Life's a Stitch

And more recently life’s a creative adventure with some travel thrown in.

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  • Can you take one more barn?

    Actually it's a house, an old homestead in British Columbia's Nicola Valley. My watercolour teacher has a fondness for these and I'm hooked as well. When we make a "mistake" we joke in class that we can always turn it into a winter scene – it's nothing that a little snow can't cover up. This…

  • Perfect combination: Autumn soup and knitting

    The sky was blue, the air was crisp, both the inspiration for a pot of soup and a progress on a scarf on the needles. Not the one you think, although the colours are right. I might have to call that my Autumn Soup Scarf. First the soup recipe: Autumn soup, a combination of two…

  • Aloha on a budget

    Hawaii is expensive. A single scoop ice cream cone at the famous Lapperts was priced at over $6 in Princeville! Veggies in the grocery store average $3.50/lb. Here are some tips: 1. We rented condos listed directly through owners and usually find deals on a car rentals through Hotwire or Priceline. Both condos came with…

  • Eating in Paradise

    I agreed to go the land vacation route if C would be my room steward, making my bed daily and that if I cooked, it would be cleaned up afterwards. My travelmates came though for me, so I cooked my heart out. Who wouldn't want to in a kitchen like this one: The out of…

  • Photography challenge

    I read an article that challenged you to take a photo, paying attention to the composition and settings, no after click touch ups allowed. No cropping or photoshopping, what you click is what you get, the simple truth. Here are a few examples, my favourite shots of Kauai:    

  • Knitting in paradise

    And I was the one who didn't want to go, preferring the more relaxing aspects of a cruise. I was wrong. Paradise is the only way to describe Kauai. We stayed five nights in the south and six nights in the north of the island. In both spots there seems to be a tradition of…

  • One more tree and then some knitting

    It's the last for now, I promise. Last week's watercolour class was a scene I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't seen the picture with my own two eyes. It's a tree growing out of a crevasse in Enchanted Rock State Natural Area in Texas: How is that possible? After researching batholiths, it's quite explainable.…

  • Brushes up, needles down

    Time for more painting. My watercolour teacher shares my love of trees. In his class I have painted birches, black oaks, fir trees, deciduous trees, palms, trees in winter, some in summer, the gamut. Walking in my daughter's neighbourhood in Calgary I spied a tree that I had to try on my own: It's a…

  • Trees

    Backing away from knitting again, this post has to do with trees.  I realized I left out one of my favourite pictures from the Juan de Fuca Trail series:

  • Knitting still happens

    After a brief foray into a hiking blog, I had to remind myself that this is about knitting. Sometimes in knitting, one little thing will stall your internal knitting machine, requiring more energy than you have in reserve to get going again. Taize is a slow go, hence its description as a meditative knit. It…