Go here and see Mona’s new toy. I am so jealous! I’m thisclose to trying to blow up the pic of the directions on how to put it together and having Yannick fake one with parts from Reno Depot. Thisclose.

This is the view from my front door. I should be confused…except this happens every year.

Happy Spring everyone!

I had a great time in TO over the weekend. Many amusing things occurred…most involving my family. I will put together a post of highlights as soon as my mom sends me over some pics ‘cus I forgot to bring our camera. (Ok, I forgot we even had a camera, and that we would be going somewhere camera-worthy).

I ditched going to my sister’s fashion show tonight. Don’t label me a horrible sister, she’s in 1 number right at the end that lasts about 2.5 minutes, and I’ve already seen hundreds of her dance and fashion shows. The main thing drawing me to this one was that it is hosted by Jenna and Ethan…that would be 2 winners of the TV show Survivor, and a couple, last I bothered checking. I was all excited until I woke up this morning to rain and a migraine. Plus my online TV guide didn’t work so I couldn’t tape anything…and then it hit me. I don’t need to go to a Jewish youth organization’s fashion show so I can see TV celebrities. My mom was in a movie. Technically my sister was too. I was in a made-for-TV movie. My entire immediate family was in a show on Life Network. My brother did a season of reality TV in Australia. My other brother is an extra in TV and actual coming-to-theaters movies. My cousin is a TV reporter. My other cousin works with Michael Moore and other big names. Why do I need to go sit in a crowd and be a faceless, nameless blob amongst others just to catch a glimpse of 2 people who were on TV a few times? I can pick up the phone and call a few such celebrities any time I want.

I’d rather knit.

It deserved it, trust me.

I was going to post pics last night. In my head, the plan was to go home from work, sit down and knit on the Comfort Shawl. Then I remembered that I’ll be in TO this weekend and besides the CS I wanted something brainless and smaller to work on, so I figured “I’ll cast-on a quick pair of socks”. Painless, right? Yeah. Well. I grabbed the orange/red sunrise-looking hank of sock yarn I bought in Vermont with the girls last October. 75% wool, 25% nylon, irresistable colors…I thought it would be easy. I took my ball winder and the hank and went down to the kitchen so I could weigh the hank on the digital scale and wind 2 equal-sized cakes (1 for each sock). I started winding at 9pm.

I was done at MIDNIGHT. Arghhhh!!!! It was smooth sailing straight into Tangle City, with a right turn at Lottsa-Knottsa Avenue. 3 FREAKING hours to wind 2 cakes that ended up being NOT the same weight. I have one that’s 48g and the other is 64g so I’ll make the first toe-up sock with the smaller one and try to use it all…knowing I’ll have a bit left over on the other ball.

I was so mad I actually spanked the yarn. (Well, I smacked it with an open palm- does that count?) There are no pics of the before, during or after because a) I thought it would take about 20 minutes and then I’d be up in bed, knitting, and b) I was too aggrivated once I was done to look at the orange blobs a moment longer. At least these socks will be for me.

So my TO knitting checklist:
-Comfort Shawl and 1 spare skein (just in case)
-Sunrise Socks
-knit-kit with scissors, measuring tape, etc…
-socks book that reminds me how to do the weird wrappy cast-on for the toe-up socks

I’m thisclose to bringing Clapotis too but I think that’s pushing it. My main priority is the shawl, I’m only bringing the sock because the shawl is too big to risk pulling out in the restaurant. I think I can get away with the sock if I knit under the table.

…I hope.

Last night we had an “unofficial” knitting meetup. Most of us assumed that we would be having one, because there wasn’t one last week. Turns out that March has 3 Wednesdays, and with how the dates fall, next week is our “official” meeting. Whatever. We still had a good turnout of about 10 or so knitters, and still talked, laughed and knit until the wee hours. (I left at 9:30pm, so I’m guessing about the “wee hours” part).

I worked on the Comfort Shawl, which is what I just decided to name the shawl/pillow thingie for my family friend (see last post). Pics later, since my phone doesn’t seem to want to email them over on demand.

I came thisclose to winning poker Saturday night. Rich and I were close at the end, and finally we decided to call it on a “best of 5” win. He won. I’m not bitter. 😉

Sunday I went to my parents’ house to model the two engagement party outfits. I’d modeled them for Yannick Julie and Rich the night before and instead of there being a clear “winner”, I was told to wear both. My parents couldn’t decide either, so it appears that on the night of my engagement party I will be pulling an awards-show-host type deal and changing halfway through. I’ll probably wear the lace dress first then change into the funky pants for the dancing later. Had to do some shopping for unmentionables (hehe) to go with the outfits, then went back to the parents’ house to spend the afternoon making chocolates for the engagement party…then scrapping the chocolates for the engagement party. What were we thinking? It would have taken waaay too long and not been worth the effort. We stayed over for dinner then headed home to watch some TV, knit and snooze.

Monday was a busy day too. First I went to my LYS, then to a bulk store, then picked up lunch, then raced home to eat in 5min or less, then grabbed my library books, then went to the library to return them and take out some new ones, then went to Curves, then went to Loblaw’s then went home. Whew! I left the house at 10am and was only home after 5pm! On my day off! So much for a nice relaxing day knitting by the TV. I did spend the rest of the day knitting on Clapotis. I have a few yards left and then the first ball is finished. Three balls would really have made for a short scarf, but I was lucky and found the same dyelot at my LYS so I bought an extra ball (and I know they have 9 more) just in case.

Had an interesting experience at Loblaw’s. They have this new (to me) think now where they have the cashier’s name on the monitor at the cash. First and last name. So I get to the cash and I see my cashier’s name and it rings a bell for me. She’s a young girl, looking somewhere between 15 and 18. So I ask her if she ever lived on XX street. She did. Holy cow. This is a girl I used to babysit for when I was in high school! And I DO mean BABYsit…she was 6 months old when I babysat her! MAN I’m getting old.

Got a good phone call too. One of my oldest friends called me with some good news and bad news. The bad? She wouldn’t be able to attend my engagement party. The good? It’s because she’s 3 months pregnant and not feeling well at all and already coming in the week later. Woo hoo! I rambled on a bit there but the best part of that sentance is the part about the baby! Congrats Jessa!

Finally, before going to bed, I watched Canada’s Worst Handyman. It was episode 3, so somewhere I must have missed episode 2. Darryl Darryl Darryl. What were you doing?? Resorting to sabotage? *tsk tsk And here I was thinking you were doing so well.

Tuesday was a pretty uneventful day at work, except I finally found out some info I needed. See, we have an old family friend. (Ok, not that old, but goes back a long time, friends with my parents since high school). This family friend has some kids, similar in ages to the kids in my family. This meant that when we grew up near them, we got together often. When we moved away we stopped seeing them as often (at least the kids) although they stayed family friends. I recently started seeing more of one of the younger kids because she works somewhere I go pretty often. Well, about 2 weeks ago she started feeling kinda sick and, well, fast forwards to the results and it’s leukemia. It’s really bothering me because this girl is so sweet and kind and nice and young. I really wanted to make her something because she’s going to be in the hospital for a while and I wanted her to have something new and clean and comforting. But I was waiting to find out her favorite color and I finally found it out yesterday so right after work I went and bought some yarn in that color and started on a shawl-type thing. I’ll be working more on it tonight at the knitting meetup so I’ll post pics tomorrow or something.

Finally, 2 amusing moments from this morning, both involving Yannick. I was in the spare bedroom grabbing a purse when I hear him make a comment about something working out better when he was a kid. I peek out of the door to see him sitting on the top stair of our staircase.
Yannick: Remember when we were kids and thought it was fun to go down the stairs on our butts? How did we do it?
Me: Didn’t we have diapers to pad our butts back then?
Yannick: Nah, I still did it when I was older.
He then proceeds to go sliding down the stairs on his jeans-covered butt. Let me paint a picture for you: Yannick is 31. 6’2″. 230 lbs. He hadn’t gotten down more than 2 stairs before momentum got a hold of him and he nearly flew down the other 20 or so stairs. I could tell by the fifth stair that this had gone from “hey this is kinda fun” to “ok this really hurts”. I laughed. Oh how I laughed. 🙂

A little later we were having breakfast and he decided to try one of my new Silhouette Smoothies yogurt drinks. After it was finished he said “You know, it’s just like having yogurt, but not having to spoon it.” I asked him if he always cuddled his yogurt from behind. He didn’t find it quite as amusing as I did.

Not from any deficiencies or sickness, just due to going to bed after 1:00am and waking up at 6:30am. We had a fun dinner at Fourquet Fourchette last night for Mike’s birthday, and he was gifted with the aptly named Mike’s Hat. It fits! That took a big worry off my mind, and I was able to relax and enjoy my food. Excellent meal as always there. They have a “maple” special going on so you had a choice of a maple-infused menu or the normal menu (which is still pretty spectacular). Couldn’t pass up their little breads, even though they’re not GI. Everything was delicious as usual.

This morning I was up so early ‘cus I had a hair appointment. Finished by 11:00 (yes, it took 3.25 hrs to color my hair) and my dad wasn’t at work yet so I went to the mall across the street and had some breakfast. I knit through the appointment even though my heart stopped every time a drop of color fell off the brush- I’m always afraid it will fall on my project! I also knit through breakfast ‘cus a) I was alone, b) I didn’t have a book with me, and c) I have books in my Palm but it’s a huge battery drain and I was running low already. I’m about 10 rows away from being finished the increase section. I can’t wait to start dropping stitches!

To Darryl from CWH: How cool! Thanks for writing to me! Yannick and I loved the show. He’s the handyman in our home so he was looking forwards to seeing what the show considered “worst” and I was looking forwards to seeing what he thought of the tasks and stuff. You 5 rocked! The show is very entertaining but it doesn’t feel like fun is being poked at anyone’s expense. I can’t wait to watch the next episodes and see what happens! Yannick wants me to let you know that we both agreed that you definately deserved the Most Improved Toolbelt.

*groan*

Of course, this probably isn’t funny if you don’t know that the name of the James C. Brett colorway in the Marble yarn is called “Berries”. But now you do. And now you can laugh.

Since Mike’s Hat is done and I don’t have any knitting deadlines at the moment I snapped at the chance to work on Clapotis some more. I’m still not sure if it’s the pattern or the yarn, but I’m loving every minute of it. I’m using stitch markers instead of purling the sts to be dropped like some people do, ‘cus I like them. I will definately be buying more of this yarn in the future.

I’ve completed 4 full increase sections at this point. I’m going to do at least one more, then decide if I do the 2 others that the pattern calls for. Even though the yarn is supposed to be dk weight (there is no gauge given, it just says “knits to most dk patterns”) I’m getting 5st to the inch on 5mm needles, which to me suggests worsted weight. Right now the scarf would be 12″ wide. Each full increase section adds about 2.5″-3″ but I haven’t decided yet how wide I want this to be. I want it more as a scarf than a shawl, so I’d rather lose an increase section or two but add some straight sections to make it longer. I’ll check it out in another 12 rows and see.

In the spirit of honesty (if I can’t be honest in my online journal to an unknown number of random strangers, where CAN I be honest?) I’m showing you the one thing I hate about the hat. It seems I didn’t pay attention in knitting school on the day when they explained how to avoid a jog when you switch colors in the round. I must have skipped that day or been outside smoking or something. See, when you knit in the round it’s not like crochet where you can (if you want) have actual rounds that meet and end, then you go up and do the next row. In knitting you’re technically knitting an unending spiral. And this looks pretty fugly. My only hopes are that a) Laura or one of the girls buy a cute 2″ square patch that can be sewn over this mess (OCC maybe?), or b) that Mike just wears the hat with the brim turned up. All the time. Learning experience, it’s a learning experience. (To all the sticklers out there- please don’t berate me for not starting over if I wasn’t happy with it. Did I not mention the party is tomorrow night? Plus…I don’t know how to fix it yet. I have to GFGI* first).

*GFGI- Go F&^%ing Google It

In the spirit of honesty (if I can’t be honest in my online journal to an unknown number of random strangers, where CAN I be honest?) I’m showing you the one thing I hate about the hat. It seems I didn’t pay attention in knitting school on the day when they explained how to avoid a jog when you switch colors in the round. I must have skipped that day or been outside smoking or something. See, when you knit in the round it’s not like crochet where you can (if you want) have actual rounds that meet and end, then you go up and do the next row. In knitting you’re technically knitting an unending spiral. And this looks pretty fugly. My only hopes are that a) Laura or one of the girls buy a cute 2″ square patch that can be sewn over this mess (OCC maybe?), or b) that Mike just wears the hat with the brim turned up. All the time. Learning experience, it’s a learning experience. (To all the sticklers out there- please don’t berate me for not starting over if I wasn’t happy with it. Did I not mention the party is tomorrow night? Plus…I don’t know how to fix it yet. I have to GFGI* first).

*GFGI- Go F&^%ing Google It