The Good Ole Day

The other day an old friend of mine came into town. We went to highschool together. He's one of those people that I haven't seen in over 12 years, and can't find on Facebook. It was supercool to hang out and talk about the good old days, and he's still in contact with a lot of people that I haven't seen in forever so I got to hear about them. When we were in Grade twelvish he bought this little concrete ornament company and sold ornaments at the Saturday Market. He gave me a little hedgehog once, which I still have. He moved to Duncan and turned his company into a very succesful venture. He also started raising money for the David Suzuki Foundation with his 100th Monkey. He's raised $27,000 dollars for the David Suzuki Foundation! Super cool! But more importantly his wife knits, and she is just learning so I am going to give her some handspun yarn!
He gave me a monkey.
This monkey (who is as yet unnamed) is going to be kickin' it in the garden with the gnome.

Things are starting to slow down a little at work I had some time for knitting and have been working on this.
It's made with Mermaids Tail yarn from Twist of Fate. It's a merino/seacell blend which is very shiny. The magpie in me loves the shiny!
But I need to put that off to the side to finish the mystery project...aren't you intrigued?

In Which Many Things Come to Pass

Words cannot describe the busyness of the last week... Last weekend was the icebreaker softball tournament. Sunday night was my Birthday party (more on that later). Monday was work and the beginning of my Pool League Tournament. Tuesday work, taking my stepdaughter to ball (and was my actual birthday, although I forgot that until I was almost at work). Wednesday was work and silkscreening tote bags. Thursday crazy busy work day and then the Body Beautiful piercing and tattoo show. Friday absolutely insane work day and drive up to Sun Peaks for the Twist of Fate Knitting Retreat. No word of a lie from Monday until Sunday afternoon I spent 5 waking hours at home...

It was all worth it though. As crazy busy as I was, they were all worthwhile pursuits.

My birthday was super awesome. There were a heck of a lot of people there.
I had no idea that so many people liked me, although I do admit the food may have been a big draw...seriously...the food...
I have never seen so much kalamari in my life...there was wings, dry ribs, veggies, fruit, spinach dip, kalamari, meat, cheese...I don't know...it's all a blur...a wonderful sated blur...
My friend Michelle brought a kick ass carrot cake.
There was lots of fun and ridiculousness.
And some karaoke judging.Adam gave me a 10!

I don't know if my brother will ever forgive my for making him wear a Hannah Montana Tiara...
Although Cliffy seemed to enjoy it...
It was without a doubt the best birthday party I have ever had! I asked people to not bring gifts, but if they wanted to they could bring a donation for Knitters Without Borders. We raised $180!

The Body Beautiful piercing and tattoo show was very cool as always. I really enjoy that show because of the eclectic group of people it brings in. There was a professional photographer there, so I will have some professional pics to put up soon. In the meantime here are some I took with my wishy washy little camera.
The knitting retreat was fantastically awesome. The instructor was Barb Brown of Wild Geese Fibres. She was a fantastically cool lady who knew an awful lot about knitting. She was very knowledgable about history so I really enjoyed listening to her theories on the exchange of ideas and information through women travelling throughout history. Her Great Grandmother showed Cowichan ladies how to knit Fair Isle, so I am going to check out her sweaters at the Museum the next time I go to Duncan. It was really nifty to hear about the evolution of the Cowichan Sweater. Barb's pretty famous in the knitting world and she hardly snores at all! (we shared a room).

I learned to knit Fair Isle and I really enjoyed it. I'm not even that great at it and it made me feel like a knitting genius! I can knit with both my hands!! I met lot of cool people and knit all weekend, after the week I had it was just about the funnest thing ever.

So yeah, things are slowing down a little bit now. I am still busy, but not exorcist head spinning busy. Hopefully now I can finally get back to some spinning and glass work, I finally managed to add a couple more products to my Etsy Store, but I have to get batteries for my camera to add anymore...stupid thing eats batteries...because I always forget to turn it off...


Oh and for those of you that have been wondering...yes Herman the Spider is still with us...

Ode to A

I saw her walking down the street
Alone
Bag over her shoulder
It was from a distance
I thought she was someone I knew
Someone who used to be my friend
But then someone walked past her
and she smiled at him
So I knew it wasn't her
She didn't smile at anyone
And that's how I knew
She wasn't the person who used to be my friend
I realized
That was why
I wasn't friends with her anymore

Don't call social services on me...I didn't mean to be neglectful...

So...I have been rather neglectful of my blog of late...but I have a really good excuse...
Here's one of them
I have been playing with my Harris Wheel...this lovely yarn is 1.5-2 wpi! My husband thinks it looks like climbing rope...I absolutely love the end result! I don't love using the actual wheel...it's clunky but light and wobbly. You really have to work at it to make the wheel go, and the hooks catch on the yarn all the time...luckily spinning this stuff is relatively fast, so even when I get annoyed with the glitches, it's not like I will be doing it for another 5 hours...
The other great thing about this wheel is that it's great for destashing! The first skein I did was 300gms and the second skein I did was a whopping 450 gms!! 1 pound of fat yarny goodness.
I also spung this "vegan" yarnIt is hemp plyed with china grass ramie. The hemp is pretty stiff, I am hoping to be able to find some that is finer or find a way to process the stuff I have.
I have been working on adding stuff to my etsy store. I haven't had any sales yet, but I have had several views of my items so I am pretty happy with that!

The Carnival came to town this weekend so I took the "kids" to check out the rides. My favourite part is the "Carnies" I always like to check out the travelling folk. Usually I am extremely dissapointed, I keep hoping to see a whole bunch of people that look like they are part of a travelling freakshow...
Aside from that the carnival was most excellent. I took Mackenzie, Stephanie and her boyfriend Ray-Tiny stayed home with the grandbaby. This was the first year that Mackenzie was tall enough to ride the big kid rides. She was pretty uncertain about whether or not she would do it but I told her that I would make sure that she was between two "adults" for all the rides and then she was game. It was absolute blast. At one point Stephanie got sick in a garbage can, which quite honestly made me laugh until I cried. We all got pretty nauseous and at the end of it all, after our stomachs had settled I bought mini-donuts. Apparently Ray's stomach wasn't as settled as he thought because he couldn't keep the one donut he at down and he also got sick in a garbage can. I asked Stephanie if they always did everything as a couple.
I pointed out to Mackenzie that she and I were the only ones who didn't get sick and she jumped up, point at Ray and said "HA! You got SERVED!" I have no idea where she gets her attitude from...
Easter Dinner was AWESOME!! Tiny baked Lemon Meringue Pies and there were delicious (note to self, go eat pie after writing blog post) and I had mashed potatoes, ham and cheese sauce for breakfast this morning.
I started a new knitting project but it's a secret so I can't give out any details. I can tell you that today involved some knitting, some purling, a few yarn overs, and some K2tog-I don't want to say much more than that because I don't want to give it away...

Pimpin' Myself Out

Yeah, I totally got my etsy store going! Check it out here. I am pretty excited, I only have a couple items, but more is coming soon...mostly I haven't put more on because I killed the battery on my camera!
I also brought home my "Harris Spinner" aka Indian Head spinning wheel. I got it in Vernon for a mere$30! That's right 30 bucks for a 100% working spinning wheel!! I am going to go try it out right now, so I am too busy to talk to you anymore...

Holy Startitis Batman!!

I know, I know...I have been rather frighteningly neglectful of my blog of late. It's not for lack of caring, I swear! I have just been really busy, although I will admit that in a lull I considered blogging but vetoed the idea because I realized it took away from precious knitting time.
I finished the asymmetrical cardi and it's freaking awesome! You'll just have to take my word for it because I don't have a pic of it (as usual) and I am at work-my boss might think it was strange if I just up and started taking photos of myself... To give you an idea of it's awesomeness I constantly get complimented on the sweater by friends and strangers alike. Not only that I have had non-homosexual men tell me they think it's nice and they like the colour! So yeah, it rocks, and I loves it.
The bad thing is, after finishing the aforementioned wicked sweater, I have the worst case of startitis! I tried to start the Aeolian Shawl but i have had nothing but trouble with it...this is largely due to my complete inability to read lace charts. I mean, I know how, and I can do it-but somehow when I do lace with a chart it's WRONG! Nearly every row I end up with the wrong number of stitches. I have identified all things I do wrong-e.g forgetting yarn overs, doing a knit stitch automatically after a yarn over but forgetting to count it, etc. Actually, pretty much all my problems with lace chart centre around yarn overs. But even though I know what I am doign wrong, I keep doing it. I feel like I am taking a bat and beating myself in the forehead with it over and over again and then asking "Why do I have a headache." I got to the point where I was 4 stitches out on one row and I yelled "F@*! it" and threw it across the room.
So then I started working on designing my entrelac noro vest...and that was a fantastic learning experience. I learned that I don't know how to count. Seriously, somebody needs to find my kindergarten teacher (her name is Mrs. Gillis and she teaches at St. Mary's in Chilliwack...I think she is still teaching...) and fire her ass, because apparently she let me out of kindergarten unable to count. No really, I counted those damn cast-on stitches 8 times. When I got the same number twice I knit the first row, at the end of the row I recounted and it was out, and no matter how many times I recounted I couldnt' get the same number twice in a row. So I decided to start over and cast on using stitch markers to keep track, except I found that I was unable to frog my knititng because the Noro I was using has a shelf life of 2 months and dissolved upon contact. No really, ended up with 50 little pieces of Noro suited for rug hooking. It kind of makes me wonder if there was a secret misison in the yarn that I somehow overlooked and it self-destructed 5 minutes after using/reading it.
So I decided to start knitting a scarf, simple, mindless. It's working so far but I don't have my hopes up. It's the multi-directional diagonal scarf but I am knitting it out of crazy mohair. Like super-hairy muppet blinding colour mohair. It should be very awesome, or very scary-either way I will be happy.
Meanwhile, while I am doing all of this I SHOULD be finishing the Kilosweater. I have the yarn spun, it's ready to go, the last sleeve is on the needles-but I dont' enjoy knittin git anymore because it was such a dissapointment. But I HAVE to finish it this week since it's for my friend's ANGEE's birthday (which was last week...I know, I am a bad friend...)
Anyhoo, that's the crazy quick update on my life, there's more super cool things going on, but since my lunch break is now over I feel this nagging obligation to go back to work.
Ta ta
(That's right, I totally said "Ta ta")

Spidere Update

Yeah...it's still there