Vacation - almost over

Only a few more days left, but it has been a great vacation so far. DH takes a lot of pics of me (that I don't like !) but he took this one last week at the Toronto Harbourfront and I do like it - It sums up my feelings exactly about this whole time off, can you tell ? :-)


Last week, it was all about family, friends, food, shopping...you know. For the first time we attended a RibFest - OMG it was good (and I decided then and there to not watch my food intake at all and just enjoy myself) !

Many of our outings were to flea markets. I came across 2 Singer buttonholers, both of which I'm sure will fit one or some of my machines - and hopefully they will work. They always seem to have good reviews, I've wanted to try one.



The couple we visit live about a 5 minute walk from the Ravine (a large park space with walking trails and bike paths, right near downtown Toronto). For the first time, I took the pups one morning for a walk there and was surprised to find there was a packed trail for walking parallel to the paved bike path. Just like walking in the woods - and so peaceful at 7am. Look :

My neurotic Pom, turned into quite the adventurer and just loved the walk - he led the way everywhere :-)

Deceiving - this was high enough to walk under without ducking.

The end of that log from the other side.


The shopping/fabric acquisitions...remember the bag ?...


6 knits from Fabricland - 3 are rayon/spandex blends, the other 3 are poly/spandex blends. The 3rd row includes fabric from the Fabric District shopping - top to bottom are, black twill lining for an upcoming project - if it works, you'll see it. If not, well...Next down is a leaf print in (I think) cotton. Both were from King Textiles. Next one is a rayon print from Downtown Fabrics - I loved it but am not sure exactly what I'll do with it. The 2 pieces on the far right are both wool from Sue who so generously parted with some of her stash to both Connie and I. The top one is in 2 pieces and there is enough to make a skirt. The other is not quite enough to make pants, I don't think.


Last year, we went into Archie Fine (& Sons ?) to find that they cut the ends of their rolls into pant lengths and the more you pick the less $ per piece. I wasn't prepare to spend for a bulk purchase then but intended to check it out again this year. The 7 pieces above were all $15/piece - I can't go wrong with that if they make wearable pants. The colorful print is strips of gauzey fabric sewn onto a lightweight cotton backing. Connie, Reethi & I all bought a bit. This is one repeat and I think I'll just gather it to a 2" elastic for a waistband.

Need a bit of help with today's purchase. Any ideas are welcome.

We stopped in our local thrift store and left with a bag of stuff for $15 ! Including the fabric below. The plaid is a fluffy wool that I figured for a skirt but it might be TOO fluffy - I'll see.

All of the other pieces are remnants, 6 are labelled Zegna, and I DO mean remnants ! They are all half-width and range from 32-40" long. Like, say, really big swatches ! There are 11 pieces and the rolled up bundle was only $2.99. I couldn't leave it there, but have NO IDEA what to do with pieces this small ! What do you think ???


Oh, I almost forgot...the boxes I brought home. Well, one was a Featherweight (given to me by the friends we were visiting - GIVEN !) and the other was a Singer 66 RedEye found on Kijiji - it belonged to the seller's grandmother. It had originally been treadled but she was keeping the cabinet - it was gorgeous ! The machine in the middle is one of the 99s we bought last year.

2nd Annual Sewing Buddies Day !

...and here we are this year !

Reethi, Connie, me & Sue

Thursday, Connie drove in for the day and both Sue and Reethi booked the afternoon off for Toronto Fabric District shopping and lunch. As expected, we had a wonderful day. Connie & I met early morning and after a kick-start of coffee and a catch-up chat, started right in. We hit a couple of shops before meeting Reethi, Sue and Connie's daughter Leah for lunch.

Afterwards, we shopped ourselves out before seeing Reethi off to an evening engagement and Connie and I took Sue up on a supper invitation. Her husband, Rusty, did the honours of chef and produced a wonderful fish/seafood supper. Sue gave us a tour of her sewing room and we chatted more about sewing. She had sorted thru her stash the previous night and had a pile of fabrics that we were able to choose from to take a few pieces home.

When it was time to go home, Rusty offered to take me on the bike. Oh, I haven't been on a motorcyle since we sold ours about 10 years ago - and couldn't resist - although I tried, LOL. I'm not nervous and once Rusty determined that, it was a great ride - I was very comfortable and really enjoyed myself. Now, this meant it was quite the production to get me home. Sue followed us in the car, because I bought too much fabric to fit in the storage of the bike and she offered to bring it. Thanks guys !

This was a quick post before we leave for home tomorrow but here is a quick look at the fabric bag - I'll detail it once I'm able to take it all out and get pics.


A couple other things are coming with me this year - a teaser pic...

Real pics once we get home.

So Ready for Vacation

8 1/2 working hours til vacation - yes, I'm counting hours LOL

We'll be in Toronto visiting friends and with a bit of planning ahead, Connie, Sue, Reethi and I have a girls' day (oh, yes - Fabric Shopping on Queen Street) scheduled for Thursday
I CAN'T WAIT - see you soon ladies !!!!!!!!

This is us - last year


I was going to write a 'real' post, but, you know, this pretty much sums it up !

A quiet week

My 10 days of possibilities turned into 10 days of 'do whatever'.

I spent some time painting :-)




Lots of walking and I managed to get the bike out 3 times - think I'll try for 3x per week as much as I can - all this exercise was great for stress relief.

A bit of baking...
Hubby's coworkers were happy to see some of this cake show up at work the next day.

I tried a recipe for an oatmeal bread that was a complete bust - it didn't rise and it tasted icky - it hit the garbage before it even cooled off.

What else ? ah, time sitting on the deck and reading - the weather cooperated pretty well all week so there was deck time every day - lazy, lazy, lazy

No real sewing - I played with the narrow hem foot on my Singer 99, it was fiddly but not too bad. It makes a pretty cool hem. I traced Kwik Sew 3299 - I promised DH t-shirts ages ago and he's still waiting.

No gardening either - well, not entirely true, I spent a couple hours today with a friend redoing one of HER beds ! Mine weren't touched all week.

All in all it was the stress busting week I wanted. This was a familiar sight all week...what a life, eh ?


Tomorrow - back to real life.

201 km !

Self and I had heated words today...

After the dog walk this morning, I watched the weather for an hour or so and decided to take out the bike. Yesterday, it conveniently threatened rain all day and I used that as the perfect excuse to NOT go out on the bike. Yeah, yeah I knew perfectly well it was an excuse, but I had a sore butt, it was gonna rain, it was cold, yadda yadda, yadda.

5 minutes from the house she started:

Self - OMG, we can't do this !

Me - YES, we can, it's only 12k

Self - But, it's gonna rain, and our knees are sore, and our bum is sore and it's windy and it's faaaaaarrrrr ! whiny, whiny, whiny voice

Me - of COURSE we can, we did it Tuesday, we can do it today.

Self - but, I'm tired already and my bum's really SORE !

Me - just keep pedalling and shut up.

Self - but, but, but...

Me - lalalalalala, I'm not listening, keep pedalling.

55 minutes later self and I arrived back home after 13km (yes, she stopped complaining and kept pedalling LOL)

Not sure if I've blogged this before but I've been walking the Trans Canada Trail (tctrail.ca has an interactive map, you use a pedometer and log mileage or steps each day). This month my goal was 200 km for the month - it took 25 km on the bike to do it but I made my goal ! Happy, happy, happy :-)

Parting Shot(s)
I love that the trees completely overhang the roads in our neighbourhood. This was cottage country in the 1950s and most of the grown trees are at least that old.


Putting mileage on those little legs this week - 4k for 5 days in a row so far - and this is the result once we get home - everyone picks their spot...

Alex gets the couch:


Skippy, the sunroom carpet:


Charlie (who we have for 2 weeks rather than the expected 2 weekends) has settled in nicely and will flake out anywhere :-)

I'm a Wimp

HA ! what a whuss !


You can see where I'm going with this, right ?
That, my friends, is a picture of a torture machine (similar to treadmills, ellipticals, etc.)

For the past 3 years (hmm, maybe more) it has lived hanging from our garage ceiling. Every year I say I should get it down and use it. For the same 3 years (or more) I've started and stopped a multitude of walking programs.

THIS year I've actually made some weight loss progress ! Somewhat unintentionally at first but hey, that was just bonus. However, it has all been a result of counting calories and cutting portion sizes. There's that 4km walk most days, and while I expect it's helping some, I try not to count that, I'd rather it just be 'normal' for me.

Now, I figure I better up the ante a bit. A weight loss program should definitely include exercise and at the moment I'm going through physio for knee pain. Biking is a good idea overall.

DH tuned it up on Sunday, today I took it out for a short ride. Those knee muscles need a LOT of work.

I can walk 10-15km no problem - and did in fact start my day with the 3-dog 4km walk. But biking uses different muscles and I apparently haven't used those in a while. My short ride turned out to be an hour - 13km. It was all local on bike paths and I tried to keep it as non-hilly as possible - those inclines felt like mountains LOL. I know it was a slow speed, short distance but I gotta start somewhere and really, I`m happy I did it without having to walk up any of the inclines.

Tomorrow again, if the rain holds off - and if I can walk. Like I said, a wimp :-)

It's all about the puppies !

Rain cleared up yesterday afternoon. Today is the only sunny day on the weather report - 'course we all know how accurate they are ! LOL

After I waved DH off at the door this morning (oh I'm liking this !), I leashed up the 3 dogs and out we went. I'm bound and determined to keep my calorie count stable and my exercise up this week. Now that I've had a couple of quiet, catch-up days, I don't want to be a couch potato all week.

Here they are - ready to go...Alex and Skippy are coupled on the purple leash - after the first walk or two of the season they walk really well like this. They get enough room to sniff a bit and no knotted leashes for me :-)


We live in a residential neighbourhood and I've got a couple 4km walks mapped out. One, in the newer (more sunny) area and the other in the older, more treed area. It was already pretty sunny and hot when we left, so we went with the shady walk.

Bah, we got the walk in, but ended up circling around some roads. Why ? because some people insist on opening their doors and letting their dogs run loose ! Their big dogs. Their big dogs who, upon seeing other dogs out walking adopt a not-so-friendly pose.

I have 2 little dogs, was walking 3 little dogs this morning and two of those little dogs have big dog complexes. When they look in the mirror they see Rottie's or something LOL

With my two, I can scoop 'em up and get out of Dodge,so to speak, if necessary - not so much with three of them.

Much better to backtrack and detour around instead. We have to do this all the time and it p***ses me off.

People, if you want your dogs out, take them for a walk - leashed !
If you want to open the door and let them out loose, fence your yard !

Tomorrow, I'll go the other route :-)

Staycation - what to do, what to do...

Today is a stat holiday in Quebec, as is next Friday (Canada Day). Normally, I wouldn't take the days in between as holidays - a lot of people do and it makes for a pretty quiet week at work. This year though, I'm ready for a break - have to clear my brain. There's been a lot of stress since about November and I'm due.

The plan? There is none really. But I'm on my own, DH is not off with me.

We're babysitting Charlie, my DSIL's dog, so, along with my 2 I've got lots of company.

If the sun comes out, maybe the dogs and I'll walk, maybe I'll garden, maybe I'll nap, maybe I'll sew, maybe I'll work on my socks (or the 'almost' done sweater, maybe I'll sit on the back deck and read (or surf).

I could have gone to New Brunswick, or Toronto but I've been counting days to doing nothing for almost a month now so no travelling.

Right now I've got 10 gloriously stress-free days to fill up as I choose ! The possibilities are endless.

Ladies who Lunch - Part 4

I'm VERY late to this party - since everyone else posted practically the next day !

But, since this will be my whole vacation post, I'll start at the beginning and lead up to the good stuff. As we often do, we spent some of our vacation visiting friends in Toronto. Normally, we have no plans, it's downtime (& shopping LOL) This year, I had one day planned for me, the rest we played by ear.

In my last post, I mentioned, amongst all the SM pics, that we spend some time visiting antique shops, consignment shops and the like. Last year, we carted home two pieces of furniture - this year one new piece came home with us. As an aside, I don't go "just" to buy furniture - if I could find these kinds of deals in Montreal, I'd snap 'em up !

Our house has NO cupboard space - my tiny galley kitchen in our old apartment has more cupboards than this house does. We've been looking for a buffet/sideboard type of cabinet for a long time. The intention was to take off the lunch counter in the pic below and replace it with storage.

An hour after we got home, the counter was off and replaced with this...please, please ignore the mess !



Now the good stuff !

When I knew we were going to Toronto, I emailed Connie and let her know. Connie, who should list mindreading in her list of talents, absolutely recognized the hidden (but not extremely subtle) message in my email - 'please, please come to Toronto and shop with me!'
And so she left her family to take care of business for the day and did just that :-)

Here we are at the start of our morning. I didn't know that Toronto had their own version of New York's Sewing Man sculpture. We've got a very large thimble, with concrete buttons surrounding trees as seating and a measuring tape imprinted into the sidewalk - pretty cool.





There's no point rehashing the trip down Queen Street as Connie has done a wonderfully complete post on the subject here...The down low on fabric shopping in Toronto

And that's not all ! I emailed Reethi and Connie emailed Sue and they met us for a while at lunchtime. We managed to catch up on the past couple of months, eat and get in some bead shopping before they had to get back to work.

Here's the 'Friends' shot - yes, we all have the same pic. We gave our cameras to a gentleman in Downtown Fabrics and he took one for all of us - we probably should have changed positions a little bit LOL !

The haul (from left to right):

16 yards of black poly/cotton broadcloth (I picked this up at a local thrift shop for $5.99) It's sure to come in handy.

Downtown Fabrics...
The wild print is a Nina Ricci cotton
Below that is a blue cotton, for a shirt and a purple and light blue knit for tees.

The steel blue and red fabrics are technical fabrics. The blue (cotton/nylon) from Chu Shing Textiles and the Red from Affordable Textiles.

The only fabric with a plan is the blue cotton/nylon - I've got a skirt that is just a titch too small and I'd like to try to copy it.

The yarns are both sock yarns, the yellow from Romni Wools on Queen Street and the other from Creative Yarns in Scarborough.

And that was my phenomenal vacation this year - I sure hope we can do it again sometime !!!!!

Last post of 2009

It's been another busy week...

This year DH & I packed up the furbabies and headed to Toronto to spend the holidays with friends. We arrived Christmas Eve and will make our way home on Saturday after we recuperate from tonights' New Years Eve party. :-)

As is usual when we visit here, it has been all about the food (with a bit of shopping !) and the company. We've even managed some exercise - so to speak ! The new toy in this house is a Wii and it has been put to good use by all of us. Bowling & golf. It's amazing how much you actually do move ;-) *I think I want one*

Of course, my knitting projects came along with me.

My 'bristow' cardigan was started on Dec 2 using the brown Cascade 220 wool I bought this summer. The body was done on a circular needle and it is ready to be split for the armholes. I brought an extra ball to be ready for this but I decided, rather than doing the back and each front separately, I would do them all at once. Since I have to work on 3 parts of the sweater, only have 2 balls of yarn and don't want to use both ends of one ball, I need another ball to continue. It will wait til I get home, but here it is as it looks now...the shaping looks quite good if I do say so myself (first sweater I ever made with waist shaping)


My socks, though, have moved along quite nicely. These are the 'Lacy Rib Socks' from Socks from the Toe Up book. I've finished the foot, done the gusset, the slip-stitch heel and this morning, started up the legs.

It should go quickly enough now, that they could be finished before the end of next week.


Shopping this week - only 3 balls of yarn...

Arequipa - 65% superwash wool, 20% alpaca, 15% nylon, 100gm, the color below would be accurate if it weren't shiny.


2 -50gm balls of Patons Kroy, Cobalt Jacquard, 75% wool, 25% nylon



As 2009 comes to a close, I would like to say thanks for reading everyone. I appreciate all of your comments and encouragement.

I wish you all a safe, enjoyable New Years Eve !

Vacation's Over

We were away this past week on holidays. Generally our vacations are very low key. Either visiting family in New Brunswick or in Toronto...this week it was Toronto.

I had no access to the internet til Thursday so, no blogging, reading blogs, reading emails AND no sewing either ! But, on Wednesday our hosts pointed DH and I in the direction of Queen & Spadina and I spent 3 hours dragging him through all the fabric & notion shops in the fasion district. I had a couple of notions I was looking for but I was NOT going to buy any fabric.....I didn't, hubby did ;-). Saturday Aug 2 was our 11th anniversary after all, what better present ?

I picked up a few skirt pieces at The Wool House - they had their end of roll pieces cut to approx 1 yd lengths and I will use these for skirts for work.

A couple of doors over, at Downtown Fabrics, I got :

a rayon knit print (the fact that I haven't yet got up the nerve to try knits didn't stop me),


a red stretch cotton w/embroidery,


blue cotton w/embroidery,

and 2 pieces of linen, the same print - one blue, one red, DH liked the blue, I liked the red, therefore I had to have both ! No ?

All of these pieces are quite a bit darker than these pics show.

I really liked every piece I bought and would like to sew them up rather than stash them. Tomorrow shortly, I'll start prewashing them.

Now I have to make another attempt at the sleeves for my coat and I've got a skirt almost finished (M3341) in an orange stretch cotton with a woven stripe in it. It only needs the waistband facing and the hem.