So This Is My Video

Some Things You Should Know About the Video

I did some prep beforehand, like

• finding the best distance away (my first test was basically my eyeball)

• checking how I looked (not too worried, but I did blot because holy shiny forehead batman)
• trying to convey the mess of my apartment without really showing it (love the kitty carrier in the middle of the living room)
• pushing away the kitten till she became distracted by the window
  
• and checking the volume of the background music (calming)
  

it was the second take only because the first one wasn't recorded. And it was totally different. I think I ranted about the cats more and tried to guilt others into helping me.

And seriously, why does a video take 45 minutes to load and still be this poor of quality? Sheesh.


Please notice

• Beethoven wrote moonlight sonata. Not Mozart. I get it confused with the Magic Flute. God knows why.
  
• my flailing hand. I talk a lot with my hands. I tried not to to no avail.
• when I mentioned kicking stuff in my bedroom I really did kick my foot which shook the camera
• I got really nervous at the end for some reason. Had no idea how to end. Apparently decided to end by making a classical music fail but regardless, nervous
  
• I have the cutest teeth~ they are so cute!
  
• my messy living room
• my ability to rant while talking just like I rant on the blog while writing

You Give Me Fever.... Bastard

Nothing like a sinus infection to bring about a fever in this heat. THANKS BODY! It means not only am I sick but I also am sweaty and have that glazed drunkard look about me. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Sexy. I know.

Done teaching so the creative side is taking over. I have the buttons on my cardigan (thanks to the wise council of Ms. Welford Purls) and I'll take a photo when I'm not, you know, the sexbomb as mentioned above. I also made an awesome pie the other night (I do all my baking around midnight to avoid the heat) and last night I made dumplings! They were so good. I made around 20 and realized I bought enough wrapped for around 100 so um, we should have a dumpling party soon. Oh, and back to the pie. I tossed the sliced apples with honey, cinnamon, vanilla, brown sugar, and a bit of lemon juice and zest, and let them sit for an hour before putting them in the pie. Next pie though I'm making my own dough.

Can't quilt because I can't iron in this heat but am knitting. I had to knit the button band to my cardigan twice (sigh) but...

finished my sock! That is the SECOND sock. In less than a week! (sure my needles are a whopping 3mm but I grabbed them running out the door to the airport so :P it's still an accomplishment) I'm so proud.


Now you might be thinking... isn't the other sock radically different?
Well yes. Same skein of Noro though! The white is higgens-clark or whatever that company is. But you can see the teal on the toe of the first sock that starts on the second one. I love these socks. I don't mind the yarn, a lot of people commented that they are itchy but I don't notice. I may wash them in conditioner but frankly, it's all good. I love the hearty wool socks.


And they love each other. As Meg noted, they don't match, but they 'go'.

My next project is a hat I'm knitting out of some yummy yarn Ms. Beentsy got me awhile back. It's to go with these buttons I picked up with Rachel that I had to buy. Rachel suggested a hat to go with them.


How could I not buy them?

So um.... other random things I found when I downloaded my photos this morning. Much like bags at an airport~ why you should never leave your camera unattended.

Back in Van

I left Friday night for home for a very day and then Julia drove me home today. I got to see tonnes of family and eat lots of great food. I have photos but that's a whole other blog post. I didn't get as much Jenn time because I became rather sick on Saturday. I blame it on my random thought last Thursday which was 'gee, I haven't been sick once for this whole contract!' and then my immune system was like 'just wait'.

Stupid immune system.

And in other news, as of today, I'm still unemployed until September so I should be blogging more. And knitting more! Check out what I did in just two days!I finished the first one in the car today and kept on going. I'm loving the stripes of the yarn (noro) but I did rip out a giant chunk of green in the second sock so that the whole thing wouldn't be green. They are very happy socks. If all things go well I'll finish the second one by Thursday to show the group!

Now I'm off to drink more tea and bundle up with the kitties. They are very happy to see me. Thankfully the only thing they decided to kill this time was a bag of flour that survived. Only the first layer of paper was ripped and it didn't open when they knocked if off the counter. Good flour. Oh, and they knocked over and broke a computer speaker but I put the screen back on and it seems to be fine. Otherwise, no pieces of bread scattered throughout the apartment, Spike didn't eat something and puke it up everywhere, no broken dishes, no ripped open bags of oats... a pretty successful trip away!

I Wish I Was Surfing Right Now

Hi! Still here. Been very busy. I took a three week contract teaching summer school in Burnaby. And half days at that, so from 9 to 12. You'd think that'd mean I'd have time (holy 'd much?) but I think it really backfired because when I work full days I make sure to take the time off but because I was all like 'I'm only working part time' I was making all these plans. But frankly, I left for work at 7 to be there by 8 and wouldn't get home till 2 usually and then I was out the door and up late. I had a lot of impromptu naps on my living room floor or in front of the computer.
I didn't have any time for knitting so I made sure to have a transit project. I don't have any photos but I have a lovely pair of mismatched pink socks to call my own. I'll get some photos soon.

The fun fun news is I bought the fabric for my hammerhead shark quilt. Have I talked about that yet? I used this photo by Eric Cheng (we've emailed. He's super cool.) and entered it into this program (having trouble with the link~ brb). The results are a little abstract, but pretty awesome.
From there I printed the colours out greyscale so I could see their value. Then I figured out how much yardage I needed for each colour and how much yardage was in the cuts of fabric. That a good math time.

Then, the really interesting part, I went to Fabricana. I was there for quite a bit. I pulled about, mmm, maybe 30 bolts of blue fabric and they let me use their teaching corner and use about five tables to lay them all out. From there I pulled the ones I liked and then sorted them by using photos of the blues I needed. Once I had the colours pared down to around 20 (I needed 15) I used my spiffy ruby beholder and made sure the values were right as well. There was a lot of sorting and painful decisions and people coming over and wondering why I had all the blue quilting cotton. Once finished I then took pictures to preserve the order and then sorted them by how much I needed of each. Booyah.

I have no idea how it's going to turn out but here we go.






I can't start this quilt until I finish all my other ones. Least to say all I have to do now is a border and I am done all my quilts. Pics to follow of those too~ they are too cute!