Posted 1.

Here goes. A blog post every day for 30 days. May 20 - April 18. Content to be determined. Length of posts to be determined.

Latest inspirations:

cool indie-art stores in downtown Toronto,
hip, Canadian graphic novels about hockey and rural-Ontario living,


long-term photo-art projects, like Back to the Future by Irina Werning,


and everything the Born Ruffians have ever done.

Our love shines.

The Stanley Cup has returned to Whitehorse YT for this year's Hockey Day in Canada.


I've been watching the festivities and highlights have included:
- A special feature about two girls from Haines Junction YT, the little town I lived near when I was up north. There were shots of the place I had soup each Friday, the place where we took hot showers, the junction where the Alaska Highway splits. Good memories.
- A story about an annual backyard hockey tournament in Cornwall ON. It looked like it was colder there than it was in Whitehorse today and I am not surprised.
- Ron McLean, sporting a Hudson's Bay Company wool coat with yellow, red, green, and blue stripes, and quoting Charles Schultz, "three things everyone loves to watch: a babbling brook, a crackling fire, and a Zamboni going round and round."
- Blue Rodeo!

I'm really glad I've got a lot of skating days scheduled for the next few weeks!

Pond hockey birthdays.

Today is the Little's 2nd birthday. She's all grown up! It seems like yesterday she was only the size of a guinea pig.


Since Mini's birthday also happens to be my half birthday, I thought I'd put a few pictures up from my very fun pond hockey birthday party last January. This was the first time I had seen many of my friends since returning from my Australia and New Zealand trip. I had barely even recovered, in fact. It was so great that everyone was able to make the drive up from Guelph to visit my little home town. We dug up enough skates and hockey sticks for everyone and spent the evening planning pick-up on the Mill Pond. After hockey we went home for homemade pizza dinner, arm wrestling, hilarious youtube videos, and then headed back out at midnight to toboggan on the hill behind the rink. Everyone slept over and we had a big breakfast including eggs from the chickens I was housesitting the next morning.

Nat and Whitney snapped so many hilarious picture of the event. Here are a few of my favourites.

Nat and I on the way to the pond. Notice all the fabulous knitwear.


Em by the stop sign infront of my parent's house on the way to the pond. Her figure skates and Matt's hockey skates. I believe her tam was made by one of my past knitting students.


Matt and John (fast friends) carry the rubbermaid bin of beer to the pond. Whit tags along. They would build a bonfire on the pond for us. Whitney is wearing the toque I made her for Christmas. She truly appreciates a good handmade item.


Skate tie-up help. Andrew's chocolate brown toque made by me.


The crew. Mom and Dad and the pups came to join in on the fun too. Notice Jayme's flap hat.


Nat and Andrew back at the house after dinner.


Matt and Jayme modelling my grandfather's old snowpants.


Me and Louise!


Brian and his pup, Stogie. Brian is wearing his Christmas toque from me as well.


Em made me a spectacular cake, as usual. With a small bonfire's worth of candles.


My party was a great time. I'm so glad that I have so many good friends to knit for. Til next July....

O, and better yet, this post puts me one tiny bit closer to finishing one of my 101 things in 1001 days items. I've been working hard on my list lately.

A funny moment at the 2010 NHL Awards.

Generally, the NHL Awards is a fairly awkward event. Players don't know how to keep acceptance speeches short and sweet. The NHL plans strange entertainment that is difficult to understand. This clip, though, was very clever.

J'adore le Club de hockey Canadien!

(It's easy to love the Habs!)

And the next series against Philly is going to be a great one! 8th place team plays the 7th place team for the conference championships.

The one I forgot to name.

Just after I posted that last one I went outside and we could literally here Edmonton cheering for Team Canada. I couldn't actually see anyone, but our hostel is one avenue over from the main drag and people were going crazy.

One of the grad students from University of Alberta who has worked at squirrel camp in the past took us out for dinner. I met a lot of people who have worked at squirrel camp and have completed the U of A driving test and I'm feeling very intimidated tonight. This might be the last time you hear from me on the internet for awhile. Also, I'm supposed to tell the driving instructor that I'm from Ontario and I don't understand round-abouts. I'm going to have to parallel park an (automatic) truck. I probably could have prepared for this a little better than I did. Wish me luck.

Gold in downtown Edmonton!

My flight landed in Edmonton at 12:10 pm local time. I met Dylan and Lindsey at the designated spot beside the Tim Hortons in Arrivals. Our ride was supposed to pick us up at 12:30. Plenty of time to head downtown to catch the puck drop at 1:30. Unfortunately, no one showed up. When we realized that no one was coming we hopped on a shuttle and headed to the hostel. Upon arriving the Aussie girl behind the desk notified us that, "we were up 1-0" and followed that up with ".....o, you guys are Canadian, right?" Uh, yeah. We dropped off our tons of gear (I thought I had a lot of stuff, but I had actually packed the smallest amount). And ran over to O'Byrnes on Whyte Avenue. There was a perfect booth waiting for us and we had dinner at 3:00, drank some beers and watched that crazy game play out.

And it isn't even 6:00 yet. I still have to go out for dinner, meet the rest of the crew, and I'm exhausted. This must be jet lag. I've been playing that card since last December though, so I don't even know anymore.

P.S. Do you see the tiny Team Canada symbols at the centre of the new symbol?

Olympic symbols.

http://www.ctvolympics.ca/about-vancouver/news/newsid=49268.html#goCommentsCtvo

My favourite month.

I like the month of January a lot every year. New starts, fresh snow, birthdays, and hockey games. This January I was housesitting for a friend out in the country.

These are the two animals that live in the house. Sparky the cocker spaniel (I think that's what he is, at least?) and CP the black cat. They really like me and I really like them even though I have to take two antihistamines every day that I hang out with CP. This was laundry day. They both ignore me when I pull the camera out. CP really enjoys knitwear (one of the main reasons he likes me). He has taken his place on my Tomten sweater. He was probably kneading it before he needed to ignore me.


This is what we look like every night. We pile up on the couch in front of the fireplace. I knit and the animals fight over who gets to sit closest to me. In general, CP doesn't like people or dogs, so we're doing pretty well in this shot.


CP generally wins at who-can-sit-closer. Then he forms into a perfectly round cat shape and maybe kneads my legwarmers a bit.


Sparky being the cutest one, running around the couch with his favourite squeaky pork chop toy.


Close-up.



On the last day at the farm, Sparky and I went for a walk when the sun was beginning to set. This is the river that runs across the property down near the front road.



The laneway from the house out to the road.


The wetland area that the river opens into on the other side of the road.


The stone house. My favourite type of house.


The chicken coop where I collect eggs every morning and feed the bunny. And I feed the chickens too. They eat a highly varied diet of potato peels and citrus fruit and any other fruit or vegetable that my parents and Jayme and Brian want to dispose of.


The red door of the barn.


The barn.


A milkweed down near where the trail begins at the side of the laneway.


The chickens in the sunset.


Sparky! He loves going to the chicken coop because he might have a chance to steal an egg.


The chicken coop in the sunset.


The ice in the sunset.


Practice makeup for my sister's wedding. I'm supposed to look like a green hydrangea petal who's also the maid of honour. I had this done earlier in the day in East City.


Sparky running back home in the sunset. See his floppy ears?

Silver.

January 5, 2010 was a sad day in Warsaw.

We all knew Canada could come back when they were down by a couple goals to the Americans in the gold medal final of the World Juniors. We even thought they'd win it in regulation time. When they went into OT I had a bad feeling though.

I wonder if Jerome is going to apologize for breaking the mirror at the end of the Force Fate ad? He's going to be in real big trouble if things go wrong (and by 'go wrong' I mean not win the gold on Canadian soil) at the Olympics.

O, and unfortunately, I'm stuck in dial-up land for the next little while. Hopefully I'll at least have time to get things organized so I can load them up all at once.

Back at it.

Been away for awhile. Just needed a bit of a break for the holiday season. I've got a few catch-up posts to make here from my trip and a new project for 2010. Hopefully I'll have decent internet access at the place I will be housesitting for January so I'll be able to load everything up.

Right now I'm deep into the International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Championships. Canada won a huge game against the States on New Years Eve. I was in my beloved Guelph at the pub for that game and it was a riot. As I type, the Swedes just tied up their semi-final game with the States 1-1. They're really starting to come on. Either team will make an a good attempt to stop the Canadians from winning their 6th gold medal in a row on Tuesday evening.

During the tournament TSN has been playing a really interesting Nike ad. I'm not a huge fan of the company, but I do think they have an incredible marketing department. My only complaint is that they didn't use a Canadian band for the soundtrack because we all know there are a whole lot of really good independent Canadian artists out there. Even a few with wolves in their names or songs about wolves, I'm sure. In case you're wondering, the song is called Wolf Like Me and it's by TV on the Radio.

One of my favourites.

Every few days the banner on the University of Guelph website changes to show off an important event or information about the school. The most recent banner is one of my all-time favourites. It shows Doug and one of his bands, the GMO's, at the Make it Seven Rally in Hamilton. The GMO's wrote a song about the drive to bring a seventh national hockey league team to Canada and they were picked up by the rally organizers to play on the big day.