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.


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.


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.


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. :-)


My best ballerina pose.


The parking lot. You could buy extra packets of colour and people were pelting each other pre- and post-race.


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.


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!


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.

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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. :-)



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.



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.

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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.








This is as close as one would get to Susan.






Blue-eyed alpaca!


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


Buddy was very glad to have visitors!


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


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!

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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.

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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.

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Calgary Zoo, June 14, 2014.

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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!

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Red panda

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

This shot alone was totally worth the price of admission.

ƒ/6.3 ~ 1/250 sec ~ ISO 4000

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