Birthday Tortoise

Well, I've finally managed to finish the tortoise for the sis-in-law! Her birthday is in 4 days though, so I don't see it making it there on time, especially since the post office is closed tomorrow... But I'm HAPPY he's finished, and I must say, it was tough to find the time or motivation to work on him. Here he is!

 

Once again, the pattern is from Roman sock, linked here. She has some really great ideas and patterns and sells some patterns as well. 

Making this buddy was challenging because I originally made him with lighter contrasting yarn, which I then ran out of... So I attempted using a darker contrasting yarn... Until I ran out of that... So I ended up with a slightly monochrome tortoise and a whole bunch of multi-colored shell pieces (maybe the starts of some granny hexagons/squares?) and a bit of frustration. (I really liked making a frame out of pipe cleaners though, the fact that the little buddy is pose-able is super cool!)

Another challenge was finding the time! Between researching and being excited about Kyoto and getting married, I started school again and even had a test in the first week. Talk about being tired! I ended up sleeping over 12 hours last night -- straight! Love love love that Mr. Man understands that sometimes, a girl just has to sleep, and took the dogs out and took care of them during the evening. 

Speaking of the dogs, Koda is getting BIGGER and BIGGER. He's picked up some manners for sure, but is the most stubborn dog I've ever met. He's really smart too, which makes for some really tricky training... I can't wait for him to get his last round of vaccines so we can take him to puppy obedience classes and make a real dog out of him, lol! 

 

Another happy thing, we are investing in a super-camera for our Kyoto trip...!! which means, we'll have a super-camera after the Kyoto trip as well!!! I'm super excited, it's going to be so nice to have some really good quality pictures for once! The camera I have now is a discount Kodak 7 megapixel point and shoot, so needless to say, we are going to be light years ahead with the new Canon! Yaaay!

As for the weather here, it's been warmer in the past few days, but it's back to -20C again. BLAH! At least it makes the trees white with frost and with the high pressure, the sun was out today as well. How I have missed it!

 The last time the weather was like this was a couple of weeks ago, the 4th actually. We took a long walk to my parent's house, forgetting how cold -20C feels when you are in it for more than 10 minutes... We were in PAIN and completely frost covered by the time we made it to their house! We got some good snapshots though from the trip. If you were wondering, no we didn't take the dogs out for such a long walk in that kind of weather, their poor little paws would have frozen, and no, they aren't the types who would agree to wearing booties, hahah =)

Downtown-ish Tampere

The view from on top of the foggy waterfall Tammerkoski smack dab in downtown Tampere

There were ducks swimming in this! I guess out in the middle, where the current is still so rough from the waterfall, it's still warm enough? Or maybe they're just crazy Finnish ducks! =D

Love the texture that millions of snowflakes upon each other creates =)

Well, I think my next project is another one from Roman sock, the sock knitter's acorn pattern. When I read it, I knew this was for my aunt, who as I've mentioned previously is a master at sock knitting. I just have to make it for her! 

I'm going to use one of my Christmas yarns, this one actually: 

Quite acorn-y.

Well, that's it for this time, 

thanks for reading!