Knitting Under Water

Happy Queen Victoria’s Birthday everyone!  Of course it really isn’t her birthday, just the weekend we celebrate it on.  Another name for this weekend is May 2-4 weekend, as in you go out and buy a case of 24 beers to drink.  There is a very good reason why all provincial parks are liquor free until after this weekend…  But it is also the official kick-off to the summer season, and it is going to be a beauty eh!  The temperatures will be high, as will our spirits. 

This weekend Miss J and I are driving down to Salt Lake for a road trip extraordinaire!  I can’t believe how perfectly all the plans have come together.  We’re going to try and finish up projects that have been hanging around awhile with all that good driving time.  On the way down we’re stopping at the Snake River Fiber Festival, and meeting Miriam in Ogden to go to some shops there.  On Sunday we’re having breakfast with the dymanic Margene and blog-free Val, and then contuing the day at the Highland Perk knitting circle.  Throw in a visit with some other friends, a trip to Red Butte gardens, maybe some other shopping (a special Canadian request has been made for Target, cause we don’t got them up here ya know!).  I hope I packed enough:

Oh yeah, I’ve got a bunch of sun dresses and skirts as well.  And sunscreen, Hi Mum!

Have a great weekend everyone, and raise a glass to good ol’ Queen Vic!

My little Jack has the cutest feet, all good and hairy. He is already a great Canadian cat, even though he is American by birth.  Those feet won’t need socks!  It is amusing that since I said I can’t get good photos of him I’ve been catching him lying in the sun a few times.  He also woke me up on Saturday morning by licking my eyelids.  I’m torn between thinking its sweet, and wondering if he is practicing for when I die and he eats my eyeballs. 

Continuing the casting on craze going on lately I add the vintage lace cardigan, inspired by this one!  As always, ones friends make nicer sweaters than those in the books.  Mine is growing from the Debbie Bliss Primo a blend of 70% bamboo, 30% wool.  It is making a lovely springy material so far, and the colour is so fresh.

Now that the lace pattern is established its growing pretty well.  When I’m not working on all my other projects.  What fun!  Its a beautiful day in Calgary, going up to over 20 oC today.  Wish I wasn’t in the cold air conditioned office looking out!

And now introducing a new series chez ma blog, called just riding along, or pics I’ve taken from my bike.  Entirely random, just what I see, and whether I have my camera out and handy.  This weekend I rode down to the baby shower, and had a lovely time on a lovely day.  On my daily commute downtown I go through the zoo, and often see the boofalo:

Shhh, they’re sleeping.  Too many fences in the way to go over and pick up buffalo fibre.  Next along the path are the deer, then the moose.  So far I have not run into any escaped gorillas, for which I am grateful.  Continuing down the bike path, the way to the Make 1 yarn store is over Memorial Dr:

Here is how you do it.  Mum, if you are reading this, keep going.  Everyone else skip over to the next paragraph.  In order to go up this round about, and go over the road, carefully dismount, and walk your bike up the ramp slowly. When you reach the ground on the other side, carefully get back on your bike and continue on.  Got that?

Okay, no Mums allowed.  Here is how you really do it.  Its best to have your mountain bike with some good grippy tires, especially good sidewall traction.  Make sure no one is in your way, then take off up the ramp as fast as you can go.  Lean the bike over as far as you can and pedal fast!  Wheeeee!!!!  Coming down is a lot of fun as well to take the curves as fast and as far over as you can.  Can I do it again?

Since getting the twinset off the needles, there has been a bit of an explosion of beautiful new projects getting started chez me.  I’m absolutely delighted with all of them, and am having a great time working on something different every day.  There are a few lacy ones that take some more concentration, and some that are a bit more mindless, but beautiful none the less.  This new scarf, the Hazy Pazy from the Stitch ‘n Bitch calender is a huge hit so far. 

It is so beautiful, and feels so wonderful I just want to make a giant suit of it and live in it forever.  The yarn is from Wooly Wonkas, 70% kid mohair and 30% silk and 100% fab. u. lous.  The colourway is “American Beauty” and is a wonderful dappling of pink. 

The pattern is 5 rows of knit or purl, then one row of nifty dropping stitches and picking them back up again.  Dropping stitches is very cool, yet slightly nerve racking at the same time.  Of course I made Auntie S feel the heavenly softness, upon which she exclaimed “it feels like almost nothing, just like champagne!”.  And by a huge coincidence, that was exactly what we were drinking at the time!

French Champagne!  ‘Cause when you celebrate something, you should do it right!  After 8 long months, I sold the house in the States!  Which also means, we’re getting out of the crack apartment very soon!  Yippee!  I so happy.  But also sad, as that house held a lot of dreams that never came true.  But also some lovely times like when the cats came home as kittens, visits from family, and some nice BBQ’s in the backyard.  I hope the new owners are very happy here. 

I finally got to give this darling little outfit to the equally darling recipient this weekend.  It was killing me to keep it a secret for much longer.  Upon seeing the outfit for the first time, Miss J. exclaimed “I think I just ovulated”, which I believe means the outfit is really cute. 

There is Jemina doing her best impression of a cute bear that just escaped from the cute jail.  “Yo, don’t mess with the cute bear!  Or the cute baby!”.  Here is a closer look at the little flower buttons:

“Dude, Who ya calling cute?  I’ll rip your head off”.  - Jemina

This outfit is from Minnow Knits, Too by Jill Eaton.  I bought it years ago for my nieces and then never got around to making anything.  Plus I don’t think their parents would have really understood.  But I’m also dying to make some of the cute little sun dresses in this book, so watch out Little Miss M!  These rompers always seemed so cute and practical to me for an active baby.  They are made from a superwash yarn, and I forget which brand.  You can’t see the little pom pom on the hat very clearly but guess what: its also cute. 

I wore the twinset last Saturday in order to get some opinions on it at the Saturday knit group.  Little did I know it would be immortalized in the photos with Kurt, and it would look so bunchy under my knapsack.  But I do find it very comfy to wear, and the yarn is nice and soft (and warm) against my skin.  On the walk over to the coffee shop I took off the cardigan and just wore the little sweater, as the day had gotten warmer.  Most people I’ve asked have not noticed the yarn differences until I’ve pointed it out, and maybe they are just being polite but they say it looks nice.  Overall I think the pattern is great, but the yarn with the four colours is a bit overwhelming.  I would not wear it hung over, as it might make me hurl.  But it is good for the weather we’re having right now, cold in the morning, nicer by the afternoon.  Snow, then sun. 

I still need to put buttons on, but it requires a sewing machine which is currently in storage.  Can you see the different yarn on the undersweater from the cardigan?  Can you see the patch on the top left sleeve of the cardigan that is different?  I was going to try and fix it a bit more, honestly I was, but I ran out of yarn.  Please don’t point and laugh. 

Have a great weekend everyone!  All the new snow has melted here, so maybe there will be some bike riding!

Whew!  What a weekend!  With all the excitement on Saturday, then going to the show Stars on Ice.  It was a great show by the way, all the skaters were top notch, none of them disappointed.  Even Sasha Cohen had a moment of brilliance when she took her skates off and did a routine with three of the male pair skaters. 

On Sunday I went to a shawl shaping class with Joan Schrouder which was a lot of fun.  I was a bit slow, and didn’t quite get it at first.  Joan was talking about K1, yo, then knit around, then K2, yo and so on to make a circular spiral shawl.  I was of course busy writing down: Start with n, yo, knit 1 round, n+1, yo until shawl desired length.  Algebra is fun see?  I need to practice some of the techniques she taught us, so I hope to make some plain shawls just to play. 

Sunday night I headed up to Edmonton, the big ED, for a conference on membranes in water treatment.  Sounds like a roaring good time doesn’t it?  Well it was okay except for the annoyance of consultants who wouldn’t know a spiral wound membrane from a tubular one.  I mean come on people!  But after the conference I headed over to River City Yarns and said “I heard a rumour you have Socks that Rock!”.  And lo and behold, they are one of the two distributors in Canada, and one of twelve in North America.  I was good however, but I did buy this cat toy:

Pretty cat toy!  Okay, so its not a cat toy, but the cost of the yarn is almost exactly what I saved last month by riding my bike to work instead of taking the bus.  See how this works?  No guilt necessary!

Today my Mumsie is 6x years old, and she does not look a day over 4x!  Here she is singing karaoke:

It is from Mum that I got my love of musicals, both of stage and screen.  We grew up listening to Hair, West Side Story, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, all the greats.  When she was younger (just a bit) Mum was also a tap dancer and a synchronized swimmer!  She has also been immortalised in paint, and is currently staring at me from the calendar of my Dad’s paintings:

(Note how hard at work I am today, you can tell by how messy my desk is!).  The name of the painting is “Beloved”.  When I’ve really needed my Mum, she has come to my rescue to nurse me through two operations.  We have our little system down pat now (unfortunately) the day before we bring in tons of supplies and movies.  Then we spend three days on the couch knitting and watching movies, which I don’t usually remember cause I’m hopped up on pain meds. 

Mum also taught me to knit, way back when.  I remember making a brown pencil case that had lots of holes.  She also made all my skating costumes, and skating sweaters.  I can’t wait to see my new skating sweater!  Its in progress!  Mum also had to put up with me in the 80’s (shudder) when she finished a perfectly lovely aran fishermans sweater, but I thought it was too tight and made her put in extra panels so it would be more “baggy”.  Of course now I want to take those panels out!  Kids these days eh?

I hope you have a wonderful day Mumsie, and a great next year.  Love Me!

I am truly the luckiest girl in the world.  Look who I ran into on my way into work today:

Kurt Browning!!  The Kurt Browning!!! The cute, charming, adorable, Kurt Browning who winked at me!!!  He was looking for new luggage, I gave directions!!!!!! Please ignore how bad my new twinset looks, its not its fault.  I so happy!!!

The lace ribbon is growing apace, mostly during my lunch hour:

I have a habit when making something long like this of measuring it regularly and noting it in my day timer.  It makes me feel good when I can really see what progress I am making.  I also thought it would be fun to make a chart about it, and estimate my finish time based on the slope of the line.  Then I continued the thought by measuring the diameter of the ball of yarn, since I’m basically stopping when the yarn is gone, not when the scarf is a specific length.  I noticed a very interesting detail; the scarf had grown over a foot, and the ball remains the same diameter.  Now how can that be?  Could the ball of yarn be expanding as more tightly constrained strands are removed from the outer shell?  Could the yarn be so fine that I truly am not using any of it?  I seem to be using a great deal, but I see no change.  I am using the same procedure, and the same ruler to measure the ball.  Now I know I have a habit of over analyzing everything, but come on, this is fun.  I must design an experiment….

In other fun news, Its the weekend!!!  The most exciting thing I”m doing this weekend by far is going to see Stars on Ice.  And you know who will be there, the incredible Kurt Browning!!!  For those not in the know, here is one of his best routines!  And here is another favorite: Here!  I’ve seen Ice shows in the States, and they are fun.  The audience politely claps, they kind of know who the people are.  Canadian audiences on the other hand, go absolutely wild at these shows!  They love their skaters, even if they never won a gold medal.  Back in the day, when Kurt Browning skated you could hear the music for all the screaming and cheering.  It was a mad house at the old Gardens in Toronto.  I’ve waited seven years to see another show in Canada, and I can’t wait.

And if you are wondering why Kristie Y is doing so well at Dancing with the Stars, I found an old video from when she was a pair skater at Nationals in 1989.  And next week they allow lifts?  Kristie is thinking “How many changes can I put into one lift, how many hand positions, and may I do a death drop at the end”, while everyone else is worried about falling.  No contest!