Earlier in December, my friend Ben and I went on a Carol Ship tour with Vancouver Cruises. We enjoyed sight-seeing the most. Vancouver’s harbour looks completely different all lit up for night. Unfortunately my camera died abut 20 minutes into the 2-hour cruise, so most of these photos are with Ben’s iPhone 4.

Science World reflecting in Vancouver's False Creek harbour

Queen of Diamonds, our vessel for the evening

Boats moored in False Creek all lit up

Approaching the Burrard Street Bridge

English Bay with festive lights in the willow tree

Once we were out of English Bay and into more open water beside Stanley Park, the captain and crew invited anyone to come try driving the boat. Sounded like fun to me, and a cute captain didn’t hurt at all.

Me driving the Carol Ship

It was a little anti-climatic driving the boat as we didn’t go very fast, and I had to turn the wheel lots just to adjust our direction a few degrees. But it was still neat — I enjoyed talking with the captain and crew and having them explain everything on the instrument panel.

Lion's Gate Bridge — with the North Shore on the left and Stanley Park on the right

Going under Lion's Gate Bridge

Downtown Vancouver — view from the inner harbour with Canada Place on the left

The only confusing/disappointing part of the cruise was the name “Carol Ships”. We were one of only 4 ships out cruising that night, and we only sang carols for about 20 minutes near the end of the voyage. For some reason, having heard for several years about the Carol Ships Parade of Lights Society, I thought that it was more impressive (from the shoreline). Or, perhaps, since we went in the first week of December, we were too early for all the events and most of the ships. Either way, I’m certainly glad we opted to go on a cruise to see the harbour lights as I love bridges and going under four of them, twice each, was awesome.

Ben & I with the Lion's Gate Bridge

The first inaugural Vancouver Christmas Market will hopefully become a new tradition here. After visiting the German Christmas Markets in Manchester, England I was very happy to hear we’d be getting our own.

While it’s not quite like the ones I’ve been to in England (and I’m sure even less like the ones in Germany) we still managed to have fun. Remember to bring cash!! Lots of cash because 1.) it’s expensive and 2.) you will want to eat all.the.things.

Crowds inside the Vancouver German Christmas Market

Mmm baked potatoes smothered in good stuffs

First stop (after $5 entrance and getting our alcohol wristbands) was The Potato Hut. Some of us waiting in this line up, while a few others waiting in the Sausage line-up to buy bratwurst. I got a baked poutine potato ($7.50) with cheese curds and gravy. While Hilary insisted it wasn’t real poutine, I insisted it was delicious!

Check out the awesome (and steamy) traditional potato baking oven with warming drawers. So awesome! We were so excited about this and all taking photos. The lady at The Potato Hut said we needed to get out more. Too true, too true.

Tammy enjoying her bratwurst sausage and some costumed stilt walkers at the Market.

Giant Santa on Liebrecht Lebkuchenhaus which sells traditional European treats including all types of gingerbread, marzipan and other sweet delights.

Then someone mentioned there were crepes — both fruit and meat types. Ferdy and I began chanting “crepes! crepes!” We headed towards the crepe hut but discovered they were out of apples (I was planning to get an apple cinnamon crepe).

Row of huts and baked apples at the Applehaus

So instead we lined up at the Applehaus for baked apples ($5.50) which were amazing. They were stuffed with walnuts, raisins, cinnamon and smothered in hot vanilla sauce. To.Die.For. Mmmmm

Erin the baby bee sits on Santa Janel’s lap and my steaming gluwein in commemorative mug.

Our last line up was for drinks, which some people had already had too. I got a mug of spiced apple gluwein ($6 plus $4 mug deposit). Very alcoholic! I would have been happy with just a spiced rum apple cider, but it also had mulled wine too. Wowza. I kept my commemorative mug as a souvenir, but a few people returned theirs to get their $4 back.

We also enjoyed the music of Maria in the Shower playing in the gazebo. There was all different entertainment nightly.

All in all we had a lot of fun. We were chatting in the line-ups and enjoyed the food immensely. I think they had to have a closed-site with entrance fee in order to get the liquor license. We have much stricter street-drinking laws than Europe. The site was packed with people (on a Saturday night) and I would love to see the site expanded next year to include more walking room and even more vendors!

(Better late than never! It’s not yet midnight here, so it’s still technically Whiskers on Wednesday.)

I made a quick trip earlier this week to Pier1 for home décor items… but not for me, for Chico. When I was in Salisbury, England, I stopped by a pet store and found these 100% willow wood, woven wicker balls (isn’t that a tongue-twister!). Willow is a chin-safe wood and they came in a natural, untreated version (as well as a blanched and flavour/colour).

I bought one for Chico and brought it home in January (earlier this year). When I presented the willow ball to Chico, he literally devoured it! It took him less than 24 hours, and he absolutely loved the thing. I have since been searching for them in Vancouver because I refuse to pay $5 per ball at the local pet store (he devours them too quickly).

Then, I discovered them for $3 each on Pier1′s website! I have made Chico such a happy boy:

Please excuse the really crappy photos. Whenever I went over to the cage with the camera, he ignored the willow ball and paid attention to me. Of course I couldn’t resist giving him a scratch, but I then had to try and take photos on the sly!

P.S. I gave him the first willow ball on Sunday night. Tonight, Wednesday, as I type, he is chewing the very last bit of it (the part still tied to the top of the cage in the bottom right photo).

No, I have no knitting to show. But I do have lovely lovely yarns. Non-yarnies, look away now. Yarn-a-holics, grab a towel, you might drool.

First up, my package from The Loopy Ewe:

I decided to see what all the fuss was about and ordered some Madelinetosh and Sanguine Gryphon. Here are the close-up shots:

The Sanguine Gryphone - Skinny Bugga! Colourway: Blue Stink Bug

Madelinetosh - Tosh Sock. Colourway: Turquoise

Now, for a few weeks I’ve been stalking the updates for Wollmeise. I fell in love with this colourway “Am kalten Polar” which translates (from German) to “in the cold arctic” with colours of teal, blue, and cranberry. Beautiful.

After a few updates, some local knitters (who are also Wollmeise die-hards) suggested I get a blue grab-bag and maybe it would be in there. They said there are so many colourways, that I should just buy something from the “in stock” page and trade it on Ravelry later.

I ended up buying a skein of 100% in the colourway “Petit Poison Nr.5″ which arrived this week. It came with some European gummy bears (which I’ve had in England before) and a glove pattern called Knotty.

Oh, and I also have a “Turquoise” grab bag (1 skein) on the way. I’m curious to see what it is!

Here’s a colour close-up of Petit Poison Nr.5 (dark):

Wollmeise - Twin 100% Superwash. Colourway: Petit Poison Nr. 5 (dark)

Next up, is the yarn from Circle Craft Christmas Market. I will be doing a post dedicated to the goodies I bought at Circle Craft this year, but I decided to group all the yarn together.

I was chatting with Carmen of MelonHead Knitwear and decided to try on a slouchy hat. I had been planning on buying some yarn anyway that Carmen cards, spins, and dyes herself. But LOW AND BEHOLD the hat actually looked good on me. Hats never look good on me. My ears are always sticky-outy and my hair is weird under them since it’s so long. But this looked really good.

I picked up a skein of thick-n-thins in this gorgeous purple-fushia colour. The hat I tried on had been a green sea foam colour, and I mentioned that blue is more “me”. Carmen said she had a skein of blue that she would bring the following day for me and I got her to put the fushia skein aside. The next day we stood chatting over the yarn and she was trying to convince me to take the blue over the fushia… but I couldn’t do it. I had my heart set on both.

I was also hoping to get a skein from Indigo Moon when the other knitters came to Circle Craft on Friday night. She had a sale “Buy 4 get the 5th free” and I was thinking 4 other people might each want to buy one skein together. No such luck… and I wasn’t crazy enough about anything to purchase it alone (especially after my other Circle Craft purchases!)

I compiled this from video clips I took on the second day of Pancake’s visit. Henry is a little better but still doesn’t like when the bunny hops straight at him.

P.S. You know how YouTube suggests similar videos to watch? You have to see these! Cute overload!!

• Momma cat adopts teeny tiny orphan bunny
• Cat giving a bunny a bath
• Bunny chasing his cat friend around the yard