Colours of June - Ontario

We started our trip by visiting a vineyard with a wine tasting. This was a common sight for me when I lived down in Niagara in the '70s, row upon row of grapevines.

Walking on the Niagara escarpment, we saw some trees with damaged bark which made great patterns.

Vast skies and power lines, some very new. I didn't get round to sketching these new pylons, just snatched a photo from the car.

These salad greens are growing in a half barrel in a friend's tiny back yard in St. Catharines.

Colourful signage on the corridors at Brock University. This was always one of the great features when I worked there in the '70s. 

 

We got together with Bob, who had been my boss in the library at Brock and went down to the canal to look for passing lakers. This is the new fencing at the Lock 3 viewing platform on the Welland canal, complete with patriotic maple leaf topping. Not the nicest thing if you should fall against it!

I'm not sure what this is, but it looks like a type of raspberry. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. As it grows in the shade, not the easiest of items to photograph. The colour really zings when you see the flowers.

An exciting display outside a hardware store in Toronto. Presumably this all comes in each night and is displayed again daily. I loved the cards showing the prices for milk, ice cream etc. Click on the image to read all the options.

This amazing moth was lurking by the garage at Pia and Tom's place in Barry's Bay. This proved hard to photograph as there was little light. It was very obliging, and stayed still until I had fetched my camera from the house.

All the temporary bollards we saw had the same format, but with the contractor's name emblazoned on them. This wasn't the best name I saw, but getting such an item in focus from a moving car isn't easy.

A beautiful old car, colourfully painted, lurking near a yarn store with a fantastic name! 

This store is in Port Perry, and we only came across it accidentally, having taken a wrong turn. We were meaning to take a brief break, and turned into a shopping complex rather than up the main road. Coming out of the slip road this was lined up straight in front of us. I called out "We have to stop to see Never Enough Wool". They had moved down a few doors earlier in the year. Ian paused to look at some local history information about the lake, and I took a look at the inspiring range of yarn.

Now to hunt out my colours of July, back home here in Derbyshire.

Birthday treats

Birthdays often pass me by, but this year I celebrated many times.
On my birthday we were on holiday in Ontario. We arrived the night before, and stayed with friends in Toronto.

On the day we went with friends firstly to visit a winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and then on to lunch at the Skylon in Niagara Falls. See the view from our table below. At the end of the meal a slice of cake with a candle on it appeared. (Birthday cake no1.)

A week later, once more with Elle and Mart, we visited Pia, Tom and family. They live on the edge of a lake near Barry's Bay.

It was so relaxing, we wished we could have stayed with them for more than two nights. Their daughters made a fantastic cheesecake with grated Toblerone on the top. I should have asked for the recipe. (Birthday cake no2.)

Because we were away, I asked my Ravelry birthday swap partner KnitsOnVerandas to delay sending her parcel to me. So, last week it turned up, and it was well worth waiting for.

The yarn,  Fundy Footsee in the Warning Sky colourway is exquisite, just my colours. I've already started off some socks using it with another yarn in single row stripes. I wore the bracelet  all the rest of the day, despite wearing clothing that didn't go with it.

Back to birthday cake - last night at our Woolly Wednesday session at the Art Room, I was surprised to be given another cake. This time it was a ginger cake with lemon icing. I shared some with others at the studio, then cycled home in the rain carrying the remainders. (Birthday cake no. 3)

Treacherous cycle lanes and other hazards ...

Gateshead ...North Shields, and Hoddesden celebrate the season!

The past few months have been full of odd hazards.

Firstly I had that virus again, you know, the one where I lose my voice for weeks on end (only 5 weeks this time).

That took me from the end of October into early December.

Somehow, feeling grotty and speechless, I have little inclination to chat electronically either.

Then we ran into problems with internet access.

Those seem to have been solved firstly by buying a new computer, and this week by getting a new phone line into the house.

Now the new machine is up and running, comes the inevitable search for those black holes where files hide themselves when you most want them.

I have modified some pictures, and they aren't where I thought they were.

I'll just have to retrace my steps ...

In the meantime we were lucky that our projected trip to Lille was due to take place just a couple of days after the Eurostar trains got stuck.
We hastily cancelled our hotel booking, and headed north to Newcastle.

A reasonably priced "secret" hotel booking turned out to be the Hilton in Gateshead.We were only there for two nights, and only slotted in one 20 minute swim in their pool.

(When we were in Madrid last summer we just missed the opening of the hotel pool by a couple of days. We saw it being filled, which was little comfort.)

So we got used to walking on icy surfaces on hills before the cold spell really took hold here.

One of the early manifestations was just how quickly it had frozen over, snow had turned to ice over a storm drain on my journey to the studio.

Today, most of the remaining few centimetres of snow has been slowly melting, and we no longer have the idyllic scene pictured below.

No time to show some of the knitting I've been doing recently, or the pictures I took of December colour in the garden prompted by Leigh's posting here.

Clone me please....

... as I never seem to have time to do things.

Somehow I find the time to spend too much time being distracted by lurking on Ravelry

Whenever I mention it as a resource to others I ask them not to blame me if they get to spend too much time on it.

I use it as a means of keeping up with friends, and it couldn't be bettered for that.

We had a steep learning curve at the Art Room as we started running our sessions in the much larger premises in January. We are making a name for ourselves, and enjoying the process, but it would be wonderful if we could make enough money to sustain ourselves and then pay ourselves some wages.

This card was made for me by a 5 year old who attended a couple of sessions back in the spring.

Alongside my voluntary work for the Art Room, I did the usual monthly sessions for CamTAD now taking place in the Salvation Army hall here in Long Eaton.

As usual I went to some of the stitching shows.

Art Room commitments meant that I had to miss out on a couple this year.

Some of them were a bit quieter this autumn, but it meant that I had time to teach crochet in depth.

I have been crocheting more anyway recently.

Thanks to the prominent exhibit of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef at the shows at the NEC, Ally Pally and Harrogate we had several people wanting to learn.

In September I had to get a new phone, and all these pictures were taken on it.

I keep forgetting that I always have a camera on me, and miss out on some shots.

I had the presence of mind to take this picture walking home from the station one day. Had I been at the Art Room that afternoon I would have missed it as it would have been behind me as I cycled home.

We did find some time to do some other things, and this was one of the sparklers we took along to a Bonfire Night party with friends in Derby.

Later on in November we had a week long trip to Poland.

This was the vaulted brick ceiling in a textile mill that has just been converted into ms2 (art gallery) as part of Manufaktura.

My camera was still in my bag in the cloakroom, but this gives a bit of the atmosphere.

Minutes after leaving the gallery we were drinking hot chocolate at Wedel . I can't think why I failed to take a picture at the time. Maybe I was too busy drinking it!

Alongside all this I did some knitting, but failed to photograph most of it. These are fingerless mittens for the other Mary knitted with more of the sock yarn I dyed for her alternating with mohair.