Dark

Hope you had a good Earth Hour.

After I put the kids to bed I had a bath by candlelight. It was rather pleasant.

Random Wednesday; one day late

1. Tried on $325 coat (I swear, the kids made me do it). The largest size didn't fit. Stupid designer clothes giving me a complex about my body.

2. Winter is never going to end.

3. I hate all my winter clothes.

4. Earth Stripe Wrap is taking FOREVER. Maybe it's completion is holding up Spring. I better get on that.

5. Emma is home sick today and my Mac is all set to remote connect so I can work except the stupid Nvivo program is not working so I'm not getting stuff done. Shit.

6. Their tech support is in Australia so I'll get no help until tomorrow. It's Summer there.

7. At least laundry is getting done.

8. I'm going to make more coffee.

9. Thanks for all the comments on my 5th blogiversary. I feel like this is a pretty poor excuse for the post-after the blogiversary declaration.

9.5 FSM! I forgot to mention that the Beck rink placed 3rd in the Tim Horton's Colts. They were the only team to beat the winning Armstrong rink (10-1 in 6 ends). Don't they look spiffy?

10. Look at these instead. I think they're funny. (Work friendly) When the posting goes random, the random go youtube.

It all started like this...

Thursday, March 20, 2003

So I decided to add one more thing to my crazy schedule and try my hand at blogging. I'm not even sure what I will put on my blog. But for now it's a good place to talk about my dissertation (but not today) and my knitting. Tonight, now that the kiddies are asleep I'm going to work on the Einstein coat I'm making for my son. It's a nice easy, no thinking, sit in front of the tv project. Just what I need today after hurting my brain trying to start writing my method chapter.

8:14 PM

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Here I am five years later (on a Thursday no less), still blogging. I started on Blogger and moved here to Typepad about 6 months later. In five years I've composed 9041 posts, had 966 956 visitors, received two silver Canadian Blog awards, and have read more than 900 comments. I really appreciate those comments; I love hearing from my readers and love being part of the knitblog community.

I certainly didn't realize what I got myself into when I started five years ago, but I'm very happy that I took the plunge and started to write. This has been the only journal that I've ever kept consistently and I don't cringe when I read the old posts (unlike the stuff I wrote when I was 13--wince). Though maybe my kids will be horrified when they realize their mother has been documenting their lives on the internet with her geeky knitting habit and feminist rantings.

I'll let you know in another five years.

How did I fall in love with a $325 coat?

Natalia for Gsus, originally uploaded by greencurry24.

(peak at more photos here: http://takemorephotos.com/2007/10/29/gsus-on-the-runway/ you need to scroll a bit).

A shop I walk by every day has this coat in the window. It's a cut like a basic black trenchcoat but has this nifty flower print on it.

I like flowers.

When I stood back to look at it, I noticed that some of the flowers form skulls.

I like skulls.

I love this coat. I google but don't find much (the brand is Gsus sindustries--unknown to me since I'm hardly a fashionista) . Then I call the store and ask how much.

$325.

Shoot.

It would have looked crappy on me anyway.

Maybe it'll go on sale.

What's in Dr. Steph's knitting bag(s)?

One area where my new MacBook totally delivers is on the photo side of things. My Canon Powershot S230 is five years old and on my PC I needed to download pictures using Canon's cumbersome software; without it, XP couldn't seem to find the camera. With my new 'puter, I plugged in the camera and there were my photos! So I took pictures of all my WIPs.

Earth Stripe wrap is at the 112cm mark (I think it's about 150cm at finished length without fringe). I'm sooooo close. I want to wear this a few times at least before Spring, so this is high on my list. It's too big and there's too many colours to carry around so I need to be home to work on this. Not a problem this week because Craig is off to the Tim Horton's Colts Provincial Championships tomorrow so it's just me, the kids and the tv. Go Beck Rink!

I finished the first Vinterblomster mitten last Tuesday night. Here it is blocked. I love it.

I started the second mitt last night so that there is a chance I'll have a pair to wear this Spring (I think they'll match nicely with Claudia).

Emma's socks are almost done (Oak grove mc and Sheldrige Farms soft touch cc). Her feet have appeared to stop growing (she's just turned 9 and wear's a woman's size 7, so having them slow down for a bit is good for sock knitting and shoe buying).

And this is the thing that is distracting me from all of the above. My first piece of Vino--Laura's awesome sweater coat. The yarn is Dream in Colour Classy in November Muse and I love knitting this and looking at it. The colour is exactly my style and it's fast and fun. I put this into the bottom of my knitting bag and left all the rest out so I don't play with it for a bit.

This also game me the chance to show off my new couch and funky ottoman.  The scary ikea couch is no more and I have place to rest my feet while I knit!

Not completely seamless

Remember I asked a few posts ago about transferring my tunes from my ipod to a computer since my laptop died and I didn't backup everything--just my itunes purchases.

Well, I looked into your suggestions and it all looks pretty good, except that I just bought a snazzy new Macbook so the plot thickens...

First, I love the new computer.  New computers are not only slicker and faster, they're clean; no bookmarks in the browser, no mail, no files, no little bits of leftover who-knows-what on the hard drive.  Being a Mac I also have the clean lines of the designs and the cleanliness of a non-microsoft OS too and while I feel a bit stupid because I'm not familiar with the world of Mac, and because the move isn't quite as seamless as the Apple hype proclaims, I'm quite happy with my purchase.

However, when it comes to moving my ipod stuff to the Mac, there is a little ripple.  The act of plugging in the ipod to the Mac will cause it to reformat and wipe everything off.  So, I still need to back up everything to a PC, find a way to transfer said back up to the Mac and then reformat the ipod.  So I'll end up spending money for a program to move stuff to my old, old PC (which is really our server and computer for the kids to wreck) and then burn them all to disk to load them onto the Mac.  Since I have 99% of my tunes on CD anyway, it'll probably just be faster to load it all back in manually while I'm watching TV.

Which means that I have no product reviews for ipod to computer software--sorry. 

The way I see it, I have a small ipod (Mini) and was getting tired of listening to the same old stuff, so I can treat my ipod like a new computer and start fresh.   I did consider upgrading the ipod  but there's nothing wrong with it except that it doesn't look as cool as the new nanos.  And it still works so why bother?

Things Go Flying

A few weeks ago I attended the launch of my friend Shari's first novel, Things Go Flying.

Celebration was very much in order because Shari wrote this book, while at home with two young kids.  I know I wrote my dissertation while my kids were young (we met at a new mom's group and were doing our writing things at the same time) but they were not with me during the day.  I cannot phathom how she wrote in those times when the kids were at pre-school groups or napping.

I was so excited when I heard she sold the book and so pleased when I got to read it. 

I loved it.

Not only did I laugh out loud in a few places, I was completely captured by the intermingling of ordinary life with slices of the extraordinary. A fun read with smart writing.   

I confess that lately I haven't been reading much because I like to spend my small amount of leisure time knitting and because I find that reading all day at work wears me out a bit.  I'm also not in the mood for heavy reading.  Much of the literary fiction out there is mighty heavy and I want something well written but also lighter in tone--no child deaths, war, revelations of sexual abuse, horrible secrets, or even triumph over tragedy tales (because of the tragedy part).  Things Go Flying has none of those things.  Instead it's funny and a bit quirky which suits me fine.

Right now it's only available in Canada, but that should change soon.  Check out Shari's site for details.  (Or see if Amazon.ca ships internationally).

And, if you're in the Toronto area, she will visit your bookclub.   Neat!

I heart Roam

I love my new sweater.

Laura's design was fantastic to knit, the shaping is fabulous and the finished product fits me perfectly.

The zipper sewing worked on the first try and the only hard thing was getting some good photos (I decided to stop trying and just blog it).  I finished it last Wednesday and have worn it every day since.

And the Briar Rose Fourth of July yarn is fantastic.  I loved working with it, love the colours, love how it feels.  I want more!

"I love it when a plan comes together." *

(*Geek points to anyone who knows that quote--circa the same time as my wood panelled basement)

Weather Report

Friday night the snow started.  It was sorta pretty and in Toronto it was melting when it hit the road.  We (somewhat foolishly) decided to hit the road too and drove to Tweed.  It took a long time but we arrived safely and I didn't have the stroke that it felt like I was having when we passed the big trucks.

It was a good thing we left Friday, because we certainly couldn't have left Saturday when the Mother of the first storm struck.

The cottage windows usually provide a gorgeous panoramic view of the lake.  This is what we saw for most of Saturday (I put the tree in the photo so you would think I just took a picture of a white piece of paper):

This is what it looked like this morning:

I haven't checked to see how  much snow we got, because in March any snow is too much snow.

The good news was that I was inside with a warm fire working on my Vinterblomster mittens. 

It was a long storm.

I love saying "Vinterblomster"

Thanks to Ravelry, I discovered some very cute mittens. I love daisies and there's something so cheery about this pattern that I want to make them right now.

What sealed the deal for me was having the called-for yarn in my stash. Amy brought it back for me from Norway and I like the idea of using it for a Norwegian pattern (where I get to keep saying Vinterblomster).

I'm still thinking out what colour goes where. Right now the plan is for the grey to be the background, the light aqua for the flowers and the teal for the contrast. I like the teal most of all, so wish I could use it more but I don't think it'll pop enough. The other option is to have the teal as the main colour and use the grey as the contrast--I may actually have to swatch (which does kill the cast on and get started thrill of a new project).

I am secretly hoping that by starting these mittens I will make all the snow melt and force Spring to arrive.  (Yes, I am in denial about yet another impending snow storm.)