Small Crochet Christmas Stockings

↑ Left - slightly larger, following my pattern adaptation, below. Right - tiny, following Sucrette's pattern as originally written. ↑I was so enchanted by the cuteness of the crocheted mini stockings over on the blog "Le Monde de Sucrette", that I just had to try out Sucrette's Free Pattern.These tiny adorable creations use up hardly any yarn at all and are easy to make. So, with my stash of vintage tapestry wool by my side, and Netflix on tv, I just kept right on going, eventually making five of them — three were given as gifts and two were kept for us.As for size of the original pattern, using worsted weight yarn and a 4 1/2 mm hook, they come out being 6 1/4 inches from top to toe and 2 1/4 inches wide. They're just big enough to fit a small gift inside, such as a lipstick, a bottle of nail polish or a dinky car.*** Please keep reading if you want to make something similar but bigger ***

Quebec City Part 4 : Handmade Greeting Cards With Photographs Taken There

c="http://www.loulou.to/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/handmade-christmas-cards-using-prints-of-your-own-photographs.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="480" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-37805 blk-brdr">You might know that our cat Eddie died this summer. He'd been a beloved part of our family for 15 years, and we miss him dearly. The reason I mention him in this post, about creating greeting cards using photographs, is that our boy had been the subject of our Christmas cards for the past six years. He was such a good model.The whole idea to feature him on our cards was his idea actually, after he hopped into the image as I was taking shots for a tutorial for a Christmas wreath I was working on, and just lounged there amoung all the baubles, ribbons and feathers. So a tradition was begun, and around this time each year, he'd pose for his annual Christmas portrait.(If you'd like to see those pictures, the links are here : 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011)Anyway, as Christmas rolled around this year, I wasn't sure if I'd be making our cards given our favourite subject was no longer with us. Then, I took a look at the shots I recently took, one rainy evening during our trip to Quebec City, and decided that, yes, I'd make some again this year.

Quebec City Part 3 : Sunshine and Staircases

c="http://www.loulou.to/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/narrow-streets-with-old-buildings-quebec-city-canada.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="480" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-37770 blk-brdr">Continuing with the story about our trip to Quebec City, on our second full day there, we awoke to brilliant sunshine and relatively warm temperatures. After a delicious breakfast at our hotel, Le Port Royal, we set out to enjoy it.Situated as it is, on the steep embankment of St. Lawrence river, a walk in this city inevitably involves climbing stairs. In fact, there are 30 notable sets of stairs linking Upper Town to Lower Town (as described in this article). And, at the end of this day, we felt as though we'd been on all of them!We were down in what is known as "Lower Town" and our goal was to get to the top of "Upper Town", so we just randomly chose streets that sloped upward, climbing staircases when we came upon them.

Our Trip to Quebec City – Part 2

As mentioned yesterday (in this post), Nick and I went to Quebec City to celebrate our recent wedding anniversary. I told you about the lovely hotel we stayed in, and today I'll show you some pictures of this beautiful city.The historic section of Quebec City is one of the oldest European settlements in North America, and is the only city north of Mexico to have the honour of being included on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites. It was built on the steep banks of the St. Lawrence River, so there are many staircases and inclines to climb. It remains surrounded by a stone wall which dates back to the late 1600s.Although I've just seen it with my own eyes, I still find it hard to believe that street upon street of buildings remain, intact with the original structures built back in the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s. I didn't notice a single modern building within the walls. We did see one construction site, but it involved a refurbishment, rather than a demolition and rebuild.It was overcast on our first day in the city, which added a moody ambiance ...

Our Anniversary Trip to Quebec City – Part 1

↑ The view from our room. ↑Hello! Nick and I just celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary in Quebec City. It was wonderful.Regular readers might remember when my friend Julie and I joined the studio audience for The Marilyn Denis Show (written about in this post). That happened on the 24th of November last year, and much to our surprise, we were there for the first day of their "ten days of giveaways", where each person in the audience is given a whole bunch of great gifts. One of the things we received was a $500 voucher for Via Rail, to be used towards a train trip anywhere in Canada. I saved mine for this anniversary trip to Quebec, with the $500 covering two return tickets with some to spare.While, no doubt, taking the train to Quebec City takes a lot of time (around 8 1/2 hours, with a train switch in Montreal), the time flew by, actually. We were quite comfortable and made full use of their online entertainment service, which involved logging on with our own devices (I had my ipad and Nick used his laptop) and either surfing the internet (except Youtube) or watching a program or movie they were streaming. I ended up seeing two movies that I really liked : "Born to be Blue", in which Ethan Hawke portrayed jazz musician Chet Baker, and "Life" about James Dean and the Life Magazine photographer Dennis Stock, who took what turned out to be some of the last public photographs of the star, shot just before he died. We had our dinner on the train, sharing the "fruit and cheese" and "veggies and dips" plates, which were quite good.So, after a long train ride, we arrived in Quebec City at around 10pm, on Monday evening, the first of our 4 night stay.We caught a cab to our hotel, Hotel Port Royal, which turned out to be only a few minutes from the station. After checking out our suite, ooh-ing and aww-ing at the luxurious beauty of it, we went out for a little walk to stretch our legs after all that sitting, and to get our bearings. It was only a quick jaunt around the block, igniting our excitement to explore by the light of day.