Category: photography

Christmas Baking #FAIL

I just spent three weeks baking for Christmas – no, I am not exaggerating – I made the following goodies:

Fruit Cake

Sugar Cookies – iced and sugared

Santa Whiskers

Gingerbread – decorated, but tradition not as zombies, regular & mini

Shortbread – chocolate-dipped and un-dipped

Icing Sugar Chocolates

Caramel – plain, chocolate-dipped, dipped & salted, and cashew turtles

Butter Tarts

Nanaimo Bars

Fake Fudge

Eggnog Cheesecake Bars

Almond Bark

…I feel like I am forgetting something – not the point – the point is that this is all I have to show for all that baking:

One photo. Taken on my iPhone and posted to Facebook to tease my sister (who LOVES homemade turtles), and, yes, I do believe that blob on the right side is the shadow of my finger in the shot – sigh!

 

Yarn bombing…

It has been especially quiet around here for over a month, and while some of that time off was forced upon me (I was rather unwell through November into December), the later half of December was a self-imposed holiday filled with much baking and entertaining and holiday fun. Through all this the weather has been remarkable here in Vancouver and I have enjoyed a number of sunny (and windy!!) seawall walks.

While walking to Granville Island on December 31, I happened upon two great examples of yarn bombing a.k.a knitting graffitti… true, I have noted others while wandering around Vancouver’s Kitsilano area, but these were brand new and begging to be photographed (with the iPhone 4s, FYI).

Wikipedia (linked above) describes yarn bombing as such: Yarn bombing, yarnbombing, yarnstorming, guerrilla knitting, urban knitting or graffiti knitting is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colorful displays of knitted or crocheted cloth rather than paint or chalk.

A fringed yarn bomb on the swing set at Kits Beach, Vancouver, BC, Canada

This, of course, got me wondering about yarn bombing and whether or not anyone was tracking such things… if I should be submitting the photos to a database or what not… and, upon Googling, I discovered that the writers behind yarnbombing.com were actually from Vancouver, BC, Canada, which I thought was more than a little cool! There are also a few Ravelry groups devoted to this subject.

A flowered yarn bomb on a tree at the entrance of the seawall path of Vanier Park

There were no tags identifying the artist(s), but I suppose that isn’t the point. I hope to happen upon more installations, and may be moved to contribute my own some day…

In the garden: Yellow Brandywine

This is one of the new varieties of tomatoes we tried this year, Yellow Brandywine. The plant was huge, took a long time to fruit, and didn’t start ripening until mid-September, also it seemed to be very prone to powdery mildew, but they sure were tasty! I purchased the starter plant at the VanDusen Garden Sale at the beginning of May 2011.