Holiday « kirsti made this with her hands

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Holiday

May 20, 2008 by kirstimadethiswithherhands

Mike and I went on a little ‘holiday’ to celebrate the end of his classes and the end of my job.

It started with the obligatory self-photo shot in the car.

We first made a very important pit-stop.

Did you know it’s ‘illegal’ to take photos inside of a SK liquor board store? How silly is that rule.

We then mosey-ed on up the road to Rouleau. You might know it better as

Dog River: home of everyone’s favourite gas station

It totally doesn’t look like a set. I was really surprised to find out that the gas station and Ruby’s Diner were actually built for the show. They totally look like they are re-constituted local landmarks.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about check this out.

From Rouleau, we went on to Moose Jaw where we spent a night at the Temple Garden’s Spa hanging out in the pool with ALOT of seniors and prentending we were more fabulous than we are.

The best part was the hotel room

with the king sized bed. We figured out that the room with the bathroom and entrance actually had a larger square footage than our entire house.

The view from our balcony was lovely too…

Part of our ‘package’ was tours of the tunnels.

THIS WAS SO COOL. Like many towns/cities in the prairies, Moose Jaw was riddled with underground tunnels that led all over the city. They were originally built usually to move supplies to hotels, restaurants and stores from the CP stations. Over the years they got forgotten about, boarded up and generally most people assumed that they didn’t exist. One day, about 15 years ago, a car fell into the road on man street and ta-da! the tunnels were rediscovered. They have created tours around them, cataloguing some local and national history in a very fun way. THe Chicago Connection was really fun and it talks about the possible connection with Moose Jaw and Al Capone’s Rum-runners in the 20’s. The Passage to Fortune is really sad and terrible. It covers how 100’s of thousands of Chinese men (mostly) came to Canada from the 1880s to the 1940s seeking fortune and were treated HORRIBLY by local and national governments, business people and locals.

If you have any interest in Canadian History, I highly suggest making a visit.

Moosejaw is a lovely city. They have preserved all the old buildings downtown, gutting them and creating a really neat area with old architecture and new shops and cafes. For a while, Moose Jaw, Saskatoon and Regina were all vying for the capital of the Province. Moose Jaw is a really wonderful place.

We enjoyed it very much.

We had snacks at Coffee Encounters on Main St.

We wandered around 3 quilting/knitting shops.

We bought really good fudge (and that’s saying alot because I really HATE fudge).

We had lunch at

Which according to Craig, Mike’s roomate in Regina, is the best Celtic pub west of Newfoundland.

(he might have a slight bias, being that he is from NFLD).

We ran into some of Mike’s friends from Regina, also out to the Spa for the day.

Nothing says holiday like being mostly drunk by 2pm in the afternoon.

We ate lemon squares that were ALMOST as good as those from the Rhineland Bakery in Victoria.

We wandered around some more and met a very interesting man.

This is Chris Weber of CWStringworks. He repairs stringed instruments. In the above photo he is standing with his 9th mandolin that he rebuilt. It was beautiful and so was the music that he shared with us. He is also part of a fun celtic band called Crofter’s Revenge. If you ever need any stringed instrument repair, he is your guy.

The holiday wasn’t just about eating and wandering, it was of course all about knitting!

I finished a gift for a former colleague and her new baby

These are Saartje’s booties (pdf) and they are so cute they make me want to have babies, just so I can put them in them.

I also made her the tulip bib from One Skein by Leigh Radford and gave her a bottle of Nutrimetics Baby wash.

This is almost the end of the Cotton Ease, and thank G-d. I will be so happy to have it out of my stash for good.

I finally got started on my first Rocking Socks Club package of 2008. And I’m so in love. The best part about this whole thing is that they send me colours that I normally would never choose and it forces me to knit outside my comfort zone. Yay!