The (Most Likely) Final Word (At Length) on PEI 2011

Well, it's about time to wrap this up, isn't it? Home for more than a week, looking ahead to Apple Festival and Rhinebeck, it's time to put the period on this tale.

We left PEI Saturday morning, made a sadly unsuccessful stop in New Brunswick for sticky buns (would you believe the shop was closed again*? neither did the dozen cars that pulled up while we were there, looking at the map), and drove on without problems. By mid-afternoon, we were waiting to cross the border.

*On the drive up, it was for being Sunday; this time, it was apparently for the holiday weekend. Humph! See if I come back before 2013!


Which is at St. Stephen, which if you didn't know has Bruins ties. Of course.

We spent the night in Maine, had a shorter drive Sunday (surprised to notice a few leaves changing, already, and more than had been just a week earlier), and finally returned to this guy:

He consoled me for the end of the trip.

Further consolation is to be found in the t-shirt I bought at Cows, which if you're not a hockey fan, or Canadian, can be somewhat explained here. (Or watch something like this, or anything on YouTube under Coach's Corner.)


And the quasi-NHL logo on the back:

I also, naturally, bought plenty of non-American chocolate:

(The Crunchies are my favorite, if you want the report, though I also like the Coffee Crisp quite a lot. The Malteasers are fine, the Caramilk are fine, just nothing to go out of my way for. The chocolate caramels were delicious, almost more a brown sugar than caramel flavor but that doesn't bother me.)

Oh, and what else did I buy? Hmmm. I know--yarn!

Make that: YARN.


I had so much fun. And I brought it to stitch and bitch last night to share the yum. Also, I kind of want to bring a skein to work, to squeeze when I get stressed. I haven't yet decided if I want to look quite that crazy at a relatively new job, though.

Anyway, details!

This is the yarn I bought on Monday, from Stanley Pottery's yarn sideline. It's blue-faced Leicester!


It feels wonderful in the hand. No idea what it wants to be when it grows up.

Also on Monday, at a rather small, very full store called North Shore Island Traditions, which I'd read about in the tour book, I bought some Fleece Artist (which is at least Canadian, though from Nova Scotia rather than PEI). See the socks-to-be!


Tuesday was the day we went to Belfast Mini Mills, where I got two skeins each of these two; blue, don't know what it will be:


And red, socks-to-be:

Then on Friday, we stopped at a chance-met alpaca and quilt shop in Brudnell, where I got this lovely alpaca (two skeins, socks again):


And this, which I think of as a mystery skein.


It's not the most professional label, but it's soft, it's lovely, and it will tell me what it wants to be, some day.


That's most all of what I bought. I'll have to take pictures of the last few things to show you (sweatshirt, shell ball, preserves, soaps) another time. For now, we're up to date, and the furball is trying to herd me to bed, so I'll leave it at that.

Feline Placeholder

It's already getting late in the evening, what with stitch and bitch tonight and then cat food shopping (I arrived at PetSmart last night juuust a few minutes after they closed; curses). So instead of the post I promised, here's a placeholder, detailing two items I saw today.

Item the first: glow in the dark cats. No, really.

Check out the picture Boing Boing ran with the story!


Now I was thinking that medical discoveries aside (and I wish them all the best with that), this is a bad, bad idea for pet cats. I was thinking that and then I saw this.

Item the second:

Yes, exactly. That.

The Cup, and (last) Friday in PEI

This morning I had an e-mail from a friend, forwarding a message she received that the Stanley Cup would be in a nearby town today. What?

And that is how I was about 15 feet from history today.


The gentleman you see is Harry Sinden, who has been involved with the team for years. Here he is, for instance, with Bobby Orr and the Stanley Cup, some 40 years ago.


It was fun to see the Cup again, and so many people excited about it. Pretty funny too that the Bruins rookies were starting training camp on the same day. This is the first summer I haven't had hockey withdrawal before camp started. Weird.

Now, I have one last day of PEI to show you: last Friday, when we went to see some of the eastern end of the Island.

It's beautiful there, too. Who'd have thought?

Our first destination was Souris, to tour the historic lighthouse there.

You can climb to the top, if you don't mind small, steep spaces.

I do, a little, but it was worth it. I ducked through this door:

And I do mean ducked.

And had quite the view down.

And out.

The water was fairly calm, but we did spot one breaker. See?

Going down the stairs was almost worse than up. I had to do it quickly, without thinking about it. And backward. Urp!

Then I read this message.

And looked at what they're calling a chair.

And my climb didn't seem so bad.

They have a large exhibit of sea glass, for so small a space.





I enjoyed the lighthouse, but wasn't sorry to get back outside again.

Did you know that falling off a cliff can be dangerous? Learn something new every day.

My mother offered to take my picture from the ground, if I wanted to run back up. I declined.

Even from the ground, the view was lovely. We stayed for a little while, enjoying the day.

And were rewarded by the sight of the ferry coming in. It's big!

I suppose it has to be, going all the way to Iles de la Madeleine.

At first we thought it was called the Travesty, which seemed highly unlikely. The camera's zoom cleared things up: the Traversier.


To explain this next picture, I have to explain two things. First, it took us a lot longer to find lunch that day than we expected it to*; and second, though I love the Island very much, it is, sadly, more a Pepsi place than I would like (hence the root been I photographed another day).

*We ate in Cardigan, though I don't seem to have noted the name of the restaurant, and the food was very good!

So you may surmise how happy I was to see this:

Also, the display case with a small whale's tail behind it.

And the bilingual mustard caught my eye as well.

As we were driving on, in a roundabout way back to Charlottetown, my alert mother noticed a sign that said alpaca yarn*, so we turned and went back. It was a small place, like a cabin in front of the house, run by a woman who quilts and sells the work of other locals.

*I like to think I have her well trained as an enabler, though she doesn't knit herself.

And yes, has alpacas:

Sadly, she was out of her own yarn, but I bought some other yarn that I am quite happy with.

Back in town, I saw this on the car next to me when I parked. Love this hockey feeling.


So that was Friday. I think I'll do one more entry to wrap the trip up, then we'll be back to the present day. For whatever that's worth.

Happy weekend!