nature &whatnot || Remembering Fishers Glen

Every summer, I go to Oakville (near Toronto) to visit friends, including my bestie, Jennie. Last year, we spent a weekend at a friend's cottage in Fishers Glen, a little village on Lake Erie. Wiki officially refers to it as a "fishing community" on the page for the county in which it resides, so you know it must be pretty small, hahah.

It was absolutely gorgeous there, and I'm crossing my fingers that we spend some time there when I visit next month! Since I've been looking through the photos from the trip a lot lately, I thought I'd share them here. Some of these are on my Instagram already, but they're a year old so it's okay, right? ;) This was before I bought my camera, so some of these are cellphone pics, and some were taken by friends with phones/cameras. I'll try to keep up with the credits! The view from the cottage backyard. Are you not instantly jealous? There were tons of ladybugs on the beach! Since then, I've read articles that say large amounts of ladybugs washing up on beaches is somewhat common. Orange ladybug. Dead cicada. Not really sure why I didn't turn it over for a better look. Not the cottage we stayed in, I just liked the framing of this shot. The sand was purple in a few spots! I wonder why... Dead fish that I definitely almost stepped on before I noticed it, hahah (note the footprints lol).
I did a bit of beachcombing, mainly looking for beach glass. At one point, a dog ran up and wanted to play, hahah. The dog's owner was a few hundred feet downshore (upshore?). Photo by Andy. Photo by Andy. Honestly not sure what I was so happily perplexed about here lol.
Photo by Andy. Lookin' at rocks, no bigs.
Photo by Andy. Ian helped me look for beachglass- I think he found more than I did!
Photo by Heather. We found a fair amount! I didn't relish the idea of transporting it all in my carry-on, though, so I left a lot of it in a decorative glass at the cottage. L-R: Dan, Heather, Victoria, Andy, me. Accidentally overextended my elbow; I try not to do that in photos because it looks weird, hahah. We were all "Ian, climb the rock with us!" and he was all "Nah, that's cool."
Photo by Jennie. Me, Andy, Jennie.
Photo by Heather. Thought the effect was kinda neat ^^ That's a pretty tall cliff we're standing at the top of.
Photo by Andy. We played Sopio, which was new to me, and super fun! Wish I had some orange Aero bubbles right about now... Me and Ian chilling on the porch with everyone else.
Photo by Heather. This little guy was spotted on the porch several different times.
We went into Port Dover for a bit, which was a bigger beach town nearby. Digging through records with Heather.
Not sure who took this, but I found it on Heather's Facebook page. Jennie and me. The beach was nice, if crowded.
Photo by Andy. Victoria, Heather, me.
Photo by Andy. Me and Andy.
Not sure who took this, but it was with Andy's camera. Here I am, discretely making out with a jawbreaker the size of my fist.
Photo by Andy. And here I am, reading smut on my Kindle! What an attractive face ;)
Photo by Andy.
We stopped in a shop because I wanted to buy a hat (I had found the pink one at the cottage and borrowed it). There were a number of sun hats, but I was informed that a certain one suited me best, and I was inclined to agree as it reminded me a bit of a cowboy hat, hahah. Heather, Dan, me, Ian, Jennie (that's Victoria hiding behind Jennie).
Photo by Andy.
Fishers Glen was awesome, but I always have an amazing time on my trips up north. Jennie and I also ended up going to the zoo with a few other friends. Me, Karlee, Jennie, and Kiyara in the front.
Photo by Kiyara.
Seriously, look at these girls! I'm glad I'm finally at a point in my life where I'm comfortable with my own face/body, but damn if these three don't outshine the hell out of me in every picture, hahah.

I'll leave you with a (blurry) picture of me making another weird face, this time because we saw a moose. Photo by Karlee.
Aaaand some pictures Jen took recently of her newly-adopted Cornish Rex, Granola (Nola for short), who I am so excited to meet! Photos by Jennie.
I hope y'all have summer adventures you're looking forward to, too!
❤︎

urbex || the meat-packing plant

The photographer Niesho and I met at the abandoned incinerator suggested we check out a meat-packing plant nearby. It was even cooler than the incinerator! We "packed" a lunch (from Whataburger) and off we went!

The ceiling was caving in in a lot of areas. Just like in the incinerator, there was tons of graffiti, ranging from beautiful and thought-provoking to crude and vulgar. Yes, that's definitely Arthur Read in gold. Dicks. Dicks everywhere. Niesho and I agreed this was probably meant to convey a dick going into a butt. "Just Another Dumb Name You Won't Remember..." "Lowlah! Help me! Im going Nuts"
This building has been abandoned for over fifty years, so nature had had plenty of time to creep back in. Turns out the cave-ins were likely due to all the trees growing on the roof! That's Fort Worth in the background, I believe. A guard tower at a meat packing plant?
There were several other buildings, but we decided they could wait. I'm sure we'll be visiting this place again sometime, it was too gorgeous not to! When I saw this star on the ground in front of an elevator, it seemed familiar. Maybe I'm imagining the similarity, but to me, it looked a lot like the plaque outside the Fort Worth Stockyards! There was a hole in an exterior wall near an elevator that really caught my eye. I love the way someone took the time to paint individual bricks different colours. This feels like a secret passageway to Wonderland or Narnia or something ❤︎ All in all, it was a pretty exciting adventure! We ran across a guy and a gal that were staging an amateur photoshoot- smart idea, the building definitely makes for an interesting backdrop!

Niesho and I got a chance to catch up, too, which is nice. We've been best friends since I spotted her in her goth garb across the gym in grade 9 (I desperately wanted to be a goth in high school so I was instantly enamored of her hahah), but we don't see each other as much these days. That crazy person is somehow balancing two jobs, school, and a six-year-old, which (obviously) doesn't leave a huge amount of free time, plus we live 45min apart (90min when the traffic's bad, which it often is). We found a nice spot by an exterior door on the second or third floor and just sat and ate and talked. I took hundreds of pics, and while I managed to pare that down to 79, that's still way too many for one post! So, you can see the rest of the photos in my Flickr album.

I'll end with my favourite photo. Happy adventuring!
❤︎

crafty things || Breaking out of slumps with YARN

I have been in a mad slump the past few weeks, in more than one way. I just got into that state where I don't want to do anything except melt into the couch and watch Netflix until my parents' the subscription runs out.

But that's bullshit!! I picked one of my too-many hobbies (crafting, in this case) and decided to crochet a granny square for every blog I subscribe to... (more on that further down).

So here's the first one, for Elycia of ❤︎elycia! Forgot to take a pic after I did the eyes/beak/feet, derp. Rest assured, that is an owl! (Pattern from here) I chose the colours based on her profile pic (I absolutely love her hair in this pic!) Of course, as soon as I started that project, unrelated inspiration struck and I ended up making a handful of shotglass bowl cozies. I'll be lucky to make a half-dozen sales in the next year, but I went ahead and opened an Etsy shop, because why not? I'll be entering items after work today.

My desk chair is a beautiful cream-coloured wooden beast, and as such the seat is not too comfy. My butt is some strange, unattractive combination of lumpy and bony that manages to both A) not be very impressive and B) provide ZERO cushioning! So I started on a seat cushion from a pattern from Pierrot Yarns, a Japanese company with some pretty cute designs. I started with an F hook (3.75mm), but I eventually realized that my butt is way too big for how small a cushion that would produce... so I had to frog about 300 stitches! I'm sure other knitters/crocheters know my pain. But hey, that's life! The green arrows point out where four rounds with an F hook got me. The peach arrows show four rounds with an H hook, the size I settled on. Fortunately this pattern works up pretty quick, so even though I unravelled all four rounds of the creme piece, it's already up to round 10! Bonus shot of Phoebe, who loves yarn almost as much as I do... much to my dismay (definitely had to pull about three feet of yarn out of her inch by inch once, and don't even get me started on the Yarnpoop Incident...).

So I only made one granny square before I gave up on the whole shebang. But listen, I have reasons! D: The entire idea was to get me back into crafting... which it obviously did! And besides, pretty sure ❤︎elycia is the only crochet blogger I follow (most of them are nail polish blogs, hahah), soooo.... yeah. I'm sure I'll start up a big granny square project eventually, I just have plenty of other things to occupy my time for now.

Have I mentioned I love yarn?? Sometimes I forget but then I open up my craft cabinet and remember, because duh, yarn fucking rules.

Happy crafting!
❤︎