And She Knits Too!

Paparazzi

DrStephs-GorgousEarthWrap, originally uploaded by notanartist.

In case you wanted to see me in my Earth Stripe Wrap.

Thanks for making me look so good Michelle.

And for capturing me in a more natural pose.

Necessity is the mother of invention

Problem: I want to ride my bike to work but must transport my huge poster home from the printers (poster is 90" by 46").

Consensus of everyone I ask: You're taking the subway today honey.

Lightbulb moment: Last  night on the subway on the way home from great night of knitting at Lettuce Knit (got to meet That Laurie who is a knitter/dyer/spinner extraordinare and all round nice woman)...I need some sort of carrying device for the tube.  Aha!  My yoga mat bag.

Aren't I clever?

And it actually worked!  Poster is at work.  I haven't looked at it yet, mostly because I'm afraid I won't be able to get it back in the tube when I'm done.  I'm going to borrow a snazzy telescopic poster case to get it to Banff.  Not as nifty as a knitted thing, but probably safer. 

My research partner offered to take it home in her car tonight so I won't have to worry about getting it home.  Too bad, I felt like an Academic Ninja with it on (I know, dorky, but I'm a geek, what can I say!)

The Turn of the Screw

Things are ramping up in home reno land.  Nope, not the stairs.  Nope, not the bathroom (did I mention that the bathroom is undergoing a very very slow transformation?  No?  Well, there are inside walls missing).  This time it's the yard.

For those who don't know, downtown Toronto homes have leeettle yards.  Postage stamps.  That suits me fine because there are parks within a few quick blocks and I'm not much for yard work.  But I do like a good barbeque and something esthetically pleasing when I look out my windows so there's work to be done.

First to go was the back deck.  It was this tiny thing that wrapped around the back of the house (a typically Toronto semi-detached that narrows at the kitchen) with a too-high railing and too little useable space.  I used to have photos, but I think they died with my laptop.  Too bad, I could have been a little more HGTV with my before and after photos.

Unlike many things in our house, this baby was built to withstand a nuclear explosion.  Buddy used a LOT of screws.

Each screw was countersunk into the wood so far that the board expanded over it and the screw rusted. So we needed to drilling into each hole, blow out the debris with the air compressor, use a smaller bit to dig out more crap and then use the drill and Craig's manly strength to get those suckers out. It took a long fucking time. So long, that in the end we decided that we didn't really need to salvage the wood and we took the circular saw to it. Sorry, it happened so fast, I didn't get pictures. And that was just the top screws, repeat the process for the underneath frame. Then we got to the footings. 4-5ft down. 9 of them. We've dug out too, 7 more to go.

We've also made a whole lot of garbage that we'll be hauling to the transfer station this weekend. This is only half, the other pile is on the other side. Note the yellow garage. That's going too (before it falls over).

Here's the back of the house now. We're using the ample crushed rock under the deck to build a hill to our door. The plan is to put random flagstones down over the whole yard with something green growing in the spaces (maybe thyme--I'm open to suggestions). We'll also have some flowerbeds along the fences with pretty things and some smaller trees, but we have a ways to go before we get to that part.

So far, the best part is that I can get my bike out to the sidewalk without that deck in the way and our tiny yard (probably 20ft wide by 12ft) is looking a whole lot bigger.

Sticky Situation

We're in the stickiest situation since Sticky the Stick Insect got stuck on a sticky bun.
                                                                                                                        ~Blackadder IV, Major Star

Saturday was Fun Fair day at the kids' school.  It's the BIG fundraiser for the year; basically a carnival with those giant inflatable jumping things, food, a silent auction (we scored $50 a month for Magic Oven pizza for a year), temporary tatoos and all kinds of fun.

Craig and I volunteered to do an hour at the Cotton Candy booth. 

Sticky.

Yes, it's all ove r me and in my hair.  It was windy and I swear the wind was bouncing off Craig's machine and into mine.

We treated ourselves after our shift was over.  Don't worry about Xander's long face, he ate plenty.

More meme.

I'm starving for content this week. I have a post planned, but have been sidelined by a cold that has knocked me on my ass. I realized I was sick when I started falling asleep over my work, at work. I'm home today and a nap is high on my To-Do list.

From Rosemary

"The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer."

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?
Barfing. I just found out I was pregnant with Emma and it was all barfing all the time. Morning sickness sucks.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):
Sleep. Laundry. Pick up drycleaning (it's been ready for a week and it's two houses away, no more forgetting). Hair cut and colour. Work on poster for Banff.

3) Snacks I enjoy:
Tortilla chips and cheese (yep that gross stuff in the jar), popcorn, coke, goldfish crackers, flax lavash and hummus.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Travel. Have someone in to fix everything around the house (before I sell it and move to something bigger). Set up some charitable foundation that would be my next job.

5) Places I have lived:
Thunder Bay, Toronto.

7) 6 peeps I wanna know more about: (I'm tired, I'm stopping at 4 and going back to bed). If you want to play, please do!

Jacquie
Knittrips
Teyani
Michelle

Procratina-meme

From Michelle.  You can see how unread I am.  Going through the list, there aren't many where I said: "gee, I should read that."  For one thing, I like short books, Anna Karenina just about killed me with the boring economics in feudal Russia stuff.

I'm also wondering why so much Jane Austen is here.  I guess people took the books out because they liked the movies and then decided it wasn't for them.  This was my thing with A Clockwork Orange.  I had a thing about this movie when I was in my last year in high school (I was going through a stage where I tried to be shocking and subversive--I did my english independent study on Lady Chatterley's lover and the use of naturalistic language (which meant I got to say "fuck" a lot in class) and it got me into Kubrick's films.  But the book didn't really do it for me.  I find reading a book first is less likely to ruin a movie for me than the other way around.  Except maybe the Keira Knightly version of Pride and Prejudice which is horrible as an adaptation and really as a film.  But I digress, on to the meme...

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (have it at home, might read it)
War and Peace
Vanity Fair

The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations

American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Now in brilliant colour!

The camera thing finally got to me. I am not the best photographer, nor have I had much desire to learn to be a better one (though I do regret missing Jacquie and Michelle's course on how to photograph my knitting), but I do like to have at least some close to the correct colour, not blurry photos of my knitting and the camera phone wasn't cutting it.

Claudia's comment gave me the push I needed. On her excellent advice, I spoke with Keri (who also just bought a new camera), I read some reviews, considered what I wanted and started some online research.

At first, I thought I just wanted a new version of my Canon digital elph. It served me well these last five years and I liked that I could just put it in my pocket and go. However, the lithium ion batteries were expensive and you can't just pop to a 7-11 and buy some--I wanted a camera that took AA batteries this time. I also wanted something with a more refined flash. My current camera tended to over do it and everything was too bright or whited out.

And, I have a romantic notion about people who can take nice photos. I admire their skill. I admire how they can see the world through a camera lens.

I don't just read Michelle's blog because she's a fun person who I like a bunch, but because her photos are always so lovely. Same with Cara and Claudia. I know they spend time with their cameras and editing photos afterward, and I may not really have the time to do that, but I want to learn more about taking pictures, since I do it almost every day. So I needed a camera with a bit more adjustability to do that. Not full DSLR adjustability, but more than compact point and shoot.

Getting another Canon seemed like a good idea because I was used to the interface, and they received good reviews in a number of places. In the end, I bought one a bit more jazzy than I expected because the price was right. It's a Canon Powershot a720 (just like Claudia's).

I used it for the demon spawn (aka moth) photo yesterday, some stash and some silly photos of the kids.

It was pouring today so I haven't tested it outside or anything, but it satisfies my needs and desires and I have a few weeks to practice with it before I put it to the real test in Banff.

Demon spawn

This week I found my life imitating Stephanie/Harlot's Art.

More specifically a chapter in her book, Yarn Harlot: A Secret Life of A Knitter.

I'm sure many of us feel like this at some point. That's why her books are fun to read.

However, this was not one of those "isn't life funny?" moments.

My life was imitating a chapter called "Moth".

I'll give you a moment to catch your breath.

***

A few days ago I saw one flit by and noticed it and then immediately denial set in and I went about my business.

Yesterday Craig noticed a flutter and said, "Hey. A moth".

I froze, and then immediately dismissed it (with no evidence) as a cereal moth.

But since the moth was corroborated, I was kinda stuck. What if it wasn't a cereal moth?

I got out Steph's book and had a read. There was my denial in black and white. Cereal moths in a room with no cereal?

I keep a bit of stash on display in a basket and I checked there first.

That's after I killed the demon spawn.

The only thing affected seems to be a few partial balls of calmer, which went into the trash. There were other moths in the basket, which I cleaned, and then the whole lot went in the freezer. I'll pull it out in few days and continue with the exorcism.

I also checked the rest of the stash (moth free!) and took the opportunity to bag it all so those evil creatures don't get at it. It also gave me the impetus to start cataloging the stash for Ravelry and maybe decide if I'm really going to use some of this yarn or if it should find a new home.

Phew, I feel like a dodged a bullet this time.

Is there a yarn goddess to pray to in order to prevent further satanic plagues?

Monogamy works!

(Hopefully that title won't attract a bunch of weirdos; especially since this is about knitting monogamy.)

I've been faithfully plugging away on Vino and on Tuesday night I finished the back.  This knitting one thing at a time plan is quite fruitful.

Sorry about the crappy camera phone pictures, I was in a rush and my camera battery was dead.  I really need to get another battery or a new camera since this is getting rather silly.

I pushed getting the back done because it was not longer portable at almost 38" and I wanted to work on it at knit night on Wednesday.  And I concur with everyone that Dream in Color is fast yarn; it just flies off the needles.  I finished the ribbing on the left front last night whilst eating cake to celebrate Denny's birthday (and a big Happy Birthday to Elizabeth whose birthday is today) and meeting Ysolda, who came all the way from Scotland to hang with the knitters--she's lovely and her cardi is now on my to-do list.

Of course, even the monogamous can stray a bit...

That's the yarn to make Hip in Hemp.  I'm trying to stay faithful and not swatch or anything until Vino is blocking.  I don't have an elastic for the waist yet, so I wouldn't get far anyway.  But it is tempting to start.  Especially now that Spring has sprung and it's ideal skirt weather. 

Better camera phone photo of Queen's Park turning green (I walk by it on my way to work.  It's kinda neat to be this close to government, even if they piss me off most of the time.)

Knitterly Weekend

Phew, what a weekend. I started with the Spring Knitter's Frolic, where I did buy almost enough hempathy to make Hip In Hemp (I need to find the dark brown, probably at Romni) and I won a fabulous skein of fuschia lace weight donated by the Sweet Sheep--thanks Michelle! I got to hang with Michelle from In Yarn Veritas for the afternoon too. Lots of fun.

Then I did some work around the house and after dinner we were off to the More Big Girl Knits book launch at Lettuce Knit. There were yummy cupcakes, loads of knitters, including Amy and Jillian the co-authors extraordinaire and Shannon Okey was up for a visit too. I tried on a bunch of the garments, won a nifty bag, and gah gahed over how everything looked amazing on Keri and had a few beers before we dashed off to see The Forbidden Kingdom (which while not extra fantastic, it was still pretty good).

I forgot to add a photo of the bag.  It's similar to this one.  They're made from rice bags and each one is different. Totally fun and fishy.

 

I managed to have a nice long sleep before spending the day close to home, watching Xander play ball hockey, doing more yard work (deck demolition, garage cleaning), supervising homework and scaling mount laundry. I did spend some time on the vino coat too--I'm an inch and a bit away from the arm hole decreases. Laura smartly pointed out that a Vino front is smaller than a Vino back, so if I can get this done, I'll be back to more portable knitting again. This is good because the next few days look a tad cold for biking and I'll need some TTC knitting.