Life of Reilly

It's been a long time

I haven't been inspired to blog much lately.  Too many other things to do, I guess.  I did want to document some cards I've made recently, though.

I'm in love...

...with this shawl!  My "Kim is Wonderful" shawl is so much fun to knit.  The colour changes are so very subtle that it doesn't feel like you're making much progress.  That is, until you step back and look at the big picture.

So far, I haven't had to change colours early, but I think I'm going to run out of shade #3...not that it will matter!

Just because I haven't been blogging...

...doesn't mean I haven't been knitting.

You may have noticed that a couple of projects are gone from my knitting section in the sidebar.  That's because they are now "off the needles."

Here is Peru.  I finally finished her a few weeks before Christmas and I'm very pleased with the result.  The sweater took a very long time.  Over a year.  Lots of cables and 3mm needles -- need I say more?

Those of you with really long memories may also be wondering what happened to Lauren.  Sadly, she went to the rip pile with only one sleeve left to go.  I had knit the front, back and one sleeve and began sewing her up.  You see, I had altered the length of the sleeve because I felt the one in the pattern was too long, and I wanted to see the first sleeve to make sure it was right before I cast on for the second.

The first problem arose when I had joined the shoulder seams and started to knit the placket.  It just looked really wrong.  That was when I realized I had completely abandoned the pattern -- a good lesson in why drinking and knitting don't mix.

So, I ripped it back and started again.  To make a long story short, I did this a few times because I was just never satisfied with the way the placket was sitting.  In the end, I realized that I just didn't love this sweater enough to rip it yet one more time.  So, into the rip pile she went.  Perhaps the yarn will get re-invented next summer. 

Another card

I've been playing with my Cricut again.  A friend's mother passed away just before the holidays, so I made a little card for us to send. 

I used the Cricut to cut out the oval vellum and purple frame. 

Crafty New Year

Yes, I've been crafting my way into 2007! 

This is a card that I made using my new Cricut that hubby gave me for Christmas.  What fun!

The letters were cut out of cardstock using the machine and then I added some stamps and glitter (hard to see the glitter online).

Here's another one.  This is one that I made for my Mum-in-Law's birthday that's coming up later this month.  Again, the letters were cut out using my Cricut, along with the shape I stamped the gift on and the little frame that surrounds it.

There's so much I'm going to be able to do with my new toy!  The ideas are coming along fast and furious! 

Happy holidays

Colin and I have been having a wonderful holiday season! 

This was the scene that greeted us on Christmas morning -- our beautiful $20 Ikea tree surrounded by gifts.  It was a great morning with Colin, my Mom, my brother and his girlfriend.  There were lots of wonderful gifts, including a very extravagant one from hubby to me -- a Cricut! (More about that in a later post).

Among the gifts under the tree was this little package -- a surprise that arrived the mail along with some yummy shortbread from one Curlie Girl.

What could it be?  I'd been wondering ever since it arrived, but I'm a good girl and, as instructed, the package remained unopened until Christmas morning.

Imagine my surprise when I opened it to find enough yarn to make myself the beautiful Merging Colours Adagio Shawl that Kim had bought at the Knitters' Fair back in September!  Kim, when I first opened it, I thought that you had ripped out your shawl and I was flabbergasted!  It was only when I opened your note that I realized you had enough yarn remaining to make a second shawl -- what a fantastic gift!

Kim suggested I name this the "I am Wonderful" shawl, but I've decided it to tweak it a bit to the "Kim is Wonderful" shawl.

I cast on on Boxing Day evening, after the festivities with Colin's family.  So far, so good -- I'm on the third colour and there's still leftover yarn!

As you can see, Rufus has become quite a knitting cat.  He usually curls up beside me on the couch at night, but this week decided the lap was a better choice.

Tia, on the other hand, prefers to spend her time terrorizing the fish.  She was particularly pleased to find that the Christmas gifts spilled over that far, giving her the perfect platform from which to stalk watch the action.      

Whoops!

I was gone for so long my Typepad account was suspended!  Forgot to update my account when my credit card expired back in September.  I am back now!

A finished project

Don't get excited -- it's not knitting (see, Carolyn...I told you we are non-knitting knit bloggers!).

For a long time -- at least three years, I think -- Colin and I have had two folding adirondack chairs in our garage.  They were given to us by good friends of ours who moved out west. 

I always had the best intentions to sand them down and refinish them, but after taking the first one apart a couple of summers ago, I lost my passion for the project. 

Well, this was the summer the chairs had to go.  We need the space in our garage for our new boarder to store her bike. 

Since Colin and I have since purchased a new adirondack chair, we didn't really need these ones, so we decided to fix them up as a gift for some good friends who invite us to their cottage every August long weekend. 

After all the painting and sanding we had done in the condo only a week before, we starting sanding and painting again.  You'll see we were smart enough to leave one chair intact while we worked on the other, so we would have a model to use when it came time to put the pieces back together!

It was a lot of work, but I think our friends really appreciated the end result.  The cottage has two lovely "new" chairs -- a perfect place to sit and watch the sun go down over the lake. 

After the work comes fun!

I'll warn you right now, if you're here for the knitting content, there's not much these days.  In fact, I haven't spent any significant time with any of my projects since the July long weekend!

After the condo was complete, we decided to take a couple of days off at the end of July to head up to Tobermory to celebrate Colin's birthday.  I did do a tiny bit of knitting in the car, but I had brought Peru with me and she's just not good car knitting.

Despite that, I do love me a good road trip!  I sat back, enjoyed the ride, and saw some pretty funny sights along the way!  Like these horses sticking their heads out while driving 100km an hour down the highway.  The sign speaks for itself.

The Georgian Bay area around Tobermory is very beautiful.  One day, we took a glass-bottom boat trip to check out Fathom Five National Marine Park.  We saw the famous Flowerpot Islands and the glass bottom allowed us to check out a couple of the shipwrecks in the area.  I can see why this is a very popular spot with divers.  There's so much to see and the water is so clear. 

We stayed at Bruce Peninsula National Park.  For "car camping," it was a pretty decent place to go.  The sites were well treed and we actually had some privacy on our site, which is always nice. 

The Bruce Trail runs right through the park, so we decided to do some hiking one day.  The trail guide indicated that the path could be quite rigorous at times, so we made sure to lace up proper footwear and packed some water for the trip. 

We started out on one of the park trails that would eventually hook up with the Bruce.  It was lovely -- all spongey wood chips and very well-maintained.  When we met up with the Bruce, it was the same.  We saw a lot of people coming the opposite way and all were wearing little more than flip flops.  Hmmmm....perhaps "rugged" means something a little different on the Bruce?  Eventually, the trail opened up and we saw where all the people were going.  A beautiful swimming cove in Georgian Bay.  You could climb down the rocks and swim in some of the most beautiful turquoise water -- it looked like the Caribbean!
There were even caves that you could swim in and out of -- very cool. 

Unfortunately, we hadn't brought our bathing suits, so we continued on and eventually the trail did become as rugged as was promised as we had to scramble over what seems like an endless stretch of large rocks.  They don't look that big in the picture, but check out how high I have to lift my leg to get up on the next one.  Along the way, Colin got some great shots of the local flora and fauna, including this really cool frog pic. 

It was a terrific 4-day getaway.  We saw a lot and wrapped up each day with a lovely swim in the lake and a few bevvies while preparing dinner. 

We never suffer for food while we're camping.  We had steak, baked potato and broccoli one night.  Salmon and Spaghetti Carbonara were some of our other meals.  Colin's birthday cake was a delicious rum cake straight from Barbados.  And we baked a carmel sponge cake in our camp oven the next night. 

After dinner, we would sit around the campfire and enjoy the lack of bugs (for once!).  Once the fire burned down, we headed for the tent and fell asleep to the sound of loons in the distance.  (oh, and a car alarm....gotta love car camping...sigh).

Where did July and half of August go?

Sorry for going MIA shortly after the long weekend.  We got pretty busy and things just started to spin out of control! 

So, let me pick up where I left off. 

After the July long weekend (on the way home from Kim's, in fact!), we picked up the keys to our new condo.  This is not a condo that we'll ever live in, but one that we bought as an investment.  The people we bought it from were looking to move into a house and agreed to rent from us until they found what they were looking for.  Unfortunately, that happened sooner than we would have liked, so we were faced with a pile of work at the beginning of July.

On the surface, the place didn't look too bad.  Well, except the bathrooms.  Witness Exhibit A:

And Exhibit B:

Yes, the bathrooms were pretty scary.  Otherwise, we figured it was going to be a coat of paint and that's it.  However, the more time we spent there, the more we needed to do.  It wasn't just "a coat of paint," it was filling all kinds of holes in the walls -- about 16 years worth, I'd estimate.  It was painting baseboards, trim and even some ceilings.  It was correcting some strange electrical things.  Fixing weird plumbing errors (including a sink that just plain wasn't connected to the drain pipe!).  The carpets are in terrible shape and very badly stained.  Fortunately, the steam cleaner we borrowed made a huge difference, but we know that's going to be a big job for another day.

Colin and I each put in well over 100 hours on the place -- he knows the exact number...I can't remember.  But, it was well worth it in the end.  The place looks fantastic.

Well, maybe you can't really tell from these pictures, but it's a huge improvement.  We cleaned the place from top-to-bottom and the fresh paint, new light fixtures and overall cleaning made a world of difference.

The best part is, we have new tenants!  A very nice couple and their two children moved in the very same day that Colin finished the final touches.  We're so relieved to know that this investment is finally going to pay off.  Or at least we're relieved to know that we can cover the mortgage!