It's Ten O'Clock on Friday Night and I'm Going to Bed

but to be fair, I've had two martinis (chocolate espresso) so the night isn't a total write off.*

Today was a good day all in all. It was the last day in my class. We had a good day, very busy, with gym and library and lots of projects to finish. My amazing aide helped them create a very nice card with they wrote messages to me on cut-out balls of yarn and then they decorated the card with yarn. One student drew a picture of my desk with all my shoes lined up underneath it. The staff was so generous and very thoughtful and went out a picked out a beautiful file folder container printed with William Morris. I received hugs from kids I never thought would hug me and very nice cards, along with two pounds of dark whole coffee beans and a whole flock of miniature paper cranes.

The flowers were gorgeous too.
So today at lunch I found out where I'm going on Monday. I'm headed to an Annex where I'll be teaching Grade 2/3 till the end of the school year. It's pretty freaky in that those are the two grades I've never taught but I'm really excited. It's made last week's purchases rather great in hindsight.
That is, starting from top left and going clockwise, City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Williams and Jon J Muth, The Magic Paintbrush by Joel Stewart, The Little Hummingbird by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, and Silent Music; A Story of Bahdad by James Rumford.

All four books are just skookum. My favorite bookstore was having a big sale and I had at least twenty books with me with no place to sit since all the benches had been removed for sale bins. The staff was awesome and simply moved a few things out of the way so I could sit down and go through all my books in one of the window display sections.
City dog, country frog is a very lovely story and the illustrations are very powerful. They made me laugh and, though I should state this isn't hard to do, made me cry.

Yup, just got choked up again. Moving along.

Silent Music is an important and unique story and the artwork in this book is breathtaking! The layers of prints and mediums is musical in itself.



I've read it about five times and each time I find something new to marvel at.

The Magic Paintbrush is a great story and the illustrations are wonderful, but I couldn't seem to get a good photo of any of them. They are full of motion and life.
I read The Little Hummingbird to my students today. It's a powerful short story and is so well suited to the illustrations. It's one of those stories that I can't see told without these accompanying drawings.

Very striking and moving.

Now, I go to bed. Here's to good reads and to me not getting taken over and run out of town by 7 and 8 year olds.

*just so you don't worry, some friends took me out for dinner, I'm not having those martinis here at home by myself. Though I wish I was cause those were good.

Newly Addicted to Earl Grey Tea

I finished the Golden Goblin. I think it's safe to say it's one of the most beautiful things I've knit. Thanks to Katy for the yarn.
I knit on slightly larger needles and didn't add any tiers to Citron. It ended up being 40 inches long and 18 deep which is perfect. Citron is the perfect pattern. It is very mindless but requires enough concentration to make you feel engaged. I'll probably knit this again.

My latest cast on (since the disaster of the yoga socks) is for a scrappy lengthwise scarf. For a 340 stitch row it's coming along very quickly. Here's a photo of the swatch to show the design.
I've already finished four rows so it's coming along nicely. Despite my swatch it seems a little short so I may knit it very wide and turn it into a runner for my coffee table.

Here's my new and improved living room layout. I really like it and it feels much more 'home' than it ever did before. I love curling up in the corner next to all my books and just read or knit. It's very relaxing.

Rainbow Farts fingerless mitts for a co-worker who plays soccer in this cold.
I got the yarn I ordered on December 31st in a blind panic. I needed the yarn for a cowichan sweater and 3bf wasn't open so I logged onto an online yarn company and quickly picked out my colours and pressed 'submit'. I thought I was ordering two creams and one brown.

Nope. Guess I should pay a little bit more attention next time. Oh well, we'll make this work.
And lastly, I knit a mini santa hat.
Lala doesn't want to wear it.
She wants to destroy it.

I'm buying my coffee tomorrow.

I'm feeling pretty lazy but I still need to shower and prep for tomorrow before bed. It's got me pretty grumpy, well, as grumpy as someone with not a lot of responsibility can get. I can pretty much guarantee I'll have a nervous breakdown every week for the first five years with children.

I downloaded photos for this post randomly, just photos I thought were interesting or told a story, and were in the two most recent folders. There's no plot here. No premise. Just photos. Tra la la.

Firstly, WTF?
I don't know if it was me or what but when I went to wind my black sock yarn for mittens this is what happened. All the breaks were at the same point which made me think I somehow accidentally cut it with scissors, but the cut was a little into the yarn itself, and also, I think I would have noticed if I cute into a skein of yarn and cut SEVEN strands. Sigh. Maybe I'll do some intarsia with it.

It snowed. I still had to go to work.
but walking ten blocks in ankle deep snow/slush is a great workout.

I'm working on a beautiful shawl. It's coming along. A little slowly right now since I'm at 444 stitches per round, but I'm on the last tier with the ruffle left to do so over 50% finished.

It's silk so amazingly scrumptions.

Lala likes me to stop knitting and to pet her right now.
Right now.

I got a couch to go with the bookshelf so whee! The only problem being that I now have no idea how to arrange my living room and I have company coming Friday night. I have way too many end tables. Like, six of them. Six end tables. Plus an oak chest. I don't know where to put anything anymore.

Poor quality photo but you get the gist. The couch is more of a mini loveseat. Keep in mind Spike is a rather large cat.
Lala was pretty scared of the couch for the first few days but now she's okay with it. It is definitely Spike's couch however. He gets so mad when I'm on it.
That being said Spike will sleep anywhere. He's sleeping in this photo. Fast asleep. Weirdo.
Oh! Look at the fibre goodness Knitting Goddess got me for my birthday! Isn't it amazing? Cannot wait to spin it up but I'm so scared of ruining it!
You want to squeeze it right now don't you? You do. You totally do.

Dirty.

And lastly, my one in a million good photo of Lala. Spike I can take good photos of but Lala, with all her fuzziness and attacking of camera cords and having to know exactly what I'm doing at all time can-I-shove-my-head-in-your-nostril, is very hard to get a good photo of.
Ohhhh.

Oh, and I just realized the topic of this post was crazy cat lady. I'm cool with that.

Giant Bookshelf

For Xmas I received a lot of gift certificates to Ikea. These are good times people. I went there with a vague idea (haha, I wrote 'ikea') of what I wanted but was pretty open to inspiration. While, inspiration hit and woah, dudes, I got an incredibly huge bookshelf for 100$ off the original price. Little did I know this bookshelf was going to TAKE OVER THE APARTMENT!!!

This is the 'good' picture. What you're not seeing is the hallway blocked by cardboard boxes and paper, the bedroom overflowing with end tables and whatever else doesn't 'work' with the new living room, the sad bare shelves sitting in the kitchen, the daybed piled high with goodness knows what.
All that being said, this bookshelf is pretty gosh darn awesome.
I've got nearly everything on it and I still have tonnes of room left. I have space for two rows in these cubes so I am putting the not so exciting books on the other side. Obviously, I need to buy more books now.

I've used it as a room divider and put my table where my desk use to be....
and made myself a little study! It's so cozy in here.
These photos aren't really doing justice to how huge this bookshelf is but yeah, it's pretty big. I'd talk more about my plans and ask for opinions on different possible layouts but dudes, it's 10:32 and I have to be a grown up tomorrow. A grown-up. Like, you know, someone who accepts responsibility and gets stuff done. Yeah. Me. Anyhoo.

Good night!

After all that...

I went through my queue and added hoardes of patterns to my '2011' folder and went through my entire stash and made a '2011' bag. After all that, what did I cast on at 12:25am on January 1st?
Crosswalkers (not in my queue) in my MSF colourway STR lightweight, which was in my 'unassigned but good' yarn bag. Already a good way done on the leg~ about just another two inches till I start the heel. I already know I'm going to have second sock syndrome on this particular pairing so I want to rush through them and get them on the done pile!

That being said I also cast on for my Laminaria in the Sweet Georgia Orchid (the hot pink seen in the post below) and am considering casting on a blanket before bed. This whole competition has given me the worst case of startitis! Which is okay because I finished a project tonight as well. Photos when I have natural light in this apartment again.

All in all, a lovely start to the new year. Cast on some fun projects, had tea with Hilary with my new beautiful hand crafted tea set from Mom, and went for a walk in this cold crisp goodness that is Vancouver right now.

Hope you also had a pleasant start to the new year. Cheers.