At least one head is warm in Canmore

Last night we drove past Canmore's Big Head (a statue of a head emerging from the ground, to celebrate the meaning of Canmore's name in Gaelic, wished on us recently by the town fathers and mothers) - and this is what we saw:Some kind person had knitted a hat to help the poor guy survive the -40C weather. He's still wearing it today, which is just as well because it's still *&*% cold.

I didn't get very far with our chronicle of the China journey. It wasn't going to work - I really don't like writing "and then we went to... and we saw..." entries. Oh well. If you're interested, check out our Flickr pictures (link should be somewhere on the right).

Next week we're off to Ottawa to see the wonderful Dmitriy and his lovely parents, and then to South America to cruise around the south end of the continent, catching a glimpse of Antarctica if we're lucky. A couple more tick-marks for the travel log.

Keep warm, y'all. That's what we're trying to do.

Around Beijing

Sleep didn't last very long last night. We were both ready to go at 1:30 a.m. We managed to stay in or around bed until 5:30, but it was no problem getting fed and ready to go by 7:30.

Beijing is even more crowded than usual this week. It's National Holiday week, 7 days to celebrate the founding of the People's Republic of China. Most people have time off work, but it looks like everyone in the outlying provinces makes a pilgrimage to the capital for this week. So, taking advantage of the jetlagged condition of our group of tourists, we got underway early.

First stop was in one of the hutongs. There are a few of these neighbourhoods left in Beijing, mostly (I think) for tourists. They're very Turkish-feeling warrens of narrow streets and low houses built around courtyards. We were driven around one by pedicab and visited the home of a retired lady who makes a little money on the side talking to tourists about life in the hutong. She seems comfortable now, although in the bad old days of the Cultural Revolution there were an awful lot of people jammed into her group of three homes.

Then we headed for Tiananmen square, along with half the population of China. Main impression: thousands and thousands of people in a square ringed with incredible flower displays. I could tell that people came from many different parts of China; they looked as different from each other as Scandinavians look from Italians. Most were dressed in fashionable, Western-looking clothes, but a few still wore more traditional clothing - Mao suits, sort of. We all found ourselves the objects of curiosity. Several families wanted us to pose for pictures with them. These, our guides said, would be people from small towns and remote regions who weren't used to Westerners yet. They were lovely people. Laughter crosses all language barriers.

Lunch was at a restaurant with another remarkable washroom. Going up to it you just noticed a large mirrored wall facing the stairs. The back wall of the cubicles (or the wall behind the urinals in the men's room) turned out to be the transparent part of this two-way mirror. The oddness continued in the sink area, shared by both genders. The sinks had female legs.

No time for admiring such things, though. There was serious tourist work to be done. We had to explore the Forbidden City, the home of the emperors from the 15th to the early 20th centuries. Gorgeous. Vast. Beautifully restored and maintained. Utterly spotless and litterless grounds. Really, really beautiful. And very crowded. We need more time there; we couldn't go inside any of the buildings or do more than get shepherded through the mobs, following our fish flags faithfully. I'm glad we saw it, but it was (necessarily) just like looking at a gourmet meal through a restaurant window.

Just time enough back at the hotel to freshen up, and we're off again, this time to a Peking Opera performance (shortened and simplified for tourists). Another appetizer experience. This isn't your Italian nonna's opera. It's a combination of martial arts, acrobatics, and music that is utterly foreign and totally entrancing. I could have watched all night, but first I would have liked to have known more about what was going on. Maybe next time.

Back to the hotel for a small bedtime snack and our first experience of "kung fu tea" (I'm not sure if that's the proper name for it). A young man in traditional costume poured hot water onto leaves in a teacup from a long, long, long-spouted pot using a variety of extraordinary positions - over his shoulder and behind his back, among others. Good tea; great show.

And so to sleep (hopefully).

First day in China

So we finally got to Beijing! We left Canmore on Monday the 29th and stopped over in Salmon Arm so we could enjoy our new favourite Barley Station Brew Pub. Tuesday we had lunch with Ron's cousin Rae, catching up after years and years. We were in Vancouver in time for dinner with Rachel - Chinese dumplings at her favourite place (and now ours) on Broadway. And Wednesday we caught the plane.

Flying is not the best way to spend half a day, in my opinion. Especially not when you're crammed in between two families with toddlers on their way to visit grandma. The problem with little kids is they're not civilized enough to pretend that they're enjoying something as dreadful as flying. At one point I was managing to drift into sleep when the kidlet behind me decided to lay some mighty kicks on my seat back. I don't know what happened - maybe I have a secret kung fu warrior within - but my arm whipped out around the seat and whacked her on her precious little legs. She stopped. The guy in the seat across the aisle gave me a thumbs-up. I was very embarrassed.

So we staggered off the plane into mid-afternoon Beijing, and this is what we saw through the airport windows:

It was a sunny day. Really.

We made our way through the passport check (very politely and efficiently done), and found the baggage carousel. I visited the washroom while we were waiting and was greeted by no fewer than 4 attendants. When I was done one hurried into the cubicle to wipe everything down and refold the toilet paper while her colleague ushered me to the sink. When my hands were properly washed another lady handed me a paper towel while the fourth wiped the sink. That was one clean washroom.

The redoubtable Jessie met us as we emerged from the bowels of the airport and, together with guides Kevin and Eric, introduced us to our new standards, the red fish and blue fish we'd follow for the next 12 days. We UBC and University of Saskatchewan alumni followed Kevin with the blue fish into one bus; the University of Alberta grads were in the red-fish bus. And soon we were in our comfy room at one of the four Hiltons in Beijing. We had just enough energy left to go to the welcome reception, learn the basic ground rules from Jessie and meet a few of our new friends. Then - crash! into bed.

A Day Redefined

For the last 7 years September 11 has meant terror and death to me. Yesterday all that changed. Our grandson, Dimitry Joseph Fisher Lewis, was born. Now September means hope and life and new beginnings. Only problem: I'm not sure how to spell his first name yet! That's what you get when your children have diverse heritages to celebrate.

Meanwhile, Ron and I are busy getting shots and things in preparation for a trip to China. We leave September 28 and get back on Thanksgiving. I can only imagine how many cute little baby things we're going to pick up there.

Up to date

Just a note to let you know I've finally got all the pictures from our trip uploaded to Flickr. The easiest place to start is here. They're a lot more informative than I've been able to make this blog - have a look. (I'm still adding comments and putting them on the map.)

Home

It's 8 a.m. on Tuesday, and I've been up since 5. Not bad for the second morning home, I guess. And the advantage of still being on a time somewhat east of us is that we get to watch the glorious sunrise light our wonderful mountains. Driving home from Calgary Sunday evening we were both struck by the beauty of our own part of the world: the mountains in the evening light with scattered patches of rain equalled anything we had seen on this or any trip. Prince Christian Sound in Greenland comes close, but only close.

The flight home followed the great circle route, of course, which meant we flew over Greenland. We've done that many times before, but this time we had some sense of what we were passing over, and it was lovely. We also got a good look at Baffin Is., which a lecturer on the cruise had talked about quite a bit, and we could see what had moved and excited him - huge mountains with deep U-shaped valleys, barren and beautiful. I for one want to see that from the ground. It might even beat the scenery around Canmore.

One thing about Europe that I miss here is the efficient and convenient public transit. In Amsterdam in particular - and also London - I was struck by the small number of private cars cluttering up the city centre. Of course it's expensive and inconvenient to drive downtown there, but it's also quite practical not to. Amsterdam has the advantage of being flat, so bicycles are a practical alternative, but there are buses and trams everywhere. You don't have to walk more than a couple of blocks or wait more than 5 minutes to get where you're going. For out-of-town travel there are trains every hour or less going just about anywhere. Why can't we do that here? I know we don't have the population density and people are attached to their cars, but this is a rich province in a rich country - build it and they will come. It particularly annoys me that Canmore has a major railway line going right past our house, but no train station and no way of using the train to get to and from Calgary. What would it take? harumph.

Anyway, it's nice being home. Our apartment and our cats were well taken care of while we were gone, and it's so great curling up in the comfy chair with a couple of purring cats.

On the way home

I'm sitting in the Air Canada passenger lounge at Heathrow (thank you, Evan!) enjoying their free coffee and internet and catching up with a bit of Flickr picture uploading (we're all the way up to the second stop in Iceland - just wait for the Greenland pictures!). We left the ship Thursday morning, not without a sense of relief. Three weeks is just a bit long to be cooped up with a couple of loud Texan war veterans. We met some thoroughly enjoyable people, too, of course: Doug and Helen, Larry and Linda (thanks for the meditation sessions), but the others begin to oppress me after a couple of weeks.

We had three days in Amsterdam in a great little hotel Ron found just a block from the Rijksmuseum and the Concertgebouw. We didn't get any museums visited, but we had our share of concerts: a youth orchestra on Thursday and the Rosenberg Trio + friends (Stephane Grappelli / Django Reinhart style jazz) on Friday at the Concertgebouw, and a Bach recital on the magnificent organ of the Westerkirk Saturday afternoon, so we did get cultured up. Friday we tried to get to a cheese market in a small town to the north, but we missed it by half an hour. Never mind, it was a pretty train trip. We also nibbled on a hemp-seed chocolate bar we picked up at the flower market Saturday, but we didn't really enjoy the effects. I got even more sleepy and stupid than usual, and Ron turned bright red. So we're not tempted to add to our list of favourite intoxicants yet. But we like Amsterdam.

So we're heading home. I for one am looking forward to a bit of utter torpitude and some catching up with email, pictures, knitting and other good stuff. Stay tuned for a knitter's view of the North Atlantic and a couple of patterns I came up with while we were away.

Iceland again, Scotland and beyond

After two days of rough sailing we were in Iceland again, this time in Reykjavik (smoky bay) in the south-east. Didn't spend long there, though - we boarded a bus right away and headed out into the countryside again for more waterfalls, plate tectonics and geothermal stuff. We saw the original Geysir, but he's not spouting any more - tourists threw too many rocks into his mouth. His neighbour Strokkur goes off every 5-10 minutes, though, so we saw lots of geiser activity.

We continue to think we need to spend more time in Iceland. It's beautiful, the people are pleasant, there's a manageable amount of interesting history - we definitely need to go back. And the next stop needs to be revisited, too: Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. Lots of wool available, of course, and I'm bringing back some along with a £10 Shetland wool pullover. But the best thing was the museum. We had time for only a quick survey tour, but it was enough to convince us we need to spend a day in the museum and a week in the islands. Beautiful, beautiful place.

We got to Edinburgh the next day (yesterday). It's in the midst of its annual Festival, with odd-looking people doing interesting things on the street and handing out invitations to the events they're involved in. There are so many plays, concerts, art exhibits and stand-up comics happening in so many places that there is a Sears catalogue-sized book giving all the details, a smaller book listing events by date and time in 10-minute intervals, and a map showing the hundreds of venues around the city. We went to two: a play that was the next thing happening at a venue we stumbled into, and a free stand-up comic performing near where we were when we were browsing the book trying to figure out what to do next. We didn't see any of the standard Edinburgh attractions - Holyrood palace, the Castle, museums, or anything else except from our hop-on hop-off bus tour, but they'll keep until next time.

We did manage to get to the Tattoo, however. It's definitely the best of its kind of event - bagpipes, marching bands, Scottish dancers and the like - and definitely worth doing. For me, once is enough. The seats are intolerably small and squished together and it's coooooolllllldddd. I was dressed for iceberg viewing and still freezing. The woman next to me moved, I think because I was shivering too much! But the music and the marching were superb.

It's looking like we're going to have to spend a good bit of time next summer doing Britain. So far the itinerary includes Penzance, Edinburgh and the Shetlands, and I'd like us to do Plymouth, Stonehenge and places around there as well (I saw them with Rachel's choir 15 years ago, but Ron hasn't been there yet).

It didn't rain in Reykjavik, Lerwick or Edinburgh, although it tried. Now we're back on the high seas - well, the North Sea anyway - and we're back into fog and rain. Perfect planning, I think. Tomorrow it's Amsterdam and the end of the cruise. I expect a return to summer, which we've managed to avoid so far on this trip. It will be a shock!

Greenland

When we first heard about this cruise it was the chance to see Greenland that appealed to me most. I've always wondered what that big white blob at the top of the globe was really like. And here was a chance to find out in relative safety and comfort.

Usually we've found that it's dangerous to have high expectations for a place. Some of our best experiences have been in places we expected to hate - Warsaw, for instance. But not this time.

We got to Greenland after two bumpy days crossing the North Atlantic. Nosing into the shelter of Prince Christian Sound at the southern tip of Greenland, our ship suddenly found itself in calm, smooth water. For nearly six hours we drifted at canoe pace between high rocky walls, past noses of glaciers that spilled down from the main ice sheet, avoiding small icebergs calved just days before. The only green was moss that had found a foothold on the scoured rock. The rest: rock and water and intense blue sky. Until we actually entered the Sound we had no idea if we'd be able to do it - the last ship that had tried to make the passage had encountered fog and ice that made it turn back. But we had great weather and were able to see this landscape that is beyond incredible.

When we left the Sound we sailed right into a dense fog bank that stayed with us until the next day, when we reached the small settlement of Qaqertoq. But as we entered its harbour we sailed into a bright sunny day and a view of cheerful little houses scattered over the rocks. The ship had to anchor and send us to the small dock in the lifeboats. And for a couple of hours the patient Greenlanders endured (with great cheerfulness) an invasion of mostly friendly tourists. We saw a nice little museum, a pretty old church, and Greenland's only fountain. I was most impressed with the colourful and skillful beadwork. The traditional Greenland Inuit woman's outfit includes a huge bead collar that drapes down around the shoulders. There were several for sale by women who'd made them, but I managed to resist - they're heavy.

Back into the fog again as we moved further up the coast to Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. And again we came out of the fog bank as we entered the harbour and had another radiantly sunny day. This was a somewhat bigger town that's been growing fast since Greenland got home rule. It had the apartment blocks to show it. Our ship circled around in the bay for awhile, and I could see and hear the captain on the flying bridge: "But we confirmed that we were coming two weeks ago!" he was saying on the telephone. Finally the pilot boat showed up and we backed through a narrow entrance to dock in the inner harbour. Pretty impressive!

The town's buses were commandeered to take our small horde into the pretty part of town and we wandered around a bit, browsing through the tourist shops (expensive!) and the museum (very good, complete with mummies and many other interesting things). I finally found some qiviut (musk ox wool), and thereby hangs a story.

I'd seen some spun qiviut in Qaqertoq, but it was more expensive and not as nice as what's available in Banff. So I was pleased to see a cardboard box of unspun stuff in a funny little tourist shop packed with interesting junk. It was even what I thought was a reasonable price - 1.5 kroner for a gram, which is a fair chunk of this light stuff. So I got a small plastic bag full. But after we left the shop (I also got a musk ox horn and a labradorite pebble) there was a woman with a musk ox hide spread out on the grass, selling a few little things she'd made. To pass the time she was working over some musk ox fur, removing the guard hairs to get the undercoat that's qiviut. We got to talking, and I told her how much I'd paid for the stuff I bought. She was shocked and ashamed that I'd be charged so much, so she took a big bagful of the fur she had and gave it to me. Free. So now I have lots, and lots of work to do to clean it, too.

We sailed out into a fog bank again, but this morning dawned clear and lovely. Sailing down the coast we passed by quite a number of icebergs and realized what our captain and navigator had been dealing with in the fog the day before. We got quite close to one lovely berg - circumnavigated it, even - that obligingly shed bits of itself into the water as the assembled multitude of tourists filled their camera memory cards. What a show!

So now we're back into rough water heading for Iceland again - we'll spend Saturday in Reykjavik - completely satisfied with our Greenland experience. I don't know if we'll ever go back - probably not - but it was an experience I'd recommend to anyone.

From Norway to nowhere

I've been falling into the trap of waiting until there's a good solid internet connection to write about what's been going on. That's not going to happen very soon, so what I'm doing now is writing something on my computer when I can and uploading it when the ship is in contact with a satellite for a few moments. 'Cause most of the satellites - why am I surprised? - are positioned to make communications easy for the largest number of people. And there sure aren't many people where we've been going.

So where have we been? I left off, I think, just before we got to Oslo. Which we did, a week ago Saturday (the 19th, I think). That's where Ron and I left the ship to go across Norway by train, boat, bus and train again, taking a couple of days to do it. We followed the Norway in a Nutshell tour that the Norwegian travel people make easy to arrange over the internet so we could see a little more of what Norway might be like.

The biggest surprise came on the first train leg. We set out from Oslo and travelled through nice green countryside, a bit like the East Kootenays of BC - trees, rounded mountains, some lakes and fast-flowing rivers, farms wherever possible. Nice. Pretty. Finally we came to a large, busy ski resort full of German and Polish tour buses, and then disappeared into a tunnel. When we came out we were on the surface of the moon. Rocks. Lichen. Struggling grasses and a few bent bushes. Lakes with rivers rushing to the Oslo side of the country still, but definitely a different climatic zone. And it was foggy and rainy, not the lovely mostly-sunny day we'd left behind. And it stayed like that for the next couple of days.

We spent the first night in an isolated former sanatorium reachable only by train (a tiny train that clung to the cliff face). The next day we took this train through spiral tunnels and switchbacks to a fjord-side town to catch a car ferry to another little town a couple of hours away. That's when we saw the Norway you see on post cards. Our pictures (to be uploaded to Flickr when there's a bit more internet) aren't post card quality thanks to the rain. Am I ever glad I got my coat waterproofed before we left, because I couldn't stand to spend any more time than necessary inside. By the end of the trip we got to feeling about waterfalls the way we feel about Roman amphitheatres - "Another waterfall? Yawn" - but it took a while. There must have been 39 gazillion of them in every possible arrangement.

We landed in a small town that seems to exist now mostly to look after the tourists like us who miss the bus for the next stage of the tour, but that was okay. Time to get a little lunch and to walk around the perimeter of the Viking fair they were holding that weekend. It was kind of like the Indian Village at the Calgary Stampede, complete with tents and campfires and people dressed up to look like their ancestors. They seemed to be having lots of fun, but we felt a little nervous as we walked along beside the archery pitch - not everyone had a Viking's skills with the bow. Fortunatly the organizers had figured out how far a novice can shoot and had cordoned off the appropriate area outside.

Finally we were in a bus climbing up an incredibly steep one-lane two-way road past a couple of superb waterfalls to a modern hotel overlooking the valley. I think one of my pictures there is postcard quality - I'll stick it in here when I can. The view was incredible. The hotel was expensive, not terribly friendly or well run (except for the young wait staff from Finland, Poland, Spain, Australia, everywhere but Norway), and boring for those of us not suited to trekking over hill and dale (I know, we should - but it hurts!). Back on the bus in the morning to another lovely little town with a gem of a 13th-century church and people parasailing on the lake, then onto the train for the trip to Bergen.

Bergen was lovely, sunny and warm (weather the ship had been experiencing all the time we were away) with a fantastic view from the top of the funicular. It had a good wool shop, too.

Impressions of Norway? Expensive! Everything is at least twice what I felt comfortable paying (except the wool I got on half-price sale in Oslo). Very pretty. Not hugely friendly, and you'd better remember your Turkish ways when trying to board trains or buses. I think that it's one of the few places we've seen enough of on our travels. We don't feel we need to spend more time there, but it was good having seen what we did. And Ron was finally able to realize there his goal of having three different kinds of pickled herring for breakfast.

Next stop, after a couple of days at sea: Iceland. First Akureyri, on the north coast at the end of Iceland's longest fjord. Sharper eyes than mine saw whales and puffins. I enjoyed the scenery and the bright sunny day. We took a bus tour to Myvatn (which our travel companions had figured out means "lake of midges" and had brought bug spray for) and the lava fields around it. It was everything we'd hoped for. We stepped over one of the many cracks where the European and North American tectonic plates are separating; didn't get splashed by boiling mud; and went to Hell and back (an extinct crater near a large geothermal power plant is called Hell - and the water in it freezes over in the winter, too. Our American friends were delighted: if Barack Obama becomes the next U.S president a black man will be inaugurated when Hell is frozen over).

The next day we moved along to the sort of claw that sticks out on the northwest coast of Iceland - a bunch of spectacular fjords - and spent an afternoon walking around the tiny town of Isafjordur. Nice place on the sunny day we enjoyed, but I can imagine how dismal it must be in the winter.

Got one small hint of how things have changed since Viking days. I walked into a lovely little craft store where the young lady behind the cash was knitting. I asked her where I could find wool, and she gestured vaguely along the main street. I wandered all over town and couldn't find the place, so I came back (bought a nice knitted hat for a shockingly small amount of money) and showed her the rather good map we'd been given on the boat. She couldn't read it! Had no idea how to make sense of it. What would her ancestors have thought?

Anyway, we liked Iceland. We're back again in a couple of days, stopping in Reykjavik, and I'm looking forward to it. So far it's a place we'd like to come back to. Maybe spend a couple of weeks near Akureyri exploring and getting to know the people a bit. So our list of places we'd like to go back to continues to get longer.

And now we are really in the middle of nowhere, on our second day at sea heading to Greenland. We finally had a glimpse yesterday of the North Atlantic my father experienced on corvette duty during WW II - near-gale winds and 2-3 meter waves. The biggest surprise so far has been the many birds - kitttiwakes and fulmars - following our boat even way out here. People say they've seen whales, but I've had to settle for the birds. Oh well.

Petrels at sea

My GPS seemed to think we were walking on water at lunch today. That reminded me of a recently-learned useless fact: that petrels (sea birds) are called that because they seem to run along the top of the water like St. Peter. So we must be a pair of petrels. Or a boat-full.

We boarded the MV Prinsendam yesterday at Dover, bound for Amsterdam via Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Shetland Islands and Edinburgh. It's a Holland America Line ship, but our fellow passengers include fewer elderly whiners than usual because the destinations are so adventurous. There are even a few kids!

It's a nice old ship. Our cabin is positively huge, especially considering we're paying just about the cheapest fare (we don't mind the lowest deck, but we do insist on having a view of the outside). She was built about 20 years ago for a Norwegian line that was bought by Holland America, so the layout is quite different from what we're used to. She's also quite small, with not quite 1000 passengers. So far the food has been just a notch less superb than we've had on other cruises and the crew is just a little less experienced, but the next three weeks look quite promising all the same.

The week or so in England was, as usual, a good experience all told. The weather was the pits, cold and rainy most of the time. We even had to stay indoors one afternoon because the rain was bucketing down. But we still managed to see a few new bits of England. Penzance, and Cornwall in general, made a great impression - scenic little villages beside the ocean, fishing boats, standing stones and all kinds of delights. And almost no North Americans! Most tourists were English, with some Germans and Dutch thrown in. Some day we must come back and spend a week or two.

We had a little more than a day in Dover, too, to see the white cliffs and other exotic sights. Dover's history goes way back. The Romans landed thereabouts and fortified the cliff east of town - the castle they began turned into a major structure under the Normans and was still being used in WW II. Even before the Romans it was an important port. The museum has an excellent display of the oldest sea-going boat ever recovered, a 3500-year-old wreck found in a hole being dug for a new road near the waterfront. They did an amazing job of restoring it and displaying it with lots of information and interactive stuff to do about the Bronze Age.

Dover still shows signs of the intense bombardment it endured during WW II. You can see the coast of France from the cliffs above town, and there were guns that could fire that far. Made life pretty hard for the people, but those English are tough souls. I was moved to tears by the memorials in St. Mary's church in the center of town - memorials to the people who manned the little ships to rescue the troops at Dunkirk, to the fishermen and others who turned their boats into minesweepers and died by the hundreds, and to thousands of others who died in the Channel during war or peace. It's not been an easy place to live. And now it seems to be going through tough economic times with the Channel tunnel taking away a lot of ferry business. That's probably why they're turning it into a cruise port, and it makes a very good one. Close to London with good train and road connections, but not so close that it's part of the huge congestion around the city. So good luck to them.

Tomorrow we arrive in Oslo. Ron and I will be taking a train across Norway to see the scenery inland. We hope, all going well, to catch up with the boat again in Bergen. Fingers crossed!

A Week and a Bit in England

As usual I'm days behind in updating people on our whereabouts - and almost out of minutes on BT OpenZone, which is one of my least favourite ways of getting at the internet. Anyway... We're in Exeter, in southwest England - Devon - just back from a less-than-lucrative day at the races at Newton Abbott. It was a good day nonetheless.

So far we've done plays and concerts in London (Hairspray, the Monteverdi Choir's wonderful performance of music by Schutz, Durufle and others, and Spamalot), spent much too little time exploring Penzance and the rest of Cornwall, and have poked around Exmoor with a couple of locals who run "Southwest Safari" - very much worth doing if you have a chance. I've been uploading pictures to Flickr as possible, so have a look there at some of what we've been doing. Time's almost up - over and out!

Wow!

Just discovered this site through Ravelry's stranded knitting group's design resource page. At this page you can upload a picture - or link to a Flickr photo - and get a set of colour samples to match. I tried to save a result & post it here - but don't know how! Just go and try it.

Shifting Rib Scarf

I've moved this pattern to my knitting blog: http://momles.livejournal.com/1495.html

Old-Fashioned String Bag

I've moved this pattern to my knitting blog: http://momles.livejournal.com/1264.html

Ocean Waves Scarf

I've moved this entry to my LiveJournal knitting blog: http://momles.livejournal.com/944.html

Knitting net

Sometimes people who visit the knitting store are surprised to see me surfing the web. They're even more surprised when they ask me "What can I make from this yarn?" and I show them screens and screens of nifty things other people have made from it. The Internet has become an incredible resource for knitters.

Here are some of my favourite sites.

My first inkling that there were some treasures out there came when I stumbled upon www.knitty.com. Knitty is a quarterly web-based magazine that's full of news, techniques, and above all funky, makeable patterns. It's where I go first when I want an idea for a hat or a pair of socks or a sweater or something - like a bottle cozy or a mitten for dog-walkers or something else with a different twist.

Knitty has tutorials, too, like how to cast on (I never suspected there were so many ways to do it) or a worksheet for knitting socks from the toe up (making it a bit more complicated than I do).

Knitty is also a community. The coffeeshop has many rooms for knitters of varying skills and interests, and is a great guide for finding wool shops in foreign cities.

I've been giving Knitty less attention recently, though, ever since I was invited to join Ravelry. Ravelry is kind of like Facebook for knitters. It's still in beta, but already it has tens of thousands of members from over 100 countries. Most of us use it as a place to catalogue all the yarn we have in our stashes, all the things we'd like to knit, and all the projects we've got in progress, finished or given up on. That would be pretty useful in itself, but the strength of Ravelry is the way we all have access to each other's info. That way I know what Jane in South Australia has done with her Handmaiden SeaSilk and whether she liked it, and I can let the world know that Bernat Denim really sucks.

When I'm at the yarn shop (Knit and Caboodle) I have Ravelry on all the time. It's a way of checking to see what size needles people really use for a yarn, what yardage they get, what a pattern looks like on real people when it's made up. And it's kind of an advertisement for our shop, too - several visitors have dropped in because I've mentioned that I bought a particular yarn here. When we're travelling this summer I'm going to use Ravelry to track down yarn shops in the places we visit.

Maybe the most surprising resource is YouTube. It's full of videos that show you how to do tricky knitting things. You can learn how to knit socks on longish circular needles, or how to knit Turkish (and Portuguese) style, or a fancy new way of casting on. I use it all the time now that I've discovered there's more to knitting than I learned 50 years ago.

The Internet is a knitter's friend.

The Family Grows Again

Since the last post we've been putting down roots in Canmore, getting re-established in our condo, joining two choirs, becoming involved in the church (Ron) and Rotary (Ron), landing two jobs (me - at the Canmore museum and at Knit and Caboodle, our local yarn store. We've been wonderfully lazy, just exactly what we wanted to do when we came home. It's great.

Among the delights of the past 5 months were Evan and Anna's wedding in September, his cousin Aimee and Tyler's wedding a couple of weeks later, and their joint second reception in Canmore on Thanksgiving weekend - a chance for the older relatives who couldn't make it to the weddings to celebrate with the newlyweds. We love the new additions to our nuclear and our extended families. I couldn't have chosen the new daughter or nephew any better if I'd done it myself.

Christmas was a delight with all our kids around. We had the second annual mass family turducken dinner on Boxing Day with 25 or so of our closest relatives enjoying a specialty of Canmore cuisine. And now we're setting into the rhythm of a life of hibernation through the rest of the winter.

Somehow the family hasn't seemed complete to me, though. We've had no animals around to complicate our lives for a very long time. So Saturday I went to the Bow Valley SPCA and adopted two elderly cats: Zazu, who's 13 and deaf, and Tazman, 15 and lazy. Taz and Zaz have been together for 10 years or so, and it seemed only right to let them spend their last days together. They're big and fat and loving and domesticated. I had no idea how much easier it was to start off with old cats who know the rules of life in a household. The only complaint I have with them is that Zaz, because he's deaf, sometimes doesn't know how loud he's meowing, and if he suddenly discovers that he's alone he'll start yowling for his buddy Taz. It's a bit startling in the middle of the night.

Future blogs might have more to do with knitting because I seem to be discovering things I never knew I had to learn about this craft I've been enjoying for more than 50 years. I want to write about things like Turkish knitting and how to knit a sock on one circular needle and my newly-invented pattern for a felted jug. Stay tuned.