Summer's half over

We have had a month of summer holidays, and I have been ferrying kids here and there, getting them out of bed, making lunches... it's like school! Now the plan was for two weeks of hanging out and relaxing, but we seem to have got ourselves invited to visit friends in fun places, so next week we will be renting a car and packing stuff up and arranging spare clothes and sleeping bags... No rest for the wicked, as they say.

In preparation for the first of our little trips -- a quick sail on Georgian Bay with people who are planning on living aboard for a year while sailing in the Caribbean -- I made a sailboat dishcloth!

I knew I would be a bit short of the blue, so I made the waves foaming under the hull, and then had to put a few puffy white clouds in at the top. It hardly looks like I ran out of yarn at all... Well, yeah, a knitter might spot that trick.

Otherwise, I am almost finished the grey-footed sock. Of course, there is a bit of drama there, as I race to the toe with a very limited amount of yarn. I should have pictures for you any day now, and I hope the toes can both be grey!

August will be a month of car and plane knitting and so on. Here are my lofty goals:

1. finish the grey-footed socks (edited to add, a few hours later: I finished these! And it's still July!)

Here are the rest of the lofty goals:

1. finish the Jamaica blanket
2. I have a scarf I haven't shown you yet, made from M's handspun, and I will continue to work on that
3. I seem to have started a cardigan from the latest VK, in my long-neglected Noro Sock. I hope to have a sleeve done by the end of the month! (Oh, heavens, I bought that yarn a year ago!)
   
4. I said I would have a blanket done for September -- not sure if that's Sept 1 or Sept 30 -- so will have to start sewing soon on the DK strips, and filling in gaps. I know that they are not all even in length, but I have a plan. Must get the plan, the knitting and the camera all together soon to show you my progress.

Okay, that's enough!
Today's adventure should involve knitting, but we also are having a wee domestic crisis, because the washing machine may have packed it in. I hope to send the boys to the basement with a wrench while I sit upstairs with my knitting, but the whole family might just have to troop out to... wherever one goes to buy a washer!

I made a few things

Since finishing the pink socks, I have made a list of all the things I have on the needles and got on a wee bit of a finishing spree. Though to be honest, one of the things I finished, I also had just started, and some of the things look like I will never finish them, and while planning what to knit on holiday a month from now, I sort of started something completely new....

It's a miracle anything gets done around here.

Okay. So. In August, I will see my nephew, who will be days away from his 40th birthday. Heck, he must have a dishrag!


That, of course, made me look at my pile of dishcloth cotton and realise I could spend a couple of weeks casually making a stack of dishcloths. But wait, what's this over here... more Katia Jamaica yarn from the Acres of Mesh sweater! That would make one of those very cool blankets! (That's on Ravelry.) I can make that on my holiday!


Oops, I thought I'd just try things out.

I am making no-sew miters and so far have 7 little squares. I figure my Jamaica will give me about 22. So I also rustled up leftovers from Basalt -- dark green DK cotton. I started thinking the blanket would be six by six little squares, but I think maybe five by five, or four by six. Kay made lovely diagrams in that tutorial, and I have done my best to make little diagrams too, though low-tech. On a shopping list.


That's two new items! What happened to the desire to finish, to cross something off the list?

The hot pink cotton scarf was started, apparently, on May 6th (of this year!) and yesterday I made the last few rows of edging and it's done! I ran out of yarn 3 rows from the end -- but luckily I have another whole skein of this stuff. I think the original plan involved a much wider wrap, but somehow I got distracted.


I didn't really pay too much attention to that edging pattern, and sometimes I have 3 ridges of garter stitch between eyelet rows, and sometimes 4. That makes it a bit hard to arrange the second end to match up with the first... and so they don't match.


One end has five sets of eyelets, and the other has six. But you won't tell, will you?

After I wrapped it around my neck and had Arthur snap my picture, I did a quick blocking of the scarf, and it seems to have ended up about 8 feet long! Which is very long indeed.

Plans now include making more jazzy miters, and perhaps, just maybe, finishing the second grey-footed sock. I see that I started these one year ago, so it does seem like it's time. I also promised to have a blanket of DK wool strips done by September, so that should be in the lineup, too. But I did get a new Rowan magazine the other day, and so have several sweaters in my mental queue....

I don't even know who David Foster Wallace is

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Of course, I had to google him and read his Wikipedia page.

He wrote this:

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.... The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.... The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.

So, yeah, I totally see the comparison. He loved endnotes, too, but I haven't figured them out in Blogger... I wonder if he used lots of ellipses....

Another finish!

My mom's birthday socks are done! And I still do not have to panic about mailing them. I'll saunter down to the post office tomorrow and they'll get there in plenty of time. I will see her later in the summer, but figure the birthday present should get there for the actual birthday.

And now, what? I could finish the second grey-footed sock. I could finish the pink cotton scarf, which is not quite that alarmingly pink! I could do any number of things... Luckily Stephen is away this week, so I can spread yarn and UFOs all over his side of the bed to study at my leisure.

Thank you for all your concern about my poor foot! It is fortunate that the foot doesn't contain any vital organs or, in fact, much except bones. No lasting damage seems to have been done and I'm not limping (too much).

Ow!

This is part of what happens when you leave your knitting on the floor:

That hurt.

After one steps on a 2.75 mm pointy stick in bare feet, here's what happens next.

1. Hobble upstairs to the bathroom to wash the wound and put a Spiderman band-aid on, apparently dripping blood on the way.
2. Stick foot in sink, find cloth, find polysporin, find band-aids, etc.
3. With damp rag in hand and superhero band-aid working its magic, hobble back, retracing earlier path, wiping blood out of the carpet.
4. Hobble back to the bathroom to deal with damp rag; pass desk, pick up camera.
5. Hobble back downstairs, grab knitting, hobble outside to catch the evening light, photograph evidence. Also photograph bottom of foot.
6. Hobble back upstairs, kick kid off computer, upload pictures. Decide picture of the bottom of one's foot is not really fit for show.

That's it for this evening, folks. I hope we won't have any more of these emergency blogging situations. Also, I hope there's another sock needle somewhere around.

I must say I have renewed sympathy for Jane, who stepped on a plug, and Ryan, who stepped on a wooden needle, though since she only complained about breaking the needle and not her skin, I would assume she was wearing shoes! This stepping-on business has got to stop!

Right now I am going to find a comfy chair, complete with footstool, and read the book I finally got from the library. It's The Crossing Places, by Elly Griffiths, recommended by Liz.

Socks and a leaf

Long ago, I started these socks.


And then they got set aside for ages! The other day I realized I had four pairs of socks on the needles, which means that I am presently committed to making eight socks! Luckily one of these was pretty darn close to completion, so I took a break in between the pink socks and raced down to the toe here! Yay me.

So, now, having finished one pink one and one grey-toe one I only have six more socks to do. Holy crow...

And now, a leaf!

The golden age of intarsia

The other day I was going past my crazy catlady neighbour's house. She had a dozen boxes out on the sidewalk, filled higgledy-piggledy with books to get rid of. Many of them were in Russian. But then, my eagle eye spied the words "Kaffe Fassett" peaking out from under something in Cyrillic script.

Ho ho! A hardcover Glorious Knitting!


I scrounged around a bit more after that, and came up with a couple of those crafty needlepoint books filled with patterns to gussy up your glasses cases, or make "coasters" with tent stitch, and Knitting Masterpieces! (Here's a link on Ravelry -- people have indeed made these sweaters!)

While I like to think of Glorious Knitting as timeless, it is from the mid-80s, the golden age of intarsia and big hair. Knitting Masterpieces is from 1987, and while the hair is a bit toned-down, the intarsia is aaaalllllllll here!

The idea is clever -- knit up great classics of world art. Cave paintings, Egyptian tomb decoration, Caesar's head from a Roman coin, Mondrian lines, Gauguin ladies.


The book tells me this is Achilles from this pot by Exekias. I prefer this pot, with Achilles and Ajax playing chess/draughts/backgammon. (I really, really love that pot!) Whatever, I would love to make Achilles onto something, like a baby blanket! I guess a cushion would do??

This one: no.


This one: At least he doesn't have big hair.


And this, perhaps my favourite:


Maybe another cushion for the couch. Achilles on one side, David on the other?

What a way to end a year

Today is the last day of the 4th year of this blog! Tomorrow is my blogiversary! Who'd have thought I would still be doing this 5 years down the road?


To celebrate -- no, actually just by chance -- I have a finished garment to show you. I started this sweater almost 2 years ago, and it sat around for months recently, just waiting for a seam or two and some buttons.




It fits fine, but the weather, in the 30s Celsius, is just too hot for a heavy cotton cardigan. Now it must sit around a few more months, but come October I think I will get a lot of use of it.

Stephen said, It's all different colours! And then he said, And all sorts of different patterns! But he didn't seem to notice the buttons.



Now, on with the socks and rest of the WIP pile!

One pink sock, multiple loose ends

One sock down!

In the best of all possible worlds, I would have a deeper heel; this seems very short.

The yarn, Tofutsies, is nice to knit with in the hot weather, not sticky, not sweaty. But... have you ever seen so many ends on one sock!?

One of those joins is sort of my fault. I tried to get the yarn out from the centre of the ball and found myself with a giant yarn barf. I just kept working away, hoping things would sort themselves out neatly, but in the end it was just so tangled that I had to break the yarn at one point. But, then I found at least 2 more places in the ball where loose ends were just knotted together. I have wound up the rest of the ball and it looks like I can get the second sock done without any knotty bits, but I think this is miserable in a ball of sock yarn.

Knitting tourist

This story starts long ago. One could start it in the seventies, but I think we can safely say that my part of the story begins in 2005. At that time, I was in Cambridge, and I had met Rosie and Liz, and they were blogging, too, and another Mary knew them and read their blogs and somehow came to mine. Phew.

So we made the odd comment on each others' blogs and sent the odd e-mail, and I moved back to Toronto and years passed! Then, recently Mary sent me a note saying she would be in my neck of the woods and shouldn't we get together? Yes, we should!

She gets to town, gives me a call. Stephen and I are out and the kids tell me, when we return, that she will call tomorrow (that is, last Friday) at 10. Great!

No, not great, I won't be here!

Messages are sent via Ravelry and e-mail. She phones in the morning, leaving a message at 11:04. I get in the door at 11:05! I go out again, leaving detailed instructions with Arthur, to get Elaine for lunch.

Then, the doorbell rings, and there she is! Nothing like the direct approach!

So, we have a cup of tea, send the now-fed Elaine back to school, and decide the thing to do is go to Romni Wools and see the sights!


Oops, some came home with me, though when I abandoned Mary and her husband down there, because the school day was almost over and I had to get Elaine again, she seemed to be acting with some restraint.

That might be partly because she can make her own lovely yarn! She gave me this wee ball of her handspun!


It is about 34 grams of wool with silk plies in as well. Bluish overall, but with all sorts of other gorgeous colours, which will all be much more visible when I make it into a nice little lacy scarf.

It was great to meet her and finally put a face to the name, and to have a proper chat, and a lovely afternoon.

Breast cancer and pink socks

Well, breast cancer is not a very cheery topic, and now I find there is something called inflammatory breast cancer, which presents itself a bit differently than your usual variety. The woman who wrote this is {ahem} the cousin of a friend of a friend of mine... or maybe the cousin of her husband or of some other acquaintance. Anyways, I received this information in my mailbox, and thought it was something I would share.

The pink of my sock actually has nothing to do with breast cancer. The socks are for my pretty healthy mom who will be 90 this summer, touch wood etc etc.

Chia dinosaur frolicking amongst the broccoli seedlings that fell off him.

School's out

Unfortunately for me, Arthur's school is done for the year! Elaine still has to go till the end of the month, though, so who knows how I will amuse the boy for almost 3 weeks.


This is a souvenir I left at the school after a knitting afternoon there. It's loosely sewn on there, but you can see the end dangling, and someone could unsew it. Of course, I hope they leave it in situ for all eternity.

I have a couple more balls of "fun fur" yarn and hope to do a bit more tagging here and there. It must be the perfect use for this yarn!

And the other winner is...

The Chicago Blackhawks!



You only need to watch the first minute and a half to get the story! Crazy goal, happy team.

They hadn't won the Stanley Cup since 1961. Now Toronto is officially the team who has gone the longest without a Cup, since 1967! Gad, they didn't even wear helmets in those days!

To compare, England has been waiting since 1966 to win another World Cup in soccer. Though I hear they will win this year! We'll believe it when we see it, I think!

That's enough sports here on Knitting on the Cam! We are looking forward to the arrival of a special guest knitter shortly, and school's almost over for Arthur, and generally we're just all in a dither around here. More news, as it happens...

And the winner is...

Oh those British-popular-vote people... You never know what they will do!

Friday, about Britain's Got Talent, I said, "I think we only learn who are the top 3, and I hereby say the top three will be Spelbound, Janey* and Paul, though those wouldn't be my favourites. I would like to see Christopher, Liam and Tobias, I think. Hard to call..."

Wow, it ended up Spelbound, Twist and Pulse and Kieran! (Others in the final were Tina and Chandi the dog and Connected.)

Here we insert a picture of Elaine up a tree, just for a break. Today it is raining and we are supposed to be having a street party.

Kieran, great back story, survivor, trier, blah blah -- but really! Not better than Tobias, not better than Liam! Christopher, did you hear him??

Spelbound, professionals, world-class competitors... and now winners of a talent show! Though both Amanda and Simon mentioned the 2012 Olympics opening show, and we all know they would be perfect for that!

Oh well. We all know that last year's second-place finisher has a huge album and is I hope living her dream...

*I give you Janey in the semi-final, because in the final she got off to a slow start and was catching up to the music all the way through. Way off and everyone knew it, poor thing!

And I've just got to add this: They say Spelbound have already been approached about the Olympics!

Britain's got a crazy lot of talent

Today saw the end of the Britain's Got Talent semi-finals. Tomorrow, Saturday, we'll have the 10 finalists in a cut-throat final -- not really, since I believe that all 10 get to take part in the live tour and get their share of fame and fortune, though only the winner gets to the Royal Variety Show. Last year Susan Boyle had everyone's attention, and I must say that there is no Susan Boyle this year.

Here's my totally amateur assessment of the situation:

From the first semi-final, there's Spelbound (who apparently have only one L), a bunch of world-class gymnasts; and Tobias Mead, a pretty cool dancing guy.

Then there's Tina and Chandi, a woman and her dancing dog; and Connected, a bunch of boys the age of my son, who want to be a boy band and never mention New Kids on the Block, who are the last boy band I ever paid attention to.

The third night gave us Paul Burling, an impressionist and comedian; and Christopher Stone, the self-proclaimed balding accountant who sings.

Last night Janey Cutler blew people away -- she's 81 and sings. Twist and Pulse are more dancing boys, very good.

And on the last night, the boy drummer I mentioned last year (he didn't make it to the semi-finals last year) won the popular vote, and Liam McNally, the 14-year-old who sings like an angel, also made it through.

So, singers: Liam, Janey, Christopher, Connected

Dancers: Twist and Pulse, Tobias Mead

Then a drummer, a comedian, a dog and some gymnasts!

I love Liam because he's young and good, Janey because she's old and good, Christopher because he's sweet and good. Don't care at all what happens to Connected. I think I prefer Tobias over the two boys, but I don't really think either should get first. Kieran, good but not great; Paul the comedian was okay when he did Bugs Bunny and Scooby Doo, but I don't get the jokes about British TV personalities; Chandi is good for a dog, but really, is a dog the most talented creature in Britain? And Spelbound are entertaining to watch, but I prefer the amateur-ness of the others.

Stephen's got a glass of wine waiting for me on the porch, so let's just make some predictions and get on with it.... I think we only learn who are the top 3, and I hereby say the top three will be Spelbound, Janey and Paul, though those wouldn't be my favourites. I would like to see Christopher, Liam and Tobias, I think. Hard to call...

But now I'm going to knit and imbibe, while you can search YouTube for all the auditions and semi-final shows!

Edited to correct Spelbound, and add their link.

The week thus far

We've had 3 semi-finals in Britain's got Talent. I have proved that I shouldn't bet on this sort of thing, since I have picked my three favourites to win each night, and been a tad off! Lots of dross, as there was last year, but lots of good stuff, too, and my favourites, Neil Fullard and Chloe Hickenbottom, missed out on the finals! The dog act, of course, did make it!

Anne's students, aka The Arrangement, did well last night, but their road ended there, and now they have more time to study for their exams. As it should be, I think! Good try, good fun, but not better than Neil!

And now, the Chia Pet, which has been put outside to enjoy a time in the sun, sprouting its little broccoli bits,




and the sock, with matching flower.

May and June

Guys, you might not know that it's Britain's Got Talent time again. Last year I gave you the blow-by-blow, but this year I am being more restrained (am I?). One semi-final down, 4 more to go, before the final. I'm sad that Olivia Archbold didn't get through last night, but that Tobias is a marvel. And the gymnasts... what can one say about those flinging leaping people? Amazing.

But enough of that; what about the knitting?

Plans for May were...

1. Sew up the Denim cardigan. This has been sitting around for a long time, but I just need to do buttonbands and other fiddly bits, I think. It's a mind-over-matter issue.

Not yet. It's all on the sofa in bits, just needing that afternoon of laying it out, putting the sleeves where they belong, and sewing it up. Gawd, I hate that part of any project!

2. Work on a pair of socks. I have 2 different partially knit socks somewhere around here, and I'd like to have at least one pair by the end of the month!

I've got socks on the brain right now. However, instead of finishing one of the two pairs I've had on the go for almost a year, alas, what I did was cast on two new socks!

I'm making my mom socks for her birthday in July (don't worry, I doubt she reads this!) and wanted to do the Embossed Leaves. Here's a pair on Flickr, and here are almost 3000 pairs on Ravelry. So, leaves need green yarn, don't they? I got some gorgeous green, but it was really too dark and mysterious, and although it is a colourway I love, I didn't really think it was just right for July birthday socks.


It took me almost the whole of one leg to reach that conclusion, so there's another pair in the lineup for Arthur!

I had a ball of Tofuties which I got at Knitomatic once, long long ago. It's pink, marled, summery, cottony -- I like all those things except the marled bit!


This yarn, I think, really needs a very plain pattern, because the way the yarn knits up, it's very hard to see any but the most pronounced twists and turns.

So, once again I try the Mesh Rib pattern I have started twice before! Fun, easy, pink...

3. Start something new -- and right now I'm not committing to anything in particular, since I change my mind every half hour.

I made the blue shawl! So that certainly fulfills that goal!


4. Tend my herb garden, including my lemon verbena. I wish Blogger had smell-o-vision! It smells like lemon candies!

I now have basil, sage, rosemary, dill, thyme, parsley, cilantro... hot peppers because they are easy to grow and the squirrels generally don't interfere with them, beans because they provide a nice tall curtain of green... and a few flowers here and there.

So, clearly, what I have to do in June is:

1. sew up that denim cardigan!
2. finish Mom's socks and get them in the mail
3. finish another pair of socks
4. I have several blanket projects that could use some attention, but the DK strips have been pledged to a September deadline for the Warm Hands Network. So, that should get a bit of work!
   

Last Thursday's sky, and Eye Candy Monday

They keep promising us a bit of rain, but it hasn't happened in weeks, it seems. This was the edge of a front -- off to the right the clouds got thicker and darker, but they just passed over us without dropping any rain.

There's a school/park/old church combo not far from here, where an iron fence has huge rosebushes planted all along it. Just now it is a wall of pink! This looks sort of unnatural in the photos, but it was bright sun, bright pink, bright green!

It was impossible to get a bee to sit still for a photo!

Update on the chia pet

A while ago, I tried to sprout an old Chia pet. It was not a success. I ended up scraping all the old seeds off and throwing up my hands.

But then! I had a package of broccoli seeds, and they are just tiny enough to fit in Chia pet grooves, so I gave it a shot! They don't get that gooey coating when wet, and they stick to your damp fingers like seed beads or something -- not fun, really.


It didn't get much coverage, due to that lack of gooeyness! But, if they all sprout, it'd still look cool.


Some tiny progress. Note the little sproutlet on the tray below. I think they sprout and then fall off, for lack of goo, or lack of rootable surface??


One valiant survivor, many fallen troops. I'll have to take the sprouts outside and set them free in the garden, to see if any will give me actual broccoli! I don't think we're going to see any marvels growing on the pet, but you can be sure I'll show you if this little guy gets much bigger!

Pretty things

I got some fuzzy blue unlabeled yarn at a yard sale 10 days ago, and quick as a wink made this little triangle.


It will block out a bit, and go to the Children's Aid for someone to snuggle up with. Why can't I do that with the yarn I actually go to the store and choose myself?

not bacon, but quartz!

Yesterday I took Elaine and a bunch of kids to the ROM. Their class was going on a field trip to the Cadbury chocolate factory, but the chocolate people wouldn't let in anyone with food allergies or sensitivites, so there were a few who were unable to go.

Luckily we had 3 parents for 5 children, so that worked well. No chocolate, but we had fun, and since the class is studying rocks and minerals, we got to see all these pretty things. (No flash, museum lighting.)

my favourite, malachite!

One day I will put all my whitish wool into a blanket like this. Must remember that a touch of gold will set it all off nicely!