Fifteen of Fifty-Two

Pair fifteen of fifty-two for the 52PP and my second pair of August socks. They are knit with Fortissima Socka in color #9072. (Not seeing this color listed on their site any more, either.) These are for the store. They're standard 60sts on 2.25mm needles, heel flap over 30sts, toe to 20sts. Pretty standard.

Finally I have a picture of the scarf I knit on the road for my MIL for Christmas. It's just plain garter since you can't tell anyways. I used Patons Carmen in Camel. (I don't see this listed on the Patons site any more, so it must be discontinued. They had cut out a lot of the colors, so it's not surprising to see it totally gone now.) It's soooooo soft, but I don't like knitting with it a lot. I've made two adult scarves with it and two child scarves.
I'm a winner! I was one of the lucky winners of Pat's Blogiversary Appreciation Day contest. I will be receiving a skein of lightweight Socks That Rock in Rose Quartz. I'm not a super-pink person, but I've been eyeing that colorway since I saw it on their site. Then I tried to win a skein of Alyson's leftover from her wedding stockings but sadly lost. So I guess it was meant to be after all, just from a different blogger! Now I'll have to go over my sock patterns and pick something lacey. I think that color needs to definitely be girly socks. (Be sure to check out Pat's finished Mystery Stole 3 -- it's gorgeous! I am tempted to try the fourth one.)

The new Yarn of the Month starts at the store today. It's going to be Patons Shetland Chunky and Shetland Chunky Tweeds. 10% off or 15% off for Client Card holders of all in-stock Shetland Chunkies. (Heddy and Nova Knitter -- Classic Wool will be featured next month, I'm 95% sure.)

We did get in a new order of Austerman Step while I was away. These two followed me home the other day, I swear. Kinda weird, too. One of Heddy's vacationing co-workers came in yesterday, and the same two colors followed her home, too.

Lastly, here are my Sockapalooza socks, my new favorite pair! They were made by Bekki at The Pig Wot Knits. It's Foxglove from Fyberspates, and I absolutely love the color, and it's so soft! I don't like cold weather, but I'll be glad when it has cooled off enough to start wearing knit socks! (Posts on her Sockapaloozing here, here, and here.) There was also a chocolate bar, but sadly that's just a sweet memory now...

Have a nice holiday weekend for those of you with Monday off.

Happy knitting!

Road Trip Part Six

Sorry its been awhile. We got home Tuesday night at eight. I went to bed at one, got up at nine in the morning, had to get hubby ready to go on the road again, then go to work for noon. It has been non-stop since I got home! (Hubby was not impressed that they sucked him into doing a trip, even if it was only to northern New Brunswick. But I knew he'd cave and not say no to them.

On to the Banff pictures!

We stopped in Kananaskis first. There was a bus load of rafters there. They were having a blast!

Beautiful green, cold glacier water!

The little black spec in the middle of the photo is a baby black bear. This was taken safely from the road inside the Jeep. I'm sure Momma was nearby, but I didn't see her. We also saw three deer, another buck later on that I thought was going to keep walking right out into the road between our two vehicles, and T saw a coyote in a field, but I missed it.

Driving into Banff from Kananaskis.

Banff itself was one of the prettiest towns I've ever been in. The buildings were gorgeous, and houses were, too. Lots of log buildings, and my dream home was always a log house! It was quite crowded, though. Fairly narrow street, loads of tour busses, tons of traffic and pedestrians. And a note for anyone going there for the first time -- you have to pay to get into Banff National Park, and they don't take debit. They only take cash or credit card. The reason for no debit was it took too long for people to put in PIN numbers, but what's the diff if you're waiting for credit card approval and need to sign your slip?

Banff Springs. Major fancy place! I was told that Queen Elizabeth stays here when she's in this part of Canada. Apparently the peak with three windows is one huge apartment, and that's the one that the Queen gets when she's there. More info on the place here. I guess the golf course is noted worldwide, and they added a world-class spa. This was taken across the river from the look-off. We did go over to the building itself, but I dare not go in! First time I ever pulled up to a place with valet parking! Not a place for my hill-billy clan.

The weather was a weird mish-mash that day. It started off sunny but hazy. It started to cloud over. We climbed down a very steep hill across from the Springs to a little sandy beach on the river. Then it started to cloud over, and the lightning began. It looked cool coming down on the mountains, but we decided we'd better get back up the hill to the cars before the rain started. We no sooner got back and started driving back into the town when humungous raindrops like I've never seen before started hitting the car like hammers, and the wind was blowing really hard. The outside temp dropped to 10Celsius. Then we noticed the rain looked funny. It wasn't just rain, but snow, too!

This is a splock of snow on the windshield.

First time I've seen snow in August. Totally weird. It rained for a bit, then it eased up and got sunny again.

There were several rainbows on the way home. This was a huge double rainbow.

The sky on the way back through Calgary.

Very beautiful place. Had I known that Banff was that close to the British Columbia border I would have gotten them to drive me across the border just so I could say I was all the way to BC! Next time. They're already planning on taking us to Lake Louise and Jasper next time. That won't happen for two years if plans go ahead for them to come here next summer.

Next post I promise to have a FO and pictures of my Sockapalooza socks! They are so nice, they are my new favorite socks.

Happy knitting!

Road Trip Part Five

I wanna go home! Please let me go home! Stuck in a truck stop waiting for a reload is not fun when you have two small kids to entertain. We've been sitting at the Flying J outside of Winnipeg since Wednesday morning after we dropped the airplane engine off. If there is no reload today then we are heading to Montreal empty for a reload Monday morning. There is lots of stuff moving there, but we're kinda stuck in a dead zone. (Since I've seen my friend I don't want to drive any more. Next time may be drive out, fly back.)

Anyways, off to Part Five, Drumheller. I must say that this was one of the coolest places I've ever seen. You're driving across the Prairies, farms all around. All of a sudden there's a sign for a steep downward hill, then BOOM! Everything changes dramatically.

As per usual, there was lots of lightning in the distance. I didn't capture it on camera, of course, but it was pretty dark in the distance.

Drumheller, Canada's Dinosaur Capital. There are dinosaurs and dino-related stuff absolutely everywhere here!

We went to the Royal Tyrrell Museum. That place was awesomely cool! The kids whip through everything so fast that I would like to get there some time adults-only so I can take my time and read the displays.

When you first go in there's a big room that's really dark with lots of dinosaur sounds playing in the background. They have some really cool models on display.

The next room was pretty dark, too. The fill flash seemed to work pretty good, but I did have to do a fair bit of enhancing. They had a full-sized T-rex skeleton.

Don't remember what this was, but it looks like that fossil dig toy the Littlest One got back in March break at the Museum of Natural History in Halifax.

There were a couple of T-rex skeletons. I had to take a close-up of this one's teeth. We were on the second level, and he was on the first level, but it was open so we were pretty even with his head.

I don't remember who these guys were, but they were about the size of a medium-sized dog.

This was a dilophosaurus. (I can remember his name cuz they had them in Jurassic Park.)

This guy was from the triceratops family, but I can't remember his name.

One of my favorites, the stegosaurus. And I have tons more pictures of dino-skeletons, that place was huge, but these are some of the best pics I got.

We went back into the town itself, and they have the world's largest dinosaur outside of their tourist bureau. You climb a whole lot of steps into his mouth for a view of the town.

I didn't linger too long even though it's plexiglassed in -- I don't like heights, and the thing swayed when you stepped in it. I stayed long enough for four hasty shots, then hubby took to swaying it, so I was outta there.

Last stop that day was to the Hoodoos. (I always find my pictures look better in Flickr, so if you wanna read the signs it may be best to do it over there. It basically says they were carved by wind and water. The umbrella-like tops help protect them from erosion, but eventually they'll be gone.)

They were pretty nifty. I may do this one and the one above into 5x7s and framen them. I converted them to black and white, and they look quite nice. We have really nice black frames with white double air matts at the store I'm thinking of using. (So B&W would look best.)

Still plunking away at some knitting. I find running an empty trailer makes the truck bounce and shake more, so I think it's bothering my motion sickness. I do a lot of laying down. I did finish one Breeze socks and started a pair of vanilla self-striping socks for the store. The first sock will be done tomorrow, and I'm hoping to finish the other sock before we get home. If things go as planned we'll be home on Tuesday sometime. I also got a picture of the scarf I knit on the trip, but that's not transferred from the camera yet.

By the way, if anyone has e-mailed me anything to my sympatico address, I can't access that on the road. darganknits at hotmail dot com is the one to use cuz I can access that one from anywhere. Guess I should have said that at the start of the trip, not the end! So I hope if anyone did use that e-mail that you aren't ticked cuz I didn't answer.

Another thing waiting for me when I get home -- my Sockapalooza package has arrived! I'm so excited to see it -- my mother said it's from England, and the customs label says socks and chocolate, so it has to be that. Can't wait to see who my Pal was and my new socks, of course!

Happy knitting!