Fastest Afghan Ever

I saw this blanket hanging over the couch when we went to my sister's for Thanksgiving dinner, and I loved it! I borrowed the pattern from her, and went shopping for yarn the next afternoon.
The pattern is called Savory Salsa (U.S. spelling) Lesley made hers in a bright white with vibrant red, yellow, and orange stripes - very spicy salsa-ish. I decided that a creamy colour would look better on our cream coloured couch, so my stripes had to be more muted also; I went with mustard, pumpkin, and claret.




They are perfect in our living room.




It took me awhile to get the hang of the pattern, but once I figured it out, it just flew together. Yay, my kind of project! I kind of got lost on the last couple of lines of the pattern, so I had to improvise, but it turned out okay anyway.
I've already started on my second version. Same creamy main colour, but with royal blue, teal, and turquoise stripes for the house in Mexico.




It was supposed to be my winter project, but if it goes together as quickly as the first one, it'll be going down completed.

Another awesome day

Another beautiful fall day. We know this can't last much longer, so we headed out on another adventure.
We consulted the book...




...and decided on Whiskey Lake, kind of south and west of Turner Valley
Cool road to get there; too bad about the dirty windshield.




The book said to follow the old logging road, so we did. Kind of surprised to see this rig coming at us, though.








This is Gibraltar Mountain




The book is a great resource for ideas, and it has all kinds of interesting information about the history, flora and fauna of the regions, but the maps and trail descriptions leave a bit to be desired. Even Map Guy was confused, and we ended up missing the turn-off for the lake. We saw a path that we thought might be it, but it wasn't marked, and it didn't correspond to the map, so we kept going instead. After walking 3 kms in a straight line on what was supposed to be a 3.5 km loop, we turned around and headed back to the missed turn- off. It still didn't make sense according to the map, but what the heck.
We had seen evidence of past bear activity along the trail, but weren't too worried because who knows how old these claw scratches are?




However, when we started to notice these very fresh looking tracks...




...and we weren't convinced that we were on the right trail anyway, we opted to abort the mission, and head back down the way we came.
I was disappointed not to see the lake, but there was plenty of other spectacular scenery to make up for it.












We stopped along the way to take another short walk to check out Sheep River Falls.
If you zoom in, you'll see a couple sitting on the rocks. We waited until they moved on, then we took their place. Nice!








Who was this bench designed for? I would've needed a stepladder to get onto it, Dan's legs are dangling about a foot off the ground.




So, even though we didn't see what we set out to see, it was still a great day to be alive and outdoors.
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Autumn walks

Best autumn evah! We've had some wonderful walks in the crunching leaves.




This is Southland park. We don't get there very often, but for a change of scenery, we strolled through Carburn park and crossed the bridge to the off-leash park.




It was a beautiful day - warm enough for a dip in the river.












Our perfect autumn was rudely interrupted by a blast of winter, but only for one day. This is the view from my desk at work. Brrrr.




And we're back to Indian Summer...
We've discovered a hidden gem just off Beddington Trail. We used to wander along the bike paths down by Nose Creek there, but that can be a bit busy. Dan works in this area quite often, so he's found a way to get to the trails beyond the bike traffic. We can wander for hours here and only occasionally run into other dog walkers.








There's a little creek about as wide as a large dog.




Yep, just the right size for a little cool down.




Pretty views out over the valley.




We crossed over to the bike path to soak up some sunshine on their bench.




Yesterday was another amazing day, so we headed out to Bragg Creek. One of my Flickr friends recently posted some photos from Beaver Flats and I wanted to see it. Weird - we've seen beaver ponds in Argentina, but not in Canada.
There are a lot of photos, so make yourself comfy.
This is the biggest of the beaver ponds.




























A hot dog.




A cool dude.




A beaver lodge.
























And the road home. Man we live in a beautiful place!




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Bzzzz

Well, who knew that a few wasps would be so expensive?!

Our microwave is 14 yrs old. We inherited the over-the-range model from Bill & Vi when they remodeled their kitchen about 6 or 7 years ago. It worked fine for them, and it's worked fine for us. It probably would've continued to work just fine if it wasn't for the damned wasps.

Because the wasps were getting into the house via the microwave vent, we had to remove the m/w to seal up the hole. We had it on & off the wall a couple of times, and there was a fair amount of shoving and banging to get it back into place both times. While it was down, it also got cleaned like a microwave has never been cleaned before. (at least none that I've owned)

A few days ago, I popped a frozen bagel onto a plate, put it in the oven, turned it on, and it went CRAAACK! I thought the plate had broken, and was surprised to find it still in one piece when I opened the door. The plate was okay, but the microwave was pooched.

So off we go to the appliance store. Note: All of our appliances are second-hand, and in the world of appliances, they're ancient! We bought the dishwasher 20+ years ago from somebody that Dan worked with, and the fridge & stove came from somebody that I work with - at least 10 years ago. So while we're looking at microwaves, we wander through the fridges and stoves and dishwashers too...Do you see where this is going?

While we're debating which brands and finishes we might want, we took a close look at our cabinets and realized that they're dated and starting to look a bit shabby...

So now it's not just a matter of picking up a replacement microwave, now we're looking at a BIG job with lots of BIG decisions. Aaaarrghh!!!

After spending 2 days poring over kitchen make-over sites and getting thoroughly confused and panic-stricken thinking we had to decide everything RIGHT NOW, I finally decided...

Yep, today we went to Lowe's and picked up a cheap counter top microwave, so we can procrastinate indefinitely, and still enjoy m/w popcorn! Ahhh!

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Last minute craft project

The inspiration:

A Colourful Canvas

The ingredients:




The finished product:








The whole thing only took about 2 hours, and that includes the time I spent running around town looking at, and rejecting, about 200 pumpkins. (The ones that looked perfect in the pile all had a lean or a wobble when I sat them on the ground).
Thanksgiving Day is NOT the time to decide to do a craft project like this. Michael's was sold out of all the nice harvest-y coloured ribbons so I had to settle for this wimpy looking one, but over all I was pleased with the result. So was the recipient :)

Thanks to Sue for the idea and the instructions.

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Catching up

I know, I know, I'm a bad blogger. I'm so far behind I don't even remember the chronological order any more, so this is just a random mish mash of stuff.
Taz did eventually end up being a cone head for a few days.




Poor girl was NOT happy about that.




She is perfectly fine now, though. Once the stitches came out, she still looked kind of freaky with bare patches all over, so we shaved her down to try and even it out.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Taz & I spent a wonderful afternoon at Big Hill Springs park




It's so pretty there.




Of course Taz's favourite part is the creek.












Then there was a weekend in Canmore. We were puppy sitting Muñeca, so of course there were lots of walks around the pretty paths there, and a couple of visits to the Quarry Lake off leash park.




Had to try out my new shoes.








So we headed to Bragg Creek to hike the Fullerton loop. Unfortunately, we got there at the exact same time as a large group. What are the odds, eh?




We lagged behind until we got to the decision point of the trail, hoping they would do the loop in the clockwise direction, but of course they didn't. I didn't want to listen to them all afternoon, so we went up the steep way. It was a little steeper than I remembered, or maybe I'm a lot older...either way, we were both pooped when we got to the top.




It was worth it though. All the pretty views are on the front side.
















I enjoyed it so much that I went back down the same way.




Stopped at Allen Bill pond for a cool off.








Back in the city. Look at the baby tower!




Sitting at the kitchen table one day, I swatted 4 wasps in about 10 minutes. Obviously, we had a problem. Dan discovered a hole in the outside wall, right by where our microwave vents. He got up before dawn the next day to spray, but it wasn't wholly successful, the wasps were still finding their way in. So, what started as a minor irritation turned into a full scale, 3 day project that involved removing the microwave, cleaning cupboards, plugging the hole, etcetera...




Out for a walk with Taz one morning, I was taking pictures of the sunrise. I turned around and it looked like someone had hung a painting on the side of the Real Estate Board building. Pretty cool. The sunrise pics that I took were crap, but I liked this reflection.




We've had just the best autumn this year. Tuesday we finally got the killing frost, but I grabbed the last of the flowers from the garden just in time.




Couple of cold days this week, but temps are starting to rise again, so the Indian Summer continues :)
It would be good weather to get the city parks cleaned up and ready for winter, but somebody in charge of the Parks Department budget messed up big time, so everybody was laid off early this year. Dan's last day of the season was Thursday - about a month earlier than usual! He's a happy man,! He has a long list of things that he wants to do before we head south.
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