And now it's almost the end of June

We've been doing the same old stuff.

My neighbour and I walked to the park with a coffee the other day. (I looked at my Visa bill online the other day and noted that practically the only places we spend money now are the grocery store and the local coffee shop.) This new park is nice and I should have taken a picture for you! It is on top of what used to be an asphalt "playground" at an underused Catholic school, and it is now a grassy space with benches and tables and even a young tree or two. I will make another trek to take some pictures.

The kids gave Stephen a new plant for Father's Day!

Too bad I don't have a "before" picture, since it was a lovely sunflower before the squirrel ate it! It's now an indoor plant, with a couple of buds on it. (Must be more assiduous with the picture-taking.)

Other things are eating our plants on the back deck, but sometimes we don't mind, like when one of these (or actually, dozens of these) eats our dill plants.

I believe they are Eastern Black Swallowtails, and I hope we get a glimpse of the butterflies one day.

I have some new knitting. This is the yarn I bought in Vancouver just before we left.

Apparently I didn't share this with you at the time, but I went to Fibre Art Studio on Granville Island and bought this single skein of lumpy Kermit-green yarn.

this photo by Stephen

They squirted me with hand-sanitizer and I was the only person in the shop. I just needed a(nother) yarn souvenir!

Because it is lumpy, or indeed bouclé, I am just knitting it plain, without trying to do anything cabled or lacy or even knit/purl textured, except you can probably see a slit on the lefthand side there. I will put a few of these holes here and there, but it will just be a straight scarf. The colour and texture are exciting enough!

I will note that this week has been filled with turmoil and betrayal and distrust and woe on Ravelry. It is a long story, but it starts with an upgrade of the look of the site. Ravelry was always a bit cute, in a quirky sort of way. You would type the word cake, and a little picture of a cake would appear in your post. There were, at various times, probably a hundred of these little things. Taco, martini, Friday the 13th, mirror ball... would all make little images appear, and now they don't. (This is a minor issue, but it was something especially Ravelry that I really liked.)

The first things I noticed in the new (or ew, as some call it) look was that it is now overly cute, and made me think of an invitation to a 10-year-old girl's birthday party. New colours, new spacing, new navigation, who can handle that?

However, some other people got migraines and at least six people had seizures! The colour contrast, the huge white spaces, the animations on certain pages were actually affecting people's health.

These things happen... and then they should be corrected right away. But the Ravelry team (which is tiny: 5 people run the site for 9 million of us users) has been pretty absent. A blog post from the designer talked about how she loved the cutesiness of it, threads were opened for feedback but then locked, and no answers were given. So disappointing from a team that has been very open and communicative all along.

A survey was put together, basically asking us how much we loved things, with yarn balls with faces to signify answers from "love" to "hate." We then learned that our answers were not anonymous, but linked to our usernames, which also link to our purchases, for example. There are talks of lawsuits, especially among Europeans who have very strict rules about these things!

We'll see how that all pans out, but one lawsuit about causing seizures or violating EU regulations could kill the whole thing. Which would be terrible.

So, that's it from me, some knitting, a new park, a caterpillar and perhaps complete collapse of my main online community.

A thing I hadn't done before

A couple of friends and I went out to Tommy Thompson Park, or as it is commonly known, Leslie Spit. It is a spit of land -- sort of land, made of concrete, bricks, demolished buildings, dirt they dug out decades ago when they made the subways -- that sticks out into Lake Ontario. Lots of birds, scrubby trees, green stuff poking out of piles of blocks of concrete.

There is rebar sticking up all over the place, and people string worn, multicoloured bricks on it.

The city is waaay over there.

From the other side, you can just see lake off to the horizon.

I found all these different colours of bricks. Worn by years of tumbling around. It's a weird landscape!

Someone had stacked up flat bits. Old countertops? Facing from some fancy building? Floor tiles? Who knows?

These are some little things I picked up. Glass and tiles. 

I was a bit restrained, and didn't bring home everything I saw. Three one-hole bricks and a few wee bits of prettiness.

There aren't any people in these pictures but there were a ton of people, mainly on bikes, enjoying the beautiful day and doing a fair job of social distancing. We are still supposed to keep two meters apart from people we don't live with, but can expand our close circles to include ten people. No one knows what that will really mean. If I am in a circle with one friend of mine, I am also in the circle with her three housemates, one of whom is four years old. And if I am in my neighbour's circle, I'm in the same circle with her son, who travels to another town in Ontario for work. I do think it all means we might be able to have a barbecue with a friend or two sometime! I'm still in no hurry to rush out!

Still here

I have started a dozen things with this yarn and taken them out again.

Do I want big lace,

smaller lace,

tiny lace?

Cardigan, I think. Maybe a shawl, for something different.

But, nothing is right.

So, I am back to sewing ends in on this.

We forgot to put the garden waste out for pickup this morning. Our Thursday routines are crumbling!

Progress

(This was meant to be published on Thursday, but I thought I'd get a picture of the blanket to show you... best laid plans...)

Already I can say I have finished one of my June goals. The baby blanket is done, ends sewn in, and any day now I will wash it and it'll be ready to go! I have about 40 grams of yarn left, enough for a tiny Aviatrix hat.

I had fun making one of these in February. I guess I didn't show you because I worried the mom-to-be would see it or something, though that was always pretty unlikely!

Anyways, I made these two hats in February for my cousin's grandchild, who was born in April.

I had to ask my cousin to sew a button on the Aviatrix, the top one! Somehow in all the hullabaloo of those distant days, I missed that step. Probably because I didn't have a button jar in my rental apartment.

Every baby girl needs a pussy hat in case she has to go to a rally or something. (I know babies are oddly shaped creatures, but I would love to see that hat on an actual baby... so tall! Surely that's wrong, but that's what the pattern said!)

I have no pictures of the blanket, but will get right on that!

It's June

Let's pretend all is normal and make a to-do list for June.

1. Finish baby blanket
2. Start knitting Ibaraki, or at least make a swatch to see how the lace yarn on big needles works
3. Sew in some ends on another ancient project, the Kaffe Fassett squares I was knitting in 2014. I have six now, I think, and a half? I have a plan, and it won't be hard, but will take some resolve and perseverance. 

That's all the knitting, and that is certainly enough. 

Other plans are completely up in the air. Who can plan? 

Lots of places are opening up more, but Toronto is still getting over a hundred new cases of COVID-19 a day, so I am sure we'll just be sitting on our porch and carefully going to get groceries. A cottage we like to go to in Southampton is available for a few weeks, but the politics of leaving the city for a getaway are fraught, and we are not sure the public health folks will allow it. 

Have some poppies: 

Finito

The lamp is finished.

I used every single jump ring, but still have hundreds, if not thousands, of slides left.

The bottom row of slides attaches to a big ring, but I only had enough jump rings to attach one side of each slide. I had to use the smaller ones for that.

Not only will this lamp remind me of all those journeys and past adventures, it will remind me of COVID-19 and these days when you can't just run out to the bead store for more jump rings! 

Ta da!

More than three things I am using these days

Surprise, a post on a Wednesday!

It is too hot to knit, so I am spending a lot of time on the slides lamp shade.

Here's how it is done.

Go through the huge bag of slides and find different sorts.

I don't care what the picture is (though I originally was doing blue pictures: mountains and sky and seascapes) but look at all the different frames they have.

Step two, and the one I so often forget about, is put a bit of white paper on the back. This diffuses the light so that you don't get little lightbulbs in the middle of your picture. So, I cut paper, tape it down.

Then we get the hole punch. This is probably for scrapbooking or some delicate craft like that, and now every time I use it I think it is going to break.

I have 80 more slides, four holes on each, left to do. So, fingers crossed. I have recently discovered the slides that have blue frames and I want to include them, but they are a tiny bit thicker than usual and Mr Hole Punch has a hard time with them. Saving them for last, I guess!

Another thing to note is that it is hard to make the holes in the same place all the time. This leads to wobbly lines of slides. Precision is your friend, but perhaps too much work!

The slides are attached with 12 mm jump rings. Some, actually, use 10 mm rings, but that is a mistake and if I could do it all again, I would have bought a million rings at the beginning, instead of a wee bag of 50, and then another bag which turned out to be not the same. My recent purchase of 400 rings turns out to have been barely sufficient, so the few remaining 10 mm rings might just get called in to action.

The pliers are indispensable here. My lefthand fingers are kind of wrecked from holding the ring, and I wish I had two pairs of pliers!

The end, almost.

I hope to have run out of rings in a few days, and then we'll say this is complete!

Three things on Thursday

Baking.

When last we spoke I was about to go make some cinnamon buns. That didn't work and I will tell you why! It's because I put all the ingredients into the bread machine, pressed the button and let it do its thing.

Unfortunately, I pressed the button for "French bread" rather than for "dough." When I realized my mistake, I didn't know when I could stop it, was it mixed enough, had it started cooking it, what oh what to do? I left it to cook my sweet dough into something like French bread, and of course it was eatable, but not a batch of cinnamon buns!

Since then I did make a lovely chocolate coffeecake, but I have not ventured into bun territory again. My 5-kilo bag of flour is actually almost empty now, too!

Knitting.

Um... I guess I have been just working away at the baby blanket, which maybe I haven't told you about. It is getting to the boring stage, after the frustrating stage and the no-problem stage.

It's a 1989 pullover pattern from Vogue Knitting, just knits and purls arranged to look sort of plaid.

I think the baby will love it, especially if I soldier on and make it a decent size, instead of finishing it off now because it's beginning to bother me. (That picture is old; I have at least twice that length now.) I have another ball of the green, and the gold for a border, so it will be great, don't you worry.

I've also been swapping old patterns for new. Someone on Ravelry wanted menswear patterns, so I sent her a bunch, including my 2002 Vogue Knitting men's special issue. She, in return, sent me three electronic patterns, for fingerless mitts, for a big sweater and for a Stephen West shawl!

Someone else wanted doll's clothes patterns, so off went two booklets. She is stuck in some paypal limbo but I expect a little something from her as well.

I am reminded that I have this beautiful green laceweight yarn that I bought in Vancouver, just waiting to be made into something, perhaps a light and lovely cardigan for me. We'll see what comes of that!

Sitting around.

We do a lot of nothing. I have watched so many second-rate movies on Netflix! I have watched all the Murdoch Mysteries available.

I have got out my 9-year-old slides lamp project! Now I am waiting for more jump rings to arrive in the mail from my favourite bead shop so I can continue with that.

And so we continue with our lockdown lives. I have just learned that the second neighbourhood supermarket has closed for cleaning for the day because someone on staff has tested positive. Lucky we have a freezer and cupboards full of stuff, even if I will run out of flour in a week or so! And I did want some green onions... Ah, we will manage for a day or two! And while I was writing this, my jump rings arrived in the mail, so I can crack on with my lamp.

It is the best of all possible worlds, obviously.

Doin' it

Okay, it's Thursday, it's time.

A bunch of pictures of my new scarf.

It has a sawtooth edge and a couple of lacy bits.

It has many colours!

It's sort of crescent-shaped.

I quite like it!

We hope that it is getting to the end of scarf season, though! It snowed the other day. It's grey and crappy and not above 15 degrees. It's the middle of May, for crying out loud!

I have been going out more, trying to get in a decent walk once in a while. Today I should have been on the blustery north Norfolk coast, looking at rocks and waves and birds and pub dinners. If I was just now dropped into that situation, I would be so sore and blistered and aching, because I have not kept up my practising. I suppose I have another year to get to it, but I do mean to put a bit more oomph into my local walking.

Right now, I am making cinnamon buns. In, um, 1978 or so, I ate about a million of these while at university. We shall see if these match the cinnamon bun in my mind!

I hope everyone is keeping well. And not too stir-crazy!

What's new?

Here we are, another Thursday.

We came from Vancouver six weeks ago. Spring is finally coming to Toronto and colours are visible here and there, although we now have a week of cold weather.

I did finish a knitting project, after some fussing around.

This skein of yarn has flowers added in at random intervals. Random, yet somehow never in the right place! I made most of a cowl but a lot of the flowers ended up on an edge, and I knitted it a bit tightly, so I ripped it and tried another shape.

Now all the flowers ended up at the edge of the triangle. And I didn't have enough yarn to make the part around the neck very deep.

But it could be called versatile? You can certainly wear it in a couple of ways!

I saw a recipe for dragon eggs on twitter, involving chocolate, butter and eggs, so gave it a try. (You might have to click "show this thread" to get all the info.)

Actual dragon egg for scale.

Really, it's a rock

Today I might just take part in a zoom exercise class a neighbour is running. So, that's something to look forward to. We also bought a pot-roast on our last trek to the grocery store, so either today or tomorrow we will have a very nice meal. And I am very close to finishing another scarf, and starting a project that might just last me the rest of the summer.

Until next Thursday, then!