Well, the trip to Niagara Falls was so great! I had just the best time ever. I would have to put it up there with the Yellowstone vacation of three years ago. Just phenomenal. I will get to that in a minute. First, look at the market bag I finished a couple days before the trip:
The pattern is Fantasy Naturale Market Bag, which I modified a bit. When I ran out of blue on the bottom, I just switched to stockinette, decreased a bit, and followed the instruction for the handles. I love this tote. Perfect for groceries (or for storing yarn in your apartment because you are running out of room, but I digress).Anyway, so that is the knitting I had done before the vacation. And now onto the good stuff. . . .
So, we (me, Alex, Melissa, and Mike) left at 4am on Wednesday morning for Niagara Falls. My sister, who needed to be entertained in the car, even decided to knit on the way there:
Because she has no blog or Ravelry account (she is totally crazy, I know) I will tell you she is knitting a baby blanket for one of her friends. She is making a diagonal baby blanket, much like this one. She is about halfway done already, but knowing her, I will be finishing it about a two days before the baby shower. Oh well, at least I got her knitting again for the time being.Many hours later, we arrived in the Niagara Falls area, and took a walk down to see the falls, naturally taking pictures next to crazy signs first:
I have no idea why we decided it would be funny to take a picture looking like we are shivering under the freezing mist sign. It's June! It was not even cold. Anywho, as we were staying on the Canada side, we got lots of good pictures of the falls:
And on day 2 of the trip, I totally took the money shot:
My sister's boyfriend proposed!!! Me and Alex (and my parents too) were totally in on it. I was excited that no one spilled that secret to my sister and she was totally surprised. The morning he was planning on doing it I was asking Melissa if she was sure she wanted to wear sweatpants and no make up. She kept telling me she was just going to get wet and misty anyway, she didn't care. So, now she has pictures (and video!) of getting engaged in sweatpants. It's kind of cute though.The next day, Melissa and I drove to Toronto to Lettuce Knit:
I mean, I might have been trying to stalk the Yarn Harlot (who I think was not even in Canada at the time. I think makes me a bad stalker for not having planned that better). And, seriously, it's not like I can go on vacation and not buy yarn. Please. So here is what I got:
That's two skeins of Misti Cotton (on the left) and two skeins of Handmaiden Casbah on the right. The Handmaiden was going to be it for the souvenir yarn but after touching the Misti Cotton, there was much squeeing by me and my sister and it was suddenly in my clutches, and I was not leaving the store without it.I really loved Lettuce Knit and the area around it was hella cool (and, of course, I got no pictures of that). So, if you go on vacation to Toronto (or even Niagara Falls, it's not that far of a drive), you should go there. It will rock your socks (and you can even get Socks That Rock there if you want!) :) After Lettuce Knit, we drove to the CN Tower, and didn't even go to the top (there was an hour wait for the elevator and we had dinner reservations). It's cool, I have no problem taking a three hour round trip to somewhere just for yarn.
On Day 4 we were back to hanging out near the water, this time on the US side at Cave of the Winds:
That was by far my favorite part of the whole trip. You put on a poncho and walk on these decks around the American Falls. It was so cool. It was loud and wet and so so much fun. We also did Journey Behind the Falls (on the Canadian side) on the same day, but I don't think it was as cool. Especially after doing Cave of the Winds.Then yesterday, it was just driving home and getting back to the thunderstorm-y weather that is Chicagoland in early June. Like I said, the vacation was great and just what I needed. I feel totally ready to focus on my yarn dyeing, and am looking forward to working on my Etsy shop some more.
And, finally, here is the knitting I accomplished on vacation. First, I did a couple more market bags:
These are patterns I just kind of made up as I went along. Both were knit with cheap cotton from Joann's and took absolutely no time to make.On the way home I knit these:
To be fair, I did start the first one the weekend before vacation (I only had a cuff though). The only reason I got them done is that my friend, Ang, has really small feet! She wanted some Atlanta Brave socks, so I dyed some yarn that I thought was Braves-esque and knit way. The yarn pooled a little weird, but I think it just makes for more interesting socks. Oh, and I used Broadripple for the pattern, as that is my standard road trip sock of choice.So, that is it. That's what has been happening in the last week or so. I plan on trying to get the Mingus socks done this week so I can start something new (uh, May Rockin' Sock Club socks!!!)I also plan on doing a lot of laundry. Ugh, the bad part about vacation...the laundry!
Happy knitting!
P.S. If you would like to see a sh*t ton more pictures of my vacation, you can do so here.
