A couple of pictures of the Prawn boat

I was able to take a couple of pictures of the "Prawn Boat".




As you can see it is a very sophisticated system!!



At least I didn't go overboard!!! Oh yes -- there is a story to that. I came home to his last helper walking around the house in my white fluffy dressing gown -- he went overboard!! Jim ended up rowing the boat - with a foot of water - back to shore with the helper hanging on to the stern --- LOL. Always an adventure :)))

Adventures in Prawning

We have a little rowboat - a small flat bottomed - very hard to row - rowboat - and some prawn traps.

This past winter Jim - and a very strong young man - Zack -  have been setting out from our house - using the little rowboat - which is down at the beach - and setting out the prawn traps.  A couple times a week we get a nice little load of prawns.

Yesterday he didn't have anyone to help so I volunteered to be Zack -- I have been going to the gym - I figure I am much stronger than I was a couple of months ago.  Oh boy - it was HARD work.  The tide was very low and we  had to pull the flat bottomed HEAVY rowboat off the TOP rack of the boat rack.  Carry it MILES!! to the water over slippery rocks.  And then row!  I am not a very good rower - one arm is stronger than the other and I tend to go in circles - and being left handed I sometimes get my left and right confused and then I circle even more - so Jim did most of the rowing.   But I did a LOT of pulling.  We collected 6 traps - two traps per line -- the lines are like 10 thousand feet of wet rope!!  By the end of the almost 3 hours it took  --- we collected about 8 1/2 pounds of prawns -- and we didn't have to share them with Zack and I required a big dose of Advil. 

Here is what the bucket of live prawns looks like -- these are B.C Spot Prawns.




A bowl of prawn tails -- ready for freezing or cooking.  If we cook them fresh Jim likes to leave some of the heads on the prawns so he can suck the heads --ewwwwww...



I have very little to do with the prawns.  Jim prepares them and then he is the one that makes all seafood dishes in our house. 



He made this Prawn and Salmon Red Thai Curry last weekend -- it was fabulous.  And I make really - really good rice!  So for this I am happy to help out pulling the prawn traps on occasion -- but boy -- my shoulders are still stiff this morning. 

On the quilting front I have been working on the Fat Quarter Shop Civil War BOM.  These are the first two blocks.  I have started cutting out the blocks from Month Two.



Happy National Quilting Day.  I am hoping to do some quilting today - although it is a beautiful sunny day here today and it really is such a shame to be inside.  Maybe I can sit on the deck and hand stitch some Dear Jane blocks......hmmmm.........maybe I need a glass of wine......Happy stitching :)))

A bit of quilting

I have been doing a bit of quilting during the past few weeks while watching the Olympics on TV.  Unfortunately I have put my Dear Jane to the side for the last little while -- I really MUST get back to it!!

I have been working on a wool BOM from my LQS --Creative Edge in North Vancouver.  The blocks are from this book.



The wool fabric of the BOM and it is hand dyed from a local person right here in my area  -- Wool Penny Rugs     I have been collecting wool and patterns for a while now and I am finally working on one and quite enjoying the ease of the wool applique.  Ah - well -- what is one more project on the go!

Block One



Block Two  -- there are 16 blocks altogether.




The blocks are sitting on the lovely silk pillows that Anri brought me back from Thailand!

The other project that I have up on my design wall right now is the Fairy quilt for little Phoenix.  I was thinking of putting it together sort of like this - with the blocks around the centre piece on just the three sides.  There are some small flower squares as well that I want to put around as well. 



I bought some more fabric in Portland to go with this quilt and then some of the prettiest fairy fabric for the backing.  I am planning on making a bigger sized quilt -- more bed sized than crib sized - which will be good since she will probably be out of the crib by the time she gets it!!  But Jessica has a some beautiful baby quilts that she is using now so I think this one can wait until she is a bit older.  Although I had better get working on it - knowing me it could end up being a graduation present!

We just finished watching about 1/3 of the movie "Get Smart"  Boy was that a terrible and stupid movie - and it didn't resemble the original TV show in any way what so ever.  I really loved that old TV series with Don Addams.  Well - at least we didn't waste too much time watching it - and it was on the PVR - I just pressed "delete".......

I have had quite the bad cold the past week - but I am starting to feel better finally this weekend... those Olympics just wore me out!!  Finally got back to the gym today after a week of coughing too hard to ride an exercise bike.  Hopefully I don't pay for it tonight....

Now back to real life

It was hard to decide what to say in this post, so it has taken a few days.  I have so many pictures I didn't know which pictures to use.... so many memories.  It certainly has been something we will never see the likes of around here again. 

We have been living under the "what will  happen when the Olympics are here" umbrella for as long as we have been living in our house.  The new highway has been under construction for most of the 8 years we have been here.  We have been "talking" about the Olympics for all these years.... an now they are over.  It is so hard to believe. 
And I enjoyed them much more than I thought I would.  We went downtown on 3 separate occasions and mingled in the crowds.   We did not wait in long lines for much.  We did not have a Japadog.  There are many things we can do when the crowds are gone.  We got downtown on one of the last nights to take some pictures of the city and the flame at night.



The Cauldron was beautiful at night.

The streets were full of people celebrating.  It was a much younger crowd at night.



Bands playing and people dancing in the streets!


We watched many MANY hours of TV.  There was 4 channels completely devoted to live coverage of all the events.  CTV did a great job covering the Olympics.  It was hard at times trying to juggle between so many live events.  It got pretty stressful at times trying to watch two or three events simultaneously!



To watch Alex Bilodeau win that first gold medal.

We went to Whistler a couple of times.  It was fun and easy to get there.







It was so much fun to meet all the visitors.  This is a group from Austria.  The young man on the far left is a huge Vancouver Canucks fan.  This is his first time to Canada and he listens to all the Canucks hockey games on the internet - he has only missed two games so far!!  He is a big fan of Roberto Luongo and was going to get himself a Luongo Canucks jersey.  They were cheering for Canada in the hockey game.

What a hockey game!!  I guess we couldn't have asked for a better ending. 

One thing to clear up..... being that Roberto Luongo was playing on his home ice the local people were all doing the Looooooouuuuuuuu yell that they do so often.  There was a newspaper article that stated that the Canadian fans were nice even when they were booing -- LOL!!  That is because they were all Loooouuuuuuuu ing  --- not booing. 

I hope everyone that came to our city had a wonderful time and took away nothing but wonderful memories and maybe a pair of mittens!  We really enjoyed having you here!!  Thanks for the memories!