Sweet Beautiful Long Weekend!!

For me at least; I am off until Monday! And ironically, I couldn't sleep in today, because my body had no interest in doing so. Oh well - that is what afternoon naps are for. I've given up on the daily blog posts during the whole month, but I'm still working on a November sweater: This is The Christmas Cardi - intended for my niece Ambar. It's the Devan pattern from knitty that used self striping sock yarn. The sock yarns are both cotton/wool blend. The stockinette knits up quite quickly. I have just started the arm/v-neck reductions. It just occured to me yesterday that someone is going to say that it's not appropriate for a girl because of the blue stripes, to which my reply will be "Red is the new pink". Hard to say if I will finish it in the next 2 weeks; at least I've got an extra 25 days after that. Granted, 12 of those extra days will be spent on call for the ICU. (I'm not sure if I've ever explained what my work schedule is like - I do call for 7 days straight 5 weeks out of every 8: 3 weeks of ICU, which is insanely busy, and 2 weeks of Respirology, which is much less busy. I have sometimes overlapped Respirology and ICU call, but I end up having to neglect my Respirology duties, so I am not doing that at all in the winter. Even though it sounds like alot of time off, my ICU weeks are very tiring, and it feels like I don't have any spare time. Unfortunately, for the next little while, I am likely to have to pick up extra time because a fellow who joined our hospital as a 3rd intensivist just after I started decided that it wasn't the right career for him, so now there are just 2 of us, meaning that I do 4 weeks of ICU out of every 8, which further cuts into my knitting time) I did manage to attend a Toronto Knitting Event (everything that happens in Toronto is capitalized; sometimes bolded and italicized too) yesterday evening - the opening of a new yarn shop called 'The Purple Purl' (I personally would have named it 'The Black Purl', but nobody asked for my opinion). I had planned to meet up with some of my knitting friends, but missed them by a bit (I subsequently caught up with them at a restaurant). There were many many people inside the yarn shop - enough to make it somewhat stressfull, because you couldn't walk anywhere without having to tap on someone's shoulder and ask them to move. So I quickly checked out their inventory, grabbed a skein of yarn, and left without even picking up a freebie gift bag. (I did stop to pay for the yarn first, just in case you were worried) This is Indigo Moon yarn, which is dyed on Gabriola Island, just of BC's Sunshine Coast. Ironically, The Gambler and I spent a few days on Gabriola Island, and I planned to check out the Indigo Moon studio, but wasn't able to find it. Now, I freely admit that I need more sock yarn like I need a hole in my head (I've always wondered - could piercings be considered "holes in the head"? How about when people put those big grommets into their earlobes?), but this yarn does solve a minor dilemma: The "Blue Spruce" colourway works well with these other 2 sock yarns, so it will allow me to knit a Kaleidoscope sweater using 3 fingering weight yarns rather than a combo of fingering/sportweight. Of course, I now have to decide if I still want to carryalong the alpaca laceweight that I only have 540 yards of...