Dresssed For The Weather

Dear Knittah,

Although Friday was pretty warm, we've been having some awfully cold weather up here in Winnipeg. I just wanted to let you know I'm okay, and I have some great cold-weather gear. What do you think of my toque and longjohns?

The longjohns actually came free with Noricum's longjohns, it just took her a while to realize what they were for. ;) So now we're stylin' in our matching longjohns, and boy do they help with the cold! On really cold days, I can even pull them up further:

(Noricum can't do that with hers, though. Mine are definitely superior.)

Love,
Swatchy

For Noricum's Birthday

For her birthday, Noricum asked her friends to go out and enjoy the day and then tell her about it. Needing no more excuse than that, my husband and I had a Grand Day Out and Nori came along.

Because of CFIDS, my Grand Day Out actually took three days. We had a brief outing on Friday, I rested all day on Saturday, and then another brief outing on Sunday. In any event, here is what we did.

On Friday, we went to my favorite coffee place. Good music, great coffee, great ambience, and permission to sit as long as you like equals the perfect coffee house. Nori enjoyed the cookies, too.


One of the cool things is the mural painted behind the building but visible through windows in the back wall. You can't find something like this in any chain place.


We sat for an hour or so, me knitting, of course. Nori and I lobbied hard for a trip to the local yarn store afterwards, but nap time won out. I didn't bother to take pictures of that, nor of all the resting I did on Saturday. Use your imagination.

Sunday, we went to the local mall. Believe it or not, this is Nori in front of the small mall.


We went to the bookstore, and I got some great stuff: Folk Bags (which is gorgeous stuff), a moleskine, and a new knitting journal.


After shopping, we had lunch. Nori helped.


Then my husband expressed the need for toys.


Among other things, he got himself a lego monkey. A monkey, made out of lego! I'm not sure why that is necessary in life.


And that was our Grand Day Out. It may not seem like much, but for us it was a lot! Happy Birthday, Noricum!

Knitting In Winnipeg

Dear Nori,

We haven't been doing anything too exciting here lately, but there has been some fun in the past week.

On Saturday we went to Leona's Sweater and Wool Shop. Here's Leona:


It's a nice little store... there isn't as big a selection as at Ram Wools, but there is quite a wide variety. If you go in there with a project in mind, she's bound to have something suitable. All the walls are covered floor to ceiling with yarn:


Can you spot me in these photos? ;)

It's kind of sad. There used to be four yarn shops (besides big box stores like Michaels and Walmart) in Winnipeg, but two have closed in the past year. Leona is getting closer to retirement, so she's cutting back on her hours. Ram Wools is a really nice store, but it's nice to have choices. Ram Wools has it's specialty (higher end yarns), and Leona's is different. Variety is the spice of life!

Noricum wasn't planning on buying anything (in fact, she didn't think to even look for the store until she was already out running errands), but caved when she saw that the Sugar 'n Cream was on sale:

She says it's okay because she cast on right away:

By now she's used nearly all the purple on one project, which currently just needs seaming, and the green project should be just as quick. She used the lovely ebony needles that Knittah gave her, but discovered that the long straight needles still aggravate her wrists. She's very unhappy about that, because the needles are so lovely and nice to use otherwise.

After Leona's, we also popped into Michaels:

We didn't take any indoor photos, because if you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all. Noricum bought a bit more yarn:

The SWS was planned (40% off coupon), but the blue cotton yarn was impulse. She has a project in mind, though, and at least it was an inexpensive impulse purchase. She made it out of Michaels with less than $10 spent, which is pretty good for her.

We took a few more photos while we had the camera out in the Michaels parking lot. Here's the Blue Bombers football stadium:

and here's a big movie theater and mall:

These photos remind me... you can see lots of sky in Winnipeg. When Noricum was down in Chapel Hill, she liked the trees, but missed the sky. There's trees here too, but also lots of sky.

This week has also been full of SNB! We went to the St James library on Tuesday night, but it was a rather small gathering there (three knitters, a librarian, and me). Here I am posing for Nicole:

She seemed thrilled at her "brush with greatness". I hadn't realized I was great! How cool is that? Or perhaps she was just teasing me. Nicole and Noricum talked lots about internet stuff, for some reason. Did you know that Nicole is also in the Lime and Violet Sock Marathon? She also has a son who must be related to Houdini somehow!

Wednesday night at Chapters had a lot more people:

We had a wonderful time!

Is Knittah able to go to a SNB, or is that too much for her?

Hugs,
Swatchy

I'm Bored!

Dear Noricum,

I am really really bored. *whine* Knittah is being very careful with her activity levels, so I haven't gone anywhere in a long time. She promised we would do something fun this Saturday - your birthday! - but until then, I'm just lounging around.



Here's a pile of books Knittah got from the library. She says the library is a great way to read knitting books that she can't buy. So here is what we got: Confessions of a Knitting Heretic, Toys to Knit (there were some great toys in this book), Angelita's Magic Yarn (I didn't like this story much), Knitting Out of Africa (Knittah really likes some of these sweaters but they look very complicated), Maine Island Kids (I thought these sweaters were a little weird), Yarnplay, and Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting. That last book got Knittah very excited. She says she wants to visit Shetland some day.

So that's about it from here, Noricum. Hopefully, we'll get out to do something fun soon! Until then,

Nori