travelling bug

My Paris Moleskine CityBook
I don't know what it is about February, but I always get a little bit restless around this time of year. It might just be because we're still in the deep freeze of winter, with Christmas in the past, and I need something to look forward to. We like to travel in May — it's around our wedding anniversary, which is nice, it's warm enough to be enjoyable without being hot, and it's not quite the high tourist season, so hotels and flights are a bit cheaper and attractions are slightly less busy (although I hesitate to see what happens at the Louvre when it is busy. Or the Eiffel Tower. Ouch) — so February is a nice time to start planning. So maybe habit is involved as well.

Last year, this was sort of ameliorated by the fact that we took possession of our house in early February, so we were in the midst of renovations and being broke. Having a new house is exciting (and account-cleansing), so we agreed that the 4-day trip to Las Vegas in the summer was going to be our 2010 trip.

And we did do that. Of course, you also know that I broke around the middle of August and we ended up in Reykjavík in early September. The only thing I regret is that we stayed only one week instead of two — even an extra three days would have let us go to Akureyri, up in the north — but that just means we're going to go back. (Okay, I do have one other regret: the lack of an extra €450 or so lying around so we could take a day trip to Greenland. But that's more of an I-would-also-like-a-Maserati kind of regret.)

All of which is to say, I am feeling antsy and want to go somewhere. We were planning on staying put in 2011, and concentrating our resources for something really spectacular later on, but I don't know if I can hold out that long. I'm not a patient person. So I'm thinking something on a smaller scale (i.e., on this continent) — Montreal? Quebec City?

... San Francisco?

documenting

So January was kind of a bust, post-wise, and it looks like February won't be much better. In my defense, though, Januaries are hard: there's never quite enough time to recover from Christmas (especially since, being an introvert, I require time to recover from the vacation that I take at Christmas), then my birthday and, generally, the Chinese New Year come in rapid succession. Also, this year, I've been sick. And, to top it all off, it has been, as you may or may have not noticed, freaking cold outside.

(No, my house does not feel any warmer, and no, we have not turned the temperature up — but I do now have throws and blankets strategically placed in every lounging area of the house.)

Also, iPhoto has been eating my photos lately. I'm usually in a hurry when I upload them, and so do not necessarily check, and don't realise that the relevant photo has gone poof! in the meanwhile. It's very upsetting. Today, for instance, you are missing a sunrise that I jubilantly took last week — not because it was a particularly lovely sunrise, mind you, but because I could see it. It is no longer dark while I wait for the streetcar in the morning! I felt like the moment needed to be documented.

Other things that we felt should be documented:


There is a little bit of foreshortening there, but you get the idea. It has been roughly a year since we took possession of our house (we didn't move in until the end of the month, but we took possession at the beginning of February, 2010— which reminds me, I had vertigo from the flu then, too). This is about how much beer we have gone through since then. This is particularly impressive since I don't drink beer, so this was consumed by only 50% of the household (+friends). I can only assume that the +friends helped a great deal.

One thing I did help with?

This is all of the wine we went through this holiday season:


Lest I be accused of not pulling my own weight in alcohol (or something).

Meanwhile, the clock has turned over onto the Year of the Rabbit, which I'm fond of because 1) my mother is a bunny, and 2) bunnies are cute. (I did not say I had good reasons to like it, although honestly, doesn't everyone feel kind of sorry for people who have to say that they are rats? I mean, really. If you have to be something, it's good luck to be something that's cute and fluffy, not vicious and a rodent.) Normally I wouldn't even mention it, except that it leads us to the next photo:


We were eating in Chinatown on the weekend when a very small parade went through, with the dragons peering into the windows of each business/restaurant. It was fantastic. Technically speaking it was barely a proper parade — generally there should be at least a few people making up the body of the dragon, not just the dragon head, and there ought to be some very vigorious drumming and dancing and such — but it made me happy. When I was very little, and still in Hong Kong, our apartment looked down onto the street and we could see the big dragon demostration every year. I used to love it, and it's one of the few things I remember (and miss).

So. Year of the Bunny. Starting off pretty good, I think.

crazy cat lady

I think I have somehow become the crazy cat person in my in-law family. I don't really know how this happened. True, I do have two adorable, fluffy, bratty cats. But so does my mother-in-law (plus one dog), and my father- and stepmother-in-law (plus two dogs, and two donkeys). And I do love my cats, but not in an obsessive kind of way. I mean ... they're cats. So maybe it's the absence of the plus dog?

Anyway, the reason I say this is because, for the last few years, I've been getting cat-related Christmas gifts from my parents-in-law. (Also Christmas gifts for the cats, which I don't really understand, but whatever. You know: do they know it's Christmastime at all and all that.) So, recent gifts have included a-cat-a-day calendars, little magnet bookmarks with sepia-toned kittens on them, a DVD set on how to train you cat (really, really too late for that), really ug-tastic ceramic Christmas stocking hooks shaped like (again) kittens ... you get the gist.

This year, I got a kitten wall calendar. A calendar! Full of kittens! Kittens gamboling. Kittens frolicking amongst the daisies (no, really). Kittens being fluffy and cute and not at all in a sarcastic kind of way.

The thing is, I actually use wall calendars in my office. I do a lot of letters where a response is required within x number of weeks, so it's really convenient to be able to look up and figure out the response date without jumping into Outlook or similar. But I refuse to be the kind of person who has a non-ironic kitten calendar up. That path leads to ... Laura Ashley paisley and teddy bears, and that is not a handbasket I want to be in. On the other hand, I really do need a calendar.

So finally, last week I broke down and bought this:


(It was either this or golden retriever puppies. Or Twilight. The universe hates me.)

Yesterday, one of the managers walked into my office and noticed the calendar, and remarked that her (teenaged) daughter has the exact same one.*

... I just can't win.

* She also remarked that it was a slight improvement over last year's choice, which was ... Twilight. Really, I couldn't make this stuff up.

soaping up with soap

Hello! I am still here!

I am fine, and ... nothing at all has happened, actually. What happened was that I had one of my momentary brainfreezes. I wrote this entire post, over a week ago, all about mittens (my new ones, which I love, and also the ones I made for my mothers-in-law for Christmas, which were the Super Secret Christmas Knitting), with a healthy defense of why I knit for myself. But then I didn't post it, because it turned out that I had forgotten to upload photographs of said Christmas mittens, and then I kept forgetting to upload them even when I was at home, and then I did upload them but I felt bad about the post, because by then the defensive-feeling about selfish knitting had left (it had been prompted by a passing comment from a friend), and I thought maybe I was just being too stentorian about it all — but I didn't want to rewrite it, either, and I couldn't write anything new without summarily tossing the post aside, so I just sat on the whole thing and felt very guilty not posting (while not doing anything about it). I think I was just kind of hoping that it would miraculously go away or something.

Anyway! So now we are going to pretend that post had just never existed to begin with, so we can move on.

Last Saturday, Pd played a bonspiel (a curling tournament) at the club, and came in first in his position! (You sign up individually, and then get placed on different teams, and in the end the people with the most points in each position win. Pierre played second, which will make sense to curlers and to no one else.) It was the Soapspiel, so this was his prize:


A Rubbermaid box full of soap-like things. The bright yellow handle near the bottom is attached to a giant tub of laundry detergent — one of those 4-litre bottles, I think. And next to it (which you can't see), is an equal measure of fabric softener. (I kept staring at it, and Pd kept telling me that it was fabric softener. I know that, but I was trying to figure out how or why one would use it. I actually never have. The entire concept perplexes me. Why would I want my clothes softened? I feel like I may be missing some essential point here.) There was also shampoo and conditioner, and some truly scary cleaning chemicals like Chlorox.

And there was also the smallest, cutest little bottle of hand sanitizer I have ever seen; it's practically single-use. I took a picture with a LEGO minifig for a size comparison:


Isn't that adorable? I don't even use hand sanitizer, but I'm tempted to carry it around, just because it's so cute. (I know. I am sad.) And yes, that is totally your second clue as to what my big birthday LEGO project is. (I didn't mention that it was LEGO, but I thought it was obvious from the last clue.) The whole kit is done, actually; we just haven't had time to diorama it. You can see a little bit of it in the background.

Meanwhile, the mittens have somehow snuck their way onto this post:


I finished them about a week and a half ago, and they're fabulous (and also looking significantly grubbier now). The stranding on the inside makes them fairly warm: they're not as cozy as my sheepskin ones, but they're not as bulky either, so that's fair. I've been wearing them every day.


They're not bad for my first colour-stranding project; I didn't make the floats long enough in some places and so sometimes the fabric gets kind of wonky. But I think I learned a lot, and you don't really notice when you're wearing them.

Details:
La Joie du Printemps mittens, by Heather Desserud. Knitted with Spud & Chloë Fine, in "popcorn" and "lizard," with 2mm needles.

a new year, a new hobby

It's not very auspicious, is it, to start off the new year by leaving my blog untended for more than a week — however, there it is. My only defense is that the first week back to work after 10 days of faffing off were rather stunning (in the literal sense). We have had two large parties since then — a New Year's Day Recovery party (which was exactly as it sounds), and a birthday party for me (er — ditto). I am now partied out, and so are the cats.

I was going to do a Christmas post, but the holidays seem like a lifetime ago. And really it wasn't terribly interesting — fun, but quiet. I also turned 30 last week, which sort of superceded the whole holiday thing (I mean. My birthday happens after Christmas every year, inevitably, but usually it gets overshadowed by the glitz. This year was different, because 30 is special — or so I was told. I am still waiting for my tiara).

The most cogent things about turning 30 is that I don't actually feel any different than I did two weeks ago, and that I now have a new pet project, thanks to my brother-in-law. I'll give you a clue:


Lots of points if you can figure out which specific kit it is. (There are indications, in that photo.) It has now entirely replaced the garter stitch blanket in my consciousness, which probably bodes ill for getting said blanket done any time in this new decade.