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.

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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.