I had a great title...

I was thinking last night before falling asleep that I should really post to the blog, and somewhere in the ether of wakefulness and sleep I came up with a really great title. Or maybe I just thought I had. In any case, it's long gone now, as is the brilliant essay I had composed in my head. I had been thinking back (way back) to the few posts I had written that were neither baby nor craft related and thought it might be nice to try and compose a few of those again from time to time. The fear that my brain is turning to a baby-talking-babbling pile of mush is a real and ever present one. I have no time to read and my capacity for a varied and impressive vocabulary is dwindling at an alarming rate. Wait, I should clarify. I suppose I might have time to read if I chose to use my snippits of free time for that purpose. But when I do get a chunk of time to myself, I usually clean something or hurry up and knit a bit. For some insane reason, I still think that I can read in bed when the reality is that I'm generally passed out before my head even hits the pillow. One night last week, I didn't even make it that far as I fell asleep while I was feeding the baby. C'est la vie.

Yesterday I was over at the Harlot's blog reading about the nastiness that has ensued due to the chaos that has become the sock summit that she has been working hard to put together. If you've read her post, you'll know that she and her comrades have apparently been receiving threatening and hateful email. When I first read that, I thought to myself 'Well that's rude' and went about my day. But I kept thinking about it and after a while I thought 'Really? Threatening? Knitters? Knitters being threatening and hateful about knitting? Socks? SERIOUSLY?' I hope it is indeed a small cohort of complainers. I mean really people...it's just knitting. Socks. Knitting socks. With other people knitting socks. There really are much more pressing things to get your panties in a bunch over. Sheesh.

Speaking of knitting, I have some to show.



First up, sock one of the Paraphernalia pair is done. Love, heart, adore. Fits like a glove too...or a sock as it were, hehehe. I think after numerous years of knitting these things, I may actually be getting the hang of it.

I've also started in on another sweater for myself, this time a Starsky by Jordana Paige. This is the third spring in a row that I've started a sweater. I feel a tradition developing. Also the third sweater that I'm knitting with Patons Shetland Chunky. I'm pretty sure chunky knits are the least flattering thing to clothe myself in, but I'm drawn to them.



Another phenomenon that seems to have repeated itself with this sweater is the curse of the cable. Maybe curse is too strong a word...the conundrum of the cable. Not the first time I've had to rip back to the beginning cuz I screwed up. I've knit the cable repeat correctly, just over the wrong number of stitches. I cast on the correct number to begin with and while I was doing the ribbing, thought that the pattern had asked for the wrong number since the 3 x 3 cable wasn't working out evenly. It wasn't until I had the 3 inches knit that I realized I hadn't read the right directions for the size I was knitting which had a helpful little adjunct which stated 'knit to last 2 sts, knit 2'. Ah yes grasshoppah, I get it now. So I just figured if I added the extra stitch that I had decreased at the beginning, everything would work itself out. Which it might've had I increased the st. on the correct side, which means I likely started the cabling on the wrong instead of the right side. Long story short, the banana tree cable pattern is moved one stitch over the entire way across. It isn't hugely noticable but kinda bugged the crap out of me. I let it marinate overnight, then consulted a fellow comrade in yarns and yes, I am going to rip it back to the end of the ribbing and fix it from there. It's only a naps worth of knittng to undo, so it's not so tragic.



Recent yarn acquisitions. All Fleece Artist. The one with the tag (Somoko) was my prize from Nova Knitters blogiversary party and the other two were purchases from the Have a Yarn mill ends sale that Heddy was nice enough to pick out and bring home to me!

Gotta go, there's sweater ripping and yarn caking to do. Then it might be time to venture out of doors. That large shiny ball of fire in the sky has returned and one never knows just how long it'll stick around. Until later...

Retail and Fabric Therapy...

First up, the retail therapy.

Saturday I decided to venture to that little travelled place called 'outside' and made my way to Mahone Bay with birthday money in hand. I'm glad I picked a day that was warm and sunny, although I anticipated that my little lone excursion would be way more fun that it actually was. Turns out that I am just way too pregnant for anything to be tonnes of fun at this point. I couldn't stand for long, I certainly couldn't get down to some of the yarn and oh my stars (to borrow an expression) was I warm :) Have a Yarn is warm on the best of days. Throw in nine months of pregnant, a winter coat and sun streaming in the windows and you have a nuclear meltdown on your hands. I had hoped to avoid wearing my coat in, but I couldn't park quite close enough for that.

Anyhow, I managed to do a fair amount of damage anyway. Behold...(ignoring the mess in the background)



I now have a swift. I've been wanting one forever and yet when I finally did purchase it, I thought it kind of silly since my yarn buying may be slowing down considerably in the next little while. Meh...ah well. It's purdy. That is some Fleece Artist mill end, sock weight I think. It didn't have a tag. It was on sale. Whee.



What would a yarn shopping trip be without more Tanis? This time in the Spearmint colourway. Well on my way to having the whole collection. And so nice to be able to cake it up and use it right away now.

Which is where the fabric therapy came in today.

I was reading Chicken Betty's blog yesterday and she was playing with fabric that was just so pretty and fresh and, well, springy. Made me realize that when wanting for spring and cooped up (no pun intended I swear) cuz of the cold, a little infusion of colour can be a wonderful thing. So off to the fabric stash I went. Well, to be honest, I had visited it a little prior to my yarn shopping trip and here's why...



It may be kind of hard to make out, but the greeny-blue yarn matches the greeny-blue fabric bang on. That came out of the stash. The yellow fabric I picked up on the way home from yarn shopping (sheesh, almost forgot about that). The purpose? Pinta needs dresses. We're hoping to make a trip home to Ontario in the oppressive (a word I do not use for dramatic effect in the least) heat and humidity of late summer where central air reigns supreme. Solution for small babies? Light cotton sun suits with lightweight little sweaters, that's what I think.



Ta-da :) (I have to use smileys instead of exclamation points...while I've discovered another avenue for a 1, there has not been a similar solution for the exclamation point on my broken laptop keyboard...arg). Having a fabric stash is a good thing. Didn't quite have enough for the bloomers so I used a co-ordinating fabric for those, as well as the ruffle on the back of the top.



See? Too freakin' cute. And easy. I made a couple of these for my niece way back when she was a wee babe (all of two years ago) and heard that they went over well in the humidity of Florida on vacation, which, honestly, is comparable to my hometown in August. I get the biggest kick out of pattern sizing too. That is the 'newborn' size there and it looks to me like it would fit a six month old or older. So I think I'm good. I plan to start the little sweater tonight sometime (no, not taking my own 'stop knitting' advice...I'm too fidgety without the knitting, sore hands be damned) and hopefully get the yellow dress sewn up tomorrow. I petered out around mid afternoon and lay down for a nap, thinking I'd only been out an hour or so, only to wake and discover three hours had disappeared (and that my husband had the same idea and conked out on the couch downstairs...with the dog. My no couch rule undermined yet again).

I feel much refreshed after my little fabric therapy. I'll likely be rummaging through the stash again to see what else I can come up with. Until later...

Love and Hate...

Love:



--My Central Park Hoodie. A less than enthusiastic photographer who disappeared inside before I could approve the photo shoot and perhaps request additional shots resulted in a handful of photo's that did nothing for either the sweater or the model. This is the best of the bunch and can best be described as me doing my best immitation of a sulky teenager.

--Meeting new people. It was a perfect fall day here in NS and I had the pleasure of meeting a fellow Raveler and Mountie wife from BC who I have been exchanging Rav messages with for the last little while. Lovely lunch and chat and some yarn shopping to boot in Mahone Bay. A thoroughly pleasent meeting and afternoon, which left me feeling very contented and happy, floating on a little yarny-purchase cloud all the way home. Soon after my arrival the dramatic turn off events resulted in the aforementioned hate.

Hate:

--When the dog shits on the floor for the third time since moving into the house in July. Seriously, WTF? This dog is trained. He practically asks in as close to a sentence as you can get with a dog, 'Um, excuse me, but it would appear as though I need to be let out of doors to relieve myself. Could you possibly assist me in facilitating such?' To which we happily reply, 'But of course Hank. By all means.'
Both the constable and I were in the house and not at all pre-occupied. I was at the computer upstairs, he in the livingroom playing PS2 baseball. At no time did Hank politely ask to be let out. Not until the unpleasent stench of dog feces wafted into the craft room was I aware of his wrong doing. Middle of the landing at the top of the stairs, which, thankfully, had a plastic drop cloth down as we are back at the painting. But still...what gives? He'd been out just a little while earlier, and made no attempt to make his needs known. Instant grumpiness. For the entire evening. Which probably lead to the other thing I hate...



--When I don't listen to that inner voice that says, 'Wait to borrow a swift from someone before you decide to wind that skein.' That mess was a lovely, squishy hank of Tanis 'Sweetheart'. Now it is the bane of my existence and will haunt me until tomorrow, as I refuse to do battle with it any more this evening.

I want a glass of red wine so bad it makes me quite literally want to cry.

One Night in Hillyfax...

So this past Wednesday the constable and I jetted off to Halifax for a mini-vacay of sorts. As a gift, my big bro had given us some tickets to go see Bob Dylan in concert. The nice thing about having a husband who works weird shifts is that every so often, it actually works out in our favour. He had the time off and my job is pretty flexible so we booked a hotel room and off we went.

Our hotel was in Bayer Lake, as we had some shopping we wanted to do on the way home, but after checking in and dumping our stuff, we headed downtown for a little sightseeing/shopping. First up of course was The Loop, which had this adorable sea creature display in the window! I was charmed by it. A felted jelly fish will get me every time apparently. If you check out the website, you can read about the little project that's going on.



After cradling some Tanis hand dyed skeins, one in bright yellow and one in bright orange, very uncharacteristic colour choices for me (there is a certain someone who I feel might be influencing my attraction to bright colours of late) I opted for the more moody and squishy Arequipa (how does one pronounce that anyway?). 65% Superwash, 20% Alpaca and the rest Nylon, is delightfully soft and bound to get lots of wear. Now, it wasn't you guys I was telling that I wouldn't buy any more yarn this summer, was it? No? Good. Must've been someone else. And I picked up the new YH book. More of a booklet, but very cute nonetheless.

After The Loop we hit Mountain Equipment Co-Op for the hubs and then traipsed around until we stumbled upon the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, as we had really wanted to check out the Art of Hockey exhibit. But it was 4:30 and they were closing in half an hour. Boo. Turns out the very next day they had their later hours AND it was national museum day or something and they were offering free admission after five pm. Boo hiss. Two minutes in the box for the AGNS. So we went looking for dinner instead.



Along the way I saw the Wired Monk, the little coffee bistro where I've heard some knitters are known to gather (waves) and a Mexican tall ship. We ended up at the Lower Deck (pub) for a yummy smoked meat sandwich and some soccer playoff action. Cool place...long tables...good beer.

Then of course it was time for the really big shooo. But might I just interject here for a minute about the hilliness of that fair city? Okay, I knew it was hilly but as I'd only strolled it very briefly once before and this trip was more of a power-shopping/hurry up and find these places C'MON! I didn't quite appreciate just how up hill everything really is. *pant* It was a harsh reminder that I am woefully out of shape which really, is a bit of a misnomer. For one to be out of shape, one has to have been 'in' shape at one point. I don't think I necessarily qualify. Anyhow, it wasn't as though I was laid out on the pavement, but I lumbered a little more than I think I really should be lumbering at this age. Sheesh.

So anyway, Bobbo. I was quite the fan back in my teens as I considered myself a bit of folksie/hippy crossed with some sort of alternaweird artsy wallflower. Really, I was just confused with bad fashion sense. So I find it somewhat ironic that I ended up sitting next to the very epitome of my former self. Young, sweet and bubbling over with enthusiasm dressed in a very paisley vintagey dress, slouch socks and ballet slippers. She was clearly there to see vintage Dylan with his acoustic guitar and harmonica singing Blowin' in the Wind. As were 99.9% of the rest of the crowd I suspect. I wasn't really sure what to expect. I mean, after 5 decades, I'd say the standards get a little tired.

Anyway, he started off with Rainy Day Woman #12 and 35, followed by It Ain't Me Babe, both of which were heavily rearranged to suit the rest of the show, which was all rockabilly/blues. It Ain't Me Babe was so different from the original, and Dylan's voice was soooo gravelly and harsh that not only did I say to myself, 'Whoo boy, we're in for a rough night', but in going over the set list later on with the hubs he was utterly shocked that Dylan actually played some songs that he might've recognized.


(yeah, we had crazy good seats. I managed to smuggle my camera in, and even though they were checking bags at the door, just about everyone around me had one. This was the still I got right before filming about 30 seconds before I got scolded by a security guard. Filming with a camera...not acceptable. Filming the entire concert with your Blackberry {dude in front of me}...totally acceptable. Anyhow, I'm going to be a good girl (re: cops wife) and not post the vid online. I'm the kind of person with the kind of luck that would get lambasted with some sort of copyright infringement hassle.)

I don't have the full breadth of the Dylan discography, only the hippie highlights, so even though I knew he ventured into this rockabilly territory, I'd never heard any of it before. I was quite pleasantly surprised. Bobbo, even at the ripe old age of a billion, still rocks the house. The show was about two hours dead on, without any interaction or kibitzing from Dylan, just two solid hours of music, including one encore. He did do All Along the Watchtower for the encore. But he never did play guitar. Just the keyboard. Poor Bob did have a bit of a senior moment though when he misplaced his harmonica and one of the roadies had to hand it to him.

I've always thought of Bob Dylan as this really ethereal, other worldly character, and he did not disappoint. The whole not talking to the crowd thing helped this. And it cemented in me a strong desire to only see geriatric rock stars from now on. The show started at 8 pm, was over by 10 and we were both back in our cozy hotel beds by around 10:30-ish. Man, am I ever getting old!

The next morning, we hit LaZBoy and pretty much picked out a whole new living room for the big move into the house, hopefully sometime this summer. We haven't ordered it yet, just spent a couple of hours picking out fabric and wood finish, which was way too much fun.

As for my baby boy Hank, he spent his first night away from home with friends of ours while we were gone.



I was really quite apprehensive about how he would handle it, but after an initial bout of homesickness as he watched my husband pull away in the Jeep (I couldn't go...I've seen how Hank reacts when I hand him off on his leash to someone else) I guess he settled right in and was a perfect little house guest. He got more walks in one and a half days than I get him out for in a week, which made me feel quite inadequate as a puppy mom. Oh well. I feel much better about leaving him with people now, knowing that he'll be a good listener and follow their rules.

And that's the week in review. Very refreshing to get away, if even just for overnight. There's so much to see and do in the city, I'd really like to go back for a two day excursion sometime. As for knitting, I'm just about finished some socks out of Fleece Artist Somoko mill ends (yummy) and am really itching to start another big project. I feel the tides turning towards me becoming a sweater knitter.

Have a nice weekend y'all. Until later...