The Postman Rang. Niiiiice...
I am working far too hard lately.
So, I was taking a break, innocently spinning
this insanely gorgeous merino on the bed,
when the doorbell rang....
My husband jokes that the postman is cruising me. Well, hell, if La Poste is going to keep dropping off stuff like this, I'm going to have to start wearing makeup or something....
Canada's Finest Customs Agents, a.k.a. La Douane,
have officially felt up the llama.
And I'll spin it if I can ever get my face out of it.
See, a spindle up the nose is just a bad idea.
As you can see, the SyndiCate has sprung into high gear. Is it not enough that we are wooed with gorgeous shots of handspun bunnycrack and silk-shot merino? Ohhhhh no. It's a conspiracy, a well-thought-out plan. They are all so much better than that. How much better? Sit down...this is going to take a while and it's better to drool on the floor. You wouldn't want to unintentionally felt anything....
This particular arm of the YouKnowYouWantTo Conspiracy (for you poetry workshop people, she's the "you") spent weeks thinking, "what would be the Exact Right Thing to win her over," and when she found it, she actually sent it to me! Poste haste, as it were! She even included a gorgeous card made by this talented lady (seriously, go get yourself a pack—I have a whole pack Cara gave me just because she's a sweetie, and they are beeeyoootiful) and then...Then! this is the kicker: the SyndiCate had the audacity to label this stuff "Spinning Fiber."
Ahem...riiiiight...excuse me, but Canadian Customs officials know llamacrack when they see it, and besides, you spelled it "fiber" instead of "fibre." Dead giveaway, lady. They were into that package in no time flat. I got the yellow plastic "Customs Felt Up This Dangerously Addictive Substance While You Were Impatiently Waiting For The Freaking Ponies To Arrive" tape on the box and everything.
Hell, they're probably watching my house right now as we speak. And since the landlord is busy hacking apart the metal front staircase with a chainsaw under the guise of "I just make a repair, no problem," I'll have to make my escape out the window amidst a shower of welder's sparks.
If I do jump, I'm taking the llama with me. Mamacate, you rock.
And yes, my hand really is that white.
Meanwhile, the knitting...ohhhh, the knitting. Just when you think it can't get any weirder...it not only can, but it will. It will start a new job. It will even demand a corporate logo.
This little guy is named KnitDuke.
He is the knitted version of the Java language mascot, Duke.
He was knit for love, but now a whole development team
wants in on the love, and they want it with a "Big Blue" hat.
Some days, I just want to crawl back into bed and spin. Shut up. I can stop any time I want.
Spiff asked if I could, at the very least, automate the nose-making procedure. After I picked myself up off the ground and wiped the tears from my eyes (please—the man said "nose-making procedural automation"—you'd die laughing too), I told him, sure, darling...that part is crocheted. I know just how I can automate this here nose-making procedure. You're hired. Here's your hook, Spiff, what's your hurry?
It's a very good thing I have people around me who know how to, uh, take care of my needs...because I'm feeling really crappy lately, what with the heat, the overload of work (every deadline known to every project I'm on is this week), and...I got a third opinion. One of the kindest people in the universe, who is also a knitblogger (I'm keeping her identity confidential but trust me, you all know and love her because she's an angel), got not only one of the best surgeons in the U.S., but an entire multi-disciplinary conference, to register an opinion on my case. And the verdict? Surgery. The Chainsaw To The Skull. Oh goody.
I'm meeting with the original Let's Go, Let's Cut, Crush Aneurysm surgeon in a few weeks, and I'm telling him I'm not doing this until next summer, when Twinkletoes is not here with me. He can argue all he wants, but the additional risk of a few months is minimal, and I'm cool with that. No furries, mate. Because I have decided that Margene is right about the process, about approaching things with a little less hurryupandwait and a lot more Zen.
Notably, I have decided that part of one's recovery must include sanity before and after the procedure, and the sheer worry about the world turning during Twink's school year and the laundry getting done and the family keeping their cool during six to twelve weeks of recovery would kill me. So, summer, it will be. Besides, I've got a life to lead. I've got jobs to finish. I've got programming classes to ace. I've got a kid and a husband to snuggle mercilessly. I've got a new career in knitting Dukes and ironing cotton pants.
I seriously thought the iron was just for steam-blocking. Who knew?
Poor Spiff. He is used to stunning black turtlenecks and jeans. He is as traumatized by having to wear cotton shirts and pants as I am by having to iron them. So, why am I ironing them? Me, Superhero Maman, Knitter Of All Things Weird and Unblockable? Well...
Here's the equation for you:
Spiff + 6h in the matin + A wicked hot, spitting iron + A little tiny hole in which to pour the steam water = A whole new set of swearwords I never even knew existed. Nuff said. It's my logic and I'll iron if I have to. Okay, back to spinning knitting....
Contrary to popular belief and certain six-year-olds, I am still knitting some normal things. I'm even plotting and planning to knit other normal things. I got this in the mail from one of the most stunningly gorgeous knitters in the blogging world, whose photo is rarely seen, but whose wheel I can now recognize in a crowded bloggerfest. She knows I'll still knit...sometimes...and this loveliness will become a Teva Durham leaf lace sweater, truncated for my midget-like limbs and height:
This is Artfibers Sage, super baby alpaca/wool single-ply.
Bloody gorgeous. I actually thought she spun it.
Shut up. I can stop any time I want.
The Spiff sweater progresses at the pace 2 x 2 black rib must progress...in fact, I just turned to blow un bisou to Spiff, and saw this on his screen:
Please hold for the next available priest. Your death is important to us. You will be resurrected in the order in which we found you. We appreciate your patience.
Well, da-yum. That does it, I'm going to spin bed. I'm hoping life will be less weird when I wake up. And please, if I have "fiber" hanging out of my nose, you'll tell me, won't you? Thank you. I knew I could count on you.
July 28, 2005 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | Print
No furries.
Look, I think we need to have a little chat
about this spinning thing....
I know that I'm going to sound like the blind leading the twisted, but bear with me for a minute. A bunch of people who have been—or are close to being—sucked into the spinning vortex have expressed deep-seated fears that they will lose out with their knitting. They will miss their knitting. They will drop knitting like yesterday's news. They will spend inordinate amounts of money on their new hobby (um, that one might actually be true...). They will lose themselves in a whirl of fuzz and confusion, never to return to their beloved needles. The spindle is all. The spindle is....
An instrument for making really cool yarn in colours and fibers you love, so you can make equally cool things like this bunny, who is made from my first handspun. And you all saw that handspun, didn't you? It was Lopi gone wild. It was Crayola Biggie. It would not recognize laceweight if they bumped into each other in a dark workroom. And yet, it was knittable! Hooray! And it wasn't even like knitting with strung-out-and-tortured teal cotton balls! Honest!
So, calm your fears. No worries. Or, as they say in Australia, no furries. (That's short for "no f*ing worries, mate....") How'm I doing so far, She Who Can Make Anything?
The bunny—let's call him Dizzy—is a six-by-six-inch swatch with ears, believe it or not. And that cute little reddish nose is some luscious merino from Fleece Artist. He's all handspun, except for...well...I'll show you in a minute. I had just enough to finish this little guy, with nothing at all to spare. If you ever spin yourself up a mini-mini-skein, beginners, this is a great way to use what you've made.
The joys of hand-dyed teal roving (god, I hate teal, but I know someone who loves it) can be seen in the variations of colour on Dizzy's back. And that pesky fuzzy end that refused to stay twisted? I put it to good use:
Nice bit of tail, eh?
Whoops, there goes my reputation....
Dizzy has actually jumped into a box and is on his way to kick some spinner butt cheer someone up. Meanwhile, I'm spinning up some other beautiful fluffy stuff, and while the kid is away, I'm using her chair as a way to set the twist. Works really well:
Actually, Twinkletoes was here when I did this,
and she assumed that I'd done all my spinning
just to make her chair more comfy.
Right, kid.
This wool was far softer in its roving stage than it ended up being once it was spun. There's not a lot of it...about fifty yards...and it's definitely too rough to put near the face in a small garment that will be worn for longer than five minutes. Any small garment near any bare skin, for that matter, would be a bad idea in this yarn (sorry, no ragg wool bikinis in my future, and a willy warmer in this stuff is absolutely out of the question. L.L. Bean would roll over in his grave.). So...I think it will also become a swatch bunny. Just a larger swatch bunny. A bunny for a kid who has whined about giving up her chair for a half-hour graciously offered me the use of her chair for said yarn. And since I can't twist a skein properly to save my life, I made a kaiser roll:
It looks much softer than it really is.
I'm not sure it's much thinner, but it's far more even.
I think. Humour me, please.
Still, payback's a bitch. While Twinkletoes was home, she realised that her three Barbies were missing something. Something crucial, something all plastic women should have. Something Disney has made sure that every little girl wants for herself, no matter how many times her mother explains to her that it makes it damned near impossible to walk in high heels. And since, you know, Twinkletoes was sweet enough to lend me her chair for my own nefarious purposes, and therefore I owed her not just one, but three, well...she put in an order:
This is an order for three knitted mermaids' tails.
A tail order, if you will.
Yes, I actually had to measure Barbie's ass.
It measures 13 cm. around. Plastic bitch.
Oh yeah. Fearless Knitter, that's me. Geesh, somebody shoot me for saying yes to this. And I just realised what colour those tails probably have to be. Teal. Shite.
Regardless of what kind of trouble I have landed myself in by being a complete pushover (please don't ask me about the elven name that will be knit into the black 2 x 2 rib), I do want you to know that spinning has not completely taken over my brain. It's all fiber, to misquote Margene. That is, the spinning and the knitting are all fiber. My brain...well, let's not talk about that right now, okay?
And if you're still worrying about getting caught up in that spinning thing, never to return to knitting, bah (or if you're French, pfff...), never you fear. You're going to have so much fun spinning your own beautiful yarn, and lest you think your knitting days are over, remember that you just made yarn that you like (unless the beginner kit came with teal roving). You can make anything you want...
You are Fiber Wo/Man. Hear Your Partner Snore.
You want to make something of it?
Talk to the bunny.
He'll tell you how....
Note to the Internet Weary from Tech Support's Support: Our error handling has been causing crashes. If you reached Calvin and Hobbes looking confused instead of Fuzzy Logic, that's okay, we know. So while I'm spinning, Spiff's been doing a little spinning of his own. We're sorry. We'll fix ourselves up to handle real life as fast as we can. Meanwhile, cool error page, no?
July 21, 2005 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (35) | Print
A Simple Twist of Fate
Okay, okay, I admit to a few weaknesses,
Bob Dylan being one of them.
But strengths, I've got a few.
I tried to knit, but I had the spindle with me...
The CN Building in Montréal has thus witnessed
its first incidence of public spinning.
And for the observant among you, you're right, that's not my hand.
I admit it. I like freaking out security guards. And the last two months or so have been such a rollercoaster in so many ways that when I was stuck this week, waiting in a lobby for a group of people to discover that my husband is brilliant, it was the spindle I smuggled in my purse that kept me calm. I have been the cheerleader, the faxer, the editor, the sounding board, the chief cook and bottlewasher, and dammit, I needed to be calm for all that. So I spun. In public. Wow, and I thought knitting in public got me weird looks...I may as well have been lighting a big ol' fire and filling up the caudron.
I did knit a wee bit. I've done about another four centimeters on the 2 x 2 black rib. But that spindle, it has developed a very loud voice for such a small little tinkertoy on a stick. And I know that eventually I will get a wheel...I have accepted my fate...but in the meantime, I'm pretty well attached to this little guy, and I'm learning how to draft more consistently. All in good time, all in good time. You know where I'm headed...I already know where the dealer is in Québec, for chrissakes....
This post will be short, because I've spent my week working my butt off in order to not work my butt off this weekend. You see, the most beautiful little monster in the world is taking a midsummer break, and my one strength lately is remembering that she and Spiff are the loves of my life (although, minor note to self: working butt off does not result in decreased size of said butt...damn...):
It fits, she loves it. Who says capelets are So 2004?
Tomorrow, I show her the spindle...Meanwhile, I am Maman le Hero.
And a wee side note to a gazillion (or at least more than a few) wonderful people who have commented on my posts lately: my reply setup for my comments is, at the moment, a complex little dance involving way more cutting and pasting than I can manage in a timely fashion. I hear you, I really do, and I'm so glad you're there reading me. Comments mean the world to me. And I know I'm supposed to be replying sooner than a decade from the moment I receive a comment. It's just that Tech Support is a wee bit busy lately and hasn't handled the Massively Annoying Comment Reply Blug (that's a Blog Bug, = Blug. Nevermind. We're geeks. Tempting as it is, try not to mock us too loudly...). I'm replying as fast as I can. Which is clearly not very bloody fast, eh? After Twinkletoes goes back to Camp Ex-Husband, I'll be a bit more freed up time-wise, I hope, and can address the comments as well as the means with which to answer them in a timely fashion. Meanwhile, sheepy people rock, plain and simple.
The pathetic little sock toe is still a wee little sock toe, but I'm seriously thinking of smuggling it into my four and a half hour programming class. Really, now. Who listens to anything for four and a half hours without something to occupy the hands? Geesh....
And major breakthrough on the spinning front...I was spinning in bed, you see...
Whaaaat? What's the problem, eh? I spun in bed. I was alone. It's relaxing. Shut up. I can stop anytime I want.
Anyway, I was spinning in bed, and Spiff came in and sat down next to me. He watched me for a while, and I saw this bizarre look begin to creep over his face. (No, no...I'm quite sure he didn't suddenly develop a spindle fetish...). He said, "I was very wrong to say that this is a dumb activity. This is almost medieval...you're actually doing in real life what your elf character in World of Warcraft would do, and that's actually pretty cool...."
See? Seeeeee?!? HA!!! I ask you, was it just a matter of time before my raised-on-Dungeons-and-Dragons husband realised just how cool it is that I can do this thing that has been done for centuries, and even better, he can get a sweater out of the deal? Well, okay, maybe a small scarf...or a set of gloveless fingers or something...anyway...HA!!! (I very quietly and unobtrusively, in not so many words, told you so. Darling.)
Next post, I promise to show some knitting. Unless I end up spinning. If I don't end up completely flattened by a weekend with my beloved child, I might manage both. Baaaa.
July 15, 2005 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (25) | Print
Right round, baby.
Lately I've felt like I've been running in circles.
So I decided to embrace the torque....
Welcome to my Sunday afternoon. I'm feeling, shall we say, a bit twisted.
So I spun this in public, at my knitting group.
The wine, I saved for later.
In addition to the thunderstorms that are running through here without offering up so much as a half-degree of heat relief, we are weathering a few shitstorms. They are not fit for internet consumption, but I will say that my gut is completely twisted (not good), I'm losing weight (that, I'll take, and I don't care how I get there), and so is Spiff (ohhhh boy. Really not good. He doesn't have it to spare...).
So, as promised in the last post, I decided to handle things my own way. I embraced my twisted state and made this:
Lopi, eat your heart out.
Once I wet it and let it dry, it bloomed a bit and looked fatter than I'd personally want in a yarn, but I'm told this is normal, beginners spin yarn-logs, I'm on the right track, kwitcha worryin', lady. Well, Jesus H. you know who, I sure hope so...because this is hyper-addictive.
Yep, I made the Crayola Biggie version of handspun.
One of the members of my knitting group asked where I bought this stuff.
Yes, I beamed. I pulled out my spindle. Jaws dropped. Yarn was fondled.
I'm aware that it's the stuff of beginners, but I'm proud anyway....
Now, I like my knitting group people. They're a talented lot. They design. They finish things way faster than me. Still, nobody, but nobody, is interested in spinning. Not in the least. In fact, someone accused me of spinning Santa Claus:
However, I noticed a few people looking a bit swayed
by the hypnotic effect of a twirling spindle...
Heh. You are getting sheeeeeeepyyyy....
Me, I completely get the draw. Drop-spindle spinning is like a license to fidget. I spun the entire little pile of teal roving, much as I hate that colour, just because I figured I'd, you know, ease my mind a bit while watching the news...two hours later, I had a spindle full and I felt oddly calm, even though I still do not know if my friend in London is okay. I have been reluctant to call his parents, but it's been days, and now I'm really worrying. He's not one to reply quickly, but still...you just never know what life is going to deal in your direction.
Spiff still doesn't get it. He thinks that since this is something I can do just while I'm sitting watching TV, well, then, it's kind of a dumb activity....
Wait until I make him a sweater out of handspun.
Did I just say what I think I just said?
Shit. I'm going to need a wheel, aren't I.... You see how it goes? Black holes really do suck....
By the way, nearly everyone at the knitting group admitted to having a bit of roving in their closet. I find that extremely amusing...some people hide bottles, others hide skeletons, and what do we have hidden in our closets? little fluffy bits of sheep....
And while I was...heu...circling the bandwagons...I made this:
I admitted to a new friend that I am a sock virgin.
She could hardly believe her ears. Well, I was so embarrassed,
I went and made a toe yesterday...so...virgin, no more.
I'm nowhere near sock slut-hood, but I might make a pair....
I have some rainbow yarn that another friend gave me for my birthday, and it will become socks for Twinkletoes because she is the Queen of the Rainbows, but in the meantime, this Lorna's Laces called out to be something for my mother, and I've been so chastened by all of these beautiful socks on everyone's blogs that I was really beginning to feel like I was a sock dork. So I bought two circs, and embarked on a sock adventure.
Let me just say, having never done this before, that I hate grafting, more than anything, even seaming, so I am a fan of the toe-up idea. However, I have to admit that the figure-eight cast-on is not for the faint of heart. In fact, after ripping out what I did three times, I started to call it the FF8 cast-on (that would be the F*cking Figure Eight cast-on), and it's a small, but fitting, testament to my inability to admit defeat and do things the easier way, that I even have this little toe to show you. Spiff, who normally doesn't even believe in such things, thinks it's bad karma to make socks for my darling mother with every row containing a "f***ing stupid knit through the f***ing back loop, how the f*** am I supposed to do this when the f***ing yarn is tighter to the needle than flies on shit...."
Ummm...Happy Birthday, Mommy?
I suck. But I didn't give up, and now I have almost a whole toe. The rest is cake. Please don't tell me how hard the short-row heel is going to be. I don't want to hear it. It's going to be JUST FINE. Did I mention that I've never short-rowed before either?
In other knitting news, I want to make a rectangular Birchy thingy without a diagonal seam down the middle of it. And I'm not sure how to do this. I have the Kidsilk Haze...now I just need to figure out the math, the approach, the edging stitch, etc. If anyone has any insight into this type of modification, please, speak up. I'm all ears.
I'll just go twist in the wind for a few days...back soon with another skein and a sock to show for it, I hope. And maybe even a black 2 x 2 ribbed sweater-back. You see, Spiff is asking..."Where's my sweater you were making a while ago?" Uh oh....
July 10, 2005 9:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (28) | Print
Pony up, darlin'...
I was going to call this post "She's Gotta Have It," but then thought better of it. You know, something about comparing my kid's love of all things "ooooh, a rainbow" to the, uh, extreeeeemely deep need of a Spike Lee character for pleasures I frankly don't want to think about in relation to Twinkletoes until she reaches the age of, say, 48...
She's 6. We've got years. PLEASE tell me we've got years.
Anyway, whatever this poncho/capelet/shoulderwarmer/lacythingy is now called, it can be subtitled Finished Object:
Not half bad, actually. I'll give it to her
when she comes home mid-summer for a brief visit.
If it doesn't fit over her head, I will cry.
And then I will MAKE it fit.
I'm in a horrible mood lately. I discovered that ex-husbands do insanely dimwitted things like leave their electric razors plugged in constantly in a bathroom they have recently begun to share with a visiting six year old. Don't ask how I know this. I will only say that it involves a full sink of water, an unsupervised child, an "on" button, and fried circuitry. The child is alright. The mother is APOPLECTIC. The razor is dead. The ex is going to wish he suffered the fate of the razor if anything like this ever happens again.
I am in serious need of stress relief. I have therefore promised myself that I am going to do something I've been dying to do, but have not had the time, thanks to trying to finish Pony. So. Next post, I will have singles. And I don't mean the kind who e-mail you thirty-eight times a day to ask if you are ALL blonde, or if you wear a thong, or if you'd like to take a long walk down a moonlit beach to the Kamasutra Korner Shoppe. No, no, deeply disappointed Googlemeisters, I mean WOOL singles. Spindle and Me. We're gonna get it on. Twist the night away. Attempt to make something that stays more tightly wrapped than I currently feel.
Meanwhile, tonight, Twinkletoes rattled on the phone to Spiff in half-comprehensible French for about fifteen minutes and then sang me her two New Favourite Songs (one about a strawberry that may or may not get eaten but could use some sugar in any case, and one about cherries that wish that somebody's mother would buy them because lots of little girls like them even though they're very expensive) and then gave me a gazillion bisoux and wished me bonne nuit. For the record, I did not cry. On the phone, that is.
I still have two skeins left of Pony Puke...uh...Arc En Ciel. I should probably save them for a rainy day or a maternally induced promise, eh?
And that Frankentank? In Stage 3, the directions for which were lost under the couch until today.
So...give me a few days' warmup time. I need to get in the right frame of mind for this singles thing. Zen is not my forté, and I may have to call in for reinforcements.July 6, 2005 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | Print
My Blowdryer's Back
And my VISA is in trouble—
Hélas, hélas,
wool's worse than crack...
We were really worried about this vacation, I have to tell you. Worried we would get lost. Worried we'd open the tent and discover it was missing parts. Worried the car would not get us there without losing parts (the exhaust system is extremely ill). Worried there would be no place left at the campground to put the tent. Worried the food would suck, because we knew that after one night of campfire cooking, we were going to want to go out somewhere and let someone else do the fire-making. Worried it would rain. Worried the ladies at Lettuce Knit would think I was a complete dork. (Okay, it was just me who was worried about that. Spiff is far more confident than I about my abilities to just land in the midst of strangers and not stutter, swear too much, or reveal my entire life story after one glass of sangria. I think I only said f*ck once and only told a small part of the story of my visitation woes with the ex. Phiou.)
Anyway, we needn't have worried, although when we got closer to the campground, this sign did make us a bit nervous about the food-finding part:
Except that they lie. Food's good, beer's cold,
we were glad they were open. Although...
they were out of Guinness. They had Stella. We forgave them.
The campground at Earl Rowe Provincial Park is lovely, though the waterline of the swimming area is so thick with stinky mud that you feel as if you have signed up for the Sulfur-Saver Pedicure Pack when you try to venture into the water. The fish, who found my legs delicious (which is very nice of them but I'm quite ticklish), added a certain element of surprise to this bizarro spa experience. And we were definitely not helped by the fact that for most of our beach time, we seemed to be downwind from a pig farm. Cows, I can handle. Sheep, even. But man, pig shit really burns the nose hairs. Still, it could have been worse. It could have been chicken shit. Next year, we try Darlington, which, I hear, is nicer, although located in the shade of the ever-photogenic natural phenomenon known as the local nuclear power plant.
Now, I thought Québec people were nice. I grew up in New Hampshire and lived in Boston for fifteen years of my adult life, and I'm used to Yankee grouchiness, so Québecers were a refreshing change. But Ontario people...they take the cake of niceness and ask you if you want extra icing with that. In fact, they apologise for the size of your (we thought) ginormous breakfast muffin and give you half price because it came out smaller than the rest. They also know how to make filter coffee that actually tastes like coffee. You apparently don't have to be called espresso to come out alright here....
We got hyper-sunburned on the first day and had to avoid the sun for the rest of the time. Hmmm, what to do, what to do. Well, like dutiful tourists, when we went to Toronto for the day, we went here:
The Say-En Tower, she is very tall, no? (Translation from
Québec English to New Hampshire English, just for Norma:
Ayuh, that's one wicked hyooge towah, alroight....
We stood on the Glass Floor, through which you can look and test your resistance to vertigo. After jumping out of a plane a couple of years ago with Spiff, I'm pretty good on that score, but it is freaking weird to be standing on what looks like nothing that high up:
Nope, the ticket price doesn't include the barf bag.
And Spiff's feet are not, in fact, that big. My freakishly short
Barney Rubble feet throw off the perspective.
Even she got in on the act, all the way to the top.
Then we tried to find our car back at the Toronto Convention Centre garage. We got lost there (so, see, I wasn't wrong to worry a bit), but the people who were at the "International Conference 2005" being held there were so nice to us that it wasn't too bad. People everywhere were coming up to us, holding out their hands and saying, "You made it! Welcome! Are you looking to register?" We thought, wow, these Ontario people, they are SO incredibly FRIENDLY, it's almost bizarre! Then, on our fourth or fifth trip up and down the escalators, we noticed what it said on the shopping bags people were carrying. Heh. It was the International Alcoholics Anonymous Conference 2005....
May I say, I am extremely glad that I asked about where I could find my car, not where I could find the bar....
In fact, it was so hot that we did indeed find a bar afterward, to have an evening Kilkenny, because Queen's Head, too, was out of the Guinness. Toronto has a Guinness supply problem, I think....Anyway, this pub was three blocks away from Romni Wool. So, ladies of Toronto, no, I did not actually walk by Romni and resist it. Duh, what kind of a girl do you think I am???
Seriously, I could have gone down to Romni, but I was having a nice time talking and relaxing with Spiff, and I wanted him to know that he, not my fiber frenzy, was my focus for the vacation. Yeah, okay, cue the "awwwww...wait a few years, honey...." Hey, I'm crazy in love with the guy. I can't help it. And I'll just order from Romni online....
Then we ate at a lovely little restaurant called Jules, on Spadina, where you can get the kind of food Spiff's Maman might cook. Mom, I ate another nearly raw steak. It was great. I'm still here.
After dinner, we went here to join in on a wee little Stitch and Bitch:
I stitched and Spiff didn't bitch. I had sangria. I fondled Koigu.
I met bloggers and non-bloggers alike. And I wish
there was a Lettuce Knit in Montréal, complete with
tables and sangria. Megan (in cool red shoes), you rock.
And I figured that if Stephanie was going to have me pose with the soul-sucking baby blanket which will, no doubt, fight its horrific karmic destiny as a soul-sucker and turn out to be just fine—in fact, a lovely comfort to the little person who will snuggle with it—I would ask her to pose with me and you-know-what:
Stephanie is taller than me. And has better hair.
I enjoyed her company immensely, even though she
is in on the plot to take over the world.
I'm really sorry, Steph, that's all I had with me for projects. You were absolutely worth, at the very least, the Frankentank. But I had to take this pony puke dishrag present for my daughter along because it has to be finished. You know the deal. Forced knitting monogamy. Unfortunately, when I am on vacation, I knit about as fast as this little guy:
He was our site-mate for the week.
Stephanie gave me a present as part of the plot, by the way. She carded it herself. I was just astonished:
Uh, oops, wrong photo. Ahem.
Curly sheep or tangled-beyond-help camp hair?
Not even Stephanie can card this stuff....
Ah, here we go, this is the real soft stuff...some Corriedale, I believe, and some merino that is just to die for. I put my face in it and I'm not ashamed to say so:
You're sneaky, Steph. Very sneaky. I loooooove this stuff....
I was also highly encouraged by all at hand to buy this:
I have absolutely no self-control. Alchemy Bamboo is gorgeous.
And no one told me not to. Imagine that.
Even Spiff said go for it. I love that man.
I had a blast and Spiff...well...he was not insanely bored. He took pictures and fended off a couple of perverts...they thought he was just sitting there to ogle us and wanted to join him in the fun. He even offered to drive me back so I could have a drink with the hilariously funny and very friendly ladies in this group and not further damage the V(ehicle)W(ounded) in the process. We went back later than we intended...and Stephanie nicely pointed out that along the way to my car, there is a Neurology Centre, in case, you know, I have a brain blow. I hope I'm not the only one who sees the humour in the fact that there is an enormous funeral home directly across the street from the Neurology Centre's entrance. So, you know, if it doesn't work out in one place, you ain't got fah t'go, honey....
And now, for the mystery photos for Cara and Laurie:
Cara, do you have any idea who this little guy is?
and what is he feeding on?
And a flower story for Laurie:
I bloomed,
I tried to contain myself,
Uh, whoops. I just became a lesson in how not to spin.
So, Laurie, these three photos are life-stages
of the same flower, which blooms for a day.
Any idea what it is?
Next post, I aim to have Pony finished, because I aim to please. (Please tell me I am not the only person who, without fail, finishes that phrase in my mind with "You aim too, please....")
July 3, 2005 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | Print