A day of holiday in my own city!

It's interesting isn't it that it takes a visitor (in our case from overseas) to get us off our prats and into our beautiful downtown Toronto.  We went to Ripley's Aquarium and it was completely spectacular.  To be that close to giant swordfish swimming just overhead, to see exquisite colourful coral and the wonder of jellyfish was just amazing.  Until you spend time downtown on the street just wandering and snapping photos you also forget how beautifully planned Toronto is.  It is not a concrete jungle - every time you turn your head there is a cafe with wrought iron railings trailing bursts of flowers and places to sit and watch the world go by under a thoughtful stand of trees.  And lots and lots of places for thirsty wanderers to sit and have a pint to enjoy and watch that world stroll by.

These two pictures are of a Sunday flea market across from St. Lawrence Market

That pint filled the bill perfectly - mmmmm good!

Or you could hire a bike and ride around!

.  What a lovely way to spend a day!

Away Day of Bliss

This girl knows. A day with yourself needs minimal planning - the only critical ingredient required is time.  On Friday I took my chair, coffee, Ereader and my new footrest stool (because I am a "feet up" person)and my crochet project and off I went to down to the lake here in Mississauga.  Sunny and perfect temps all combined to create a perfect day!

Many of the these guys were having a snooze - I get that...

This was my view....

Lunch anyone?

Lunch around here is quickly created and immediately inhaled.  I had to fend off the hungry hordes to snap these pics.  Cameron is a master of the "dagwood" sandwich and he learned this skill at the feet of the master, my husband Peter.  The creations are legendary, finely tuned and well received.  It's a feast!

Shawl

There is something soothing about so many squares in delightful colours on their way to somewhere.  All of a uniform size, pleasing to the eye and destined for cuddling.  This shawl will warm my shoulders on those end of summer forest visits.   Each square will be surrounded by a beautiful chocolate brown wool making each one like a picture in a frame.  Sigh..

The Great Craft Room purge of 2014!

Oh my yesssss it was bad...

Mmmm hmmmm...

Yes, this is the sewing table -I used to clear away a spot and sew or create but this room was also the universal dumping ground.

So you can see the dilemma I was in especially after having been hugely influenced while visiting dearest friends in Calgary who live in a small space.  Every  piece of crafting material (soup to nuts) has to be in its place most of the time.  I was especially struck by my friend's handy treatment of her wool stash - a place for every skein and every skein in its place!  The idea began to percolate...I could/would/might clean up my own craft room to see if I could make enough space to cut out squares for a lap quilt I had purchased some fabric for.  The fabric squares in question are 7 inches square so quite a bit of room was needed on my craft table and that meant that everything else in there had to shift.

I think the final garbage bag total was 7 big green garbage bags. The photos at the bottom of the post show the classic crafter trick of putting each project in its own special plastic container thus having it ever handy and my own bad habit of buying lovely bags to do the same.  There are a LOT of empty plastic bins in my house currently.  Post Inn Village is the beneficiary of much of the extra wool, stamps, scrapbooking papers etc.  Sigh - and what took me three days of semi-hard graft is now to be revealed!!!!

 Good Canadian girl must work with Tim's - there is simply no other way !

The results are in - I can see the floor in the cupboard and everything has its place - so thank you Jane and Shannon!

The story of a blankie and a hat

The blankie was for Karenanne's 50th birthday.  It was started many months ago, the result of trolling online for a very favourite colourway from Bonnie & Camille for Moda.  Bought a charm pack.  They really are charming because when I quilted all those many MANY years ago, the bane of my existence was cutting perfect (and they had to be perfect) squares of whatever size.  Enter the charm pack.  The fabric comes already laser cut squares with pinked edges no less.  So all of my angst about not sewing them exactly together or having mismatches galore were 90% gone to my joyous delight.

I really wanted this little quilt to be a blankie in the true sense of the word.  Dragged along the sand, having lots of spots as reminders of good times had with it tucked around.  So here it is...photographed in a brief break during a snowstorm.  Farewell small blankie....

The hat came about because I went to a Christmas lunch.  It was very nice listening to ladies who I work with but don't see all the time.  The gal on my left (perhaps sensing I didn't know what everyone else was talking about) proceeded to take knitting needles and a ball of wool out of her purse! and asked me if I knew how to knit!!! So then we spent awhile talking about European vs. English knitting and how she used to knit when she was much younger and how she was determined to get back into it.  And as I was determined to make something useful from crocheting we made a pact.  She would knit a hat and I would crochet a hat.  Voila!  I had ever so much fun figuring out how to do the flowers too and if I do say so myself, it looks quite nice!