heartbreak (and some small consolation)

The problem with being a knitter is that it makes you very, very picky about buying commercial knits. I appreciate machine knits as much as anyone — I love very fine knits, which are impossible to do by hand — but then I see an aran-weight cashmere blend for $400, and decide that, screw it, I could make that for under $200. (That's coming, by the way. Although probably not until next winter. But it's a layering piece, fisherman's rib, raglan: simplicity itself.) Similarly, when I can't find exactly what I want, I tend to try to figure out if I can design it, and make it myself.

Pregnancy is particularly bad for this. Most clothes don't fit me (even the maternity ones) so if I want something particular, I almost have to make it myself.

For the past three weeks or so, I have been working on a cardigan. Something with a hood, at least fingertip length, and a lot of drape so I can cover up my bump when it gets cold. (This is what is lacking in most of my other cardigans.) Something light and lustrous. The yarn is Manos del Uruguay Fino (yes, again), in a cream with tawny-grey-pink highlights (the colourway is "Ivory Letter Opener"), 2.75mm needles. I decided to knit it from the bottom up, so I made a schematic, I made calculations, I wrote everything out before I started.

Last night, I got to the shoulder seaming and the start of the hood — which, incidentally, was the first time I could try it on with any accuracy.

It was drapey.

It was fingertip length.

It was too small.

The shoulders, back and armscye are good. I just underestimated the amount of "front" I would need for the shawl-like drape. So if it had been a sweater, I would have been fine. There was, in fact, no gauge accident. But the way I'd made the front lapels meant that picking up the stitches and knitting an extra inch or four was out of the question — well, no, but it would look ridiculous. And there's no point in doing all this if it's not going to be perfect.

So, into the frog pond and back to the beginning.

There is some small consolation, though — and it's a good one. I'd originally given myself until the end of November to knit this cardigan, before I would have to move on to Christmas knitting. I'm still going to do that, but the Christmas knitting I've got lined up is this:


I know it doesn't look like much, but wait: this is 100% cashmere (from Handmaiden). I'm going to have to give it away, true. But half the luxury of having something beautifully soft like this is being able to handle it and play with it, and that's the best part of being a maker — I get that part to myself.

weekend(s): dinosaurs! goats! and a baby giraffe

It was the Santa Claus parade in Toronto on Sunday — but alas, not for us. The Spanish Inquisition seemed to like it last year, so we'd planned to go this year — but the forecast kept calling for rain, and she had a not-insignificant cold already, and ... to be honest, Pd and I were just Too Damn Tired. (There is the parade, which is entertainment in and of itself, but you have to get there early to get a good view, and the Spanish Inquisition is not the patient kind of toddler. If such a thing even exists.) So we ran errands and had an easy day of it, and I am trying not to feel guilty.

After all, on Saturday we did do this:


Her first trip to the museum, specifically to see dinosaurs, and she got to play archaeologist. To be entirely honest, I don't think she knows what that means, but she did seem to enjoy it. She knows that word "museum" from Olivia, but she thought that she would also get to see baby horses, which ... not so much.

She probably thought this because this is what we did the weekend before last:


The Royal Winter Fair, where she got to feed goats and, yes, pat horses. (I think they may have been ponies, actually. Or, at least, very small horses.)

And the weekend before that:


We saw the new baby giraffe at the zoo. (I say "new." It's taller than Pd, who is six feet tall. I suppose that's small for a giraffe.)

So it's not as though we're depriving her of experiences, or of things that she enjoys. It's not difficult, actually, to find fun things with her; the problem is that one have to keep finding or doing them, and at some point I need a nap.

straights vs circulars

We had a cold snap yesterday! It's still cold today, but yesterday it was positively winter — the temperature actually went into the negative and everyone scurried around in winter gear: coats with fur-lined hoods up, chunky scarfs, mittens and boots and bright red cheeks from the wind.

Of course, by March this selfsame temperature will feel positively balmy, but we're still in the onset of winter, here, so everyone is bundling up for the long haul.

I had been delaying knitting a new neckwarmer/cowl for the Spanish Inquisition. (Her daycare requires it, in that they prohibit scarves — a strangulation hazard. I'd like to tell them that my daughter is hardly Isabella Duncan, and there's a subtle difference between a short chunky knit and flowing silk beneath spoked tires, but I doubt anyone will listen.) I'd meant to knit it out of Dream in Color Starry, or some other kind of sparkly yarn, but I hadn't had time to buy it yet — so I kept putting it off.

Until it got cold, and I felt guilty that her neck would be unprotected. So I grabbed some leftover baby alpaca sport (which, don't let the name fool you, is actually a bulky yarn) and knit one up right quick. Because time was of the essence — I had about two hours to knit the whole thing — I decided to knit it on my 6mm straights instead of DPNs.

(I wish I'd taken a picture for you. But I finished it and went straight to bed, and now it lives exclusively at daycare, so I lost my chance. Just imagine a purple tube in 2x2 rib about the size of a toddler's neck.)

And ... it turns out that straights are so cumbersome! I never used to think this before. I learned to knit on straights — these particular ones, in fact. And I'd loved them. I only stopped using them because I've been knitting things that are bigger than I'd feel comfortable putting on a straight needle, and Pd had given me a set of Addi interchangeable circulars a year or two ago. But now, I kept noticing how the straights would bang into my elbow. Or the table. Or how I would have to really arc my knitting wide when I changed sides. And heavy! And I would think, really? I actually preferred this?

I will probably still use my straights when I can, or when it's convenient to do so. I want to rediscover my old habit. I have some lovely bamboo and rosewood pairs, the latter of which are so lovely that I will actually pause my knitting just to look at them. They're warm, and supple, and feel so much more personal than aluminum. And I firmly believe that tools get better when you use them.

All that being said, this is my current knitting obsession:


Manos del Uruguay Fino (yes, again), in "Ivory Letter Opener," on, yes, Addi Interchangeables. I had something very specific in mind, so I'm designing it myself. Miles of stockinette — again — but broken up just enough by the texture of the seed stitch. Creamy and lovely for cold days and nights.

(The picture at the very top is technically Christmas knitting, which I have abandoned in favour of the Manos right now. Luckily there is still some time. I loved the gradients so much when I spread the skein out that I had to take a picture. It is SweetGeorgia's tough love sock in "Shipwreck," and it knits up in a reasonable stripey fashion.)

FO: Roo

Here, finally, is the Spanish Inquisition's new purple sweater-coat:

The penguin buttons/bribe totally worked; she loves them, and they don't disrupt the pattern too much (and the button band makes the jacket close fully, which is good).  I originally envisioned it as an early fall jacket, but it's too cold for that now, so she gets to wear it as a cardigan. Which is fine. She's worn it a couple of times since Thanksgiving, and it fits perfectly — which makes me feel a bit better for insisting on re-knitting it in the 24" size, as this means that the original (22") really was far too small. I would have preferred a longer length, but it's hard to adjust on the fly.

This coat has a garter border at the bottom of the coat and somehow, I managed to knit a different number of rows for the back and the two fronts — and not notice until seaming. This means that I even blocked it without noticing the discrepancy. Luckily the fabric is very dark (this photograph was taken in nearly-full sun), and the Spanish Inquisition moves around a lot, so I don't think anyone will notice. But I'm a little appalled that I managed to do that. It's not like the pattern doesn't give me the exact number of rows I should be aiming for.

The only other problem was that the penguin buttons are very, very skinny, so they kept slipping out of the buttonholes as knit. (I used a simple double yarnover-k2tog). I sewed the holes tighter when we got home after Thanksgiving, and now they're fine.

The yarn is Berroco Ultra Alpaca, which is 50% wool and 50% alpaca, in the imaginatively named "Deep Purple," between 2.5 and 3 skeins. 4.5mm needles. The pattern is Roo from Twist Collective, by Kate Gilbert.

fly-by update

What a week. Work has been busy, not least because I've had to take some time off because home has been busy — various members of the family (including me) had various appointments that couldn't be shifted, and so we've started earlier, stayed up later, and paradoxically worked less, time-wise, than usual this week. I wrote a very simple, fairly irrelevant post earlier this week; Blogger ate it, and I've had neither the time nor the inclination to write it again. (It really was negligible. It was about the Spanish Inquisition's hats.)

We took the Spanish Inquisition to the new aquarium last Saturday! And the picture above is the only photograph I'm ready to show you. I know: there are sharks in there, and sawfish, and giant Pacific kelp, and I'm showing you ... jellyfish? But they were beautiful. And they photograph well; always a plus.

Meanwhile, this is what I have been doing this week:

This is roughly how much of a fingerless mitten one can get through when forced to sit still (more or less) for three hours or so at the doctor's office. The pattern is Sherbet Lemon by Ysolda, and the yarn is Alisha Goes Around, Richness of Martens in the "Genevieve" colourway. 2.75mm needles. It was a sock club yarn that I've been saving for something special; I love the colour but I thought that it would be wasted on socks. These are much more fun.

I aded an extra half-repeat so that it goes (roughly) up to my elbows; that's why the beginning of the cable looks slightly different from the original pattern. If I had to do it again I would sit down and plan the tessellations a little bit better, but this isn't bad, and I was anxious to get started. I actually finished them today; in fact I'm wearing them now. And oh, they are so lovely; there's 15% cashmere and 10% silk in the yarn. It's been getting down to the low single digits here in the mornings, and so these will be perfect.

I have also the never-ending sweater (doesn't it seem like I have one of those every fall?) and the Spanish Inquisition's Olivia Petit, which is almost done. I really only have about an inch and then the sleeves to go, but sleeves are never terribly fun, so I'm finding it a bit of a slog. (Also: the alpaca, while lovely, sheds as I knit it, and I am big enough now that my knitting is generally resting on my bump ... which means that, every time I knit it, it looks like I went and rubbed up against some particularly-hyperallegenic cat. So I have decided that they are not really good as subway- or work-knitting.)

And then there is also this (although technically this is cheating; I did these last week):


Yup. (Canadian) Thanksgiving is over, which means it's time. This year I am attempting to be rational about it all and to do a little bit frequently, instead of trying to create 60 cards in the span of a week. So far I am only averaging perhaps a few cards every two weeks, but even then, that puts me ahead of where I usually am. These are being left for now; I've got my eye on a stamp I want to emboss on the top, but I have to wait until the One of a Kind Show in late November to actually get it. Perhaps this year will be the year I actually learn to use the embossing gun effectively.

thankful

I know that I am a little late posting this. I needed to wait for Pd to stop hogging the computer* so I could offload (and then upload) some photographs** so that this isn't completely boring, and it took a little while.

* By "hogging," please read "using the computer for his kick-ass programming skillz that actually helps pay the bills around here." My first-generation Air (which is what I am using right now) is no longer capable of supporting my photo -taking and -editing habit, so we got a shared desktop a few months ago. We have an agreement, actually, that I can use the desktop pretty much whenever I like, but it's a lot easier for him (and better for his back) to program with the big screen and proper chair ... and I feel kind of bad kicking him off to support my emphatically nonprofitable blog, while he works to keep me in knitting and crafting supplies (not to mention food). So I am happy to wait.

** Yes, this means that I actually used the proper camera this weekend! The iPad is convenient but the lens is rather soft, have you noticed? Of course, what happened then was that the Spanish Inquisition stuck her fingers on the camera lens while I was packing, and I forgot to wipe it clean, so for the first hour or so I was completely flummoxed as to why I couldn't focus properly, even on manual. Soft focus or toddler smear? — ultimately, it's all the same, really.

Anyway, it was Thanksgiving, and I am most thankful for my favourite two people in the world:


Sometimes we are sleep-deprived, and sometimes we are cranky, but for the most part we are all happy and silly and content, and when one of these people grins a silly grin at me, my heart explodes with joy.


(And yes, that is the purple sweater, take 2. The penguin buttons/bribery totally worked. Details later.)

cold hands call for desperate measures

I am usually a very ... obsessive kind of person. (A small strain of OCD runs through my family. It was such a relief when I heard that.) I am the kind of person who can have the same thing for lunch every week. I change up my clothes, sure, but practically everything in my closet is either black, grey, a shade of white, or a shade of blue. I have very recently begun branching out into — wait for it — purple. (By "branching out" understand that I mean I have one cardigan, one shirt and one dress.) I listen to the same album on my iPod over and over until I am finally sick of it. That usually takes a few weeks.

The only exceptions are books and knitting. I am usually reading two books at a time. I don't know why; maybe it's a remnant from grad school. And I usually have a bunch of knitting projects on the go. I have two blankets — a Moderne Log Cabin, and a mitered square (made out of remnant sock yarn) — I've been working on both for three or five years, respectively, and they're too big to be portable anywhere, so they stay at home and get worked on during long winter evenings.

Actually, I thought the sock blanket would be done by now. I'd say I'm about a third of the way through. Part of the slowdown was that I'd stopped knitting socks for a while, so I didn't have any new yarn to add, and I have a thing where the same yarn can't be too close to each other (OCD, remember?) and the problem-solving was driving be mad. I am really hoping that it's not going to take another 10 years to finish.

I don't really count those as "projects." They're just ongoing things in the back of my mind. Actual projects right now are my Fino sweater, which is coming along (but also not, because it's a full-size adult tunic in fingering yarn; I'm small but not that small) and another sweater for the Spanish Inquisition.

I may have panicked a little when the cold weather came. She had a big growth spurt in July, and I think she's having another one now, the upshot of which is that none of her old, pre-summer clothes fit. Which is fine, but I wanted to make sure she had sweaters. This is Olivia Petit, by Connie Chang Chinchio; she got one last year, too.

(Her father destroyed that one in the wash. Fun fact: Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend felts like a dream. The thing went from fitting a one-year-old to practically doll-size. The buttonholes were so small that there was no physical way the buttons could get through. Pd felt bad about it, but it really was awesome, in the traditional sense of the word. And anyway, she'd practically grown out of it by then. But she'd loved it, and it was well used; that's why she's getting another.)

This one is Cascade Eco Duo, an undyed 70-30 merino-alpaca blend that's also not machine washable, but Pd says that he's learned his lesson now. I discovered it last winter and it's become one of my go-to yarns for toddlers — super soft and warm.

All this is to say that I'm not big on knitting monogamy, although right now even I am having a little trouble juggling all of my projects. I keep my number of projects in check by keying it to the number of available stitch counters. This is feasible because I very rarely buy knitting notions; I tend to feel guilty about the amount I'm spending on yarn, and the easiest way to lower my total at the cash is to drop the knitting notions.  Right now, I have three. Two are being used in the projects above, and the third is with a shawl project that's been ... "resting." (It begins with an 8-stitch lace border that's repeated 70-odd times. I crapped out around repeat number 40.) I can't remove that marker because there really is no way to recover if I lose the number of repeats I'm on.

So I shouldn't start anything, is what I'm saying. No stitch markers, no new projects. I only have two hands, Christmas is coming; I want these sweaters done before the snow hits. How much knitting time do I even think I have?

But it's starting to get cold now, especially in the mornings, and I have this beautiful skein of Alisha Goes Around Richness of Martens that I've been saving up, and I finally found the perfect fingerless mitten pattern for it, and ...



Oh, screw it.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend, everyone!

naptime is for cooking

(nb — I started this post two days ago. That's kind of what my life has been like recently.)


In honour of Marcella Hazan — although, truth be told, I have no idea which book or class this comes from. This is her bolognese sauce, more or less (perhaps even her "famous" one, according to the New York Times obituary), though I doubt she would acknowledge it as such. My knife skills, patience and available time being what they are, I utterly fail at making a proper soffritto — and anyway, I rather like the rustic look that identifiable chunks of carrot and celery give. So: diced onions, yes, as small as I can stand to make them, and fine for the home, but it would probably make a true gastronome weep.

Anyway, this has by our go-to bolognese sauce for years, since my brother-in-law made it for us many winters ago and I cribbed the recipe from him. (I have no idea what the state of his soffritto is — although, knowing him, it is probably meticulous and excellent.) We make it all the time, almost always only in winter, and the first one of the season always feels like the start of something — an acknowledgement of the incoming cold season, maybe. Just the smell of it makes me think of snows outside, the smell of frost, the comfort of the warmth indoors and the quality of winter light.

It's the sort of food that is deeply, almost sacrilegiously out of place in the warm months, and its reappearance made me happy — even though it also meant, inevitably, the reappearance of woollies and cold and being able to see my breath in the morning.

(Pd says that we've been having a mild fall. I say we haven't been experiencing the same season at all.)


I've finally finished version 2 of the Spanish Inquisition's Roo coat. (The above picture was taken yesterday, when I was about 20 rows from the end of the second sleeve.) It's going into a Eucalan bath and getting a wet block tonight. Then I'll knit a button band and put those penguin buttons on it. The toggle closures were actually one of my favourite parts of this coat, but ... I've knit this coat twice now and I want her to wear it. I am not above petty bribery, and the kid loves her penguins.

things undone

Last week was a bit of a doozy. It started out fair, if tiring — why I no longer remember — and ended with a small medical emergency in my family and a lot of dashing back and forth. Rest assured, everything (and everyone) is reasonably fine — but it didn't leave a lot of time for getting on with things. In fact, everything that could be dropped, was (and so were some things that probably shouldn't have been, probably).

For instance, I have not really knit. I have my traditional fall sweater:

I'm a few inches farther along now; I've divided the sleeves from the body (it's a raglan), but fundamentally it looks about the same. I am loving the yarn, though: Manos del Uruguay Fino, 70% merino and 30% silk, in "Silhouette." It looks like a lovely green darkening to turquoise in artificial light, and exactly the colour of wellworn denim in the sun.

It is also an adult sweater-tunic knit in light fingering with 3mm needles, though, so I wouldn't expect this to be finished any time soon.


Another example of things undone: garlic. I'd meant to plant garlic this year. I didn't get around to it last year; the year before I had merely plugged some conventional garlic into the ground (it may have been locally grown, but I honestly don't remember), but this year I was Going To Do It. Growing garlic is ridiculously easy: you plug the cloves into a plot of ground in the fall, then summer comes and you harvest. The demands on the soil are light; there aren't really any required amendments, no trimming or deadheading. And the more harvests you make, the better garlic you get.

The devil, of course, is in the details. I'd meant to buy order proper garlic online (likely 'Music,' which seems to grow well in Ontario), but the growers didn't take orders until late summer. Ah, but I was sick throughout August. I checked last week and they had stopped taking orders for 2013.

Okay, I thought. I can probably get some at the Garlic Festival. Which is a great idea and would absolutely have worked if only the Garlic Festival hadn't happened two Sundays ago.

I want to plant tulips this year (that got missed last year, too), but we were too busy this weekend to buy the bulbs, so we'll see. I do remember one year that I actually put them in the ground on my Remembrance Day holiday, so there's time. But there's also the distinct possibility that the universe is trying to tell me that salvaging the fall is pointless; I might as well skip directly to winter — for these came in the mail last week:



... which is a little discombobulating, even for me. (And I am sharing it with you so that you may be as freaked out as I.) I read them, of course — I always do — but it still feels a bit wrong. Like starting to cram for finals in February.

our little dictator of cute

A few days ago, I was using my iPad to check the weather forecast before we went out, when the Spanish Inquisition noticed what I was doing. This is what happened next:

SI: Mummy take a picture!
Me: No, sweetie, mummy's just checking the weather.
SI: Mummy take a picture NOW!
Me: Oh, you want me to take a picture of you eating a snack?
SI: Yeah!
(I go to the other end of the dining table and prepare to take her picture)
Me: Okay, say ... Hi, mummy!
SI: HI MUMMY! (pause) Want to see!
(So I show her the picture, and then move to take the iPad away)
SI: No, want to see AGAIN!

So here, courtesy of her Royal Cuteness, is the Spanish Inquisition having a snack (and mugging for the camera):


It's a little blurry because while she likes posing for the camera, she hasn't quite grasped the concept of holding the pose. So now, instead of a lot of blurry pictures of her running, I have a lot of blurry pictures of her grinning.

Like everything else, it's a work in progress.

In this picture, she is wearing the green dress that I knit last week — Spud & Chloë Sweater. about 2.5 skeins, pattern out of the Vogue Stitchionary and my own brain. Strawberry buttons at the top. It's a sweater dress and goes down to about her knees — but I haven't managed to get her to stand still long enough to have any pictures of the bottom half yet. Rest assured that there is a bottom half ... and that she's wearing pants. Usually.

royal purple princess rabbit

The Spanish Inquisition's favourite colour is purple. Consequently, there's a lot of that going around our house right now.


The matching wasn't actually on purpose, although I don't think Pd believes me. The dress on the right is from Roots, which so far she has refused to wear, but I am harbouring hopes. (The upside of having a toddler with definite opinions is that she changes her mind like a toddler — which is to say, like the wind.) The knit on the left is  Roo, from Twist Collective.

I have had this pattern queued since before the Spanish Inquisition was born — since before I was even pregnant. I even waited patiently until she was old enough to really do it justice (it's not really a pattern for babies, is it?). She had a growth spurt earlier this summer, and it's become obvious that not a thing from her spring wardrobe is going to fit her this fall, so it was the perfect time. The yarn is Berroco Ultra Alpaca in "deep purple," which was surprisingly ideal; I was worried that the alpaca would be too drapey, but the merino and tight twist firm it up and it has the proper coat stiffness.

And ... it's too small (and she hasn't even worn it yet!). I'd measured her chest; it's about 20" (which, yes, is like the 18-month size, but she's a skinny bean). I knit the 22" size, to be safe, and for once I cannot even blame gauge because — and I never do this, really — I made a gauge swatch and I blocked to measurements. To measurements! And yet, it's too small. I tried to see if we could repurpose it as an open-front cardigan, but the armscye is too tight to be comfortable and she wanted it off right away.

So, no go. It breaks my heart to have to take it apart — it's a beautiful coat, it really is — so we're going to keep it for the kidlet, or give it to someone if the kidlet turns out to be the kind who doesn't like purple. It won't go to waste. And, meanwhile, I had a lot of the same yarn left over, so I am going to knit another one. A bigger one.

(I told my mother all this, and she laughed at me. It's all her fault, really: when I was growing up, she would buy or knit things for me to "grow into." Except I never grew as fast as she anticipated, so things were always baggy or too big — and now I hate baggy clothes and knit almost all my sweaters with negative ease. She's still at it, though. She likes to buy the Spanish Inquisition clothes, but this fall she's decided to up the ante to 3T so that she can "grow into it," and I've had to tell her that, yes, she will ... next year. I've now started a drawer full of 3T clothes that we can pull out when she's big enough. It's actually very useful, given the Spanish Inquisition's sudden growth spurts. But there really isn't a way to make snowpants that are three inches too long "work," and yes, we tried.)

Anyway, I haven't started yet, because while the knit itself was enjoyable (the first time), the second time 'round it's just ... demoralizing. And I've got all this to give my attention to:



Maybe I should consider doing the 3T thing after all.

easing back into it

It's that time of year again!


Okay, no, it really isn't. That would actually be a little insane; even I know that. Although — all of my "October" nesting magazines have arrived, and they all have ads on the back for their November/Christmas/entertaining issues. So it's not outside of the realm of possibility.

It's just that it's been literally years. Remember how I was going to sell some of my designs? And then I was completely bowled over by a bout of flu right at the beginning of December ... and then I got pregnant ... and then I had a whirling dirvish of an 18-month-old ... and now it's three years later, and I still haven't finished the cards I'd pre-printed in 2010. (You can see them, in the top left of the photo, the gold and red.)

So maybe it's about time. I've been feeling the itch for a few days now. Also, I'm trying to plan ahead. I think, by the time Christmas-card season rolls around, I'm going to have a bit more trouble leaning forward. And this way I can do a few at a time, instead of trying to mass-produce everything inside of a week; that part was always a bit insane (but very characteristic, admittedly).

I spent a couple of hours last night just doodling calligraphy, practicing swashes and getting my hand back. I'd forgotten how lovely and relaxing calligraphy can be.

(I just realised I'd promised you knitting, oops. There will definitely be knitting later — I just finished a sweater dress for the Spanish Inquisition; you can see it (the green thing) at the top of the photograph. I just need to get my act together and actually take pictures of things.)

catching up

The weather has turned cold, I'm wearing my beloved jackets and wooly socks (sometimes) again, so — it must be fall, and time for me to get back to blogging.

(I say this, and we are in the middle of a one-day heat wave — 40-degree Humidex and everyone is running for air-conditioned cover. O well. At least the light is right.)

I didn't mean to go dark. To be fair, that means almost nothing; I never mean to go dark. This summer passed in a haze of fatigue and nausea, which would have made me entirely cranky if I hadn't been too sick to have moods. (Pd will probably tell you that this is not true. I had moods. I had, in fact, two that I spent a great deal of time veering between: tired, and difficult. Oh, and hungry. Is hunger a mood?) Anyway, it's very hard to blog when one is trying to either a) sit very, very still whilst avoiding looking at the computer,  or, better option, b) lying prone on the sofa, so: no blogging. And, sadly, not much gardening, either, so the garden is a right mess that I have washed my hands of until next spring.

 Because, yes, absolutely, I think it is going to be so much easier to garden when we've got a toddler and another wee kidlet. I'm starting to imagine the garden as something akin to retirement planning — and by "akin," I really mean "part of; not executed until." This could be applied to other things, too, like "time," or "positive bank account balance."

Meanwhile, the Spanish Inquisition turned two. She continues to be a reasonably happy kid, and we are very lucky that, so far, the two's have not hit the terrible stage. On the other hand, there is definitely a palpable change from, say, 18 months. To whit: the kid runs (see picture). She started walking later than usual, and so is making up for lost time by being speedy. Consequently, I have lots of summer vacation photographs, not so many not-blurry ones. And even then, they are usually of her moving.

Enough, now. I'm still organizing photos back into Flickr so it will probably be a couple of days before the next post, but I will be back. I have so much knitting to show you! The kidlet is due in winter, so my mind has been living there — that's what pregnancy does; it collapses the seasons in between. So I have been planning and planning, and knitting like a fiend.

weekly bloom: rose in bloom

Last week was a wash, literally: so wet and wild that there was no gardening, nor gardening pictures, to be had.  All that rain destroyed the Oriental poppies, which had just started to bloom:


Poppies are not terribly robust flowers (though the foliage is fine), so the plants were flattened and pushed by the rain. This was the best picture I could get, and you see, it's lying on the ground. All of the other blooms have been smashed to pieces by the heavy rain. It looks like there may be a second wave of bloom, a very small one, in the next few days — but they'll be done for the season after that, I'm afraid. Which is a pity. Otherwise I'm very pleased, though; they're exactly what I wanted: white with deep purple streaks.

There was another peony, too, on the second shrub — the one I planted last year — and it was of generally the same shade and size as the first. I'm surprised at how well they match, and very pleased that it bloomed the first year, even if it's just one. The garden is fast establishing itself, finally.

Speaking of which: roses! The backbone of the front garden are the roses, which hem it on two sides. (The anchor is the serviceberry tree, which I can't do anything about. And I don't know what to call the lavender — carpeting, maybe? Filler?) I planted them in the spring of 2012, three species: 'The Fairy,' which are miniature pink roses, maybe a foot or two tall; 'Amber Sun,' which are slightly bigger and vermillion, and 'Graham Thomas,' which is the most traditional of the three, with big, robust flowers on a six-foot shrub. The first two roses took to their new digs like ducks to water, but 'Graham Thomas' merely sent out one lonely (but beautiful) bloom before dormancy in October.

It's still a bit too early for 'The Fairy' — although I can see the buds forming now — but both the 'Graham Thomas' and 'Amber Sun' shrubs burst into bloom this week. I was so excited that I ran outside and took some quick pictures yesterday, despite the dreary weather:





The 'Graham Thomas' roses are the most perfect buttery yellow, and there are oh, so many of them, and the 'Amber Sun' roses are as adorable (and prolific) as ever. And the best part is that they are both repeat bloomers, which means now that they've started, they're liable to keep going until fall. Which, again,  is just about perfect.

weekly bloom: at long last

I'm a little late posting this. This picture was actually taken last Thursday and, given the heavy rain we've had since, this particular bloom is no more. It bowed more and more throughout the week, until one day I came home and the petals had exploded away.

Still, though. A peony! This one came from a root I planted three years ago, which originally came from my father-in-law's garden, and it's a complete surprise: one, because the dratted plant hadn't bloomed yet, though it had grown foliage every year (this year was its Last Chance; I said this year I would replace it with a rose if it didn't bloom; perhaps it heard me); and two, because it came from a clump of peonies my father-in-law had divided, no one had any idea what colour it would. It could conceivably have been white, pale pink, or this, a deep magenta.

There's another peony that I think is about to bloom; it's the one I planted last year and it's a singleton, as well. I suspect it's also a dark magenta. I had to admit that I am partial to pale pink peonies myself, but I'm quite fond of the magenta, too. Also: it's a peony. There's nothing not to love. Maybe next year there will even be more.

It's been very dreary and rainy (and relatively cold!) this week, so I haven't really worked on the garden or taken any pictures. The Oriental poppies are starting to pop up, and the irises have come and are thinking of leaving. On the weekend, I planted a large hosta (to replace the one that hadn't made it through the winter), an alpine anemone, and some lovely blue delphiniums. I don't think the delphiniums are going to take, though. I may have been a little too rough on them during transplant — we shall see. But they are so lovely that I may just swallow my pride and get more.

weekly bloom: interregnum

It's an odd time in the garden right now. Everything is very much growing — no massive die-offs yet! — but we're in that in-between time where the tulips are spent and nothing else is quite ready to take over. There are a few days like this every so often — gardening being far from an exact science.

The garden, this week:

 The theme this week is "anticipation." I have no actual full-throated blooms to show you. The roses don't bloom until June-time, and the coneflowers until the height of summer. The poppies aren't here yet. But there are some indications that a flower show is coming. The columbines are the furthest along:


I remember there were masses of them last year, in the back yard, and I was planning to some of them to the front yard come spring. Well, they forestalled me. I'm actually not entirely sure how. The front and back yards are not physically connected by any strip of soil.


I really think I am going to get a peony this year. Just one. But that's more than I've gotten any other year, so far.

You'll have to look closely, but there are several flower buds in this Oriental poppy:


 And finally, the irises are getting ready for their debut:


The other thing that I did last week, which I forgot to write about (or take pictures of), is put invasives into the front part of the garden. Yes, I planted lilies-of-the-valley. I do love them (despite their tenacity), and the front garden is fairly isolated — they couldn't go far even if they tried (and I have no doubt that they will try). They can duke it out with the periwinkle. I figure, by the time all of the groundcover get established, I will never have to weed again.

when a finished knitted object means an unmoveable force

A close member of my family got married last week, and even though it was a very simple ceremony at the civic centre, the Spanish Inquisition still needed an outfit (read: not her beloved overalls, definitely not her cargo pants — is there anything cuter than a 2-year-old tomboy?). Since it was going to be a cool-ish spring day, I decided that she needed a cardigan to go with her dress.



The pattern is Kitty (Rav link), the yarn is a sock-yarn something, from Lettuce Knit, and the colourway is (I think) "Kitten Whiskers." It's not what I would have chosen. It's a bit too twee, the cream and the pink and the name, and in any case the Spanish Inquisition is the kind of child who insists on feeding herself soup, so generally speaking I know better than to put her in white. But this was a last-minute thing — they announced their intention 8 days before the deed — and the cardigan absolutely had to be white so that it could match a variety of dresses, in case the one I'd ordered didn't arrive in time. So, "Kitten Whiskers" it was, and a green satin ribbon from Mokuba to rescue it from cutesy-ness.

In the end, though — not so much with the wearing. You can see it bunched up in my lap, instead. (Notice how the ribbon matches the dress exactly, though? I'm very proud.)



She just flat-out refused. She's been having a bit of a difficult week; we think her molars are coming in, and so she's been more opinionated, more irritable. And when I asked her to put the cardigan on, she said NO.

Multiple times.

And then grabbed it out of my hands and tried to throw it to the ground.


So, no pictures of the Spanish Inquisition in the cute cardigan. I had, in a fit of cover-my-arsedness, also picked up some pink ribbon that exactly matched the pink splotches in the yarn, so while I vastly prefer the green, I'm going to replace the ribbon and see if she'll change her mind.

Otherwise ... well, I have a couple of neighbours who either have or are expecting girls. And they don't knit.

weekly bloom: tulips ahoy

No gardening this weekend. We were away on Saturday, and Sunday was just indescribably wretched: sporadic rain and hail. Luckily, the garden is relatively maintenance-free right now; I should probably weed a little bit but the situation isn't dire.

The whole thing is in full spring growth mode now, which is a little worrying because there's a frost warning tonight, but what am I supposed to do about it now? Not only have the roses been pruned, but they're also sending out crazy growth; I can't stop it now. In fact, it looks like the garden got through the normal Canadian winter just fine; as far as I can tell, the sum total of the winter casualty list is a small hosta. (I think. I am certain that I had three hostas, and now I have two, but I need to wait until they leaf out before I can determine which two. Also, one of them is awfully skinny, and so its survival may be more tenuous than not.)

I forgot to take an overall picture of the garden this time, but here's a ground-level one of the stone path:

The tulips are "Carnival de Rio," late-spring bloomers, once they're gone tulip season in my garden will be over. On the right are the coneflowers I mentioned above; I think they were white and label-less when I planted them; I'll need to check my notes to make sure.* And behind those, with the fern-like leaves, are Oriental poppies, two of them, also hopefully white — I bought them in the midst of high summer last year, well after their blooming season (and thus got a great deal for them, too). I wasn't sure they would come back, actually, so this is particularly gratifying.

I had declared that, if we did not get any peonies this year, I would tear out one or both plants and replace them with roses — I had even gone so far as to decide which ones — likely Morden Blush or Morden Sunrise. So, of course, one of the peony plants — the older one — is finally budding. About darn time, I say. The thing has been sulking in the ground for three years, sending up a single shoot that leafs out far too short and too early, and breaking my peony-less heart in June.

*Haha. I like to pretend that my notes are precise and thorough, as opposed to being either a) the dates of old digital photos, or — better yet — blog entries, or b) the giant pile of discarded plant tags on the window sill by the kitchen sink.

weekly bloom: the start

The  hellebores came back! They are a little bit more scraggly, a little less well-formed than when I bought them last year; I have left them entirely alone to get established. It seems to have worked. I believe the cultivar is "Ivory Prince," which is one of the commercial hybrids that has upturned, rather than the usual downturned, flowers. (I know: the traditional hellebores are lovely, and getting "Ivory Prince" is sort of akin to getting those black violas, or things-that-look-like-other-things — of course you can do it, but why? But hellebores are so beautiful that I do want to see them, and I am not really a foliage kind of girl.)

The mid-spring tulips have also sprung. These are 'Banja Luka.' This photograph doesn't quite capture their lurid garishness in full sun (they look quite reasonabl here, in fact), but trust me: they are the plastic flowers of the tulip world. The Spanish Inquisition loves to look at them.



I finally laid the path down in the garden weekend before last. The previous owner had had the pavers down, but after I moved almost all of her plants (she had had a thing for shrubbery and 'Roxann' geraniums; I don't, particularly the geraniums), it didn't make any sense. We did want a bit of a path, though, to give the garden a bit of contrast, so I made a winding sort of path that also gave me some natural boundaries to work with.

I made the plan last year, and tried to execute it — but the first round of flanking plants perished the the Great July Die-Off of 2012, and the wooden stakes I had used to mark the tulips' locations disintegrated, so some plants are little closer to the path than I would like. It's a bit raw right now, but after some rain and some growth I'm sure it will be just fine.

The garden two weekends ago:


And the garden yesterday:


You can see that the heat wave we've been having has done wonders for the growth. The mid-spring tulips are blooming now (see above), the chives have gone haywire, as they are wont to do, and the roses and peonies have started leafing out. I may put mulch down soon, around the roses and perhaps the path. I was going to leave everything else — there's periwinkle groundcover by the lavender and patches of violets — and let it all grow in, naturally, but last year taught me that that is just an open invitation to weeds. I'm still mulling it over.

I also pruned the roses in the back garden this weekend, but no photographs of that: that place looks like a wind storm swept through. I only had an hour or so, so I didn't do much, just the pruning, by which I mean I took down seven- and eight-foot long canes. (In some cases, I even yanked them out of the grass, where they had tried to root.)

I'm starting to think that those scabrosas might be climbers.

weekly bloom, redux

I never meant to leave for so long. Actually, I had a whole post written in mid-April, but for some reason I didn't publish it, and then it fell out of my brain and now it's too old. It's the first of May, though, and it's 20 degrees outside, so it seems like a good time to bring back the weekly bloom, doesn't it?


The Giuseppe Verdi tulips have been blooming for almost two weeks now — since the last week of April. This is almost precisely when they bloomed in 2011, as well. (They bloomed a full month earlier in 2012, but we all know that 2012 Does Not Count.) They're almost done, but the mid- and late-spring tulips are springing up right behind them.

I know that often tulips don't act like perennials, but I have to say: this is the third year they've sprung up, and I've only ever planted them once. The lazy gardener (oh, what an apt name) in me is very pleased. I don't know that they've multiplied, exactly, but they've been very dependable for the last three years and I am grateful.

More later. I actually spent almost two hours in the garden over the weekend, cleaning up, and now it looks much tidier and less ... neglected. The roses all seem to have survived, the Oriental poppies are staging a comeback, and there's even a chance I could get peonies this year.

priorities

This is to remind myself about priorities — that a lot of the things I do, I do because I choose to, because I have prioritized something or other. It's something I often forget. I am easily guilted, and now that there is the Spanish Inquisition, there is always something to feel guilty about.

I have a neighbour who has a child about the Spanish Inquisition's age, and she is wondrous. Her house is spectacular; everything is always tidy and clean; she always looks put together. The first time she invited me over, she served me a no-rise, gluten-free loaf of bread ... that she had baked herself that morning ... with sprouts that she had grown. While dealing with an under-one baby, who did not sleep through the night, who was still nursing, who woke up around the (literal) crack of dawn.

I'm pretty sure I just rolled out of bed that day around 9 o'clock. (We were very lucky around that time: the Spanish Inquisition didn't sleep through the night, but she did sleep in.) I may or may not have brushed my hair.

The thing is, though, her house is always clean because it's important to her. I've seen her spot-Pledge the floor after someone accidentally spilled a bit of tea or biscuit on it. Me? I've been known to step around cat puke. (Not for more than a few hours, and not where the Spanish Inquisition is liable to come upon it. But otherwise ... it's been known to happen, is what I'm saying.) So, obviously, a clean house is a little bit more important to her than it is to me. She has beautiful, modern teak furniture and a sparkly kitchen. I have feral dust bunnies rapidly gaining sentience.

This weekend, I gave her child a little handknit cardigan. I gave myself a couple of weeks to do it, and at no point was I terribly worried over it — it had a (very easy) cable pattern and raglan sleeves. Granted, I did end up sewing the buttons on while slightly drunk the night before — but that was only because my silk-camel yarn arrived and I absolutely had to immediately cast on; it wasn't a race to the end. I say all this because everybody else was very amazed by it — how did I find the time to knit? It must have taken so much of my free time. And I felt very abashed, like I'd pulled a fast one on them. The truth is, it hadn't really taken me any time at all.

... Except then it dawned on me (and Pd helped me with this), that it also sort of did. All that time when she was catching up on housework, or making herself presentable, I was ... knitting. Or reading. And I shouldn't feel guilty about that (although, of course, hello!, I do). It's priorities. Having a house that is the perpetual mess of mine would drive her mad. Not having the time to knit or read would make me insane. And so, we choose the things that make us happy. And that doesn't make us any better, or worse, than the other person.

I am really trying very hard to remember this. I bet her kid never tried to stuff a dust bunny in his mouth.*

*This is not true, actually. I just remembered: he has. At my place.

family knitting

Busy, busy week. The Chinese new year is this Sunday, and it's traditional to wear something new for the visiting day. So I've been finishing things up for the family:


Socks for my sweetie. New handknit socks have become a sort of tradition around here, which is really just me shooting myself in the foot — who wants more deadline knitting a month after Christmas? Nonetheless, here they are, self-striping yarn from the turtlepurl (colourway: "Burberry"), purchased at The Purple Purl. The pattern is a simple 3x1 rib to show off the stripes. Which I find fascinating, actually, because usually I knit with hand-dyed variegated yarns, whose pairs never look the same. Sometimes they don't even look related. So this thing about having a pair of socks that are identical? It's kind of blowing my wee mind.

These have progressed significantly since I took this picture — there are only about 10 more rounds before the toe decreases. I should be able to do them in plenty of time.

And for my other sweetie:


A sweet little dress with Noro stripes. (The Purple Purl had a massive markdown on one of my two favourite Noro colourways in Ayatori. How could I not?) I blocked this last night, so it is all ready for the day; luckily my mother knits so hopefully she will appreciate my handiwork.

Alas, I myself do not get new socks this year.  I decided to prioritize Pd, who got ... well, three. (Two for Christmas, one for the new year.) This is fair because I've kind of stiffed him in the sock department for the past couple of years, and he's been very patient about it. (Last year, he got his socks — his cushy, warm, 15% cashmere socks — in July. And he was happy. The man is a saint.)

I did start on a pair, on Monday, but honestly, I wasn't going to be able to start and finish a pair of socks while finishing another pair and weaving in the ends of a toddler dress and doing the button bands and buttons of another toddler cardigan ... inside of a week. (The latter is a birthday gift. You'll see it once it's been gifted.)

Besides which, this arrived in the mail on Monday night, and kind of put all other yarn on hold:


Fyberspates Elegance Lace, which is 65% silk and 35% baby camel, in "plum 3" (nominally a little darker and richer than in that picture). It is gorgeous. It has the sheen of silk but the camel keeps it from catching on the needles the way silk often does. This will be yet another cardigan for me — justified because it's been several months since I knit anything for me, one, and two, because it's been frigidly cold out and I've proven that I do wear my handknits, if winter gives me a chance.

Although, mind you, I wouldn't exactly say no if winter stopped given me any more chances to do so until, say, next December?

hitting rock bottom before you can rebuild

Our new kitchen is almost finished! The only major things left are the ceiling lights. After that I'll have to repair the ceiling, repaint and put up a pot rack, but those are very small, minor things. It's taking us a little while, though, because Pd has been busy with other things (he is the electrician in this family), and honestly, there isn't as much motivation as there used to be — the kitchen is useable, more or less, so we can afford to wait.

Anyway, I figure, I will do a few posts about what we've done so far, and perhaps by the time I'm done I'll be able to show you a finished kitchen.

These are the befores:


It's a decent size, as you can see — about 165 square feet — but awkwardly laid out. There are doors, windows or other openings on three walls, and the fourth wall is a lovely brick that we don't want to cover up. (The upside to this is that we actually get lovely light in there at certain times of the day/year.) There was practically no storage — we had more cabinet space in our little galley kitchen in our old apartment, which was maybe half this size. Certainly we had more counterspace. All in all, it was an aggravating space to work in.

And the floor! I can't even tell you. It's linoleum, which is fine, but why this horrid pinky-peach? And the grey patches are random, literally random. I have had two and a half years to stare at this floor and I am telling you: there is no pattern. Which drove me up the wall, because I am not good at random.

When we bought this house, we always knew that we would do something to the kitchen, that it wasn't going to be satisfactory for very long. This time, we debated whether we should just refresh it — maybe put in furniture that would serve as a pantry or an island — but in the end, we decided that we wanted to do this once. And so, complete renovation it was, starting with the demolition:


The cabinets came down so quickly that I didn't have a chance to take any pictures. I went on a walk with the Spanish Inquisition so that they could do the noisiest parts first, and by the time I came back, an hour later, they were done. So we started on the floor, too, and by the end of the day:




Apparently, the reason for the ease of demolition was that the wall cabinets had been secured to the wall by six screws, and the bottom cabinets had been secured to the kitchen by exactly none. This disturbs me less than it probably should, if only for the fact that I only found out after six measly screws were no longer holding up all of my china. Conversely, the single shelf holding up the undercabinet exhaust hood was attached to the wall by seven incredibly long screws, in a pattern I like to call "Is it holding up now? How about now?"

The only other discovery of note was that a tomato plant, which I had thought dead, was still alive and had some green tomatoes on it — which was unfortunate, because we made this discovery only after someone dropped a sink on it.

(We were using our backyard as a dump for the time being. This particular plant had fallen off its stake, very early in the season, and as I couldn't find the vine again I had assumed it had died. Instead, it seems to have grown laterally. But it was already October, so I don't think the tomatoes were going to ripen in any case. Sad to say, but this is my most successful tomato growing to date. I am better with roses — possibly because I don't even like tomatoes. But it would be nice to be able to grow them. As of right now, I would need to get a bumper crop three years running to even approach a 50% success rate.)

hope

I want to show you something.

 This is a hellebore. It lives in my front garden, close to the house.




It was -18 Celsius when I left the house this morning, it's still dark when I get home and in my heart I'm not convinced that I will ever feel warm again.

But now, at least, I have hope.

and then there was Christmas

Okay, Christmas. Which was almost a month ago, but never mind. Actually I think we didn't manage to put up the tree until the weekend before, which would have been exactly a month ago. So I am late, but not (too) outrageously so.

I forgot to take pictures of the tree. It was an Ikea tree. (Last year it was a Loblaws tree.) Pd is adamant that we get a real tree, but other than that we're not terribly picky. I think it was a balsam? (I think they all are?) It wasn't very smelly, I'm afraid — then again, I spent almost the entirely of the holidays with a congested nose, so it's possible that my house smelled like the Black Forest and I was merely oblivious.


The Spanish Inquisition helped me decorate the tree. She loves putting things in and out of boxes, so it was perfect. The actual mechanism of hooking the ornament into the tree was a bit beyond her — particularly as I wasn't about to give her any of the ornament hooks — but she totally understood the idea and tried very hard to follow through.


(Here she is trying to balance a wooden ornament on a branch, next to another ornament — which totally makes sense to me. I think next year we're going to have a very bottom-heavy tree, decor-wise.)

The tree was for the Spanish Inquisition. The mantel was for me.

Behold:

Hogwarts Castle, Borgin & Burkes, and Gringotts. There was also Ollivander's, which you can see in the picture at the top of this post.  I was going to add the Hogwarts Express, too, but it turns out that our mantel is a little narrower than I expected. Also, we finished these at the very last minute — literally, at 11 o'clock on Christmas Eve — and I was so tired I forgot about the minifigs — so it turns out that, on Christmas and in the dead of night, only Dementors, a couple of goblins and a few random Weasleys inhabit Diagon Alley. Which I suppose isn't entirely unexpected.

I am really just an average (as opposed to fanatical) Harry Potter fan, and not a particularly skilled LEGO builder (although I do love it); it's just that I happen to like medieval villages, too, so Harry Potter and LEGO and a Christmas village was just too much good to pass up.


And finally, on Boxing Day, we had a big snowstorm — I mean, really, we were buried; it was wonderful. It turns out that there is a great tobogganing hill literally five minutes' walk away from our house, so we gathered some friends and took the Spanish Inquisition for her first sledding run. 


Okay, so honestly, she didn't seem terribly impressed. But the rest of us liked it.