The Little Knittin' Kitten

Travel Knitting

2008-10-28T10:35:00.002-04:00

Well, my multiple weddings and receptions are finally behind me. As much as I enjoyed everything, I am exceedingly glad to be finished "getting married" so that I can now enjoy "being married". But I'm not entirely done yet; we've still got the honeymoon coming up. We're leaving for Japan on Friday and I have to make some tough decisions fast. The toughest decision, of course, is what knitting to pack.

I've been working away at socks, as planned, for the last few weeks, but I've only managed to finish that one pair of Spring Forward socks from Knitty; I grafted the toes on the subway this morning. I got a few more rows in on Arwen this last week, but it's painfully clear that I will not have it finished in time to wear it in Japan. I may take it as a project to work on, if I can get over my aversion to doing finishing work while travelling (not to mention my fear of not bringing enough yarn to finish it, or bringing too much and having to carry it around, taking up room that could be used to buy new yarn).

I was planning to start another pair of socks to work on, since socks make good travel knitting, but a voice in the back of my head has been whispering "a small sweater would be so nice to knit on trains". I contemplated Hey Teach! but the moment passed; it is still in my Ravelry queue, but I just don't think it's right for this trip. Then, while catching up on the Yarn Harlot blog from this weekend, I noticed that she had linked to the February Lady sweater and I think I'm a smitten as she is. For some reason I've never been that keen on the February Baby sweater, although it is in my queue as something that looks like it would be a good pattern to knock off if I ever needed a baby sweater toute suite. But as a grown-up sweater, and with the shaping the designer has added to it, I find it very fetching.

As a top-down raglan, it would be easier to travel with than Arwen, which is currently in 3 parts stored together in the clear plastic packaging that my bed linen came in (you know, the kind with the zipper? They make excellent knitting project holders!). Knitting something that's completely in one piece would give me the satisfaction (not to mention KIP wow factor) of knitting a full sweater, without the seaming or keeping track of pieces that Arwen would require. Wince we're backpacking, this is important, as we don't have the structure of suitcases to keep things organized: just one big chasm of a bag to stuff clothes into between destinations.

Of course, I'll still pack some sock yarn and a pattern, and I need to pick up some bamboo circs in case I feel like working on them on the plane, but I think I've found my travel project. I just need to choose yarn and swatch sometime between now and Friday. I'm still trying valiantly to knit from stash (I say "valiantly" because I noticed on the way home from work the other day that Knit Boutique is having a sale), so I'm going to see if I have anything that would be good for this. However, I'm not averse to picking up some Dream in Colour at Lettuce Knit if it comes to it. :)

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Quick mid-weddings post

2008-10-15T12:27:00.002-04:00

We had the first wedding on Saturday. Nyron and my maid of honour and her fiance and Nyron's parents and I flew into Halifax Friday morning for the rehersal that night. The wedding was just wonderful and, aside from me blanking momentarily on my vows, everything went off without a hitch. I'd go into detail, but it's better to let pictures tell the story; our photographer put a selection of the photos up on his blog.

Honeymoon dreams

2008-10-05T10:18:00.002-04:00

For almost the whole length of our engagement, we had decided that we were going to go to Ecuador. I lived there for a year as a high school exchange student 10 years ago and I've been dying to go back. But when we actually priced the trip, we realized that we wouldn't be able to afford to go to the Galapagos while we're there; it would almost double to cost of our trip. We didn't want to go and not be able to include such an important part, so we decided to postpone going to Ecuador until we can afford the trip we really want. Which left us, with only a month before our scheduled time off, suddenly without a honeymoon destination. After a few days of deliberation, tallying up the pros and cons of various possible locals, we finally picked the perfect place: Japan.

We're going to spend 2 weeks backpacking around Japan, starting in Tokyo, where I have a friend who lives just outside the city, and traveling around the various islands. We want to focus on seeing some landmarks of anime, including the Studio Ghibli Museum, I want to check out some of that awesome crafts stuff there and I've already started looking up yarn stores in Japan. Another thing of knitting note, is that in many places in Japan, visitors are expected to take their shoes off before entering many buildings. How could a sock knitter worth her salt give up such an opportunity to gratuitously show off fabulous socks? So I'm doing some serious sock knitting in preparation. Also, I'm trying to get Arwen finally finished, since I'll need something nice and cozy to wear in the Japanese Autumn.

Any suggestions, from people who have been to Japan? I've also got to decide on my travel knitting. Any thoughts?

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

The Final Countdown

2008-09-16T16:15:00.002-04:00

For a lot of you, of course, this would mean the countdown to Christmas and the deadline for all the Christmas knitting. But for me, it’s a much sooner countdown; the countdown to the wedding, which is now less than a month away (for the first one, at least). It’s been going full force at the Ali-Barnard household (soon to be the Ali household) to get everything done. Most things are being done jointly; we’re both making all the invitations by hand and making sure that the right invitations get sent to the right people at the right address for the right event, Nyron’s driving me around to meet up with his mom for dress-fittings and such, and we’re both trying to find some cuddle-time in and amongst all this. But some things are all me, and that’s the knitting.

Knitting the wedding flowers has been a huge undertaking. It took me over a month just to make all the corsages and boutonnieres, which are made using the Cabbage Rose pattern (for the corsages) and the American Beauty Rose (for the boutonnieres) from Nicky Epstein’s Knitting Flowers and 3 of the small leaves on each.

Corsages

Boutinneires

I’m now trying to do a bouquet for each of my bridesmaids and one for myself. The bouquets are a mix of the 2 flower patterns, each with 2 of the small leaves and a 5-stitch i-cord stem (35 stitches long). I can make about 2 in a day on my way to and from work, so they’re coming along, but I have to decide how I’m going to wrap them. I’d thought about the idea of doing a filet crochet wrap for at least mine using a rose pattern that was my great-grandmother’s signature pattern. I’m still holding out hope for this idea but I don’t know if I’ll get it done on time, not least because I’ve never done filet crochet before and I’m not as experienced with crochet in general as I am with knitting. We’ll see. For at least the bridesmaids’ (and for mine if I don’t get the crochet done) I have some fabric that I bought in my wedding colours to pass around to my bridesmaids to help them find their dresses, so I’ll cut that into strips and use them to wrap the bouquets together.

I’ve just started spinning the yarn for my garter, as well. I’m pretty sure I’m going to use the pattern in the Spring 2008 issue of Spin-off. I’ve drafted it super thin and it’s coming out quite nice. It’s still not as even as I’d like it to be, but I’m getting better. I’d love to take the spinning workshop in Haliburton, but each level is a week of full-day classes, so I doubt I can get the time off work for that.

The reason for the long blog absence (and this ungodly long entry) is that my brother Tim and his girlfriend Ally were visiting all last week. It’s always fun to have Tim visit and I’m really glad Ally could come, too, not only because she keeps Tim entertained while I’m at work. Ally’s the one who asked me to knit the dog sweaters for her and her siblings’ dogs. Apparently, she got a luke warm reaction to the idea when she mentioned it to one of her sisters, so she changed her order - which is fine because I was worried about getting such a large order done by Christmas. Instead, she’s now asked for cabled baby scarves for her niece and soon-to-be-born nephew. I sat her down with some of my stitch dictionaries and let her choose the designs for each scarf. I also took her to Lettuce knit so she could pick out the yarn and she made an excellent choice: Blue Sky Alpaca’s Baby Alpaca in a light pink and blue. I’ve always wanted to work with Blue Sky but until now hadn’t had an excuse. These will be much quicker to knit post-wedding than 4 large dog sweaters and will be a welcomed change to knitting a mountain of cotton flowers!

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

More knitting reminders

2008-08-12T10:47:00.002-04:00

Just as the yarn editor on Ravelry reminded me of my poor, unassigned yarn, Yarn Harlot has reminded me of a pattern I want to knit. Back in July I queued the Hibiscus for Hope sock pattern. The designer is asking for donations for the Toronto Weekend to End Breast Cancer in order to receive the pattern. I queued it in Ravlery with the intention of making a donation to get the pattern and then promptly forgot about it. Luckily Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has been knitting it while travelling through Newfoundland and has reminded me of my forgotten pledge to - well - pledge. So that has been done and I should be receiving the pattern soon; although it will be a while before I will be able to knit it.

Which brings me to elaborating on some of the things I mentioned in the last post. I not only post on this blog, but also on Stashalong and Homespun Helpers, so I sometimes write on this blog and mention projects without realizing that I haven't spoken about them here before. :) So, about these dog sweaters. On the long weekend recently my parents flew me to Nova Scotia so that I could participate in the tasting for the wedding caterers, as well as a few other wedding things and just to generally get out of the city and relax for a few days. While there, I met my brother's new girlfriend (well, new to me, anyway, since I hadn't met her before).

Although it had been absent from the public view for some time, and it is well out of season for it, my brother has recently been proudly displaying a shadow scarf that I knit for him a number of years ago. It's one of those scarves like the Alien Scarf in Stitch 'n Bitch, where head-on it just looks like stripes but at an angle you see a design. For a while I was making these custom on consignment and it had all started when I made that scarf (with marijuana leaves as the hidden design) for Tim for Christmas.

Just as before, the presence of that scarf is generating interest in my knitting among friends and family. Tim's friend who is in sales and marketing expressed interest in marketing my knit designs. When I went home, I suggested to Tim that if his friend wanted to market something, that we consider working on dog sweaters knit in traditional fisherman styles. Not only do we have a friend in marketing, but we also have a friend who runs a pet store, and traditional fisherman styles in anything is generally a hit in the Maritimes. When Ally heard my suggestion, she got very excited. It turns out, her family once found a group of 4 chocolate lab puppies abandoned on the side of the road in Arizona. They divided the puppies among her and her siblings, who live all over North America, and there is a very good chance that all 4 puppies will be reunited in Nova Scotia this Christmas when the siblings and their families come together. So as soon as I'm finished knitting for the wedding, I have to immediately cast on to make 4 dog sweaters for rather large (now full-grown) chocolate labs! What do I get myself into! :)

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Ravelry does it again!

2008-08-11T21:01:00.005-04:00

There is no end to the ways that Ravelry helps me with my knitting! If only I didn't have this damned day job, I could stay at home and knit up everything in my queue! What magic has it performed this time? Well, let me tell you.

I decided to go on the computer while Nyron was playing Soul Caliber IV, which I attempted to play with him, but all that mindless button-mashing started to hurt my hands, so I gave up my controller and now he's trying to see if he can put together the most ridiculous costume possible in the Character Customizer. So, obviously, I needed something to occupy myself. After checking my email, I went on Ravelry, as I do almost by reflex now when I find myself online without a specific goal. In the upper corner was the welcome flashing that indicates that I had a message. One of the lovely yarn editors had been editing the entry for Fleisher's Shetland Floss and was asking if she could use my stash photo, since I'm the only person who has it stashed. It's a discontinued yarn that I received in quantity from a woman on Freecycle. It has been sitting in my stash since last fall without even a thought to what it could become.

Seeing the yarn's site on Ravelry got me thinking about possible patterns for it. Since no one else on Ravlery has this yarn (which makes it feel kind of special) I couldn't go browsing through the projects as I normally would. Ravelry hasn't yet added a feature where you can look up the yarn patterns that a yarn has been published in instead of just what it's been used for so I decided to do a quick google search. It wasn't long before I found a website on vintage patterns (just one) that mentioned pattern that this yarn company published to go along with this yarn. It's quite cute, too, and because it was published in the early 1920s it's in the public domain (in the US, anyway, which is where the blog is published) so she posted the pattern. I've queued it so that when I'm done the wedding flowers and the socks for Yarn Smackdown and the dog sweaters that my brother's girlfriend commissioned (I think I'm getting ahead of myself, I'll go into detail about these in a later post).

When next we knit!

=^_^=

The post with lots of pictures

2008-08-11T15:49:00.003-04:00

My first charity sweater is now completely finished. I also did my first button holes that weren't just K2tog YO. I just cast off some stitches and then cast them back on on the way back. Of course, they didn't look so good at first:

I had to go over them with some crochet stitches to straighten them out:

There, that's much better. Here's the finished sweater.

For some reason, it's not uploading to blogger very well so It's hard to see the stitch design. You can check it out on Ravelry.

I've also go some spinning done lately.

With some help from Spirit, of course:

What a good little spinner kitty! I've drafted my next batch, some lovely purple top my mom bought me in Nova Scotia (although the fiber is from New Zealand). The different colours came apart so neatly that I decided to draft them individually and then spin them together randomly to see what kinds of purple stripes I get when I ply.

Updates coming soon on the Baby Surprise Jacket and my wedding flowers.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Secret Pal Question #6

2008-07-21T12:45:00.002-04:00

For some reason, I haven't been getting any of the previous 5 questions that my Secret Pal hostess has sent to all of us, but I did get this one so I think I should answer it. The question is: What kind of knitting do you like to take on vacation? This is very good timing because I am going to Nova Scotia in August to get some more wedding stuff done, so I will soon be tackling this very issue myself. Most people automatically say "socks ans shawls" and that's all well and good. I definitely have at least one small project (or a large project that's still small in size) for when I'm travelling around within my destination, but I have no problem pulling out a big sweater in progress on a plane, especially if it's a long trip, or packing it in my suitcase to work on if I'm just going to visit family. The last knitting I took on a plane was the Rocketry sweater for Amy's baby Grace and I discovered that the armrests of airplane seats are excellent for winding remaining yarn into skeins.

For this trip east, since it's only a 2 hour plane ride, I'll probably take something more portable. I like taking things that are simple enough that I can watch the satellite TV that they have in airplanes now (isn't technology wonderful?! Gone are the days when we actually have to talk to our fellow passengers). I'll definitely have the purple sweater done by today or tomorrow, so I won't be taking that. I'd like to try making the baby surprise jacket on the thinnest baby weight yarn I own on really tiny needles to see if it comes out preemie-sized so I might bring that along. I may also bring the Spring Up socks, which I have almost definitely decided to rip back to the cuffs and re-knit including those 2 rows of stocking stitch that I forgot. I know for sure I'll be bringing Mom's Lighthearted Leaves scarf, if only because she's convinced that I'll never get anything knit for her completed and I want her to see me working on it. :)

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

If you wait, the universe will provide

2008-07-18T10:47:00.003-04:00

I started knitting the Orphans for Orphans sweater with charity in mind, right from the off. Children's sweaters really excite me as a project because they allow for design experimentation on a smaller scale than a full adult-sized sweater. They take up much less wool and are much quicker to knit; I can play around with colour or stitch patterns or shaping with less risk and with the hope of getting something I would want to size up to fit myself or someone else. Of course, charity knitting is what started my knitting obsession in the first place 8 years ago, so the two just go hand in hand.

Although I'd had the sweater earmarked for charity before it was even a cast-on row, I had no idea who I would give it to. I spent some time searching online, but I couldn't find anything that satisfactorily met my criteria; I wanted something where the donation centre would be local, or would at least had a drop-off location in Toronto so that I didn't have to pay for postage, and I wanted something that would stay in the country and help people in Canada. Not that I'm downplaying the great need in many countries all over the world, I'm really trying to keep it local, to help people here at home before I start to send things off to far-off lands. So I was thrilled when I found a post on the Ravelry GTA Fibre Faces group about Warming Hands.

Warming Hands accepts donations of children's sweaters, hats, mitts, socks, and baby blankets. They are an official collector group for the Dulaan Project, but they have also just begun a charity drive for the Innu children of Northern Labrador. They re based in Ottawa, but they have a number of drop-off points in Toronto (including Knit Cafe; I've been wanting an excuse to go there more often). How perfect is this? It meets all my criteria for being Canadian and with local drop-off locations, plus it sends the items to the Maritimes! I couldn't be happier. Especially since I've been re-reading all my Elizabeth Zimmerman books, so I've got future design ideas swirling in my little head.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

The lost post

2008-07-17T16:55:00.002-04:00

While looking back over the last few entries, I realized that I hadn't posted the pictures I took of the front and back panel, as I thought I had. I'd posted it on the Stashalong blog, but not here.

In the disappointment from my ill-fated Classico Twinset I decided to do some stashbusting with a charity sweater. I picked the Orphans for Orphans pattern from Knitting for Peace because it had interesting construction and was a great blank canvas for playing with stitch patters. It's knit in 2 panels, one front and one back, and then the side stitches are picked up from each panel and knit horizontally. The sides, as I've mentioned, are grafted together and the sleeves just keep getting knit horizontally until you come to the cuff. I looked on Ravelry to see some of the sweaters other knitters have knit from this pattern and to look for any relevant advice. One thing I found was that people who did the sleeve cuffs and border in garter stitch, as it's called for, complained that it flared out (as it would, because garter stitch is longer than stocking stitch), so I decided to do the cuffs and (when I come to it) the border in moss stitch to keep the theme going.

Here is a close up of the panels, which I finished last week. The sweater is designed to be a pullover, but still a little gun shy from my recent skirmish with neck holes, I've decided to make it into a cardigan with an off-centre button band. The stitch pattern I chose came from Gladys Thomas's Patterns for Guernsey, Jerseys and Arans and is a band of diamonds up the centre with moss stitch on either side. As I said on Monday, this pattern is repeated on the sleeves, with 2 (smaller) strips of the above pattern separated by 2 stitches of stocking stitch. The decrease section of the sleeves is left in stocking stitch so that I didn't have to fiddle with the pattern on an ever-decreasing number of stitches.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

A little sweater getting bigger

2008-07-14T17:03:00.004-04:00

I've been work diligently on the charity sweater, and I quite like how it's coming along. It's also a great way to get more practice at kitchener stitch, since each side of the body is kitchenered together. I'm still not able to do it without it looking up on youtube, but I'm getting there.

Here's the latest photo.

I wish the picture had come out clearer, it's kind of hard to see all the stitch definition. If you're interested, see it on my flickr page. The pattern up along the top of the sleeve is the same diamond and moss stitch pattern on the front and back panel, but smaller and doubled with a 2-stitch length of stocking stitch to separate them and mark the mid-point. There's also a band of 10 stitches of moss stitch across the side that meets in the side seem, although it didn't quite mtch up when I kitchenered the sides together, for some reason. Maybe i'll have more luck on the left side.

Here's a picture that Nyron took while I was working on it that I think is really cute.

Spirit is the perfect knitter's cat. She can't be bothered to chase my yarn unless it actually rolls over her paws, she's grown out of the stage where she used to bat at my needles while I knit (plus, I use circs almolst exclusively now, so there's no tempting ends for her to play with), and she's knows her place while I'm knitting is on my sholder, not on my lap (most of the time).

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Secret Pal 12 Questionaire

2008-06-30T13:44:00.003-04:00

At long last, the questionnaire for this round. Apologies to my spoiler that I haven't had it up before, but I never received it from the mod, so I wasn't sure what was going on. Hopefully you've been able to make do so far with the SP 11 one still linked on my sidebar. I've pulled the questions from my spoilee's blog and I hope they're the right ones.

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
I love alpaca and superwash wool (I do the laundry in the house, and I try not to hand wash if I can help it). I'm getting into socks and lace more lately, and I like anything kitteny soft. I really don't like novelty yarns (I even consider tape yarn and lamé as "novelty"). I'm looking forward to knitting with some bamboo yarn for the first time, although I don't know if I'll get to that this summer. I'm planning to knit my wedding bouquet, so this will be my first foray into felting and felting yarns.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
I made the roll-up case from Stitch n' Bitch for my straights and I made a sized-down version for my crochet hooks. My Knitpicks and Denise's each have their own cases. My generic circs and dpns are in boxes right now. I'm trying to design a practical case for them.

3. How long have you been knitting & how did you learn? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?
My grandmother taught me when I was 7, but I only ever picked up the needles when I had a project I wanted to do that happened to be knit. I've been a serial crafter all my life, so I often bounce around between crafts. When I started university, the knitting bug bit me hard and I've been a pretty veracious knitter ever since (that was about 8 years ago). I'd consider myself upper intermediate - advanced; I don't know everything, but I'm confident that there isn't anything I can't figure out when I need to.

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
I have one on Amazon.ca. Just look it up under my name. I'm not into pattern books; I prefer books that focus on a technique or the history of my crafts.

5. What's your favorite scent?
I love sweet fruity scents (but not cloying). I love sugar cookie and cinnamon scents.

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?
I like Reese's Pieces and Peanut Butter Cups. I love dark chocolate, especially over cherries or coconut. I don't eat a lot of candy, though. When I have it, I usually have to keep reminding myself to eat it before it goes bad.

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?
I crochet occasionally, but I tend to prefer knitting. I'm a beginning spinner and my mom bought me a Louet Victoria for my birthday. I do papermaking and I'm going to start bookbinding soon. I want to get into quilting. I used to be a cross-stitch fiend and still do it from time to time. I really like crafts that can be made with upcycled or reclaimed materials.

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)
My computer can play MP3s and I have an iPod that I take everywhere. It's really too hard to say what kind of music I like, because I'm really eclectic. I like good indie music (Belle & Sebastian, The Decemberists, The Shins, Tokyo Police Club, Sufjan Stevens, Jens Leckman, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Vampire Weekend) and mainstream stuff like Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Counting Crows, and folk music like Great Big Sea and Dropkick Murphies. I'm always open to new influences.

9. What's your favorite color(s)? Any colors you just can't stand?
I love earth tones, especially green (dark, forest green) and blue. In the reds, I prefer burgundy and deep reds to primary red. I'm starting to really like purples, too.

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?
I'm getting married in October, which I'm really excited about. We have 1 cat, a 9 year old named Spirit.

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?
I don't wear ponchos, but as a Canadian scarves, hats, and mitts are a necessity!

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?
I usually knit sweaters or tops, but I also like small projects like socks and baby sweaters. I'm going to get back into lace knitting once the dust settles from the wedding plans and I'll bring out the Mystery Shawl again and play around with Susanna Lewis's lace knitting workshop. I like anything that teaches me a new technique or gets me to try something or figure out something in a different way.

13. What are you knitting right now?
Right now I'm knitting the Spring Forward socks from this season's knitty, the Lighthearted Leaves scarf for my mom, and a child's guernsey sweater for charity.

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?
Of course! Anyone who doesn't, doesn't deserve to receive them.

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?
I prefer wooden circulars (particularly my Knitpick Harmony Options). I love any needles that are of the interchangeable variety.

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?
I have neither.

17. How old is your oldest UFO?
About 3 years old. It's a pair of mittens I started for my brother while I was in England and I still haven't finished them.

18. What is your favorite holiday?
Easily Christmas. I love going to The Bay on Queen St. and seeing the Christmas window displays.

19. Is there anything that you collect?
I collect books, salt & pepper shakers, Wade figurines, Eeyore swag, and things in miniature (like dollhouse accessories, although I don't own a dollhouse). I also collect antique and vintage knitting and sewing notions (this collection started with a bone needle case that I found in an antique shop in England).

20. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?
Obviously, Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting. :) My amazon list is mostly knitting and spinning books. I have a subscription to Interweave Knits and I'm considering one to Spin Off, but I haven't made the leap yet.

21. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?
Whenever I want to learn a technique, I just go ahead and learn it. Other than spinning, which was something I held off on for a long time. With everything else I just jump in with both feet.

22. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?
I am a sock knitter. I'm size 6 1/2 to 7 US shoe size.

23. When is your birthday?
January 22, 1981

24. Are you on Ravelry? If so, what's your ID?
lilknittinkitten

When good projects go bad

2008-06-25T15:50:00.002-04:00

I've been loving my Classico Twinset. I'm actually using the yarn called for in the pattern (a rarity for me) and I got gauge with no trouble. Despite a few brief turns in stockinette hell it's been fun to knit. The cashmere/wool yarn is soft and only occasionally give me a knitting blister and the yardage is so good I've been able to knit the bodies of both pieces in only 5 balls. Yet, despite such an upstanding record, maybe out of boredom or falling in with a bad crowd, any good project can go bad. And this one has.

Last night, while Nyron played Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation, I decided to get some finishing work done. I sewed together the shoulder seams on the shell and started to contemplate how to knit the collar. I've knit everything on this project in the round, even the things that are directed to be knit flat in the pattern, so I'm trying very hard to maintain this continuity. The directions say to sew together one shoulder seam, then pick up the stitches around the neck starting at the other shoulder seam and then sew up the shoulder seam and the side of the collar when finished. Well, that's not very seamless, so I decided I would sew both shoulders and then knit the collar in the round. I don't have any dpns that size, so my first thought was the 2-circ method, which I love. However, I don't have another circ in this size, either. I pulled out my Denises, but I remembered Brenda Dane's cautionary tale about the 2 needles of the "same size" by different companies that aren't actually the same size at all. So I measured the Denises and sure enough, it's slightly larger than the Harmony Options I'm using. Drat. But all is not lost, because this was a great excuse to make myself learn magic loop, which worked swimmingly.

After plugging along with the magic loop, I finished the collar. It looked a little long and I was afraid it might sit like a turtleneck, so I decided to try it on. This is probably something I should have done immediately after sewing up the shoulders.

As you can see, it doesn't quite fit.

OK, it really doesn't fit.

I think Nyron was having too much fun taking these pictures.

I'm quite ticked off. The problem is not that I knit the collar too tight; if only that's what it was! The opening itself is just too small. I'm going to have to not only frog the collar, but undo the sewing, frog a few inches of the shoulders and then re-configure the decreases to make the opening larger, without turning the shoulder seams into spaghetti straps. *sigh*

Spirit saw how distressed I was and come over to console me.

I may continue working on the cardigan part, but I think at least the shell is going into hibernation for a while until I cool down.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

What what what?

2008-06-22T14:52:00.004-04:00

Recently, I actually made someone do a triple take. Well, I didn't: my knitting did. I was on the subway with some of my friends in my publishing class at Ryerson and we were all travelling home together because we live all in the West End. I was sitting in one of the seats that is placed widthwise in the subway train and there was a woman reading a hardcover novel sitting directly in front of me, in a seat that is placed along the wall of the train so that we were perpendicular to each other. I guess that's how she happened to see me out of the corner of her eye, since she was sitting with her profile to me.

I saw her head turn slightly to take in my knitting, then go back to her book. An instant later her head swivelled back to the work on my lap, and she made that furrowed-brow frowning look of someone who's surprised and confused and not exactly happy about being either. Only on a third return to her book and then back at me did she look up at my face, I guess to try and puzzle out what manner of strange creature would be so oddly occupied in public. I swear, it was like I was kneading bread on my lap and covering her with flour! I gave her a bright smile and she returned it with a rather hesitant one and that's the last time her gaze ventured my way, although she stayed on almost as long as I did (I live at the penultimate stop). Some people are so strange.

I finally finished the baby blanket for Amy's new little girl, Grace. I think it looks quite good with the green border.

I'm very happy with how it turned out, although I think it'll be a while before I do a patchwork blanket again. That's a lot of sewing!

I'm also plugging along on the Spring Forward Socks from this season's Knitty. I cast them on specially for WWKIP Day because the Classico Twinset was too large to carry with me and I wanted something I could stick in my purse. The twinset is now only suitable for knitting on the couch or on my daily commute where I won't be disturbed for a good half hour at a time.

This is Lucy Neatby Celestial Merino Dream in Sunbeam that my mother bought me when I was home in May. I love the colour, but I'm a little concerned about one of the balls. As I was winding it up from the skein, I noticed that she seems to have dripped a spot of dark blue dye on it. I'm hoping that as I knit it up it all the little blue dots scattered throughout the yarn will all magically fall to the back of the stitches and none will show. We'll see.

I got some gardening done a while back, so I thought I'd share a picture of how they're coming along.

The plastic movie theatre popcorn tubs contain roma tomatoes, the wooden basket has 2 strawberry plants and the rectangular container with the round trellis in the back (Bernat Satin yarn wound around a tomato cage) has snow peas. I still wish I had a backyard, but for now my south-facing balcony will do. We've been getting a lot of rain lately, which helps a lazy gardener like me. I don't know what I'll do when I have to actually remember to water them myself!

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

World Wide Knit in Public Day

2008-06-18T17:02:00.003-04:00

Saturday was super fun. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and Rachel H did such a great job of setting up the 1000 Knitters Project/Yarn Harlot birthday bash. Everything ran smoothly (or at least it did from our end. I don't know if our lovely coordinators would say the same thing, since they spent most of the running around and making sure that everything ran smoothly!).

Lots of knitters showed up and veritably littered the steps of Lettuce Knit with their gorgeous selves and various works in progress.

That's Ken in the foreground (yes, The Ken, of the numerous mentions in Stephanie's blog and books), as well as my friends Marisa in the blue sweater (a whole sweater in Dream in Colour yarn!) and Kim (Indigodragonfly, who taught us colour theory and hand dyeing) in the purple stole with her back tot he camera.

Of course, Franklin was there, the man of the hour.

He was very congenial and made sure to engage each knitter in conversation while he did his thing. We talked about our connections to Eeyore, since I was wearing one of my favourite Eeyore t-shirts. He even got a peak at my Eeyore tattoo.

Of course, what would a party be without cupcakes?

The cupcakes on the right were made by Marisa and they spell out Stephanie & Franklin.

A few days before the event a knitter on Ravelry posted that she had near-mint condition copies of Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting and Knitting Lace: A Workshop by Susanna Lewis that she wanted to sell. She gave me a deal on both and dropped them off to me at Lettuce Knit.

I did do a tiny bit of shopping.

Notice there's no yarn? I am on a yarn diet, after all. I got 4 braids of wonderful blue roving (and how often is it that you find 4 matching braids of roving in the Lettuce Knit roving basket! I couldn't pass that up!), some undyed roving that I plan to dye to match my Aubergine Dream roving, this season's issue of Spin-off magazine and a Denise Interchangable soft case.

Of course, I have the case that my Denise's came in, but I've recently acquired a partial set from a woman who was doing an ultimate de-stash and gave me almost all of her knitting paraphernalia, so I wanted a case in which I could amalgamate both sets. It was a bit expensive, but my parents were in town and my dad handed me spending money on my way out the door (aren't dads who live far away great?!) so that funded the bulk of this little spree.

The blue roving will be spun and part of it used to knit my wedding garter. That way I'll have something new and something blue and if I borrow the ribbon I'll have something borrowed, too.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Skeins Her Way Goals contest

2008-06-05T15:55:00.002-04:00

I found this contest via the Destroy My Sweater blog and I think I'll join. Here are my summer goals:

- finish Amy's baby blanket
- finish Classico Twinset
- finish A Cardigan for Arwen

I'm keeping it small to keep from getting overwhelmed. I like the sweater kit that's the prize, too. It'll be nice to knit a top that I can wear to work that isn't light yellow.

In other news, I'm going with a co-worker to see The Kids in the Hall at Massey Hall tonight! So excited! I've been watching that show since I was 8 and I missed seeing them live the last time they went on tour, so this is going to be great. Plus, it looks like Russtle Peters will open for them. A great night of Canadian entertainment.

I've been tagged!

2008-06-04T17:14:00.003-04:00

Blast that Marisa! She's tagged me for a meme! So here we go...

The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1) 10 years ago, I was:

Getting ready to go spend a year in Ecuador: deciding what to pack, getting all kinds of shots and taking typhoid-preventing medication. It would have been my grade 12 year, but I ended up not bothering to try and get credits for the high school I attended there (and my teachers certainly didn't expect me to) so I ended up taking grade 12 over when I got back. I absolutely loved it there and Nyron and I will be going to Ecuador for our honeymoon, my first trip back.

2) 5 things on my to-do list for today:

Well the day is close to over by now, at 5:15pm, but here's what my list would have been this morning:

- cast-on the twinset cardigan, since I just have blocking and finishing work to do left on the shell (did this morning)
- survive another day at work with my lingering cold
- buy Kids in the Hall tickets from my co-worker Nancy (she had spare tickets and I've been dying to see them live ever since I missed them last time. I grew up watching that show!)
- manage to find something to eat before my publishing class tonight
- try not to let my cough keep me awake all night again.

3) Snacks I enjoy:

I'm really digging multi grain Tostitoes and Tostitoes Spinach dip right now. I always try to keep something healthy in my desk to snack on at work; right now it's Not Nuts Mountain Mambo trail mix. I've been eating a lot of Basset's Licorice All-Sorts (not so healthy) since my diabetic father discovered that they shoot his blood sugar through the roof and gave me all that he had, but I think I've eaten most of them. I don't tend to snack a lot and when I do I try to make it healthy.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Oh, do I dream of this! Well, actually my dreams are usually just content to make me a millionaire, so billionaire is quite a treat. Obviously, the first thing I'd do is pay off all my debts and the upcoming wedding debts, then I'd pay the debts of some of my friends who are currently crippled with 10s of thousands of dollars in student loans, and pay my parents back for sending me to school. Then, of course, I'd quite my job and Nyron and I would buy a house on the lake with a big backyard for gardening and a detached studio where I could spend my time making things for my woefully still-empty etsy store. I'd put most of the res into wise investments so that I don't have to worry about it running out and could maybe be a patron of a small publishing house to allow them to take more risks without worrying about the bottom line. Of course, I've always wanted to start my own charity, so there's that, too, and without a job I could spend my time doing volunteer work and teaching knitting at the local women's shelter (which I would much rather be doing than working at my paying job). Basically, I'd do all the things that I don't have the time and energy for because I use up all that time and energy at my job.

5) Places I have lived:

In order:

- Toronto, Ontario
- Bedford, Nova Scotia
- Vire, France (for a month, but it was in a house, not a hotel, so I considering it living there)
- Ambato, Ecuador
- Leeds, England

6) Jobs I have had:

My first job was scraping paint off the front deck and wheelchair ramp of my parents' funeral home when I was 13 (can you say lead poisoning?). Then, when my voice sounded mature enough, I graduated to answering phones and spending every Saturday in one of the locations in case someone walked in (I did this for 6 years). In high school I was a Membership Counsellor Assistant at Nubody's Fitness Centre (read telemarketer). When I moved to Toronto my first job was as a salesgirl at Seductions Love Boutique on Yonge St, then I did just about every job possible at the Cumberland Movie Theatre (including running the projectors). Then I worked for 2 years at World's Biggest Bookstore before leaving to go to England where I didn't do any job because I didn't have a work permit and that would have been illegal. Then I got my current job at the ESL school where I still work today.

7) Bloggers I am tagging who I will enjoy getting to know better:

I'm tagging Stasholic, my old Secret Pal recipient over at Destroy my Sweater, my Secret Pal at Ewe Gotta Knit, my dear friend Amy (Amy of the ladybug button sweater), and Nyron, just to make him write a post in his blog, which has been abandoned since March '07!

By the way, Marisa, I do believe it was your Rose Garden that leaked into my Aubergine Dream. I remember you picking up your roving to steam and a waterfall of dye coming out of it! :) It's a wonder I don't sue.

Knit, cough, knit

2008-06-03T16:17:00.003-04:00

So remember that I mentioned in my last post that Nyron had a cold? Well, share and share alike, right? I caught his cold on Sunday and ended up staying home from work yesterday. I was pretty out of it and slept in until almost noon, but when I did drag my ass out of bed I managed to find enough strength to knit. Of course. :)

On Sunday I decided to focus on bringing Arwen out from hibernation and getting to in a state where I could actually work on it while travelling, since a large amount of my knitting time comes from my daily 2 hour round-trip commute to and from work. To that end I took my newly acquired mad kitchener stitch skillz and grafted the sleeve. The pattern calls for only the cabled cuff to be grafted, but I figured if I can graft live stitches to a cast on edge for the cuff I can do it for the whole sleeve, right? I didn't like the idea of having a nicely grafted cuff and then a sewn seam all the way up the rest of the sleeve. I think it turned out quite well.

You can't tell in the picture, but because the first row of knitting on the sleeve is a purl row on the wrong side (the sleeve is knit horizontally instead of cuff to sholder) there's this little row of bumps just above the row of grafted stitches. It's kind of like Elizabeth Zimmerman's fake seam in her seamless sweaters. And it's along the underside-edge of the arm, so really only I know it's there. It's my little secret.

Yesterday, I worked on the sholder and neck shaping for the shell of my twinset. I don't like carrying patterns around with me as try to carry everything I need in one small sholder bag, so it sometimes take a bit of coordination to get all the shapping done at home so that it's ready to travel the next morning. So I really took advantage of being home all day (and the shaping wasn't complicated enough to muddle my rather woozy head) and got the whole front and part of the back above the armhole devide done.

Coming along, eh? I'll definitely have the shell done this week so I can cast on the cardigan at the end of the week or on the weekend.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

I dream of Aubergines

2008-05-31T13:06:00.006-04:00

Ravelry continues to be a wonderful source to fuel my fibre addiction. A forum chain about dyeing led to 3 of us spending yesterday afternoon in the new Lettuce Knit dye room with Kim (Idigodragonfly) learning how to mix acid dyes and basic colour theory. We spent the first half of the class learning to mix the powdered dyes in primary colours and combining them to create other colours (like in 3rd grade, but much more scientific). It may sound boring but was actually quite interesting. One of these days I'll make a whole colour wheel of dyed yarn as a template for dyeing, although I'll probably start with Kool-Aide since it's cheaper and less toxic. You can get some surprisingly nice shades by mixing Kool-Aide, not just the acid green you're probably picturing right now. I know there's an article on Knitty about it, but I can't be bothered to look it up right now.

Then we got to the fun stuff. I bought 100g of merino roving from the store and dyed this roving.

Gorgeous, eh? I love the variations in purples. I've been getting more into purple lately, as a departure from surrounding myself with green all the time. I found instructions on this blog on how to braid roving into those nice braided strips. I think it looks really pretty this way. I called it Aubergine Dream.

I think I'll wait until I'm a little better at spinning before I tackle this just because it feels like it deserves better. Speaking of spinning, I kidnapped Marisa (one of the other 2 who attended the dye class with me) and forced her to drive me home in exchange for supper and getting to play with my spinning wheel. There was Rock Band in the deal, as well, but we couldn't get it to work and Nyron was still getting over his cold so he was taking a nap.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Much ado about babies

2008-05-27T07:30:00.004-04:00

Angela's baby shower was on Sunday, so I had to step it up on the baby knitting. I had planned to give the first blanket that I finished to Amy, since she was due first, but I haven't seen her yet and I needed something to put in a pretty gift bag for the shower so the first blanket went to Angela, instead. It'll be a while yet before I see Amy, since she lives on the other side of town, so I've got time to make up the second blanket for her. The only difference between the 2 will be that I don't have enough of the Strange Harvest colourway to do the border, so I'll do the blanket for little Grace with a green border instead.

It looked a lot nicer after I blocked it.

Of course, I had to get the baby sweater finished, too, which only meant blocking it and sewing on the buttons. I love these leather buttons that I found at Courage My Love in Kensington (absolutely THE place to get buttons in Toronto, in my humble opinion).

I'm not sure I like having such a large button-free space at the bottom; I wish I'd put in a 6th button hole (especially since the buttons came in a set of 6). But then again, it may be good for pudgy baby tummies to have some room to grow.

It felt so good to get the buttons on this sweater, that I decided to go ahead and put the buttons on Grace's sweater, too. I love the little ladybugs, again found at Courage My Love. I think it makes the sweater a little more feminine.

In the midst of all this baby knitting, I made sure not to slack in Sock Wars. I was eliminated on Friday, but not before taking out my own target! I consider that a victory, especially since I finally learned kitchener stitch in order to graft the toes! I found a video on Youtube that I was able to follow much easier than diagrams in a book. These are the socks I knit for my target:
And this is what my assassin sent me:

I know the lighting isn't very good, but I was trying to take the picture quickly this morning before I left for work (if Nyron's reading this, yes, that is what made me late this morning). I love the little skull, what a nice touch! I also got a bag of tea. Mmmmm. Tea.

I've started a cardigan twin set in wool/cashmere that I bought as a kit at the Good Buy sale at Village Yarns. It's in a lovely light yellow colour that will be perfect to wear at work this summer. I've recently realized that all of the tops I've knit for myself this past year have been in a similar shade of light yellow. I really didn't do that intentionally; light yellow isn't even one of my favourite colours! It just happened that way. I'd like to pick up Arwen again, as well, although it's quickly getting too warm to wear it this season. At least it'll be ready for the fall.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Mixed reviews

2008-05-16T11:24:00.002-04:00

I do a lot of knitting in publick (almost every day, in fact, on my commute to work) and most of the time it goes without comment by the general population of non-knitters around me. Last night, though, I received 2 comments from people on the street. The first came when I was getting off the streetcar to go to my knitting class that I teach every other Thursday. A woman on her bike asked what I was making and when I held it up so she could see my socks, she said it was nice. Later on, while we were enjoying knitting class on the patio of the cafe in Kensington Market where we meet, a man walking by shouted out "knitting sucks!" at us. When we all looked up he smiled and said, "just kidding". I think he just wanted to make a group of young women look at him. Loser.

It was really precient that I was talking yesterday about Amy having the baby, because yesterday Amy had the baby! After work I found a voice mail from her husband to say that little Gracie had been delivered that morning and that mother and baby were fine. It was really sweet of him to call me with a birth anouncement. I wanted to call back and congratulate him, but he sounded really tired (she went into labour the night before, so he probably hadn't had any sleep since Wendesday morning) so I didn't want to risk waking him. I'll call this afternoon when I'm home from work.

I got confirmation from my Sock Wars assassin this morning that she didn't mail the socks priority post! Hurray! That means I'll definitely have my socks done before the end of the weekend (especially since it's a long weekend in Canada) so I'll have the satisfaction of taking out my own target before being wacked myself.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Much knitting, but little blogging

2008-05-15T09:04:00.002-04:00

My apologies for being such a negligent blogger. I spent most of last week in Nova Scotia doing wedding planning and then work has suddenly been hit by the busy season, so this is the first chance I've had for an update.

Angela's baby shower is next weekend and I still haven't finished the second baby blanket. Therefore, I have decided to give her the first one I finished and give the other one to Amy later, since Amy isn't having a baby shower (this is her second yung'n) so I have more time to before I'll see her again. I'm assuming she's had the baby by now, since it's a week past her due date, but I don't want to bother her while she's still "lying in" so I'll call her next week sometime. I still have to block Angela's sweater so I can sew the buttons on. I've never sewn buttons onto knitting before, so wish me luck.

Sock Wars III is in full swing and I'm almost halfway done. I'm doing the 2 socks on 2 circs method (as always) which I was hoping would give me an edge on speed, but apparently not. A quick peruse of Ravelry shows that lots of people have already finished their socks. Then I looked on the forum and found that my assassin has sent my socks today! Depending on the type of postage, I could be "dead" as early as tomorrow. Hopefully she picked a slower service so that I'll at least be able to finish these before my untimely demise. On the bright side, no one has ever knit socks for my before, so I'm thrilled to get them. Always a silver lining, right?

While I was in Nova Scotia my mom and I had 1 afternoon where I didn't have any wedding stuff or family stuff scheduled and I could do whatever I wanted to do. Wanna guess what it was? Yarn shopping! When I was growing up in Bedford (the town next to Halifax) the only place to buy yarn was Lewiscraft, which meant Patons Canadiana and Bernat acrylic. But in the last few years Halifax has got a few nice yarn shops and I always try to hit them when I'm in town. My excuse was that I needed to get sock yarn for Sock Wars, so that became my focus. We started off at LK Yarns which is close to where my bridesmaid Sarah lives. There, Mom got me 2 skeins of Estelle Arequipa: one in a lovely dark green and the other in a peachy seashell type variegated. Then we went to the Loop Cafe (where I took my hand spindle spinning lesson) and really raked it in. I got a braid of Aurelia Topknots roving in deep purple and lilac tones and a bag of Louet wool fibre in a natural brown colour (Mom spotted both of them, saying "is that what you use on your wheel thing?"). Then I got my obligatory 2 skeins of lovely Lucy Neatby Celestial Merino Dream, this time in a gorgeous sunny yellow, and a ball of Tofutsies for the Sock Wars socks (see, I didn't forget my original objective). I'm loving working with Tofutsies and definitely intend to buy some for myself. While we were checking out, Mom noticed a hairpin lace bobbin and decided to buy it for me, too. Then, she noticed a scarf pattern called Lighthearted Leaves from Fiddlesticks Yarn and decided she wanted me to knit it for her. So she added the pattern and the yarn called for (a silk yarn in a lovely orange colour) to the pile in front of us. Can I say, I love yarn shopping with Mom? :)

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Happy April!

2008-04-05T16:58:00.007-04:00

Hurray! I just love Spring. Even though it's still rather chilly outside, the snow is (mostly) gone with no signs of returning (until December).

I've been getting a lot of knitting done lately. I've got the 2 Rocketry sweaters done for Amy's and Angela's babies. They just need blocking and buttons. I couldn't find any suitable buttons in my button stash, but I did see some really cute ones at Romni; Little sheep with dangly feet that come in the same rainbow of colours as the sweaters. I'll probably get them for Amy's baby, since Amy is a knitter and will appreciate it, and find something a little more classic for Ange. Here are the two completed sweaters:

I'm probably the last knitblogger in Toronto to write about it, but I did go to the Stephanie Pearl McPhee book launch on Tuesday. I've somehow missed every book signing she's ever had, so I'm so happy to have finally made it to this one. I worked a half day so I could meet up with some other knittas and participate in the Sock Picture Scavenger Hunt. You can see the pictures on my flickr page. I do have a picture of my sock with a TTC driver, but I was informed that he could get into a lot of trouble or even fired for having a picture of him in a TTC car or wearing a TTC uniform on the internet without the TTC's consent, so it's not included. Here are the lovely knitters I spent my afternoon with:

We then went to the book launch (which was, of course, the whole point). The Skydiggers were great; I loved seeing a knitter get an opening act! :) If you look in the picture that she put up on her blog, you can see me in the front row - right hand side in a green shirt. Marisa (the blond lovely in the picture above) is sitting to my right.

After laughing at the hilarity of Stephanie's stories and her wonderful talk, we all went over to the Fox and Fiddle on Bay, an old haunt of mine from university. Despite having been warned of our coming in advance, the owners - with typical disregard for the knitting community and our vast numbers - only had 2 waitresses on staff, so I didn't even get my order taken until after 10pm. However, I was starving and the whiskey I was drinking was beginning to need some food companionship. I got to chat with Stephanie a few times, too! She's one super lady. :)

She said she liked my top! :)

Until next we knit!

=^_^+

More knitting woes

2008-03-20T14:48:00.002-04:00

After years of dithering, I finally bought a set of Knit Picks Options needles. I already have a set of Denise Interchangeables that Nyron bought me for Christmas one year, but I've become so enamored with using interchangeable style circular needles that I often have to juggle the limited number of needle points and cable lengths between many projects and decided that it would be worth adding the Knit Picks version to my stash. Once I've had a chance to use them, I'll give a full review of the pros and cons of each set.

In the same order, I got a pair of Harmony wood 2.25mm circular needles so that I could knit the Fall Fire socks from the Robyn's Nest October Sock Club. I bought the Harmony needles because I think they are so pretty, but I paid for my vanity. I bought them with the intention of knitting the socks during the Stephanie Pearl McPhee book tour launch on April 1, so I cast the socks on Tuesday night, thinking this would give me plenty of time. My preferred method of sock knitting is toe-up, 2 socks on 2 circs, and the pattern is written from toe up so this was the perfect pattern for my still-fledgling sock skills to handle while watching the glorious Yarn Harlot on the stage of the Isabel Bader Theatre (where I used to have an English class, so it's already imbued with good memories for me). I was only on the second round of the socks, in the middle of a Make 1 to the right where I was trying to get the point of the needle needle in the twisted M1 stitch and - horrors! - the needle tip snapped off in my hand! I looked down and the little tip was still hanging on by the stitches and the little metal join was in my hand, connected to the cable, with a completely clean break where the needle tip had once been.

I will not repeat what I said when I realized what had happened, or those of you with parental controls on your computers will not be able to access this blog, but suffice it to say it was nasty enough to make Nyron pause the Battlestar Gallactica DVD we'd been watching (he's trying to get my caught before season 4 starts in April). After some cuddles and sympathy from Nyron, I sent an email to their customer service address requesting to exchange them for a pair of nickel plated circs of the same size (I'm not taking my chances with another set of wood needles, as beautiful as they are). And I waited.

I didn't hear back from them all day yesterday, so this afternoon I called the number directly. I explained what had happened and further added my concerns about my April 1 deadline. In true knitter fashion, the mention of Stephanie Pearl McPhee lit a fire under the lovely woman who answered the phone (I believe her name was Kathy) and she said that she would try to get my new needles to me as fast as possible so that I would have them in time. I don't even have to send the broken ones back to them, as that would further delay the exchange. I was very impressed. Now I'm just hoping I get my new needles in time. Wish me luck!

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Sock Wars III: prepare to be assassinated!

2008-03-12T10:40:00.002-04:00

3s seem to be The number with me lately. I didn't hear about the Mystery Shawl KAL until a week before the deadline for its third round, and I hadn't heard about Sock Wars until membership had closed for the second round, so I've had to wait for the third to join. I just saw on the Craft: magazine website that membership for Sock Wars III is now open, so I jumped at the chance to finally sign up. After wrestling with my PayPal account for a bit (I guess it's a good thing that I use it so rarely that I forgot my password) I was able to pay the $2 membership fee and join.

I'm really looking forward to this, since I always want an excuse to knit socks and it sounds like a lot of fun. What a unique idea! For those of you who are hearing about this for the first time, here's the way it works: On May 9 everyone who has signed up with be emailed an exclusive sock pattern and a top-secret dossier with their assassination target. In order to assassinate your target, you must knit them a pair of socks and send it to them. Once they receive their socks they are dead and must send their assassination target, as well as their unfinished socks of death, to you. You must then try to assassinate this next person. However, someone out there has a file on you, so you must try to assassinate as many people as you can before you, yourself are assassinated. Good ol' extreme knitting fun! I'm really looking forward to it!

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Oh the horror!

2008-03-10T13:28:00.003-04:00

Last night I witnessed a horrible sight. As I was getting into bed a tiny, evil moth whisped past my head and dissapeared against the builder's beige walls of my bedroom. I froze, my eye wild with terror. Nyron tried to reassure me that it was just a fly, but I knew! I knew it was a moth! When we caught it, I could show him for sure.

It was too late last night to put all my natural fibres in quarantine in the freezer, but it is what I will do first thing tonight when I get home from work. To add to the trauma, Nyron and I accidentally locked Spirit in my studio when we went in to see if there was any obvious signs of advanced infestation (there weren't, but we all know that means little). I didn't realize this until this morning, when I heard a soft, plaintive mewing coming from the room across the hall. Boy, was she pissed!

Pray for me.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

KnitML knitting code

2008-02-22T11:01:00.003-05:00

I have recently discovered the Craft:zine website and have been spending my downtime at work browsing past entries and feeling very inspired to get making stuff again (I began a part-time architecture course at Ryerson's Continuing Education school and it's been taking a fair bit of my spare time and focus). I came across somethingin one of the entries from December that I just had to pass on as something that could develope into a very useful tool for us knitters. It's the KnitML standardized pattern format. It promises to:

Render a pattern in either written directions or a chart, dependent on a preference setting
Render a pattern in any language, using conventions familiar to that language and dialect
Validate that a pattern is physically possible to knit (eliminating some types of errata)
Automatically convert English measurements to and from metric measurements
Size a pattern up or down to any size, not just the sizes that come with the pattern
Recalculate a pattern for your gauge rather than the one that came with the pattern
Explicitly write out mathematically complex directions (e.g., "increase 34 stitches evenly over 171 stiches")
Alter the pattern using an easy-to-use graphical editor (or create new KnitML-based pattern from scratch)
Preview the result of a pattern using graphics
Integrate into your favorite knitting software (such as Sweater Wizard)
Digitally sign the pattern to guarantee original authenticity

Pretty cool, eh? They've got a version 1.0 up on the website and ready for download and testing. I think I'll play around with it sometime this weekend.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Up in smoke

2008-02-20T09:23:00.002-05:00

This morning on my way to work, I could smell smoke on the subway. I wasn't terribly concerned, because occationally the gears or someone illegally smoking on TTC property has caused a smoky smell in the past and it wasn't thick enough indicate to indicate an immediate threat, like that the train was on fire. However, I still smelled it when I got off the subway at Union station and walked to work. It wasn't until I got in and mentioned it to some of my co-workers that I found out the full story. A building at Queen and Portland St. caught fire early this morning and the fire has quickly spread to the surrounding buildings, mostly small retail stores. My first thought was, Oh no! That's near Romni!

I have been told by Nyron that it's actually on the south side of the street, so as long as the fire doesn't jump 4 lanes of traffic, it shouldn't effect Romni, which is on the north side. It has, however, burned down Suspect Video. We didn't rent from Suspect often, but it's been a well-loved independent video rental place in Toronto for many years and we enjoyed browsing the Queen St store and looking at their cool movie toys and collectables. It was the kind of place where you can get films that the big box rental places like Blockbuster don't carry (like Six String Samurai). It's always sad to lose an indepentent store, of any variety, in a world that is quickly being Walmarted. There is another location on Markham St. so at least we haven't lost it entirely. But still, it's sad. When the smoke clears, we'll see what else has been lost from one of my favourite streets in the city.

Until next we knit.

=^_^=

Knit-less week

2008-02-13T16:38:00.002-05:00

Ha ha! Did I say that I was going to get lots of knitting done on the weekend? I highly underestimated the pain involved in recovering from having 4 of your teeth surgically removed from you jaw. I'm feeling better now, but I haven't knit a stitch since Wednesday, which is just as well, since Lettuce Knit didn't have the yarn I need to finish those 2 sweaters. And that's what I really want to be working on. Not Nyron's sweater. Not Greg's snowboarding hat (which will be ready just in time for him to wear to the beach, at this rate). No, the only knitting that is really calling to me are those sweaters and I can't work on them. *sigh*

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Meet Vicky!

2008-02-04T19:08:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I got my spinning wheel. I ordered it from Lettuce Knit on Monday and wasn't expecting it to arrive until next week, but I got a call on Wednesday afternoon saying it had arrived! I picked it up on my lunch break so that I could bring it back to work and show my co-workers, who were at least feigning interest in all my crazy talk about spinning wheels (one of my co-workers thinks I'm a complete geek, which is true). So here she is in all her glory:

She's a Louet Victoria, which is a nice beginner model. I made a little video on my Mac to show my mom, since this was her birthday gift to me, afterall. I spent most of the weekend spinning the lovely roving that my Secret Pal sent me. I'm still over-spinning, but I'm getting better.

When I wasn't spinning, I was working on the Rocketry sweaters that I'm making for my two pregnant friends, Amy and Angela. I'd put them into hibernation while we waited to find out the sex of each baby. Amy's last ultrasound showed that her baby is a girl, so now I know which side to put the button holes. Angela's last ultrasound was inconclusive in terms of gender, so I'm giving it boy buttonholes since it's more interchangable than girl button holes (or so Nyron tells me). Here are the progress pics:

Angela's is just 1 more round of 2x1 ribbing and a few buttons away from being done.

I need to pick up some more purple and brown yarn from Lettuce Knit to finish Amy's. I'll likely do this on Wednesday, so I can work on these while I'm recovering from having all 4 wisdom teeth removed on Thursday. Yikes!

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Some current WIPs

2008-01-13T17:48:00.001-05:00

My primary focus for the new year is to finish the mountain of WIPs that have built up toward the end of last year. You can see my post on the Stashalong site for a complete list.

For now, I thought I'd update some of the progress I've made this weekend. Despite having recently purchase the very hard to find Rock Band for the PS3, which is very distracting, I have managed to spend some time knitting this weekend.

My main focus has been the snowboard hat I'm knitting for my co-worker Greg. He's paying me good money for this, so I want to make sure it's done while there's still time in the season to snowboard!

I'm knitting it from the top down on 2 circs so that I can fit it while I knit. I've knit to where I think the increases should end and will take it to work tomorrow to have him try it on.

As for Nyron's Christmas sweater, that is predictably still on the needles:

If you look closely, you can see the tiny bit of the red N that I'm knitting onto the chest. What I'm learning with this project is that it's not impossible to knit a picture onto a sweater that's knit in the round, but it is slower and there's a LOT of weaving in of ends. :)

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2008-01-02T10:13:00.000-05:00

Seasons greetings to everyone! This is just a quickie while I'm having a slow day at work. I hope everyont got to spend time with their friends an family and they had a wonderful holiday, whatever you celebrate. I hope to do a post in the near future about my shamefully large WIP pile. :)

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Wedding bells and silver bells.

2007-12-23T10:42:00.000-05:00

Hurray! On Thursday night after work, Nyron took me to a very romantic spot (a small circle of evergreen trees surrounding a pond in the courtyard of BCE place) and proposed! It was so lovely! He diverted my attention by having me look out at the twinkle lights on the evergreen trees and the decorations on the office building across the courtyard and while I was thus distracted he put our song on his iPod and pointed the head phones outward so I could hear it, then got down in front of my and asked me to marry him! I'm so happy. All that night as we did the last of our Christmas shopping I couldn't stop from glancing down at the ring on my finger; it's a wonder I didn't walk into things!

Here's some pictures of the ring I keep staring at:

I like this last one so much I made it my profile picture on Facebook. I've been getting so many congrats on Facebook, it's unbelievable. Now I've just got to start planning a wedding!

Until next we knit!^

=^_^=

Technical difficulties: I'll post what I have and fix it later.

2007-12-16T13:14:00.000-05:00

Sorry for my prolonged absence, everyone, I've been sick for the last few weeks. I'm better now, though, and able to show off my final Secret Pal gift:

Adopt-a-sheep

2007-11-20T16:41:00.000-05:00

I was browsing the TreeHugger 2007 Gift Guide this week and, among a number of cool things, I came up with this: the Owen Farm Adopt-a-sheep program. For $125USD or $160CAD you can be the proud owner of a sheep without all the hassle of having to take care of it. You get an adoption certificate, 7 seasonal visits to the farm to cuddle your sheep, 6 letters from the farm, a storage binder, photo journal, and Sheep Year Calendar to record your experiences on aforementioned visits, an invitation to shearing day, your own sheep's fleece (raw, but they will wash and card it for an extra fee), a picture of your sheep, pedigree information and history of your sheep, a phone call when your sheep goes into labour, and an invitation to the End-of-the-Sheep-Year party. How cool is that! If I knew someone who would be willing to drop $160 on a single gift for me, and if we had a car that could survive multiple trips to New England, I would so ask for that for Christmas! Sigh. I'll just have to wait a while before I can vicariously live the life of a sheep farmer.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Let the season begin!

2007-11-16T13:55:00.000-05:00

This morning we had the first snow of the season. Of course, it being mid-November, it was more along the lines of "flurries" or "snow showers" as they called it on the 680 News weather report. Still, that means the fingerless mitts are definitely not going to cut it much longer. I must get to work on the gloves (I've decided to make them fingerless gloves with a fold-over top for maximum versatility). I need to learn kitchener stitch for the pattern I'm designing (I'm knitting these on the fly right now) and that is a skill that has eluded me despite a number of attempts to figure it out. I must bring hem to the Westend Woolies meeting next Thursday and get Sarah to show me how it's done.

I did end up going to the Yarn Boutique sale looking for yarn for the Juno Shawl and was sadly disappointed: not just with the sale, but with the whole store. This is the first time I've been in there since the first week it re-opened under new management. The old shop didn't have a lot of variety, but the owner was super nice and you could knit and chat with her forever. It had a cosy, rather cluttered feel that felt very comfortable. When I went last night, there still wasn't a lot of variety, but it had lost a lot of that welcoming feel. Instead of the warm browns of the old store, it's now been painted a bright sterile white. Instead of an owner interested in a chat, it had an owner (I assume it was the owner, there was a picture of her and her kids on the table) absorbed in the TV while she knit. When I asked for some lace weight yarn I practically had to explain to her what lace weight was. When I told her what gauge I was looking for we searched the store for it and couldn't find a single ball or skein with that gauge. Then she just went back to the TV (she was watching I/R Cold Case Files on A&E, a show I love, which prompted Nyron to wonder allowed what it was with knitters and A&E crime documentaries).

I took a moment last night to look up the retailers for the actual yarn called for in the pattern, Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace, and it turns out that they carry it at Lettuce Knit. Looks like I'll be going there after work tonight. I've decided that I'm definitely going to knit it and hope to get it done in time to give it as a gift to Kathryn (I hope she's not reading this blog). I've been budgeting very well this week, so I think I'll buy another skein of the Dream in Color yarn for the Rocketry blankets and sweater for Amy's baby. It's reasonably priced for hand-dyed yarn (although still more than I usually spend per skein) so I'm hoping to make it stretch for 2 babies.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

So much knitting, how do I keep track?!

2007-11-13T16:54:00.000-05:00

It's official; all the symptoms are there. Someone call a doctor: I have Startitus. I think it's caused by the scratchiness of Nyron's Christmas sweater. I just can't knit it for long periods of time, and since that's exactly what I have on Tuesday nights when I work at the Rogers Television station I need to make sure that I have something soft and friendly on the needles that won't peel the skin off my index finger. I started the Rocketry sweater from Lettuce Knits that Yarn Harlot was obsessed with and it will be a gift for a co-worker who is pregnant. I'm also making a blanket out of the same colours, only instead of doing the blanket they have pictured on the yarn company's website, I'm doing a log cabin blanket in the same stripe pattern of the sweater. However, it was so fun and quick to knit (I think I'll do one for Amy, as well!) that I've already knit as much as I can until I know if the baby is a boy or a girl (it effects which side to put the button holes).

So that left me with the question of what to knit tonight. I loved the scarf that I knit for my Ravelry Scarf Exchange pal, which was just the cable edging from A Cardigan for Arwen with an added repeat to give it some extra width, that I've decided to make a whole scarf, mitten, hat set for myself. I'm working on the mitts right now (which may end up becoming gloves, I haven't decided) because I need a pair of mitts. I only have some fingerless mitts that I knit for myself when I was living in England (where fingerless mitts are appropriate pretty much all year round).

But now, when I've only just barely cast on for this 3 piece project this very morning, my eye is wandering once more. I didn't really pay much attention to the Knitty surprise patterns when they came out because I was really busy at work that day and then I just forgot about them. But I just saw a link for the Juno Regina Shawl on someone else's blog and am smitten. It's so lovely and I could work on it on my commute no problem (a rare thing with lace shawl). This may become my next project for me. Or I might knit it for my friend Kathryn, since I'm still looking for a good gift for her. Maybe I should stop off at Yarn Boutique on my way home from work sometime this week. They're having a sale...

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Birth of the Westend Woolies

2007-11-12T12:53:00.000-05:00

Ravelry has done it again. For years I've been trying to start or join a knitting group closer to home, so that I don't have to travel the hour trip downtown or stick to ones that start immediately after I get off work. I had one last about 6 months or so and then fizzled out. I'd put entries up on Freecycle and Favorville looking for a groups to join or start and hadn't got a lot of response, so I'd pretty much given up. Until I saw a post on Ravelry, by a woman named Tracy who was about to move to the High Park neighbourhood and was asking if there was a group she could join. In less than a week there were half a dozen other Westenders joining in and before I knew it, we had become the founders of the Westend Woolies.

We had our first gathering on Thursday and it went really well. We all get along and were able to find lots to talk about. Right now we meet at a Starbucks, but I'd like to look into finding a place that serves food, since I still end up going there straight after work.

I'm preparing for a soft opening of my etsy store, since I'm sick of it sitting empty. My problem seems to be that I have so many crafts that I do and so many ideas for products that I don't know where to start: so I just don't. I've decided to focus on one craft right now until I've got lots ot items ready before swtiching to another. Right now I'm inspired by having located my papermaking supplies, so I'm working on some handmade recycled paper and some Christmas cards to sell. I'll move into bookbinding in a bit, when I really get a good method worked out for making lots of paper at once. I'll let you all know when I start listing things on the store.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Secret Pal show off post

2007-11-04T18:23:00.000-05:00

This is the second weekend in a row that I haven't been able to make the video post about the gift that my Secret Pal had me pick up from Lettuce Knit, so I don't want to put it off any longer.

This is what was waiting for my at Lettuce Knit:

Fleece Artist sock yarn! Hurray! Isn't it lovely? apparently she had a chat with Laura who works there about what I've bought in the past and what she thought I would like, and my SP settled on Fleece Artist because it's Nova Scotia (awwww) and sock yarn because I've been dabbling in socks lately (although my last pair didn't turn out so well, but that's the fault of the pattern).

I'm working on a tweed sweater for Nyron right now. I hate knitting tweed, it's so scratchy, but these are the things we do for love.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Good-bye Stay-cation!

2007-10-23T15:55:00.000-04:00

All last week I was on stay-cation. "Stay-cation" is a term borrowed from the show Corner Gas and it refers to a vacation where you don't go anywhere; you stay home. I had a lovely stay-cation and now that I'm back at work I'm very sad to see it gone. I spent a lot of time on the couch, playing Sims 2 on my new Mac (the game runs like a dream!). I also made sure that I didn't waste my stay-cation and I got a lot of housework done, including cleaning the garage! I mean it, it's actually clean. We even swept the floor (for the first time in 2 years). For those of you who have never been to my house (which is pretty much all of you) my garage became not just the repository of my stuff and Nyron's stuff, but my great-grandmother's stuff when she moved into the nursing home, so it was very full of stuff. You had to be carefully when opening the car door that it didn't hit any of the miscellaneous stuff piled up next to it. Now, things have been carted off to the Salvation Army, sorted onto storage shelves or brought inside for more thorough sorting (mostly boxes of old clothes). I'm still a little shocked each time I'm go into the garage to see all the open space. :)

I've received word from my darling Secret Pal that she's sent my parcel to Lettuce Knit. What fun! That way, I get an excuse to poke around a yarn store and I can walk out with goodies without even spending any money! Sadly, I won't be able to get there until Thursday, but I now have something to look forward to Thursday after work. Pictures to follow once I've brought it home (maybe I'll video tape opening it and post it as a video blog. We shall see).

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Knit like a chef, or cook like a knitter?

2007-10-17T21:32:00.000-04:00

A recent series of articles for Interweave's Knitting Daily newsletter has been about using your stitch dictionairy like a cookbook. It's meant to empower knitters to design, or at least personalize patterns, in their knitting. For me, however, I've been trying to teach myself how to use a cookbook like my stitch dictionairy. I have no problems designing on the fly, opening a stitch dictionary and putting together a project without using a published pattern, but for a long time I've been wishing I had that kind of confidence in my cooking. I've spent so long cooking only frozen meals, like fish and chips or chiken strips, that I'm like a knitter who has never strayed from a pattern. The idea of cooking something real, of poking my head in my fridge and making dinner out of whatever's there, is something that Nyron seems to do with ease but that I regard as some kind of magic. Until I realized the similarity between what I want to do in cooking and what I already do for knitting.

So that's what I'm working on right now, along with my actual knitting, of course. I'm reading through Cooking Basics for Dummies and trying to make it make sense, so that I can view my kitchen the same why I view my yarn closet, as a place of possibility instead of a place of intimidation. Wish me luck.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

A new member of the family

2007-10-10T10:11:00.001-04:00

This weekend, we had a little bundle of joy arrive at our house. Yes, that's right; we got a new computer! Hurray! I've had my current computer since second year university so I'm definitely due for a new one. It's a Macbook Pro. I haven't used a Mac since grade school so it's a whole new world for me. Nyron spent all weekend uploading a software that will allow me to run Microsoft programs on the Macbook. Now why, I hear the Mac-heads crying, would you ever want to run a Microsoft program on a Mac? So I can play Sims 2, silly! My old computer is so old that it didn't run it properly, even when the game was brand new, and I ended up letting it collect dust because I couldn't stand how slow and choppy it was. So Nyron installed this program and, voila! Sims runs like it was meant to, and for the first time ever I can see what it's like to really play the game. *sigh*

But that's not the only reason I bought a new computer. Nyron and I love road trips (well, we would if our car could handle it!) and we want to start making travel videos when we take breaks from Smog Town. Mac's have great editing software for film, video and music (even if we can't afford the $800 Final Cut Pro). I didn't have a lot of time to play around with it this weekend because we spent all of our time between turkey dinners getting the computer set up the way we want it (Happy Thanksgiving, by the way!). But I plan to teach myself video editing by making a video blog entry this weekend. I'm pretty excited about it. If people like it, I may make more (maybe even enter the world of video podcasting? We'll see). So you can look forward to that this weekend.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Secret Pal 11 Contest #3

2007-09-30T22:04:00.001-04:00

This contest is "Flash your Stash", so I've got to fess up and show a picture. It's time to literally come out of the closet:

This is the Yarn Closet. It's the closet in my studio that is exclusively used for my knitting. Here's a closer view of the left side:

and a close up of the right side:

and, of course, the top shelf:

It's a lot of yarn. I was able to pair it down a bit with my yarn diet this summer. I'm not officially on a yarn diet anymore, but I am still trying to concentrate on the stash. I plan on going through it some weekend and putting some of it up for sale.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Secret Pal swag!

2007-09-30T10:04:00.000-04:00

My first Secret Pal package arrived and it's an embarrassment of riches. Here's the pic:

I got a skein of olive green yarn which her note says is spun from the fleece of Nova Scotian sheep (how thoughtful!) and a lovely braid of merino roving. The girl knows I like green! Too bad I had to give the spinning wheel back to Lettuce Knit, but I'm angling for a wheel for Christmas, so hopefully the braid won't sit waiting for long.

She also sent a print out of a bag pattern from MagKnits (a suggested project for the olive green wool, perhaps?), a sweet little tin box with Audrey Hepburn on it (love her!), a sample package of goat's milk lotion, one of those plastic pencils where the leads come pre-sharpened in little white holders collected in the pencil shaft (total nostalgia, I haven't had one of those since grade school!), a note book, and a tin of lovely beaded stitch markers from Hide and Sheep on Etsy. Here's a close up of the stitch markers:

Aren't they sweet? I actually remember finding Hide and Sheep while browsing Etsy one day and admiring the dangle-free stitch markers, and now I have a set! Awesome!

Here's a funny, totally non-knitting related story for my dear readers:

I try wherever possible to live sustainably, and toward this end I vermicompost. This is composting with worms, where I keep a bin with red wiggler worms (the kind you fish with) and when I have some vegetable matter, like potato skins, I toss it into the bin and let the worms turn it into compost. I tried this once before with a homemade bin and it didn't work very well, but I recently got a professionally made composter from a woman on Freecycle and decided to try again. I got a pound of worms on Wednesday and dropped them into a bin with shredded newspaper and left them to do their thing.

On Thursday, I had friends from England , Roni and her brother Ram, visiting and after playing tour guide around the city Nyron and I took them back to our place for dinner. While I was giving Roni a tour of the house I heard Nyron call to me from downstairs in a rather concerned tone of voice. He said, "Brooke, your worms are escaping!" I ran downstairs and sure enough, the worms were executing a mass escape! There were worms crawling up the inside of the bin, worms on the lid, worms dropping down to the kitchen floor. It was a mass Exodus! I was so embarrassed as I sat down in front of the bin and began rescuing worms from their own self-inflicted peril (worms can't survive outside of the bin). Luckily, my guests were really good sports about it. They started turning it into a likeness of the show Prison Break and naming individual worms after characters on the show ("look at that one go ahead of the rest! That's Michael Scofield for sure!"). Nyron got into the fun by calling me Bellick, who is the prison guard in the show. "Nice going Bellick" became a bit of a joke for the remainder of their stay in Toronto.

The worms are fine now, I made some corrections to the environment inside the bin and they've returned to their home. But that made it one memorable dinner party!

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Unsettled

2007-09-26T22:04:00.000-04:00

I don't watch the news very often and for just this reason. The National had a piece about a recent outburst of hatred against Canadians in Afghanistan. The Canadian soldiers who are there are not there in coalition with American soldiers; they are there in Canada's stock role as Peace Keepers. But now, a community in Afghanistan is claiming that last night Canadian soldiers forced their way into homes, tied people up, dragged them outside and killed 2 people.

The Canadian government and the leaders of the armed forces are categorically denying that our people, or any NATO soldiers, had anything to do with this and are speculating about the possibility of special forces from another country having committed this. I really want to believe that and am really hoping that future new reports will say that the group responsible have been found and they're...who knows who. But I can't help but remember my shock at learning about the torture committed by Canadian soldiers in Somalia when I was in high school. No one wants to think that their own countrymen and women could be capable of such things. But we all know that literally anyone is capable of literally anything under the right (or should I say, wrong) circumstances.

This is why I don't watch the news. More lighter topics in future, I promise.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

4 blog entries 4

2007-09-23T11:56:00.004-04:00

...each month. Those are the rules of the Secret Pal game and I've been a bad blogger. Mea culpa. Work was so busy over the summer that once it died down I was left kind of dazed. I haven't done much knitting, either, which is very sad. I finished both the tops I was working on in August, but I don't have pictures yet (it's hard to take pictures of yourself, isn't it?). Basically, I'm just trying to get my land legs again after all the stress and craziness.

But it's over now and I'm starting to get back into a groove. The fall weather helps; fall has always made me feel energetic and motivated. Maybe it's because I'm young enough to still remember when fall meant the start of a new schhol year and cracking open all those brand-new notebooks and writing in them with brand-new pens...sorry, I have a bit of a thing for office supplies. :)

I've been working on a few things for my etsy store and hope to have them finished soon so I can start posting things for sale. Nyron is supposed to be working on a banner and avatar for me, but I think I may end up buying a pre-fab one, at least for now. He seems to be having trouble finding downloads for the software he needs to make it. I also received a nice tax rebate recently, so I bought the yarn I need for this year's Christmas sweater for Nyron. He wants a sweater inspired by the Weasley sweater from Harry Potter (i.e., with a big N on the front) but he wants a more collegiate look. I had him draw it out for me last night, so I'll start on it later this week.

I been plugging along on Arwyn, but I keep knitting past the measurements called for in the pattern and having to rip back and inch or 2. Plus, there's Kitchener stitch involved, and Kitchener stitch always kicks my ass. I don't know why it never seems to make sense to me, but I always end up throwing the project across the room halfway through. I'll have to work on it again when I'm feeling calm.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

4 blog entries 3

2007-09-23T11:56:00.003-04:00

...4 blog entries...

4 blog entries 2

2007-09-23T11:56:00.001-04:00

...post at least...

4 blog entries 1

2007-09-23T11:55:00.001-04:00

I need to...

Spinning on a rented wheel

2007-08-28T15:14:00.001-04:00

The rental spinning wheel at Lettuce Knit finally became available so yesterday Nyron drove to work so that we could pick it up and take it home. I've rented it for 2 weeks, so that should give me plenty of time to practice.

My initial concern was that this Ashford Joy would give me as much hassle as the Ashford Kiwi that was set up for the class. Of the 3 wheels that we got to try out, the Ashfor Kiwi and I did not get along right from the start and when I sat down at the Joy last night I saw right away that it took after its cousin wheel. I found it really hard to get the wheel spinning and then once I did It would start going in the wrong direction with no warning. After half an hour that included much swearing I finally gave up and settled down to watch CSI: Miami and do some knitting, which never fights back.

Towards the end of the night Nyron, who'd been asleep on the couch since we finished dinner, got up and asked me to show him how it worked. This helped calm me down and he was able to watch objectively and see what was making the wheel suddenly stop turning or turn in the wrong direction. The wheels we learned on were all 2-treadle wheels and the Joy only has one, so the spinner can't rely on being able to use the push of the other treadle to carry it over the apex of the wheel. With a single treadle, you have to get enough momentum in one push to carry it over, and I wasn't getting it. This was causing the wheel to halt before it got going, or to keep its momentum going in the same direction once I did. This is good for me to know; I don't like single-treadle wheels. :)

Of course, we only figured this out at bedtime, so I didn't have a chance to work on it more, but I got up early this morning (see how dedicated I am!) and spun for a half hour before work, filling the rest of the bobbin I started last night. I'll fill the second bobbin when I get home tonight and maybe even get them plied. I'm really just aiming for making yarn that is knitable at this point, which my attempts in class did not accomplish. I feel pretty good about this so far. The cost of the lesson included $25 in roving so I made sure to get braids of different fibres so that I could have some diversity in my practice. I plan on using all the skeins from the different types of fibre to knit a plain garter stitch scarf for myself. I think it'll be a great way to showcase my early life as a spinner and the colours I picked should look very interesting together. The yarn is certainly slubby enough that even simple garter stitch will have some interest and texture. Pictures to follow.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Secret Pal 11 Questionaire 2

2007-08-26T15:37:00.000-04:00

Wow, a second Secret Pal questionnaire! Things sure have changed since I took part in a secret pal exchange 2 years ago (I think it was the 4th or 5th SP). We're actually expected to make continuous contact with our pals this time, instead of just stalking them for 3 months and then sending them a box of stuff. So here is my Secret Pall 11 Questionnaire: Part 2.

1. What is the one knitting accessory you could not live without?

My notions case. When I took up knitting again in earnest when I was 20, my grandmother gave me a whole bunch of knitting supplies for Christmas that year: needles of different sizes, the ubiquitous Patons Canadiana wool that all Canadian knitters have in their stash and a small, fold-over carrying case covered in flowers. Inside, each with it's own little pocket to hold everything in place, is everything I could ever need for my knitting projects, except the actual yarn and needles. It has darning needles of varying sizes and sharpness, an embroidery needle, stitch markers, a cable needle, a ruler with needle gauge, folding scissors, bobbins, a stitch holder, needle tip protectors, and 2 row counters. I never take a knitting project anywhere without it and it spends the rest of the time on the coffee table for when I knit on the couch.

2. If you're heading on vacation, do you take knitting with you? If so, how much and what type of project?

I always take knitting with me on vacation. If I'm going somewhere where we will be travelling around a lot, like a backpacking trip, I take small projects like socks. When I go home to Nova Scotia for Christmas or on a road trip, I bring my big Namaste Messenger Bag full of 2 or 3 large projects, good for hours of knitting in the car or in one of my grandmother's overstuffed armchairs.

3. Where have you travelled to that you'd consider your favorite spot?
Wow. Way too many favourite spots to pick just one. I loved living in Ecuador and still have friends there, London's great, San Sebastien, Spain is so beautiful it makes me want to perfect my Spanish and move there, and Morocco was like nowhere I had ever been. I would go back to any other those places in a heartbeat.

4. What is your favorite knitting book at the moment? Do you own it?
I don't knit from books that often, although I own so many of them that it would suggest otherwise. Right now I like anything that helps me work on technique, as opposed to just having other people's patterns. I'm really enjoying Jaqueline Fee's Sweater Workshop, because when you're done with the Sweater Sampler you can pretty much knit any sweater you want without a pattern, which is what I'm into. Freedom from patterns!

5. Do you listen to podcasts? Which is your favorite(s)?
I listen to way too many podcasts: Sticks & String, Cast On, Lime & Violet, Stash & Burn, Knit Picks, and Knit Science. I'm always "auditioning" others so the list keeps growing.

6. If you could only knit with 1 color for the rest of your life, what color would that be?
I just can't get enough of green. Especially earthy, natural looking greens.

7. If you were far into a project and then noticed a mistake near the beginning what would you do?
I have ripped out large sections of knitting to fix something, but I have also left in mistakes that were only a few rows back. If it can fit into the category of "un-noticeable" or "design feature" than it stays. If it's something noticeable or that will alter the shaping in some way, it gets frogged.

8. Where is the most unusual spot you've ever knit?
While attempting to hitch-hike in France. No one picked us up, though; maybe they were afraid of the double-pointed needles.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Stitch n' Pitch

2007-08-19T10:57:00.000-04:00

The Stitch n' Pitch on Wednesday was really fun. As a complete coincidence, Amy and I ended up sitting next to a woman I had met at the last Drunken Knitters pub night, so it was nice to know someone else in the crowd. We were over 700 strong and one of the fullest sections in the stadium. The website said that everyone would get a knitting tote (and it actually says Stitch n' Pitch on it!), but what they didn't mention was that the tote would contain swag! I got 3 balls of yarn, although 2 are novelty yarns so I'm planning to swap them, an Estelle magazine with patterns and the promo material of some local shops and organizations. Anyone interested in having a Stitch n' Pitch yarn swap (or any yarns swap, for that matter) let me know.

I wish I'd remembered to bring my camera; they even got the Blue Jays mascot to walk around our section with a ball of yarn and 2 big needles, moving them up and down in an approximation of knitting. There are lots of pictures on other people's blogs, though, so if you're hungry for snaps just look around. Don't ask me about the game, though; I don't know anything about baseball and rarely paid attention. I just love kipping.

I finally finished Vernum last night at 1:30 in the morning. I really got into a groove sewing on the sleeves with the TV tuned to Teletune in the background. I love watching cartoons late at night. That's when you get the grown-up cartoons! I'd been knitting the sleeves on Friday in the break room of the Rogers Television studio while waiting for the show to start (I was Floor Director that night) and for some reason the conversation kept turning back to my knitting. It's not the first time they've seen me knitting there, but it seemed to be what everyone noticed. One of the hosts of the show that I work on brought it up a few times throughout the night and I ended up promising to have it finished in time to wear it on Monday, which is the next time I'm in the studio. I find I work better on a deadline, anyway, so I finished it up last night and just have to block it today (once I get all the stuff off the table, of course). Pictures to come.

I'm also almost done Rusted Root, too; I just have the cuff of the sleeves and the bottom hem to finish. The pattern directions say to start the ribbing on the sleeves now, but causes the ribbing to start on the row directly after the last row of decreases and I think I want a few more rows of knitting snuck in there, first. If we weren't going to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival today, I'd have it done by tomorrow, too.

With my 2 main projects coming to an end so close to each other, I'm going to have to find another project to start, stat! I find that if I'm completely projectless than starting a new projects becomes somehow more daunting. I'm pretty sure this was one of the causes of my earlier hiatus; after months of constant knitting I found myself without a project on the needles and didn't feel up to the process of picking a new project, swatching, waiting for the swatch to block, etc before casting on. This is one of the ways that Ravelry is being helpful (always so helpful!). I've got a queue of 8 projects to choose from, so I don't have to worry about picking something from the hundreds of patterns in my library (or design ideas in my head); I only have to choose from 8. Since the weather is starting to get delightfully chilly (my favourite seasons are the in-between seasons: fall and spring), I think I can start on a light sweater. I've had A Cardigan for Arwen from IK swimming behind my eyeballs ever since I discovered (again, thanks to Ravelry) that I have the exact yarn specified already in my stash. I rarely ever knit with the pattern yarn, so it's a nice change. No worries about recalculating the pattern to the gauge, or if the drape will work. So that will be my next project.

*A note to my secret pal* I've been reading some people's complaints on the Secret Pal Ravelry group that their partners don't post often and I'm afraid I probably fall under that group. It's not that I'm quiet or don't want to talk about myself, it's just that my day job is 7 and a half hours of answering emails, so I rarely have the energy on weeknights for blogging (or anything computer related, for that matter). If you have any questions, feel free to email me; I'll be very vocal in my answers. And know that you'll always get at least one nice long blog post on the weekend. Thanks for putting up with me.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Geek alert!

2007-08-13T19:57:00.000-04:00

I've only just been assigned my Secret Pal spoilee and I've already benefited from the pairing. My spoilee had a link on her blog to the Lime and Violet Knit Wars, which is an online game based loosely on D&D. There's no dice, but you make a character (complete with character stats) and gain experience points by completing adventures, like teaching someone to knit or finishing a UFO from a year ago. It's meant to be a fun way to get motivated to cross hurdles and set goals.

Having been a mad D&D gamer in my day, I've really taken to this style of the game. I even wrote all my adventure comments in very formal, King Arthur and his knights-type language. I'm currently a first level Enchanter with 73 XP (that's experience points for the laymen) and 33 "gold pieces". There are different things that you can do with gold pieces; ignore them as just a fun part of the game (like the Sceptre of Fiberblogginess and other pieces of treasure that you have a chance to acquire in adventures), use them to dictate how much actual money you can spend on stash, determine a dollar value (x gp = $1) and use them to save up for a special treat. I'm considering the last option: picking a correlative value of the gp and use that the save up real money for a knitter's retreat or trip to a fibre festival, something that I would normally not spend money on for myself but that I would really, really like. Of course, I could save it up for a spinning wheel, but I'll be buying/getting one for Christmas anyway, so it doesn't seem like a good investment of my imaginary gold pieces.

I'm getting way too into this game already! :) I can't wait until they get the buttons up.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Mini knitters

2007-08-11T17:17:00.000-04:00

I taught another knitting class today, this time to a pair of 8 and 9 year old sisters. The 8 year old seemed really intent on learning; she made the same mistakes multiple times, but she kept plodding along single-mindedly. The 9 year old seemed to have a harder time staying focused, so next time I'm going to try her on crochet to see if she takes to that. It's more free-form, so I think she might have an easier time with it and not get as frustrated.

I'm almost done Rusted Root. I've got a few more inches left on the body before I start the ribbing and I have to do the ribbing on the sleeves. I figure it'll be done by the middle of this week.

In Mystery Stole news, I'm still just shy of finishing Clue 1. I was plugging along earlier in the week when all of a sudden I dropped a stitch and it continued to fall for about 3 or 4 rows. Ouch. I didn't have the patience to tink back that much at the time, so I'm going to have to tackle it sometime this weekend. I have my other spinning class tomorrow, however, so that may provide a distraction.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Secret Pal 11 Questionaire

2007-08-07T20:25:00.000-04:00

Hi Secret Pal partner! I am linking this from my sidebar so that it's easy for you to find when you want to refer back to it.

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
I love anything soft (merino, alpaca) and DK cotton is very versatile, so it's tends to end up in my stash a lot. I'm getting into socks and lace, but I don't have a lot of yarn for that yet. I do not like novelty yarns.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
I store my straight needles and crochet hooks in roll-up holders I made myself (based on the needle case in Stitch 'n Bitch). I don't have a holder for my circs, though, and I have quite a few of them (because I keep loosing them and having to buy new ones). I also have a set of Denise Interchangeables.

3. How long have you been knitting & how did you learn? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?
I first learned from my grandmother at age 7, and then again at age 16 when I had an actual knitting project I wanted to do. At 20 I re-taught myself and really took to it in earnest; that was 6 years ago. I'd consider my skill level intermediate to advanced; I can't do everything, but I'm pretty fearless and will jump straight into anything. My first pair of socks were knit toe-up, 2 at a time on circular needles and I figured out the technique without knowing that anyone had published instructions on it.

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
Not yet, but I've been meaning to get one. I'll come back to this when I have one.

5. What's your favorite scent?
I love ocean-y scents and very natural scents. I had an essential oil called Siesta in the Rain that I used up in university. Not so hot on lavender, only because I have so much of it at home and am rather sick of it, but some lavender or cedar sachets for my yarn closet would be welcome.

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?
I love dark chocolate, especially with cherries in the centre.

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?
I knit and crochet (although I prefer knitting). I'm just learning to spin and am saving up for a wheel. I do paper making and am always looking for more screens and deckles (they're rather hard to find). My craft of choice for most of my life had been cross stitch and although I don't do it much anymore I'm very interested in the tradition of embroidered samplers.

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)
My computer can play MP3s and I have an iPod that I take everywhere. I like good indie music (Belle & Sebastian, Camera Obsura, The Decemberists, The Shins, Tokyo Police Club, Sufjan Stevens) but am always open to new influences.

9. What's your favorite color(s)? Any colors you just can't stand?
I love earth tones, especially greens, blues and deep reds or maroons. I can't stand bright, crayon-y colours.

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?
I've been with my boyfriend Nyron for 3 years and we're planning to get married next fall. We have a cat named Spirit who likes to play with things that move (all her toys are something tied to a pole on a long string) and toilet paper roles.

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?
Not big on the poncho thing, but scarves, hats and mittens are a survival must here in Canada!

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?
My favourite things to knit are the things I'm currently knitting (and there's always more than one). I tend to like things that will teach me a technique I've never done before and I love designing and figuring out new ways of doing something.

13. What are you knitting right now?
Right now I'm knitting Rusted Root by Zephyr Style, Mystery Stole 3, and Vernum, which is a DK cotton shirt in an issue of Knitting magazine.

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?
I love handmade gifts! I make so many gifts for other people and no one really makes gifts for me.

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?
I love circs, especially of the interchangeable variety. I'm not a fan of plastic but have been known to use it (my beloved Denises are plastic, for example). I'm interested in the Knit Picks Options but I'd like to try them first before shelling out the dough. I like bamboo, but find the join on bamboo circulars to be maddeningly catchy. Most of my needles are aluminum.

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?
I don't own either. I've never found the need for a ball winder, as I can wind perfectly good centre-pull balls on my hand, but I've been jonesing for a swift for a while; the back of my computer chair can be a little tricky to use. I don't like the swifts that are held together by bits of waste yarn, though, so I'm always looking for one with proper joint connectors. I've seen them, so I know they exist, I've just never seen one for sale.

17. How old is your oldest UFO?
My oldest UFO is probably 2 years old. It's a pair of green merino mittens that I started knitting for my brother, but he took one look at them and asked if I can change this and that, so I've never gotten around to frogging them and making the changes.

18. What is your favorite holiday?
I like Christmas because I get the most time off from work and get to go home to Nova Scotia to see my family, but I'm not into all the Santa, Christmas carols, cheesy stuff. I'm not religious, either, so it's really all about the vacation and family time (and gifts).

19. Is there anything that you collect?
I collect salt & pepper shakers, Wade figurines, Eeyore swag, and things in miniature (like dollhouse accessories, although I don't own a dollhouse). I also collect antique and vintage knitting and sewing notions (this collection started with an antique bone needle case that I found in an antique shop in England).

20. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?
I'm not really dying to get my hands on anything in particular, since if there's a pattern I want I either buy it or figure out how to do it myself. I have a subscription to Interweave Knits, but I also read Knitting (a UK magazine) and anything else that has patterns or articles that catch my eye.

21. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?
I've been planning a sweater for Nyron that has entrelac in it, so I plan to get around to learning that soon. I'm quite into lace knitting right now because I'd like to make a shawl and veil for my wedding.

22. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?
I am just getting into socks (I've knit two pairs). I knit toe-up so I don't ever need to actually take measurements or knit a gauge swatch since I fit as I go. I'll scrounge around for my ribbon tape measure and get back to you on this.

23. When is your birthday?
January 22

24. Are you on Ravelry? If so, what's your ID?
For now my Rav ID is my name, which I don't want to give away, but I've asked Casey to change it to Arroyo (Little Knittin Kitten was too long and someone had already taken Knittin Kitten. I didn't think I wouldn't be able to change it later). I'll update when the change has been made.

Well, looking forward to getting to know you through this exchange!

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Moon Mist accidental art yarn?

2007-08-05T18:37:00.000-04:00

I had my first spinning wheel class today! The class is taught at Lettuce Knit in Kensington Market here in Toronto. It's a 2-part class, which is good because I clearly need a lot more practice! I chose some roving that reminded me of an ice cream flavour that is only made by a few dairy companies on the East Coast. It's called Moon Mist and it's a mix of flavours; there's always a purple "grape" flavour, and then depending on the company it could be green "lime", yellow "banana" or blue "blueberry" (the flavours are in quotations marks because you can't really taste them on their own, you can only assume that this is what they're supposed to taste like). Each scoop is a swirl of light pastel colours and is just gorgeous, so when I saw those colours in a lovely skein of roving I just had to have it! The roving was dyed by the instructor right on site in their new dye lab, so I'll have to see if she can duplicate it and show me how. I'd knit a whole item in those colours.

So after two hours of trying to keep my twist even (and failing) I ended up with a skein of what I'm calling art yarn, because it makes it sound like I intended it that way. :)

As you can see, I was having a little trouble keeping the twist consistent. I kept over-twisting the yarn in some parts and really under twisting it in others. My real problem is with drafting; when I took a drop spindle class last Christmas I had the same problem. But the spinning wheel makes more sense to me somehow than the drop spindle did, so I'm going to stick with this. Nyron, who is the ever fiber-supportive boyfriend, has already started looking for ways that I could fit the cost of a spinning wheel into the budget.

**A note about the picture: I tried to take a picture of this "yarn" next to my cat while she was lying across the back of the couch, thinking that it would be really cute. She's not usually interested in yarn unless it's spinning across the floor, so I figured it would be safe. I placed the skein next to her head; she took one sniff of it and went wild! I don't know what it was, but she began batting at it and nipping it. I finally managed to get this shot, where she is in the act of tossing it off the back of the couch:

Just look at how wild her eyes were! She's manic, I tells you! Manic!

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Caught up in the Ravelry

2007-08-04T10:51:00.000-04:00

In an echo of what pretty much everyone who has received their Ravelry invite has said, I am spending way too much time on this website! :) It's cutting into my knitting time! Normally on the weekend I'd be working on the Mystery Stole while the house is still quiet, but instead I'm reading the message boards or adding projects and yarns to my Notebook. I've even begun pattern editing, which takes up a huge amount of time, but I really enjoy. Pattern editing is going through the database of patterns and filling in any missing information. That way, when you do a project from one of the patterns in the database and you make an entry for it in your notebook, the pattern information it links to will be complete and up-to-date.

One thing that I'm finding very frustrating is that I can't add patterns. As I explained above (for those not in the Rav yet) when you create an entry for a project it links to an information page about the pattern, as long as it's a published pattern and not self-designed. However, not every pattern ever published is in the database yet, so if you are creating an entry for a project and you're the first person on Ravelry to do so, you can click on a link that will let you add the pattern to the database. For some reason, this doesn't work on my computer. I get as far as bringing up the link, but it doesn't take me to the window where I can fill in the pattern information; the link just disappears. I posted this to the Editor's group message board and Casey, one of Ravelry's creators, made a few comments, but now he seems to have moved off to other projects and forgotten about me and the other person having the same problem, because he hasn't made a comment in a few days now. Hopefully that means that he's still working on it but doesn't have anything new to add and it will be fixed soon. I have 3 projects that need pattern links and it bothers my sense of continuity to not have the entries "finished".

There is one great thing that Ravelry has done for me that I didn't expect. This morning I gathered up a bunch of my magazines to bring down to the computer to see if any of the issues still needed editing. In the process of sorting through which ones I wanted to bring down, I discovered an issue that I thought was lost. It contains the pattern for a top that I'd been working on and have finished up to the sleeves, but I lost both the magazine and my photocopy, so it's been languishing in the stash closet, contemplating its fate as a WIP that would likely end up frogged. But now that I've found the pattern, I can finally finish this top! One more FO, coming my way!

Of course, you're probably all still wondering which pattern I picked for my Debbie Bliss Cotton DK yarn. Well, I won't make you wait any longer; I've been cruel enough already. I chose Rusted Root, even though it means I'll have to buy an undershirt to wear it. I just plain like it better than Green Gable, although I've put Green Gable in my queue for someday in the future. The queue is really helping me find destinies for my stash yarn. I've found 5 possible projects for stash yarn and am constantly looking for more.

I'm continuing with my yarn diet into the fall. I'm not interesting in this month's KAL within a KAL on Stashalong so I'm going to just go 4 months without buying new yarn (although I'm allowed 1 free day each month, which is good in case I decide to work on mom's Christmas Stole). With all the projects lined up in my queue this should be a breeze!

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

How do you know it's love?

2007-07-28T10:16:00.001-04:00

I've had a week from hell at work. Without going into details, it's been one of those weeks where my energy is entirely fuelled by mixture of stress and urgency. Friday was the worst, as is every Friday before a new student arrival date during the busiest time of the year: last-minute changes to student registrations, last-minute new student registrations, last-minute emergencies. So needless to say, I've been a bit irritable during those few hours when I'm home and trying desperately to relax on the couch with Nyron. But instead of getting upset at my irritability and saying things like, "don't take your stress out on me!" what does he do? He calls me up at the end of my office hours on Friday and says, "I've just cashed my $50 GST cheque. Why don't I take you over to Romni and buy you some yarn". He knows that Romni's July sale (20% off everything!) is ending this weekend and I haven't been able to take advantage of it at all because of my yarn diet. He also knows that gift yarn doesn't count as breaking the diet, so he dropped me off for the last half hour that Romni is open on Fridays with cart blanche to buy $50 worth of anything I wanted. See why I love this man?

I ended up buying 10 balls of Debbie Bliss Cotton DK in the Green Apple colourway. I don't usually like to buy yarn without a pattern in mind and Romni is especially overwhelming when one doesn't have an exact shopping list, but cotton DK of any variety is always useful and Debbie Bliss is a brand I've knit and enjoyed before so I'm happy with my purchase. It came to a little over the $50 limit, but who's counting?

Of course, the first thing I did this morning was add it to my Ravelry stash. Don't worry, I had every intention of telling you all; I got my Ravelry invite on Wednesday. This was perfect timing. Part of my stress of last week was caused by a terrible headache Tuesday night that made me to go home early Wednesday afternoon as I was still feeling pretty sick (the headache gave me a hangover like I haven't had since university!). Just before leaving work I checked my place in line and found that there were only 14 invites ahead of me. I willed my invite to be in my inbox by the time I got home and it was! That made me feel much better; I spent the afternoon starting to add things to my site, although it's still a work in progress, and joining a few groups.

So far, it's been the most helpful to me in getting inspiration for future projects. A lot of my stash is actually gift yarn which I received from a very generous knitter in England who heard my cries about the lack of decent yarn shops in the city. While I'm incredibly grateful to her, I have no idea what to do with most of what she gave me. Example: 20 balls of Jaeger merino DK weight in a lovely light gray that has been sitting in my stash for these 3 years without telling me what it wants to be. With Ravelry, I can add it to my stash and up pops a link to thumbnails of all the other projects that have or are being knit in that yarn. So I can browse through and see if there is anything that I particularly like and would want to knit. Unfortunately for this case, the projects that I liked the most were the aran knit sweaters from Aran Knitting by Alice Starmore, a book that costs over $300 on Amazon. So that yarn will have to sit a little longer. However, I have narrowed down what I'd like to do with my new cotton DK to two patterns: Green Gable or Rusted Root, both from Zephyr Style. I like Rusted Root the best and I think it would look great in this green colourway, but I'm not sure I'd want everyone to see the left cup of my bra through the shirt, and I don't tend to wear undershirts as a rule. I might like the pattern enough to cave in an buy one, though.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Oh, the waiting!

2007-07-15T01:15:00.000-04:00

I've become totally caught up in the anticipation over Ravelry. I sent in my invite request sometime in June and have been checking the blog regularly, watching as they add 1000 more people, 1200 more people, never knowing how close or far they were to my email address on the list. Until now! They've just added a new feature so that you can check your place in line and gauge how much longer you have to wait. And I'm very happy to say that I'm not as far down the list as I thought. I'd figured I'd added my name in mid June, but according to this new feature I sent in my request on June 4. There are less than 1200 people ahead of me in line and since they've been adding people in groups of 1200 lately, I think my chances are good that I'll be getting that invite sometime this week. I certainly hope so. I've heard excellent things about this community site and I'm really looking forward to exploring. A full review for those of you still waiting as soon as I'm in, I promise.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

A weekend for finishing

2007-07-14T12:19:00.000-04:00

This past week has been very busy. Aside from the usual weekday stuff like work and pilates, Nyron and I have been helping out at the Chapters that he used to manage to decorate for the big Harry Potter midnight sale! We get to help out at the sale next Friday, too. We spent all Thursday night from when we got off work until almost 10:00 at night cutting out bristol board letters of FLOURISH & BLOTTS to put in the large windows above the front door. They've also printed out spells from the books spread out onto about 3 pieces of paper each and velcroed them to the walls. The spells are in black but the Unforgivable Curses are in red. Very cool.

So with all that going on I didn't get a lot of knitting done this past week. I did, however, finish the linen hand towel for Erin's bridal shower gift. Here's the finished towel:

I decided to forgo the chenille washcloth because I was having trouble working with the chenille. I'd always thought of chenille as this incredibly luxurious yarn that I would love working with, but when I actually tried it turned out to be fiddly and unyielding. Besides, I've now knit with baby alpaca, which beats chenille right out of the water in terms of luxury!

The whole spa kit is almost all put together; all it's lacking as a big bar of chocolate and a card. It currently contains: a cleansing cream, a facial mask, 2 bottles of nail polish, 1 bar of Sultana of Soap and a bar of Comforter Bubble Bar (both from Lush). And the hand towel, of course.

I've also finished Chart A of Clue 1 of the MS3 stole! I had to frog the whole thing back twice at row 23 and it took 6 times for get through row 45 without having too many or too few stitches on the needle, but I finally did it. All it took was some peace and quiet (Nyron can be very distracting, especially now that we've bought a Wii). I taped it to the back of the chart so I could take a picture:

It's not very clear, since I didn't want to take the time to block it - I want to keep knitting before Nyron gets here! It's knit in Misti Alpaca 100% baby alpaca 2 ply laceweight. The beads are fresh water pearl seed beads that I found for $5 a string at a bead store downtown (if anyone out there is into beading, you have to come to Toronto! There's practically a beading neighbourhood on Queen St.). This is my first lace project and my first time knitting with alpaca and I'm loving them both. I might even make a second one as a gift. Mom, what do you think, would you like a lace stole? Just in case Dad ever takes you anywhere nicer than one of the pubs in Halifax? ; )

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

I am weak.

2007-07-06T19:35:00.001-04:00

I've been peddling along nicely on my yarn diet thus far. I successfully completed the Stashalong June challenge by knitting the two blankets for Allison's twins and Nyron's God awful argyle sweater. I've knit over 20 granny squares to use up 5 balls from Mount Bernat to be made into a blanket for Warming Families. I've started a pair of socks and got as far as turning the heal and have been planning a yoga mat bag to take another chunk out of Mount Bernat. But today, something changed.

Now, I've heard of the Mystery Stole before, mentioned on other knitter's blogs, and have easily turned a disinterested eye. I haven't worn a stole or shawl of any kind since my high school prom and I have never felt the need to knit the same thing as thousands of other knitters at the same time. So I had every intention in the world to let another Mystery Stole pass me by unnoticed.

Let's set the scene: a young girl, going square-eyed at a computer in her small, windowless office staring down the very real likelihood that she will have to come in on her day off to get through her ever increasing workload. She decides to take a short mental vacation by skimming through some of her favourite knitting blogs. She comes across The Yarn Harlot's humourous account of being "tricked" into joining the Mystery Stole 3 KAL. She mentions that tonight is the deadline for signing up (instilling in me the Fear of Missing Out) and includes a picture of a first clue knitted up. It's so lovely. And I've never knit lace before. And I've been seriously considering learning. And before 5 minutes had passed I had signed up for MS3. Yarn Harlot, you are an enabler!

Of course, I will now have to by some laceweight yarn, as I don't have any (oh no) and some beads, because the stole calls for beads (double oh no!). This I can do on my way to work tomorrow (yes, I really do have to go in on my day off).

I won't be able to start on it until after next weekend, however, because I am working away on my friend's spa kit towel. Linen, I am finding, is not very soft to knit with, but the chenille will surely make up for it so I'm saving it as a prize to myself for finishing the towel.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Happy Canada Day, eh?!

2007-07-01T22:56:00.000-04:00

And an early Happy July 4th to my readers south of the border! My Canada Day is particularly happy because I finally finished that damned argyle sweater. Not only has that sweater fought me every step of the way, but in sewing it up I noticed all kinds of issues.

First of all, the new yarn that was of a different dye lot didn't match quite as well as I'd convinced myself it had while I was knitting it and if you look you can definitely see the difference. Also, because I had to re-knit much of the sleeves, I ended up mixing up the balls of frogged yarn and now one sleeve has a thick strip of a the old dye lot between 2 sections of the new. The change in dye lot is especially noticeable at the shoulder seams because the sleeves were mainly knit with the new dye lot and the front was entirely knit with the old. Also, the collar didn't work out as well as I would have liked, as I'm still pretty inexperienced with picking up stitches. Finally, I didn't notice until after I'd sewn everything up that on the photograph in the magazine the argyle ziz-zags stop short of the shoulders, where as I have made it go all the way up. I asked Nyron if he wanted me to pull it back so that I looked like the magazine but he said he likes it the way it is. He's such a trooper!

Of course, like a lot of other knitters (especially those who are meticulous as I tend to be) I continually see this sweater as unsatisfactory. Nyron kept asking me if I liked it and I would say things like, "I'm just glad you like it" or "I'm happy it's finished, but I'll never be happy with it". I even told him that I would understand if he didn't want to wear it out in public! But the important thing is he's happy with it (although at least he's had the honesty to admit that he notices the different dye lots, too). And even I have to admit he looks quite dashing in it:

Gotta love his male model pose. He's so cute. :)

I've only just finished this project and I'm on to others. I'm crocheting as many blanket squares as I can for the Homespun Helpers (previously Craft for a Cause) blanket square contest; the knitter/crocheter who makes the most gets a $25 (American!) gift certificate to the yarn shop of their choice and anyone who posts that they have made at least 5 by today goes into a draw for a skein of yarn. It's not against my yarn diet if it's a gift. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!). I'm crocheting granny squares to piece together into a blanket for Warming Families; it's a great way to get rid of all that Bernat Berella 4 in my stash (I have a whole Rubbermade container full from when I used to do Knit for Kids through Lewiscrat at Christmas). Here's 14 of the 18 squares I've knit so far:

I'm also knitting the moss square towel from Mason-Dixon Knitting as part of a spa basket I'm putting together for my friend's bridal shower gift. I'd also like to knit her a chenille bath mitt if I have enough time. The bridal shower is on the 14th, so I only have 2 weeks to get it all together. Fortunately, it's a long weekend, so I don't have to work tomorrow and therefore should have lots of time to knit. Unfortunately, I have lots of housework that has to get done this weekend because we're having our annual house party/bbq next weekend. Also, spending so much time working on Nyron's sweater has made me neglect Nyron a bit and he was getting jealous. Speaking of which, I should go spend some time with him now. ;)

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Cute Overload

2007-06-18T18:54:00.001-04:00

Warning: The following blog post contains images that may considered be too cute for some knitters. It contains scenes babies and yarn, all at the same time. Viewer discretion advised.

Nyron and I had a wonderful time meeting the twins on Saturday. They are absolutely adorable. Without further ado, here is the long-anticipated picture of them wrapped up snug in their new blankets:

Need I say, I'm in love? They are just absolutely precious! I didn't get to hold Amelia (right) because she was a bit fussy and stayed with her mom, but I spent a good portion of the evening with Colin (left) in my arms. I can't wait to knit entire wardrobes for them! Luckily, their parents are Harry Potter fans because I just happened to own a copy of Charmed Knits. Of course, I'll have to wait until their old enough to be sorted into houses...

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

This sweater is kicking my ass!

2007-06-16T14:36:00.000-04:00

This is getting to be a bit much. On Tuesday Nyron drove all the way to the East End to get a single ball of yarn from the one yarn shop in the city who carries it in the colour I need. This now makes 3 dye lots represented in one sweater, but luckily they all match exactly - I really must stop playing fast and loose with dye lots, it's going to come back to bite me one of these days. I spent all of Wednesday doing the shapping on the sleeves and noticed that the yarn isn't colourfast; it left a blue line of dye along my index finger where I wrap the yarn to keep tension while I'm knitting. I'll have to wasth the sleeves with vinegar before sewing them on.

Of course, it'll still be a while before it comes to that. When I had knit the sleeves until about an inch from the end of the shaping I decided to try them on Nyron's arm to see if they fit. They're way too long. They go past his knuckles.

I was so upset that I haven't been able to touch the stupid thing since Wednesday. But it's my final remaining WIP for the Stashalong June challenge, so I have to have it finished by the end of June. However, I'm happy to say that ignoring this cursed sweater gave me the chance to finish the second twin blanket.

Just in time, too, since we're seeing the twins for the first time today. I hope they like them. The next picture I have of these blankets they'll be wrapped snugly around their recipients.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Isn't this a cliche by now?

2007-06-10T23:16:00.000-04:00

Ok, it's happened; made all the more frustrating because I'm in a challenge to finish the argyle sweater by the end of the month and don't want to contend with any hold-ups. I'm part way into the shoulder shaping of the sleeves and I've run out of yarn. The only yarn shop that currently has this yarn and colour in stock is on the completely other side of town. What is it exactly that I have done to so anger the knitting goddesses? Or are they just bored and having a little fun? I tried to go to the yarn shop on the street car this afternoon, but it didn't arrive at my stop until 3:45, which meant that there was no way I could get all the way to the East End before the shop closed at 5.

Oh well. Today was the day when Nyron and I went to the World's Biggest Bookstore to get a last shopping spree out of his employee discount card. His last day as a book drone for Heather Reisman is this Thursday. I spent almost exactly $100 which was my self-appointed budget (I have to have some limit!) and got 4 books. It was harder than I thought it would be to find books that I wanted to buy, as I'm not that interested in pattern books. I much prefer technique books, or pattern books that will teach me something that I don't already know. So I got a book on finishing techniques, a book on hand-dying self striping yarn, a book on hand spinning, and Mason-Dixon Knitting, just because I've had my eye on it for a while.

On Friday I went to the knitter's pub night and got to meet the lovely Stashaholic (see the blog link on my side bar). I've been linking to her for years; I think I originally linked to her back when I first started this blog because I was a bit homesick while living in England and wanted to read a blog from home. It was great to finally meet her and have a drink (even though it wasn't Keith's) and a laugh and a reminisce about Nova Scotia. I also found out that she still hasn't sold her beginner's spinning wheel, which I may buy from her in the near future. I plan on taking the spinning course at Lettuce Knit to see if I like it and if I take to it I'll see if Stashaholic still has Lilith to sell. I'm getting excited about the idea of spinning and dying my own yarns. I bought David Attenbough's Planet Earth recently and all the colour combinations are making me think of socks. Mmmmm, Planet Earth socks.

Unit next we knit!

=^_^=

My last new yarn for a long time

2007-06-07T18:24:00.000-04:00

Just before joinging Save Cash! Use Your Stash and the Stashalong which has effectively put me on a yarn diet, I placed an order on Knit Picks. I've been listening to their podcast lately and I am walking proof that a podcast is excellent advertising for a yarn store. I bought 2 books, I Can't Believe I'm Knitting Socks by Cindy Guggemos and The Sweater Workshop by Jacqueline Fee, as well as some Memories Merino sock yarn in the Rocky Mountain Dusk colourway. I've never been to the Rockies (I've never been west of Alberta) but I'm kind of into purples right now and it looks nice and cozy. Here's a picture of all this, which just arrived in the mail today (after being shipped on May 31, so that was quite quick!).

To be honest, all I'd really wanted was the sweater book. It was described on the podcast as a book that would take you through all the techniques required to knit a sweater by having you knit a knid of amorphous sweater sampler in the round. I have a lot of pattern books already so what I'm really interested in are books that focus on technique and will help with my designing. I bought the sock book because I've knit one pair of socks already and would like to expand my skill set in that area as well. My only excuse for the yarn was that I figured I could use it to work on the bounty of sock knitting skills I am sure to learn from this book. And it was on sale. I hope I like working with it becuase I'd love to go back and buy some more at that price in the different colourways before they are all gone.

In other news, I've joined abouther blog group. This time it's Craft for a Cause. At least, this is the name right now, they are in the process of changing it to something that isn't already taken. I've always loved charity knitting (in fact it's what got me back into knitting after a haitus of a few years) and I plan to do a lot of it as part of my upcoming destash, so now I'll have a place to post about it. Speaking of posts on other blogs, I'm going to post my progress on the 3 WIPs I mentioned in a previous post on the Stashalong blog. I've entered them into the June KAL within a KAL challenge where participants have to post regular updates for their designated WIPs and have them done by the end of the month. Wish me luck! Now I'm going to go curl up with that sweater book!

Until next we Knit!

=^_^=

Knitting in the Rain

2007-06-04T20:55:00.001-04:00

No, this isn't a fibre artist's Gene Kelly fantasy. This is what I was doing this morning on the side of the road an hour late for work. But more on that later.

This has been a very frustrating week, and it's only Monday. Things started to get hairy on Saturday. I greatly appreciate my weekends because I really don't like my current job. I rely on my weekends to be relaxing and recharging so that I can face the work week ahead. On Saturday I took a trip to the North End of Toronto to teach knitting, an appointment I'd set up weeks ago. I got all the way to St Claire West station (an hour's sojourn on public transit from my house) only to realize that I got the day wrong. June 3 was, in fact, a Sunday and not a Saturday as I had previously believed. So another hour long trip home again. Of course, it meant 2 hours of knitting, but I would have much rathered spend those 2 hours curled up on the couch.

Later that night Nyron had a date to play basketball with his highschool buddies and I got to come along (a rare treat). While I was (generously) invited to play, I have no delusions about having game, so I sat on the grass and knit. When Nyron subbed out of one of the games, I decided to have him stretch out his arm and test the fit. I'm usually fanatical about fitting because I don't trust patterns and always knit to my own gauge. But for some reason I was almost half way through the sleeves before I thought to check the fit. And, of course, the knitting goddesses laughed. It just barely fit around his wrist, which might be fine for another man, but Nyron tends to roll his sleeves up so they need to fit at half way up his forearms. So I spent the last half hour of game play frogging both sleeves and rolling them into balls. I think the guys must have thought I was insane. They'd just spent 2 hours watching me knit and then in the last half hour I pulled everything out again.

On Sunday I managed to get to the knitting lesson on time; or so I thought. I arrived at the subway station with 20 minutes to spare and waited for the bus that I was told would take me to the organizer's house. But the bus didn't come. It wasn't until a very nice person came over and told the half dozen of us standing on the platform that the bus wasn't coming. It was re-routed to Bathurst station (a stop on another line) due to construction. There was no sign or information to let any of us know that. The TTC ticket seller was decidedly unhelpful and I ended up having to take a taxi.

The class itself was wonderful! There were 5 people, 2 teenage girls, a woman and her 9 and 6 year old daughters. I got a knitting spool for the 6 year old to keep her occupied while I taught knitting to the rest of the group. Luckily, the 9 year old was the only one who was completely new to the art, so I could give some basic guidance to the others and focus my attention on Marin. She was really sweet and very upset to see me go at the end of the 2 hours. I'll definitely be doing another lesson with that group!

Which brings me back to why I was knitting in the rain this morning. There was a passenger emergency on the subway which halted all service between Keele and St. George stations, which is a significant length of track. They ran a shuttle bus, but it always left Keele Station full to the brim, so the only time they would actually stop at the corner where I was waiting (which was only 1 subway stop from Keele) was if there was a red light, and then they never opened the doors. I tried to get a cab, but of course they were all occupied with other people left stranded by The Better Way. I stood in the rain for over an hour, knitting furiously to try and calm my fraying nerves, until a cab finally stopped and picked up myself and 2 other women who were also going downtown. Very thoughtful of this cab, seeing as most other cabs were taking advantage of the glut in need for their services by saving just one stranded commuter at a time. I got to work at 10:30, which meant I had to skip lunch and work until 6:00 to make my hours for the day. Needless to say I kept my knitting hidden under my desk so that I could do a few rows when I needed to take the edge off.

And that's just it. All through this ridiculous weekend my knitting is what has kept my sanity. And continues to do so.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Knitting injuries

2007-05-31T19:17:00.000-04:00

I'm almost finished my 4 current WIPs, two of them just need the sleeves and the making up, but unfortunately I seem to have sustained a knitting injury. I have a blister. I knit English style and use the middle finger of my right hand to catch the needle after looping the yarn around it. This has the unfortunate effect of causing a bit of rawness along the side of my finger from rubbing across wool for hours at a time. Because I've been knitting rather obsessively of late (that is to say, every single moment in which my hands aren't doing something else) it was really only a matter of time before I would get a blister. It only hurt a little last night, but it will most definitely get worse if I keep up this knitting pace (I've already ignored it for a day and now have a little bump where before it was just a little red and sore) and so I've decided to take a break from knitting.

Normally when I have a knitting injury that requires me to take a little break (yarn burn on the finger that holds the yarn taught, for example, or sore wrists) I switch to crochet or focus on reading a novel. But I couldn't find a crochet project I like - I usually only crochet baby blankets and no one I know is currently pregnant - and I'm not really enjoying my current novel, so I was in a bit of a pickle. Luckily, 3 of the WIP require some embroidery, so that is keeping me occupied on my trips to work on public transport.

One project is the argyle sweater that I'm knitting for my fiance. I'm doing the zig-zags in duplicate stitch, which I don't really like, to be honest, because I find the stitches don't act like try knit stitches (and why would they? They aren't true knit stitches). However, I made the choice to do it in duplicate stitch because there are 6 zig-zags and the one ball of that colour called for in the pattern only has 2 ends. I would have had to either buy 3 balls of yarn to have enough ends to keep all 6 zig-zags going right in the knitting, or cut the ball into thirds, which severely limits how I can use the remainder yarn when the sweater is done. I'm a bit fanatical about using yarn efficiently and making sure I have the best possible chance of using the leftover yarn for something later. So I stand by my choice.

The other two are a pare of blankets for my friend Allison's twins. They require chain stitch lines criss-crossing all over the blanket. It took a bit, but I eventually got used to embroidering on half-double crochet, which isn't nearly as nice and tight as knitting.

So I haven't knit a stitch all day. I was a little afraid that I might loose the momentum of my Finishitupitus, but I don't think that's likely. Already the little bump doesn't hurt anymore, so I'll just give it another day to go down and then dive back in.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Stashbusting knit alongs

2007-05-30T19:46:00.000-04:00

On Monday I spent some time reacquainting myself with the blogsphere and checking out some of the new groups and KALs. I was saddened to discover that I've missed the deadline to sign up for Secret Pal 10. I'd been a part of Secret Pal 5 a number of years ago and had really enjoyed it, but haven't had the time to commit myself to it since. Now that I'm feeling much more centred I think I can handle the responsibility, so I will definitely sign up for Secret Pal 11.

I'm not all that interested in KALs where everyone just knits the same thing, but I found 2 KALs that were unified by a central theme and were right up my alley; they are both focused on a Knit-your-stash-instead-of-buying-new-yarn philosophy, which I can relate to since I have a pretty scary stash. The first one is Stashalong (there's a button on the sidebar) where you can see a picture of said scary stash (scary, but loved!). It works by letting the knitter choose between a time line of no-buying (at least 1 month), fully-disclosing the total size of the stash and then pledging to knit X amount of it before buying anything new, or working on X number of WIPs before buying anything new. To start, I've decided to work through my 4 WIPs (more on these later)

The other is Save Cash! Use Your Stash! (I'll have a button up soon) which operates on a system of calculating the money saved by knitting from your stash instead of buying new. Each member reports how much money the stash yarn cost when originally purchased and that amount is counted towards a running total for the group. She also keeps totals for individual members which are tallied at the end of each month. So between the 2 KALs I should have lots of motivation to knit up the stash.

Of course, like most knitters, I have some yarn that I just don't like. Yarn that was given to me as well-meaning gifts or that I bought in a haze at a yarn sale. I know deep down in my knitter's heart that I will never use this yarn and so I would rather it find a better home. To this end I will eventually join Destash to either sell or swap what I won't use. I say eventually because I can't quite bring myself to the Herculean task of sorting through my stash closet. :)

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

Yes, I'm still alive!

2007-05-27T10:42:00.000-04:00

I am guilty of a shameful neglect of this blog with a list of excuses too long to even going into, but the main one has been my knitting hiatus. I knot that is a term that strikes fear into the heart of many a knitter - the concept that you might wake up some morning and just not feel like knitting. However, as a survivor of this very common ailment I can assure you all that it is temporary and non-fatal.

What brought me out of my knitting hiatus was the one thing that has the almost unfailing ability to drag countless knitters out of a knitting hiatus, or even encourage a non-knitter to pick up the needles; people around me started popping out babies. It started with an old friend of Nyron's who had a son last summer, so I crocheted this baby blanket for him.

I designed it using my Royal Needlework Academy design software because it's done in Afghan crochet which comes out in perfect squares (unlike knit stitches which are rectangular and need a rectangular chart for plotting designs). The mother and father are both professional musicians, so I thought the musical instrument motif would fit very well. It took a while to find that many instruments that could be easily crocheted into silhouettes, let me tell you!

Closely following that came the birth of my friend Valeria's daughter, Nadia. Valeria was my host sister when I lived in Ecuador as an exchange student almost 10 years ago and I'm still in touch with her family. I found this blanket as a kit from Mary Maxim at the Creative Needlework and Sewing Festival here in Toronto last fall.

It's not a very good picture, but you can get a sense of it.

Then, this past February, my very, very brave friend Allison gave birth to twins, one boy and one girl (which would be my choice, if I was ever given one). I am almost finished their blankets, which I crocheted from two patterns I found in Candy Blankies by Candi Jensen and modified by changing the yarn and the colours. I'll post pictures as soon as I'm done.

Hopefully This won't disintegrate into another case of blog neglect as I am very thoroughly enmeshed in my addiction once more (in fact, I think it's even contributing to my current insomnia!). Hopefully next post I'll have pictures of Nyron in a basket weave stitch sweater I knit him for Christmas and my current WIPs, another sweater for Nyron (surprise, surprise! That boy certainly doesn't suffer from my knitting habit!) and a cotton shirt for myself.

=^_^=

What a thirsty kitty!

2006-02-21T16:20:00.000-05:00

Spirit has always been very intrigued by the bath/shower process. Whenever I take a shower, she sits on the floor of the washroom and sometimes pats at the shower cutrain with her paws. When I take a bath, she'll put her front paws ont he edge of the tub and sometimes go so far as to sit on the edge and watch me (not as creepy as it sounds; if you're a cat owner, you understand). Whenever I'm done with my strange human water ritual and the water has all drained out, she jumps into the tub and begins licking the puddles that are left behind.

Last night I took a bath to soak my aching muscles (aching, thanks to an arobic/weight-lifting class I got talked into by a friend of mine). It was at this time, for the first time, that I realized that I can adjust the safety drain to allow the water level to rise high enough that it almost completely covers me to my shoulders. Heaven! It turns out, this is also high enough for Spirit to dip her head forward and reach the water and she began drinking my bath water! Luckily, I didn't use any soap or essential oils that may have made her sick. I guess this is what she'd been trying to do the whole time, drink the bath water. It was so strange to see her little kitty face meet her little kitty reflection on the water's surface. I couldn't help but watch in fascination for a while - and she must have been thirsty, because she drank a lot! - before cutting it short and draining the bath. Of course, she cleaned up the puddles, as usual.

=^_^=

When kitties dream

2006-02-09T18:08:00.000-05:00

Early this morning, around 5:30am, I was awoken by a strange sound. It was a very startled kind of squawk sound, definitely not machine-made, coming from somewhere in my bedroom. I looked around at the blurry shadowed shapes (I wear very strong prescription glasses) and my eyes finally stopped on the silhouette of my cat asleep in the corner. She usually sleeps in bed with me, but we've been having to administer an ear-cleaning and medication to her every night after dinner, so she's usually still pretty pissed at me by bed-time. After hearing the sound a few more times I realized it was Spirit. She must have been having an awful nightmare! I had to call her name a few times before she'd wake up. The nightmare must have been bad enough to make her quickly forget my horrible doctoring from earlier because it took almost no encouraging to get her to come to bed, where she wouldn't settle down until I would let her lay right on top of me. Poor dear. I wonder if she was dreaming of having Q-tips and liquid squirted in her ears.

=^_^=

Knitting Lesson #183

2006-02-07T08:56:00.000-05:00

If you knit on a busy street corner in downtown Toronto while waiting for a streetcar, this will create a stripe of exhaust-shaded colour into whatever you are knitting. Damn.

=^_^=

Welcome to the Knit Side, Kristina!

2006-02-01T22:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I was hanging out in my co-worker Kristina's office for the last half hour of work. We really only need to be there to close up after the last students and teachers have left. I had my knitting with me to work on on the streetcar, so I took it with me into her office. Of course, by the end of the evening, she'd asked me to teach her and even bought yarn and needles on her way to work this morning. While I was teaching her, one of the teachers walked by and mentioned that she'd like to learn, too. Ahhh, so many converts. You don't know how sedcutive the Knit Side can be!

=^_^=

A little kitten to make a home

2006-01-08T10:27:00.000-05:00

Spirit has been home for about 2 weeks now. I brought her home with me on the plane from Nova Scotia. At first she seemed decidedly less than thrilled with the fact that she was in yet another unfamiliar environment, but Spirit has always been wonderfully adaptable. By the end of the day, she'd discovered the incredibly thick and soft sofa back and has made it her home inside home. 'Having her here definitely makes this place feel more like home. I always look forward to coming home from work and being told off by her from the top of the stairs for being gone all day. : )

We're a little concerned about her weight, though. She hasn't been to the vet yet this year, so I don't know her official weight, but she's definitely beginning to show it. I can't set up limited feeding times like you're supposed to with cats, because she has a tendency to stuff her face all at once and then throw up when the dry food expands inside her stomach. I have, however, severely limited the amount that I give her each morning and I don't feed her any more during the day. We're also trying to get her to exercise more, which is a real effort on our parts because she's an indoor cat. Luckily, she got lots of cat toys for Christmas from my family, including a laser pointer, so hopefully she'll start to get trimmer in the upcoming months. If anyone has any advice on how to get a cat who's at least 12 lbs (but probably more like 13) down to a healthier weight, feel free to post a comment.

=^_^=

A little knittin' to pass the time

2006-01-01T15:38:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to be really productive today and get lots of work done, but I seem to be ever drawn to my knitting. This is welcome, because I haven't actually knit anything in a week or so and I ran the risk of going through withdrawl any day. I'm re-knitting one of the Knit For Kids scarves that I didn't get finished in time for the deadline. I had knit it in stocking stitch with a few inches of ribbing at either end and sewn two of Nicki Epstein's knit roses on either end, but I didn't like the way the roses sat when the stocking stitch caused the whole scarf to curl. They looked like the bloodshot eyes of a very skinny lizard. I guess two inches of ribbing isn't quite enough to combat that tendency to curl. So I frogged it and am re-knitting the entire thing in ribbing so that the roses will lay flat and nice. I'm just a little worried that they may look like a pare of breasts at either end of the little girl's scarf. Oh well, never too early to learn about anatomy. And isn't the flower metaphor the classic one, anyway?

=^_^=

Merry Christmas everyone!

2005-12-27T14:05:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long haitus, moving is a bitch. But I'm happily settled in my new house and Spirit is finally here to truely make it home.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I spent mine in Nova Scotia with my family where we had a bit of a special Christmas surprise. I also got to teach my brother's girlfriend how to knit. I hope she sticks with it; she's studying geriology (probably spelled wrong) which is the study of working with elderly people, so knowing how to knit will come in handy for her. When we were talking about it, it came out that her cousin in Ottawa recognized my email address and realized that she reads this blog. So thanks for reading, Ashley's cousin, and I hope the long break in posts hasn't put you off. : ) Post a comment and I'll link to your blog.

For Christmas, Nyron got me Denise Interchangables! Yay! I can't wait to try them out and see if they're as spectacular as everyone says they are. I mainly wanted them because they're elegedly airline safe and I do a fair bit of flying what with my family in another province and all. Now I can get some decent knitting done on the way.

I'm very excited because I finally started to set up my studio in the spare room of my new place. I got some hanging shelves from Canadian Tire that I've put all my yarn into, divided by weight and, in some cases, brand if I have a lot of yarn from a particular brand. I've also put all my charity yarn into a Rubbermade container that fits perfectly underneath them all. Why all the excitement?, besides the joy of having all my yarn in one place. I've decided I'm going to start my own business, selling some of my home-made home decor projects. When I have a few of the pruducts made, I'll post pictures along with a questionaire so that you, my readers, can be my focus group. I'd really appreciate your help with this and I'm looking forward to your responces.

Well, that's a good update for now. I'll make more of an effort to post regularly, I promise. : )

=^_^=

Jigsaw bounty

2005-10-25T17:54:00.000-04:00

Today at work I spent the day cleaning out the back storage space, which clearly hasn't been touched since June and desperately needed it. vAmong the broken office supplies and student binders with outdated events calendars I found 4 boxes of jigsaw puzzles. My boss surmised that they are probably incomplete and they are too large to be effectively used in a single class period, so she suggested I toss them. But I couldn't see all those colourful spaes without thinking "mosaic tiles" and so I've comandeered them for my own uses. I'm not sure all of what I'll do with them, but picture frames and earings spring readily to mind. I'm sure I'll come up with more in due time. There's not really much I can do until I move into my new house (which is looking like it won't be until almost December) and get the rest of my materials out of storage.

In the mean time I'm 3/4 of the way finished Nyron's mother's scarf, wo it'll be ready for Eid with no problem. I took a pattern drafting course at Romni over the weekend and learned all the math required to custom designing a sweater. I'm going to use this newfound education for Nyron's Christmas sweater. I'm still making the argyle pattern from Knitting Magazine, but I'll use the math to make sure it fits Nyron, not just the guy in the picture. To do this well I'm going to wait until I'm in my townhouse where I'll have access to my steam iron (we learned the proper way to block a swatch) to make sure that the bases for all that math is accurate. Until then, I'll prabably do Knit for Kids through Lewiscraft or make preemie sets with some yarn I'm getting from a woman on Freecycle.

=^_^=

The scarf that didn't seem to want to be; or A quest for the right pattern

2005-10-16T17:05:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I decided to knit a scarf for Nyron's mom. Nyron's family doesn't celebrate Christmas but it's Ramadan this month and Eid, the end of Ramadan, is a good occation to give gifts. Nyron said that she doesn't really have a scarf so I went to Romni and found some merino wool in a gorgeous deep red colour that she likes. Everything was set for making a lovely scarf just in time for winter.

Some people talk about waiting until their yarn tells them what it wants to be. I don't know that I've ever had that happen, but this yarn definitely had some strong feelings about what it DIDN'T want to be! I started by trying the Feather and Fan pattern that I've seen some people use to make lovely scarves. That produced a scarf that buckled like a sheet of corregated metal which completely hid the pattern. So I used that as a excuse to buy a new book of stitch patterns and found three lovely flower motifs. One was done in reverse stocking stitch on a stocking stitch background, another used twisted stitches (which I've never done before) on a reverse stocking stitch background and the other had lots of eyelets. They were all beautiful, but proved to be far too complicated for what little brainpower I have left after work. At this point I learned that Extra 100% Australian Merino Wool doesn't withstand frogging very well. It started to literally fray and I would have to cut above the fray and start over again. Twice.

Now I've settled on a simple pattern of eyelets all the way across every row. It creates a neat effect of making the stitches on either side slant in opposite directions which curls the scarf into a coil. It's starting to look very cool and will be very warm for Nyron's mom.

=^_^=

Nothing brightens your day like pressies!

2005-09-27T12:06:00.000-04:00

Nyron and I got back from Nova Scotia late Sunday night, absolutely exhausted from such a long drive (14 hours on the road!). It was wonderful to get to see my family and show Nyron around my city. I've never been a tourist in my home town before. I even discovered parts of Halifax that I did know were there. We found a little yarn shop in a shopping centre on Barrington that I didn't know about. It's hard to find yarn anywhere but a Lewiscraft in Halifax, so it's nice to know about this place. Unfortunately, it doesn't carry a very wide variety of yarns and hardly any standard brand names. The shopping centre is very touristy and the yarn shop seems to just be there to look quaint. No matter, tomorrow I'll go to Romni and pick up the yarn for Nyron's Christmas sweater, the Argyle sweater in this month's Knitting. Mmmmm, cotton cashmere! Since coming home, however, things haven't been as relaxing.

My first day back at work was the registration day for new students so I had to be in at 8am. Since I was staying the night at Nyron's in Brampton I had to get up at 5:30 am in order to take the Go train into town. By the end of the day I could barely stand but I had to walk half an hour to the residence hotel where I'll be living until my townhouse becomes available. The residence is in the middle of the hospital district and caters to students and long-term care patients who don't need to stay in the hospital but would like to live nearby. My room, for lack of a more polite term, is spartan and roughly the size of a shoe box. If it were ever to enter an "Enough Room to Swing a Cat Contest" it would most likely lose. The ambulances going past my window at all hours made me start to wonder if I'd every get any sleep.

When Nyron came to spend some time with me and go out for dinner (I live dangerously close to one of my favourite sushi restaurants!) he brought my Secret Pal parcel! I'd been having mail problems when I first got back from England so I had her send it to Nyron's house. Thank you so much for everything Martina! It's all lovely! I can't post a picture right now because I don't have internet at the residence (I'm being very bad and writing this at work), but here's a list of all she gave me:

- a large black Barbie shoulder bag, easily large enough for a sweater project. Instead of the silly Barbie symbol it has a cute little pink kitty on it!
- a pack of Studio18 note cards featuring a pink sweater still attached to the balls of yarn. A pair of needles is stuck into one of the balls. It's a really sweet, simple design.
- a mini photo album with bees on it (I love bees!)
- a zipper charm of a sweater on the needles
- a pair of tapestry needles
- a yarn cutter pendant; I was just saying the other day how I wanted one of those
- a plastic drinking cup which I'm very grateful to have right now as all my cutlery and dishes are packed away
- a Craft Council of Canada guide to the professional art and craft studios of Newfoundland and Labrador (which I promise to make use of when I visit Newfoundland someday)
- a light green candle holder
- a hand made bookmark and a small bag of hand made stitch markers which I absolutely love! The beads are beautiful!
- a pair of needle holders
- and everything came in a tartan photo box which will be great for keeping things in order when I start scrapbooking

Is that everything? I hope I haven't forgotten to mention anything. Basically, thanks Martina my darling by brightening my day in a way only gifts from a complete stranger can!

=^_^=

This is one of the hardest things I've ever done.

2005-09-19T12:09:00.000-04:00

A man from Toronto Animal Services came a few minutes ago to take Sebastian and Hyde. I thought I could get through it without crying, but I should have known that would be a pipe dream. Especially after he reminded me that there is no guarantee of adoption. All the no-kill shelters are full and I have nowhere else to take them.

The worst part was that they knew the minute I picked them up what was going on. They fought like the devil and I'm covered in scratches. Even Sebastian who was upstairs at the time and didn't see the man come in with cat cages somehow knew.

I hate that I had to do this and I hate that I couldn't find anyone else to take them. I wish I'd had more time to find them homes but as it is I don't know what I'm going to do with Spirit while I wait for my new townhouse to become available. The real estate agent who said I could stay in his basement apartment got into a fight with my father on the phone and like a child who takes his ball and leaves the game when he doesn't get his way suddenly retracted his offer. Now I'm trying to find a hotel that will let me stay there with Spirit and is still affordable. If I can't, we have to take Spirit with us when we go to Nova Scotia and leave her with my parents until I move into my new home.

Everything about this has just gone more and more wrong no matter what I do. I need to go find something to knit.

=^_^=

It'll be a goodbye Monday

2005-09-16T15:24:00.000-04:00

Nyron and I leave for Nova Scotia on Monday. My boss at works has very graciously allowed me to carry on with our pre-existing plans to visit my family back home. We had originally planned to go for 10 days but i've decided to cut it down to one week so that I can be back in time for work the following Monday morning. I work in a language school and that Monday is the day when the next batch of new students arrive and they'll need as many hands as possible.

Monday is also the day when Hyde and Sebastian will be handed over to the city animal services. No one has offered to take them and all the shelters are full (too many cats gettin' busy over the summer). I hate to turn them over to the city like this since they have a much more uncertain future than they would at a shelter, but I try not to let myself think about that. I've forced myself to get used to the idea and I can pretty much think of it without crying, although I still get a little teary.

=^_^=

My cats need a home

2005-09-11T13:22:00.000-04:00

My father has told me that I have to get rid of Sebastian and Hyde. At first he gave me until when I move into my new place, which would be December, but now he says I have to have them gone by next weekend! I want them to go to good homes, not just the shelter. Please, PLEASE if anyone can take them or knows someone who can let me know asap. This is breaking my heart.

=^_^=

Drumroll please....

2005-09-07T12:03:00.000-04:00

I have managed to cast on, make the toe and half the foot of my toe-up-two-at-a-time-on-circular-needle socks. I've really got to come up with a snappier name for them. : )

And here they are!

Cute, eh? I love the colours. I've never used self-patterning sock yarn before, it's a lot of fun. What's also cool about it is that each ball came with a spool of thread to reinforce the heels! Isn't that helpful?

=^_^=

Nyron Ali: Pet Detective

2005-08-29T20:38:00.000-04:00

Nyron came home and found Hyde. He was hiding in a box, under a bunch of boxes, behind some more boxes, in a closet in the back room. Bad kitty. So, thanksfully, we were able to take all three of them to the cat hotel.

I highly recomend this place! It's called The Cat's Meow Motel in Mississauga. The woman who runs it, Jean, is so sweet. It's cats only and the cats get to walk around the place as they please until night time. Even at night they're not put into tiny metal cages, but in sectioned off squares of the room. Hyde, Sebastian and Spirit all have a room together. Hopefully having to spend a week together in a small space will force them to get along.

Getting them to the hotel was a bit tricky, though. Spirit's been through the car ride thing before and she just sat on my lap the whole time, but Hyde and Sebastian were both terrified. The last time they got put in carriers and loaded into a car was to go to the vet where they had a thermometre stuck in their buts and needles in each hip. As soon as they were in the car they messed inside their respective carriers. The ride stank. When we arrived and got everyone settled and I explained how to administer their ear medicine (only $2.50 extra per cat, per application) we went back to the car to assess the damage. One of the carriers leaked all over the back seat of the car so we went to Canadian Tire to buy upolstery cleaner. A lot of cleaner and half a box of kleenex later we had a slightly less smelly car but a much bigger stain. Our next strategy is baking soda left on the stain over night to get the smell out and then another very throrough cleaning tomorrow morning.

=^_^=

I hope Hyde is hiding...

2005-08-29T13:14:00.000-04:00

...because the alternative is that he's got out. Which, by now, I'm sure is what happened. The new owner left two windows open that don't have screens and I can't find him anywhere. Sebastian is likely to hide all day in the same place and not be seen, but Hyde likes to wander around. It's unusual to go so long without seeing him (I know he's not in the attic because the door's been closed all day). I haven't even heard the sound the little bell on his collar makes. The main evidence that Hyde's not in the house is that Spirit spent a good hour lounging on the couch; if Hyde were around she'd have been sitting tensely on the inside door mat waiting to hiss and growl at him whenever he came by. The fact that Spirit was so relaxed means that Hyde is nowhere around.

I've gone out a number of times looking for him, but with all the piles of branches and contsruction material around my backyard, not to mention the great big dumpster at the end of the driveway, make it difficult to conduct a proper search. I've checked the basement which is accessible from outside in case he went down there, but there's nowhere left for him to hide down there; most of the walls have even been taken down. I've walked up and down my street checking under cars and in trees and put out an APB with the workers at the garden centre across the street to keep an eye out for him.

What makes matters worse, I have to have the cats and myself out of the house tonight so that the new owner can sand and stain all the floors. I have the cats set to go to a cat hotel in Mississauga, but I may only be dropping off 2 if I can't find Hyde. I almost couldn't get them in there at all because they were diagnosed with ear mites at the vet on Saturday. Of course, I had to be honest and tell the proprietress about it - she's got other people's cats there as well as her own and I'd hate for them to catch the mites. At first she declined to take them. She apologised profusely and even gave me tips on finding Hyde, but after a while she consented to take them if she keeps them quarantined in one room that she can easily clean. I've offered to pay extra for the special grooming that they need with the ear medicine.

So, basically, I'm having a rough week. I can't wait to get out of this house and into a nice small condo where there isn't any construction going on and we can all feel settled. I really hope I find Hyde before I leave; I keep worrying that he'll come back and not be able to get back in while I'm gone.

=^_^=

Finally, some knitting news

2005-08-28T11:18:00.000-04:00

I've decided to teach myself to knit socks. Of course, just knitting socks isn't enough for me. I always figure that if I learn the hardest way to do something first, than all the easier ways and variations will be a snap. So in that philosophy, I'm teaching myself to knit socks toe-up on circular needles, both at the same time. OK, I may not figure out that last part this time, but I will someday. If I succeed I'll write up instructions and post them on this blog.

=^_^=

Cat in a hot tin roof

2005-08-25T22:37:00.000-04:00

Ever since the building inspector discovered aspestos in my attic there's been a string of contractors coming and going giving estimates to replace it with something safer. A contractor was finally decided on and set to come this morning, but when he arrived he was shocked to hear that they expected him to do a week long, highly toxic job with a young woman and three cats in the house (he also discovered previously unnoticed asbestos in the basement). This resulted in a number of back and forths in the only room with access to the attic and the door eventually being left open. This proved to be just too much temptation to a certain hide-and-seek loving pussy cat.

Nyron and I had had a lot planned this morning. We were going to pick up a second litterbox for the kittens (Spirit sometimes denies them access, the bitch), then visit my friend Amy and see her new baby. Then Nyron was going to go to work and Amy and I were going to spend some seriously necessary and long overdue girl-time. We never like to leave the house without knowing where all the cats are, thanks largely to their many disappearing acts, so we set about on the daily search. It's not terribly unusualy to find all the cats but Hyde, so we started going through all his usual favourite spots - under the armchair, the windowsill in the bathroom and inside the stove (I'm not even kidding).

When we went upstairs we noticed the door standing open, the attic closet open and a ladder pushed helpfully right inside, prividing a nice little set of kitty stairs right into the attic. It took us about three circles of all the hiding spots to finally admit that he must have gone up there. Nyron - like a trooper! - poked his head up the hole and into the hot, dusty, potentially lung-ruining attic and shined a feeble plastic flashlight around. The first time he didn't see anything, but a second attempt revealed the errant puss, huddled in a corner well far away from the opening. I can understand why; the new owner was using some very loud machinery today and it must have been very frightening.

Hyde was discovered in the attic at around 11:30. It wasn't until almost 9 tonight that he finally ventured down. Between that time we tried everything to coax him down. Nyron braved the attic 3 more times and I spent hours sitting just outside the door with the food bowl on the floor. I was initially worried that if I left the door open for Hyde to come down himself then the other cats would find the attic inticing and venture up there themselves, but I needn't have been concerned. The machinery also frightened our scaredy-cat Sebastian and he didn't come out from under the armchair until about an hour ago. Nerves of Steel Spirit made a few attempts to get into the room (likely only because I was trying to keep her out of it) and eventually decided to take no interest whatsoever in the attic and took up her usual post at the end of my bed. So after worrying about him for almost 12 hours Hyde eventually sauntered down like nothing at all, went into the kitchen and preceeded to drink half the water bowl in one sitting. Silly kitty.

=^_^=

Who are you and what have you done with my cat?

2005-08-23T12:44:00.000-04:00

Hyde has undergone a complete turn around! On Friday Nyron and I had to herd all the cats upstairs so that we could clear out the basement. The new owner of my house wanted to start working on the basement and I had all my laundry down there. Since we'd been using a door pushed up against the doorway and held in place by heavy Rubbermade boxes that we removed to get downstairs we couldn't let them wander around. Nyron cleared up the basement while I spent time upstairs with the cats. This time, Hyde didn't fight so hard and took almost no time at all to come to enjoy getting pets and scfratches around the neck. We also managed to get his collar on him (although he still tries to get it off).

For the rest of the night hyde hung around the couch looking for more attention. Every day since then he's become more and more comfortable around us. They both spend a lot less time hiding under the armchair. In fact, Hyde has now become the most affectionate cat in the house, following us around, looping around our legs and purring like an 18-wheeler.

Of course, nothing is ever easy and this wonderful newfound affection has come with a price. Spirit is horribly jealous and it doesn't help matters that Hyde is on a crusade to win her affection, which she is determined not to give. He spends a lot of time following her around and getting hissede at for her trouble. the last two nights I have been kept awake by Hyde trying to inch closer to Spirit and Spirit hissing and growling at him.

It's nice to have 3 cuddly kitties in my house now. Although Nyron maintains that Spirit will always be his favourite.

=^_^=

The legend continues...

2005-08-19T14:15:00.000-04:00

The other day Nyron and I finally managed to secure the basement in a way that the cats can't get through. Eventually we may find a way to do that will let me get down to do laundry as well, but who knows. We then went looking for the cats and, as usual, found Sebastian without much trouble. He was sitting on a windowsill. Windowsills, it seems, are good places for cornering cats. After letting us pet him for a while we decided to try and get his collar on him, with much success. He didn't try to scramble away or push it off. Even Spirit put up more of a fuss when I first put her collar on her! In light of our success, we decided to try picking Sebastian up and once again he passively let us do it with a minimum of fuss. We took him into the living room and I held him and petted him until he calmed down. He was still breathing rather quickly, but he didn't immediately jump away when I released my grip, either. Instead, he just circled around to a more comfortable position on my lap and lay back down again. We also managed to take the first ever photographs of Sebastian:

Here's Sebastian, a little scared from being picked up.

Here he is again, feeling a bit more comfortable.

High on our achievement we decided to try the same maneuver on Hyde. He, predictably, was considerably more difficult to catch. We eventually cornered him in my bedroom and it took the two of us to hold him while he fought like his life depended on it. That's when Nyron's phone rang downstairs. We'd been expecting a call from his friend Jenny who was in town for only a few days and couldn't miss it, so I told Nyron that I had him and he left to answer the phone. I did actually think I had him. He proved me wrong. He twisted like an eel in my grip until he was turned around facing me. Then he did something I've only ever seen cats do in the movies; he tried to scratch my eyes out. Thankfully I wear glasses, which he managed to knock half way across the room. He did, however, scratch my eyelid and my cheek in three places:

Looking a little better after a day to heal.

On the second attempt we managed to hold on to Hyde long enough to get his collar on him, but not long enough for him to feel comfortable being held. To add to the physical comedy of the whole situation, the amount of fur lying around in the air was reeking havoc on our allergies. We kept sneezing and having to blow our noses with one hand while holding the cat with the other.

The next morning I found Hyde's collar on the floor in the foyer. Two days later I found Sebastian's collar had been chewed off and left behind the armchair in the corner of the living room.

It looks like they're getting organized.

Since then we have managed to continue picking up and cuddling Sebastian. Each time he seems less afraid when we pick him up and more comfortable being held. He's even started purring loudly when one of us has him in our lap and he's eating treats out of our hands. Still, not so for Hyde. Sometimes I can walk within inches of his nose and he'll do nothing but stare at me suspiciously. Other times, he'll flat out run. We still have a hard time getting close enough to him to pick him up, although if we find him on a windowsill he'll often tolerate being petted. I'm hoping that the more he sees Sebastian being calm with us the sooner it'll be that he decides we're OK, too. I have managed to get a picture of him:

Right now we're experiencing one of Toronto's frequent summer thunder storms and that cats don't seem to be enjoying it as much as I do. Sebastian is hiding behind the armchair (although that's still a common hang-out for him) and Hyde is on the livingroom windowsill, looking anxiously out at the night sky. Every once in a while he lets out a scared little mew. I wish I could comfort him, but I know he won't yet take it as comfort. He's getting better, though. Soon he'll be properly socialized.

=^_^=

I dub thee...

2005-08-15T20:28:00.000-04:00

Hyde! That's is what I've decided to name the other cat, erstwhile known as "the unnamed one" (my friend Sarah got a kick out of that). It was actually the name I'd come up with within a few days of their arrival here; I suggested to Nyron that we name them Hyde and Siek (get it?). He had his heart set on Sebastian, though, so I moved on. But it kept reocurring and the more I thought about it, the more I got to like it. Now I get to order name tags!

The cats have taken to coming out in the open in the day time now! It's all progress!

=^_^=

Progress!

2005-08-13T22:10:00.000-04:00

It seems the "leave them alone and they'll come to me when they want to" theory of cat climatization is the one that's winning out. Within the last half hour, both cats have been up here on the main floor, out in the open, in full view of me. They were both a bit wary, but seemed calm. They haven't come right up to me yet, but this is the first time they've come out in the open with me here. Sebastian (the shy one) wouldn't come any closer than the windowsill of the next room, but the unnamed one came right into the room and lay down a few feet from me. This is good.

=^_^=

Claws in the walls

2005-08-13T19:01:00.000-04:00

Once again, the cats gave us the slip. Nyron and I were looking for them, still quite baffled that we could only ever find one at a time, if either of them. I knew there must be a hiding place that we didn't know about, and I was right. While we were looking under the basement stairs I heard a rustling sound behind me. I turned around but couldn't figure out where it came from. The only thing directly behind me was a wall: to my right was the boiler room and to my left was the rest of the basement. We searched everywhere and couldn't find Sebastian (the unnamed one was on the main floor) and since Nyron hadn't heard it he quickly dismissed it.

My mind wouldn't leave that sound alone, though, and I knew that they must've found a way to get into the wall. Of course, that's just where we found him. Nyron discovered a hole in the drywall. The drywall in the basement is very water damaged and the hole was covered over from view by the paper that hadn't disolved in the moisture. It took a while to scare him out (and Nyron ended up making that hole bigger and opening up another one) but finally he booked it out of there and upstairs. Nyron covered up the holes and then tried to block up the basement doorway again. By the next morning, they'd found a way back downstairs.

I was doing a search of cat care and behaviour to try and figure out a way to get through this. I want these cats to feel comfortable around us, to become our pets and let us love them. It's hard when they won't let us near. I found a site that tells you what to do when introducing a new cat into the home, and it turns out I did absolutely everything wrong. I let them loose in the house instead of getting them aclimatized to one room at a time, and I introduced them to Spirit right away. Now I'm trying to figure out how to go about fixing this. Should I start over and put them in kitty isolation like I should have at first until they get used to us, or should I let things go as they are and trust that they'll come around in time? The only real problem is that I have a time limit; I'm moving sometime in the next three months and at some point we're going to have to be able to pick them up to get them to the new house. I just don't know what to do.

In less dysfunctional news, Spirit seems to have fully forgiven me for leaving her for a year. The last few nights she's gone back to sleeping in bed with me and she's been a lot more cuddly. At least one of my cats loves me.

=^_^=

Phantom claws

2005-08-11T20:03:00.000-04:00

You know how people say that when you lose a limb you can still feel it like it's there, like it's a phantom limb? I think cats who have been declawed get that. My evidence: Spirit is declawed (my grandmother refused to look after her whie I was away unless I did). I've seen her paw the arms of the couch, but I always assumed she was just stretching. But tonight we bought a scratching post for the two new cats who are still armed and dangerous and Nyron saw her trying to scratch it like she used to when she still had her claws. That's really quite sad.

=^_^=

Help! I've been tagged!

2005-08-11T16:03:00.000-04:00

Tagged by Jaqueline

5 CDs in your Player:
1. Mix CD that my DB made for me before I went to England
2. King's of Convenience (burned, I don't know which album)
3. The Shins (both albums on one burned CD)
My CD player only accepts 3 CDs. If I had a 5-CD changer I'd also have:
4. Belle and Sebastian
5. Amaral

5 Movies You've watched Recently:
1. Charile and the Chocolate Factory – Wonderful!
2. The Dukes of Hazard - What I get for letting my little brother pick the movie
3. The Bourne Identity
4. The Bourne Supremecy
5. Howl's Moving Castle - I love anime! Especially Miyazaki films

5 Nice Things That Happened To You Lately
1. My mother visited for the first time since I moved to Toronto (5 years ago)
2. I met some very cool people at Bookcrossing and knitting meetings this week
3. Nyron brought back a lot of books from the Random House preview
4. My newly adopted and still slightly disoriented kitties let me pet them
5. I get to see Nyron today for more than half an hour after he gets off work

5 MP3s on your playlist
None at the moment.

5 Friends You're Passing This To:
1. Nyron
2. Sarah
3. Kathryn
4. Diana
5. Amy

=^_^=

What kind of knitter are you?

2005-08-11T16:01:00.000-04:00

You appear to be a Knitting Adventurer.
You are through those knitting growing pains and
feeling more adventurous. You can follow a
standard pattern if it's not too complicated
and know where to go to get help. Maybe you've
started to experiment with different fibers and
you might be eyeing a book with a cool
technique you've never tried. Perhaps you
prefer to stick to other people's patterns but
you are trying to challenge yourself more.
Regardless of your preference, you are
continually trying to grow as a knitter, and as
well you should since your non-knitting friends
are probably dropping some serious hints, these
days.
http://marniemaclean.com

What Kind of Knitter Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

=^_^=

Kitties of Steel!

2005-08-11T15:23:00.000-04:00

Last night I arrived home from knitting group to see Nyron looking for the cats. Of course, this time it was Sebastian who was AWOL and the unnamed one who was readily found (although still quite nervous about being found). In fact, he had apparently been spending most of the evening in my craft room in the back of the house. So why, since we had already established the night before that both cats were still alive and well, were we still searching for them? Because Nyron had a plan.

The plan was this; since our main problem was that the cats kept hiding extremely effectively in the basement, then we would simply have to keep them out of the basement. Seems simple. Except for the fact that there is no door to the basement. Nyron tried taking the door off the livingroom and putting it in the doorway to the basement, but the hinges didn't fit. So after a fruitless search we decided that they must both be somewhere on the main or upper floor of the house and proceeded to block off the basement by leaning the heavy door against it and pushing two heavy boxes and the broom against the bottom edges where there was still room to squeeze through. We also tried to eliminate the number of available hiding spots by doing something that I tend to avoid like the plague: tidying up.

This morning I went downstairs to find that the door had been knocked over. Cats:2. Us:0

Knitting group last night was great. What a great bunch of people! I immediately felt very comfortable, even though it was my first time with this group. I even found someone who had read this blog! Oooo, that makes me feel so flattered! Hi Cami! Read her blog, it's really good! The next meeting is set for two Wednesdays from now, if anyone is interested, at the Starbucks at Yonge and Davisville. We're having a Stash Bash, so bring yarn/supplies to trade/sell.

In some incredibly good news, I got a package delivery notice from Canada Post today! There's only one thing it could be...my backpack of yarn from England! Huzzah for the postal system! Unluckily, I was downtown at a job interview when it arrived, so I wasn't here to accept it right away (I'd better get that job!). Luckily, today is already a day that Nyron and I have decided to allocate to running errands, so I'll surely be able to pick it up today! See, I told you it would arrive. : )

=^_^=

All cats present and acounted for

2005-08-10T00:43:00.000-04:00

When Nyron arrived here after work, the first thing we did was hunt for the kitties. I still hadn't succeeded in finding the unnamed cat before I left for the bookcrossing meeting and I was still worried. We searched the basement for a while and managed to find a cat several times, but because the only sure way to tell them apart is to check for the little bit on white on the unnamed one's chest, it was often hard to tell who was the streak of black feline running from its hiding place as if its life depended on it.

After a break on the couch (Nyron had a headache from work) we tried again. We went downstairs and found one of them in the same hiding spot in which we had left him previously, but we didn't know which one. While I tried to get a good look at his chest, Nyron continued to search around the main room of the basement. That's when the other one leapt from behind the curtain in the dog's eye view window and almost landed on him. So, for the first time since they were dropped off last night, I managed to see both cats in the same place and finally confirm that one of them wasn't stuck in the wall somewhere starving (this is a very old house, it could happen).

I feel better knowing they are both ok. Now I can just relax and stay out of their fur until they decide they are comfortable enough to approach me.

=^_^=

One cat found, one more still on the lam

2005-08-09T14:17:00.000-04:00

I found one of the cats this afternoon. It was the smaller, shy one that Nyron named Sabastian. He was hiding in an upper cupboard in the basement. When I discovered him he took off and hid amongst the moving boxes that I keep in a room in the basement. After some slow and careful inching towards him he finally let me pet him, but he still seems rather nervous. I'm sure they'll get used to me and their surroundings eventually.

I still haven't found the other one. The only food in the house is in the kitchen, so he's got to come out of hiding sometime.

=^_^=

Where oh where have my kitties gone?

2005-08-09T12:14:00.000-04:00

My cousins came over with the cats last night: two all black males, 8 months old. After an initial once-over of the house they had a 3 hour stand off with Spirit in the basement. Eventually Spirit came upstairs and displayed her mastery of the house by walking boldly around in the faces of the other two who tended to slink.

Now, I can't seem to find the two males. Spirit is still strutting around and offering me no help in finding them. I've looked all over the house a number of times, but there are just so many places they can hide! There's nothing I can really do until they get hungry and come out for food.

I feel kind of bad for the little kitties. They don't know where they are and have spent the night being put in their place by a much older cat. They haven't let me come near them yet, I'm still waiting for them to feel comfortable enough to come to me. I don't want to make them feel threatened. I'm a little worried about their disappearing act, but I hope they'll come out into the open soon.

=^_^=