When Mommy's away, the kids will play

So I got home from work this morning to this sight:

The blinds from my sliding doors. Interestingly enough, they were hanging from the ceiling this morning when I left for work, and yet here they are, laying down on the job. I wonder What could possibly have happened. This sort of thing only happens when you have somewhere else to be. In fact, I shouldn't even be taking the time to blog about it because my ride arrives in about half an hour, but I couldn't resist sharing the work of my precious angels.

In other news:

Completed Jaywalkers. These are my second pair, and I love, love, love this pattern. I suspect there will be many more in my future. So, again, these are Jaywalker Socks by Grumperina and I knit them out of Meilenweit Cotton Fondo in the 6506 colour.
Here's a closeup of the toes:

Hmmm, something's a little amiss, but I think I can live with it.

Anyway, I must be off, I have somewhere to be. The blinds can just stay where they are.

Oops, I did it again... again...

For the record, I am not nor have I ever been a fan of Britney Spears.

Okay, now that that is on record, here goes again. My internet shut down mid post before, so...

I went yarn shopping. Again. Yay me!

So I got this:

Bernat Sox in Lime Hot. This says it's new. It's certainly new to me, and I hope it's okay. It's an acrylic nylon blend which is kinda, meh. But it's lime green! And even more important, it was under $3!!! Which is good because I also got this:

Regia Cotton Tip & Top Color in the 4085 colourway. I can't find what the actual name of the colour is and after the crash, I can't be bothered finding out right now. Maybe when I actually knit it. I also got these:

Regia 4-ply in Raspberry (1258) and Turquoise (1255). Regia needs to get more creative in the names of their colours. My yellow one from the other day is "Yellow."

So then after satifying my need to bulk up my sock yarn stash in preparation for summer knitting (I sadly only had 3 pairs worth stashed), I splurged on this:

This is only two of the six balls I bought of Filatura di Crosa Luxury 100% silk! The colour is called Natural and has been discontinued. I have no idea what I'm going to make out of this except that it will be a summer shell tank. I can't wait.

Now just to prove that I haven't been sitting idly, with nothing but shopping going on, I have progress shots of the second of my Meilenweit cotton Jaywalkers and the left front of my Not-so-Kakhi Cables cardi:

Gratuitous kitty shot:

And as if my babies weren't eye candy enough, the Eiffel tower in the late afternoon:

I have other Paris shots which I can share later, but I couldn't resist these two pictures taken from our hotel room. This was on the windowsill, just outside.

Two pats of butter and a partially eaten piece of cheese. Mmmm, just in case the guests get hungry, the hotel finds a way to get past the lack of mini-fridge in the room.

Just beyond that tasty snack (which, incidentally, we left for the next lucky visitor) was what was lovingly referred to as the jaccuzi:

Also, not so lovingly, as the cesspool. The roof of the building next door. I could have climbed out my window into it. Pretty gross. Luckily, we didn't spend much time in the hotel, cause... Paris!

Anyway, I've posted more pictures than ever in this post I think, so I will leave you with those lovely pictures. Me, I'm going to play with silk!

Grr Argh

So for the last week, I've been trying to post these pictures, but haven't been able to. Turns out, I can do it if I do them one or two at a time. Irritating. But, I have knitting and cool geeky stuff to blog about, so let's get to it.

This is the first of a pair of Jaywalkers (a la Grumperina):

This is Meilenweit Cotton Fondo colour 6506. It feels really springy with the bright colour stripes and the creamy background. I've made pretty good headway on the second sock since I've finished this one, but I don't have a picture yet. What I have got is a close up:

Here you can see the striping and the pattern. I love this pattern, it's the second time I've done it and my other pair are my favourite socks. Caleb approves :)

In not knitting, but still geeky news, this arrived in the mail the other day!

Close up:

Reverse:

This is a t-shirt from MakeUSmile Tees. An online company based in the states. I really liked the service I got and would recommend them. Anyway. The picture is from a commercial that airs very briefly in the movie Serenity.

I love this movie, just like I love the television series that it was based on, Firefly. This was an example of the voices of fans having sway in the entertainment industry. FOX network prematurely cancelled Firefly, much to the fans' horror, and a really big noise went up online and at conventions and in letter campaigns, and we got a movie out of it. Never give up on a cancelled program you love. Personally, I'm going after FOX again for cancelling Drive. I hope anyone else reading, takes their television entertainment into their own hands too. Maybe we can get rid of all the garbage that's out there.

Browncoats did the impossible, we are mighty, never give up!

Yay New Post!

So It's been a while... Again. I have excuses. There was no sun for the last eon (about a week and a half , but still), and I killed my battery recharger in London and so, had no batteries for my camera. Pitiful excuses, I know. I could have bought disposable batteries for my camera or even a new charger and taken low-light photos. I could have posted with no knitting pictures. I didn't. Get over it.


There has been knitting, though. I present Monkey Socks:

Close up:

I started these in Rome and knit most of the first sock on my 10 hour flight. I really like this pattern. I do not feel that this yarn makes the most of it, though. It does create an interesting snakeskin look, though and I do like the colours. I just wish that Cookie's fabulous pattern came through it. Oh well, I'll just have to knit this one again. Woe is me. Stats: Monkey Socks from Knitty by Cookie, the yarn is Supersocke 100 Highland Color 844, and they're knit with 2.5 mm needles.


Onward. I finished the (unblocked) back of my Not-so-Kakhi Cables cardigan:

Sideways view, sorry I forgot to rotate it before I uploaded it. Anyway, you can see the pattern of the cables really well. The centre portion and the sides are seed stitch and I really like how that looks in this yarn (Briggs and Little Regal). I knit this a little longer than the pattern calls for, because I like my sweaters to come past my waist. It may turn out to be a lot longer than my waist, but I figure in cases like this, more is definately better.


I also enhanced my stash some. One of my LYS is closing and is having a sale. Mmmm yarn sale.... Ahem, so yarn:

This is Galway Irish Worsted Knitting Yarn. 100% pure wool. The colour didn't come out very well in the picture, but is a gorgeous emerald green which I thought was appropriate (for the record, it is colour 26).
Also:

Regia 3-ply. I think this is a little finer than some of the other sock yarns I've worked with but I think I can manage. I might have to (gasp) swatch first. The yellow is actually a little softer than the picture, but not by much. I was riding the bus home and started snickering to myself when I thought about what socks to knit with it. I think these are going to be Melanie Berney's Snowflake Lace Socks. I think that's hilarious, but then I'm notoriously "off."


So I've also been plugging away at a trial run of Icarus using some old fingering weight yarn. So far it's turning out pretty well, but I have no pictures because due to the nature of lace, it just looks like a blob. Not terribly interesting. I have some lovely alpaca laceweight waiting in the wings to do this shawl in it's proper form, but me being a first time lace knitter, and a big chicken, I thought a trial run was in order. I wouldn't want to horribly ruin something as pretty as Icarus ought to be.


That's it on the knitting front. I'll just post a couple more shots from my vacation as eye candy. Also I figure the longer I can draw this out, the longer I can pretend I just got back from vacation. So: Here is The London Eye from across the Thames with the sun making it even cooler looking:

I'm a really big fan of the new Doctor Who. And this landmark played a very large part in the first season pilot, so it was really cool for me to see.


Next is a very serious bird:

This is one of the Tower ravens. There have been ravens at the Tower of London for hundreds of years. It is said that as long as the ravens stay at the Tower, the monarchy will never fall. Of course, the ravens live in a wire cage and have been bred specially, so that seems a little unlikely. Long live the Queen!


Finally, for the English portion of my trip:

As you may guess this is the glorious, ancient Stonehenge. You can't actually get up close to it anymore, it's all fenced off. Some vandals had caused some damage with spraypaint, and actually stolen some of the stone. I can't imagine someone doing something like that, but there you go. This site was very important for me. As a pagan, I could not go to London without making this pilgrimage. As you can see from the photo, we had an absolutely gorgeous day for it.

So that's it for now. I'll move on to the next leg whenever I get around to posting next :)

Back from Vacation

Wow! It's been almost a month since my last post. I just returned from a fabulous vacation abroad and have been spending the last week remembering why I left :)

I spent a little over two weeks in Europe, starting with a visit with my grandparents who were vacationing in the South of France, then off to London to begin a Contiki bus tour. We did London, Paris and Rome (we being myself and my brother aka Boy) and had an absolute blast. We met lots of new fun people and made total fools of ourself when we discovered the joys and horrors of absinthe. The books make it look very glamorous, but boy does it pack a punch.

Anyway, not a whole lot of knitting got done, though I did take some along. I figure that if I had left it all at home, I would have been bored stiff and have been practically screaming for some pointy sticks and string. So here is the rundown:

I finished my Endpaper Mitts. These are from a pattern by Eunny, and she deserves all credit for anything fabulous about these mitts. I love them, though I discovered that my tension goes all to hell when I do stranded knitting. This was my first attempt, so I won't be too hard on myself, but you can see where the space between my dpns was, and my tension is way too tight. They fit, barely. I won't give up though, I'll just try bigger needles next time, maybe even bigger yarn.

I finished my Baudelaire socks. This pattern is by Cookie and I got it from Knitty. The yarn is Regia 4-ply tweed in colour 70. The flecks of orange mixed in with the green is lost in the pictures, but I love it.

Here's a look at the cable down the sides:

I finished these on the bus from London to Paris, and the photos were taken in my Paris hotel room. Pretty nifty, huh? Anyway, this was a pretty easy knit, the patten chart is simple enough to memorize which made them great for travel, but I have yet to master cabling without a needle so wrestling with 6 dpns on a moving vehicle is not something I would recommend.

This was my first attempt at knitting a sock from the toe up, and I don't think I'll be trying it again soon. I can totally see the appeal in being able to knit until you run out of yarn, and for anyone who hates kitchener stitch, avoiding that would be a blessing, but personally, I have shapely calves and don't like really high socks anyway, plus I am a freak who loves the kitchener stitch, so, I think I will stick with top down for now. Don't hold me to it though.

So here is the next sock on the agenda:

This is another design by Cookie (number 3 for me). These are Monkey socks, again from Knitty. The yarn is ONLine Supersocke 100 in colour 844 which is mostly brown with bits of cream and blueish gray mixed in. It's self-striping, and I hope I can manage to match them. I did it before with my Jaywalkers (which were before the blog. Maybe someday, I'll post a picture), so I should be able to do it again.

Here's a closer shot:

I knit all but an inch and a half on my flight from Rome to Toronto. I might have finished it if I had knit the whole trip (10 hrs), but I had to stop due to hand cramps and imminent food.

Oh well. I suppose that's a pretty respectable amount of knitting for an adventure packed trip. I saw a lot of really fabulous places and if I'd been knitting the whole time, I would have missed an awful lot. The sort of things that I may never see again. Knitting won't go anywhere. So now I'll leave you with a picture from the trip. I think I'll post a couple of pictures each post so as to not overload a knit blog with not knitting content. Here is a picture of the candy I bought at the Confiserie Florian in Pont de Loup, France:

Not enough? Okay, here's the Mediterannean:

That's it for now, I'm off. I won't be gone for a month this time, I promise.

Of Josh and Angelus

Not much to report on the knitting front. Mostly I've been tearing around trying to get ready for my trip (4 days and counting). I have been getting some work done on my "Kakhi" Cables. The back is starting to look like it might actually be on its way to becoming a garment:

I'm past the armhole shaping now and have about 4 more inches to knit before I reach the shoulder shaping. I'm loving how this pattern looks, even if it is fussy with all that seed stitch and cable work (I haven't figured out how to do it without a cabling needle). Here's another close-up:

Now that all that exciting knitting is done with (this is a knitting blog after all), I'll move on to what has me the most excited today. Josh Groban! He performed here in Ottawa last night at Scotiabank Place and I had my tickets months ago. Here is a shot of the stage:

It was really impressive! All the panels lit up and had images on them that changed throughout the show. Josh sounded spectacular (no surprise there)! Here's an "action" shot:

For his encore, he came out wearing this Senators jersey which was really awesome. It had Groban 07 on the back, which was pretty cool.

I took lots of photos but I wasn't allowed to use my flash so most of them look like this:

This was an absolutely phenomenal concert and I can't wait for him to come to Ottawa again!

Also on the not knitting front, on Saturday instead of groceries, I came home with this:

This is a thing of beauty! The Sword of Angelus from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is the one that features in the 2nd season finale where Buffy stabs Angel and sends him to hell. Yeah, good times. This is my first blade, and hopefully, it's just the beginning!

Well, I guess that's enough of non-knitting stuff for now, hopefully I'll find time to post again before my trip (4 days, did I mention?), that is assuming I have actual knitting progress to report.

Bad Blogger

I am such a bad blogger! I can't believe it's been so long since my last post.

I recently found out that there is a knitting guild here in Ottawa. A coworker of mine told me about it, and I went to a meeting last night. It was awesome! I've been wanting to check out a group of knitters, and this is a big group. I think I'll be going again.

I have been knitting, and have a few things to mention. First is a finished Endpaper Mitt (designed by Eunny).


I don't remember if I mentioned the yarn I used in previous posts, so I'll do it now. This is Schoeller Esslinger Fortissima in colour 144 and Scheepjes Invicta Extra in colour 1350.

Here is the inside:

Looks kind of the same as the outside, if I do say so myself :) This is my first time using two colours at the same time. I have done stripes before, but this was kind of addictive. Who knew?

In works in progress:

Here is the "Kahki" cables cardi so far. Eh. Not so exciting blog fodder. The black looks gray, but at least you can see the pattern. For the record, I hate seed stitch! I do like the way this is coming together though, even if it is slow going. I think I'll make this my priority piece. I have small things going too, but I'm going on a trip in a little less than 2 weeks, and want to save them for airplane, bus and train trips :)

Anyhow, I hope that I will have a couple more posts up before I head off for vacation, but until then, it's time for House and he gets cranky(er) if I'm late.