new stash

So, right, box from Blue Moon. I'd taken pictures, but hadn't had time to upload them from my camera until this weekend. The single most important part of the box were the four skeins of Single Luscious Silk, which is a 50-50 blend of merino and silk (yum). There was also a skein of Socks that Rock lightweight in there, but the star was definitely the LSS. It is just about the softest thing ever.


Don't you just want to bury your face in it?


The colourway is Motley Hue, which I was a bit worried about because some people have had problems with it (according to Ravelry). But it's really perfect — mostly pearl grey, with flashes of light blue. I was worried that the flashes of blue would result in too much striping, but —


No, it's just about perfect. This is a Vivian from last winter's Twist Collective, which I have coveted pretty much the moment I set eyes on the pattern. I started it during the cottage break this summer with Cascade Eco Wool, which was lovely in its own right but too rustic and heavy for my taste. (I know that other people have used it and got amazing results, but I knit very tightly and it was like iron.) This is much lighter, and fluffier, and all-round better. And thus continues my pattern of starting out with the wrong yarn on one of Ysolda Teague's sweaters and switching out. I'm 2 for 2.

I may use the Eco Wool for something else. A Log Cabin blanket, maybe (Rav link). I'm very into the comfy-cozy blanket idea of knitting right now.

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Sweater update: Pierre's Christmas sweater is almost done!


Yes, I am aware that it's very difficult to see anything other than a giant knitted lump. Don't worry. It's there. I just have about three inches of collar to knit, and then some finishing — I spent a few hours last night doing all the seaming. Usually three inches of ribbing isn't too difficult, but this isn't exactly subway/work knitting, so the timing is going to be a little tight.

Since it's so big, it has been living in a reckless pile in our living room. Pierre says that every time he sees it out of the corner of his eye, he thinks it's our cat. So I thought I'd compare.


Sweater.


Cat.

Hmm.

quickie

Today a box came from the magical land of Blue Moon.

Actually, the box came last Tuesday, but no one was around to let it in so I had to go pick it up. I finally had time today because I took the morning off from work. And I took the morning off from work because I had an appointment to try to get a mortgage.

So it's a very, very good thing that I have a stash and that there's lots of sock yarn in it. I have a feeling that it's all I'm going to have to live on for a while.

attack of the killer gingerbread

Last weekend, we had our annual gingerbread decorating party. (Well, it was the second year. But it was never meant be an annual sort of thing, and this year people brought props, so I think it might be turning into a Thing.)

It's pretty amazing, how certain ... personality traits come to the fore. You take a room full of perfectly reasonable adults, and for some reason all the gingerbread houses turn out like this:


(I told you they brought props)

... or like this:


In case the latter seems innocuous to you, here's a close-up of the two amiable gingerbreadmen at the front of the house:



Yes. It is a gingercide in freeze-frame. Last year we also had the "CSI House," and a horrific "Katrina in New Orleans" house.

Then there is the house that was built by my invitation-only team. (Invitation-only because I think there are very few people who would have the patience to be as anal-retentive as we obviously are.)


Front view, and back view.


This took about six or seven hours. I mean, there were other things in between, including some fairly silly carolling, and a lot of it was waiting time for the mortar frosting to dry enough for our effects, but still. You may notice that the colour pattern of tiling on the roof match on both sides, as do the mini M&Ms surrounding the circular "window." And just look at that old-fashioned wood piling fence, not to mention the woodpile itself. And then remember that, of the two main perpetrators, one was drinking eggnog with something like 25% alcohol content, and the other was drunk on champagne. (That would be me. Somewhere around my second glass, I frosted the roof on — upside down.) We are superstars, is what I'm saying.

Next year we are thinking about tackling something from The Gingerbread Architect. Just think about what we could do wtih the Tudor Revival house — or the New York Brownstone! I've always wanted a brownstone. We just have to recruit someone else to do the baking.

requiem for a paperback

Last night, as I was waiting for the subway at Glencairn, pages xvii to xxiv of Marilyn Butler's excellent introduction to Mansfield Park fell out of my book and scattered themselves on the platform.

I think it may finally be time to replace that book.

I love that book. I can almost precisely date its acquisition — September, 1998. I gave my first university-level lecture on that book, wrote my M.A. on it. My first (and only) academic conference paper was on interiority in Mansfield Park and Jane Eyre. It was a good book. Just not, I guess, very sturdy.

---

I think I was lucky that that was yesterday, and not today. At least the platform was dry.

I thought about taking the camera in to work today to document the first winter storm of the season, but decided against it as the snow wasn't pretty — icy and partially melted, the opposite of powder. And then it was raining heavily when I finally made it in to work, so most of the snow is gone anyhow. I'm glad it's warm, I hate the cold, but I think I'd have more respect for the season if it were actually winter. Right now it's just indecisive.

scrolls + skulls + bat cave, oh my!

On Friday, we went to the Royal Ontario Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. It was housed in the basement level, and this is what is hung over the entrance as you descend the stairs:


A wide display of antlered skulls (and the odd narwhal tusk, way in the back). Creepy, no?

(And no, this had nothing to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls, although I enjoyed it a lot more. Did anyone else find the exhibit extremely Judeo-Christian? I realise that the scrolls have significance in early Christianity as well as not-so-early Judaism, but there's no call to keep quoting John all the time. Or locating Sapphoris with geographic reference to Nazareth. For example.)

I had been to the ROM a year or two ago, after the Crystal had "officially" opened but before it had been populated, so after the scrolls we went wandering up to the dinosaurs.


They hid the T-Rex and other late Cretaceous dinos away from the other dinosaurs in the more open part of the Crystal. It was like they didn't want the obligatory "GRRRR!" picture. (But of course, we took one anyway.)

Of the four of us, I was the only one who had seen the Crystal before, but the others matched my sense of underwhelm. It's not just that we had all loved the old museum (although we did); it's just that there was so much potential that was wasted there. The AGO has shown that it's possible to retrofit modern architecture onto an existing structure (in Toronto, no less), and not suck — so why not the ROM?

I think it is never a good thing when the architect misses the point.

stash management

A few months ago, a friend who worked at a library told me that they were selling some of their card catalogues.

I bought one.


In retrospect, that might have been a tad ... premature. It is large, and my apartment is small. But I'd wanted one forever, so we brought it home. And there it has sat, dominating my living room and doing nothing whatsoever, for the past few months.

We are planning on refinishing it and turning it into a cabinet for my printmaking supplies, including large rolls of paper. I have no idea how we're going to do that, exactly, but that's the plan. For now though, it sits there. Empty. Hulking.

Yesterday, I had a thought: I have this big cabinet with lots of little drawers. I have lots of yarn, especially sock yarn, that comes in individually small skeins that can fit into little drawers. One is empty, and one is taking up space. And so, voilà:


The new location for most of my yarn stash. There's the Dream in Colour Smoochy drawer, the Socks that Rock lightweight drawer, and my personal favourite, the bright blue Malabrigo drawer. Because everyone needs bright blue Malabrigo, no?


Sadly, I didn't have enough Handmaiden Casbah to give it its own drawer. (That's a beautiful purple Dyed in the Wool sitting behind it.) That will have to be fixed. (And no, that's not the entire stash. Ha. That's not even the entire sock yarn stash.)

I was very proud of myself for finding such an ingenious solution. Or rather, I was proud until I opened the middle section of the card catalog ...


... and discovered that my husband had already beaten me to it.

pause.

A member of my close circle of friends died suddenly last week. Consequently, there hasn't been much in the way of crafting, knitting, or preparation for Christmas. We are slowly getting back into things (what choice do we have? It's December; how did that happen?), but for the next little while things might be a little slow on the crafting/printmaking front. I need to wait until the idea of proclaiming joy stops feeling like a sick joke.

We went to the One of a Kind Show on Monday — that always meant, to me, the start of the Christmas season. We bought less than I ever remembering buying: just some food (albeit amazingly nummy food), a small piece of pottery, a vase for a friend, a pair of utterly cunning little overshoes for my nephew, and the artwork above. It's from one of my favourite studios, Mizzonk Workshop, part of their inspiration series, and I just love it. The large-scale version of this piece is spectacular.

a monologue about being short (well ... rant, really)

It's been a bit of a slow week for me. (And yet, ironically, I'm more tired now than I was last Thursday.) Here is a list of things I have not done this week:

- laundry. (Well, that's a big one.)
- cook. (Another big one.)
- bought a house. (Not that I buy houses every week. But I was sort of hoping that I would this week.)
- made cards.
- knit on anything other than a giant man-sized sweater in stockinette.
- finish climbing a 5.11a.
- finish climbing anything harder than a 5.10a, now that I think about it.

I did, however, buy yarn. A big whacking load of it. And now I'm all antsy until it gets here, because then I can knit on something other than a gigantic stockinette sweater (because, you know, the big pile of sock yarn in the stash is nothing — nothing, I tell you).

So anyway, no, climbing is not going so well. The route-setters have this rhythm that I'm starting to get used to, but which annoys the Hell out of me — every three months or so, they decide to set up climbs that work only for tall people. It's insane. The 5.11a is not terribly difficult; it's very precise and I love it. Well. I would love it if I didn't have to stretch this way and that like ElastiGirl, and no, there isn't any other way to do it, because I am 5'1" and that's not gonna change. I wouldn't mind it quite so much if it was obvious that there's something I should be able to hold onto but can't; it's when I climb things and I get stuck because I literally cannot touch the next hold and then my 6'1" husband and his 5'10" friend easily and casually sail past it that I have a problem with. And I am having this problem on 5.10c routes — 5.10c. I can redpoint bloody 5.10c; this is not a strength or technique problem.

I am getting, as you can tell, very cranky. I only have about six weeks left to finish a 5.11c (toprope) and it's not looking so good any more. There was a perfect route I was projecting (not too reachy and über crimpy — exactly to my taste), but they took it away and replaced it with a 5.10d two weeks ago. Berks.

(Kniting update: still on the sweater, right front now. It's just chugging along. Man, bulky yarn on big needles is fantastic. Why didn't anyone tell me this before?)

Shop Announcement! (hee.)

My Etsy shop is up! I will be selling my handmade Christmas cards there for the next little while. What I will do after Christmas ... I don't know. I'll figure it out later. But this has been something like two years in the making, so it's nice to have it finally done. Now I can get back to actually making the cards, which would be nice. I've got a few new ideas I've been doodling around with ...

Anyway, in case you can't guess, I spent most of the weekend setting up the shop. (Well, there was other stuff. There was an excellent brunch, for example, and open houses, and a hockey game that would have been heartbreaking if we hadn't already given up on the Leafs.) I also knit:


This is Pierre's not-unexpected Christmas present. (Big sweater cardigans are not good stealth projects.) It's the Daniel pattern from Twist Collective, and it's knitting up fast, which is a bit of a relief. This is the left front; I've already got the back done. The yarn is Manos del Uruguay Wool Clasica, in the new naturals line, and the colour is nothing like the picture — it's much more of a woodsy, dark brown oatmeal kind of colour. I love it. It's a bit thickie-thin and rustic (but softer than it looks) and the heathered colour and slubby bits give the vast yards of stockinette good interest. It should be warm, too, which is just what he wanted.

When I went to the Purple Purl to buy an extra skein, they told me that Manos del Uruguay just got their fair trade certification. I didn't even know that yarn could (or couldn't) be fair trade, but it made my hippie little heart happy.

And finally, about a week ago, we had some friends over to play Beatles Rock Band (which is über fun, by the way), and it turns out that my cat has a secret life as a roadie:


She may want to work on that narcolepsy thing first, though.

easily distracted by shiny things

So ... lately, I have been thinking about taking up quilting. Which is stupid, and insane. I do not need another hobby, especially not one that lets me have a giant, ever-growing stash. (I already have two of those. Check.) Also, I really, really hate the sewing machine. A few years ago, a friend of mine and I took some sewing classes. She's a great seamstress (she was, even before the class) — and she always finds the cutest patterns and makes the most adorable clothes, so it seemed like a good idea to go with her. We took two 6-week classes. The first one, which I really enjoyed, we learned to use the sewing machine and made a messenger bag, which I still use and love. The second one, slightly more advanced, we learned to use a serger — and that is in the loosest sense of the word "learn" only, because all I really did manage to do was cut up pieces of my laboriously-traced fabric. Repeatedly. And then I forgot that I was supposed to have taken the grain of the fabric into account before cutting, and I had to make up the dimensions of some of the pieces because the sizing didn't go as small as I am (granted, I am abnormally midget-sized), so by the end of the class I was only halfway into the stupid project and it is now in a little ball crammed into the back of my closet. I didn't want to finish it anyway. The pants looked stupid.

So maybe quilting is not the best idea (unless I can somehow make a bag out of it; apparently I'm okay with that). But quilts are so pretty! I actually don't like them as a bedspread — I love my white duvet — but as a dash of colour they're gorgeous. And so nice to snuggle up to. Here's a nice one I found on Etsy (click on the picture to go to the listing):



Wouldn't this look lovely spread on a white bed?

a little forward momentum

It's warm! It's warm!

The unexpected warm spell this weekend (and today!) is a little bit insane. I just want to run outside and jump around, absolutely silly, when I know perfectly well that 18-degree weather three months ago would have made me bundle up and grumble about unseasonal weather. But never mind all that: it's warm! It's warm!

Ahem.

Much as I would have liked to spend all weekend outside (and yes, really, I would have preferred that), I spent most of it working instead. Pierre pitched in and took some lovely photos of the newest Gocco design for Christmas:





And I, uh, made the cards.

I also finished the latest batch of baby congratulations cards:



Just in time, too. Two of these will be winging out of here soon; a friend gave birth last week, and another is expected to do the same sometime this week. And as soon as Christmas printmaking and knitting are out of the way, I need to start on a baby-related project for yet another friend. It's that time of decade, I guess.

(I have also been knitting, never fear. But right now I am working on a sweater for Pierre — Christmas deadline — and I decided to start with the back, which means inches and yards of straight stockinette. It's not exactly photogenic, but it is very soothing to not have to worry about a pattern. Yet.)

a little bit behind

I was planning to have my Etsy shop ready for the beginning of November, but ... no, that's not going to happen. Now I'm hoping for some time next week. It's been hard to find the time to make cards, and I've also been having some technical problems — namely, that water-based calligraphy ink slides right off Gocco ink. I've switched over to an acrylic alternative, which seemed to work when I tested it last week but has suddenly stopped working now. I think the solution is to let the Gocco ink cure a bit more, so they're sitting on their little rack until I have time to get back to them.

Oh well. In lieu of actual finished cards, here's a picture of what I did to the dining table in the meanwhile:


No, we don't really eat there right now; why do you ask?

Another view, with a close-up of some of the cards I was working on:


Aren't they cute?


These won't take long to finish; they just need calligraphy "legs." I held off because the Gocco scrollwork hadn't dried and honestly, scrollwork with permanent ink when you're tired is never a good idea.

Here's a preview of the new design that's been giving me problems:

It's a bit hard to see, but the Gocco image is lifting a bit over the calligraphy, which makes the latter busy and hard to read. (And yes, they're sitting on top of an Ikea catalog. It was taking up valuable flat surface space!)

A new beginning

So it turns out, and this probably won't come as a surprise to anyone, that I am crap at updating regularly. Thing is, I am both a little bit obsessive and easily distracted. Which means that I will do something very intently for a few weeks and then move on to something else, which is a problem if I've already started a blog writing about the first something, since I'm no longer doing it in an obsessive kind of way. I no longer, for instance, manage to finish a complicated sock pattern in a week. Now it takes me two — but really only because I've moved on to sweaters. Or printmaking (not with yarn). You see?

So my solution, this time, is not to start a blog about knitting sweaters, or printmaking, or whatever else I happen to be doing; my solution now is to just write about everything in one place. Specifically, this place. This means that I will no longer have three separate blogs about three separate topics, and also makes it likelier that I will update more than semi-annually. These are good things.

And now, let me give you a photo and a question:



A friend recently visited our apartment and, while standing in front of these very bookshelves, asked if I still bought physical books. This picture encompasses roughly a third of the collection crammed into our little 800 sq.ft. apartment, so let me ask you:

Does this really look like the library of a girl who doesn't buy books?