Calgary: Day 1

The time finally came for the LA Kings Fan Trip to Calgary. Lupe and I were ready bright and early Saturday morning. The flight was a tad bumpy but not awful.





I managed to take a couple of pics out of our plane window. The mountain were snow topped and I assume these are the Canadian Rockies.

Our hotel, The Westin Calgary was in a great location about 2 blocks away from Chinatown so we hoofed it over there for a yummy dim sum lunch. From there we walked down Centre St toward the Calgary Tower. Lots of interesting sculptures/art work to see.












 Our hotel is about 2 blocks from the river so we had that option which we did another day. The downtown area is easy to walk and we didn't have difficulty navigating the city. The Calgary Tower was our afternoon adventure and off we went.

The tower is not the tallest structure in Calgary but it does offer good views . There is a portion of the tower that has a clear ledge or skywalk so you can see straight down to the street below. Lupe is freaked out by that sort of thing so I tried it and you definitely get that dizzying/vertigo feeling but you kind of get used to it after a bit. :)











We ended our evening with a nice reception/dinner at the Canada Sports Hall of Fame. We got to taste Alberta beef which is excellent and the drinks were flowing. We later learned that the Olympic flame was at the Calgary Tower during the 1988 Winter Olympics. Also the facilities we were at is the official training center for the Canadian winter athletes. :)

I have lots more to post but this is the first part and hopefully I can be good about posting more about our Calgary trip.

Dust Bunnies

A little cute project for leftover yarn. Originally written for sock yarn which would make these super little, I started with some bulky yarn and I liked how they came out.

I think I might knit some up (gotta start now) as little student gifts at the end of the year.




I have lots of yarn...

Hats Galore

On the Puck This group on Ravelry we have a Hat Trick month in January and it's all for fun but the goal is to knit 3 hats in the month. I do love knitting hats since they're usually fast and fun.

My usual goal is to use up my current stash but that does not always work out as planned. I'm not sure if I blogged about my personal hat trick but I did continue knitting on hats through February. Also if you watched the winter Olympics in Sochi, you may noticed the really cool knit hats that many athletes wore.

Luckily there are plenty of talented people to reverse engineer the designs and share them with fellow knitters. One of my first hats was the 2014 USA hat, of course. I only have one photo of the hat which features colorwork moose, designs of USA and 2014.



Quite large for the average person and I stopped the chart soon after the moose as the hat was getting very tall. I'm sure I can find someone who will claim this cool hat.

Then I was in a patriotic mood, so I continued with the same yarn and made a Scrappy Ski Hat. This is a super pattern for using all those odd and ends of yarn laying around. I keep saying I need to knit up my existing stash but somehow I keep buying more yarn. Its a vicious cycle.





Oh, I'm not finished! I was telling you I was on some sort of hat knitting frenzy...



This cool pattern, Slovakian Folklore Hat takes its inspiration from the winter Olympics where the Slovakia had these super fab hats. A talented person took her time to chart it out and I was lucky enough to find it/knit it. This hat is really tall and slouchy which is how it's supposed to be but I did have to leave out the last chart before it was too long. Yes, I bought more yarn but these colors are great and wintery. And it looks complete with a pom pom. :)



I'm definitely wearing this hat when I take off to the great white north next month. :)





One more hat and I think that's it for now. I knit another Sockhead hat. This hat is great because it uses sock yarn which is thinner/lighter which is more suitable for SoCal weather. We are supposed to get 2 rainstorms and I'm currently wearing it as I type.

It's a great mindless project because I don't have to think about it. Just lots of ribbing and then miles of knitting. I might use up some leftover sock yarn and make a scrappy one.

Phew! That's the hats although I didn't show the 3 I knit for January. I don't want to overload everyone more than I have. Now to prepare for rain!

Mammoth Mountain

February is practically over and I have been a bad blogger. I do have my reasons and that's because 2 weekends we spent driving up to Mammoth Lakes in the eastern Sierras. The kids got 2 3 day weekends to enjoy back to back and for we decided to go for it.



The first weekend I drove up with the kids and met my friend Julie along with her cousins & friends so total us up all together and I think we were 10 sharing a condo at The Village. Our drive up was uneventful (which is great) but when we reached Mammoth the weather definitely different. Cold & windy with snow in the forecast but we were all nice a cozy in our penthouse condo.



We had plenty of restaurants to choose from and we just take the gondola there to the right to Canyon Lodge. We had to bundle up to go snowboarding to face the elements.





I think we would have done better if it weren't for the windy conditions.



Not that we were heading up to the top of the mountain but we couldn't see much past the lifts.

 

It was hard to keep track of both boys on the slope. Everyone looks the same, more or less.



Sunday was better weather-wise but not much. We managed the best we could.





Maybe this is why we usually come up during the spring to avoid this kind of weather. :)
Naturally Monday was beautiful and calm when we headed home.



The kids didn't seem to mind clearing the car of overnight snow.

One Piece

We started watching One Piece and there are tons of episodes. We finished a 8 box DVD and there are more episodes available online which H probably finished by now.

I suggested to Josh that he can cosplay as Luffy because they are very close in looks. :) Josh is cool with that but I think he'd rather be Roronoa Zoro because he always carries 3 swords.

back in the mix

and now back to photography...

These mushrooms have popped up in our neighbor's yard last week so it's been interesting to see the growth and decay of them. Today I decided to dust off my DSLR and macro lens to get back into a groove.

Lots of cool little nuances and textures in these little shrooms. The gardeners are coming today so this was my last time to get really up close to them.

It rained yesterday and by rain, I mean that it was basically trace amounts. Enough to get the cars wet but not enough to rinse all the dirt completely off.

Flight plan

Another great weekend especially since the kids got Monday off. Hector and Tyler were invited lunch on Sunday at Catalina island with Roger & Glenn. Tyler has known Glenn since kindergarten and they've become great friends in middle school. Roger has a small plane and has been flying since he was 16. This the first time, Hector & Tyler has flown in a Cessna so both were very excited.
























They flew about 15 minutes to Catalina island where they landed, had lunch and short hike. I can't really say any more about it since I didn't go with them but I know they had a special time. Thanks to Roger and Glenn for the fun day!