Here be dragons!

Let's be honest. I have (barely) survival-level French. By which I mean, I can manage, with the aid of a lot of gesturing & sound effects (skills well-honed from years of teaching English!) I can do all the important things: not get (too) lost; order a coffee; find a bathroom. (Not necessarily in that order!) I can't have much of a conversation, beyond discussing whether a grapefruit is on, or possibly under, the table (or was that in your mother's shoes?). But I can find an exit or figure out a menu, and understand why the name of the candy store up the road (Sucre Bleu) is pretty funny.

So while I was planning this trip, and on the train up - even when I got to the hotel, then went out for dinner on Monday, I had this idea that "How very charmant! Everything is in French!"

Then I got up Tuesday morning, left my comfy hotel room, and realized: "Holy shit! Everything's in French!" So I called Mr.Q with a minor melt-down, certain that I wasn't going to get any breakfast...He steadied my nerves, and sent me out into the city to have an adventure. (And I did get breakfast: some lovely crepes, with mixed berries.)

And the French thing hasn't been a problem, because every time I try, whomever I'm talking to kind of gives me this little smile, shakes their head, and switches to English. The first person I tried to talk to in French was a very nice homeless guy, who barely spoke any English, but between us we managed, and it was quite a confidence boost. Until I ordered a coffee from a Chinese woman at a cafe, and she switched to English...oy!

I started out with a quick walk around Vieux Montreal - I'm going to have to go back, because it was all so overwhelming that I barely managed to take in a fraction of it. I went to the Pointe-a-Calliere Museum of Archaeology and saw some really old stuff.

(I also realized I'm not so good with museums, as I don't have a lot of patience to look at all the details and displays - I just like to look at the cool stuff.) It was cool - and old! Maybe not for someone in Italy, but being from Vancouver, it was practically ancient! The foundations (literally!) of the country and all that. As I said, cool!

A little more wandering, and I headed back to the hotel for a rest. Then off to the Botanical Gardens, where there was a lantern exhibit in the Chinese garden. (Also, an Insectarium with lots of cool (dead) beatles and butterflies...though disturbingly, some very large spiders as well! I'd been hoping, not being insects, they'd be excluded. Apparently French Canadians have different ideas of whath constitutes an insect!)

Below: some pics of places aroung Vieux Montreal (I have no idea of what - I just liked them!) The ones from a higher perspective were taken from the look-out at the top of the museum. The lanterns, obviously, were from the gardens - the exhibit was called "The Magic of Lanterns" and it really was magical!

Down by the station, early in the morning...

I love travelling by train. It's slow, and the trip to Montreal was quite long. (Not least due to the tourists on board...oy! I maintain, now and always, that there is a huge difference between a "traveller" and a "tourist" - and I have little patience for the latter!) Anyway - it was a great way to see more of this corner of the world, and the leaves were indeed beautiful. Some highlights...

From the station in Poughkeepsie:

Albany (?):



Somewhere with pretty leaves:


Waiting at the border...


On the home stretch, back in the land of maple syrup and mooses:

And finally, Montreal! My hotel is nice - old, but clean, and very conveniently located. I went out in search of dinner, found this (for Mr.Q - there was a huge display for Godin guitars in the window!)

Finally settled on poutine, the one thing I knew I could order in French:

(My accent must be a lot worse than I thought, because although I tried...the burly Quebecois behind the counter immediately switched to English!)

Finally, back in the hotel, drinking mead from a plastic cup....

And now off to explore the city by daylight! I could get used to this travelling thing...

A hard hat is not enough protection against a flying pumpkin...

Sunday was much more leisurely, though just as awesome. We slept in a little bit before making our way back to the fair grounds. The crowd was thinner, and a little less intense. There was more time to wander, visit with people we ran into, watch the alpacas on parade...I would say the line-ups were better, too - until I found myself here:

The line for the chicken pot pie. It was well worth the wait! Fresh out of the oven - literally, so I had to wait awhile to eat it.

So while I was waiting, we wandered over to the field to watch the "punkin-chunkin" competition. Which was...an odd-but-awesome thing to behold. There were 5 high school & college teams, all in team colours...and hard hats:

They built these:

And had to try to hit a target about 150 feet away. Quite a feat, as the trebuchets were a bit unwieldy, and I cannot fathom how they managed to achieve any kind of accuracy. (But - they did!) Once the slings were loaded, an air horn would sound, and the pumpkins would fly:

What you can't see is that this particular pumpkin was painted gold, as were the hardhats of the team lobbing it. They hit their first 2 targets spot on, too. The carnage on the field was something to see! Though I think there were a few disappointed young spectators, as I overheard one young boy gleefully reporting to his brother that after the pumpkins, there would be sheep-tossing....

More time to wander meant more time to take in some of the non-fibre arts on display:

This one's for my Baby Sis:

Then, despite the warm weather (I actually got a bit of a sunburn!), we took some shots of new knitwear in action:

We imposed on a very kind knitter to take a picture of the two of us in our Rhinebeck sweaters...

I'd just like to point out that Anne spun the wool for this sweater from the Rhinebeck fleece she bought last year - how cool is that?

Finally, after some apple crisp (NOM!), it was time to go. Anne dropped me back at the hotel and headed home; I had the fun of trying to get everything into my suitcase. Before I packed, though, I got a pic of all my ill-gotten loot, all at once:

(I did not, in fact, roll around in it naked. Although I was sorely tempted...it's not all superwash, and there's some very sexy silk in that pile. I didn't think it would be good for the yarn.)

Rhinebeck weekend was over. I would totally do it again! But I had the next leg of my adventure to look forward to: a prophylactic against post-festival let-down. Next: the train!

The Rhinebeck 500

I'm puttering around, getting things sorted before I head to the train station, and then north to Montreal for the next leg of my adventure. I woke up early, which gives me a few minutes to finish up a post about Saturday: Day One of Rhinebeck Madness. (Fittingly, my first ever Rhinebeck post is also my 500th post! Woo!)

There is no possible way I could capture the essence of Rhinebeck in words. Also, as it was my first time, there was waaaayyy too much to absorb and process! Happily, I was surrounded by awesome people to help me get my bearings. Some folks I met at Sock Summit last year, like Girl Unravelled, who not only helped me get my sea legs, but also some Bugga! yarn...NOM! And Glenna C, who totally rocked her Rhinebeck sweater, finished at the very last minute. Annie, my hostess, was indulgent and enabling, and her very, very funny friends broke me. (By which I mean, had me laughing so hard I almost peed myself. Literally!) There were also lots of other fantastic people that I met...which is the true magic of Rhinebeck. So. Much. Fun! (Also, So. Much. Yarn!) (Oh! And maple cotton candy!)

But there's no way I could possibly tell all the stories, or even most of them! So here are some pics that I hope give an idea of what Saturday was like.


The antici.....pation....builds in the early-morning line-up:


Once we finally got in, one of the first people I ran into was a woman who had also knit Red Oak - as far as we can tell, we were #1 and #2 to knit the new pattern...and she's a Canuck, too! Cool! (This is possibly one of the least flattering pics of me ever, but we had just escaped the madness of the Sanguine Gryphon booth...

There was hot cider, and lamb stew, and excellent company:

Handknits and Ravellers galore, at the lunchtime Ravelry meet-up:

There were walkie-talkies:

Sheeps:

Alpacas:

Lllamas:

And after a break for dinner, there were back seats on the school bus, like one of the cool kids:

And the Ravelry party, with a bonfire and cupcakes and a photobooth, and some pretty nice pumpkin ale:

And then another bus ride back to the car, so we could drive back to the hotel & try to fall asleep...though we were so wired, it took awhile!

Where to begin?

I don't even know where to start with the last 3 days. I am absolutely exhausted, and it has been worth every sleep-deprived minute! My pal Anne, who was my Sock Summit roomie last year, picked me up at the airport and took me back to her house. I slept like a log, we had a leisurely morning on Friday, and sometime after lunch, we hit the road. We arrived at our hotel in Poughkeepsie with some time to spare before meeting some of her crazy (and way cool!) friends for dinner, so we drove up the road a bit. We took in some of the local history:



Sculptures made from pieces of the Berlin Wall:


A shot (poorly capturing the colours!) of the valley, from the back yard of FDR's house:


A better shot of some of the local colour:


During dinner, I managed to weave in the ends of the fingerless mitts I had been working on. But to have them ready to wear for the morning, there was still the matter of washing them...and drying! Knitterly ingenuity came to the rescue. I had the forethought to pack a small bottle of Euclan, and there was a hair dryer in our hotel, as well as a space heater:

Victory! And a good thing, too, coz the wind at the fairgrounds on Saturday was wicked-cold! We got up at 6:30 to get to the grounds early, which would have been OK except that my laptop was still showing Pacific time. 3 hours earlier. Oy!

But the rest will have to wait for another post, as I am bone-tired, and have yet to finish packing before I go to bed. More tomorrow!

Squee!

After a long but uneventful day (if you don't count getting grossed out by zombies eating people's intestines, watching Shaun of the Dead for the first time!) I somehow found myself here:

Am now cozily ensconced at my friend Anne's place, and getting ready to hit the road to Rhinebeck....Squee!

Happy Turkey Day!

Being Thanksgiving up here in the Great White North, I thought I'd post about some things that have recently made me quite happy. I have come down with a wicked sinus cold, but I have the makings of hot toddies close by (and, in fact, the first toddy is half-way gone!) But I am still happy about a lot of things!

First, I finished these:

In Sanguine Gryphon's "Little Traveler" sock yarn, which was a joy to knit with, and is even better to wear. It was a Sock Summit score, and I have another whole skein (in a gorgeous orangey-red) to play with.

Then, I finally got the buttons placed on this beast:

My Rhinebeck sweater. I think it makes me look like Grimace; Mr.Q and my friends very sweetly disagree, but really? I don't care. I love it. It is warm, and comfortable, and the Cascade Eco+ washed up a lot softer than I expected. Also, that oak leaf panel stretched my knitting brain in ways I would never have anticipated. It's imperfect, and I don't care. I love it.

(Of course, it's warm and sunny again...19 degrees (Celsius) outside...I may never actually get to wear the thing. But I love it!)

We had a fantabulous dinner at my sister's place last night: whiskey-molasses glazed ham (Oh. My. Bob!) & veg, and I made this for dessert. (I meant to take pics, but it totally didn't last long enough. It's a really, really good thing it only made enough for a small-ish serving for each of us. Because I'm not sure I could have stopped until it was all gone, and any more would have been a bad idea! It was amazing.

But before dinner, I had some fun watching Mr.Q bond with the nephew-person over home improvements:

A good time was had by all!

Also, we got ourselves an early Christmas present on Saturday: tickets to see Leonard Cohen when he's here in December. If that's the only thing we do to celebrate the holidays, I think we'll both be more than ecstatic. Word on the street is that he still puts on an astonishing live show.

Now Mr.Q's out for coffee, while I sniffle around the house in my pink flannel nightie. He set me up with some chicken broth and juice before he left, and the cats are keeping me great company. (By which I mean: sleeping like the big fat lazy lumps!) And I have a million loads of laundry to do, and packing to start sorting out, because I leave in THREE MORE SLEEPS!

(Really, more like TWO MORE SLEEPS, coz I doubt I'll sleep much on Wednesday!) I'm rather a little excited. For Rhinebeck, of course, and especially to see some of the friends I made at Sock Summit last year. But also for the train up to Montreal, and a few days of solo-exploring there. I have taken planes and road trips alone lots of times, but always to meet somebody else at the other end. Montreal will be the first trip I've taken alone...I have a feeling it won't be the last!

Now...to see how few clothes I really need for 9 days...to make more room for more yarn!

Happy Thanksgiving, all!