Okay, okay

The Diane who left two comments on my last post is my sister. So I can hardly disregard her sage advice. (Yeah, tell that to my kids... they'll learn, I suppose.)

So, some ramblings about knitting:

• I am making plain brown sleeves for Botticelli. So far, anyways! I might stick a bigger stripe of each colour in, but not the two-row stripes. Plain brown might be simple, but might also not be very fast!
• I am halfway through the November square, which I am doing independently from the Block-a-Month group. Next year we will start another round, I hope, and I will continue to make squares slowly but surely! 
• I also mean to really really knit those socks next year! This year I started a KAL to knit socks on a pretty regular basis, but fell off the wagon in March or April. Next year, for sure.
• I also have a ton of socks to darn for Arthur. He no longer grows out of socks as fast as he did, so he wears holes in them. 
• Bed socks for mom,  right... Not for Christmas, but maybe for Groundhog Day. 
• I'd kind of like to make one of those giant cowls. I have a winter-ish coat that has a big open neck, so a stupidly large scarf might come in handy. Maybe I will steal a picture from somewhere. Let me have a look. Ah...

Okay, maybe a few modifications would have to be made.

Day 18

It's day 18 of NaBloPoMo, and I am parched, crossing the desert of blogland, searching for something to say.


Maybe the month ends here. Maybe something exciting will happen tomorrow. Maybe I will knit a sleeve!

Report from New York

Stephen is in New York for a couple of days to talk with a guy about dribbling syrup (like this experiment, by Stephen) and thought he would just go check out the Occupy Wall Street situation.

Not much was going on at Zuccotti Park, as everyone had headed for the Brooklyn Bridge and Foley Square. But these women were there with their knitting, so he kindly sent me the pictures.

Meanwhile, I was watching the live news feed and sending him messages like, "In hospital or jail, or just out to dinner?" because I couldn't get in touch with him. He had walked toward Chinatown, and when he saw the protesters near the bridge, took a few blurry pictures and went, sensibly, for dinner.

Today's phone pictures and an unseen piano

Some days I go for a swim, and some days I walk up the hill. Today was a walk day.

I passed a lovely red E-type Jaguar down at the corner. One of the few great car designs, I say. (Though that G in the name is not quite the way I would do it, myself.) The whole thing, of course, looks like this.

Then I walked Up The Hill and into a place called Wychwood Park, which has been there all along but which I am just now exploring. It's a wonderful treed neighbourhood with a terrible road (because it's privately owned, and who would pay for lookie-loos to drive comfortably around their area!) and gorgeous houses. Here's a history, and here's a blurb by some real estate folks written in 2008. You'd think they'd have spent half an hour updating that once the big Wychwood barns project they mention was finally finished.

There is a pond, filled by the elusive Taddle Creek -- the bit of water we all blame for our wet basements or settling of houses! There were a few ducks swimming around, but I would have liked to see some evidence of this "quicksand"!

 

On my way back down, I passed this retaining wall, which serves to hold the whole place from eroding away, I suppose, on which someone had written a (slightly altered) quote from Jane Jacobs. Apparently she actually said, “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

 

Hear, hear.

ETA: Oh, I titled this for the piano, as well! When I got back home, movers were taking a piano into the house next door. We share a wall, so I assume we will hear lots of piano playing, but so far all is quiet! 

Hair and other natural phenomena

 

I went to the hairdresser the other day, to get the hair on my neck just trimmed up. I also just got a few bits of red "peekaboo" colour put in here and there. I am a bit disappointed, but perhaps that is because I didn't really comprehend the peekaboo aspect sufficiently. Except for the one right in front, they are hidden for the most part. I have to flip my hair constantly if I want anyone to see them! Next time, brighter colour, and more visible!

The weather has been unseasonably warm and sunny -- this means I am still wandering about without a hat jammed on my head. It also means that the garden is still doing its crazy thing. Along with the ornamental cabbage,

 

we have cauliflower just coming in:

 

and the cosmos now has 4 flowers.

It is supposed to get cold and wet in the coming days. Perhaps this is the last hurrah before the snow and grimness comes!

Late today

I had better put something up, so as not to fail at my NaBloPoMo obligations.

• I went swimming this morning. I like it, but wish I could do more before the blood starts pounding in my head. Practise, practise.
• I am still not finished my cardigan front.
• Stephen left his laptop elsewhere, so three of us are wanting to use this computer. 
• I guess I will let him use it, since he actually has to do work on it.

That's it till tomorrow, then!

The morning after

Oh, my, we did eat well last night!

Lots of variety of food, lots of neighbours, including both "the usual suspects" and some we don't always get out to these things. For the appetizers we milled about, nibbling goodies while the teenage daughter of our hosts played the harp. A big, gorgeous one like this. Very nice.

At the main course we had a ton of food (beef, pork, salmon + various veg/pasta dishes), and we did not have to juggle plate, cutlery, wine glass while perched on the couch -- they had two or three tables together and we all sat down with white tablecloths and the whole nine yards. Civilised, I call it!

Dessert is always a bit extra, and when one has cookies, brownies, pie, cheese, fruit and more, well, that is a lot extra! (I wonder if one hosts the dessert course, that might be the way to get the most leftovers. Hmm, keep that in mind for next time!)

 

I think pictures of my almost finished roses are better than pictures of strangers with their mouths full, and besides, I didn't take a camera last night. Somewhere out there, there is one picture of the whole gang at the big table, but that is all.

We'll eat well tonight

Today I am getting ready for our street's progressive dinner. We go to three different houses, starting at one for appetizers, then another for main dishes, and ending up at a third for desserts.

We all bring a dish and it usually all works out very well. I've often thought that we could just do appetizers and desserts, since there is always a ton of food!

I am making cookies and bars for dessert, but I also thought there might be a shortage of plain old green stuff at the main course, so I am making a salad and some simple broccoli.

I had to make the desserts in order to show off my new three-tiered serving dish. Snazzy!

Multitalented

Margaret Atwood, knitter of extinct birds. Or, at least, one extinct bird!

Picture shamelessly stolen from the National Post. Read all about the cause she is knitting for there.

She introduced this project here in August. That's not bad, to knit a great auk in 3 months!

Oh, and tootling around on that iDoLVine site (I hope I got all those caps right) I found out that PD James has written a new book -- a murder mystery set at Pemberley, home to Darcy and Elizabeth, our friends from Pride and Prejudice. I now have hold #103 on it at the library, and it's not even published yet, I think. It had better be good!

Knitting and cabbage

Let's start with the knitting, but I warn you that today's post really is mainly concerned with cabbage.

This is the second front of Botticelli, and there is not that much more to do on it. Then we start the sleeves, and who knows what will happen then. I have ideas...

I am also having ideas about what to do with the remaining yarn when this is finished! I will have many half-balls lying about. I am not sure a scarf would be a good idea, since the yarn is a bit tickly, and this also stops me from thinking "baby blanket," but there might be a slew of nice light hats in the future.

And now, on to the cabbage! This is one of those frilly ornamental cabbages that appear on people's porches in October or so. Ours, as you see, has begun to get yellow around the base, but is still hot hot pink in the middle.

So hot pink that it is hard to get a "real" looking photo! I put the green up and the red a bit a bit down in this, but it is still overwhelming, isn't it?

The yellowed edges are still crinkly as ever, and the edges are not soft, but still firm.

And the stalk is out of this world! This was taken leaning the camera on the rim of the pot, no flash. There should be a dinosaur roaming the landscape beneath it.

Of course, it sort of reminds me of knitting.

Posting TMI*, late in the day

My mind has not been on writing witty things for the blog lately. It is just a bit more than a year since my operation, so today I had to go get checked out. Yesterday and today I was totally concerned with my internal organs, which, I am pleased to say, are just fine, actually.

Maybe I can find a piece of medical humour for you... 

from here

Close enough, and totally true!

*TMI = too much information

Knitted and crocheted song and dance

Here's a bit of knitted silliness for you all. I think I came across this via Twitter or something. I just wish they'd made a "making of" video at the same time! Imagine...


Seventeen Evergreen - Polarity Song from Lucky Number Music on Vimeo.

As an aside, every day, I publish my blog, and then have to go back to add the nablopomo tag. Sheesh, I'll try harder tomorrow!

14 miscellaneous ideas today

1. It is 49 days before Christmas, I understand.
2. The grocery store is lightly decorated, and the baking section is fully stocked.
3. In Canada, we have nothing else to think of between Halloween and Christmas, unlike the Americans, who have Thanksgiving to divert them.
4. A friend and I were discussing shortbread. I insist on brown sugar, while she is not offended by icing sugar, which of course, doesn't really make real shortbread like brown sugar does. 
5. I had to make some proper Christmas shortbread to prove it. 
6. One cup of brown sugar, two cups of butter, four cups of flour. Knead it up, chill in logs, slice and bake for 30 minutes or so in a slow oven, about 275ºF.
7. Well, then I had whole lot of shortbread, and it is not really Christmas yet.
8. So I put a couple of dozen pieces in a box and mailed them off to my parents.
9. I specially stopped on my way to the post office to buy some real Earl Grey tea, since it is my dad's favourite.
10. I forgot to put the tea in the package, so now what? They will have an imperfect tea party.
11. I also stopped by at the library, and got a book by Martha Grimes, whose books I hardly ever read. Any opinions? I think of her as churning them out, but maybe I am mistaken.
12. Oh, dear, it seems it's a sequel to something. Maybe I have to rethink this. It's called Dakota.
13. I also got Hoopla: the art of unexpected embroidery. It looks pretty entertaining. I will read that tonight. 
14. I am still knitting on Botticelli.

A different kind of dog sweater

This is Somebody's Dad, in a great "vintage" picture sweater. The noble hunting doggy and the crossed guns.

(More examples of phone photography; not very impressive. And the room wasn't very brightly lit.)

Those mismatched lines on the shoulders would have driven me nuts if I'd made this. I was going to add a "but..."  here, but I really can't. Yeah, I find them jarring. But I love the dog and his shadow!

My new phone has a camera

It is so fun to have a camera-phone, don't you think?

One feels like a spy, or something. Somehow it is more important, taking a picture with a phone -- so urgent I can't stop to deal with my real camera.

The very first picture I took with my phone was at Peace, Love and Misunderstanding at the film festival. Up there is Bruce Beresford! And the cute little guy, whatshisname... Nat Wolff.  He said that he really liked doing this movie because he got to pretend to get stoned with Jane Fonda, and who wouldn't, really? Thing #1 I learned here: the camera makes a terrible shutter noise! Luckily, Arthur figured out how to turn it off.

Then I took a bunch of pictures that made it clear to me that this is not a very super camera. Things across the street are too blurry. Lighting has to have attention paid to it. And so on...

But, it did capture the lovely purpleness of this boss car. It was a Dodge Charger, purply-pink, and for a couple of days it was parked down the street. This, as you might guess, is where you put the gas in. See me and Elaine reflected!

And this morning, just before the thing beeped at me to tell me I had too many pictures and needed to download them off the phone, I took this! The colours of this bush were amazing, all the way from pale yellow through to brightest red. The sky was clear and blue and it was all just gorgeous.

So, like some sort of superhero (or big dork, whatever) I stopped on my way to get groceries to take a picture of the pretty bush.

When I got home, indeed, I had to get Arthur to mutter encouraging things while I learned to get the pictures onto the computer! Oh, I'd best be sure to keep that cable somewhere safe...

I need a November square

My block-a-month group is using these last months of 2011 to finish up blankets, but my blanket needs a few more squares, so I must soldier on alone and find a square to knit!

This is called Eyelet and Flame Chevron, from the Vogue Knitting stitch-a-day calendar for 2010. Clever placement of yarnovers and decreases; about the right size without a lot of fiddling; all one colour this month, I think; no cables!

(Indoor/no-flash photo off somewhat glossy paper, with photographer's shadow and inexpertly boosted colour!)

Now, I am not going to just jump right in and knit this, though I have vague plans to get it done shortly. I have started the other front of the Botticelli, and I do love it so. Tomorrow night I have to go hang around while Arthur plays Dungeons & Dragons, so perhaps I'll take the square then.

(An aside: if you had a pattern-a-day calendar and were leaving your cosy home to knit, would you rip out the page you were knitting from, risking losing it and messing up the calendar; carry the whole block of pages, a desk calendar from last year, around with you, looking a bit crazy; or copy the 24-row pattern out on a piece of paper? The block is not really convenient to knit from, as it doesn't stay open to the desired page without a cup of tea or something to weigh it down. Not a great design, in my mind.)

A few pictures of stuff

This is my little baby avocado. It just sprouted a while ago, and you can see it is taking after its pal, growing super tall and not at all bushy. I think they don't get enough light, and just stretch and stretch trying to reach the sky.  Poor deluded things.

Another crazy horticultural marvel... Long, long ago (what, 5 or 6 months ago?) I scattered some seeds that were supposed to grow flowers that would attract butterflies. Well, it is now November, and my one cosmos flower is finally in bloom. It is very lovely, but I rather expected more of them, and perhaps a few months ago! Who knows what is going on?

Now, finally, a second piece of knitting. The left front of the Botticelli is done, and (phew) it is the same length as the back. (It's kind of rolled up at the bottom, but really, it's good.)

I really love the "wrong" side of striped stocking stitch. For a while, I considered making it the "right" side, and so didn't weave my ends in. I think, though, smooth side out. One more front to do, and then we tackle the sleeves. I'm still fretting about matching the stripes at the top of the sleeve, thinking about a little stripey cuff and mostly plain brown sleeve?

After-Halloween stuff

Our neighbourhood association organizes a pumpkin patch party in the park every November 1. We bring our jack o'lanterns and set them all in a line along a path, and they look cool.

That's it, really!

We had our usual good weather on Halloween. It's customary for us to sit on the front porch with a glass of wine, watching the kids go by and giving out treats. The costumes are always interesting! This year, way more Harry Potters than one would expect, plus Angry Birds!

Tomorrow: knitting, I'm almost sure!

The first of the month

This year, I will once again attempt to post every day in November. Sometimes the posts will, of course, be about my knitting, but I am working on the Botticelli these days and it's just the same stocking stitch stripes over and over. I think I am almost finished a piece, so perhaps pics of that soon!

But first, I will show you this how-to video, which some of you will undoubtedly have seen:




This first appeared on the guy's blog where he gives the following instructions:

Step One: Knit.
Step Two: Keep knitting.
Step Three: Finish knitting and open an Etsy shop to sell your wares.

Ha ha ha ha.

I was out with some friends the other day, and had my felted buttonhole bag with me. They were all oooh and aaaah, and, of course, said "you could make those and sell them!" So we had the time/materials/cost discussion again. Would you spend $150 for a felted purse? Not me, though I would spend the time making one.

Pumpkin pie, anyone?

Happy Halloween, and see you in November for NaBloPoMo!

Knit or crochet?

Are these knitted or crocheted? So clever, whatever!

That shawl

Finally this has reached its destination so I can blog about it!

Oh, my! This was fun to knit (although I ignored it for a while, when something new took my fancy -- can't remember what, now!).

The pattern calls for knitting each module onto the next one, but then cut the yarn at the end of each, and work in horizontal rows. I followed hints found on Ravelry and just knit the diagonal rows from bottom to top, picking up stitches for the next shell along the side of the shell I had just finished. I had two colourways of Kureyon sock, and mainly just let the colours flow, but did occasionally change things up. I don't think it looks diagonally striped at all, does it?

flash!

I finished it a couple of weeks ago now and mailed it off to my sister-in-law in BC for her 50th birthday! Stephen cleverly packed it in an iPad box, just to tease, and took it off to the post office. The fellow at the counter told him it'd be there "on Wednesday," which of course costs more than "sometime in the next couple of weeks."

When her birthday came and went, and our tracking information showed that in a week it had got about 5 miles, we contacted the post office and had moments of panic, thinking something terrible had happened, but it did show up where it was supposed to be the very next day, and only a week later than our cheerful salesman had suggested!

I've been promised pictures of it in use, so do stay tuned for that!

Me in 2040

Borrowed from someone who borrowed from someone on Facebook. 

I love the pink teacup.

October square

The October square is done!

 

It looks similar to other squares I have done, with the sort of framed dips, but they are all different enough, I think!

I think I might be in for a surprise when I finally block them all and see if they will really fit together neatly. That's what "sashing" is for, I guess!

I am aiming for 16 squares in total. I think the KAL group on Ravelry was based on a blanket of 8 or 9 square patterns, and according to the master plan, one should knit each in 3 colours. Well, that didn't happen here. This square is from a different pattern, so I guess the original set is done! I shall see what the group does in November, and if there is no "assigned" square, I am sure I can come up with something. And I shall have a finished little blanket for next fall.

A cool thing I found

I came across this on Pinterest the other day: a sky scarf.

You gather some blue, grey and white yarns, and each day for a whole year, you knit a garter ridge in the colour of the sky (although more research on Ravelry shows that some people throw in pink or yellow on occasion, and some people keep track of moods rather than skies).

You'd have to pick a time of day to choose your colour, I think, since some mornings are clear blue and their afternoons are grey and thundery! The pattern does call for mixing two strands, so I guess you could do clear blue and grey together.

White for snowfall, or just for white sky? Should one have a wonderful pink, just for those days when one sees a great sunset?

Although this just involves 2 rows a day, I have a few wee things to get out of the way before I jump in. I think it would be fun, simple and a cool way to chart progress through the year. Maybe I will chart 2012.

This picture, by the way, is from the project page of the designer, leafcutter, on Ravelry. You can see it much better on Flickr.

It's October now, time to get ready for winter!?

It's been beautiful and sunny for a while. Cold nights and mornings, leaves starting to turn. Definitely fall and not summer, but warm during the day. Very nice, indeed. And time to think of the coming seasons.

I have recently discovered Pinterest, which is a very big time-sink and it also shows me all sorts of things I wouldn't otherwise trouble myself with, like Halloween wreaths! Now, a Halloween wreath seems like a very silly thing to me, but a wreath for the door around Christmastime is a fine thing, and anything other than the cedar circles from the grocery store is even better.

First, you get a ring -- remember the lampshade project? I have a bucketload of lampshade rings that just need old glue and guck taken off, and then they are perfect for this.

Then you need some tulle, and I just happened to have a wee bit of white in a bag, so we cut that up and looped it on. It only covered about a third of the ring, so we had to do some thinking. I had some black, which was not quite the right texture and we weren't sure we wanted the Cruella DeVille look, either. So, new plan.

I happened to be out near Value Village, which was full of stuff for Halloween -- the wedding dresses with stains on the front which are only good for costumes, the out-of-season things they'd like to get rid of, the ... costumes and weird exotic funny things! I was in a rush, but ran through one rack and came up with a few options, ultimately deciding on a toddler-sized dress with three layers of tulle, in white and icy blue!

(At several points in the making of this, I said, "Hmm, I should have taken a picture for the blog." I don't even have a picture of the dress before we cut it up.)

knotted on the ring

The clear white is the original stuff we had, and the yellowed white is from the dress. Under the layer of white there were two layers of blue. It was a very cute size 2T dress with a halter top, an elastic waist in the back and a full skirt to go over the diapers! And perhaps it was even floor-length, though my understanding of what a two-year-old looks like is a bit misty these days.

Maybe we will attach more lace, and a big snowflake?

The Chia Pet is delighted.

We need to add a few details, find a ribbon to hang it, and sit back and wait for the snow, I guess!

(This took much longer to compose than it should have, because I am using Blogger's new template thingy and to get the pictures in the right places and not crazy looking I had to keep going back and forth to tweak the HTML. I think they wanted to make it easier, but they didn't!)