Oh August, how you rocked

It is with a sad heart (and a very empty wallet) (oh, and a liver crying for respite) that we bid adieu to lovely August. I don't have much to say as I'm trying to go to bed early and get up early in order to function come September but I thought I'd leave you with a few photos and some commentary on just a few of the things that went down in August.

These are in no order since apparently I am not smarter than the uploader here on blogger and I hate moving the pictures around.

I worked on some fears, even though that isn't a goal of mine, it's just a fact of life that it's something you have to do in order to see things like the Cheese Rolling Festival. Here's a photo from the gondola at Whistler.
I watched my brother in law delight in train tracks.
Our nephew was there too but I'm pretty sure it was all part of Jason's guise.
At Deep Cove, I faced up to an irrational fear of water as I swam in the ocean to a very deep part where I couldn't see the bottom of the water (don't worry Mom (and Erica) there were lifeguards on duty and we didn't go past the safety lines).
It was really freaking cold.

I also hiked to the that rock quarry you see out to the top left of this photo.
And ate lunch at the top. Here is a view from that rock, which was crowed with silly people and dogs...
so we hiked to an even higher rock and finished our lunch there, enjoying the stillness.
I spent a whole spool of good thread and quite a bit of a day and finished 16.6% of the quilt (6 strips, all sewn, all sewn together~ it's another blog post).
I already love it. Even if it turns out to be an indistinguishable blue blob, I love it.

I spun on my wheel for the first time successfully. I first made some spiffy artsy yarn.
And then knit it into the funkiest cowl ever (cannot wait for snow now!).
I also spun up my Sweet Georgia and couldn't be happier with it. I didn't spin this one artsy but I'm happy with the weight. I won't be spinning lace on my wheel any time soon (or ever, it's kinda a clunker) but I love the yarn even more.
It's all imperfect but awesome.

I also finished part one in the Sari-Sisters-Bag project (still need to line this one but have cast on for the second one).
I went to a pretty skookum wedding (well it was a whole weekend thingie) which will get it's own post but here are some photos.

Jim and Jenn (take three, either Jim looked possessed or Jenn was blinking).
Julia gave a wonderful speech.
My only shot of the bride and groom! But I love how demure Jess is looking here.
Mom stayed all night! She danced till the wee hours and then let me led her astray in my drunkedness at 1am. I apparently insisted upon driving past my old schools. I'm sure it was a very good time.
I got snuggles from Mr. Malcolm pants.
We golfed and ate wondeful food (at the pre-wedding party fun-ness).
I wore my handknitted by Erica skirt for the first time! It's a gorgeous skirt!
No pictures from Gibsons because I forgot my camera but here is the only yarn I returned with. Rachel and I deemed it 'old sun bleached out cabin on the beach with a trellis of dried roses in PEI'.
I painted a friend's table and then tried to sneak it home with me. More photos of this process (cause wowza, was it a process) when my monitor doesn't register this whole thing as yellow. (oh yeah, did I tell you my monitor fried up the red chip so now everything is blue or yellow? Makes my brain hurt. I hate samsung.)

Lala and Spike bonded!
I drew a jellyfish on my arm with the waiter's pen at Whistler. What round were we on when I did this Sheena? And the next morning I dyed the bathtub blue getting it off but oh well.
I went insane with sorting.

And colouring.
And Lala stayed the same size but got cuter every day.
I also knit a hat. Cause, between that and the cowl, I may have been wishing for cooler days.
Spike's health has improved dramatically~ most of this change being visible through the change in his behaviour. He's back to his usual ways of shoving himself into small spaces and scratching me. Woooo Spike!
And now, it is ten minutes to twelve, and I am headed to bed. Sweet dreams, and see you in September. Which I think will be equally awesome, but not so.... tipsy. Tata!

Whistler

I need to get up earlier tomorrow than I have all month but do I go to sleep at a decent hour? No. I decide to blog. Hiya! If the whether is nice than I'm going to Deep Cove for a hike and a swim but if it's crummy than I'm knitting at a friend's house while drinking green tea. Win/win.

So Whistler. It was pretty awesome. It's a real collision of worlds up there. The people who actually do athletic stuff, and those who don't. I didn't really go up with any money but another day I would love to hike up around there.

We went up during Crankworks which was interesting. A very diverse crowd of people who ride hardcore, people associated with those people, and people who go up to be complete posers, and people associated with those posers. I know I'm sounding judgmental but you would not believe some of the people up there.

Anyhoo, Sheena and I had a blast. We both were broke so no 85$ manicure or 40$ for the big gondola (you had to pay for the peak to peak gondola even if you weren't going on it and we all know I would actually start screaming hysterically before I even set foot on it). We got in the line up for the free gondola which was okay. I'm usually better going up than down on gondolas.

On the way down I had to not look or talk to anyone.
Anyhoo, we got to the cheese rolling festival. It's when you throw an 11 pound wheel of cheese down a very steep hill and 20 people go tearing after it and after a few races the winner gets a pass to Whistler. It's amazing what people will do for a pass to Whistler. You don't actually try to catch the cheese and it goes 65mph but you have to try to be one of the first to cross the finish line. And it doesn't matter how you cross it either. Apparently this started in England 200 years ago. Sheena and I got a great place to sit about halfway up the hill and had a gorgeous view.
It's a very steep hill.


Eek. Contestants had to wear helmets, but the body armor that was provided was optional. You kinda wish more people choose body armor.
It's really hard to describe the speed at which participants flew down the hill, or the violence in which they fell. It was rather brutal and really took me by surprise. Still enjoyed it though, but yeah, you have to be pretty insane to compete in this. I have no good pictures of the spills but here's a few with some action.

Afterwards we went all around the shops and bought rather spiffy hats. Mine was slightly impractical (a fedora isn't well known for keeping the sun out but my did I look spiffy).

After that we tried to ignore the gorgeous outdoors but Sheena's boyfriend dragged us to slopestyle. I was very skeptical because it was sooooo crowded and I though we wouldn't be able to see anything but once again we managed to get great seats to view things.

Here's one insane dude coming off the ramp.
And another insane dude doing the 25 foot high 20 foot wide jump of doom. It was kinda bonkers. We were also right by the giant screen so the big jump at the bottom that we couldn't see we could still watch. We stayed for the first round of bikers but the dust and the heat really grates on you.
Very much worth it though~ experiences a lot of things that weekend are very memorable. Drew a jellyfish aaaaalllllll over my arm at one point. That was cool.

Okay, I'm so tired I cannot write anymore. Whistler was awesome and I couldn't have gone up with a better couple to have that weekend with. Hopefully I'll have some pictures of deep cove for you tomorrow!

Still in pieces

Well, I don't know about all of you but woah. August is pretty awesome. I'd be okay with it not ending but my whole, you know, no income thing is starting to put a cramp in things. I have been super busy and running around like mad. I never know what day it is I just know where I am suppose to be in relation to what I am currently doing. It's like 'today I'm going to walk to Tisol and then go have dinner with Ju and tomorrow Mom gets here and one day after Mom gets here I go to Gibsons and after Gibsons Jen and Jim get here and then after Jim and Jen get here I am going to Pitch and Putt and the BBQ for Jess and Jay and after that Jess and Jay are getting married and....' and occasionally I nap.

I have lots to blog about so I just decided to see which photos were first in my queue because normally it would be all 'WEDDING' but my battery is dead and it needs to charge before I can upload so don't worry, soon there will be pictures of the JJ wedding.Anyhoo, last you heard about the quilt was this post where I amazed you all with my mad colouring skillz. We've gone a bit from there though it may not look like it. I love how long this quilt took even before I got it to a sewing machine.

Anyhoo, I finally gathered my courage and started cutting the fabric. Most likely against/with the wrong grain but is anyone really expecting this quilt to be even remotely correct? I digress, so I started cutting, which I really thought was going to be the hard hard time consuming portion but once I got started it went really quickly.
I made little piles of each and put their letter on them.
Now, I can't remember if I told you but I did lose my binder with all my notes so I kinda had to fudge some of the fabrics and where they went. What was interesting was as I was cutting I found out, in time, about two choices I had made that were wrong. Because I just had the fabric cut according to how much I would need when I would pull a fabric and look at the numbers I was able to tell if the fabric was too small or too large and then look at the order of the letters and figure out which one it needed to be switched with. As well, if fabrics were very similar and the letters were similar in value than I would look at which fabric got more 'showtime' and choose the fabric I liked best. For instance, I have one fabric with mushrooms and one with herons, and when I couldn't figure out which was was which letter because their values were so similar I just figured out which one had the longest segments and made it the heron because I liked it better.

Did that make any sense?
I kept on cutting and ironing...
when Spike was kind enough to let me iron the fabrics.

I was very enamored with this fabric because the 3" cut was also the motif repeat so all the cuts were at the same point. I totally love this fabric. until it ran out. Yup. Ran out. Needed something lame like four more big squares. Nothing I could do. Cried a little. Considered finding the personal home phone number of the owner of Fabricana so he could check to see if they still carried the fabric (it was probably around 2am at this point) but I didn't. So the next morning I frantically bused over to Richmond and the insanely helpful people there found my fabric right away and cut me a quarter (I was tempted to ask for a four inch strip) and I finished the cuts. Here they are.
It's not really my favorite fabric anymore. So I finished. Some had a few pieces, like up above, or some, like L, had a lot of pieces.
Now, the funny part, is I was so proud of myself. Did that all in an evening. I was going to finish this quilt in NO TIME. Booyah. Because, I mean really, all I had to do after this was sort the pieces. Say it with me this time- booyah!
So I got the rows numbered and sorted on the table.
All spiffy like. And started sorting. And sorting. And sorting.... and sorting............. and sorting....
OH GOD WILL IT EVER END?!?!?!?About four or so hours later it did.
But during the sorting I realized that the notes I had made about which pieces went in which rows didn't always meet up with the coloured chart I had made. Keep in mind the program I used just gives you the chart, it doesn't break it down any further for you so you have to figure out each row. And the two ways I did that, through the colouring and the notes, didn't match. Fun.

So then I went through each row and made sure it matched the coloured chart I had made. I set up my table as a big stations and put each row in an envelope and put them in order.
Spike thinks order is for wussies. He prefers them on the floor and under his belly.
He's been such a help. And then I set up my ironing board to line up the pieces according to the coloured chart. It was a good thing I did because there was some discrepancies. It was really slow, but by far the most fun up until this point. It was neat seeing how the fabrics related to each other.
Until Spike figured he would see how the fabrics related to him. And also, if you ever see this look on Spike, which is very similar to his usual look for sure, but still, see that slightly crazier than usual glint? Do not try to pet him or get your fabric out from under him. It will require the use of spiderman band-aids if you do.
So, maybe five or so hours later or something else gawd awful, I finished the sorting.
They sat like this for a bit during all the family and wedding fun, but yesterday I sewed the first strip! 35 left to go!

And since this has been a Spike show (you can tell he's feeling better eh?) I though to throw in a picture of Lala.


This is me at my computer. It's hard to take a photo from this angle so sorry for the fuzziness but could she be any cuter?