Stash Pron

Well, the cruise is over, but I am still a few thousand km away from my laptop, so you'll have to wait a while to see the pics. Here are some photos that I managed to upload before I left for my holiday: My temporary LYS had an Earth Day Sale a few weeks ago - all yarns which were 100% natural fibres were discounted. I picked up some bamboo yarn which will become a tank top The colours remind me of various shades of chocolate... Mmmmmm...Chocolate This is some Fleece artist Kid Silk which I planned to combine with the Silk Garden to knit into a shawl for the cruise. In my sleep deprivation-induced delusional state, I thought that I might be able to finish it before the cruise started...more on that in a future post. More Kid Silk which is destined to become a Clapotis. Cruise related Blog post should be up early in the week. And Craft Pirate is the winner of the guess the acronym contest.

I'm not dead!

Just dead tired. I ended up going back on call for the ICU last Friday (after finishing call Monday morning), and I hadn't caught up on my sleep yet. I then proceeded to spend an unholy amount of time at the hospital over the weekend (can you say 6 AM to 11:30 PM?). Luckily tomorrow is my last day before a well deserved break because after a few more days of this current pace, I would look like this: Tonight I packed for my Sock knitting cruise. Heck, I'm just looking forward to being able to sit around all day and knit and eat 3 meals a day that do not involve either a microwave or a heat lamp. I'm a few rows past the heels on the Raindrops Keep Falling on My Socks (sorry, no photos). I should be able to finish them before the end of the month thanks to free knitting time on the boat. Mousewise, I finally removed the Mouse That Was Previously Alive from the kitchen counter. It only took 2 days. The first day I intended to use section of the newspaper to slide underneath it, and use a second section to cover the top. I was only able to cover the mouse with one section of the newspaper. At least this way I was now able to walk into the kitchen with my eyes open. The next day, I got a garbage bag, opened it up, put the open bag over the newspaper, and started to slide it towards the edge of the counter. When the newspaper started to slide off the mouse, I repositioned the bag, and used a cutting board as a "scraper". I then slid the bag and board towards the edge of the counter, hoping desperately that the mouse would fall into the bag and not onto the floor, because if it hit the floor I would have to go stay at a hotel until The Gambler came to pick the damned thing off of the floor. Luckily, it fell in the bag, and I was able to get on with my life. But here's the kicker - when I told The Gambler that I finally got rid of the mouse in the kitchen, he said "Oh yeah, before you go, can you check the trap that I left in the basement?" TRAP IN THE BASEMENT!?!? WHAT WAS HE THINKING???? I haven't even gone down into the basement since we moved in, and there was no way in hell that I was going to go searching for a trap that might contain a mouse that could have been caught in the trap FIVE DAYS EARLIER!!! I told The Gambler that I would just leave the door to the basement closed, because it was pretty unlikely that any smell would make it up to the second floor bedroom (where I sleep) before I left on Friday, so he'd be able to take care of any trap when we both come back on May 10th. Jo asked why I refer to my husband as The Gambler - I wanted to come up with a blog tag for him, and chose "The Gambler" because he is a poker player, and because he loves the Kenny Rogers song by that name. Plus, HWSMTALMTDWTC doesn't flow well. Blog contest - some souvenir yarn goes to the first commenter who figures out what unabbreviated version of that title is.

Gambler 6, Mice 3

Latest chapter in the ongoing Rental House Mouse Saga: The Gambler was trying to figure out how the mice actually get up onto the kitchen counter, and decided that they must be climbing up a cord that comes up from behind the fridge. So on Wednesday he put the trap beside the fridge. Yesterday morning the cheese appeared to have been nibbled a bit, but the trap remained armed. The Gambler was heading back to BC yesterday, and I suggested that he might want to put the traps away while he was gone, but we were in a rush to leave early enough to beat much of the traffic, and I kind of forgot about it when I stopped at home to take a nap before going into work. So, this morning, I walk into the kitchen (eyeglasses on), and as the counter beside the fridge comes into view, I see it. The lower half of a mouse corpse. So I immediately run out of the kitchen - just in case the mouse had turned into a zombie, I suppose. I then managed to prep and eat breakfast without looking at that part of the kitchen counter, and left for work. I sent an email to The Gambler, asking if the house might have a bad smell if I left the mouse there until he came back on May 10th. He suggested that I buy a cheap dishtowel from the dollar store, throw the towel over the mouse and trap, and toss the whole bundle into the garbage. I'm wondering how much an exterminator would charge me to come take the thing away.(BTW - I have no idea why I am so squeamish about this. I can handle the gross parts of my job, but the idea of even SEEING the dead mouse makes me go euhgh! Heck, I wouldn't be this afraid of a live mouse.) I'm thinking that I will use a newspaper to slide it off the counter into the garbage - good thing I hadn't gotten around to putting up the "No Flyers Please" sign yet. Anyways, I promised you pictures: Socks as of this afternoon.Good view of the colour.Good view of the texture. Note how the heel is the only part of the sock where the colours aren't pooling. Well, I don't see myself ever knitting socks from alternating skeins, so it's just going to be a matter of trial and error with future "handpainted" yarns. At least it's not as ugly striping as my first Jaywalker attempt. I managed to get a fair amount done on the second heel yesterday evening at the DKC meeting. The topic was supposed to be "mitten styles from around the world", but the original presenter had to cancel, so instead there was a talk on "Interpretive Knitting" given by "Doctor Knit" (as opposed to The Knitting Doctor). You know how interpretive dance is an aquired taste? Uh, yeah. Maybe it would have been more interesting if there had been slides ( there were having computer issues as well), but I'm thinking...not. At least I picked up some nice yarn: Here's some Silky Wool that I bought a few weeks ago because it was a weekend, I was on call, The Gambler hadn't yet arrived in town, and it made me feel better. I want to knit a Dragonfly a la DefinitelyMaybeKnits. Since I don't like mohair, the Fiddlesticks Zephyr Wool-Silk will be the carryalong yarn that I'll use on the top half. I am trying to track down some Elsebeth Lavold Silky Tweed to use as the 2nd yarn for the body. I have some beads in various shades of red that should work for the project. Because you know that I don't have nearly enough projects waiting to be knit!!I also managed to pick up 5 skeins of Patons Kroy for $10 at the meeting (which was a good deal, but not nearly as good a deal as the off-label Manos that Jacquie picked up recently.) This photo came our much more blue than the yarn truly is; I'd say it's more crocus coloured. I might use it to knit myself a pair of knee high socks. One day. Oh, and just to remind Bezzie and any stalkers out there what The Gambler (and I) look like:

An -ity bitty post

Some musings of late: Synchronicity: Now it's understandable when similar themes are found in different blogland locales (say, several people posting a link to the same economic analysis of a particular yarn brand) - cross pollination is endemic online. But on Saturday I was listening to DNTO while driving, and I heard Sook-Yin Lee interviewing Heather Mallick about the sinister term that online commentary can take. Heather mentioned a female blogger who had very sinister threats/photoshop images in response to a discussion about erasing online comments (and it is interesting to note the tone of most of the reader feedback notes given the content of her article). On Sunday night, when I finally had a chance to check bloglines, I saw a post that was discussing the same female blogger which had been posted on Friday. Since I usually don't read the newspaper, watch TV (other than far more CSI episodes than is healthy in the last 3 months, as well as innocent bystander exposure to whatever "sports" show The Gambler is watching), or listen to commercial radio, my 2 windows on the world are generally the Internet and CBC Radio One. So it always surprises me when I come across the same themes in the different spheres. Serendipity:I made it to Thursday Night Knitting at my temporary LYS last week. The owner had ordered volume 5 from some pattern book line, and ended up getting Volume 5 of an Elsebeth Lavold pattern book instead. I thumbed through it, and there are several patterns that I like, and I have some Hempathy yarn, as well as some Jaeger Trinity that would work perfectly for the patterns. So I am going to buy that pattern book for future use. I have less stash guilt when stash yarn is actually "assigned" a potential project. Granted, many of these potential projects have been sitting around waiting to be knit for quite some time... Anonymity: The Gambler has joined the Facebook world. It works well for him, because many of his classmates from high school are on it, and he's made contact with many of them (plus, he is one of those people who likes to mantain stong ties to people from his past, even if it is at the exclusion of making new ties with people from the present). I joined facebook, but really don't plan to spend much time on it (partially because I do not have the urge to chat about things that happened when I was a teenager, and because there are very few people from my past with whom I have any great desire to reconnect. When my life changes, many of my aquaintances fade away, and I focus on finding new connections.). I like blogs and blogging better. Part of the reason that I prefer blogs to facebook is the fact that you can maintain the illusion of anonymity. Now I realize that I do post pictures of myself and The Gambler, and that I discuss enough details about my life that it's possible to track me down, but it's not the same as posting my name, my high school, job, university degree etc. It's interesting to see the degree to which people maintain their privacy while blogging. Some use their first names, some have pseudonyms. Some people won't publish photos of themselves or their families, others will post photos of themselves but not their families, and others will post photos of anything/anyone in their circle. I sometimes wonder if I should be asking permission to post photos that I take of others - granted, about 95% of the photos I post are cats/scenery/knitting, or some combination of cats and knitting. Confidentiality - part of the reason why I think about things like asking for permission to post photos on my blog is because maintaining patient privacy has been a hot topic in the last few years. Some rather silly situations can arise based on new legislation - for instance, I technically have to ask permission of a patient to send a note back to the doctor who originally referred them to me. I was thinking about this the othe day when I had to order an HIV test on a patient. I need to get permission from a patient or his/her representative in order for an HIV test to be done. The result is then mailed to me, and is not to be a part of the person's permanent chart. There are no such constraints on other infectious diseases that can be sexually transmitted. Test for Hepatitis C, syphillis, herpes, gonorrhea - no problem; I can do that without saying a word to the patient. Granted, 20 years ago, getting a diagnosis of HIV infection was a) a death sentence and b) could make someone a social pariah. But it's a totally different environment today - we can't cure HIV infection, but therapies are much more successful in controlling the manifestations, and I read an article in a woman's magazine about a young woman "living with HIV" which named her, featured several photos of her, and mentioned the city she lives in and the type of job she holds. (Not saying at all that fear and misunderstanding about HIV infection don't exist - sadly, they do) Yet still we treat HIV testing with kid gloves. And I doubt that will ever change. Anyways, more photos next post. I promise. Ruth: You asked about the sock pattern - it's my own design, based on a cable pattern that I found in my Harmony Guide to Aran Knitting. Short row heels and toes.

Thank God it's Monday!

Wow. I just finished a horrific weekend on call. Complete with patient arriving at the unit at 4:30 AM Monday (my week officially ends at 7 AM Monday - when I went to bed Sunday night I said to The Gambler "they can only hurt me for 8 more hours"...little did I know), finding out that someone else had decided to go to sleep in my on call room, a gazillion phone calls from public health/occupational health, and screaming widow - not necessarily in that order. The only thing that would have been better than coming home at 9AM for a 3 hour nap would have been if the cats were here. Which reminds me - no success with the old fashioned mouse trap today, but there was a mouse in one of the live traps. The Gambler "took care of it" like the mighty hunter he is. To celebrate the end of my hellish very busy week, I had a glass of wine, watched an episode of CSI, and ate some delicious chili that The Gambler cooked up today. (Am I a crazy woman or what?!) I also managed to get some quality knitting time in: Yes, I have made it to the heel. I was spoiled by the 6 ply regia sock yarn; the short row progress is much slower with these socks than with the Djungle Djaywalkers.I'm liking the way that the colours are shifting on the heel; it just occured to me that the "striping" of the pink and blue is actually pooling, and that if I had cast on a few more stitches it might have mixed it up a bit more, but I really don't give a care about it. They're only socks!

Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes

Still no new sock photos - I am starting the heel tonight if I have to stay up until midnight. So for your amusement: (Fake)Diamonds on the sole of my new shoes - this is not why I bought them, but it does provide me with minutes of amusement. Then my left small toe starts to hurt. I was looking at my cow keychain the other day, and something seemed a bit odd. I can't hear you!!! Somehow, both of the ears managed to snap off. Don't ask me how - there are no kitty teeth marks evident on the poor thing. Speaking of things snapping off, Kyle decided to bait the mousetrap with cheese last night. So this morning, I made sure that I checked the kitchen before I put my glasses on. Everything was blurry, but I was able to ascertain that there looked to be something other than just the trap on the counter, so I immediately went into the family room and worked on the socks until Kyle woke up. I then told The Great White Hunter that dealing with mouse corpses is not in my job description, and that he better take care of it before he started making me breakfast (Yes, my wonderful husband frequently makes me breakfast. Granted, he also gets to stay in the nice warm bed when I have to head into the hospital in the wee hours, so I think it is a more than fair tradeoff). BTW - I'm trying to come up with a blog nickname or acronym for my husband Kyle. DH just doesn't do it for me. I ran a few by him, but nothing struck his fancy. We finally narrowed it down to something poker related. So as of now, when blogging, I will refer to my husband as The Gambler (very apt, since he is a rabid an avid poker player, and he loves the Kenny Rogers song.) Because you gotta know when to hold them, and know when to fold them...

Adding insult to injury...

So yesterday morning I came down for breakfast and saw that Kyle had set a mousetrap in the kitchen. I did the quick peek to make sure that there were no casualties (because that would mean me telling Kyle to come down and dispose of the evidence), and saw that the coast was clear. I set about getting my breakfast ready and noticed something (sorry, no photos)...there was mouse poop on the counter right beside the trap, which was itself pristine. I thought "Oh great, Kyle didn't think to load the trap with bait - was he hoping to scare them to death or just scare the sh!t out of them, because that seems to be the effect the trap has had" When Kyle got up, I asked him why he didn't bait the trap. "I did" he said. "I put peanut butter on the trap last night". We re-inspected the trap: the bait plate was so spotless that we could have returned it to Canadian Tire and gotten our money back! Kyle tested the trap with a spoon, and SNAP! The little bugger(s) licked that bait plate clean! I couldn't believe it!! Did he do some kind of Mission Impossible trick with a rope suspended from the ceiling? (By the way - to my Canadian readers - is the latest Tim Horton's commercial stupid or what? And how the heck does that donut count as being triple chocolate? Two different colours of chocolate icing with chocolate filling is double chocolate in my book. If the donut dough itself was chocolate, then I would buy it. Chocolate drizzle indeed! And don't even get me started about the overuse of white chocolate in their triple chocolate muffin...because white chocolate doesn't provide any chocolate flavour, it just makes things sweet, and the muffin is so sickly sweet that you can't even taste the chocolate. Bah!) Anyways, where was I - oh yeah, the Macgyver Mouse...I can't believe that not only are our mice some kind of murine stealth burglars, but they have the audacity to take a dump right beside the trap. It's like a mouse version of flipping us the bird!! I'm tempted to have Kyle fly home tomorrow and bring the cats back Monday just to teach these smart-ass Ontario mice a lesson. I am a few rows away from turning the heel on the Raindrops Keep Falling On My Socks, so I'll post another progress shot in the next few days. Oh, and I knuckled down to peer pressure and joined Socktopia 4. Crossing my fingers for a sock pal with size 6 feet.

Almost makes you want to take up golf...

Remember the Sheep Tea Cozy ? I am now the proud owner of a Sheep Golf Club Cover kit. Since neither of us golf, (yes, I am a physician who does not golf. I'm not an imposter - my handwriting is crap.) I'm trying to figure out what other use I might put this to once I knit it. It's too long to be a cell phone cozy (and since I usually end up rummaging through my purse while my cell phone merrily rings away, the last thing I need is to have to slip a cozy off the phone before I can answer the damned thing). (No new Sock in Progress photos today - I have only knit about 4 rows since Sunday, since I on call this week. ) Follow up on our house sale - We have sold the house to the couple who made the first offer that we didn't like. Over the weekend there was counteroffer action back and forth, and on Tuesday we finally told our realtor the 3 options we would consider (Price 1 with the sale conditional on the sale of their house, Price 2 with no conditions, or letting the offer die), and they chose door #2. However, they managed to maintain the annoyance factor by asking for 3 weeks to arrange financing (3 weeks - what the hell kind of financing is going to take that long to arrange? Are they planning on putting some of their organs up for auction on ebay?). The annoyance is the fact that we now can't confirm financing on any house we want to buy until the end of the month. Bah! But Kyle is going to look at houses with The Perky Realtor on Friday, so we will see what happens. We have our BC house until the end of June. Oh - and Martina: it may seem that the house sold quickly, except for the fact that we put it up for sale in OCTOBER; about a month after the Okanagan real estate market goes into its winter hibernation. Is anyone doing Sockapalooza? I am seriously considering joining - my theory is that since I am trying to knit a pair of socks per month, it's not really adding to my list of projects, and I'm probably going to get matched with someone who has smaller feet than me...although once again, I suspect that this is one of those things that seems like a good idea at the time...

And now we do the Dance of Joy!

We sold our house!!!!!

Rental bonus!

While the cats passed the time in BC... Hey Somerset - pull my finger! We discovered Sunday morning that our Ontario rental house has some furry creatures of its own: Kyle thought that maybe the bread was like that when we bought it at the grocery store:I don't think so, because that hole wasn't there yesterday. In knitting news, here's where I am at on the Raindrops Keep Falling On My Socks: I'm going to do one more pattern repeat (16 rows) before I start to turn the heel. Then I will begin to pray that I don't run out of yarn. Here's a non-flash shot which better illustrates the raindrop pattern: I'm still wondering why there is pink in a colourway named "water". Is it supposed to represent an oil slick? It does enable me to label these as a Project Spectrum WIP.

Woo Hoo!!!

I have been reunited with my car! And, even better news is the fact that we (finally) got an offer on our house yesterday - the agent phoned Kyle on his cell phone just as we were going through Security at the airport. It's not an offer that we are happy with, but at least there's some action on the house. By the way - is it just me, or has Bloglines not been doing a very good job of late?

Back in action

Somerset is a bit more herself today, at least enough so to go after anything dangly like lengths of yarn... ...or socks on a circ. Here's today's closeup of the Socks of Death Raindrops Keep Falling on My Socks. Lori asked if the pockmarks raindrop imprints are scattered randomly - they aren't (I don't do well with random). The cable pattern is an 18 stitch repeat, and requires a multiple of 18 stitches + 10. I initially tried 82 (18x4 + 10) stitches, but that couldn't make it over my ankle, but 92 stitches (2x(18x4+10)) does. Which means the spots don't travel around the sock - this side view demonstrates. So from one direction, there's going to be a funky argyloid pattern, and if the sock is rotated 90 degrees, it will be a staggered dot pattern. I'm debating whether I should rotate the heel by 90 degrees so that the argyloids will be on the front and back of the sock, but that will mean that one cable will be at the beginning/end of the row every so often, and that will probably lead to several cable mistakes (because I've already had to repair a few cables just knitting the sock as is!) So the argyloids will be on the side of the sock. Other news today is that my car and I will soon be reunited! (maybe) I had a phone call from We HAve a MoNOpoly on shipping CARs by rail in his country and thus have no need to do a good job Inc. (aka WHAMNOCAR Inc.) The guy from WHAMNOCAR called to ask for the address to which the car was supposed to be delivered. Which raised a bit of concern, since we had given that info to the woman at the moving company, who contracted WHAMNOCAR to transport my car. So I gave him my FIL's address, and Mr WHAMNOCAR said "Great! It will be there on Monday". Monday! Monday April 10th? Almost 6 weeks after they picked it up? What happened to it getting there yesterday or today? So Kyle makes some phone calls, and apparently there is room on the truck heading to Oshawa on Thursday, or to Brampton on Monday. So the car can be delivered to an empty rental house before we get there, or to my FIL's place 3 days after we arrive. After pointing out to them what the actual timing of this move, including the fact that we could DRIVE THE CAR FROM HERE TO BRAMPTON BY FRIDAY, WHAMNOCAR decided that in the interests of customer service, a customer representative would drive the car up to Brampton tomorrow. I'm not holding my breath.

She's back!

Somerset made it through her ordeal yesterday, although she was apparently pretty grumpy this morning. She hissed up a storm at anyone who came near her. Lashing out at those who are trying to help just because you are afraid - yup, that's my girl! And wouldn't you know it, we had 2 appointments for people to look at the house today - the first one was about 20 minutes after I got home from the vet. We rushed home once the appointment was done to check that she hadn't puked up blood on the carpet (which she didn't), and to give her her antibiotic (which the vet was afraid to administer today) as well as her pain medication. Then we had to leave again 30 minutes later, and it turned out that they were running late, so we had to give them another 20 minutes! Since we got home, she's been glued to my lap. She inspected the sock, but since she has spent the afternoon looking like this:Or like this:I think that this was what the sock looked like to her: Needless to say, I don't think the cables have made a big impression on her. In response to Kathy Kathy Kathy's question: I was woken from an afternoon nap (because I am 39 going on 80, and regularly take a 90 minute nap some time between 1 and 4 PM) by the phone ringing. It was the woman from the moving company calling to ask if my car had arrived. (Is it just me, or is it wrong that SHE should be asking ME where my car is). Apparently "they" promised that it would get delivered yesterday or today (this is the same "they" who had promised it would arrive by last Friday). Sigh. One thing I do know - if I have to rent a car AGAIN, I am NOT going to get a model that has the gear shift on the steering wheel. After driving a car with the steering wheel gear shift for 12 days, once I got home to our car, I kept turning the windshield wipers on when I wanted to get out of a parking spot.

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Socks

Greedo is doing the sock inspection tonight, because Somerset has to overnight at the animal hospital - she had 2 molars pulled, and because she's 10 years old, they wanted to keep an eye on her. Poor little thing. At least her mouth won't hurt anymore. Here's the first pattern repeat. It's a cable pattern I found in my Harmony Guide to Aran Knitting book. This is my first time cabling without needles - initially I thought it would be impossible, but then I realized that C4B doesn't mean slip 4 stitches on the cable needle...I'm now getting the hang of it, and might give a try to working on them when I fly back to Toronto on Friday (I returned a phone call from my parents today and the first thing they asked was "So where are you now?". Kyle had an email message to call our Ontario landlady - she wanted to check to see how we were liking the house. The scary part is that this back and forth bit is starting to seem normal) I had intended that the pattern have the appearance of the impression that raindrops make in sand (or dirt). I fear that it might look more like smallpox, or maybe bulletholes. Oh great, I may be knitting Socks of Death.

What, meme worry?

Had to take Somerset to the vet to get her teeth cleaned this morning. Trying not to obsess about the possibility that something could go wrong. Here's a meme to keep you occupied: Seen in many spots - most recently on Trillian 42's blog Look at the list of (100) books below. Bold the ones you’ve read. Italicize the ones you want to read. Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in. Movies don’t count. Here's where I add my personal spin: Parentheses around the ones that I have partly read. Asterisk the ones that I wouldn't read if I were stuck on a desert island. Comment on the books if moved to do so. 1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) 2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) Or was that Sense and Sensibility...it's so hard to keep track of these things... 3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) 4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) 5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)* 6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)* 7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)* ...are you sensing a theme here? 8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) ...I also read Anne of the Island. A million years ago. 9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon) 10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) 11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)* 12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) 13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)* 14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) 15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden) 16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)*...see #7 17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald) 18. The Stand (Stephen King) 19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)* 20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) 21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)* 22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) ...Holden Caulfield has always kind of annoyed me; maybe that's why I didn't enjoy A Complicated Kindness by Marian Toews. Even if it was a Canada Reads winner 23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) ...is there anyone out there who didn't want to be Jo? 24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold) 25. [Life of Pi] (Yann Martel) 26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) 27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) 28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) 29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) 30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)*** At my cousin's wedding, his brother gave a reading from this book as part of his speech. Six single spaced pages worth. I want that 20 minutes of my life back. 31. Dune (Frank Herbert) 32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) 33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) 34. 1984 (Orwell) 35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) 36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) 37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay) 38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)* 39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) 40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) 41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) 42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) 43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella) 44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)** 45. [Bible] 46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) 47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) 48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) 49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) 50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)* 51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)* 52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)* 53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card) 54. Great Expectations (Dickens) 55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) 56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence) 57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)* 58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) ...it was the 80's...those were crazy times...the mini-series was a new and exciting entity... 59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)... I preferred The Edible Woman. I haven't read any of her last few books. Probably because if I try, I hear her reading them in her Grand Dame of Canadian Literature voice. And that brings out the iconoclast in me. 60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)...is that her real name? Must have been hell for her spending time on the playground. 61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) 63. War and Peace (Tolstoy) 64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice) 65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis) 66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)* 68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) 69. Les Miserables (Hugo) 70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) 71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)...you know how you feel after eating a bunch of Timbits? That "They looked good, and tasted good for about 2 seconds, but now I feel kind of sick and gross for having eaten them"feeling?... Chick-lit. Tim-bit. Coincidence? I think not! 72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez) 73. Shogun (James Clavell) 74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)... I kept reading and reading, waiting to get to the point where I actually gave a crap about what happened to any of the characters. Never happened. Kind of like what happened when I read Generation X. 75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) 76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay) 77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith) 78. The World According To Garp (John Irving) ...not sure why I have read 2 books by an author I don't really like. 79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence) ...see #78 - although at least she was a Manitoban...Never could remember if she was from Neepawa or Pinawa 80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White) 81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley) 82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) 83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) 84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind) 85. Emma (Jane Austen) 86. Watership Down (Richard Adams) ...The Plague Dogs was better IMHO 87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)...or was that 1984 I'm thinking of...nope, I'm pretty sure I read this one as well.."Oh brave new world, that has such people in it"... 88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields) ...I'm from Winnipeg, so I always feel like I should WANT to read Carol Shields, but I can never bring myself to do so. 89. Blindness (Jose Saramago) 90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer) 91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)* 92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) 93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck) 94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)...a rare thing - a CBC radio related book which I have no interest in reading 95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) ...although that Matt Damon is dreamy... 96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) 97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch) 98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)* 99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield) ...I put it on reserve at the library, and there were something like 30 holds ahead of me. By the time my name came up, I had gotten on with my life. 100. Ulysses (James Joyce) ...I started reading The Odyssey, does that count? Hmmm...not alot of italicized things there. Probably for a few reasons. I am horribly biased against any book that makes it to Oprah's Book Club (I read The Reader several years ago and enjoyed it. I couldn't BELIEVE that it was subsequently tainted by the 'O' branding). I also don't have much interest in fantasy/magic themed novels (not because I don't like reading long drawn out books - I read the whole Dune series AND War and Peace; I did my time.) Plus, of late, I have been reading predominantly non-fiction books. Much of it would fall into the category "Sociology", I guess. I'm just in the process of finishing "The Ethical Imagination" by Margaret Somerville, and am over 1/3 of the way through "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. Hmmm, come to think of it, much of my reading material in the last few years has consisted of books that I heard about on CBC Radio One (either author interview, book discussion, lecture series, or hearing the book being read aloud in serial format on Between The Covers). By the way - who came up with this list? What exactly is the significance of the selection? And why are there no Somerset Maugham books listed? Is the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants more worthy of a read than Farenheit 451? Would I have gotten more out of A Woman of Substance than I did from Madame Bovary? I hope she's not too scared and lonely in her cage...

It doesn't matter what Wendy says...

Sock yarn DOES count. Sock yarn does count. Sock yarn does count. Sock yarn does count. Am I convincing anyone?

Flash my Sock Yarn Stash!

Right now, a significant portion of my stash is hidden away in a storage closet under /behind large boxes (and the yarn destined for the EBTKS sweater is in the rental house), so I decided that I would focus on sock yarns (because most of it is still accessible, although there are a few AWOL skeins that must be down in that closet. I hope.)The entire stash.The yarn that started it all; I saw this skein of yarn at the Seattle Knitting and Fibre Arts Expo last April, and thought "I think I'm going to learn how to knit socks". I didn't realize how good the price was at the time. My Regia yarn collection. Large skeins of yarn with German labels. Smaller skeins of yarn with non-english labels. Famous maker handpaints. Yes, that would be 3 skeins of STR Sock Club yarn that remain unknit. Canadian handpaints. Independent dyer handpaints. I have at least 3 other skeins somewhere. Yarns with unique fibres. Bargain yarns. Yarn that is destined to become something other than socks. I can't bring myself to tally them. Better get knitting!