Back from the Nation's Capital

Just a quick post to say I am back from the conference in Ottawa, but have very little to show in the past week. I did cast on for Ene's Scarf from Scarf Style - all 375 stitches! It was to be my traveling knitting for the plane, but I ended up working on the way to Ottawa, and watched the last Harry Potter movie on the way back. The plane was full on both trips as well, so I didn't want to jab somebody with a knitting needle or, more likely, my elbows as I wrestled with the yarn. I am using some lovely Fiddlesticks Knitting Country Silk yarn in the Earth colourway, which I purchased at Handknitting.com a while back. I love the colours in this yarn and the silk gives it a rustic feel and look. I will post a picture when I have actually made some progress.

Other than that, I knit a few rows on Orangina during a bit of the spare time I had at the conference, but didn't have time for much else but catching up on emails and decompressing with a little television. The conference was informative, my presentation went well, and I ate too much as most of the food was provided for the week. We had some fantastic entertainment as well with the headliner being Buffy Sainte-Marie who is a really prolific and talented song writer and musician. We were also entertained with Sierra Noble - wow! At 16, this young woman is professional, eloquent, and very talented. Her live performance was wonderful and she elaborated on how she discovered her passion for the music of her people, the Metis people of Canada, and how the songs she played were taught to her by the elder fiddle players. The music is just a part of Metis fiddle playing, with the story behind the song filling in the context and making each performance very rich and heartfelt. There is really no comparison with live music!

I have company and a bit of catching up to do at school so I hope to be back in a couple of days.