Spring CreativFestival

Today was spent @ the CreativFestival @ the International Center... which was very cool, although I was truthfully a little disappointed. The autumn one is HUGE, and a part of me was expecting the spring show to be something like it - but it was only like a third of the size. Nonetheless, I walked out with a crochet kit and a book - $10 off! Score!

adventures @ Knitter's Frolic

I spent a couple hours today hangin' out in Toronto @ the Knitter's Frolic over at the Japanese Culteral Center... it was sooo much fun! I had found out about it from Linda over at Linda's Craftique, since she had a booth there and was obviously attending.

I did find some fantastic goodies - a knitting kit with 4 skeins of baby alpaca yarn, and 4 1-skein patterns, which are going to make fantastic xmas gifts, plus a couple goodies over @ Linda's booth: a black sheep tape measure & a beautiful shawl pin.

I also had the great fortune - while ordering a cup of coffee - to meet Amy Singer of knitty, who was standing in line behind me! (Cool!) We chatted for a little while, while ordering our respective drinks; it was pretty interesting to meet a knitting celeb! :)

cooking & knitting

I don't know why this idea has been stuck in my brain the last few days...

Wouldn't it be neat to have a knitting themed cook book? I, being the knitting dork that I am, thinks so. A few months ago I was watching Martha and saw a woman making knit-looking sweaters out of marzipan and thought that was simply brilliant. But what other knitting and crocheting themed items can be made with food? Is there a special knit-tini? Something involving crocheted spaghetti and meatball pompoms?

Have I completely fallen off my rocker with this idea, or what?

back from vacation...

Well, I finally came back from visiting my parents in the south of France - lucky me, eh? Phew, it was an exhausting two weeks. A large part of it is getting used to the time change (6 hours difference), and once I got used to it the first week I had to get back used to the time change when I came home! Eep!

Also, with being @ my grandmother's, she's the type of person who is always out doing something, so we hadn't had a day of rest, we were constantly running around somewhere.

Since I'm limited to the number of pics I can post at a time, I will limit my stories of France as one description of my trip per post. (Believe it or not, we have over 250 pics that I had to load up after two weeks! I won't bore you with all of them, but will show off some!)

My grandmother lives on a property that's at least a half acre, with a single story home, beautiful front yard, and fruit trees growing out the wazoo in the back. This is a pic of her front yard one foggy morning, which I thought was beautiful:

The weird looking trees you see growing are (I think) mulberry trees, that have enormous leaves that just started to bud the day before DH and I came home.

These next 2 pics are of where my dad works... there are a few more but you get an idea of how the grounds look like:

It's a winery located in Pertui (sp?) ... it's a huge property that grows mainly grape vines (obviously) for making their own wine, and olive trees too for their own olive oil. The pic on the left is part of the winery itself; there's also a banquet hall, small shop, and another part of the winery in another building, and the family live in an authentic castle just up the hill behind the pictured building. The pic on the right is of some of the gardens, which there easily is at least 5 times more of. They grown their own vegetables and have tons of fruit trees as well.

I'm off to do a little work now, but I will post more pics of my trip later on in the week....