A lesson in something

There are two bloggers I wanna be when I grow up. One is Kay, who is a way faster knitter than I am and has nice crockery to pose with her dishcloths, and the other is NiC, who takes marvellous pictures of nature in London. He's been showing us reflections lately, and I got this picture out to have another look at it.

This is from my trip out west in August. You kind of have to work to see the subject of the picture.


There's a bright blue dragonfly in the middle. All the trees and whatnot are reflections in the pond, and you can barely see the edge of the pond way in the back corner. Funny how one's eye (okay, my eye) doesn't realise all that stuff will be in the picture! It was just a picture of a dragonfly when I took it!

Here it is upside down!


Huh.

Nice people and a brilliant movie, all for free

As I emerged from my shower this morning, I got a phone call from a friend telling me to check my local Freecycle group, as there was a ticket available for a 12 noon film at the Film Festival.

It all worked very well: the movie looked like something I would enjoy; the person giving away the ticket lived near me; the kids both stay at school for lunch today; I had time to stop at the library, have a snack and get to the theatre in plenty of time. Yahoo.

I got there early, I thought. But the ticket-holders' line was already very long! So first I thought I was being a dork for getting there too early, only to realize what a naive newbie I was to not know just how many people get there really early. Can't win...

Anyways, I was lucky to be in line beside a little concrete wall, so I could sit and knit! And, the woman next to me pulled out her beautiful blue socks and we knitted and chatted for half an hour before the line started to move. Very pleasant... I ran out of this 1980s Bed-&-Breakfast-pink wool/acrylic blend just as the lights were dimming. (It will likely end up as a square in a blanket.)

The movie itself was a load of fun. Funny and clever (too clever, say some) and nice to look at. The acting was very good, and the steampunk aspects of the whole thing tickled my fancy. Some of the costumes were cleverly timeless, and although there's a Lamborghini in the film, there's also a steam train. And lots of good explosions.

A fun day, but now I must tend to my dirty laundry and dishes. Funny how that happens, eh?

Just get 'er done

Those socks that have been on the needles for quite some time are now finiti!



I couldn't wait for daylight.

I have the next socks lined up, plus I just got Barbara Walker from the library and found a lovely lace shawl stitch I just must start immediately, plus, let's not forget the 592 things already under way... That might be a slight exaggeration...

Anyways, the joy of finishing something will spur me onward, and maybe I could just swatch that lace pattern in the shawl yarn to show you, but I can't really start it till maybe... later.

Sigh.

Updated goals and more holiday

Hmmm, what am I going to knit this month?

The secret thing is still on the needles. It will kill me, I'm sure. But that's more than I should really say, so we'll pass quickly by.

The rainbow sock needs a bit more of a foot. Should be doable. Yes, by the end of the month, I'll have a pair of socks done.





I notice that I boastfully recorded the finishing of a single mitten on January second!

Perhaps I should finish the second one, since they'd be great fall mitts.

I've dug it out and will find the pattern any day now.







That's a lot of stuff on teeny needles already. There's also the big brown thing, which would make a pleasant big-needle change. Hmm. I'll keep that in reserve.

I'll never finish all four of those things in one month. But those are the four I'll work on!

We are still settling in after our end-of-summer jet-lag. Managing to get up in the morning, though not so keenly this morning as yesterday!

I made it to two grocery stores and a drug store yesterday -- we seem to have run out of everything just before we left town! There's still a small pile of laundry, but that'll just blend in with the usual stuff.

Here's a selection of the wonderful things we saw on that holiday.

The kids loved the big slugs!

Don't get those here in Toronto!

We didn't interrupt these two. We figure this might be slug snuggling...

And this superhero slug made it up high onto a fern. This is a flash picture because we were deep in the forest, great slug territory.

For those who prefer birds to slugs, a woodpecker! (You'd better click it to get the big picture.)

This is the part of the bay we looked out on.

We saw it morning and night, calm and not so calm, with the tide going in and out.

I could sit and watch it all the time!

And now back to our regular programming.

A quick look at holiday knitting

There was some knitting done last week at the bottom end of Vancouver Island.


I finished these socks at home this morning (I took 3 balls of sock yarn with me, and if I hadn't gone for walks on beaches and through woods, and if I hadn't sat in the hot tub or around the groaning board I could have knitted more than one pair...) and will send them off to Afghans for Afghans lickety split.

The plate in the photo is just exactly why one should always drop in at the junk stores when travelling. I regret that on our Lake Huron holiday, we drove past gazillions of shops advertising "treasure," "collectibles," "knick-knacks," and even "antiques," without stopping at a single one. But this time we hit both the St Vincent de Paul and the Sally Ann, and we found this plate with a picture of Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland! We have been there; my brother used to live there. Buying a souvenir of the easternmost part of the country in a thrift store at practically the end of the road on the western side of the country was ridiculously thrilling. And it matched the socks.

The holiday was a blast, and we have plenty more pictures. But, it seems that tonight is the last minute before school starts, so I have a few other things to do! Really, when things settle down, you'll see some action around here.

Well, that didn't go as planned

Here I am, running around getting ready to leave town again.

I meant to provide you with a blow-by-blow report of our last holiday before now, but can just show you my lovely mini-shawl, with its first row of blue.


I will take socks for Afghan children to knit on the plane and while sitting on the lanai watching more breathtaking sunsets.

See you in September!

Back safe and sound

We just had a sunny, sandy, surfy weekend at Southampton, and we are now back home again, washing the clothes and beach towels in preparation for another holiday next week.

There was a sunset or two:



beach fun:



knitting in high places:



and those eternal fashion questions. Who bought this man's shorts?


More later!

Cottage country

I've lived in Toronto for many years now, but still am uneasy about what happens when one goes beyond the end of the subway line. This weekend, if we don't fall off the map as we pass the last station, we are heading off to the shores of Lake Huron, for sun and sand.

Ha! We are packing sweaters and raincoats, as well as a beach towel or two.

I need car knitting and beach knitting and simple knitting!


I'll take the rainbow sock (I started the heel on the second one the other day in the park) and my (ahem) new project of the weaver's wool mini-shawl.


This is what I will use my Rowanspun for. I notice in the instructions we need 350 yards of dk weight yarn, but 6.5 mm needles. Well, I am not using such gigantic needles, so maybe my mini shawl will be even more mini than most. Oh well.

As you can see, it is very mini right now.

Will I come back next week with a finished sock and more of a shawl?? Who can tell?

I'm not used to beaches without tides, having grown up on the west coast. What's the point of a sandcastle if the tide won't come in and fill your moat, and then wreck your castle!? Perhaps we'll learn.

Book swap package!

Once upon a time, I took part in a book and bookmark swap. I had fun finding a pre-1960 book with a knitting reference in it, and greatly enjoyed finding pink beads for my partner, which I probably wouldn't have bought for myself, but which were, if I do say so myself, very lovely!

And now, thanks to the joint efforts of the Royal Mail and Canada Post and some camels and sloths, I bet, I got my package!


The book is I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith, which I know nothing about, and which, I hear, has no knitting in it! But I am assured that it seems like the characters should be knitting, and they probably are, but we're just not told. I look forward to reading this! The bookmark is a shimmery fabric one -- it looks very complicated to li'l old me, layers of fabric held together in some magic way.

My swap partner was Katie, who is master of many crafts!

She made buttons (the pin kind, not the sew-on kind) of old paper pictures, and envelopes (not cards, as I had first thought) made from pages of old kids' books! You can see the beautiful fronts, and the backs with flaps. There are stickers to address them, but I think these might get used for secret correspondence, tucked into gifts or other such things.

Let's see, what next?! A skein of Rowanspun DK, just what I needed! I started thinking of a shawl last night, and got out my white Rowanspun, and another bit of dk wool that turned out to be not quite right. Now with this, another 200 meters of the same yarn, I am happy as can be. (We'll talk later of the wisdom of even thinking of starting this project before finishing the 274 projects in line ahead of it...) A book of Rowan patterns for felted bags, slippers and so on. A bar of lavender and wildflower soap. And a card of the painting of Katie in her studio that you see in her blog's banner!

Thank you so much, Katie, for the wonderful package, and Zoe, for organising this swap!

Oops, forgot to mention the chocolate! You can see its opened and crumpled wrapper in the picture! Delicious milk chocolate!

Wow, I heard this at 4 am

This morning at 4, a blast of air came in our window and rattled our heavy venetian blinds. We leapt out of bed, thinking those scary thoughts that come into your brain when you are jerked awake by loud noises at 4 am.

There were thunderous booms, and after I realised the tree had not fallen on our house, I assumed we were in for another thunderstorm. But, no hail, no rain, no more wind after that first blast.

And the thunder was weird, too! Just distant thumps, and lots of them. And, hey, lots of sirens, too, which we don't usually hear. Something seemed to be exploding. We live near the train tracks and remembered the accident that once occurred on them. We got up and looked outside but could see nothing.

So, this morning we learn there was a fire at a propane depot, about 5 miles from here, as the crow flies. It sure made a heck of a noise! The news report says there have been injuries, but no details. I bet there will be lots more coverage of this story!

Wait, there's more here!

And of course, there's video on YouTube.


And you know I don't like to post without a picture and I don't have pictures of fireballs, so here's my "things I'm working on/thinking about" pile by the side of the bed.

It only looks like there have been explosions here!

Don't you love my old Coleman cooler I rescued from the trash? It's full of sock yarn.

Knit on, with no more explosions!

That long pointy thing, and some knitting

A number of you have commented on my long pointy thing.

We have "sail making." Eh, but why so long? Why pointy on both ends?

"Suturing." You would not want to be sutured with this baby, lemme tell you. Perhaps suturing together a dead elephant... Which leads us to "leather needle." Maybe, but still, why so long? Why pointy on both ends?

Our last suggestion is "a rug needle," which might work, but... I dunno.

So, I did a bit of googling around, and found that it probably is a leather needle, but I still don't know why you'd need points on both ends! And you know, if you google something about needles with points on both ends, you end up with knitting stuff! Surprise, surprise.

We'll file this away for future research...

I haven't just been spending my days fretting about long pointy needles, you know. I have actually knitted some stuff, too!

This is the denim yarn. I couldn't resist casting on... even though I have a very muddled idea of how this will all turn out. This is Sleeve #1 (a pattern from the Learn to Knit Afghan Book) and Sleeve #2 will not be identical. That much I know.

Then there will be a hodgepodge of pattern and colour in between the sleeves. Sorta like this -- scroll down to Narvik. Here it is on Ravelry. Of course, I haven't got the same yarn, the same colours, the same gauge, and I think I will knit it in one piece from wrist to wrist.

So, not really like that at all....

Some pretties for Eye Candy Friday

We got a new camera. So we've been taking pictures...



Delphinium. My, this was taken quite some time ago, and these flowers are now finished.


Breakfast. I love these little egg cups, but we hardly ever use them.


Oh, and Arthur, having snatched away the Basalt tank!

Buying strange things for cheap

Elaine and I took a trip out to Value Village this afternoon. She tapped her foot while I cruised through housewares, and then gladly tried on a bazillion fall jackets before settling on a purple reversible one.

We picked up a few other clothes, schmancy girly jeans (you'll see the pink ones below), some shorts for Arthur....

Then we hit the knitting needle shelf.


This all came in one bag. There were a few more, without the "head" on, and I've just tossed them. (What is the correct term for the knobby bit on the end? The knob, perhaps?)


Luckily knitting needles are really fine decorative objects... none of these has a mate.

And then there was this thing... (click to embiggen, as always)
About a foot long,


steel,





with an eye,


and both ends have these triangular points, excellent for piercing innocent fingertips.




Some kind of needle, for sewing really tough stuff -- that point indicates serious business. It's about the diameter of a sock needle, 2.5 or 3 mm.

Elaine, who really knows very little about sewing, said you could make a ruffle with it, piercing all the gathered fabric at once. This, she felt, would explain the great length. Clever idea, but I'm not sold on it.

So, anyone know? Anyone want it??

Accomplishments and goals

I made a list at the beginning of June, but haven't checked in on that yet!

I said:


I hope to finish the brown wool wrap in June, though it won't get much use then!

Um, no. In fact, it is likely still in exactly the same spot it was. I look at it and my hands get sweaty. Let's leave that till September!

And something for my mom's birthday in July

Done; I sent her the Swallowtail.






And the jazzy socks

Progress has been made.

And the Basalt tank (oh, my gosh!)

Finito!

Here you see it needing a few ends sewn in, with my crib sheet. The pattern in the book is hard to follow, so I wrote it out line by line, marking off each row when I was done.


I saw someone had fiddled with this pattern and used a few carefully placed pentagons instead of hexagons, and made a beautiful dress. With some side shaping...

If I had been paying attention, I could have fiddled in a similar way. Now, I don't have a lot of waist shaping myself, but this top could really use some! Maybe padded hip hexagons are needed!

I will wear a tank top underneath, or maybe it will get more use in the fall over a shirt. Anyways, it is done, it was interesting to make, and I may have learned that I don't look like the tall thin model in the book!

And some lace

Begun! But I can't show you here. I hope to get something up on Ravelry, where prying eyes can't see!

And here's my plan for the future:

Make the secret lace thing.
Make some kids' socks for Afghans for Afghans.
Cross another thing off the WIP list. Maybe the rainbow socks, for the beginning of school.

That's it for now!

Oh, so schnell und trendy, mit 3 colours

I've been thinking of this yarn for some time. It's denim, 100% cotton, shrinks and fades with use... It's heavier than Rowan Denim, and seems a bit softer initially. And I see it whenever I go to the depths of Romni's sale room.

I was there yesterday, and lo and behold, there was a sale on! An extra 20% off the sale price... What could I do?!

There was enough of the dark to make a whole garment, but I don't like it as much as the others, so I picked up all the light and medium there was, plus a few of the dark. The balls are only 50 meters each.


I have crazy plans, or perhaps "ideas" would be a better word. I think of Gee's Bend quilts, patchwork denim jackets for hippy-wannabes from the early 70s, sampler lace bits...

This will take some thought and planning and hemming and hawing. I want texture as well as colour. But somehow, it shouldn't look too tacky*!

Gad, maybe I should make a blanket...


* I used to link to a picture of a tacky denim jacket here, but I am sick of being connected to that picture. My stats will show a dip, for sure, but the picture was never here anyways! I'm sure you can all imagine a jacket in your minds...

One of those bullet-list posts

• I got a book of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple stories out of the library, wondering if Arthur would like to read them. I have skimmed through it and am stunned by the number of "girls" who get "in trouble." This often seems to be reason for murder. I think we've got over that in our society. We also don't call women in their twenties "girls" much anymore.
  
• Arthur seems more interested in Sherlock Holmes.
• Yesterday we had all red food for dinner. Radishes and tomatoes and cherries and raspberries and strawberries, and red tortillas with red meat (ie. cooked ground beef with taco seasoning), salsa, grated cheddar. Kim chi, perhaps. Red wine, red freezies. I confess I put (white) yogurt in my tortilla as well.
  
• Tonight we will have Jamie Oliver's potato salad with smoked salmon.
  
• Except I bet Elaine won't want it.
• We have sweet corn growing on our back deck, and there are even teeny cobs!
  
• That picture up above was taken a while ago. Cute, innit? Robot-like.
• Still haven't finished the Basalt, but really, any day now!
  

Hot, hazy and humid

I went to the 68th floor of a bank building today. It could have been a stunning view of the city and the lake, but we could barely see the CN Tower.

The forecast is for rain, thunderstorms, temperatures and humidity to knock you out, and muck like that.

Knitting continues in a sort of sluggish fashion. A sock could well be the limit.

And now I have learned about the Afghans for Afghans campaign for clothing and blankets for children for the upcoming winter. I can hardly imagine the upcoming winter, but this gives me an excuse to use up some single 50g balls of sock yarn. I could probably provide socks for a large number of children with my single balls!

I am determined to finish Basalt before embarking on anything else, and there are lacy shawl patterns bookmarked all over the place, but I will certainly take these children's socks on my week's holiday this August.

Now I'm off for a glass of ice water.

Which reminds me... Yesterday I stopped off in a Second Cup coffee shop for a Chillatte, which is a blended ice and coffee drink. And then I checked some stats, and found some amazing things. A chillatte has 293 calories, more than a Tim Horton's Boston cream donut! But, a Second Cup skinny chocolate chiller has... (drum roll, please!) 433 calories and 82 grams of sugar! It's called skinny because it has only 2 g of fat, but you won't be skinny for long drinking those when all you need is a cool drink. We all know what a 50 gram ball of yarn looks like, but I can't quite picture 82 grams of sugar... (But of course, the internet tells us everything, so now I can tell you that "According to GourmetSleuth.com, one gram of granulated sugar is about 1/4 teaspoon, so about four grams of sugar would be in a teaspoon." Which means that 80 grams of sugar would be in 20 teaspoons. Holy cow!

Right, now, off to the kitchen tap for my fat-free, sugar-free and cost-free glass of water!

Basalt Q&A

When last we spoke, there were some questions raised. Let me set some things straight.

Anonymous, or Anne as we call her, wondered about the side hexagons, and said, "Could you turn them in to 1/2 hexagons so that the bottom edge is even?"

Short answer: No.

People have made this with 1/2 hexagons there, but those people had their moment of panic before jumping off the cliff. This top is knit hex by hex, and stitches are picked up from hex 1 to make the edge of hex 2, etc. The low side bits are numbers 2 and 3, so I would have to rip out everything I've done back to the very first central hexagon, and then redo it. No way, Jose.

Besides, I kind of like the whole hexagonality of the whole thing. I just think it looks a bit dumpy on me right now... When I get those dang straps knit, it'll all hang much better, fer sure.

And Rosie perhaps went in the opposite direction by saying, "were I about 30 years younger I might be tempted to add stuffing to the lower hexs in a rather Vivienne Westwood-ish way!"

Vivienne Westwood, apparently, can make anything. Check out this dress! Her new collection looks like this. She and Malcolm McLaren had a shop on the King's Road and sold ripped up clothes to punks 30 years ago. However, although I have a stuffed-hip image hazily in my mind, I can't find just the picture I want. I will do my best to think of Vivienne Westwood while finishing this, though.

And Mary Lou said, "Thanks for the reminder that i have about 12 balls of that in my stash in a lovely sagey green...NOT for chaircovers, though."

Oh, dear, no! I will not make chair covers out of 2 balls of Cotton Angora! No, indeed. We need sturdier stuff, I imagine. My chair cover idea has been dumbed down so that I am now considering squares with ties to cover up the icky seats on the dining room chairs. You'll be the first to know when the idea becomes a WIP!

And I'd love to see your sagey green yarn in action!

Now, we can't have a post without a photo, so I will tell you about my cooking adventures! I got the latest Jamie Oliver book from the library, and the photos are fabuloso! We want to make everything... So yesterday Arthur and I made the Blackberry and Apple Pie.

Well, first we decided not to make our own crust. I find pie crust rather intimidating, and always fall back on store-bought in the end.

Then the recipe calls for ginger in syrup. Well, what the heck is that? So we used a scrap of fresh ginger.

And our blackberries were in terrible shape, so I used a handful of raspberries as well. So we ended up with a very loose approximation of a Jamie Oliver pie.

We bought vanilla frozen yogurt to put on top, but then invited The Moth Man and Kentish KT over to help us eat it, and The MM made us custard (with no skin or lumps!).

Ta da!

Basalt progress and other really interesting stuff

I'm working on the central back hexagon of Basalt. It connects the whole thing around, and so I can kind of try it on.


There will be an inch or so of border and straps on the front, so it won't be quite so low in front! And I hope the side hexagons don't droop like that when the whole thing is together!

Funny. I'm still not sure about this at all!


But we do have a hot pepper growing upside down. We will have quite the harvest of these; we'll have to string them up artfully and dry them. Our other attempts at back-deck farming are even harder to photograph.

Oh, my, what's this? I went to a new-to-me thrift store the other day and got these two, plus some crap I put back in the donations box, for $1.99. I am thinking of something piratey.

I'm also thinking of knitting a chair cover. (That will take you to the Ravelry group.) Or maybe just some seat covers for 6 dining room chairs. I'll let this stew for a bit.

Tuesday funnies

Did you know that it takes three sheep to make a sweater?

No, I didn't.

I bet you didn't even know they could knit.

Hahaha ha ha ha ....

Courtesy of Elaine's new joke book.

I said it was funny looking

I have finished hexagon #4 of the Basalt tank, a five-sixths hexagon.


If I fold it, you can see the neckline (well, kind of half the neckline, and there'll be straps...) and how the bottom hexagons go around the sides. It'll be interesting to see how this all works out.

The urge to reward myself for getting this far is great. I should, somehow, be allowed to abandon this, for a moment, to cast on something else. ...even though I have several more unfinished things lying about, and I want to finish this, and casting on something new will get me nowhere! I got a book from the library with knitted lace tablecloths. It's where this awesome delight came from. I do not want a lace tablecloth, or anything like one, but I just can't wait to fiddle with these patterns. There are a couple of scarves I can see in my future (that future where I can knit really fast...).

I think of posting more often and more thrillingly, but somehow, this is what you get....