Sunday 29 June 2014

Colour Us Rad

These are all of my photos, plus the one photo my sister sent me (the first). I didn't take any during the hike because I was in "walk" mode and not "photography" mode.

If you're curious, I recorded the walk with MapMyWalk and you can see the stats and route here.

ETA: MapMyWalk 3D video of the route:



Mary-Anne, my sister, made our tutus. With glittery fabric. I vacuumed lots of colour and glitter out of my car yesterday.

The before.
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Taken before we started. This is how much powder was blowing off of each of the colour stations, where young people enthusiastically pelt the runners/walkers with coloured gluten-free cornstarch.
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I tucked my eyeglasses safely away and wore mu sunglasses. This is me, happy to not be walking up a fucking ski hill any more, right after I took off my sunglasses.
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With the sunglasses. I had no idea that the blue dot of powder was on my nose and Mary-Anne chose not to tell me. :-)
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My best ballerina pose.
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The parking lot. You could buy extra packets of colour and people were pelting each other pre- and post-race.
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I told the young people at the purple station that purple is Mary-Anne's favourite colour, and they made sure to extra-pelt her.
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I laughed when I started stripping to have a shower. My cleavage was a rainbow and no, I did not take a photo. I was ready to wash off the sweat-encrusted cornstarch!
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According to the race website, the colour will wash out of all clothing. Yeah ... nope. My t-shirt and sports bra still have colour remnants, but that's okay.

Thursday 26 June 2014

Olds Fibre Art merchant mall

This photo was meant to represent what the five of us bought at the Fibre Art Week event in Olds. At least two of them bought more after the photo was taken. :-)

With our new treasures

I brought cash and only used that, to make sure I stuck to my budget. I bought lots of sock-weight yarn, plus a pattern.

New additions to the stash

We found a darling local bookstore that served tea and hot chocolate. If you're ever in Olds, check out Pandora's Boox and Tea.

Tuesday 24 June 2014

A visit to an alpaca farm

Susan told us knitters that a local alpaca farm that sells wool was inviting visitors for tours. Add in the fact that she just bought a new car and we had a road trip yesterday. :-)

It was great to see a part of Alberta that I hadn't been too yet. It would have been nicer if there had been public washrooms along the way. ;-)

A to Z Alpacas has over 300 alpacas and is tucked away beside the Bow River. Our hostess, Leslie, was very gracious and showed us around. Her father, Rod, also helped educate us on alpacas and the history of the farm. We'd been told we might get to see some crias (babies) being born, but it was not our lucky day.

The first pen we visited had females and their crias (not newborns). The alpacas were curious but kept their distance.
alpaca photography

alpaca photography

2014-06-23-alpaca-01

alpaca photography

This is as close as one would get to Susan.
alpaca photography

alpaca photography

alpaca photography

Blue-eyed alpaca!
alpaca photography

We visited the pasture where the mothers and youngest crias are, and watched them from a distance.
alpaca photography

Buddy was very glad to have visitors!
Buddy the dog

Alpacas do not like cars - here they are, fleeing as we drove away.
alpaca photography

Now, we didn't drive over 3 hours just to enjoy the scenery and look at alpacas. We also bought yarn. I got 3 skeins of sock weight yarn, 200 g each. Lovely and soft!
New wool for the stash

Sunday 22 June 2014

Figure Drawing

figure drawing

This post will contain drawings that are not safe for work.

I went to a Meetup last night As I put it on Facebook, "Angelina the Artist is at Figure Drawing tonight." The first time I went to a figure drawing event, I was unintentionally introduced as Angelina. It was decided then that my art name is Angelina. :-)

It was very interesting. A live band (Sealegs) played, and I really enjoyed their music. They have a folksy songwriter style like Grant-Lee Phillips, and most of their lyrics were about the ocean. They were supposed to play for just the first hour but stayed longer and kept the atmosphere calm and rejuvenating.

There were three models who rotated around the couches and platform. We started with 2 minute poses, then 5 minute, then 30 minute. There was a break in between. It was great to be able to look at other people's artwork and meet other artists. I was also very happy to see Zhen, who used to work with me.

Friday 20 June 2014

Games night

I went to a new Meetup tonight - the group is for board games, and the specific Meetup was women only.

Of the nine women there, three were named Angela and one was Angelica. :-) We Angelas all had ginger hair and wore glasses, to boot. Angelica is Hispanic and looked nothing like us.

It was a lot of fun. We played Quirkle, Forbidden Island, and Love Letter. I've already RSVPed "yes" for the next all-women Meetups, and one of the other ones as well.

One of the Angelas is someone I met at Drunken Knitwits. I drove her to the nearest train station so that she didn't have to walk or wait a while for a bus, later in the evening. She told me about a Geek Girlz Meetup group that I've since joined. And I've also joined a group on Ravelry that knits baby blankets for the local NICU because another woman tonight is part of it.

Fun and networking - a good evening.

Tuesday 17 June 2014

Calgary Zoo, June 14, 2014.

King Lion

Monday 16 June 2014

Selfie catch up

Clearly I was so over the selfie project in the last 8 days. I missed two days after 156 straight days. Blame it on overcast weather, being broody about Father's Day, ruminations on selfies after realizing how easily a fake profile can be created for online scams ... this is a mixed bag, of times when I put effort into it and times I did not.

Day 157 - dressed up for a Victorian murder mystery party. I had ringlets!
Day 157

Saturday 14 June 2014

Red panda

I went to another "Focused at the Zoo" event this morning.

This shot alone was totally worth the price of admission.
Red panda
ƒ/6.3 ~ 1/250 sec ~ ISO 4000

Friday 13 June 2014

Chloe Kitty

Chloe Kitty

Mish-mash

I recently gave Gluten-Free Singles online dating a try and didn't like it. The messages were all the copy and paste generic kind, and some were kinda creepy. There was one guy who had two photos that didn't quite look like each other. I did a Reverse Google Image Search on one of them and sussed out that he wasn't who he was saying he was.

The only person whose messages showed that he had read my profile was "Martin from Texas". Yes, the quotation marks are foreshadowing. His emails were nice, but were a little too full of "I would treat a woman so right, I would do everything..." and not enough meat.

A little too full of promises ... My inner voice said there was no connection. I wondered what the etiquette is. Do I just stop replying? (I stopped replying).

Then yesterday I read something about this Catfish TV show which I haven't watched ... I did a Reverse Google Image Search on his profile picture. Did you know that there are forums where people flag repeated romance scammers? And yes, his profile picture has been flagged.

So I deleted my profile. :-P

oOoOo

Way back in the days of Geocities, I built a fansite of the actress and dancer Vera-Ellen. Which I can no longer edit, apparently not without paying for Yahoo! web hosting.

So yesterday I started doing what I've meant to do for a while - build a whole new site. I registered a domain and started building using a template from Weebly which I'm going to replace. www.vera-ellen.com is under construction.

It's the first time I've worked on a website in weeks and I missed HTML and CSS so much!. I've been in a bit of a funk this week, and doing web work snapped me out of it.

White Christmas

Thursday 12 June 2014

153. MAYA ANGELOU: Phenomenal Woman

153. MAYA ANGELOU: Phenomenal Woman

Zen Pencils is an amazing site and I strongly encourage you to check out this tribute to Maya Angelou.

Seven Sisters at Moraine Lake

I went to Moraine Lake and back. That is a long drive for one person. I did invite two ladies from knitting but both had to back out due to other commitments. Next time we'll do it together!

It was beautiful and I'll be posting lots of photos. This one is of the "Seven Sisters", seven peaks around the lake.

Seven Sisters at Moraine Lake
ƒ/13.0 ~ 18.0 mm ~ 1/160 ~ ISO 100 ~ Landscape mode

Wednesday 11 June 2014

Hello blog

Last week was so busy that I've been doing a lot of relaxing and chilling. And binge-watching Season 2 of Orange is the New Black OMGWTF.

Today's big accomplishment was to wash my curtains to get the cat hair off. I also hemmed two sets. So now. after moving in on February 2012, all of my curtains are hemmed.

Yesterday I watched a YouTube video on Lightroom workflow and using the Develop module and it ws amazing. I developed a couple of photos while watching and I basically want to go back and redevelop so many photos.

Here is a photo I took on Sunday:
Sleepy Charlie
ƒ/6.3 ~ 134.0 mm ~ 1/250 exposure ~ ISO 4000

And here is a photo I took on April 21 and revisited with my new skills.
Northern Lights
ƒ/3.5 ~ 18.0 mm ~ 15 sec exposure ~ ISO 3200

ETA: the video that I found to be very helpful:

Sunday 8 June 2014

Northern Lights June 8 2014

A solar event in the last few days triggered the Northern Lights last night. A friend went out with me, because she hadn't seen them in years. Then she let me crash on her couch when I felt too tired to drive home. A good night!

Click on the photos to get a larger version that you can use on your desktop.
Northern Lights aurora Alberta Canada

Friday 6 June 2014

Selfie catch up!

Day 151 - road trip! Taken while parked at a rest stop outside of Bowden.
Day 151

Thursday 5 June 2014

Sky over Horseshoe Canyon

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Moncton, New Brunswick tonight.

Yesterday, on a whim, I went to Horseshoe Canyon. I even hiked in it a bit. It was a beautiful day.

Sky Over Horseshoe Canyon

Wednesday 4 June 2014

Lightning

I remember a sleepover that was interrupted by a thunderstorm - my friends' mother was terrified of them, and made us huddle with her by the bed. As an adult, I go outside with an umbrella, a tripod, and my camera, to get shots like this:

Lightning!

Tuesday 3 June 2014

Figure drawing

figure drawing
My word of the year is "create" and my inner voice says that I need to draw more. So, last night, I went to a figure drawing event.

The model was nude so there is nudity behind the cut, though not explicit. Hopefully this won't all show in RSS readers.