In and Out of Season

Spring cleaning the house is easy. Spring cleaning life is tough. -- Anonymous

I'm often shocked at how quickly the seasons change. All of a sudden, I'm digging out shorts and sandals to wear and I'm having to concern myself with shaving my legs and with the state of my toenails. It's not that I'm terribly vain, it's just that there are some things I feel I should not burden the world with, my hairy legs included.

We've been busy these days with such unglamourous seasonal tasks such as vacuuming the car and steam cleaning rugs and other such unglamourous moving-house tasks such as clearing out cupboards and old clothes. We've purged books and magazines, and I'm slowly going through a list of things to sort through and clear out. It's amazing how many holey socks and raggedy t-shirts I appear to be holding onto, and it's times like these where I am a teensy bit ashamed at the number of pairs of shoes I own. Still, there's nothing like moving to make you shed things you simply aren't using anymore.

This includes my own finished knitting projects. After over ten years of knitting, I guess there are some things you have far too many of. Years ago, I would never have dreamed of letting these things go, but since I only have one head, I think I can let go of any ill-fitting hats and unflattering scarves. It's a strange feeling to let them go and it's really the wrong season to be donating warm clothes, but needs must. I have a pile waiting to be cleaned right now, and as soon as they are ready, I'll walk them down to the local hospital auxiliary thrift shop and wish them well.

Don't talk me out of it. This is hard enough.

Last weekend, we made a trip over to Vancouver to interview for our Nexus passes. We'd planned the whole day away since we were sure we'd need to have lots of time to complete the interviews. We were surprised when they allowed us in early, and before we knew it, the whole thing was over in an hour. That left us the rest of the day to wander around busy Vancouver. We went straight down to the water to escape the masses of people who were out for Mother's Day:

Craving some greenery, we wandered down to Stanley Park to find some shade and some ice cream:

We stopped by Vancouver Aquarium. I was surprised at how much it had changed since I was last there. We didn't go in, but I enjoyed the new artwork outside, especially this mural:

We sat by the water for a while:

And then we made our way back to the Port of Vancouver, where we would be catching our seaplane back to the Island and where the cruise ships all dock while they are getting ready to sail away with their thousands of vacationers. Wow... they are getting bigger and bigger all the time:

It was a pretty good day, but whenever I spend time in big cities, I remember why I don't live in them anymore. I'm so used to my sleepy little town where people greet you as you walk past and where there's never a line up to wait in and never too many people in my way. We were glad to get home to our quiet little town where little Seymour had been having a fun day with the dogsitter. He was as exhausted as we were by the end of the day:

I'm thrilled to finally be able to share you a finished project, just in time for it to be too hot to wear it. Here is the Sideways Wrap by Robin Lynn, made with some yarn dyed by my friend, Tara called "The Experiment." It was a great pattern to make the most out of a skein of variegated yarn:

I absolutely adore the way this single-ply yarn shows off the colours in the skein. The stitches have such a pleasing roundness to them that just makes the colours shine:

I'm particularly enamoured by the effect of simply slipping one of the stitches makes to create this pleasing ridge. It's like a little braid all along the inner part of the edging:

Someone else seemed to like it as well - enough to be a model for me:

Well, he liked it to a point, but he had more fun rolling around on the floor with it afterward. Oh well. It's not scarf season anyway:

I have another project I'm about to start which should keep me busy for a while and will be nice whatever season I find myself in, but for now, it's barbecue season and I'm off to get some veggies ready for grilling. Have a great week!