Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Frolic, 2014

On Saturday, I hopped on board the 6:45 am train to Toronto, and a little over two hours later, I walked in the front door of the Japanese Cultural Centre, one of my favourite venues for a knitting event. This year, all the vendors had booths on the ground level, and that was a great improvement. I always had the feeling that the upstairs vendors were short-changed a bit. I had as much fun as usual, and purchased these, among other things.


I know they look drab in this photo, but they're not. The two skeins on the right are from Sweet Fibre, based in British Columbia, my new favourite hand-dyeing company. Do check out their page of colourways, here. Takes your breath away, doesn't it? The two skeins I bought are "vintage lace" and "smoke", both in Cashmerino Sock.
But the best part of my trip came when I left the Frolic and headed downtown with my friend and fellow designer, Robin. Together, we "did" the Queen St.W. strip, including Romni Wools (referred to by Fiona Ellis as "the Mothership"), a button shop, an amazing ribbon shop, a handmade hat store, and finally, a meal (not sure if it was lunch or dinner!) at the Queen Mother Cafe. Then it was back onto the train for the ride home.
Oh, did I mention that Bill and I have bought a new car---finally? It's a sweet Mazda 3 hatchback, which we took to Ottawa yesterday so that Bill could hear some famous economist from MIT speak at the Chateau Laurier while I contended with the unbelievable construction mess in the city.
Finally, I loved that one of my blog readers introduced herself to me when we got off the bus at the Frolic. She reads, but never comments, she says. Like most of my readers.