Oddball Yarns

And Another Thing About These Socks

2006-06-04T08:51:00.000-04:00

The NZH sox ["New Zealand Helen"] are even more remarkable because when I signed up for Sockapaloooza, I included NO PREFERENCES. "I'd never had or made handknit sox," I said, "so I'm open to anything." I figured that would make it easy for my sockpal.

I mean really. Can you imagine anything more stressful? Particularly given that Helen and I were in the newbies group, so it wasn't like she had years of sock-making experience to draw on ("Ah, yes, indecisive Canadians always like pattern X....") So these are extra-excellent sox, having been created without a safety net.

And it's been raining ALL weekend in Toronto, so I'm wearing them a lot. With slippers -- can't let them touch the floors!

Antipodean Ssssssssox

2006-06-02T15:52:00.000-04:00

Feast your eyes on these beauties:

My Sockapaloooza socks have arrived, and they are gorgeous...they fit perfectly, I love the pattern, and the colours are wonderful: lots of variations on purple and orange and green and pink. They're the handiwork of the uber-busy Helen, who lives 14,688 km (that's 9,127 miles) from Toronto in Dunedin, New Zealand. Helen is at school and is a new Mum to the darling Sam and she knits...I think sleep must be scarce around her house. Helen, I love these socks: thank you so much!!

Plus, Helen sent me a gift! Check it out: a beautiful skein of Touch 2-ply laceweight in purples and blues and turquoises...these are colours I'm always stroking in yarn shops, and I'm looking forward to making something light and glamorous out of it.

Believe it or not, I've been doing some knitting myself, but mostly secret stuff...gifts for small people, etc. I'm also a little stalled on CeCe -- I'm at the point where I need to start the sleeves, but I don't have the right size DPNs. Maybe I'll take a break and wind this nice skein into a ball....

Disgracefully Infrequent Blogging.

2006-05-13T23:52:00.000-04:00

Okay, it's the MIDDLE of the night and long past the hound's bedtime, but here's a quick update. I darted out to B.C. for an excellent week chez M & D [see above] and have been back for a few days, communing with Stuart, foraging for meals, assessing the state of the Home Business.

In sox news, my lovely sock pal Bertha received her sox!! I'm soooo pleased that she likes them -- it's tough, making sox for someone you've never met! She's clearly a lovely person, and going through a few transitions in her life -- all of them good, but change is always tough -- so I really wanted her to be happy with them.

My own Pal let me know that my sox are still in progress, which is just fine with me -- she's going to school AND has a baby! That's a heap of things to keep a woman busy. Don't sweat it, sock pal: take your time!

Must get Stuart to bed...more [soon] on the finished Picovoli and the CeCe in progress.

In Praise of the Last Minute

2006-05-01T09:46:00.000-04:00

Needle at rest, with inquisitive snout:

A PAIR of Sockapaloooza socks!

Started: ages ago...sometime post-Olympics.
Finished: 20 minutes ago.

Post-canine inspection, sox hit the showers:
Pre-wash, they're snug but not outrageously so, and my feet are about the same size as my Pal's...the Eucalan dunk ought to soften them up so they're just right. I really like them, and they were so fun to make. I understand the knitting world's sock mania a little better after this exchange!

Bianca Elizabeth

2006-04-30T01:48:00.000-04:00

Well, I wish I had a picture of the little snack pack, but her Dad has been camping out at the hospital instead of darting home to email pictures to North America. Remember this? That bump has become baby B, who arrived on April 28 at 11:14AM, French time. Sooooo looking forward to seeing pictures. And I'm so happy for my little sister, who will be a loving and cool mother -- just like ours. Remember Lindz: Two Graham Crackers!

In the meantime, here's a gratuitous dog shot. Again: isn't he darling?

In stitchin' news, I'm one repeat + 2" ribbing from finishing my Sockapaloooza sox and am working on the waist shaping on the Picovoli and have just completed the opening ribbing on CeCe.

Must put the hound to bed.

Beach Bum

2006-04-25T16:50:00.000-04:00

The Companion Animal and I headed for the beach today and had a splendid time chasing/throwing a stick and romping in the sand. He showed no interest in swimming but liked the boardwalk and inspected some geese from a distance. Later, in the park, we saw a hulking Goldendoodle -- twice as big as Stuart. I told S. that he wasn't to get quite that big, please.

New project a-hatching: Bonne Marie's CeCe: stylish, pretty, knit in ONE piece...I love it. Plus, I have a bunch of Rowan Calmer stashed away that was going to be a T-shirt, but I already have a Picovoli on the needles (in lamb's pride cotton fleece, "columbine" blue) for easy knittin' T-shirt wearin' summer lying about, so the Calmer will be commandeered for La Ce.

0.6 Socks to Go

2006-04-23T13:28:00.000-04:00

Note to sock pal: I'll be washing and blocking these sox before they wing their way to you!

Thanks to the BBC's fabulous production of Bleak House, I'm making good mileage on sock #2, and enjoying it as much as #1. Mind you, yesterday the third DVD was NOT in -- was OVERDUE in fact -- and the hipsters at my local indy video store didn't seem to understand that I REALLY NEED TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS. Last night I rented Shopgirl -- love Steve Martin, usually, but I thought it was tedious. You can only shoot Claire Danes looking wistful/quirky from so many angles before the audience clues in that it's filllllller. I have another Sherlock Holmes in reserve, but I'm hoping that the last BH disc is back to the store soon. I want to finish up this sock! I'm off to Kamloops on May 2, so I need to get my package in the mail on May 1.

Also, puppy-as-sock-display-unit is acceptable, I think, because yesterday Stuart had his first bath (first one here at my house, anyway) and he is the cleanest fuzzball on the block. He didn't particularly care for the experience, but didn't struggle or try to make a break for it. No, he confined himself to reproachful looks, especially during the blow-dry. As you can see, he is Not. Pleased. But there were rawhide rewards at the end, and he slept the rest of the day -- after a muddy hour in the park and his ordeal at the home salon, he had to retreat and recharge. This morning he chewed the edge of my tax return, but that might not be a comment on the indignities of the bath.

And check out the final results:

He's five months old today. Isn't he handsome?

Another Shameless Pet Blog

2006-04-13T19:25:00.000-04:00

Today I wondered WHY I had waited so long to get a dog...but then (and this shows how utterly smitten I am) I realized that Stuart has only been alive since November 23rd, so THAT's the reason. It was strange to think that in September, when my parents were here for a visit, Stuart was probably in utero! Yeah, I'm a little mental about this dog.

He's relaxed a lot in the last few days: we play with the squeaky frog, toss the tennis ball, hang out in the backyard -- it's great. He's so incredibly sweet natured. And as you can see, he likes to supervise the neighbours, just like me!

And I knew that people liked dogs (lord knows I do), but I didn't really understand...so many people stop to tell me how beautiful he is, or want to pat him, or ask about his breed.

Okay, enough dogblogging. Let's at least refer to knitting.

Here's Stuart, checking out my behind- schedule Sock-pal sox. Well, "sock" singular. I re-knit the heel on Sock 1, and it's better on one side, but just as holey on the other side. I think I'm going to cheat and do a little sewing to fix it. This one ought to be finished in the next day or two, and then I'll motor through the second one. They're really satisfying...I hope my Pal likes them. She's had a bit of a stressful time lately -- it's odd to check her blog and not comment. But soon enough!

Okay, must go stare lovingly at the hound.

Please welcome...

2006-04-10T21:46:00.000-04:00

Stuart.Here, Stuart settles in on his first night with a comforting rawhide treat and the Saturday newspaper. It was a tough day for him: he woke up on the farm, surrounded by relatives (his Mum, a bunch of young cousins, several other close family friends) and his original human family, and then found himself in the backseat of a strange car with two women he'd never met, driving an hour and a half to a new and strange house with one of the women. (The crazier one, too, worst luck.) If it had happened to me, I too would've whizzed all over the house the first night.

Day 2 was better: Stuart mastered the stairs to the backyard, tolerated my going into the bathroom and shutting the door (with him on the wrong side), and learned about his "leash" and "going for a walk," both of which still seem overrated, in his well-mannered opinion. There was a small upset when I had the nerve to run down the block to pick up a couple of things at the store without him, but tomorrow we'll do some work on Being Alone. Hell, I had to learn it in grad school, and it took me more than 48 hours.

Day 3 (today) we had new victories: Stuart learned to ring a bell when he wants to go out (still blows my mind), went down the stairs all by himself, met the neighbours on both sides, and took three forms of public transit. We're both exhausted, but it's been a good third day. And Stuart is in good spirits: I was just on the phone with my Dad, and he started to chase his tail. Stuart did, that is. Must try to catch that on film.

Tomorrow, we're going to take it easy. I've ordered internet groceries (can't leave him alone yet; can't take him into a grocery store) and included in the order is a big package of hot dogs, which I'll slice into pennies and give him for treats when we do a little training. And we might try to make it down to High Park, where there'll be no scary traffic and lots of other dogs to hang out with.

Limited knitting going on...I did go back and fix the heel on sock #1 (will need to knit like lightning to get the pair finished for May 2) and I've been working a bit on the cotton T-shirt. But most of the time I'm absorbed with the young furball.

Too. Excited. To. Knit.

2006-04-04T20:06:00.000-04:00

Yes, shocking but true -- something Very Fun is going to happen this week at OY and I'm too busy darting around the house, chasing my own tail, and gnawing random things to settle down with the sticks. I was going to give a photographic hint, but Blogger is all ratty about accepting photos. Maybe it's a sign that I should keep it a secret until it really happens.

Yarn-wise, I hit The Wall with both my knit-a-long projects this week. Sockapaloooza sox: turned the heel...incorrectly. Blast and damn. Not looking forward to pulling it back...I might put it on a holder, knit the second sock, and then go back to it. And the Mountain Peaks Shawl laid a whuppin' on me last night. I tried row 4 of chart 1 a number [large number] of times and couldn't get the stitch count right. So we're having a little time out, the laceweight and me. We're thinking about how we've each contributed to our problem and we're coming up with ways to compromise and behave like grown-up knitters/yarn. Maybe after a very good night's sleep, we'll get together in direct natural light and try it again.

I did swatch for a cotton T-shirt type affair. Should be simple enough that I can stitch AND race around the house in anticipation.

Last Night of Eastern Standard Time...And a Wild One It Is.

2006-04-01T20:32:00.000-05:00

It started out so granola-yuppie [guppie?]: hair appointment first thing (you can't see it: too clean and fluffy), yoga class at lunchtime, quick stops at the health food store and the library...and then I came home to the sticks, and it's Saturday night at 8:37PM. My god I have to get out a little more. Except that I kind of like an evening in with the CBC, a beer (all gone pre-photoshoot), and a couple of projects. In the lower right corner is an ALMOST finished object -- small pink cardigan baby gift. On the left, the set up for the Mountain Peaks Shawl. The winning needle is the Aero circular from Karp Styles (which is in the Northwest Territories!), and the point is nineteen times pointier than the Denises. So far so good with the join, but I don't have a lot of stitches yet. I'm finished the 14 set-up rows and row 5 (of 8) of the very first chart. This pattern has about 140 rows plus the edging, and there's a contest on the knit-a-long for the person who starts on April 1 and finishes first. That person is unlikely to be me. I can't BELIEVE how skinny this yarn is. And the fuzz is a challenge. Must go slow and pay attention and try to keep shoulders from creeping up around ears (worked on that in yoga today). I'm excited about learning to work with this stuff, though, and the finished object looks soooo pretty.

Exciting travel news: I'm going home to Kamloops for a week in May! Bless you Air Canada and your seat sale. Can't wait to see M&D and the guys and the short one and the dog.

Spring Forward

2006-03-30T22:37:00.000-05:00

Coming up to the best weekend in the year: Daylight Savings Time kicks in between Saturday and Sunday, PLUS we're still tipping toward the sun and therefore getting another two minutes(ish) of daylight every day. More daylight hours are A Good Thing, when one's slow-and-steady progress on the sock is more slow than steady. Check it out: It's not racing along, this little sock, but I'm into the magic loop groove and will make some real progress once my pesky work is done for the week. Oh, and what you see dangling from the sock? Kind of like a greyhound at rest? My first Addi Turbo. [Turbos? Plurals really get me sometimes. I'm still smarting from the time I referred to the Borgs on Star Trek and was hooted out of the room.] Anyway, right, these needles. Might as well cash in the RRSPs now...the join alone brings me close to tears. Of joy.

Speaking of spending all the dough on needles, the two candidates for the Mountain Peaks Shawl arrived this week, and they seem quite pointy, which was the whole idea. I'm going to pull out the eight rows I've done and start again on April 1 so that I can be in the contest and so that I can try one of Eunny's cast-on methods.

Want to see the sole of the sock? Oh go on. Have a look.

Sockapaloooza Learning Swerve

2006-03-26T20:06:00.000-05:00

If learning fiddly new things helps build brain synapses, I've made my quota for the week just by starting my Sockapaloooza sox. Look at this small wonder:
Here we have a Turkish Cast-On (I learned it from a Meg Swansen article in Vogue, but this tutorial is extremely clear, and online) and my first foray into the mystical Magic Loop and my first toe-up sock. Now I'm going to go breathe into a paper bag.

As pleased as I am with all this new learnin', I think I'll pull this first try out and start again. I have some weird gaps on the sides of the toe, which are either because my ML technique is clumsy or because my M1s aren't quite right. I can never remember which direction to lift the bar from and whether to knit into the front or back of the resulting loop. Must go look it up. And I might go back to Romni and get a longer circular needle, because I think this would be more comfortable with larger magic loops. Soon I'll own nineteen versions of 2.25mm sock needles.

I'm so excited about these sox! I want to get some momentum going on them...but I'm supposed to be reading up on a potential new client, so I have to put them aside for a bit. This week is jam packed with work, almost all of it revenue-generating: good for my needle habit.

2006-03-23T22:58:00.000-05:00

Hooray! Here is my 600+ yards of alchemy "haiku" in forest waltz, posed artistically next to a framed picture of my home mountains...Mts. Peter and Paul, in the Desert Jewel, aka Kamloops B.C. Here in Hogtown, mountains are scarce, but I grew up on hills and love them, even when I'm at the bottom and it's 38 degrees celsius. Well, maybe not LOVE them. But I do love the colours in this yarn, and I can't wait for the new sticks to arrive in the mail, so I can get started properly on the Mountain Peaks shawl.

In other news, I returned the 13 skeins of lamb's pride bulky that was scheduled to become Teva Durham's cabled riding jacket. The v-neck corrugated asymmetrical pullover taught me that this yarn -- while lovely -- sheds too much and wouldn't show the cables to the degree I would want. Hmph. Anywho, I now have a whopping credit at Romni, even after I bought some proper sock needles. Tomorrow, post-work and pre-houseguests, I'll get going on the sox.

Tonight I went out for a drink with my thesis supervisor, who wants me to come in on April 19 and talk to his class about Things You Can Do with a Ph.D. (other than being a professor) and we had a fine time catching up and swapping gossip. He was all cut up that I'd been cruelly dumped in January, but I explained that I was over it 99.9 percent and besides was now a media darling. He may or may not have bought it, but it's 99.9 percent the truth. Then I raced around the corner for dinner with my lovely friend Sarah, who has had one hell of a few months but is now back on track with her boyfriend and has adopted a dog -- a GoldenDoodle called Finn...which was one of the names that my parents considered for Riley, Ace of Dogs. Though now he's SUCH a Riley. She (Sarah) is doing extremely well and wants me to do A Reading at her wedding, date/place/time TBA.

I'm finished the body of a small pink cotton cardi for my friend Ilana's new baby, Thea -- this weekend, I need to make sleeves and a hood and put it all together.

And so to bed.

Don't Buy Cheap Tools.

2006-03-21T13:14:00.001-05:00

Small setback on the sox for my pal. I bought a couple sets of Pony Pearl sock needles (pins, more like) and they are Craposaurus Rex. I cast on that nice Koigu the other night and made it through 1.5 rounds before giving up, with a lot of hmmphing. The needles are all bendy and have weird blunt tips and seem too short. Miserable little things.

My Dad carries a small notebook EVERYWHERE with him (and therefore must have pockets in all his shirts, including T-shirts) -- very handy, that notebook, for lists and websites and important numbers and getting rid of one's gum -- and when he and Mum were here in September on a Renovate-Erin's-Apartment working holiday, he showed me the inside cover of his current notebook, where he'd written: Don't buy cheap tools. I nodded and agreed but then when I get in front of a wall of knitting needles my ingrained cheapness shouts What? Fifteen bucks for one set of sticks? And I choose the six dollar beauties, which are now expensive skewers for BLTs. And I never make or eat those.

Instead, I cast on for a new lace project. I've joined the Mountain Lace Knitalong and am making Mim's Mountain Peaks Shawl out of Alchemy "Haiku" (40 silk/60 mohair) in "Forest Waltz." It's a little bit vareigated -- greens and browns -- but I think the lace will show up well. I'd show you, but Blogger is being pettish about accepting pictures.

So. Laceweight. Pretty skinny stuff, you know. And speaking of tools, my darling Denise interchangeables aren't going to cut it with this stuff (though they're not cheap tools and I adore them for almost everything else). I leapt onto the InterWeb and ordered two new circs that should have very very pointy ends (according to a discussion Wendy had during her Summer of Lace).

The net net is that I have heaps of yarn and none of the right sticks! Must get back to work to pay for all the ones that will be coming in the mail.

Ssssssssocks: plural!

2006-03-19T15:24:00.000-05:00

I am all set to get going on my Sockapaloooza socks: the practice pair is fini! Here you see them relaxing with The Magazine That I'm In: this week's Canadian Business. And I even talked about the Knitting Olympics in the interview...spreading the purly word at every turn. These socks aren't beauties -- one of them has a ladder wide enough to climb -- but they're cheerful, they're finished, and the yarn was free. Plus, they're twins. Check it out.

These socks and the Teva Durham V-neck were on hiatus during the Olympics...I think I said last month that I'd work them in between bouts of Kiri knitting: uh, didn't exactly happen. Reminds me of when I moved to Kingston in 1994 and thought that I'd be dashing off to Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa -- New York, probably -- on weekends. You know, packing up my school books and a couple of smashing outfits and leaping on the train... But I didn't factor in 1) being broke 2) having eleventy-teen thousand pages of reading every week -- I think I figured grad school would be mostly fancy coffees and nodding thoughtfully in seminars -- so weekend junkets were scarce. But what the heck...Kingston had charms of its own, including two or three places to eat the Biggest Pieces of Cheesecake ever.

Anywho, back to socks: I'm now ready to get the Sockapaloooza show on the road, and will commence swatching tonight in front of (I hope) a detective show. Here's my yarn! I love it, and hope my pal will, too. Koigu KPPPM, variegated, mostly oranges and yellows:
I'm thinking I'll try Wendy's toe-up sock for my sock pal: it makes the most sense to me (why graft if you can avoid it) and I can get maximum length out of these yarn cakes. Plus, I can do the foot part in stockinette and put off the decision about patterns for the leg...I've looked at heaps of patterns and can't decide, but I want to get moving. May 2nd is coming up fast!

Runway Ready...or Michelin Man?

2006-03-15T21:37:00.000-05:00

It's a tough call...I like the neckline, but that sleeve is all Big White Tire Guy. And I won't lie to you: it's a little itchy. But I was impatient to wear it out for Korean food with Sarah and Maya, so say it with me...We Suffer to Be Beautiful. Or to look like a Pine Shadows marshmallow. It's not get-this-off-my-body itchy, and it'll soften up once I give it the Eucalan dunk. The colour is greener and prettier than it looks -- more "pine" and less "mud" -- and the 20% mohair sheds a little but not too much. One thing that's hard to do: get an in-focus shot of this sweater. Here's me trying to boss the camera into holding still:
Look how annoyed I am! I've always been prone to irrational irritation with inanimate objects. Anywho, that's the Teva Durham corrugated asymmetrical V-neck, and today Toronto was -11 degrees, so I can wear it a few times before the winter duds go into storage. On the weekend, when it went up to +17 degrees, I had a panicky moment trying to remember where the heck I'd stashed my spring/summer clothes. I stared wildly into space, trying to imagine my logic last October...and my eyes fell on the big gray Rubbermaid tub behind the printer. But of course! The love I have for this apartment is unconditional though, and I can only blame myself for having too much stuff to cram into its single closet.

Right, moving along then: I'm going to finish the 2nd sock, graft all the toes, and have another FO this week. Then I can get started on my Sock Pal's sox (just wait until you see the yarn) and my next knit-along project and a couple of new baby presents.

Move Along, Nothing to See Here....

2006-03-10T09:54:00.000-05:00

Sure, it looks chaotic, but it all makes sense. You don't measure your knitting with your level? Hardware can be a knitter's friend. Teva Durham corrugated v-neck, attempt 1.5: half a sleeve and some seaming from completion.

Inaugural Sock

2006-03-07T22:14:00.000-05:00

Check it out: one sock in the sunshine, hangin' in the backyard. It needs its toe grafted, but for that I have to get out the Knitty article and concentrate. It fits reasonably well: maybe a little slouchier than it ought to be, but I'm pleased with it. And its sibling is on the sticks and seeing some action on the subway/streetcar, so I could have TWO of these pups before long. Then I'll need a whole new outfit to coordinate with them.

On Friday, the clever and crafty SM and I are meeting again and going to Lettuce Knit, where I will finally buy the yarn for my Sockapaloooza pal...and maybe something for another shawl. Maybe. A client sent a whopping cheque today, and it's smoldering in my pocket. [Note to self: mustn't spend grocery money on yarn and call it a weight loss initiative.]

Today I met my friend Maya to catch up and do a refresher knitting lesson. She's determined to make a shrug, and she'll be able to do it once she gets more comfortable with the needles and figures out what to do with all those fingers. I was showing her the knit stitch in slow motion and had to think hard about all the small steps...how do I keep the needles steady when I'm throwing the yarn? I pinch the needles where they make an "X", of course, but it took me a minute to watch myself and figure it out. Ditto on gripping the yarn with the little finger of my right hand immediately after the throw...that's what keeps the tension from going all loosey goosey, but until today I couldn't have said what I was doing.

wild and woolly week

2006-03-05T19:27:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy few days here at OY, what with house guests (Amy and her latest, in from both Londons) and darting around the city. On Monday I was at a Disruptive Innovation conference, where I heard some dumb presentations but also a couple of good ones -- the best was Bill Ives, who talked about blogging as a knowledge management [aka "filing"] tool. This guy was great -- virtually no jargon and a master of the pause. Plus, his slides didn't make me want to poke him with something sharp. I think I disappointed the friend/mentor who invited me, because I'm still hopeless at networking and avoid talking about My Business. But honestly, I'm so happy not working every single day. It's just fantastic. I imagine I'll have to get busier if I want to buy a house or have a kid, but I'm not looking to do either in the next year. Anyway, it was a day reasonably well spent, and I learned a few new things.

The post-Olympic knitting is aimless: I'm back at work on the Teva Durham corrugated V-neck, and have finished my first practice sock [!] ...outdoor photos tomorrow.

Not much else to report, except this man and his camera in my hallway. He and his henchman made one hell of a mess in the place -- they moved all my piles of stuff out of the shots, and now everything is higgledy-piggledy (that means "a real mess") Details to follow in the next few days!

Red [Black!] Letter Weekend

2006-02-27T22:33:00.000-05:00

Let's talk student debt. I was luckier than most: thanks to pulp mill nepotism and the need to keep giant piles of woodchips safe, I spent three summers as a Firewatch in the early '90s [see: "Yore; Days Of"]. From May to August I patrolled the chipyard and kept a hairy eyeball out for skiffs of smoke. Get even a small fire going in a great big chip pile, friend, and you have a capital P problem. Mind you, the only fire I ever saw was during a rainstorm, and at the time I was having lunch in the Chip Tower with Ed Adams, who made soup every shift at noon or midnight. And anyway, I wasn't allowed to do anything about a fire: should I come across anything bigger than my steel-toed boot, my instructions were to radio for the fire crew.

They paid $23 an hour and time-and-a-half on Sundays. Luck into a Canada Day shift, and you could just about treat the whole mill to ice cream. So my undergrad degree was mine, free and clear from the day the chancellor bopped me on the head, and there was always money left over for milkshakes and magazines. And peach coolers, the repulsive drink of choice in 1992. It was wonderful.

But then it was another young snapper's turn to patrol the chipyard and make the big bucks, and off I went to grad school, where, what with one degree and then another, I managed to get in hock with the governments of B.C. and Canada. It wasn't an outrageous amount, but it had five figures before the decimal point, and I'd only ever had a credit card with a $1,000 limit.

When I graduated for the final time in 2003 (so help me god I'll never pay another dime in tuition), the Royal Bank and I owned a sparkling new Ph.D. in English Renaissance literature. Which is not a bad degree to have, out on the job market. It testifies to an ability to communicate and a willingness to suffer. In short order, I had a job that required both.

Right, so long story shortish, I started paying that pup down two years ago this month. When I quit the job at Crazy Ladies, Inc. and went out on my own, I considered slowing the payments down, but then decided that would show too little faith and might jinx the new little biz. This weekend I cut a big slice out of the nest egg, found a bank branch open on a Saturday, and finished it off. What you see above is the receipt for final payment. And a couple of Shakespeare erasers.

What does it all mean?
1. I own that degree.
2. No more putting off other things because "I just want to pay down my loan a bit more." I'm a ways off becoming a real estate baron or adopting an alpaca herd, but now I'm going to dream a little.

To celebrate the dropping off of the check, there were treats. Here you see Paul Auster's latest book, The Brooklyn Follies. If Paul Auster published his grocery lists, I would buy them in hardcover and read them. And probably you'd all get copies for Christmas. In addition: Ritter SPORT, yogurt variety. Big favourite. Why don't more chocolate bars have yogurt filling? And: first sock! This is the doorprize yarn [great typo...wrote "yearn" for yarn: so true!] from the Team Canada Opening Ceremonies party. It will be practice for my Sockapaloooza socks. So far, so good. I'm not having a transcendent knitting experience, but it's pleasant. Turning the heel was satisfying. I'll definitely make two.

Golden.

2006-02-24T16:31:00.000-05:00

According to this picture, I've got some kind of love affair going on with red, pink, and orange. I swear I didn't notice until I organized the photo shoot. Also: damn, do I need a haircut. The John Frieda Secret Weapon Frizz Ease is letting me down. But back to the matter at hand: gold medal for Kiri!

In the end, I did 11 repeats + the edging, which makes sense -- my total yardage of Lion & Lamb was about 65 yards short of the Cracksilk Haze called for in the pattern. Finished dimensions are 62" wide by 33" long, and it's very fetching over jeans and a black sweater. Also looking forward to wearing it with some sort of floaty sundress.

Shawls are such great projects: why didn't I know this? Once you finish the knitting, you're done. No worrying about iffy sewing skills, no pile of dismembered sweater pieces looking reproachful in the knitting basket -- just block, wait, and wear. I want to do another one immediately. I'm going to cruise through Wendy's FOs and find one that I think I can tackle.

Meanwhile...RIP, Yarn Diet.

Uh, whoops. I'm going to blame my lovely and crafty friend, SM, who led me into temptation this morning at The Beadery. This ain't your junior high-school bead shop, baby. If you have the slightest interest in jewellry and live within a day's drive of Toronto, you should get in the car/on the train/bus and come see this place. It's full of strokers, just like a yarn shop. I stroked ebony beads and turquoise beads and blown glass beads and Australian opals. And a whole lot of POLISHED ROCK beads, which is just more proof that my parents should have given me that rock polisher back in 1978 when I really really really wanted one more than I had ever wanted anything before. Because I could be making it big now, polishing rocks and drilling holes in them and creating works of art. Instead of which I'm drowning in yarn.

Right, so enough blaming Mum and Dad and back to blaming SM. After we parted on Queen, I walked down past Romni and sweet mother of pearl they were having a sale. What you see in the photo is two skeins of my true love Malabrigo (colourway: blue surf) for a project to be named later, and thirteen balls of my esteemed friend Lamb's Pride Bulky (colourway: blue magic) for Teva Durham's cabled riding jacket, because now that I've knit Kiri I have an inflated sense of my abilities and will spend several months dashing myself on the rocks of Cable.

Yes, the Olympics are ending, and I've got the blues. But such pretty ones.

Ready to Make My Country Proud

2006-02-23T23:51:00.000-05:00

Speed blocking.
Vancouver, 2010.
Own the Podium.

Hit the Showers

2006-02-21T19:33:00.000-05:00

As a younger knitter, I ran [shuffled through] four marathons, and I can tell you that Olympic knitting has a lot in common with the most Olympic of races; viz.:

1. The training is a ball.

Marathon: You scamper through long training runs, then drink coffee with your running buddies and swap stories about sore I.T. bands and the pros and cons of hill training. You plan your carbo-loading and buy expensive socks. You imagine yourself, sweaty but still sleek, crossing the finish line. You're going to look smashing.
Olympic Knitting: You troll through every pattern you own, check a few hundred blogs to see what others are choosing, think about what's in the stash. You swatch. You imagine yourself showing up at the closing ceremonies party in your fabulous new [insert challenging project]. You're going to look smashing.

2. The event itself is also fun, but not so much.

Marathon: You wait in the chute with many thousands of other runners, all sleeker than you. It's a little too cold or a little too warm. You wish you'd made one more trip to the port-o-let. The gun goes off! Your pace is too fast, then too slow. You worry about your pace and wonder if you're drinking too much or not enough water. You keep an eye out for the next port-o-let.
Knitting: You cast on and knit the first few rows of your project. You wish you'd spent some time in training memorizing the chart symbols. You wish you'd bought one of those magnetic boards for the chart. While calculating the number of repeats you'll need to do per day, you miss a yarn-over. You miss that you missed the yarn-over. You tink a couple of rows. You resume knitting and try to figure out how much yarn you'll use up per repeat. You miss a yarn-over.

3. The event is longer than you think.

Marathon: You hit the halfway point (kilometre 21) and you feel wonderful. You think, This Is A Breeze. What chumps these people on the sidelines are...they should be out here running like me, like a gazelle. At kilometre 28, you realize that you are well and truly screwed. What kind of Idiot, you think, does this voluntarily? I hate myself. I hate these socks. Where's the port-o-let? You contemplate giving up and veering into the nearest doughnut joint. You keep running/shuffling.
Knitting: You're confident you have enough time to finish, except that you may have to pull your first all-nighter since leaving school. Your left hand is now a claw. Any man who might want to marry you will have to put the ring on your right hand. How are you going to meet a nice man if all you do is knit? You hate yourself. You contemplate chucking the project and taking up beading. You keep knitting.

4. Finishing makes up for everything.

Marathon: You see your sensible non-running friends near the finish line, and they shout things like Just a little farther! You look terrific! What liars your friends are. You see people who have already finished -- HOURS ago -- with their medals and their cool silver tinfoil keep-you-warm blankets. You crave a silver tinfoil blanket like you have never craved anything before. You swear to yourself that if you can just get across the line and get one of those blankets, you'll throw away your expensive socks and never again break into so much as a trot. You cross the finish line. You are sweaty but not sleek. A clean and smiling volunteer gives you a tinfoil blanket, which you wrap around your salt-encrusted shoulders. Not running is the best feeling you've ever had. Awash in endorphins, you say out loud in front of all your friends that for the next race, you'll do the damn hill training.
Knitting: Other knitters are finishing left, right, and centre. Their projects are beautiful, they smile on their blogs, they talk about what they'll work on next. You finally start the edging. You don't rush, because you'll miss a yarn-over and not have the strength of character to fix it. You keep a nervous eye on the last ball of yarn, which is disappearing onto the needles at a fearsome rate. Casting off takes approximately eight hours. The last stitch comes off the needles. You shake out your claw and look at the remaining few yards of yarn. Your project sits in your lap. You think to yourself, next time I knit [insert impressive project], I'll try it in a solid colour...maybe a really deep green.

10,500 Stitches to Go

2006-02-19T13:42:00.000-05:00

We're part way through Repeat 10 of 12, which means that I have roughly 35 rows left, and the rows will average about 300 stitches...so I should get the samheck off the computer and chew a few off! The downstairs punk is playing motivational top-volume stadium rock, which is only slightly better than his courageous marathon of sex last weekend, though that I could avoid hearing if I closed all the interior doors in the apartment and sat in the far corner of the living room. With earplugs.

This afternoon there's Olympic hockey: Canada vs. Finland, and the Canadians have some winning to do, after yesterday's Swiss disaster. Hoping to get through repeat 11 during the game.

How Olympic Knitting is Like Magic Realism

2006-02-16T14:52:00.000-05:00

Kiri is now almost big enough to conceal the panda: I'm part-way through Repeat 7 of 12 of the main chart, and the rows oh my they are getting long. I can no longer say "I'll just finish this row and then I'll [insert urgent matter here]" because the house would burn down or I'd wet my pants before I made it through the 200+ stitches.

Last night I made a mistake and didn't catch it for two rows...and I jerry-rigged a solution, which I've been trying to avoid doing. Part of my Olympic challenge is to give a damn about going back and fixing screw-ups. In general I subscribe to the if-you-can't-see-it- from-the-back-of-a-cantering- horse-to-hell-with-fixing-it school of error repair, but a little more perfectionism wouldn't hurt my craft. Last night: too, too tired. For me, nothing good comes of trying to knit past 11PM. Brushing my teeth is about as dexterous as I can get when it's that appallingly late.

Yesterday, the Chief Olympitrix reflected on what she's learned from this one-project madness. I've learned a few things, too, and not just that I can't watch skating and knit lace at the same time. Back in the day at UBC, some guy I had a crush on encouraged me to read A Hundred Years of Solitude, so I got a copy and read it in small bites on buses and before bed, and I thought it was fine and had some clever scenes but I couldn't keep straight all the Aurelio and Arcadio Buendias and I lost the plot a lot.

Maybe a year later I had to write a paper in a hurry on magic realism in Marquez and Faulkner and so I re-read A Hundred Years over a couple of days and the Aurelios and Arcadios distinguished themselves from one another and the magic realism grabbed me and held on. I Couldn't Put It Down, and not just because a deadline was coming at a gallop.

Kiri is affecting me the same way: ordinarily, I'd knit this pup over six months and never get particularly attached to it. Forced to focus on it for two weeks, I don't want to put it down -- and it's not just the race to finish. I've fallen in love with the logic of the pattern, and this Lorna's Laces has me mesmerized. Pay attention to the process, wise knitters say, and don't get hung up on reaching the goal. But what I'm finding is that the more time I spend on it, the more I get lost in the process. Magic, indeed.

Yo, Yo, Bloody YO

2006-02-12T19:10:00.000-05:00

Day 3 is coming to a close: progress pic of Kiri, above. Currently it's lap blanket-sized, if you're a small stuffed panda. I've done Chart 2 twice of twelve times, and that's not bad, except that the rows are going to have to get a lot longer before I can sling this shawl fetchingly around my shoulders. Technical difficulties, one in particular, have slowed the pace. Today I watched part of a documentary on figure skaters trying to qualify for the Canadian Olympic team, and the narrator explained that to embed their jumps in muscle memory, "These skaters will practice their jumps a remarkable sixteen thousand times."

Whoopee, I thought (or may have said to the TV), I've done that many yarn-overs since lunchtime. I've never tinked so much or so often...for a while, it was once or twice a row, and often the one I'd missed was hell-and-gone back around stitch five. The pattern even prints the easy to miss ones in red: little red circles helpfully shouting "Stop! One more yarn over!"

In other knit-along news, I won sock yarn at the Canadian Opening Ceremonies party (which was a hoot), so now I'm ready to get going on my practice pair for Sockapaloooza. [Thank you, Team Canada sponsors!] I also have my eye on some yarn for my Sock Pal...there's a shade of Koigu that I think would be splendid. Today I bought the dearest little dpn toothpicks: US size ZERO. Zero? Can I subcontract these socks to a four-year-old? I've already got tendons that are knitting under protest. But thousands of knitters can't be all wrong, because if it weren't at least sort of fun, they'd be buying socks at three pairs for ten bucks and spending the yarn money on something that knits up on at least a 4.5mm. I'm willing to let them all convert me...once I get another couple of Kiri repeats under my belt - and on the panda - I'll cast on for a sock. Possibly under a magnifying glass.

Pre-Games Jitters

2006-02-09T15:08:00.000-05:00

Santa Monica!...only ONE DAY more to wait for the Olympics to start. Last night I watched 3/4 of "Mondovino " and practiced the provisional cast-on for Kiri. Damn, is that fiddly! Probably not wise to try it while half-watching a subtitled flick. I'm glad I only need three stitches and that I have Sally Melville's The Purl Stitch out from the library, because her explanation made the best sense of the ones I could find. I've decided to do the cast-on in the afternoon while the opening ceremonies are on live (2PM EST), because I don't think I can do it in public at the Team Canada party. Not sure how I'm going to keep track of the pattern charts, the ceremonies, and a big 'ol beer, but heck: it's supposed to be a challenge. Look at that nice yarn, just waiting to get on the sticks!

The Romin' Snake scarf has had its bath and is now blocking on the ironing board. Maybe doing it in black wasn't the smartest choice, because the leaves won't show up as well as they would in a leaf colour, but I really wanted a black scarf, and an interesting one. Highly recommend this pattern.

And I'm having a small crisis over the Teva Durham corrugated: I'm worried I'm making the wrong size. I think it should have [slight] negative ease, but I'm knitting the 37" size...did I have a moment of self-delusion re: the capaciousness of my rack? Instead of frogging the almost-finished piece 1 [hate backtracking!], I'm going to do the 32" size of piece 2. Then when it's time to frog, I won't mind so much, because I'll have the sweater 2/3 done. Right? Right??

Time to do some positive visualizations and a little more carbo loading.

Knitting Is the Opiate of the Masses

2006-02-06T14:04:00.000-05:00

It was a productive weekend, stitch-wise, here at OY. I’m almost finished the Annie Modesitt Backyard Leaves scarf (with apologies for misspelling Annie’s name and misnaming the scarf in previous posts…the fact checker in this joint needs a good scolding): I’m two repeats and an end-leaf away from having two Romin’ Snakes, which I will then bathe, block, and join. Black blobs on field of poppies:

In addition:

What is it? Pullover for a baby gorilla? Pas de tout! One clever fold, and it’s a little easier to see that this will be Piece 1 of the Teva Durham corrugated asymmetrical pullover:

The fat bit is the sleeve, which is three or four inches from being finished. This is the smaller piece, but it whips right along. The next piece is worked on the bias and will fold around and meet the long skinny edge…well, there’ll be pics. The lamb’s pride bulky is called “Pine Shadows” and has a slight halo of white, which is making me feel all romantical about snow on pine trees. Though I’d prefer not to look like one in this sweater.

The rest of the weekend was intermittently social. Lunch with the Kamloops chix, which always means laughing until we snort wine through our noses. It was so much less painful when we drank milk at lunch. Our knocked-up member is off to Mexico next week to get married…they weren’t going to bother, but both sets of parents were very keen on the idea.

Then on Sunday I went to church for the first time in way too long, but didn’t much like the hippy minister at Emmanuel Howard United. She talked diversity and acceptance and celebrating difference but didn’t make eye contact when she was shaking hands after the service.

And I’m all for the United Church’s very Canadian attitudes on God (imagine Him/Her/It how you will) and one’s neighbours (be nice to them, for crying out loud) but I don’t know…the order of service/weekly bulletin had an asterisk next to “kingdom” in the Lord’s Prayer, and referring to the bottom of the page, I saw that I was welcome to say “kindom” instead. I don’t like it when people muck with texts – particularly beautiful ones. While it’s true that words shape our beliefs without our even knowing it, I think we need more credit for being able to hold in our minds both the value of reciting a prayer that connects us to generations – centuries’ worth – of churchgoers and the understanding that the prayer’s words mean something different to us than they might have to those who preceded us. Do we really need a made-up word (honestly: “kindom”!) to keep us from thinking that the United Church advocates the return of a patriarchal monarchy?

Well, having said all that, I’ll go back next week and give it another try. Mustn’t give up after just one service. And, a strange coincidence: I watched Mrs. Miniver on Saturday night, and at the end of the movie, the minister reads Psalm 91. At church yesterday, the children's choir sang the same Psalm.

Those poppies posing as background to the WIPs? They’re going to become a curtain: I remembered how to thread this beast:

and now I just need to get up the nerve to cut the fabric. (measure ~~twice~~ three times; cut once!)

Sock Sock Sock

2006-02-03T13:58:00.000-05:00

Today I'm editing a heap 'o high-tech white papers (who said "Happiness writes white"?) and then getting the heck out of the apartment to join [finally] Elena's gym (time to work off the batwings) and get some groceries and track down the next "I, Claudius" dvd. But the editing is a little dull, so I'm noodling around on the internet and building me a word cloud:Goes to show what I yap about the most, doesn't it?

I'm also poking around different sites looking for sock wisdom: it's Sockapaloooza time! Yes, an unsuspecting knittin' kitten will be getting either my first or second pair of knitted socks (I might do a pair for me first, to work out the bugs in my technique). And another sock newbie will be making me a pair...I'm in love with the whole idea. This weekend I'll polish off the Romin' Snake and keep the Teva Durham corrugated moving along, and choose a sock pattern. Then next week it'll be Olympics knitting and sock yarn deliberations, and I think in week 2 of the Olympics I'll cast on for the sockhopping.

But before any of that: more editing. Must make rent and yarn money.

A Bloggers' [Silent] Poetry Reading

2006-02-02T15:27:00.000-05:00

With thanks to the literary doyenne at Grace's Poppies for organizing a great e-vent. Here's my favourite sonnet.

what time is it?it is by every star
a different time,and each most falsely true;
or so subhuman superminds declare
--nor all their times encompass me and you:
when are we never,but forever now
(hosts of eternity;not guests of seem)
believe me,dear,clocks have enough to do
without confusing timelessness and time.
Time cannot children,poets,lovers tell --
measure imagine,mystery,a kiss
--not though mankind would rather know than feel;
mistrusting utterly that timelessness
whose absence would make your whole life and my
(and infinite our) merely to undie

e.e. cummings

It's a perfect poem, if you ask me -- I have a different favourite line every time I read it (today I have two: 7&8), and I love the tension between the idea of timelessness and the tick of the sonnet form.

***
In other news, I'm Florence Nightingaling myself through a mean as hell hangover today -- the inevitable aftermath of a raucous night out with The Great Man (a former client from my pharma training days [yeah, I used to teach people to sell drugs]). The GM gets his name from his ability to go on several benders a week and still arrive at the next day's meeting/conference/sockhop with clear eyes and a perfectly pressed shirt...even though he's usually nineteen time zones ahead of or behind his GMT internal clock (speaking of clocks). He's an inspiration and I think maybe a force for evil. At the start of the evening I explained that I would not be drinking to excess, but one bottle led to another and today I've managed to bathe, dress, feed myself, and not much else. The good news is that I hid the phone in the piano bench before I went out, so there was no drinking-and-dialling misdemeanours at the end of the night. Love the GM, but it's good that he's only in town a few times a year.

Good thing it's not a work day here at OY. I'm working up the energy to knit a few rows -- the fetching Brown Sheep in the photo is on the needles and becoming a Teva Durham corrugated v-neck, and I'm motoring along on the second half of the Annie Modessitt Falling Leaves scarf, which I am renaming Romin' Snake Scarf, because I work on it while eating up I Claudius episodes. The credits start with a nasty looking asp [?] slithering over a mosaic. Here's the completed first half of the Snake:

Isn't it evil looking? And yet in a soft, wrap-around-your-neck sort of way.

Coolest WIP of 2006

2006-01-30T19:11:00.000-05:00

I mean really -- does it get any more hand-bitingly adorable? I particularly like the WIP against the background of the red towel and the blue tiles. That look on her face? Might be the "enough with the goddamn pictures" expression. I have to hand it to her: she was an extremely good sport, as you can see from the next shot:
It was M and D's 35th on Saturday, so we sent photo greetings from Junior.

While in town, Lindz ate all the green seedless grapes she could get her mitts on, snapped up a caseload of pre- and post-natal vitamins to take back to France, and bought 32 cloth diapers -- the French are all about disposables, apparently. Also ten novels, because she and Pez are starved for books in English. And yarn, bien sur! We headed to Romni (cf.) on Friday, where the approximately 50 people working in the shop (the place was jammed with staff) ALL praised Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, so Lindz snapped up a bunch of Barn Red for a baby blanket. But there were setbacks. The ersatz perfect yarn split like crazy, even in the swatch, and the knitter thought it felt too much like dishcloth and not enough like blanny. What with the infant kicking from the inside and the yarn splitting on the outside...well, she scrapped the Barn Red and exchanged it on Sunday for some Red Baron superwash worsted wool, which looks more promising, judging from the swatch.

I stuck to the yarn sanctions, despite TWO trips to Romni in 72 hours, and am still smugly stitching up the stash. There'd be pictures, but blogger is fractious and won't post them right now. Besides, it's time to tuck up in bed.

You gotta eat.

2006-01-25T21:44:00.000-05:00

Since quitting my job on the 4th of July (yeah, nice coincidence) I've started feeding like some kind of itinerant animal...when the food is plentiful, I'm at it all the time. When it's not, I make do with what I can forage from the high shelves and the back of the fridge. The bulk raisins are now gone, as is the milk and the last can of tuna. You'd think I'd grocery shop, now that my time is my own, but it seems I'd rather test the limits of what's palatable on toast. Mind you, I'll have to get groceries in the morning for La Soeur Francaise: she's put in a request for seedless grapes, which the French must stop importing in the winter.

Elena (my knitting-buddy-from-the-internet) and I went to the Knit Cafe tonight where we drank tea and I pulled back one triangle of the multi-directional malabrigo scarf [lime blue] and did half a repeat of the falling leaves malabrigo scarf [black]. Love the KC, but the snax are totally inadequate. What that place needs is a pizza joint next door.

Right. Off to forage and then finish that repeat. Photos of the pregnant chick tomorrow.

Quel Bordel

2006-01-24T22:30:00.000-05:00

Yep, I'm cleaning house. The French have some great expressions, and one of my faves is "Quel bordel!": literally, "what a brothel!" and figuratively, "this place is one hell of a mess!" French houses of ill-repute: are they particularly untidy? I don't know anyone I could ask. But if a French person dropped by this place on most days, he or she would be thinking "QB" if not saying it out loud.

Anyway, what with the little sister arriving on Thursday for her first visit to the new nest, it's time to de-bordel it, so I'm shoveling paper and reorganizing clothes and alphabetizing the CDs (will she notice or care? unlikely) and breaking out the Mr. Clean. Tomorrow I lay in groceries and plan an agenda of Toronto activities.

(Now that I think about it, the British sometimes talk about "sluttish" or "slatternly" housekeeping... maybe it's a cross-cultural slur against the oldest profession.)

One lucky victim of the cleaning campaign: my Teva Durham polar vest. Here we see it post-Euculan bath and finally blocking on the ironing board. Not sure why it and the entire house look so yellow. I swear I'm going to get better with this camera. I loved knitting this vest, and I hope it looks reasonable on. The yarn is lovely, and in the yarn suitcase I have ten red balls of it (eBay impulse), so I'm on the hunt for something else to make out of it. Maybe a parka-style sweater with a zipper?

Right. Must get back to busting the bordel.

Deja Blue All Over Again

2006-01-23T22:17:00.000-05:00

I'm parked in front of the CBC watching the election results come in and it looks like the Conservatives are out of the doghouse and back in charge. The numbers keep shifting across the bottom of the screen, but the Tories are up 20ish seats on the Liberals. B.C. hasn't come in yet, so the gap will get bigger...but with any luck the NDP will hold the balance of power. I'm still waiting for them to show Parkdale-High Park.

ANYway, in more cheerful news, we have this:
That's the Noro scarf from Amy...isn't it pretty? It's a lousy shot, because I'm still an amateur with the new camera, but believe me, it's fab. Here's a closer shot. I think I'll go put it on to watch the B.C. results come in.

London Calling

2006-01-22T23:43:00.000-05:00

Am just back from London, where I spent a weekend at Victoria and Waterloo, walking along the Thames, cruising Piccadilly...you get the picture. The wrong picture, mind you: it was a whirlwind trip to London Ontario, where everything is named for everything in the original London (it's a bit creepy, really...Pall Mall can't possibly measure up), and where Amy is a history professor. I managed to forget the new camera, in part because I'm not used to having it and in [slightly larger] part because I was hung over something awful on Friday morning and packed in a blur. I did bring the almost-complete Marilyn's NSSC and Amy loved it, even with the ends unwoven and the buttons not on. I finished it up Saturday morning and blocked it in the afternoon: next time she comes here for a visit, there'll be photos! And tomorrow there'll be photos of the gorgeous basketweave scarf and cowl that she made me out of Noro Cash Iroha in "midnight." It's a beautiful colour and they're soooooo soft. I wore them all weekend, inside and outside.

Heaps of other knitting content: I brought a bunch of books and all the malabrigo in the house. [Can't wait for the yarn diet to end, because I am going to go on one unholy Uruguayan binge, let me tell you.] Anywho, the books. This one, an Xmas gift from M and D -- I want to put a decorative edge on everything -- and this favourite that I bought in Philadelphia last June. Plus these two from the library. Then we hunkered down on the couch and watched 1) Funny Face, 2) Brigadoon, 3) Grey Gardens, and 4) Moonstruck. I finished the lime blue Malabrigo hat and started Annie Modessitt's backyard leaves scarf...3 of 22 repeats done. WIP photo tomorrow in the daylight.

This week I have some work lined up for Monday and Tuesday, election-results-watching on Monday night, and a whole lot of scrubbing up the house and cooking of tasty things for my little sister, who arrives from France on Thursday WITH my niece/nephew-in-progress. Very excited to see Lindz knocked up: more excellent photo ops.

Good grief, it's seven past midnight: must put myself to bed. What is this, some kind of after-hours glam rock blog?

Still Life with Classics

2006-01-18T17:14:00.000-05:00

At Christmas, my mother asked me if I wanted all those Greek books...in her ongoing purge-the-house-of- children's-crap campaign (also known as the "Your Dad and I Aren't Running a Museum" initiative), her narrow gaze fell on ten or twelve Penguins that I bought in '89 for Classics 101 -- a team-taught survey course that introduced punk undergrads to the Greeks and Romans. Great course, especially Anthony Barrett's lectures on The Aeneid. I haven't had a lot of use for my copies of Plutarch, Herodotus, and the gang in the intervening years, but they're classics for pete's sake, and I liked knowing they were back at the homestead. Made me feel smart when I visited. Well, there's no flies on my mother, and my strategy to avoid taking the books (leaving them on the shelf downstairs) didn't work -- she paid the $16 to send them across the country and have them live at my house. Hmmph. Chagrined, I was. Though she softened me up a little by sending some xmas cake in the package...I'm almost mollified. And I've started watching "I, Claudius" on DVD this week, so maybe I'll look through the books and find out if Livia really was so evil.

The whole "I, Claudius" series is something like 800 minutes long, and I've made it through episodes 1-3 while racing to finish the cardigan for Amy. It's now officially a garment, as you can see from this brown blob:Today while on an interminable conference call I finished up second sleeve (the upside to working at home) and now I'm down to hems and button bands and possibly ruffles -- I'm going to wait on those and let Amy decide whether she wants them. I think they're quite cute, but she might not. Tomorrow I need to find the Perfect Buttons. And block the thing. Might be weaving in ends on the bus down to London.

After this, I'm going to finish a Malabrigo hat I have on the go (colour: Lime Blue...Bonne Marie would adore it) and then make the fabulous scarf that's on the front of Nicky Epstein's Knitting on the Edge...in Malabrigo (black, to go with my weird collection of pink, red, green coats). Looooove the Malabrigo. Can't wait to go off the yarn diet and snap up some more. Might bully my sister into buying some when she comes to visit next week...she's pregnant and therefore can't run away from my yarn evangelism.

In Training

2006-01-17T17:04:00.000-05:00

I've joined the Harlot's Olympic Challenge: my hard-but-not-impossible-I-hope project is Kiri, which I'll knit out of Lorna's Laces Lion and Lamb in bittersweet. The yarn was going to be a clapotis for someone in the ex-bf's family, but plans have changed because that would be a bit like stalking, given that he and I are no longer keeping company. [Good grief: it's just occurred to me that I may be a victim of the Boyfriend Curse...for xmas I knit him an Irish hiking scarf and a ski toque. And here I thought it was only sweaters. Loved that scarf, too -- it'd be wrong to demand it back, wouldn't it?]

Anyway, on the upside, I now have this lovely luxury yarn to make something for me me me. Very excited to get started on it and MUCH MORE excited at the thought of working to finish it before the closing ceremonies...plus I like the idea that 500+ other crazed knitters will be out in the world watching skeleton and bobsledding and ice dancing and knitting things that are a little hard for them. I'm all for hard projects, and the blog world seems to be the place to find them and see others working on them (cf. Wendy, just for starters). You can't swing a circ in your lys without hitting another Big Book of Garter Stitch Blobs for Newbies and I think it's boring. Sure, big market of novices out there and they need inspiration, but even if you're just starting out, don't you want to look at projects that make you nervous? It's like reading cookbooks. I'd rather read a recipe for profiteroles than leaf through the Jello Collection anyday. No disrespect to gelatin treats, either.

Speaking of things that are hard to do, here's my smart and beautiful friend Marlis all ready for her interview at a Major Canadian University. She's up for a tenure-track position -- the gold medal for academics -- and the interview is Olympian, all right. She started this morning with a job talk [academic paper presented to the department], then gave a lecture to a class of 82 undergrads, met with the Head of the Department and the Dean of Arts, had lunch and assorted coffee/donut encounters over the course of the day, and I think she's probably in the interview proper right now. Then it's off for dinner with the interview committee. I expect her back tonight around 9PM and plan to pour either herbal tea or scotch into her (she gets to choose). Tomorrow she goes back to Philadelphia to her husband and their 6-month-old and her post-doc at Penn. She's astonishing!

Last night I was working on the cardigan for Amy and she said something along the lines of "I really have to get back to knitting...I just let it lapse...." Babe, one Olympic sport at a time. I'm convinced she'll land this job: the committee is probably offering it to her right this minute.

A Million Little Pieces of Zara

2006-01-16T23:37:00.000-05:00

The first of my hard-won extra Zaras appears to be fifty bits of yarn knotted together. Plus, dye lot matters! Not sure if this is going to work as a design principle.

And: my book club is divided on James Frey. But really, if, ten years after the fact, I wrote a memoir about six weeks of rehab, would I be any more reliable? I did wonder, while reading it, how Frey could possibly remember every meal he ate at the clinic. The gritty crack stories, the dentist appointment from hell, the motley crowd of loveable if terrifying buddies: those would stick with you. But the fish sticks?

When In Doubt, Tape it to the Fridge

2006-01-15T17:32:00.000-05:00

I'd like to see a Venn diagram of the overlap between knitters and packrats. I'll bet the shaded area would be really, really big. Today, several days post-break up [hate rejection: hate it!] I ate two fortifying scones and opened up the boxes that I've been toting from apartment to apartment lo these many years. (Not that the bad man who rejected me was around long enough to generate much packratted material...but he provoked a purge urge and I was going to grab it.)

I managed to part with enough paper to fill a big black garbage bag, including such treasures as a blank calendar page for December 1996 on which I had helpfully written "Christmas" on the 25th. It was otherwise empty, and I figure I'll remember the date of Xmas '96, so I chucked it. Also on their way out: postcards from friends I can't remember, a notebook of grocery lists (don't care what I was eating as an undergraduate), and the student evaluations from my ten-minute career teaching Shakespeare. I'm keeping all love letters, everything from family members, wedding invitations, and my English 100 essays -- which are handwritten on foolscap (you can't throw out FOSSILS).

But what to do with things like the envelope of Peanuts cartoons? I've always loved the ones with Snoopy on his typewriter and can't quite get rid of them...it'd be expensive to replace them and besides, I like them on newsprint. So they're on the fridge...probably their last stop, but I'll see them every time I go for an icecube.

Post-purge I worked on sleeve #2 of the NSSC and I'll be back on it tonight in front of the tube. Must finish by Thursday!

Quest for Fibre

2006-01-14T18:16:00.000-05:00

My final Christmas present is almost finished (yeah, late)...and horrible horrible horrible I'm running out of yarn. Like the rest of the knitting world, I'm on a yarn diet, but surely topping up for an existing project doesn't count, right?

I'm making Knit and Tonic Wendy's "Marilyn's Not-So-Shrunken Cardigan" (great pattern) for my friend Amy, but I've substituted Zara for the Elsebeth Lavold tweedy silk. The gauge, yardage, weight, etc all match but there's no denying the dwindling pile of Zara, so today I was on the hunt for more chocolatey brown shade 1663. Never mind that it's minus a hundred and I'm carless [why drive when you can Ride the Rocket?]: I have a new digital camera and a deadline that has already whizzed by.

Now, Toronto is the Florence of knitting, we're told, and we have a heap of LYSs to support the Renaissance, but damn: if Leonardo had had to cover the miles that I did to find the last tube [did they have tubes?] of paint for the Mona Lisa, the Louvre might be a lot less crowded today.

First stop: Back to the source of my 8 balls of Zara. Here we have the paradiso/inferno of knitting in T.O.:
Imagine the most yarn you can and then double it, and you're close to picturing Romni. My mother thinks it's a firetrap, and it's true that you don't want to get preoccupied in the merino aisle and forget to check for exits. The staff varies from lovely (Laura -- so nice! Jonathan -- darling new dad!) to surly as hell but most local knitters put up with the spotty customer service because they have So Much Yarn.

But not Zara 1663...nope, not even in a different dye lot. EVERY OTHER shade, natch.

Anyway, moving right along, I zipped by streetcar and subway to this place. Wedged between the barber and the PizzaPizza [heh heh]: see the sign in the window? Yep, 50% off everything in stock -- the owner is packing it in and selling to someone who's going to run a yarn shop but doesn't want the inventory. It's a dream: I'll find the Zara for HALF PRICE. Yep, a dream...she doesn't have a shred of Zara. Dang and blast.

Okay, no problem, I'm a professional, don't mind the frostbite, thrilled to get back on public transit....

Well, I suppose I'm a bit of a drama queen, because I only had to go another six stops to find Village Yarns [where I forgot to take a picture because my blood sugar was low and I'd lost feeling in my fingertips] and praise be they had a profusion of Zara and several 1663s. Plus, it's a nice little shop with an assortment of solicitous women to help out. I'll go back, in the spring when it's warm and the stash is more svelte.

The dyelot isn't the same (I couldn't even find a PHOTO of the right colour), but to hell with it: I'm going to use it on the hems, edging, button bands, and ruffles. And call it a design choice.

An Early Knitting Lesson

2006-01-13T13:22:00.000-05:00

I'm the bald one. On the left is my mother, a mere slip of a girl herself -- if I'm six or eight months in this pic, Mum is about 23. Isn't she darling? I can't say I remember this lesson (though I remember subsequent siblings using that yellow saucer to get around) but I've always been easily influenced, so I'm glad it was knitting, rather than, say, skeet shooting.