Bad jokes about strokes and other things

I had my two root canals today. After the kabillion liters of freezing I was working on my root canal sock and I noticed my hands were shaking like crazy. The lovely hygenist walked in and I nearly said 'look I've got parkinson's!' which I thought was funny but then I realized not everyone, whether or not they have someone in their family with parkinson's, would think that was funny. Bet I just made Jenn chuckle though. Afterwards it felt like the left side of my mouth was stretched permantly and I remember looking in the mirror and thinking I had had a stroke. I also made a mental joke and kept it to myself in fear of not being understood for the comic genius I am. In other news root canals suck but meh, they weren't bad at all. It was more annoying when drool was pooling in my chin and I couldn't do anything about it.

Root canal socks: Noro sock yarn on Hiya Hiya 2mm

Yesterday after coffee work I turned off my computer for four hours. As long as I don't mind spending a lot of time on the computer it's fine. It's when I start to get ooky about how much time I'm on my computer that I do an intervention. Does that make sense? Anyhoo, I worked on some knitting, read, talked on the phone a lot, and lined my faerie bag. I took the straps right off and put on wider shorter ones.
Do you see my bare legs there? Dangerously close.

The lining improved it ten-fold and I loves it even more.

Last Saturday I went to the Trout Lake Farmers Market with Alyeria and Lara. We had a great time. We ate crepes, bought organic veggie goodness, and then walked over to the 'lake' part and did our fibre thing. I worked on my skirt which I'm making good progress on despite my insane inability to count (83-50=23 AND 112-103=20)(I kid you not! Counting while placing markers makes me superdumb in a fantastic sort of way). I'm on my fourth panel now.

Stitch marker from See Jayne Knit
Lana taught Alyria how to crochet. Check out that fierce determination. Alyria, just like she has with knitting, has taken to crochet with the speed of someone who is using performance enhancing drugs.
I'm just a tad jealous.

And check out just a bit of my market goodness. This is the most insanely decandant brownie ever (took me three goes to finish it) from Veganmania with the raspberries that weren't eaten on the bus home.
Seriously. Like just. Yeah.

Shoes, yarn, cats, and antiobiotics (I'm not creative today with titles)

First things first...

check out my friend's new shoes. She's already 5'11 so you know. She really needs these.
I put them on for kicks. Finally got to stop looking at her nostrils for a bit.

We were at her place playing with Gordo (guinea pig) and going through her stash when I found a great bag full of buttons. I started playing them because, well, I'm easily amused, and started to colour code them (I didn't know how long Alyria was going to fondle her stash there~ I was preparing to stay for a bit). I was sorting pretty ones and red ones when she told me I could keep the red ones. I insisted no, that I was merely entertaining myself with shiny things, much like a young child (and possibly with the same choking hazard potential), but she went and got a baggy and I came home with 25 delicious little red buttons.

Of course I already had the yarn picked out before I got out her apartment door. Cascade in a lovely off white.
Buttony sweater anyone? Rav and off-rav links. I however cannot start this cardigan until I finish Alyria's skirt! See here? These two panels? I'm feeling pretty cocky eh? Yeah she has five panels on my skirt done. Oops.
I also shouldn't start a cardigan because I'm working on #1 of my 30 by 30 list and this is the first prototype of the cardigan. This cardigan is loosely based off of the Whisper cardigan in that it's knit side to side but I'm going to try putting in short rows at the shoulders and than disregard the pattern entirely for the front and back and I'm also thinking darts which would be cool and then more moss stitch with a rolled collar. Yeah this is pretty ambitious and I'll let you know in two years what I learned when I'm done something that won't resemble a cardigan but maybe a cat bed? We can hope.
Check out that jog! Ew!

The Beast is coming along only because the weather has been nicer (and by nicer I mean cooler because this thing is a kabillion pounds of wool sitting in your lap). I put a loonie there for comparison. 12 mores of the chart! Then the fun stuff begins like felting, lining, bag feet, handles... yeah.
And if you think I'm dead because I dropped off the face of the earth about a week ago I'm sorry. I was having some really bad pain in my mouth the last week of school and it turns out two root canals I had done years and years ago weren't done properly (yeah). So the nerves in there that weren't protected are all infected, which, um, is quite painful. So I'm going to a specialist on Tuesdays (always get root canals done by a specialist) and using my tax refund to pay for it so I'll be poor this summer but oh well. And he put me on some fun antibiotics. Fun = makes everything taste like metal, avoid all alcohol (including cough syrup), calcium, prolonged exposure to sunlight, and you'll sleep a lot and be grumpy. So to be fair, to all my friends who don't remember what I look like, you wouldn't have wanted to be around me :P

In happy news, this is Kia.


Enjoying Julia and Jasons' new furniture in their bloody awesome new place. She approves.

A Week Indeed (arooni)

Yeah... so. It's been one week since I finished teaching. Among other things I've gone to the dentist and they sent me to a specialist who put me on some super fun antibiotics and booked for for some fun root canals for next week. The REALLY fun part is that these teeth have already had root canals! They just weren't done right! AAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

And oh yeah, I'm going to be super-dooper poor this summer. Those two things are completely related.

So let's give a round of applause to the only reason I've survived this week.

MOM!!!
She's helped me with everything. Including all the vital things like holding 900 yards of fleece artist.

She also made me a Canada Day lunch that made me very happy.

We've been knitting. While, Mom's been knitting~ I've been knitting and sleeping and being kinda grumpy because of these antibiotics.

I finished my cardigan which blocked a little large but it's okay.
I finished my cashmere lace scarf. It's short because the pattern was driving me crazy but I just need some nice buttons.
Cast off the bridesmaid shawl and have left it without a border. It just fits nicely around my shoulders.
As for new projects I started a pair of Monkeys with my STR.
And Mom is knitting a gorgeous cardigan for Mal out of some more of the gorgeous Dream in Colour Blue Lagoon.
Spike is exhausted by all this knitting.

I'm a wreck

I didn't think it was going to be this hard to let my class go this year. I knew I would be sad but I was pretty inconsolable actually. I kept it together at school~ got a little teary with some of the cards and letters I received (I asked for no chocolate- just letters~ got both) and was a little blue after the last massive group hug but I was doing okay.

Then, that evening, at knitting group, people were talking about their plans for the upcoming days and weeks and I remember that I stopped knitting because I was going to joke about not knowing what I was going to do with my time and then it just took my breathe away because I realized I was not going to see my kids again like that ever. And I started to get really sad. I just put my knitting down and stared at my lap because I was just overcome with the realization. Lara next to me asked me what was wrong and when I went to tell her I just started to cry. The poor knitting group. One moment I'm joking away about goodness know what and next thing I'm weeping into my yarn. But yeah, I couldn't make my sadness go away and I had to leave. I just kept on all night with those silent tears you know? Like your doing something else and you realize you have tears on your cheeks.

I don't talk about my class a lot because of various things. But I mean, just a little, cause this year was special. My first class. I'm so proud of them. It was the best way to end the year~ the two kids I was worried about becoming bullies last year gave me incredibly heart-felt letters, when I opened my desk after recess and it was full of paper airplanes I didn't even get to guess who it was because they ran right into me and gave me a bear-hug, I had a 'no I'll miss you more!' competition with one of my dear dear students who came to us last year from the Phillipines, and from my little student who barely speaks English I received a pink post-it note covered in flowers and hearts.

Decorations from the year-end dance.

Distracting myself is going to be a big focus for getting through next week. Thankfully I have two canvases prepared and, um, some yarn. That's three skeins of STR in Bleeding Heart, three skeins of STR in Puck's Mischief, and just one skein of STR in Carbon Dioxide; otherwise known as two Whisper Cardigans and a pair of socks.

Spike also has big plans for the next week.

Mr.Tightypants

So as many of you know Mr. Tightpants and his parents came for a visit last week. After a tangled drive here they made it safe and sound.

Malcolm did a lot of things and went to a lot of places. He's so much fun. He totally remembered me and was at ease in the apartment. We also took him to a park downtown which at first he wasn't sold on.

This is his 'I'm-Slightly-Disgruntled-And-Am-Very-Unsure-About-You-Folk' look. We asked Jenn if there are people where she is from because Malcolm seemed very stunned at all the people wandering around.
But with some Aunty Julia love and some crackers he was coaxed out of his nervousness...
and started to have a fun time.
Baby feet! In sandals! In the grass!
When at home Spike did a lot of this~ staying out of Beeb's reach.
But down on ground level Malcolm was always the centre of attention.
Mom and Dad did get some downtime. I lent them my Buffy comics and they let me babysit Malcolm for an evening.
We got sushi (he didn't eat the tempura~ just gorged himself on the avocado roll, seaweed and all).
Oh how the boy loves his avocado.
and, of course when with Auntie Leone, his Lady Gaga

A Knitter Sewing Bag

Sewing. It's like cheating for knitters and just like cheating is very productive! I started out with this neato piece of fabric (so far I have accidentally typed yarn instead of fabric twice) that was a gift from my Mom (or more accurately~ my Mom paid for it and I haven't paid her back yet). I don't have any sewing patterns and I figured none would work here because of the nature of the fabric. And while I was raised by awesome seamstresses (my Grandmother had her own store) and I kinda know how to knit, I don't particularly care for measuring and pinning so I just decided to wing it.
I started by ripping out the part of the fabric that I figured would make a good face of a bag and then I measured it. It was exactly 18" by 17.5" which was fun. And then I did some more ripping all approximately 17.5 by 3.5 inches. I really didn't measure these proper like which we'll talk about more later.
Then I spent some time putting together the strips in a pleasing way and then I put colour coding pins in so that when I sewed them together I wouldn't forget which one went with which. I am just so clever like that.
After sewing all the strips I ironed down the edges and finally recognized I could no longer ignore that one piece I ripped a little hasty.
That'll do.
So this is the other side of the bag. I'm very happy with it. I didn't want the strips to match up but I didn't want it to look disjointed either.
Then I took a break because the sewing machine got Spike so riled up he jumped up on my chair and kinda went a little Spawn-kitty on me. I have some battle scratches from taking these photos. The things I'll do for my blog eh.
He ended up getting his claw stuck in the top of the chair so I had to tip the chair down so he could detach his claw~ afterwards he stalked away and I resumed sewing. Here's the bag sewn together....

Spike was calmed by the bag and laid down for a nap.
Luckily I was onto the handles at that point. I took all the scraps and ripped them into approximately 1.5" strips and then sewed the wrong sides together, and folded them right side out afterwards with help of a massive safety pin. You would have thought I would have learned my lesson and measured the strips but no. After I ironed them I discovered what I had made.

The most un-even winding pathway strips ever. Hilarious.
I folded them into each other but I'm not happy with the look of them so I'm going to buy some ribbon and sew it onto the joins to make it look less... home-school.

When I did the hem I didn't want to pin so when I was ironing the inside seam I just folded over a chuck of fabric and pressed it. When I went to sew it I just lined up the crease with the 15 mark on the sewing machine and let her fly. I sewed the handles on with the square method which is really hard to rip out when you sew the handles on the wrong side but eventually I got it.
And here we are! A finished bag. I may line it with that stuff that makes it more sturdy- more because of the fraying ends than anything else. I lurves it.
And here's the koi fish I made in a latte last week. I made the poor woman wait for her drink while I ran to my purse to get my camera. I can't actually make foam art but I was attempting to make a tree when I was doing this. Isn't that just freaking wild?