Dream assignment for gamer geek Kes :)

Ouch!!!

Kesler dropped to the ice to block Jere Lehtinen's second-period shot, missed the puck but not the Star's skate, which clipped the back of his head as Lehtinen jumped over Kesler.

He appeared dazed, but was able to skate off the ice.

"I got lucky," Kesler said. "It could have been way worse. Obviously, I was pretty worried walking into the locker room but they were able to fix it up so I could go back out. "

With the shallow, four-inch laceration closed, Kesler returned to the game and in the third period cut hard around defenceman Darryl Sydor and fired under Turco to make it 4-1 at 2:26.

That's my boy, head cut open by a skate blade, what does he do? Come straight back out and score :)

I am almost getting bored with saying "I told you so" now, but I TOLD YOU SO! Kesler for the C.

Dank Sedin bled all over the ice from a high stick to the chops and scored shortly afterwards too, maybe next time we hit a slump AV should randomly punch a couple of the guys to wake them up? Seems to work!

Final result Van 5 Dal 2 - whoot!

That makes up for Saturday :)

Meet the diseased squid

Another one of those things that worked better in my head...

This particular infected marine mollusc is SUPPOSED to be a tree :)

Even placing it on a nice grassy hill and embroidering it a few leaves doesn't detract from its undeniable cephalopod-ness.

Ah well, it was worth a try :D

This is my entry for last month's Art Raffle, which I need to send out this week. It's late. Sorry all. Life got in the way big time.


The background is acrylics, Squidney Crosby there was made from airdry clay and painted with brown and bronze acrylics before being varnished, and the leaves are embroidered straight onto the canvas with variegated floss.

I hope the raffle winner doesn't have an irrational fear of poorly sealife.


In other news. Awwwwwww. Darcy. Awwwwww. Now give that baby back to its mother and come heeeeeeere! :D

You know, I think Mr Kesler is getting a leeeetle jealous at all the attention I'm giving his cutie enforcer pal, because this is what he had to say about the Hordibaby photo:

“Embarrassing,” said Ryan Kesler, who sits next to Hordichuk in the Canuck dressing room. “There should be a fine. For him to actually pose for a picture with his shirt off... You’ve seen his body, He doesn’t have the greatest body. It’s like the ‘before’ picture in the Jenny Craig commercials.”

Now now boys, there's enough of me to go round, you don't have to bicker :D :D :D

Wrong bench Kes!

oops!

from last night's game vs Nashville

a post NHL career as a human cannonball beckons

seriously, I haven't seen the game yet, I hope he's ok! looks like his landing was softened by a number of Preds though so I expect he's fine.

It had to happen eventually

In fact, I'm amazed it didn't happen sooner

To be honest, for a fight that's been brewing for 6 years, it was a bit of a disappointment in the end, kind of a damp squib

But hopefully it was enough to close off that unfinished business...

What a purty bunch of assistant captains we have

'scuse me while I have a puck bunny moment :)

WTG Kes!

Number one in Sportsnet's Top 10 Plays of the 2007/8 Season

cool!

That was one sick goal though, huh? huh??? :)

Five for Oh, baybeeeeeeee!

Oh if only this was the regular season, what a start!!

(and Anam would have lost our bet already :))

A 3 point night for Kes in a confidence pumping 6-1 victory when Calgary came to GM Place last night

5 games into the pre-season and still unbeaten

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet !!!!! :) :) :)

How smug does my boy look rockin’ that A? eh?

:D

(no Bert on the Flames roster last night, we’ve still got the spectacle of OUR Todd turning up at GM in THEIR jersey to come……)



And yes, we'd ALL like the regular season to start already!!



(edited to add - 6 for 0 now! eeek! Am getting worried now we might use up all our luck!!!)

Wow! I genuinely didn't see THAT coming!

The new Canucks captain!!!

screw NHL Rule 14-D :O

(and KESLER, Mitchell and Ohlund get the A - yay!!!)

I'm gobsmacked :)

But I say it's a GREAT choice - I just didn't realise there was a way they could!

Happy birthday Bull!

Ryan Kesler, sweet 24 today :)



















and as if he wanted to give ME a birthday gift....follow the link for his first interview for the 2008/9 season. It's good to hear that he is, as ever, raring to go:

Kesler Arrives

I can't WAIT for the season to start!!!!!!

17 days until I get to see my Wildcats back out there. And almost 6 weeks until the Canucks are back in regular season action.

I WANT MY HOCKEYYYYYYYY!!!!

Finally a bit of catch up on my A-Z Journal

I'm still behind, but now only 5 letters, not 7, and am starting to cultivate a glimmer of hope that I can catch up....

(not that I have the foggiest idea what I'm going to do for O, or for Q.... but will cross that bridge later)

K was a no brainer - this is supposed to be an A-Z of what makes me tick, after all. So K is for Kes.... my Krazy Kanuck Krush :) (ouch)

I was going for a pop art / offset print type of look on this one - but it has just ended up looking like he has kind of mutant shoulders :) Never mind, eh :)

(in reality, he has mighty fiiiiine shoulders, let me tell you :))



The second page features a beautiful photo of my mum, taken by my dad a long time ago. The original scan from my dad's photo album is below.

I used Photoshop to render the photo (extract it from its background), and sepia tone it. Then I printed the picture directly onto a sheet of cardstock that had been crumpled, tapped with distress ink pads in antique linen and tattered rose, sprayed with water and then ironed flat.

After sealing the print with an acrylic spray, I oversprayed it with a light application of Glimmer Mist in irridescent gold and then matted the page onto some paper with a houndstooth check pattern - which appealed to me for this page on my mum because she was such a snazzy dresser - always stylishly and immaculately turned out. So unlike her scruffy daughter.

The journalling for this one is on the back, a bit too personal for sharing.

Yes!!!! it worked!!! check out my t-shirt!!! :)

Oh wow this was so nervewracking!

I had to wait for the paint to dry completely before I could peel off the stencil - and I really had no idea if any paint might have bled under and ruined the design completely.

It felt like forever.

But when I took off that stencil and saw the PERFECT result, I whooped out loud :)

Ignore the shiny bits you can see around the design - that's residue from the temp glue I used to hold the stencil down tight on the shirt while I was painting through it. That will just rub off but I want to wait till the morning to make absolutely sure I won't smudge the paint.

Can't wait to wear it :)

(and yes, it's supposed to be off-centre!)


Inge asked for a tutorial.... but there isn't much to tell really. It was amazingly simple.

I lightly coated the back of the mylar stencil with zig glue and let it dry completely for a few hours.

Then I ironed the shirt (which was an interesting experience, I don't think I have used an iron in over a year - apart from the little craft iron I use for ironing distressed tags!! :)) - and laid it flat on the table with a big bit of cardboard inside, just in case the paint leeched through onto the back of the shirt.

Next it was just a case of sticking the stencil onto the front of the shirt, being extra careful with the little detail bits. And then I used a sponge brush with a dabbing motion to apply Lumiere fabric paint all over the design.

I waited an hour or so till the paint was dry, and then peeled off the stencil. And whooped :)

Tomorrow I'll need to iron it to heat set it, and then it will be washable and all finished.

This is the first of many t-shirts for me, that's for sure. I already have a couple more stencils cut, but they are for pressies, so I can't show them on here....

Oh, and on a completely different subject - here's Cons yesterday when we went caching in Chiseldon:

oh I am SO hooked!

You remember the stencil I cut a week or so ago for the Green Pepper Press "cut it out!" crusade?

Well I wanted to do some more, specifically for stencilling onto t-shirts with fabric paint or bleach, but didn't think I would have time during April - but then Michelle went and extended the deadline, didn't she :)

Perfect!

So I went and ordered a whole heap of plain t-shirts, and fabric paints a-plenty, and a stencil cutting tool, and got busy in Photoshop designing stencils.

And here is my first attempt with the hot cutter...

I am SO pleased with how this has turned out!!!!!!! (even if I did burn my hair.....must remember to tie it back next time)


This is the paper rough draft, I will bite the bullet (and my bottom lip) and try the stencil out on a t-shirt tomorrow - wish me luck!

This t-shirt will be so special because it will be TOTALLY unique, and TOTALLY made by me:

• I took the photo (in Calgary during the anthem before the Canucks/Flames game I went to in March)
  
• I converted the photo to something stencilworthy in Photoshop
  
• I painstakingly cut the stencil out by hand, and
  
• I used (or will do tomorrow) the stencil to create a one of a kind, unique piece of wearable art

And yes, I call it art, not everyone would, but I am prouder of this than almost anything I have ever made, and to me it's art. So ner :)

Here's the original photo:



I'll report back once the t-shirt's done....

Can't wait to make more stencils

Hooked, I tell ya :)

'citing stuff - baby Kesler could be here any day!

From yesterday's Vancouver Sun:

Kesler confirmed he won't be playing for Team USA in the upcoming world championships due to his wife's advanced pregnancy. In fact, the Keslers thought the baby, a girl, was on its way Wednesday night and rushed off to hospital in what turned out to be a false alarm.

"We all got excited," said the 23-year-old Kesler. "The baby is due the first week of May but it looks like we're going to have it even earlier. I definitely made the right decision not going to the world championships because I would have been devastated if I missed the birth.

"Now I will get to spend three or four months with our baby girl before training camp. That will be good."

Good luck Andrea! :)

Plus a vid from locker clean out day

(stuff like this will end up being stored over at www.Ryan-Kesler.com rather than on here....but I don't have the video library set up there yet, and I don't want to lose the link :))

Just call me mistress

Webmistress, that is :)

Just the other day I typed these words on this 'ere blog:

I am pretty sure that this blog, in amongst all my personal stuff, has the single biggest collection of Ryan Kesler related photos and the like on the whole internet - which is kind of scary - so I'm kind of doing a public service :)

I was pondering this morning the fact that, as Kes gets more popular (and mark my words, he will), more people might end up poking about my blog looking for photos of him / old newspaper articles etc etc, all of which I have on here.

Not only is it a little unfair to expect those people to have to trawl through my diary entries on geocaching, and photos of Connor in cute hats, in order to get to the Kesler material.

But also it's really not organised very well on here.

Photos for example would be better off in galleries, press articles in a dedicated archive, etc etc etc

So.... on impulse pretty much .... I am now the proud owner of the ryan-kesler.com domain name :)

How cool is that???

(and I got ryan-kesler.co.uk for free, which I doubt will get much traffic, given only about 3 people in the UK probably know who he is - and they are all related to me :))

There is nothing there yet, and given my severe lack of free time, it will take me a while to get everything I already have up onto the site.

But by the time the next season is underway, young Mr K will have his very own 100% unofficial website :)

(maybe I could model it on Alex Steen's ROFL)

PS anyone want a yourname@ryan-kesler.com email address???? :) Free if you want one :)


*edited at 10pm to say - ooooh, it's just gone live!!*

I need to do a Kespress catch up soon

I have a ton of photos and press to share, and I will get around to blogging them very soon (as I am pretty sure that this blog, in amongst all my personal stuff, has the single biggest collection of Ryan Kesler related photos and the like on the whole internet - which is kind of scary - so I'm kind of doing a public service :) ), but this one can't wait:



When Ryan's Dad talks about how painful it was to hear everyone question his skill when he was first finding his feet with the Canucks, that choked me up.

Although to be fair, I'm crying at almost anything to do with hockey right now, it's an emotional part of the season, and I am a wreck :)

Check out diddy Kes, he was born cute, this one :)

Canada Day 9 : Canucks @ Oilers

WARNING: this post is going to be a killer for anyone with dial up net access! Photos galore :)

I had a great day today - stash shopping and a hockey game, the perfect combination!

Anam took me to Treasured Memories, an Edmonton scrapbook store that she does DT work for. The place was a real Aladdin's Cave of goodies, and I might just have spent stupid amounts of money in there :) They were nice enough to give me a discount, though, so that softened the blow quite a bit.

After the shopping trip we came home to deliver Fay to her little pal's mum for a sleepover, and got all ready for the big hockey game. Canucks vs the Oilers at Rexall Place, a vitally important divisional battle, just a stone's throw from the end of the season.

We met up with Ian and had a bite to eat, and then got a cab out to the arena.


The atmosphere there was excellent, nobody gave us any stick for our Vancouver jerseys, well not bad natured stick anyway :) We were really lucky that tonight happened to be "Fan Appreciation Night", so there were loads of extra things going on - including free popcorn and inflatable bangy sticks all round and lots of signed jersey giveaways and so on - that seemed to put everyone in a great mood.


We had GREAT seats for the game - thanks to Anam's pal whose hubby is a very important honcho at Rexall. They were immediately behind the TV cameras at centre ice - and you just can't get a better view of the entire game than that - they put the cameras there for a reason :)


The game itself was great for me and Connor, not so for poor Anam and Ian, as we beat them 4-1. Anam says we only won because of Luongo, and to be honest I would struggle to disagree with her tonight. The Oilers were putting us under tremendous pressure, outshot us significantly, and really should have got more pucks in the net, but Lu pulled off some frankly superhuman saves. Thank GOD he's ours. Can someone PLEASE get him to sign a 20 year contract extension?


I love the showbiz of the games here, the way they lower the oil derrick did kind of bring to mind the Stonehenge set from Spinal Tap, but it really was cool the way they all skate out through it. I am going to suggest to Steve Nell that we have something similar for the Wildcats lol.


Thanks to very nice important honcho man, we had special stickers on our tickets that said "club access" - and that basically got us into the fancy bar downstairs, where I could actually get served (would you believe the woman at the public bar upstairs refused to serve me because I didn't have ID???? I was actually so flattered that I didn't care about having to drink water instead of Smirnoff Ice :) :) :) ).

The other advantage of the Club area, is that it is handily situated between the players' dressing room and the ice - so they walk right past you as they come back out to play - how cool is that???

Malc- I'm afraid I didn't get quite close enough to MacTavish to run my fingers through his hair for you, as requested :) But here is a photo, I hope that will do :D


It gets even more exciting - in the 2nd intermission, we got a tour of Oilers TV from aforementioned honcho, and Connor even got to don a headset and be a part of the team for a while! Pretty cool of them given they were directing a live TV broadcast going out across Canada and probably the US aswell, and he was worryingly close to very important looking buttons and dials :)


We had to take off our Vancouver jerseys for the tour ("you have a choice son, either you lose that jersey or your pants" lol), but luckily we had t shirts on underneath :)


(After the game the same fab man accidentally made Connor cry by beating up Furry for wearing a Vancouver hat, and even some nice policemen couldn't cheer him up - oops! But a reassurance that Furry was just fine and the promise of a ride home on the train did the trick)

As for the plethora of fab photos, I can't take credit for all of them as some of the in game shots and most of the "backstage" pics are Anam's, taken either with my camera or her whizzy new Nikon D80, bought earlier the same morning.


Sorry there are so many, but I just couldn't narrow down the selection any further.

All in all, a brilliant night

and sorry Oilers, but GO CANUCKS!!!!!!


Pics below are half from the warm up, half from the game, in no particular order:

The 2 Ryans....nice to see Ryan Shannon back on the ice





Ditto for Boom Boom Bieksa (on whom my mate Ellard has a very manly man crush :)), it seemed like he was gone forever after that nasty skate-blade-through-the-calf-muscle incident:





I love that race across the red line they do in warm up, those NHL boys sure can fly :) :

Luuuuuuuuuuuuu





Sexiest bottom in the NHL? :)



Another great save from our saviour :)


Naughty boy Willie

New job for Markus?


Best pic I could get of the new boy, Matt Pettinger, already producing very well for us, keep it up Matt!


Why is Anam's favourite Oiler flashing our goalie???

Curtis Sanford:



Poor Willie still has to wear the full face shield:

Kes got a nasty sting from a puck to the foot late in the 3rd and hobbled back to the bench in obvious pain :(