Oh B-have!

It's Been over a week since I last posted (I am a Bad Blogger). Tomorrow is the deadline for my B themed post, and even though tomorrow will be spent at the Better Breathing conference, Blog fodder will be lacking. But I do have a photo of Big trees against a Blue sky. Speaking of Blue skies: My knittyBoard secret pal sent me some Beautiful green alpaca yarn (Blue sky alpaca Brand)! And here's the latest pair of socks that I completed - das Boot/Blueberry apricot. Yes, I am such an overachiever that rather than develop Second Sock Syndrome, I will soon Be in the throes of Third and Fourth Sock Syndrome. But I will Be working on socks 3 and 4, Because socks are much more portable than the sleeves of my Brooklyn tweed scarf inspired lines in the sand sweater - Besides, having to untangle the skeins at the Beginning of each round makes for Brain-numBingly slow progress.

Spreading the Word

The Driftwood Theatre Company is holding a special fundraising event: Trafalgar 24. Ten new Canadian plays will be created in 24 hours and performed on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at Trafalgar Castle School in Whitby, Ontario. Single tickets are $50/$90 for a pair/$40 each for groups of 10 or more. You can see a performance of Driftwood's most popular (and hilarious) production "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)" at The Papermill Theatre at Todmorden Mills, 67 Pottery Road, Toronto from March 26-April 6. For tickets and information, call (416)317-1438

An uplifting post?

Apparently, today is the most depressing day of the year. Well, it's also my second Blogiversary. Yes, two years ago today, I wrote my first blog post, complete with cat photo. To celebrate, I am going to take this opportunity to Pay it Forward. I saw this 2 months ago on Stacie's blog - I'm not sure where it originated, but this is the commitment: I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog In honor of my blogiversary, I will pay it forward to 2 random commenters as well, for a grand total of 5 recipients. Any comment made in the next week is eligible If that's not enough to make you feel a little bit better, here's what the day looked like in this little corner of the world: No cold noses here!Not many clouds either. But there are mountains, And more mountains, And times ahead look good. This is Bob from Saskatchewan. He's retired, and spends his winters here. Twice a week, he takes people on tours around the mountain. What's not to smile about?

Socks on a Plane

I'm back in BC for a week - we are taking a ski vacation. Big White was our "local" ski hill before we moved. As I was packing for the trip, I realized that there are some things about living in Kelowna that I really do miss - like having a cross country ski club and trails 25 minutes away, and a ski hill was 60 minutes away. Now they are a 4.5 hour flight away... On the flight over here, I had 2 different plane knitting projects: The Das Boot Socks I am knitting for The Gambler. This yarn is annoyingly splitty, but for the most part I was able successfully watch a subtitled movie on my in-seat-TV while I knit it. I also cast on for another pair of socks for me: Socks being knit out of Blueberries and Apricots by Seacoast Handpainted. This was the "podcast" knitting. It started out being knit in a pattern from a UK knitting magazine that The Gambler gave me for Christmas (he's so awesome - tracking down an imported knitting magazine for me!), but I realized after knitting a few inches that there was absolutely no pooling on the 2x2 rib cuff: ..but once I started adding in some slip stitches, the colours started to pool into thick spiral-type stripes. I often get that kind of pooling because I have to cast on extra stitches for socks to accomodate my large feet, so I decided to rip back, and just knit it in 2x2 rib, and save the stitch pattern for a sock yarn that was already pooling. Sorry - no photos of the pooling sock: once I decided to rip back, I did it right away before my resolve weakened. I of course packed several knitting projects for the trip - which is a good thing, because it looks like there is going to be a cold snap for the next few days. Which made this an excellent time for me to finish this: Antifreeze from knitty, or, as I have christened it, Antifrostbite. It had been sitting in a UFO pile for, well, almost a year now. I actually would have finished it last year, but I made some modifications on the face portion that didn't work, and I had to rip it back, and then last year's January cold snap had passed, and we headed to Toronto/Chicago for 10 days, etc. I still had to rip back a few times yesterday when I was finishing this, because I made some modifications that didn't work out well - I was paranoid that it wouldn't cover my entire nose, or that the face opening would be too big, and of course the opening ended up being too small. In the end, I added some extra short rows, and then did a garter stitch/EZ sewn bind off instead of the crochet trim as called for in the pattern. I'm going to wear it today: it's -10 Celcius, and it's going to be windy.

This post brought to you by the letter A

I joined the 2008 ABC along (will update with a link in the next few days), and I have until the 19th to post on the letter A. I was Absolutely Amazed to find that our Amazon order Arrived 3 days After placing the order: That's Astonishingly fast! Of course no post is complete without An Adorable cat photo: Or photos of cat Adoration: As An Afterthought, here's A sweater update: Body is done, sleeves Are in progress The sleeves Are being knit 2 At A time on one circ, using 4 different skeins. Which may drive me to An insane Asylum.

Bunny Thumper Contest!

Kitkatknits is running a contest on her blog - it involves measuring your cat's "bunny thumper" - from the tip of their longest rear toe to their "heel". Presumably the length of the "sole" if you were insane enough to knit a pair of socks for your cat. Greedo wasn't interested in being measured demonstrated the difficulty involved in taking a picture of a white cat using a flash, and turned out to have a 5 3/4 inch thumper, which isn't the longest measurement out there. But it looks like Somerset might be in the running for having the daintiest Bunny Thumper: 4 and 3/8 inches long. Since it's impossible to measure accurately and take a photo at the same time, The Gambler kindly took a picture of me doing my imitation of a giant caliper: Of course, size isn't everything, because it's usually Somerset who ends up thumping the crap out of Greedo's head when they tussle. But enough about the cats... it's time for another Hourglass Sweater Update: I've decided to rename it the "Lines in The Sand Sweater" because I thought it would be bad knitting karma to refer to something as The PITSS. I am a few inches away from dividing for the yoke: I'm wondering if I should have gone down a needle size for the seed stitch border (a modification from the folded hem called for in the pattern) - I might do that for the collar/cuffs. I'm just letting the Silk Garden stripe as it comes off the skein, because I would go insane if I tried to enforce some order on its Noro-ness. However, I think it is somewhat fortuitous that that lime green section ends up falling at the top of my hip rather than lower down... I decided to change the striping ratios a final time, so the middle section is 4 rows dark/4 rows light rather than 3/3 - now I just have to figure out when to switch to 3 rows dark/4 rows light. Probably at the bust line, because my chest can stand a bit of emphasis! This is the first time that I tried the sweater on; the pre-blocking fit is snug, so it should work out well post-blocking. My gauge is 20 st/4in right now, so it should end up being close to the called for 19 st/4in when all is said and done.

Sheep and Stripes

Last year I knit a sheep tea cozy. Of course, both the Sheep Tea cozy and my copy of the pattern are AWOL - in a box somewhere. Sigh. The yarn and pattern came as a kit; I bought it on ebay from a woman in Alberta. A friend of The Gambler asked him about the pattern (her mom wants to knit one), and when I was searching for the listing, I found that she now sells kits for a few other items. Such as: The sheep pillow The sheep toilet roll cover (my favourite) Never before have I had the urge to knit a toilet roll cover. Maybe that will be my reward for finishing my sweater: Yes, I cast on for my version of The Hourglass Sweater on Tuesday - I'm thinking of naming it The Patterns In The Sand Sweater (which I just realized can be shortened to PITSS - hmmmm). The pattern as written has a turned under hem, which I converted to a 7 row seed stitch border. I quickly realized that on 4 mm needles, a 2 row stripe was pretty thin, and to prevent the sweater from being one that would induce seizures (because I took an oath against causing suffering), I increased the minimum stripe size to 3 rows. So the bottom is 4 rows dark/3 rows light, the middle will be 3 rows light/3 rows dark, and the top will be 4 rows light/3 rows dark. I will probably try to follow that sequence in the sleeves as well.

Silicon footprint?

I've been diligently listening (while knitting) to my backlog of CBC podcasts, and much of it has been thought-provoking. A recent episode of Spark raised the issue of energy consumption and technology ; do people buy carbon offsets for ipod usage in addition to air travel? Now I don't feel so bad about the fact that my cell phone is turned off 95% of the time... Some of you who read my blog regularly may have noticed that there was one gift project that didn't make it to the last post: The Christmas Cardi ended up being finished in time for Ukrainian Christmas. There's a bit of a long story behind why I didn't finish it for December 25th - it involved being post call, The Gambler's antisocial brother, and some amaryllis bulbs...but we won't go there. The last seaming was done yesterday. I'm visiting The Purple Purl with Jackie this afternoon, so by the end of the day, the buttons will be sewn on and it will get mailed tomorrow. Together with the birthday shawls for my mom and my aunt. I swear. Really. No, I actually mean it this time... And now that the gift knits are done, it's back to the me knitting: I'm swatching for the Hourglass sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I am planning on striping these 2 Silk Garden colourways together. I had initially planned on doing 2 rows of each, but now I am thinking that it might work well to do 3 rows dark/2 rows light at the bottom, 2 rows dark/2 rows light in the middle, and 2 rows dark/3 rows light at the top. Or maybe it will look like crap. We'll see.

There has been knitting...

I did manage to crank out a few FOs in the last 2 weeks - a product of the fact that if I wasn't working/sleeping, I didn't do much other than knit. I finished the Speedy Yet Effective Shawl #1 aka Mom's Horribly Late Birthday Shawl: Followed by Speedy Yet Effective Shawl #2 aka Aunt's Not Quite So Horridly Late Birthday Shawl... Knit out of 3 skeins (2 different colourways) of SWTC Karaoke. And even though I had intended to give my friend Ute My Soho Called Scarf for Christmas, I realized that the Soho yarn is on the scratchy side, and so I knit a (Noro Striped Scarf-inspired) Mille Colori Striped Scarf for her. The colour changes make it interesting enough to keep knitting the 1x1 rib, and the simple 1x1 rib makes it easy enough to knit during other activities - like watching the Raptors game that we went to last Friday. I cast off this morning, exactly 36 hours after going to see a movie with Ute. And I swear by all that is holy that I am going to get started on a real sweater for me this week.

Time Off is Great in 2008!

Well, I ended up having a pretty craptacular "holiday season", mostly because of work. Why does Mommy keep threatening to drink both of these in one sitting? But I am now off until Monday the 14th (with the exception of having to go to the hospital to meet with hospital administration and a patient's family to do go over an Incident Quality of Care Review - reliving one of the lowlights of the last 2 weeks, as it were). I have managed to get some knitting done, but am horribly behind on taking photos - will try to catch up this weekend. I do, however have photos of a lovely present that my SP11 downstream Penny sent me: Getting the blues takes on a whole new meaning when it comes to yarn like this! It was particularly thoughtful of her to print out 3 patterns for lace scarves that can be knit with this yarn. Printing things is a bit of a chore in our house - we have a laser printer which is 4-5 years old, and our new computer doesn't have the right port to connect the printer with it. My laptop is the only computer in the house that can it can connect to; and it is usually on the main floor. The printer lives on the 3rd floor of our house. Thank you Penny!!! Although I haven't blogged in a week or so, I have been looking at blogs and Ravelry. It's interesting to see that last year's "Knit from my stash" phenomenon has morphed into "Knit down my stash". Does anyone remember how yarn store owners were apparently wringing their hands, worried that sales would plummet if enough knitters went on a yarn diet for the first 6 months of 2007? I imagine that there were some who were successful, but let's face it, diets are generally doomed to fail, as are the bulk of New Year's Resolutions. So this year, I am making only 4 resolutions: 1) I will listen to more podcasts (I have hours and hours of CBC Radio One podcasts stored on my computer, enough to fill several mp3 players). Maybe once I clear the backlog, I will check out some knitting podcasts. 2) I will document at least 90% of my stash on Ravelry. Of course, this means that I will have to locate a few boxes of yarn that I haven't seen since the move. Which leads to resolution#3 3) I will unpack/figure out where to store the stuff that is still sitting in bins/boxes. The Gambler and I have need to get around to buying some bedroom furniture; right now I keep most of my socks in a Rubbermaid bin! 4) I will drink more water. Well, it is off to fight the crowds at the gym. I got 6 "personal trainer sessions" when we joined the gym in November, but was only able to schedule the first one for yesterday because of my insande work schedule in November/December. I feel like having a shirt made up saying "No, this is NOT a New Year's Resolution"