Weekend Doin's

Saturday - Teaching gig at Stash Needle Art lounge (her website is here)   On the agenda - Teaching the fine art of knitting socks - which is one of my favourite knitting things to do.  It was a small class, but being as how I haven't taught in quite a while, that was probably a good thing.  By all reports, everybody had a good time, and accomplished the first phase of sock construction, knitting the leg - or they will have by next week because I gave them homework. 
Next week, we will be turning the heel.  I always tell my students that turning a sock heel is one of the magical bits of knitting - it makes no sense, but it works and you have to suspend your disbelief and just go for it. We will accomplish it together and hopefully take the scary bits out of the process.
Stash Needleart Lounge, owned by Veronica Murphy - no mean knitting teacher herself - is a delightful little shop in the Inglewood district of Calgary.  I love the antiques and vintage bits scattered around the shop and used as shelving and decoration. Don't you love the old frig's - cold storage for yarn.  Lovely.

There is something very comforting about being in a yarn shop surrounded by all that texture and colour.  It sort of makes up for the bad weather around here.
I beat the predicted storm home and decided in the interests of sanity to just close all the drapes, light candles and plug in a film to watch while I knit...what else...a warm, woolly sock.

Sunday - woke up to this

For heaven's sake, this needs to stop!  There seems to be a high pressure system that has it in for the prairies.  One small consolation- Libby loves having a back garden full of soft, white snow to roll in, jump in and  run through.
So.. once I had cleaned off the sidewalks and the car, (again in the interests of sanity),  I ventured back out into the weather, and headed for the Calgary Horticultural Society's Annual Garden show out at Spruce Meadows, a spot better known around the world, I think, as host of International Horse show jumping competitions.  Today the barns were full of garden and landscaping displays.  Just the thing to brighten my spirits.

You have to be an optimist to be a gardener - even if you do resort to a bright plastic flower in your outdoor display.  Actually this is a pretty neat water feature that  looks surprisingly good in the snow.

Inside was warmth and lots of fun and colour.  But it is very early in gardening season in my little world - especially since there is 10 cm of snow covering most of my garden beds.  Never mind.  I splurged on some seed potatoes for my potato barrel, and some Dahlia tubers.  A girl can dream can't she?

The last word goes to Spruce Meadow's wonderful stop sign.