Olympic bowling

We took a break from the Olympic knitting and the occasional sport-watching this weekend to celebrate our own achievement: Elaine is now 10 years old!


We took a cake, some candles and a handful of girls up the hill to the bowling alley. I think everyone had fun -- some very careful children kept track of the score, but all rivalry was quite civilized.

And now both my children are in the double-digit ages. Arthur will be a teenager in a few short weeks. Where does the time go??

It's hard to knit lace and watch hockey at the same time

Oh, Em, Gee.
US 1, Canada 0, after 49 seconds of play.
And how can I pay attention to my Birch? Do I risk dropped stitches, or do I put it aside for a couple of hours? Eeeeek!

Time passes:

Are you watching this?! Halfway through the first period, 2-1 for the other guys. And I can tell you things are tough when you mess up the stitch over a K2tog. Perhaps I'd best just watch the game...

End of second period: 3-2, US still in the lead. Looks like I'll have to stay up past my bedtime to see the end of this. Birch progress is minimal.

Oh, boo hoo! We took our goalie out in the last minute to try to tie it up before the end of the game, but to no avail -- the Americans scored one last time to win 5-3!

Good game, guys, and .... grr, next time!!

Approximately 3 rows were knitted.

Only 200 more rows to go

It's very hard to see the colours, and hard to see the pattern as it is all scrunched up on the needles. I managed to find a decent circular needle -- on the floor, not near anything I might knit with it -- and progress is slow but steady. It's just so fiddly, this dang laceweight!

We were playing Scrabble last night, and the word "tied" was on the board. Stephen said, "ha, ha, is 'stied' a word? Like the pig was in its sty; it was stied." Just to be sure, we looked it up, and indeed to "sty" is a verb. Our actual paper dictionary gives a more full definition, which includes, as the 5th definition, "to live in or as in a sty." So, I am stied today. Must dig out from under the laundry and dishes, must go get some groceries, must unsty the place!

Rock on...

Do I spend more time blogging when I'm knitting under pressure?

Today's Birch is hardly different from yesterday's, but I've had to pause a moment to look through my closet to try yet again to find the perfect needles for the job.

I have found several pairs of needles I no longer want or need, and one pair that I will test out.

First I used the circular needle with the little bump at the end of the cord -- ick. Then I got some plastic straights which are too flexible, not pointy enough and ... straight! -- ick. Now I have metal straights.

Please stop me from going down to Romni and spending $25 on a pair of Addis.

But, enough about me! The Poetry Society is knitting another poem! See it on Ravelry, or try Facebook. I hope to get all the dope soon and add a letter to my never-ending pile of WIPs.

And now, back to work.

A day late, but done

The pre-Olympic sock sprint is over, and although I stumbled across the finish line a day late, I am pleased that these socks are done and out of the way.

Now I shall mail them off to San Francisco and they shall end up keeping some Afghan child a bit warm.

And, start on my real Olympic project. Oh, indecision and confusion! I said on the Yarn Harlot's sign-up page that I would make Sedate from Rowan 47, but I am not using the designer's yarn, I haven't swatched, I just noticed the sleeves have lace knitting on right and wrong side rows.... I think I should be prepared to give that project more time, and I should go back to idea #48c, which is work on Birch.

Also, I have that pile of UFOs to wrap up....

Real Olympic athletes don't have to fuss about whether they are skiers or skaters, do they?

Edited a few hours later: I knit one plain row of Birch, then I stared at it and skimmed over the pattern to find which row I should be doing. Then I made up something completely wrong and knit about 200 stitches before figuring out what I should really do. Then I tinked out those 200 stitches and knit the one pattern row, and one plain row. And that is the evening's work: 3 lousy rows. This will be a marathon, for sure!

Read what the pattern actually says, and look at your work!

Last pre-Olympic post

I am off to see King Tut at the Art Gallery now and likely won't get another stitch knitted for a few hours. I am just on the heel flap of sock #2. I guess... oh... what to do? I think I will finish the dang sock a.s.a.p and cast on the Olympic cardi when I can!
Good luck, all!

Sock progress

This was the sock yesterday morning. It was on the floor with the ol' Dr Who mask we once got in a loot bag from a kid birthday party.

Then things got a bit silly. This is, of course, me.

And now I have one finished sock!
Can I make a whole second sock before Friday?

The emergency blue toe is because I now have a nice digital scale,
and I could tell that I had used half my yarn already.
This way I hope to have two socks that look alike, at least!

Right, back to work!

There was a party

Friends of ours had a February Deblahification (I think that was the word!) party on the weekend. Potluck, but only desserts, please.

One can get all the food groups in a meal of desserts -- cheesecake for protein, fruit salad for fruit...


From my contribution, one would get white flour, white sugar, eggs, butter and cocoa. Plus pink icing and giant heart-shaped sprinkles! It was a bit early for Valentine's Day, but it was an opportunity to publicly show off my heart sprinkles.

The pre-Olympic sock sprint is going well, though I'm not sure I can get the whole pair done by Friday. Stay tuned!

Passing it forward, and Olympian challenges

I saw this on Tempewytch's blog, and I was one of her winners! So, now I make this offer on my blog. It is a bit different from others I've seen on knitting blogs -- this just involves 5 items, and not necessarily a handmade gift.

1. Send no less than 5 stitching/knitting/craft related items per person within the next 365 days.
2. Items can be DMC, other threads, stitching needles, straight pins, buttons, scissors, ribbons, etc. - a combination of items such as 3 threads, 1 pack of straight pins and 1 pack of stitching needles or just 5 threads. This is obviously for stitching - for other crafts do something similar! (And we know there are lots of little knitting gadgets around!)
   
3. The items must be new and not used. (Send things you'd be happy to receive.)
4. You will post this PIF on your blog and do the same for at least 2 people.

So, leave me a comment before, hmmm, next Friday, Feb 12, the first day of the Olympics, and I will draw 2 lucky winners!

And speaking of Olympics, I have had to reorder my priorities about the Knitting Olympics. The socks I was going to knit need to be finished and in San Francisco March 1. And the Olympics end Feb. 28.

So I am doing a pre-Olympic dash on them now, while knitting a row or two on the Skiers here and there, and then I'll do Birch for the Olympics. (If I continue to knit with my kids in the pub, I will get nowhere, I'm sure.)

It's a plan, though perhaps not a very good one. And indeed Birch has been started some time ago, but there is still plenty to be challenging for 16 days.

Perhaps I am bending the rules here somewhat... Maybe I'll start a whole new thing and play by all the rules and never get around to poor Birch after all!

It's February -- let's make a list

I will make this month:

Skiers

Birch

some Olympic children's socks for a4A... that is, I will make a pair of socks for my Olympic challenge, which I will then give to afghans for Afghans for their youth campaign

I think that's about enough! I don't need more than three promises to fall short on...

Note to self re: PD James

I must have read every PD James book in our local library.

I often pick one up, thinking it has somehow escaped me in the past, and take it home, only to discover about 20 pages in that I know that scene, that minor character, that road by the ocean.

I always plug on, because I can't remember who the bad guy is or even who gets murdered, why they were murdered, what thrilling end game we will be treated to. I am now reading, for at least the second time, but perhaps even the third, one called Devices and Desires.

As I always need a picture, I give you two possibly dangerous items from my very own collection. Which might be the weapon: the cricket bat once discarded by neighbours who were moving, or the 100-year-old soup ladle, once owned by my Dutch grandmother? (I hope to see short stories featuring a soup ladle as a murder weapon appearing soon!)

And now I think I have to venture out in the cold to pick up Elaine from a birthday party. The birthday girl generously asked guests not to bring gifts for her, but donations for Haiti!

That doesn't stop me whining about having to go out in the cold.

It might be quicker to make it in marble

Those of you who hang on my every word will remember that I once admired a certain floor in the Louvre, and decided to knit it.


I took this baby out this weekend because I needed "yakking with knitters in the coffee shop" knitting, and wasn't I good to work on this instead of starting something new?

This is not that much like the original, is it? (Just tilt your head -- I was too lazy to rotate the picture...)


I see that the stone one isn't as simple as I'd first thought. I was just making this:


But, as I now see, the colours are not uniformly distributed:


And, of course, I have 4 colours instead of 6 -- and there is a lot of variation in those 6! In fact, I have used two different light browns and a bit of silvery grey for some of the white -- aren't I clever? (No, because I have now used up all the second light brown in a different project...)

Ah well, since it is not a project I have worked on with any real diligence, I will put these issues off yet again and worry about it later!

For fun, I will continue to pay attention to my brown collection and keep an eye out for good yarn for this, but really, Must Knit Skiers! (I have the back and 1.5 fronts up to the arms, and will get everything to that point and then join in a yoke.)

I must add that I just put a batch of brownies in the oven. As I was putting the batter into the pan, I realised I hadn't greased the pan. Will disaster follow?

Now here's a paragraph

I am reading the original Julie/Julia project blog these days. I am maybe half-way through. Of course, Julie talks about her cooking, but she also talks about her husband and politics and New York and food. She has at least inspired me to put Julia Child's book on hold at the library, so I can make leeks gratinees and beef stew with anchovies in it!

But look at this -- this is perfect:

"It seems to me – and I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit – that any revolution in food and agricultural [sic] has to be two pronged. Yes, by all means, extol the virtues of the artisanal this and organic that, patronize the small farmers and the renegade cheese-makers, if you can afford it. But the goal is to make good food available to everyone, isn’t it? And that means doing more than opening a hoity-toity restaurant. That means lobbying and teaching and bringing the food to Mohammed, and otherwise getting your hands dirty. Get the peach to the inner city kids killing themselves with Krispy Kremes. Get the peach to the 22-year-old mother of three living off welfare checks, dependent on the Bargain Market in the strip mall. Do that – and I don’t know how you do – and you’ve really got something.

Otherwise, you’re just shoveling horseshit for rich people.

[And with that, Julie modestly descends from her soapbox.]"

From March 18, 2003. You can also read the comments there that offer some other thoughts.

And now, I shall go knit a sweater. Oh, I need a picture...

This will be my Knitting Olympics official cup. A tacky touristy Vancouver mug from likely 20 or 30 years ago. There are other significant things that would be on a modern-day tourist mug, I think!

The very exciting spelling bee

Elaine was in the school spelling bee last week. There were 22 kids to start, from grades 4, 5 and 6. We parents were stuck way up in the bleachers, but the spellers had a microphone so we had no trouble hearing. The whole school was watching!


That's her in the middle in the red pants, spelling one of her first words. The benches are full of kids. As time went on, the crowd of spellers dwindled.



That was her penultimate word -- I was saving camera battery power so didn't catch her last try -- "synthetically." The last successfully spelled word of the day was "muesli"!

Now we must watch Spellbound, and see what happens next year!

Finished, I finished!

Don't get too excited -- it's doll-sized!

I meant to have this under the Christmas tree and addressed to Elaine's doll, but circumstances did not allow that!

It's this pattern, and used about 1/2 a ball of sock yarn. The funny proportions make it easy to get on over dolly's stiff fingers, and she doesn't complain about the bunching under her arms. We'll see about a modeled shot, but this morning the only doll I could find had no pants on and her hair was a mess!

Far out, far away

So, there was an annular solar eclipse.

Since I am not in the Maldives, I have to rely on others to take pictures, but I have borrowed this one from Reuters...

That's the sun, not the moon!

Oh, so cool. Except that people seem to have been looking at it through X-ray film and little cardboard glasses, which doesn't strike me as correct procedure. Just FYI, NASA says: "Unsafe filters include color film, some non-silver black and white film, medical x-ray films with images on them, smoked glass, photographic neutral density filters and polarizing filters."

Enough of that! What I really wanted to share with you today is this video of Holly Cole.

My husband does a lot of travelling to conferences and to give talks to physicists far and wide, and he's been to both Vancouver (that's in the big blue province on the west) and Fredericton (in province #3 on the east) this week. So, eventually, I get to singing this song...

Zooming right along

Love these 6 mm needles! I think when I am old and blind, I will just knit stocking stitch on 6 mm needles forever... deo volente et me potente, touch wood, etc.


Anyhoo, the first skier is in motion.

I would suggest to anyone making such a garment: don't start with the back! A wonky skier on a sleeve will be much less noticeable than one slap in the middle of one's back! This is not too bad, but I am sure I can get better at maneuvering the bits of colour around.

Those skis are especially tricky! And the goldarn poles! One stitch at the end, say a purl row. Fine. Then knit a bazillion stitches on the next row, fine. Then! Bring the yarn back across to purl one more stitch! Holy cow! When I have trimmed and secured all the ends nicely I will show you the back, but for now it is a bit of a mess.

My poor Birch sits and waits. I'll do this sweater, then Birch, then, I hope, it will be time for the Olympics, and then I have to make my mom a pair of socks for her 90th birthday... But wait... I meant to make myself a sweater for my birthday... I guess Birch will be my present! But I think I might give it to someone else... Ah, the knitter's life is never simple!

Big sigh, more later...

The tension is killing me

I've knitted one ball of the black yarn on my Skiers sweater already! I have 12, so, as usual, I am doing ridiculous calculations to see if I need to buy more.

But that's not the main point. The main point is, Lookee here, I made some zigzags!

The pattern says to use a separate length of red for each line, which I thought crazy at first. So I just went along with my one ball of red and my one ball of black. Eeeuw! Especially on the circular needle, twisting around with only 3 or 4 inches of knitted fabric below, I was not happy knitting one red stitch and 5 black ones across the row. It was hard to keep the tension right and I was loathe to leave a float of 5 stitches, so I had to hoick the red up in the middle, which didn't actually add to my pleasure at all.

I finally decided to follow orders, so cut myself 13 lengths of red. It worked quite well, except that instead of being too tight, that bit of knitting is too loose! Actually, I don't like doing colourwork... what am I doing making this garment at all... all is lost... gimme back my lace!

Ah, 6 rows of plain black has now calmed me down and I am about to start on the skier! I think I'll be more able to keep my tension on this part, since it's more or less one big blob of colour in the middle. Stay tuned...

Starting the year off right

Oh, the joys of back-to-school! Now I have time to accomplish all those millions of little things, right?

I have a pile of knitted bits which need to be sewn up into two sweaters.


Don't hold your breath.

I should also point out that little ball of green in the basket there: it was supposed to be a doll sweater for Christmas. Better really get on to that again soon! I would have finished it in time, honest, if only the kids stayed in school till Christmas eve!

I have started to knit Birch, out of that nice yarn I have been looking at for 2 years.



Sorry, terrible picture! You start with 299 stitches and decrease down to the point, and I'm down below 279 now. It is not too hard, but I am not giving up my stitch markers just yet. I'm doing it in garter stitch, which makes it sort of fluffy. The yarn is very soft. I am using straight needles because I like these points, but I wish I could spread it out and see the whole width. Ah, the excitement.

I have ordered yarn for this classic gem, the Skiers, which I hope to have knitted for the Olympics, mid-February. I don't have the yarn in hand right yet, but this will soon be competing with Birch for actual knitting time.


I saw one in real life over the holiday -- bright green with yellow skiers! I liked it a lot, and decided I didn't need to have white snowy background. Mine will be blazing skiers, red and yellow on black! Hoo-la!

Ha ha ha ha ha.

In non-knitting news, we got two new jigsaw puzzles at Christmas. Why oh why did we start with the 1000-piece one? The one with the tantalizingly different buildings, interspersed with identical-seeming patches of shadow?


This morning we were soooo close to finishing, having 2 holes and 2 pieces. Alas, the pieces did not fit in the holes! Those big black shadows are deadly, I tell ya!


Finally, after a bit of rearranging, success! Every dang bit of shadow is now perfect. The dining room table is still covered with this, though, and we can't sit and admire it for too much longer. Back in the box!

The last post of 2009

This was our tree. Same old plastic tree we have had for years, and, as ever, we said we must get a bigger one because our ornaments collection keeps getting bigger. I think you can see a souvenir of Newfoundland, an old heat sink from a computer, kid-crafted items of all shapes and sizes, a bit of plastic from a broken bike reflector... The usual assortment at our place!

We had a fine Christmas morning, with goodies all around. Next year just might be the year of cooking, instead of the year of lace or the year of socks. I got a new Jamie Oliver book and the kids and I decided Stephen needed a book about Asian dumplings and a bamboo steamer! Everything sounds so yummy!

We spent Boxing Day lolling around, and then got in a rental car and went for a little trip:

Destination: Ottawa. Not quite the Caribbean, but Mommy didn't have to cook! We stayed in a hotel where we actually had plenty of room and a little kitchen so we could keep milk and make toast and coffee for breakfast. We just spent a couple of days there, going to museums (Civilization, and then Nature for the girls and Aviation for the boys) and visiting friends and relations.

This is, of course, a real Tyrannosaurus Rex, about to chomp the hand of some unsuspecting child. Actually, it's a model in the Nature museum ... It was fun to see the "flesh and blood" dinosaurs along with the skeletons. This T Rex had been in a little skirmish and our 8-year-old tour guide, a friend's daughter, happily showed us the wounds on its flank!

A ceiling at the Civilization Museum! My kind of colour wheel!


My uncle showed Arthur and Stephen the Aviation Museum, complete with Lancaster bomber from WWII.


Some gates on Parliament Hill,


and a stone pillar, covered in a thin layer of ice. Luckily we missed the freezing rain by a day or two!




The ride home. I was bored; Stephen was driving. I had taken some yarn and needles for the ride, but found that I needed smaller needles. Aha, a good excuse to go to a yarn shop on the way to a museum... But when I got back in the passenger seat with nothing to do, I was sick of the yarn and had no ideas about what I wanted to do with it! Perhaps another day I'll show you the doodle I knitted...

Tonight, who knows? Nothing very exciting will happen, and tomorrow it will be 2010! There will be knitting Olympics, and I am chuffed about that -- more later!

We have cookies but no snow

Chocolate cookie dough, rolled in sprinkles, with a Hershey's kiss jammed into each cookie when they are hot out of the oven. The kiss melts a bit and glues itself to the cookie. They are a bit decadent!

And now I am off to the store for some real food.

If I don't manage to make it back to blogland over the next few days, I wish you all health and happiness and good eats!

This is an ad, but so funny

Folks, lovers of fine knitwear, you have to go here, to see how our knitted creations are appreciated... It's an ad for Mini Coopers, but, really, it's a love letter to the holiday intarsia masterpieces of days gone by.

I hope Arthur doesn't mind lending his face for this project...

The gingerbread house

I'm pleased to present this year's gingerbread house. We make one every year -- that is to say, we buy the prefab house and icing at the grocery store and put it all together -- but I do not have a whole series of pictures for you. Hmm, they have not been blogworthy in the past??

Here is one previous attempt. We've perhaps become less crazy with the icing over the years.

There will be knitting news one of these days -- I just need a moment to sit down and sort myself out. Maybe in a week or two!

Another side of winter

Ah, we have the Christmas cookies, the beautiful amaryllis... and the snow. Toronto went without snow till now -- we had the first snowless November in recorded history. So, it's giving it a try now, but with temperatures going up to +4 today, it'll just be a miserable slushy day.

Our back porch after Stephen and Elaine left for school.


There's rather a lot of prints, because you have to go part way, then remember you need shoes for when you're inside at school, turn around, tramp back into the house, then out again. Ick.


But, the amaryllis is just peacefully growing and flourishing.



I wonder what kind of creature it needs to pollinate it. Look at that inviting display!

Amaryllis watch, 2009

One thing I like about the Christmas season is the amaryllis! We put lights on the house and we put up a tree a week or two before the 25th, but we don't go all out with decorations around the house. I have never really got on with poinsettias -- messy once they start to go, and for me, impossible to revive after the initial colourful display. But an amaryllis is a marvel! You buy a box with a pot, a gigantic bulb and a puck of dehydrated growing medium, and a few weeks later you get this great big fantastic looking flower! With the promise of more to come!

This is what my amaryllis looked like on Thursday.

And this is what it looked like Friday morning.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Oh, I'm quick

Done!
Since I had a few wee rows to do, it's not a big surprise.

The "knot" where one end goes through a casing at the other end.

The scarf resting among the last crazy marigolds.

Now I can return to the denim cardigan and polish that off.

What's going to happen in December

I wrote goals for November, but I think I didn't post them! I'll tell you now what they were:

1. Finish the denim cardigan
2. Finish one front of the Noro cardigan
3. Finish a sock

So. I have sort of finished the denim cardigan. The body went into the wash yesterday, so it just needs sewing up. If I make that a December goal, I'll almost certainly meet it!

The others, no... Although I really want to start something new, I will put November's 2 and 3 as December's 2 and 3, after the cardi.

Oh, and in the middle of all this, I seem to have started something different! I was in the new Anthropologie store in town and saw some cute little scarves -- you know, the kind people's grandmothers knit for them in the 1960s, little bow-tie like things. I found this pattern on Ravelry.


It's clearly for another year's Anthropologie scarf, because this year they are garter stitch with a simple cable and bobble pattern going up the middle! However, I liked the texture of this one and am making one for Elaine, using a ball of Rowan 4-ply wool that was this year's "free gift" when I subscribed to the magazines, held together with some sparkly sock yarn I picked up recently.



The sparkles make it look like it's just dusted with snow! I think I have the colour called Acai. It looks better in real life -- neither the flash nor the dull morning light show it to advantage.

Shortly, though, we will have a completed scarf, which might even get modeled if I ask nicely. Stay tuned -- you might get 2 finished objects before you know it!