Artwork

Finished knitting the beast. All in all it didn't take that long~ I think if I had stuck to it it would have only taken two weeks. Big needles and holding two strands of cascade makes knitting FLY! The bag is huge and I take it for a proper felting on Monday.

I really hope that I stick to finishing this bag and not just let it languish now that I'm done knitting. It needs a lot of work still: felting, plastic canvas along the bottom, bag feet, lining, zipper, and handles.

Good thing it's pretty.
In other news, here's my friend Kat!
Oh no! Where did she go?!?!?!?!
I think one of the reasons I like fair isle is because it reminds me of tattoos and the such. Especially the beast. Wouldn't that design be awesome as a sleeve tattoo? I know right?

This is my latest one. It's a little impulsive but I just needed to get something done while waiting for the planned tattoo. It's also only 24 hours old as of right now. It's on my right hip and is much smaller than this photo makes it out to be. I like to explain most of my tattoos~ I talk and talk about their meaning and what they represent but this one is pretty self-explanatory.

The Summer is Closing Down

I'm in denial but a friend brought that up today. Booger. I enjoy (kinda) not knowing what day of the week it is. I'm soaking it all in~ taking long walks along the water, going to markets, painting and knitting, pretending I have money... it's all good.

I had a sad day today for a bit so I'm focused on the calming and, forgive the word, charmed things in my life right now.

I have an amazing family (friends included in this definition). Everyone wave at Sheena. She's the one who inspired me to paint again. Three cheers!
And see that wine we're drinking? Remember how I didn't buy any yarn at Gibsons? Remember this? That explains the 'I've Got Sunshine' from SeeJayneKnit. I've got mighty fine taste under the influence it would seem. The other yarn is the Yarntini from Sweet Shop that Meg stole from me so I had to go buy some. Yarn is happy and makes me stretch my toes in glee.
And I've got this cute cat guy here.

Gibson's Landing

Ah... I am sleep deprived still but what a fun time. Let's see here....

proof that I got up at 5 so I was downtown by 6 to catch the bus to catch the ferry. I don't know why I thought I had to be there so early. I think because I was paying to stay at a hotel I figured I should get as much as possible out of the trip. I'm glad I did.

One good shot of the ferry coming in. Thankfully I still like ferries. I had a less than pleasant time getting off this ferry. Turns out at Langdale you walk off a car level because they have no passenger walkway. I've always thought that under no circumstances should you get off on a car level~ like ever! So anyhoo I was lost on the ferry and a very nice woman told me I had to go down to level 2 (and I was like that's a CAR level and she said that's okay) so by the time I got down there I was the last person and the man yelled at me to hurry up cause all the cars had to wait for me. Thankfully I wasn't far behind everyone else but still. AUGH. I was worried that I hadn't been listening properly or something but I listened really hard on the way back and frankly you cannot hear the announcer properly through no fault of your own. The ferry is too loud to hear instructions so I stick my tongue out at them.
:P

Anyhoo I got to Gibsons and after a loop de loop bus ride got to the high school which made me very happy. I was super early but I made myself at home at a starbucks (Tim Horton's coffee? Oxymoron right there).
Afterwards I returned and spent a long time in the exhibition part which was amazing. I kept asking if I could take photos and the volunteers would nicely point to the signs that said 'no photography' and I would say 'I know but please?'. What amazing items. The quilts were to die for! And also... turns out there are two types of rug hooking. Michael's rug hooking and rug hooking that is awesome. I can't show you any photos of the awesome rug hooking but trust me. It's like... folded strips of long skinny fabric. So amazing.

After that I went over to the market which rocked my socks off. I had a brief and messy love affair with a Ladybug wheel but due to budget constraints and some issues with pedals I decided against. I solaced my broken heart with a turkish drop spindle and some fleece (80% BFL (heehee) and 20% silk~ I think). I spun while waiting for my friend Lara to arrive. I'm glad I didn't get the ladybug because I am now all over this. I want it. I will have one. When I have money. Oh it will be mine.

I also tried to figure out a way to get this table of Kauni home without the merchant seeing me. Lara arrived and Gibson's got even more fun! We even got to hang out with YarnPiggy and my friend Janet as well. I made lots of friends of all ages and sorts. Simone is a lovely young eight year old who just 'knew how to knit' and Doreen is a lovely older woman who spun paper and wove it into a purse. I know!

Lara is the most amazing crocheter and here she is displaying just one of her creations. This is crocheted! CROCHET!!!!
Do you see that camera too? I know. I know.

The following day Lara and I explored Gibson's Landing some more. I'm not overly familiar with BeachCombers but for all of you who are, here you go. We also went to an awesome bakery called WheatBerries and lots of other fun beautiful places.


The ferry ride home I braved the upper deck to get some nice photos and then quickly went back down since we all know how I feel about heights and water. Lara and I were pretty zonked by that point but it was a quick ferry ride home and we got the express bus into Vancouver. I never put my drop spindle down and actually had enough yarn to pull it off and test the handiness of a turkish drop spindle Saturday evening. Isn't that neat? A ready made ball when you are done.

And this is the other purchase made on Saturday... crochet thread! It's colour fast varigated #12 crochet thread from Romania. Very exciting. I'll post soon what I'm hoping to get done with it. Jenn... you may need to get me some more (Kelowna store). And for those of you observant enough to notice... I didn't get any knitting yarn! I know! Craziness. Well, hopefully I will be able to share with you why I did not get any knitting yarn while at Gibsons.

In other news, I'm going to bed.

red wine blogging

that's about it.

It's um... 10:40 on a Monday and I've got to say~ if you're drunk on organic red wine it's got to be a good start to a week.

and I still have to finish Alyria's wine for her ! Whoo!

eta: 10:40 PM. very important. If's it 10:40 AM drunk than it's a very... interesting start to a week. Different than good.

I have a living room again!

It's all so exciting. It's amazing what picking up 14 pillows and vacuuming will do to a room. There was more to it than that but not much more. I moved Spike's yoga mat and found three kitty treats which excited him just as much as when he realized I had moved his mat which makes it new and exciting again. He hasn't gotten off it since.
Spike wonders why I am not giving him treats right now.

So I've been working a lot at the coffee shop and working out like a demon. I really like yoga. And I think I might be able to keep this up. I enjoy the classes more and more and actually kinda missed the gym today. I just feel like my body is more relaxed and can move easier. I've known for a long time that I needed to do something but just couldn't get started. And while yoga is so hard and sometimes you think you will die if the instructor says to hold the pose for two more breathes it's also just so awesome sometimes. The stretches and twists are very... I'm looking for a word that relates to being able to breathe that would apply to the previous statement... I dunno. I lost my vocabulary in July. But whatever that word is, that is yoga to me.

I went hiking. This is the bridge that I started to cry on and freaked out and my friends had to lead me across. Those are them waaaay ahead of me. I took the photo to convince myself I was fine. Then I stopped breathing. Why do I go across suspension bridges?

I took lots of pictures. Pretty rivers (I do fine on other bridges... it's those bloody suspension bridges) and pretty rocks. Than I had to go downhill and found out my shoes did not grip and that sucked. I fell right at the end and ended up tearing some muscle filaments in my left foot. Stupid shoes.


Meg came back from sock summit with my yarn. She keeps on insisting it's hers but I'm like... 'it loves ME!!!'



That's true love if I've ever seen it (thanks Janelle for the photo). I also like how Meg is in the background here~ completely unaware that in an hour I will sneak that yarn out of her bag and contemplate leaving the cafe with it since she *so* did not see me take it. I hit her with it instead (thanks Janelle for the suggestion).

This was also the night I spent 90 minutes doing the kitchener stitch for my cardigan. I've always enjoyed kitchener stitch but now I need to clarify. I enjoy kitchener stitch for socks. A looser large gauge over 70 stitches? Hell. My cardigan has hit a few bumps. The darts are too far down to be effective so as Rachel noted~ they look like boobs (or sassy eggs). So I'm going to pull them into this little pocket detail in the back which has some people concerned but don't worry! I'm pretty sure I think I know what I'm doing! Here's some progress photos. Still need to block it again and do some more fiddling.

My tool kit for this cardigan. See the post its with the sheep clips? That's my pattern.

post-kitchener hell

A clip I'm thinking about for the back.

The seed stitch border was stupidly difficult and un-neccessarily hard but I like it.


And I decided to name it by random wiki article and it (I am DEAD serious here) came up with Jan Baas. I know. So what do you think? Can I call it the J. Baas cardigan?

Do I win prizes for the most random blog entries?

Push: Love and Hate (and ending with random photos)

In style of Jennifurfur I'm going to start with a comparison of two things- one of those things being awesome and one being the opposite of anything awesome- and they have one thing in common. Their name.

Push (the movie): oh it's just so. so. very. bad. And I made my friend watch it with me. How she ever forgave me. I was hoping for cheesy goodness you know? Like some Van Damne (how do you spell his last name?) movies or Stallone where you know it's bad but at least it's not painful! Or even one of those movies that you watch when it's on TV but when anybody else comes into the room you change it to the History Channel and say yes... yes you are watching the show about AIRCOM. Why?

But no. No no no. This movie was beyond. You don't even hate the characters because you just don't care. You also don't know who are the major characters besides the main two so all of a sudden you're like... oh wait, she's important too? Wtf? And the dialouge tries to be funny but it just isn't. I was telling my friend how painful their attempts at humour were and she hadn't realized it was even a humour attempt. I think she 'left' for the movie in order to cope. The real shame here being is that the fight scenes were okay! I enjoyed the sounds and the choreographing but sweet jesus do not watch this movie. Ugh. Painful painful ugh. Like leggings and uggs. Lace edged leggings. Lace edged leggings whose special power is to yell really loud. Yup. Their foes could yell really loud. How's that for a spin off?

Push By Sapphire: I shouldn't actually review books just after reading them because I can never really articulate myself properly. This book is good though and I know I'm going to stand by that. It was interesting because even though the main character goes through so much the book never got stuck or pulled you down~ the strength of the main character to get through all her abuse comes through in the writing so it's like you can get through too. Does that make any sense? I'm so not a critical analysis or articulate person and I can get waaaaay too emotional and mushy when writing but Precious, the main character, is real to me now and it's like I'm proud of her and all this stuff. I mean, I'm also the girl who wants to marry Mr. Darcy, which I know now is a common thread, but still. It's these kinds of books that made me wish I taught high school so I could read these books with youth.


Random Photos!!!

So I went home for a week in July. As usual it was a good time that was had. Lots of nephew kissing and squeezing, Grandparents, hanging out with Mom, watching TV with Dad, and even an awesome lunch with a Jodi.

Flying there we passed by one of the fires that has now been contained; however, as I'm sure many of you know, there are many more raging. It's hard to show in the photos just how massive this fire was or how huge those clouds are but it was very awful. The cloud of smoke just stretched on and on. The last picture is from the Kelowna airport.


Upon getting to Vernon the knitting did commence. Julia wants to knit a felted sweater so this time she picked out wool instead of acrylic so we're hoping for better results than the bag of doom she knit in Christmas 2006 (was that the year?). Isn't she too cute? I took this photo than put my camera down ontop of a table of knickknacks in the basement and didn't find it till my last hour in Vernon so this is it for Vernon pictures.
When I returned home I had a very upset Kitty on my hands. Even though I had the best house-sitter yarn can buy I guess he was just a little ansy this time around.
Not only did he claw and bite my dear friend who was taking care of him~ including one episode where he went Spawn-Kitty on her (ears back, legs straight, fur poofed, walking sideways, hissing, tail big)~ but I guess Spike also decided other things in the apartment had to die as well.
Including the evil granola.

Eeeeeevil.

I'm working at the coffee shop lots. We sell those little bottles of San Pelligreno so I've asked everyone to save the lids for me. So far I have 98 lids. If I decide to do the coffee table which was a suggestion from a friend I'll need 361 so I'm 27% there but we'll see. May yet change my mind. But if you do have any of those lids mind sending them my way?
This is the underwear I left in the laundry room for two weeks that was folded nicely and left on the front table in the laundry room. Just incase you're doubting your eyes, that is a print of dogs wearing sweaters hanging xmas lights.
I had to frog the sleeve to my cardigan but I have cast on again. It was tooooo big. I'm proud of myself for frogging and not just ignoring it till I messed the whole thing up. Oh well. that yarn by the way is bloody amazing.
And in a 30 by 30 update, Julia and I have joined the YWCA which is just neat. So this is working on.... #14. Go team!