Blah

today i'm feeling very blah, so i am going to try and distract myself with thoughts of fun things...

like the Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk yarn that I was swatching yesterday and today... go here for a photo, and then imagine all its lightweight silky chestnut-coloured softness. I'm trying to decide whether or not to believe yesterday's swatch, which I did while sitting in a McDonald's drinking very bad coffee (I was in a very non-trendy, rather industrial part of the west end of town, and there was not a proper coffee shop in sight!), waiting for the mechanic to tell me what turned out to be very irritating news about our new-to-us new car. Anyway, on a generic grey metal 3.75mm circular needle, I got 23 stitches in 4 inches instead of the necessary 24... but the stitches were loose and relaxed and I really don't trust myself to knit a whole sweater without adding a little more tension to the mix... so today I'm swatching with a fun purple 4mm circular to see if it gives a better result... i think its worth the extra swatching just for the fun purpleness of it all! :)


another fun thing to focus on is the hiking trip we took this weekend to Lake Placid, New York - after only a three hour drive, I was surrounded by mountains again! yay! this was the second time that we made this trip - 2 years ago, I decided that I wanted to go on one last hiking trip before the fall season was over, so we got a bunch of friends together and headed south. That trip ended up being on the 3rd weekend in October, so it was not surprising that we hiked through new-fallen snow on the second day. This time, we lucked out by going at the end of September - we had a bright sunny day, and the views from the top of the mountain (3,000 feet up) were amazing! Its been a chilly past few weeks too, so the leaves were at their peak for colour. Here, take a look!

a little waterfall on the way up the mountain

getting close to the top (the trees are shorter, that's how you can tell!)


Here's Mikey near the top
(see how red the hills are in the background?)


what the bear saw on the other side of the mountain


we followed a little stream all the way down the mountian... when the stream turned into this big waterfall, we knew we were close to the bottom! :)

almost there...

the cliffs on the side of the lake are too steep to climb over,
so they built us a boardwalk instead. Good thing too, by this time, we were exhausted!

The hike we did was the Algonquin Peak Loop, a mere 13 miles up and over a mountain - the first 4 miles took us up 3000 feet, and the next 2.4 miles took us back down... then we still had almost 7 miles to go before we were back out of the woods! Due to a missed turn on the way to a trailhead, we didn't get on the trail till about 10:30am... it was therefore not surprising that us not-so-quick hikers (those of us with shorter legs, for example!) didn't get off the trail till 7:30 that night! good thing we took our headlamps along! But it all ended very nicely with a big feast of pizza and pasta and beer in Lake Placid - the perfect ending to a fall hike! Also, since none of us had realized that the trail would be so long and arduous, the second day of hiking turned into a big brunch and then a hike through the local shops! We had to miss it, since Mike had to be back in Ottawa to catch a plane at 3:30 on the Sunday... too bad too, because I really wanted to go visit the Adirondack Yarns shop! oh well, maybe next time!

ugh. thats the end of the fun things to focus on for the moment... now I have to go and focus on the not so fun fact that I have a deadline coming up, and not nearly enough stuff written yet! Ahhhh! well, maybe I'll get lucky and one of the many fun packages that I'm expecting will arrive (its all stuff that I ordered, so no surprises, but I'm still excited to get them!)

hope you're having a less blah day than I am!