Victoria at its fibre finest.

I had decided that I wasn't going to be too cliche and put in all kinds of pictures of the beautiful flowers in Victoria as with our mild spring back east I actually got to see some lilacs beginning to bloom in our neighbour's yard before I left on May 4th! Unheard of.

I resisted the seduction the few roses that I've seen in bloom but there was something about this gorgeous peony struggling up beside the reconstruction of the sidewalk beside my brother's place that I just couldn't resist. Isn't it lovely? A few more weeks and we'll have our own back home to admire.



This is the gate to Chinatown in Victoria. Although Chinatown here is but a couple of blocks of great restaurants and a few grocers and oriental trinket shops, it does have the distinction of being Canada's oldest Chinatown. The other reason that I thought it interesting to mention this area is that both of the knitting stores and the main quilt shop in the city are all within 2 blocks of these gates...I have no idea what that means or why that is but I found it very interesting.




The Beehive Wool Shop has been a fixture on the Victoria fibre scene for many years (from 1906-2010 to be precise...now that's longevity). This felted hat is from a display that customers are treated to as they walk in the front door. It's from a collection of Everett Wong, a young fine arts student at UVic whose grad project was to design the costumes for the main characters of Alice in Wonderland. Can't you just see this top hat at the tea party. I was hoping that there would be other pictures available on line but alas, no.





I found an extremely interesting home in Knotty By Nature the newest fibre arts store in the city. Link to the site and be patient as it's not exactly obvious how to navigate - the concept is fantastic: lots of beautiful yarns (many that we carry) tastefully displayed and supplemented by fantastic attractions (like this knitted bicycle) and a wonderful selection of items for sale on consignment from the many wonderful fibre artists in the city. It's lovely to read the "about us" page on the site although the site itself doesn't do them justice. It a fabulous store and it says a lot that I plan to return tomorrow to learn more about this great young couple.

A big walk down memory lane.

Yesterday I got to take the day in Duncan and area where we lived when we were first married over 30 years ago. This is the 1st house where we lived: it was a camp that was owned by the Diocese of Victoria on Shawnigan Lake but because of size and liability issues, it was no longer being used as a kids' camp.

Imagine my surprise to see that everything was exactly the same...30 years later, including the young carpenter who was working on the main house, who reminded me so much of my husband, apprentice that he was in those days and who was probably the last person to have worked on those front stairs.

Then up the highway I went to WhippleTree Junction, a wild west era shopping mall...actual buildings from the turn of the last century and before were transported to a site just south of Duncan and were turned into retail space. At that location is The Loom, which is one of the knitting stores where I began my knitting career when we lived here, making samples for the store. It seems a lot smaller than I remembered it, but just as vibrant.

The irony is that my husband's cousin Ronald Woodall, whom we have never met, is the artist who created these lovely pieces of "disappearing architecture", which includes a piece entitled "Old Chinatown" I believe (bottom left), which is how the stores at WhippleTree originally looked before they got gussied up.

Later in the day, I got lost and literally drove into (the parking lot of ) a lovely little case of serendipity. This is a picture of Andrew who works at Glenora Farms' Weavery. Link here to their site to read more about this wonderful community just south of Duncan BC. The Glenora Farm community refers to itself as: "A place where special needs are met..." Andrew is an amazing weaver and I bought 3 of his cotton and linen tea towels. His fine wool scarves are also greatly prized. He told me with great pride that he loves to bake too and often makes his special lemon loaf which is sold at the Glenora general store. It's wonderful to think that lovely people like Andrew have found a warm place to live and be productive, within the confines of their special needs. Isn't it fun to get lost?

This is Victoria?

Victoria is just as beautiful as ever. For Mothers' Day, my brother, Anthony, took me to Hatley Castle, now part of Royal Roads University. There was a craft fair on the front lawn and the castle and its gardens were open to the public. Absolutely amazing.

While we were there we met Wendy Mitchell of Sea Bluff Farms in Metchosin, near Victoria. Wendy is the creator of Barbie here, she is a papier mache sheep who has been dressed in a cardi and balaclava that were knit by Wendy of locally grown sheep's fleece that she spun. Wendy had called her creation Barbie and one of the guests at the castle suggested that Barbie could be Barbie Dollie in honour of Dollie, the cloned sheep.

Wendy is hoping to encourage knitters from her local fibre arts guild and crafters across Canada to donate knitted clothes to Barbie Dollie's wardrobe. You will notice the colourful leg warmers that she now is wearing but she could certainly use a hat or scarf or tail warmer, or shawl from other parts of Canada.

If anyone would like to help clothe Barbie Dollie, please contact Wendy at wendyncmitchell@shaw.ca

P.S. A hat to fit a medium adult or large sized child would suit the bill perfectly.

Nearly There...

Arrived this morning at the Vancouver station. By the way, for anyone who is interested: this trip is absolutely amazing. And much to my husband's eventual dismay, I've discovered that there are similar rail services all over the US too. I think I'm hooked...oh yeah, I do have to go back to work at some point.

So here is a picture of one of the first mountains that we came upon just before Jasper. How pretty, but I realized that although I was impressed, mountains don't actually do anything. If you've seen a picture, you've seen a mountain. BUT at 5 am this morning, we rode through the Fraser Canyon. WOW! How sad that the schedule doesn't allow for travellers to see it unless they are chronic insomniacs like me.

This is a lovely knit and quilt shop that I got to visit in Jasper. I noted the coincidence as my store is called WOOL-TYME and one of the customers in the store said: "Why, I've been to WOOL-TYME!" It is a very small world. After my visit came the best part of our 1 1/2 hour stop over in Jasper: I dropped $40 plus tip for a shampoo...and worth every cent.

I've come along a bit on the toe up socks. The pink stripe is the waste yarn for the "afterthought heel" which will be added when the rest of the leg is done. Any observers, knitters and non knitters alike, had great difficulty visualizing the afterthought addition of a heel.

Off to get the bus/ferry/bus to Victoria where I hear that there is a giant rally/parade for earth day and protesting the local fish farms. My brother says that they planned it for today as they knew I'd be arriving. I think not!

The Assiniboine Valley is too beautiful to waste on a straight highway.

For some reason, I've been really surprised by the friendliness of all the passenger and staff on board. But if you think about it, spending 80 hours together is a bit like being on a cruise where people will start chatting just to satisfy their curiosity about each other.

At first it began with the younger ones getting together and staying up way past when the rest of us had tried to get some sleep But as we passed the half way point between Toronto and Vancouver, we all started looking at each other as potential chat buddies. These girls had brought some very creative activities to pass the time in the dome car. This was their balsa wood model plane. Later in the day they brought out wax crayons and mini colouring books.


Needless to say, the toe up socks and the rug hooking that I've been working on have attracted some attention along the way but now people are stopping to watch and ask about what I'm doing instead of just shyly passing and mentioning that they liked it.


A young woman from the Niagara area, whose boyfriend had borrowed my scissors the day before while they were working on woven friendship bracelets of embroidery floss, was telling me something interesting that she has learned during her Midwifery program where she is enrolled at McMaster U. It would appear that there is a nurse-midwife in Britain who has made it a part of her practice to knit during the labour and part of the delivery of her patients, only putting down her needles in an emergency. The theory is that by knitting, she creates an atmosphere of calm and mild detachment, believing that nature is capable of leading the way and assuring the mothers that they will able to follow what their bodies are prepared to do.

Her success and satisfaction rates are apparently phenomenal. It puts a new twist on Elizabeth Zimmerman's perennial edict to: "Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises."

This is a picture that I took of a little girl that I saw during our stop over in Winnipeg. What first caught my eye was her little white coat which actually has a sheep hood and is a cute as can be. But then I saw her beautiful fingering weight leggings. The Mom said that her best friend made them for the little one and although she herself can't knit, she certainly appreciated the knitted gifts that this good friend likes to send.
We can't all be creators. Grateful recipients are important too!

Day 2 on the train

We've arrived early in Winnipeg and it's one of the few times that I'll have internet access along the trip so I'm making the most of it.

For the full 16 hours of daylight time we rode through deep forest that I'm sure no amount of the most super powered insect repellent could protect one from during the buggy season.

I've driven across Canada several times and have taught Canadian Geography and neither experience prepared me for the amazing vastness of the wilderness in northern Ontario. Aside from the occasional dirt road and a few villages with nothing higher than a 2 storey dwelling, there is very little of human intervention to be seen from the train for hours on end.

When people asked me why I didn't just fly to Victoria if I wanted to go to the West Coast, I told them that I wanted a working vacation, and that this would be like a cottage that could also move me to where I wanted to go. After a day, I realize that a better comparison is like being at a vacation resort with really nice staff to help out and lots of interesting people to meet. And sitting on the "porch" of my chalet is like watching a really long episode of National Geographic: Astounding for its magnitude and beauty when you glance up from your work, but you wouldn't want to have to pay constant attention to it for all 16 daylight hours.


Here is a picture of the socks that I was working on yesterday, and that's the boreal forest in the background. I actually started the toe at home as I'm not ultra confident in toe-up techniques and I didn't want to have the stress of trying to get it right enough to give as a gift when I'm working on a moving train.
As it turned out, it was a good thing that I did that as it took me 3 tries to get it right-ish.

The bulk of my crafting time yesterday was spent on the rug hooking project that I've designed. I had wanted to learn more about shading with yarns, so I created a mosaic of 9 "tiles", each containing a flower from The Rug Hookers Bible. I did the blue one at home as a test run to see if it would be a feasible project. The wild roses I did yesterday. I'm going to try and complete the majority one flower each day that I'm on the train. I'll keep you posted.

Vancouver Island or Bust!

After 15 months of planning the final hour has arrived and I'm on the train to Toronto for the shortest leg of my ultimate trip to the West Coast.

From what I can tell from the Via Rail website, this jaunt from Kingston to Toronto is likely to be the least comfortable of the trek as we (the other travelers who are heading west and I) will be boarding the "Continental" just a bit before midnight tonight, which should arrive sometime on Saturday morning in Vancouver. From there, I'll make my way by bus and ferry to Victoria where I'll be meeting my brothers for a week of visits, yarn shop searching and a day at the Cowichan centre to try and connect with some of the Native knitters there.

At left is a picture of Victoria in full bloom a few weeks ago. Not all that different from what I'm leaving here.

This is what we have to travel through on the way across Canada: what Albertans are hoping to be the last of the spring storms. Very pretty but I had been hoping to see SPRING on the prairies. A lot can happen before I get there.

I have packed a whole suitcase of knitting, rug hooking, books, note books, this laptop, my MP3 player and a whole lot of snacks. I was assuming that I'd have a chance to blog a fair bit while on the train but have discovered that it's only on this leg of the journey that internet access is available on the train. It appears that I'll have to wait until I can get off in train stations for a bit of a break, once or twice a day in order to connect to the station's access. All that to say, I'll be keeping some notes and pictures along the way but it might only get posted every second day.

Be back with you soon.

Anne