Vie Vaedri: Rainy Saturday

The other day, some friends and I decided to share our day in pictures. This is something we’ve done a couple of times now, and always with interesting results. This time around, our “day” fell on the same day as the Kitchener-Waterloo knitter’s fair. I wasn’t sure I would go, but felt like I had to do something picture-worthy. And if I’m going to take all kinds of pictures and tell stories, then I might as well blog it. Here is my apology in advance for a VERY long post. Feel free to skim.

After lounging about all that morning, I decided to get in the car and drive to Kitchener-Waterloo for the fair. It was a chilly, rainy day, but the roads weren’t bad.

I started to take the most direct route to the fair, but saw signs that directed me differently, and I ended up taking the route I knew best, past my old stomping grounds in Guelph. I loved being back on roads I knew and have driven dozens of times.

I arrived at Bingeman’s without incident, and my first thought as I drove into the parking lot was, “I’ve been here before”. I can’t remember why – I think maybe there must have been an Engineering career fair or something way back when.

As I’d had such a long, lazy morning, I didn’t arrive at the fair until almost three. So I didn’t get to check out any of the workshops the website had mentioned, but there was still plenty to see.

I guess in previous years, the vendors had all been in one big room, and the place was jam-packed. This was the first year they expanded to two rooms, and everything was well-spaced, with wide aisles. There were lots of deals to be had, but I was fairly restrained. But not saintly.

I wandered both rooms, visiting every stall with varying degrees of interest. I had just wandered into my last stall, and was thinking it was weird that I hadn’t found the Linda’s Craftique booth, when I heard Linda call out my name. I turned around to find that I was, in fact, in her booth. It was nice to see a few familiar faces (and familiar F.O.s).

It continued to pour all day, which didn’t really bother the knitters, as they scurried from hall to car laden with fibre and tools.

I stayed right up to the end, at 4:30 (partly in hopes that some vendors might suddenly decide to lighten their loads home and offer ridiculous deals) then headed back to my car in the suddenly empty parking lot.

I was a bit confuddled to find a satellite dish in the middle of some bushes by my car. Next to… nothing at all. Okay.

Then it was back on the road for me. Despite the rain, it was a lovely drive along familiar roads.

I love driving back roads at this time of year. Even better is a couple of weeks from now, when the leaves have started to change, and the world is awash with sunset colours.

But this time of year is lovely, too, with the rich browns and yellows of the fields, all on a backdrop of lush greenness.

And every now and then, in the distance, or – more startlingly – suddenly in a field flashing by, you can see bright sheets of brilliant yellow canola.

Yes, I know I probably took too many pictures, but I don’t get out this way nearly often enough these days.

I didn’t even notice the big windmill behind this house until I was going through the photo files later at home.

I took the long, slow way back to Guelph, and then through the city, driving along roads that took me back in time about nine years.

It’s been bothering me that I couldn’t remember the name of the street I lived on in second year, so I swung by that way to remind myself that it was “Keats Crescent”.