Yes, again.

Did I mention that I took over 1000 pictures on this trip? That's what happens when you go on vacation with a new camera that takes really fast pictures. But there's actual knitting related stuff in this entry, at least.

We made a quick stop at the Purple Purl, which is a lovely little shop. I almost fell down and spent $60 on some pretty silk/linen, but I resisted, and got out spending a little less on some pretty lilac yarn that Caitie and I want to share.


Then we took the ferry to Center Island, which the kids loved.
Terrorist Fist Jab
The ferry, in addition to being really fun if you're a 5 year old boy, gives you a great view of Toronto.
We visited Franklin's Garden, which was concluded to be "lame".
I was sworn to never show this picture to any of Caitie's friends. Since I'm pretty sure none of her friends read my blog, I think I'm safe.
There was more beach (still cold).

It was a beautiful day.
Looking back through the pictures now I can see what happened.

Rob was taking this flattering picture of my back side, when Molly wandered off. She got really very lost, and what followed was a ridiculous chase with me and a guy who worked there who had a walkie talking running around from place to place and getting bits if information. Is she wearing pink shoes? Saw her running by the petting zoo. Someone saw a girl in a pink skirt running over the bridge. Apparently several people tried to ask her if she was lost, but she just looked at them blankly and ran away. Everywhere we ran to where they just saw her, but she wasn't there anymore. And I am not a good runner. Running = difficulty breathing. Not good.

I could totally envision her getting on the ferry by herself and was fairly well freaking out by the time someone else who worked there finally caught her and held on to her until we got there.

Dinner and a beer later, I was almost back to normal. The guy who chased her down with me ended up being our waiter, and he ended up dumping a tray of drinks all over himself, which was hilarious and totally made my day. He got a very big tip.
After dinner I went back to Lettuce Knit for knit night (Rob took the kids back to High Park).

It turned out to be Megan's baby shower, so there were a TON of people there. It was a little weird to crash her shower. Apparently it's a pretty regular occurence for someone from out of town to come on knit night. Stephanie sprayed me with some kind of miracle air conditioner stuff that she said was the best thing American's ever invented. I don't know if I would go *THAT* far. I mean there was that whole lightbulb thing. But it was pretty cool.

I sat in the back off to the left and boggled that a baby would be so loved as to recieve so many gorgeous hand knits. I thought about Kinnearing Stephanie, but decided it's not possible to pull off with my big new camera, a down side I had not foreseen. I had some nice conversations with several Toronto knitters whose names I completely couldn't remember when I got back and wanted to look them up in ravelry. If anyone knows who the maker of the Elizabeth Zimmermann longies and sweater were, let me know.

Rob came back around dusk with everyone and Caitie jumped out exclaiming "I want to meet the Yarn Harlot!" Stephanie was a very good sport about it (you get the feeling that probably happens to her a lot), and we had a nice chat about fun things to do in or around Toronto. Caitie was a little star struck. (So was I, really.) We mentioned we were going to Ontario Place the next day and Stephanie gave Caitie the tip that you can see the nude beach on the Island from the top of the blue slide.

Rob blinded us all with the strobe light on my camera before we had to take off. (See very pregnant Megan behind me?)
Caitie declared after we drove away "The Yarn Harlot is weird - but in a good way." That's really high praise from a 10 year old.
And this was about 3 minutes after we got on the road back to our camp site.

Toronto Again

So, if pictures of kids on vacation bore or offend you, move along. Nothing to see here.

If not:

After Caitie and I left Lettuce Knit, we met up with everyone else at High Park. If you have kids, and you visit Toronto, you should totally visit High Park because it was very fun, and free. There is an adventure playground, designed and built by kids, that was really very cool and I don't know how I ended up with no pictures of it. When I asked Sean what his favorite part of the trip was, he said High Park.

There is also a small zoo, where we saw this peacock being cocky.



And this capybara, which was very exciting when we saw the sign. Last year Caitie did a school project on the rainforest and she learned a lot about capybaras, which are the largest rodents in the world.

All I could think of was that it was a real R.O.U.S.
There was also this animal. You might think it's a mountain goat, but it's actually a Barbary sheep. Basically it's a sheep without wool. What's the point of that?

High Park also has a big hill which is apparently really fun to run down.




And really hard not to wipe out when you do.
There were several races down and back up.
Molly learned the hard way and decided to take the long way down.

And here's the best thing about running up and down a huge hill all day.
There was even knitting.



Next day we went to the beach of Lake Ontario.

(which is cold, by the way)

But the sand was fun.





Toronto

Let's pass over the fact that it's been so long since I've posted on the blog, and just be happy that I'm finally doing it. Vacations are great but they mess me up.

So we went to Toronto in July. It was a great trip.

The kids loved taking the train

















But not the noise.
We took the train in to downtown and walked around the city checking things out.
We happened to walk in to this nice outdoor art/craft show in a park. I still don't think I know what the name of it was.

What I do know is it was the location of the Great Pants Incident of 2008.

Molly accidentally stepped into that water (which was clearly marked no wading but had tons of people walking around in it anyway).

Well Molly can not have wet clothes on. Can. Not. I honestly think it might be painful for her. There was much screaming, while I tried to come up with a plan. I rolled up the wet part. Didn't matter. I took her to a place with fewer people (which was hard, the place was *crowded*). We had no extra pants, and we were a good 30 minute walk and another 30 minute train ride away from dry pants. I couldn't find any pants that I could buy. I thought about having her switch pants with Caitie, but they wouldn't fit. I thought about putting Sean's extra shorts on her, but that didn't work.

Finally it occurred to me. Cut the stupid things off.

I don't know why it took so long to think of that.



After that we had a lovely day walking around Toronto.

We saw the CN tower, which we decided not to go up in once we realized how much it was going to cost. Apparently it's spectacular, and has a glass floor. But we didn't see it so I'll have to take other people's word for it. There aren't many views that are worth $140.

There was a mad dash to our train, up some stairs, came up on the wrong side, back down, around, up just as the train doors closed. Grrr.

So we waited an hour for the next train, and finally made it back to our camp site.


We stayed at Glen Rouge, which is in Toronto (but only barely). Our site was nice, except for the crazy French Canadians who parked their popup about a foot away from our shared water and the proceeded to set up their kitchen around and in front of the water so we basically couldn't get to it, and who's kids were swinging around 25 foot long poles.

It's not that I have anything against French Canadians in general. They seem to be perfectly pleasant people in general. I only mentioned it in this case because they didn't understand me at all when I said "Could we please get to our water?" or "Could you please stop your son from trying to decapitate mine?" There was a lot of smiling and waving.

Fortunately they only stayed for 2 nights.

Caitie found great trees to climb. She is a monkey at heart.
And there were some ballsy, fat racoons that actually came up and stole a pound of bacon out of our cooler that was sitting about 3 feet away from where I was sitting.

I know racoons can open coolers and will steal your food while you're asleep, but I've never seen one so completely unafraid of us. I chased them and they HISSED at me. OK, OK... you can have the bacon.

*grumble*

On Monday we drove back in to town and Rob dropped Caitie and me off so we could go to Lettuce Knit, which was seriously one of the things about the trip I was most excited about. Lettuce Knit is a knitting landmark.

I'd tried really hard to make it there on Sunday but it was too far to walk at our speed, and we just never managed to be in the right place to catch a street car (which is totally a trolley, but if you call it a trolley in Toronto they will look at you like they have no idea what language you are speaking).

So we made it finally and I learned how hard it is to take a sock picture.

I finally enlisted Caitie to hold the sock for me.

I was so overwhelmed by yarn fumes that I forgot to take a picture inside, but dude, it's tiny.

You see the door that you can see inside? That's as far back as the store goes. It's a really big closet. But there is so much yummy yarn in there. And Megan is really very nice, even when she's hugely pregnant (which I can NOT say about myself...).
There were even words of wisdom in the bathroom from Stephanie herself.

Too cool.
After that Caitie and I took the subway to catch up with the rest of the family. If you ask her she'll tell you the subway was one of her favorite things of the whole vacation. We probably could have saved ourselves a ton of money.

More later.

Completely unrelated to skirts....

What's this? Another blog post?

Why yes, yes it is...

This is a custom order I just finished that I am particularly fond of.







And this is the new thing I'm making that I'm completely enchanted with.

It's a tank top for Molly and Molly. We're going to Chicago in July to get her, and This top will be just the thing.

Gauge is 4 stitches on the big one, and 7.5 on the small one. I'm having so much fun designing them. And now I'm into the solid part, just a little waist shaping for a while, so that should be quick work.


Oh, and one last thing...

We shaved the bunny a little while ago.

Angora fiber. Yum.

Skirt Vortex

I know I've been a Very Bad Blogger.

But it's because for weeks and weeks I've been working on this:

Which turned out to be a swirling vortex of time sucking insanity.
But now that it's finished, I'm calling it the Sheepy Skirt Collection , which totally sounds better.

The other reason is that my wrist has been bothering me whenever I got on my computer, so extra things like blogging have fallen off the wayside. A ergonomic keyboard and mouse, and a new (bigger, better) desk have helped that some, and also not needing to spend so much time working on the pattern helps, too.

The skirt pattern started out being like my other patterns, a few variations on the same thing, and then I just kept thinking of more variations and I couldn't stop myself. I may have gotten carried away. I never would have gotten the pattern done without the help of my test knitters (who now hold skirt licenses, by the way, should you want to buy a skirt from one of them...).

I am both very proud of myself and extremely relieved that it is done. It was starting to feel like a huge monkey on my back. But I really like the results, so I guess it was worth it!

For those of you who are wondering, it currently goes from newborn to Toddler, which is around 2-3T (sizes seem so un-standard). The size chart is on my site. But since I've already had lots of requests, I'm going to grade the skirt pattern up to sizes 4-10 girls and sell that separately. It will not have as many versions, since some are clearly baby looking, and it will not include the diaper cover portion, for obvious reasons. It will also therefore be a few bucks cheaper.

But first I have to catch my breath and catch up on some other things. Right now all my thoughts are dreaming of Annie Modesitt corsetts and American Girl Doll tops...