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I know a lot of people considered 2016 to be pretty crappy… but to be honest it was one of the best years of my life, for sure. I’ve picked 12 pictures here but that doesn’t even come close to including all the awesome things that we got to do. I feel very lucky and grateful, and will reflect on my year fondly.

The IBSF World Cup coming to Whistler and getting to meet my skeleton hero, Martins Dukurs.

Finally finishing my crochet blanket. That’s an ipad by the way… the blanket is enormous. I also did A LOT of crossstitch.

Not coming in last in my final skeleton race of my career. I actually ended up finishing 4th out of 8, behind three very talented national team girls.

Being my own personal island in a cenote in Mexico. Renting that big house with 11 great friends was SO. MUCH. FUN.

Experiencing Antelope Canyon, my top road trip bucket list place. It was just as cool as I hoped.

Exploring Yellowstone National Park on opening day. Scott’s roadtrip bucket list place. Seeing Old Faithful erupt 5 minutes after we got there without being able to check the schedule.

Spending a ridiculous amount of time and money to go to the Jorna Indian restaurant in Ipswich. TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Walking half way across Spain to get our ticket into heaven. Destroyed my feet but it was definitely a cool experience.

OK well this isn’t really a highlight for Scott, but it’s still one of my favourite pictures of the year. Eating all the cheese possible in France.

Turning 30 in Thailand.

Being brave and making new friends in Melbourne.

Lots and lots of family time. This picture is from Christmas Day.

2016 Video Every Day project coming V V SOON!

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Since I am funemployed I have quite a bit of time to do crafts. (Which is amazing, by the way!)

I crossstitched a sprite on to one of Scott’s hoodies using waste canvas.

The trickiest bit is pinning the waste canvas in the right spot, with interfacing on the back, and then setting it in a frame without everything getting all out of place. But once it’s all set up you just cross stitch like normal, although you have to use a pointy needle and it’s way harder on your fingers to get it through all the layers.

Finished. They are apparently characters from Final Fantasy VI. Iunno, he picked them. :P

Then you get to do the best part, pulling the white strings out. I dunked the whole thing in water to soften the fibres, and then pulled out each strand out the side with tweezers. It takes a little while, but it’s satisfying.

All done.

What the back looks like. I also cut out another rectangle of ironable interfacing and ironed it on top, in an attempt to seal up all the loose ends. I don’t know how well that will hold up, but so far it’s working.

I used DMC threads, so we can launder it like normal, the only thing is that I told Scott to make sure the zipper is done up when he puts it in the washing machine so less chance of something like a tooth catching and pulling something out. It feels pretty secure in general though.

Pretty happy with how it turned out. Now I want to monogram everything!

I got this metal tuk tuk kit in Thailand. All the pieces came in two small flat sheets. You just punch the pieces out and follow the instructions, bending pieces and twisting tiny tabs with needlenose pliers that lock everything into place. It took me a good few hours to finish and I stabbed my fingertips many many times. I definitely made some mistakes, as the instructions weren’t super great, but I think it turned out pretty neat. It’s about 7 cm tall, by the way. I would totally like to try another kit!

I finished my koala in a funny shirt crossstitch… I will post a picture soon. Next project, a matching sea otter in a woolly sweater.

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And here are some of my paper-based projects lately.

I started a new recipe book, reserved for my all-time favourite recipes. Things we cook all the time. I’m not that good at lettering yet, mostly I just find cool fonts online and then copy them. These are a few of my favourite pages. I’m hoping this book is something that we will keep for a long long time.

Adult colouring. Broke out my set of Prismacolors that my mom bought for me in high school. They’re still good! This colouring page was photocopied out of the book* I gave Rosemarie for Christmas. It is insanely intricate so you’d better have a pencil sharpener handy! I found it very relaxing.

*Not an affiliate link. I don’t know how to do that.

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OK wow, I knew I had been procrastinating doing another Crafty WIP post, but I didn’t realize I’d left it TWO YEARS! Holy moly. I have a lot to show off, so I’ll have to do two posts! Here are some crossstitches I finished over the last couple years.

Papa and me in Fiji. My first photo pattern. I used My Photo Stitch to make a pattern out of a picture. I was so skeptical it was going to look ok because it was asking for like green and purple to stitch our faces, but it does!

The back was a little crazy.

The cloth is filthy and warped so not quite sure how I should display it yet.

Quick little Nintendo controller. I added the letters and the arrows to the pattern myself.

My spirit animal/life motto? Not sure what to do with this one as I didn’t leave enough extra room at the top. I might cut it out if I can figure out how to keep the cloth from unravelling, and then sew it onto something like a patch?

This one was fun to stitch. So cute. I do <3 Canada.

This was a huge project from last year. It’s a Frosted Pumpkin pattern, but I switched all the months around to fit the Southern Hemisphere (particularly Melbourne) because at that point I knew we were moving. I actually purposely didn’t show it to people in case they figured it out before I’d told work. Perhaps I was a little paranoid, haha.

Now I just have to get around to ironing and framing all of them!

My next crossstitch projects are either going to be a 22 page black and white Escher pattern that will probably take 80 years to finish, and/or experimenting with crossstitching on clothing using waste canvas.

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June 4th – June 8th, 2016

After Elche we caught the bus to Valencia for one night. We did a nice DIY walking tour based on the recommendations from our hostel. We tried Valencian horchata, which is made from ground tigernuts. There was lots of cool street art. Scott tried Agua de Valencia (OJ, champagne, vodka and gin) and I had a mediocre mojito. Then we went to bed before the pub crawl group had even left because we are old and boring. :P

I love Barcelona. We crammed as much as possible into 3 days, but it totally wasn’t long enough. I think it would be very easy to spend 2 weeks there and not run out of stuff to do.

Day 1: Park Guell. I had been there before but I don’t think we climbed to the very back of the park last time. Spectacular views. The park is awesome as well, but it was filled with hordes of people. We still got some nice pictures though.

Day 2: Port Aventura. I love going to amusement parks in new countries. This one only had a few roller coasters, but the few that they had were good ones.

  • Khan: 8 loops. A bit violent on the ears. Standard. B+
  • Shambala: Giant up & down speed coaster. Fun! Painful in the rain (like needles to the face!). A-
  • Furious Baco: Super short, but SUPER INTENSE ACCELERATION & SPEED! It was especially fun the first time we rode it when we had no idea what to expect. My eyes watered and Scott drooled, hahaha. A+

Also amusing: Spanish bumper car culture is very different than Canadian. Everyone was just driving around avoiding the other people!! I felt super overly aggressive because most people were not trying to bump into each other. I may have traumatized some children.

We went out for a really nice dinner at La Vietnamita that evening back in Barcelona. We had banh mi, sticky shrimp rolls, and the most delicious ceviche ever: white fish, lime, cilantro, cabbage, tomato and PASSION FRUIT.

 

Day 3: Mega tourist day. We walked around for the whole day. We went to the Sagrada Familia, other Gaudi buildings, Las Ramblas, 2 markets, the cathedral, the city beach, the Picasso Museum, and much more that I am forgetting. We also went to a few of the remaining bars that still give out free tapas with drinks.

The Picasso Museum was great. We especially liked the temporary exhibition of 156 engravings. They were… interesting. Lots of boobs and buttholes, and most of them had a creepy Degas looking in from the corner/window. Very strange. Scott and I liked trying to guess what the titles of the pieces would be, since they were quite literal once you figured out what was happening in the picture. Ex. “Prostitute Eating Grapes”, or “Prostitute With Parrot with Degas as a Voyeur”. Ha.