Sunday, July 24, 2011

Sockenwollerestedeckeupdate

Update on the scrap sockyarn blanket project.

Last Friday, I put all the patches I've made so far in one big pile and looked at it.

Looks like plenty, I thought.
Then I spread them out on the floor, in mostly random order, into a 15 x 16 patches retangular (plus 4 patches) and looked at it again.

First thought: Pretty!
Second thought: This is not enough, damn.
Measuring I get about 132 cm across the 15 patches, which is not quite the 180 x 220cm I'm aiming for.
*Sigh*
Back to the crocheting.

One question remains, though. My original plan was to crochet all those patches together using black sockyarn, but looking on the patches lying on the ground like this, I wonder if I should use something lighter in color. I'm thinking of an off-white or cream.
And suggestions?

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Canada Vacation - Post 05 - Stuff

Just Stuff that somehow didn't fit into the other posts.

The streets of St. John's
The entrance to the harbour of St. John's (aka the Narrows)


Our ferry from Argentia to North Sydney

Moose advertisment:


Actual moose:

Canada Vacation - Post 04 - Birds

Seagulls, Puffins and Gannets, oh my!

Black-legged Kittiwakes:
Puffins:

And gannets:

Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Canada Vacation - Post 03 - Landscapes

Sometimes bad weather (as in wind and fog) has an advantage. Take a rocky coastline, add some atmospheric mist in the air. Some wind for the waves, and one has a fantastic picture.


Well, one of the reasons we went to Newfoundland was because the Northcoast is also known as 'Iceberg Alley' as during spring and early summer the icebergs that have broken off months ago from the glaciers in Greenland travel along the coast and can be seen from land. At least in theory. During the time we've been on the island, however, icebergs had been rather scarce. We only got about three and for two of thoe we had to take a boat tour.

The advantage of taking a boat tour is that you can get really close to the bergs and see details you just can't get from land.

One of the icebergs even had a guest.
One more typical picture.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Canada Vacation - Post 02 - Lighthouses

I've always have loved lighthouses. I'm not sure what it is that calls to me, but if I know there's a lighthouse somewhere I will try to get there and make a picture of it.

The first one pictured, is actually the last one I took a photo of. It is the lighthouse in Peggy's Cove and quite posibly the most fotographed lighthouse in Novo Scotia, is not in all of Canada. It was Canada Day (1st of July) and our last day in Canada. Luckily we arrived early enough to beat the crowds. The weather was brilliant and it was for the first time in three weeks we actually saw a clear blue sky.

This lighthouse (and the sky behind it) is more typical for what we had for most of the trip. It is the light house in Cow's Head on the West coast of Newfoundland.

This lighthouse is the one in Cape Spear, the Eastern most point in North America. Again is was foggy and the first sound we heard when we arrived there was the deep bass of the foghorn blowing every minute or so. This is actually the new lighthouse there, there's another historical building a few meters away that is the original lighthouse.

The funniest lighthouse (in my opinion) was this one in Bonavista. This is the more traditional style of lighthouses, where the lighthouse is actually more of a house for the lighthouse keeper and his family living on the premise. Today, all the lighthouses are automaticized (is that a word?), though, so no lighthouse keepers needed anymore.
This last building is obviously not a lighthouse. This is the Cabot Tower in St. John's, marking the place John Cabot on St. John's Day 1497 (24th June) set foot for the first time on North American soil.
This place is interesting for at least one more historical reason. It is the place where in 1901 Guglielmo Marconi received first wireless transatlantic signal from Cornwall in England, basically jump starting the modern communication age.

Monday, July 04, 2011

Canada Vacation - Post 01 - Nova Scotia

Some may have wondered why I haven't posted anything for the last three weeks (some may not have wondered, because they knew). I've been away on vacation to Canada. A friend and I rented a motorhome and went from Halifax to Newfoundland and back.

When we arrived in Halifax, the weather was great, nice and warm.

The Clocktower in Halifax:


We went down to the harbourfront and took a tour on the Harbour Hopper, going through downtown Halifax and then into the harbour itself.

Of course we also saw tugboat Theodore Too (isn't he just too cute - he got his own tv-show)


The next day we picked up our camper. It also had started to rain, which was pretty much the mode for the next 2 1/2 weeks. If it wasn't raining is was foggy or windy.

Compared to some others we saw on the road he was downright smallish, but for us he was just the right size. When we returned him, we had driven more than 5000 km.

Before heading to the ferry and up to Newfoundland, we drove along the Cabot Trail, a very beautiful strech of road on Cape Brenton Island.

From the trail we saw quite a few times fishermen pulling up lobster baskets full of yummy North Atlantic lobsters.


Of course, it didn't us long before the first lobster landed in our cooking pot (though, we didn't go for life lobster. I don't think either of us could have manage the kill the poor thing by drowning it in boiling water - we left that dirty job to others)