Saturday Afternoon Walk - Part II

Just some pretty flowers.

This is our favourite park. The stairs down to the train bridge is just down and to the right. Plus it's got a great name. Though we would have named it something else. Like "Train Conductor Park" . . . or something.




John and I like to come down to this bridge and watch the trains. It's really nice at sunset. They go right underneath the bridge. It's right next to an inlet. There's always boats out there, and apparently a pile of sulphur that they filmed an episode of SG-1 on top of. I would think that would have been unpleasant for the actors.

A sticker that we liked. It's meat!

Down by the tracks. There's all sorts of good stuff to look at from the old bridge.

We ran into the sea star again on our way back home. He had moved slightly, and was now completely dead. I suggested that a dog sniffed him. John thought maybe he was kicked. I guess we'll never know. And neither will he.

This is a pretty mural by our house. See the grey squirrel on the balcony rail?

And finally we end up on Our Street. It was about 6 by this time. We went out for sushi at this awesome new restaurant by our place. The service is incredible, the food is great, and the prices are good. Perfect balance.

Our Saturday Afternoon Walk - Part I

John and I went out for a long walk today. I took lots of pictures.


We ran into this guy on the sidewalk. We suppose he was dropped by a bird. He was very dry and dying/already dead when we found him. We considered dumping slushy on him to help him out, but thought that sugar and extreme cold was probably not good for sea stars.


Just so you don't think that we really had slushies.


One park that we went to had lots of initials carved into the trees.


And very pretty moss.


And neat things in stumps.

The sidewalks becomes trail at one point. It smells really nice along here.



We are really close to an ocean inlet, and there's some pretty intense industrial areas. Lots of seagulls.



I guess they were testing out the road-line painters or something here. The shadow is John's head, in case you weren't making the leap.

Dreams, apparently.



I took some excellent photos of John while we were walking. I think they look slightly CD-insert-ish. We also found the best seesaw ever. It was huge and sproingy and very confortable. You could stand in the middle. This might be the best photo of John ever taken.

My Newest Obsession,

Spinning.

I decided to go visit Birkeland Bros a few days ago to look for a nice yarn for John's upcoming Tomten sweater. While I was browsing I noticed some drop spindles behind the counter. I've always wanted to learn, but never had anyone to teach me. I bought a small bag of Shades of Narnia (from Chilliwack) at the PNE a few years ago, and had no idea what to do with it.


So I bought a student drop spindle and 2 lbs of roving in two lovely greens. Pearl showed me how to use the spindle and I headed for home.

It took me a while to be able to spin the spindle and a) not drop it and b) know when backspin was going to destroy what I had just made. My first yarn was lumpy and ugly and wonderful.
I made about 6 yards. I seriously have no idea how much of it there is, but definately not enough to do *anything* with. I'm just going to keep it for sentimental reasons.


My *second* handspun is more like real yarn. I'm still not sure on the yardage of it, but it's about 100g of fibre. I should be able to actually make something out of it. It's a two-plu aran weight, made from the bag of Narnia roving. It's incredibly pretty. I've just got it drying at the moment, but I'll post photos of it when it's all clean and dry and wound. I can't wait to knit with it.


I also got a great steal at Value Village the other day. A large men's wool sweater, handknit. I'm in the process of ripping it all out. The yarn is a fingering weight, I think, and a beautiful blue-green colour. I'm looking forward to doing something with it, though I'm not sure what yet.