Scottish Dancers at Sunrise

Last night I visited Neil at Sunrise and joined him in watching a special performance of the Inverglen Scottish Dancers. This is a dance group which includes dancers from age 3 to adult. They treated us to both Highland dancing and Scottish Country Dancing.  Very nice to see the young ones participate in this way.

An Evening of Knitting Inspiration

On the evening of October 20, I attended a Sisterhood program on knitting, which featured Amanda Kafka, creator of The Crafty Jackalope knitters website, as our guest speaker.  She told us about her journey in knitting and fashion design.  Her two passions came together and she began designing knitting patterns and teaching.

The Crafty Jackalope is a knitting/crochet craft website that sells knit & crochet patterns/instructions, knit,crochet kits (yarn & patterns), needles, and notions. Amanda’ brought with her some of the knitting designs from a recent trunk show.  Here are some photos from the evening, including one of Amanda speaking, and then photos of the knit or crocheted items that she brought with her to show us. Very inspiring.

She has also just published a knitting pattern book called "The Crafty Jackalope" Vol. 01 with beautiful knitting patterns. She did all of the work to create and test the new patterns, as well as putting the book together.

Four Day Cruise Getaway

October 1 to 4 I was off on a four day cruise on Holland America Cruise Line's Nieuw Amsterdam departing from Canada Place in Vancouver bound for Seattle, WA and the Georgia Strait, returning to Canada Place.  Very simply cruise just for a chance to get away from caregiving duties.  Annikki accompanied me, and Linda and Cec and Linda's cousin and her daughter came too, so we were three cabins.

After an extremely slow boarding, caused by the Port's computer's being down resulting in a huge backload of passengers, we got onboard after a 2 1/2 hour wait check in process. Much too long. The life boat drill was very unorganized and impossible to hear the crew, but we didn't sink. Very much enjoyed the food on board ship which was top notch.

We docked at Seattle at 7:00 am the next morning, and then after breakfast Annikki and I took the provided shuttle to Pike Place Market. Weather was mixed, and the market was very busy, filled with shoppers.

The flower markets were so beautiful. Huge bouquets of flowers for $10 US.

Lots of stalls with fresh fish and seafood.

After Pike Place Market we visited Starbucks (of course) for a break and to check our wifi, then back to the shuttle.  The shuttle took us to the retail centre where the monorail starts and we looked into several major stores such as Macys, Nordstrom's Rack, Gap, Eileen Fisher, etc.  Then back home for a stroll on deck.

After a day cruising Georgia Strait, we arrived back at Canada Place Tuesday morning, and then faced an ultra long wait for a taxi because of the rain. All and all a very good break.