Epenthetical

expanding my world

2012-02-08T11:33:00.003-08:00

There was a time when the thought of wandering around a decent-sized city all on my lonesome would have been absurd to me. But becoming an adult means that the terror of exploring someplace new on my own has faded quite a bit.

Yesterday, I went on one of my trips down to UBC to borrow books. It's close to a two-hour bus and train ride just to get there, but it's always interesting. This time, I went out of my way, first going to Gastown and stopping off at Dressew. I'd been told numerous times that I needed to go there, so I did. While I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about their fabric selection (having grown up in the same town as Mill End, I'm a little spoiled and therefore picky when it comes to fabric stores), I was highly impressed with what they had in notions. I've never seen so many zippers in my life. I ended up buying a 28 cent package of measuring tapes, since I'm always managing to misplace mine. Now I have one of those retractable ones, and another non-retractable one.

Then I wandered around the corner to Button Button. I've been there before, but it's the sort of place in which I could probably spend a couple hours, given the chance. I emerged with these:

I'm very fond of buttons. I think I know which sweater the greeny-brown ones may go with, but I'm not sure about the coin ones yet (they're casts of ancient coins--they say "Elfred" on them).

Anyway, after the button shop, I went to UBC and to the fantastic library. I love the libraries there. I emerged with a few books, and made my way over to a friend's place, following her directions to take the bus. After lunch, my next adventure was to hop on a bus and hope that it would get me to skytrain.

Well, it did. I had to take the Canada Line over to the Expo Line, so while I started my journey out to Vancouver at the beginning of the Expo line, I started my journey home at the end of it.

And I made it home all in one piece, though with my poor ankle (which I'd twisted the day before) slightly the worse for wear. And, as I reflected on the way home, there's more of Vancouver that I connais (know).

reflections on "The Writing Life"

2012-01-26T00:57:00.003-08:00

Tonight, I was reading Annie Dillard's The Writing Life. While her experience with writing is far different than my own (to be expected, I suppose), the book still resonates with me in ways that I am not sure I can search out. And I fear that this musing may prove to be rather solipsistic.

I've been reading since I was five, listening to stories since I was less than a year old. And something of what Dillard had to say about reading seemed apt to my experience: “Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?” (Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 1989, p. 72). I read for many reasons. I want to know the story. I want to know the whys, the reasons for a happening. I was profoundly disturbed by a recent dream I had, and much of that was because my dream dropped me into the middle of the story, so I didn't know why the person I was in the dream was doing what she was doing.

I want to know why. I want to start at the beginning, turn the pages, and continue to the end, through the whole entralling journey.

I have been writing since...late grade school? I'd been telling myself stories for years before that. What I write, and why I write, changes year by year, because I change. My motivations shift. Dorothy Sayers' words, "Write it out and get rid of it," have been a primary reason at many times. I work out my thoughts, my feelings, my understanding, through essays and poems and stories. I let the words pour out, and grow to understand my self and my world better. At times it has seemed like I must write. The notebook that lives in my purse attests to this at times, certainly, as would the notebooks I kept for years.

Articulation through words is easy. But articulating what I keep silent is hard. Grasping at the truths found in the stillness, I write, trying to find my way. Much of what I struggle with remains in my mind, where I turn it over and over again, sorting through it, asking again what it means, but little of it finds its way onto the page. Some of it finds itself in conversation, in the discussions that I have with those who are kindred spirits. Sometimes it emerges in what I make, my thoughts silent, yet visible to me in the stitches of the items I knit.

Tonight some of those thoughts are spilling into these typed words. I write to tell the stories that spill into my mind, from circumstance, from thoughts of possibility, from the dreams I experience. And I write to explore what I cannot understand. Tonight, I am trying to follow that resonance with Dillard's words to its source, which I have yet to find.

the elusion of sleep

2012-01-24T23:21:00.002-08:00

One of my favourite authors, Sarah Vowell, wrote an essay on insomnia some years ago. I'm fond of that essay, partly because it is humourous. Now, partly because I can sympathize.

The question, of course, is, what should I do when I'm awake in the middle of the night? There are a multitude of things I could do with my time.

Sometimes I write. Or I knit. I read. Some times I have ended up doing the dishes and then tidying up the living room. The other night I organized the drawer-thing on my desk and emptied out a box of junk that needs sorting through (haven't finished sorting it yet). I thought about mounting my whiteboard on the wall, but activities involving nails and a hammer are usually best reserved for daytime hours.

I'm considering crawling into bed for now, in the hopes that I'll actually fall asleep. If I can't though, I might find myself cleaning the bathroom at 3 in the morning. We shall see.

2012-01-05T23:01:00.002-08:00

J. went to play board games with some friends tonight, promising not to be too late, and here it is 11 pm and he isn't home yet. Well, it's his fault if he's sleepy in the morning when he has to get up at 5:30.

I'm arriving at the point of sleepiness, where I consider switching off the computer and curling up in bed. Inevitably, this leads to my being awake for about an hour as I try to fall asleep, unless I'm very lucky and my body decides it's going to sleep quickly.

I wouldn't call myself an insomniac, exactly, since I can and do sleep (and I love sleep--it's awesome). But sleep doesn't always come easily, and can be quickly shattered, unless it's when I have to get up, which is, naturally, when my most colourful dreams happen.

The other night, I dreamed that I was vacuuming, and the vacuum gathered up a tangled, skein-shaped mess of purple yarn bits, that, I observed in the dream, would be enough to knit a hat with if they were all in one piece, instead of snippets. Last night I went to a place that was a combination of a retreat centre I used to work at, and an underground hideout with many complicated rules based on a society that had evolved underground. And there was sushi. A friend I haven't seen in years, who got engaged recently, was talking about her wedding plans. Her brother was chattering about his overseas travels, and my husband and I were trying to figure out how to leave, since the meal was over. Also, there was someone who hated my guts, for an unknown reason, and I couldn't figure out why.

Let's see where I end up tonight.

2012-01-01T18:20:00.005-08:00

I recently discovered that people have made my "Harvey the Vampire Squid" pattern. Other people. That I don't know. That's so incredibly awesome. Makes me want to try my hand at designing something else. Don't know what yet. I think have some ideas written down somewhere. I'll probably start with something small.

Recently, I needed a picture of intarsia knitting for a writing project, so I gritted my teeth and knit a dishcloth. I changed the original design somewhat, but the result was rather nice. I still don't think I'll ever love intarsia like I do, say, lace, but it's not that bad. This reminds me of a nine-patch quilt I made one summer.

In the meantime, I still have Christmas presents to finish knitting. There are some socks, and a shawl. I'd best find my way back to them before I get too carried away with wanting to start new things.

floating

2011-12-19T16:41:00.003-08:00

Last night, I had the unusual experience of not knowing what to do with myself. My schoolwork for the semester is finished, and I'm taking a break from academic stuff for the week to let my mind recuperate before I get going on the thesis again (it's the only thing left between me and graduating right now, so I'm determined to complete it this semester). One of my best friends, who usually comes over on Sundays, is visiting family for the holidays, so our weekly dinner and a children's movie didn't happen.

So J. and I felt a little lost last night. I finished a Christmas present. We watched an episode of Firefly (Shindig, fantastic just on the basis Kaylee's dress, not mentioning many other great parts of the episode), played a couple rounds of Ascension (I won), and I got the fruitcake and Christmas puddings started. But the evening still felt weird, like something was missing. No stress from deadlines, maybe.

Today was a little less weird, since there were things to do, but I still feel up in the air. Like reality has been briefly suspended and will come crashing back down to surprise me.

In the meantime, I guess I'll keep knitting.

2011-12-16T01:15:00.003-08:00

My to-do list for this semester has shrunk quite dramatically. I have two things left to finish. Crazy, right? A week ago it was a much longer list.

It's a good feeling, being awake in the middle of the night, working on a paper. Whenever I finish a long paper, I have this weird exhilarated reaction despite the sleep deprivation. Maybe that's what it feels like to have given birth. Also, I may be naturally slightly nocturnal, so being awake in the middle of the night is pretty great on its own (pretty strange for a woman who was afraid of the dark for years when she was a kid and still can't sleep without a light on when alone at night).

Something about the end of the semester usually means that I'm sick. Last spring, I went to a final accompanied by a box of tissues. Today I woke up way early, having gone to bed late and not slept much, because of this cold that I caught from J. Unable to go back to sleep, I managed to finish three assignments, do dishes, go to the doctor to get a prescription renewal, and do a load of laundry, all before noon. This is pretty awesome for me, since mornings and I aren't friends.

I've been working on the paper for a lot of the afternoon and evening. My process with papers is different than my process with fiction. With fiction, I do a lot of drafting and revising. With papers, I do a lot of outlining, note-taking, reading, and thinking, so by the time I sit down to write the paper, the writing itself isn't too hard because I already know most of what I want to say.

I typically don't follow the advice I give tutoring students: get it done early, let it sit, read over it again, have someone else read over it. I wish I did. I'm not organized enough in my personal life to do that (unless it's my thesis, in which case a constant state of revision is pretty normal), and I never have been (hence my untidy home and the fact that I have no idea what I'm serving for dinner tomorrow).

And yet this disorder works for me. Having to rearrange things once in a while works. Not sure why.

2011-12-12T23:46:00.003-08:00

Sometimes it seems like I do better at concentrating in the middle of the night, in the silence of our apartment. J. is asleep in the next room, and the only sounds I hear are the occasional creaks of the heater and my fingers tapping on the keyboard (music can be distracting). My cup of tea has long since gone cold, and I haven't eaten in hours.

I'm taking a break from a project to write for myself for a little while. I'll work on the project until I'm sleepy, and then head to bed. To sleep. When I get up I'll work on the project until it is complete.

We ventured into the mall today, armed with an HBC gift card. It was less scary than I'd anticipated, possibly because it was a Monday evening. My last memories of the mall at Christmas were several years ago, and all I remember was chaos, and needing to lie down afterward because I was dizzy. Large spaces with lots of people still make me a bit dizzy, but thankfully, there weren't too many people there.

When we emerged from the mall, we had a food processor (which I've been longing for, for months--J. said I looked quite the feminist, carrying a food processor with a big smile on my face--I may be a feminist but why that should stop me from making hummus, I don't know), and new underwear, which we both badly need. Not that that's really something to write about on a blog. I mean, seriously, underwear? I must be stuck for ideas if that's what I'm prattling on about. As an aside, has anyone noticed the pricing for men's versus women's underwear? We both got the packaged kind, and his cost quite a bit more than mine, for fewer pairs (one package of 6 for women's was less than a package of 3 for men). J. asserts that it's because his involve more fabric.

On a different note, I have a food processor! I am positively looking forward to making hummus on Wednesday for the Fraser Valley Knitting Guild Christmas party. I don't have to splash partially blended chickpeas all over the kitchen this time. I can try chopping chocolate in it next week when I'm doing Christmas baking and cooking. It's going to be fun. And now I have to figure out how to fit it in the cupboards somewhere (reorganizing the kitchen's on my to-do list next week).

I sound absurdly domestic in this post, and I haven't even talked about my knitting. Oh well. Back to the language project write-up.

when distraction is fruitful

2011-12-03T23:54:00.005-08:00

This is what happens when someone gives me fruit:

There is jam. And jelly. I used to be confused about the difference between the two, but it turns out that jam has actual pieces of fruit in it, whereas jelly is just made of fruit juice. Believe it or not, these are both derived from the same batch of fruit.

My friend Donna has a quince tree, and this year, she gave me some. Quince need to be picked after the first frost, and because they are very hard, letting them ripen is not a bad idea (turns out the process is called "bletting" and it's the same thing you have to do with persimmons--essentially letting them rot until they're ripe enough to eat). I didn't take a picture of the fruit, but they look much like yellow pears. And they smell heavenly, a combination of floral and pear scents (as quince is in the rose family, this is not unsurprising).

I parboiled the fruit so they would be easier to cut up, and then peeled and chopped them. After that, I boiled the chopped fruit like potatoes until it was soft, drained off the water into a separate bowl, and cooked the fruit into jam. That's how tough these things are. I stirred the jam in between reading and trying to work on a project, and then processed it for ten minutes in a hot water canner, which is my standard procedure with jam. The most complicated part of the process is waiting for the jam to cook to the right consistency. I usually don't add extra pectin, so it takes time.

Later that evening, I started on the jelly. I found a recipe so I could figure out the proportion of sugar to juice, and then started it cooking. I think it took over an hour before it was where I wanted it, which let me take advantage of one of quince's other properties.

The tannins in quince, as they break down, render the white fruit pink, and then red. The jam is in the early stages of this, where it's more pinkish-brown (it's supposed to grow more pink with time, even in the jar). But the jelly is crimson.

Even though I know they came from the same fruits, I am still surprised when I look at the jars. Jam-making, as a process, is endlessly exciting for me. It's always a joy when I come out with jars of jam at the end. It feels like magic.

Perhaps it is.

midnight musings

2011-11-29T00:00:00.002-08:00

I'm currently doing the "up in the middle of the night even though I have to get up in the morning" because I'm freaked about the end of term. And possibly other stuff. Not sure. Either way, I keep tossing and turning, wondering if my sore throat indicates the beginning of a cold (in my head, I hear my mother's voice telling me to take zinc lozenges, which taste vile, but head off colds in a marvelous way; I may take her advice tomorrow after tutoring--tutoring with zinc breath would just be yicky), thinking over all I have to do (making a schedule mitigated some of this, thank God--now it looks possible), and trying to talk myself into sleep by going through the imaginary knitting bag (yes, for real...or for made-up).

At any rate, the tension's enough for me to be struggling to relax enough for sleep to happen. I'm up browsing Ravelry, hoping that the cough syrup I just downed to make my throat feel marginally better will make me sleepy enough to go back to bed. If not, I may be the person in the back row of the classroom with the dark circles beneath my eyes and the really awesome finished mittens, zany from reading Shapiro at 2 am (I'd really prefer sleep than finishing the mittens tonight, though, and I'd rather read Shapiro over my breakfast cereal).

Okay, weariness seems to be returning, so I'm for bed, in hopes that I'll stay there this time. Happy dreams!

pondering

2011-11-25T13:52:00.003-08:00

Earlier this week, I braved the chaos that is the thrift store on 50% off day, in search of something with long sleeves. I became what I term "edgy" within a very short space of time. It's the sort of feeling that makes me wonder whether or not I'll be bursting into tears in front of a crowd of strangers momentarily.

It may be the general stress of the end of the semester. It may be something else entirely. Who knows? But the anxiety that lurks beneath everything has resurfaced at intervals this week, and crowded stores are, as I am well-aware, a trigger point for this. Exiting the store and returning home where quiet reigns solved the problem, but the anxiety continued to lurk.

As Black Friday has spread northward, I am celebrating "Buy Nothing Day" almost incidentally. Very little could induce me to enter the mall or most retail outlets today (if, superhero-like, going would prevent a major disaster, then yes, I would go; since going might induce a panic attack, it's better to stay home and attempt to focus on my paper). I don't need to go to the grocery store today, only the library, so buying nothing is a given.

I think Buy Nothing Day is commendable, but there are many days in the year when I do buy things. I go through spates of cleaning out our excess, but the fact remains that I truly do have more than I actually need. This North American problem of acquisition has been debated, constantly, by many people wiser than myself. My own contribution today is my wondering what it accomplishes. Where is what I value? How would I react if I suddenly found myself with drastically fewer items in my possession?

The answer is that I simply don't know. I know that I am far more a product of my culture than I would like to be, and that I sometimes envy my friends who could care less about stuff. I confess an attachment to my stuff. I'm very fond of the books on the shelves, the teacups in the cupboards, and the yarn in the chest. Sometimes, getting rid of old clothes that I don't wear anymore is a wrench. Getting rid of books is even harder, because it feels like getting rid of friends.

Is this attachment to things okay or not? Again, I don't know.

Where is my treasure? And where is my heart?

thinking about books

2011-11-12T13:56:00.004-08:00

In the middle of taking a short break from Deeley's fantastic Four Ages of Understanding (I want to own this book so I can underline and make comments in the margins and muse over it more, and I can't afford it right now as it's out-of-print), I've drifted over to the blog.

Books are a way of life with us. I grew up in a house full of books. If I wanted to read something new, it wasn't hard to find. I didn't even have to go the library (although I did, quite regularly). My own home is full of books, and it seems we're always ending up with more. From where I'm sitting, on the bed in the bedroom, I can count at least nine books on the nightstands and the bed. The bedspread is patterned with books. If I go into the living room, there are three tall bookcases, all pretty much full. There are stacks of books for a paper I'm working on. There are library books on the hallway bookcase, and a bag of library books in the living room. The bookcase in the spare room has a few philosophy books and my small collection of craft books on it.

Yep. We're addicted. I vividly remember my dad grounding me off of reading for an afternoon when I was a kid. It was horrible. I don't remember what I'd done, but I'm pretty sure I never did it again. Six hours without reading was a nightmare.

And on that note, back to the Latin philosophers.

2011-11-09T10:58:00.002-08:00

I'm sitting here at my desk at school, staring out the window occasionally. I'm not entirely sure why I'm exhausted; I just know that I am. I think I slept last night, but apparently it wasn't enough, and the caffeine in my tea isn't doing the trick.

So in my sleepy state of mind, I've been sending emails about fairly important stuff (let's hope I emailed the right marked documents to the right people, since comments on someone else's homework are likely to be less than useful) and trying to figure out money things. I hate money sometimes. Or rather, I hate having to deal with money and not having enough of it to easily handle stuff at any time of the month. The hope is that once I can get a full-time job, this will be less of a problem, as J. and I will then both be working full-time, and neither of us will be paying tuition. Still, sometimes I wish I could pay my tuition with knitting. That'd be good. Also if I could barter baked goods for a working vacuum.

I realize that there are many advantages to a monetary system, but bartering has its charms when you don't have to live with it on a daily basis (as I don't know what it's like when you do).

As I'm retyping sentences and then deleting them, I should probably stop this and try to do something more productive, like homework. If I can stay awake.

change in the weather

2011-10-17T10:02:00.003-07:00

It's October and the temperature's dropping. That can mean only one thing. We're playing Furnace Wars.

Okay, to be honest, it's actually Baseboard Heater Wars, but "Furnace Wars" sounds more dramatic. It's mostly an effort to drop our heating bill this winter, because baseboard heaters use a lot of energy. We're competing with ourselves, since most of our friends don't appear to be that competitive about it.

I'm layering up, with warm socks and sweaters. J. hasn't noticed the cold much yet, because he radiates heat like a miniature star. It's not that cold at the moment, but we're starting to notice the change in the weather in our apartment because we're on the first floor, above the garage, and at the corner of the building, neither of which are locations conducive to just absorbing heat from the neighbours.

This is actually one of my favourite times of the year, because it's cool, crisp, and yet I don't freeze at the bus stop. Bright sunlight doesn't feel oppressive because it's not accompanied by stifling heat, and my habit of drinking hot tea with everything appears sensible. There's the rest of it, too: the leaves change colour, there's squash at the produce store, and it's foggy in the mornings.

But right now, my toes are cold, in spite of the wool socks, and I'm drinking hot tea because it is cool in here. Admittedly, part of me wants to turn on the heater for a little bit. But I won't. Part of the game is to see how long it takes to cave.

sense of wonder

2011-10-16T23:25:00.002-07:00

These thoughts were sparked by a post from here. The topic of surprise quickly leads me to thinking about wonder.

What do we mean when we say that something is "wonderful"? Take the word apart, and you get the idea that we're saying it's "full of wonder." But do we really intend to convey that? What is this thing called "wonder," anyway?

I know what it is to wonder about something. I'm thinking about it, and the sense that I get sometimes is that it's maybe more casual than pondering (possibly not, but work with me here). I'm thinking about an idea, or a topic, and that object of my wondering is something I don't understand. I don't know it. Je le connais pas. This is an unknown that I might not even be able to understand soon.

And in that sense, it is possible that wondering is far more serious than pondering. It's forming ideas. New ideas, about things I don't understand, in an attempt to reach understanding. In the Peircean sense (I've been reading a lot of him lately), it's part of the process of abduction (as compared to deduction or induction; I'm not talking about kidnapping here).

Of course, wondering may not lead me swiftly to understanding. What it will ultimately lead me to, if I allow the process to draw me down its natural path, is a growing sense of mystery. Of awe in that mystery. A respect for the workings of this universe. A desire to learn more. That deep feeling of serenity which tells me of the peace I can't possibly comprehend.

A sense of wonder.

layers

2011-10-10T12:47:00.002-07:00

Because it is so damp around here, wearing layers is a fact of life. It's cooled down enough that I'm starting to do the wool socks, the jeans, the long-sleeved shirt, the jacket, the scarf, and the mitts. Fortunately, it's not cold enough for the thermals yet.

I carried the layering theme over to Thanksgiving this weekend (albeit unintentionally). My family and my husband's family came over on Saturday, and we had lasagna, followed by baklava for dessert. The lasagna comes from my former roommate's husband's recipe--his family is Sicilian and their lasagna is so good that I, a former lasagna-hater, will eat it cold for breakfast. A few years ago, we did lasagna for a family Easter and he made it. It was amazing, and now I associate lasagna with holidays. It's also a simpler meal, in many ways, than the traditional turkey dinner.

The baklava came from the giant bucket of honey that someone gave us. It seemed like a good excuse to go buy walnuts and phyllo dough. Then I realized that dinner was turning into a layered theme. I didn't stretch the theme to a layered salad, because those scare me.

Today is a quiet day after the craziness of the weekend (family visit, Cranberry Festival, Houston Trail, unicycling, and learning to make espresso). I ought to be doing homework and baking bread but I'm still trying to summon up the motivation. Most of me just wants to have a nap.

2011-09-23T16:07:00.003-07:00

Yarn Harvest is tomorrow, and I have butterflies. This year I had the privilege of getting to help out with this event, and while I'm not a primary organizer by any means, I'm still having the anxiety of "will it all come together tomorrow?" If I'm jittery now, I can't imagine how it'll be tomorrow morning. I'll probably have to leave early for 88 Stitches (the carpool I'm going with isn't leaving from there until around 11 am) just to banish the twitches.

Anxiety, of course, is a frequent companion, so I know that it will probably be fine tomorrow, and that tonight I should concentrate on what's happening tonight (weekly movie night, either The Court Jester or The Secret Life of Walter Mitty).

Which means, of course, that I should stop blogging and go unload the dishwasher.

2011-09-08T21:31:00.002-07:00

It's September. Life begins again.

For most of my life, the year has started in September. Even as a homeschooler, the school year started in the ninth month. There is something about this time of year, as summer is slowly (oh so slowly) moving into autumn, that has a special quality to it.

This week has been fraught with ups and downs. There was Labour Day, when friends visited. There was a lot of laughter and talk and it was wonderful to spend time with people I don't see very often. Tuesday was a wretched day, where I pulled up a section of my thesis, wrote a sentence, and then cried about it. Wednesday was better. A friend came over so we could finish up Season 3 of Slings and Arrows and we got into a great discussion about story, writing, and behaviourism.

Today was good. I came home from the first day of classes, zinging with the energy that only comes from well-spoken words and the academic environment. Exposed to Academia, I become giddy from discussions and lectures. It doesn't last, of course. Highs are inevitably followed by crashes. Once the workload piles up next week, I doubt I'll feel as much of the zing.

However, a good story, an interesting discussion, a fascinating article...those can bring it back for a few hours. This is probably why I keep coming back.

language, theory, and the uncertainty that plagues me

2011-08-23T23:58:00.004-07:00

Tonight I was staring at registration for fall courses and when I finally registered for one, I dropped it three minutes later.

I'm required to take the thesis continuation. I know that; it's not a problem. Ideally, I want to finish writing the dratted thing this semester (yes, I love my topic, but I've been thinking about it and making notes for a year, and now I only have a lousy six pages drafted...62-ish to go, because I'm such a procrastinator--I'd wanted to have something like 40 pages written over the summer, which was totally doable, and didn't happen). But I feel sick at the thought of taking another course from the applied stream to fill up my degree requirements. I signed up for the one course that I can take, and then dropped it. What is it with me and classes not from my stream?

Last year, I took a course that I'd never intended to take, simply because it was available and happened to be one of the few classes I could take, and while I did learn some useful things, I intensely disliked most of the course.

Maybe it's just that which is colouring my view, or it could be my preference for analytical linguistics, rather than applied linguistics.

It makes me want to laugh at my eighteen-year-old self, who, when embarking upon her BA, saw non-applied linguistics as "useless" and theory as "boring." She never realized that she'd be specializing in analytical linguistics, and would develop a love for theory. She never thought that the applied branches would turn out to not be as interesting to her as she'd believed they would be (and the one branch that she's beginning to investigate isn't really something she'd thought much about back then, and she still isn't entirely sure about it).

I still feel that theory needs to be sensitive to the realities of language--if it can't be used in understanding real language use, I think that makes it problematic--but it's far from useless. And it's beautiful. An elegant theory is unique in the kind of beauty it creates. Sure, some of them make my head hurt, but what I love is how each one seems to point out interesting aspects of language.

Last spring I started to realize just how interesting semantics can be. It used to be one of the branches of language that made me want to pull my hair out. Some semantic theories still make me want to do that, because they so obviously don't get it, but it's far more intriguing than I'd originally thought.

I want to do a directed study in semantics this fall, but I have no idea if I'll get to. Part of me is beginning to feel desperate about it, because otherwise I'll end up stuck in a course where the focus is more on the Bible translation thing, and less on the linguistics. Not that I think Bible translation is bad (as a Christian, I definitely can't say that). That was my original goal when I ended up at this school. A lot's changed, though.

I'm certain God drew me to linguistics for a reason, but my heart seems to be more with teaching it than with translating the Bible. Let's face it, everything I'm half-way decent at seems to be more in theory and analysis than anything else. I really enjoy getting up and talking about language, or just playing around with language and theory. Greek class? It was okay, but I was always forgetting to do my translation before class, translating on the spur of the moment, and then getting told that my translations were too free (which I still argue is a legitimate translation style).

Add to that God telling me to let go of the mission thing for now and giving me an okay to pursue writing more than I have in the last few years, and I'm sitting here looking at a very different path than the one I envisioned even just four years ago. It's a path I'm okay with, even if it's a little scary.

A part of me has been thinking lately that, once upon a time, it might have been easier to throw myself into the mission and make that the focus, than it would be to really evaluate the whispers I've been hearing for years, the ones that suggest that traditional missions work isn't for us, and that maybe we're supposed to be elsewhere than living overseas somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Those whispers say that my longings and my doubts are there for a reason. That I started writing over ten years ago for a reason. That J. and I are part of our church community for a reason, part of our group of friends for a reason.

So that's where I am now. Evaluating the whispers. I have a few answers. Not many, but I don't need many right now.

sweater stories

2011-08-02T07:40:00.001-07:00

When I learned how to knit, I envisioned myself knitting amazing sweaters that would astound people. The reality was that it took me a while. My first attempt at outerwear resulted in the red vest of shame, which lives a secret life in the bottom of a box. I won't even frog it, because that would be to acknowledge it. The second red vest just didn't fit well, although it looked good by itself. It's waiting to become another red vest. I just haven't had the courage to re-knit it using a different pattern (seeing a trend with red vests?).

So instead, I knit a different sweater. A green one. In seed stitch. Unfortunately, seed stitch stretches. A lot. I should have used smaller needles. The resulting sweater is okay, but not great.

Sweater number three is blue. I love it, I think it's great. It's also very, very warm. And a little too big in one shoulder, so it's a tad lopsided. Other than that, it's much better. People think it looks good, but it still doesn't have the polished look it does in the picture on the pattern page.

The fourth sweater was a sleeveless top/vest. I wear it a lot, more as a vest than as a top. Waist-shaping is a fantastic thing.

The next sweater was black. It ended up a little shorter than I'd hoped, but otherwise, it's not bad. Also very warm. Angora=winter sweater.

There was a sleeveless brown sweater that got knitted up over the winter, and sadly, it's not a terrific sweater, either. The yarn just wasn't the best choice. I don't wear it often. That'll teach me to knit sweaters from super-bulky yarns.

This one is the most recent complete sweater. There's another in progress which I plan to finish this next month, but that'll be a different post. My Adriatic Cardi has turned out well. I can wear it, it's comfortable, it's not too warm or too short, and kettle-dyeing it has added another layer of interest to the sweater. It doesn't look like I might need shoulder pads (blue sweater--but I refuse to use shoulder pads). The sleeves are too long, due to some stuff with the pattern repeat, but that's what the cuffs are for. They fold back.
I've finally hit that "cool sweater" moment. I got comments on it at the library when I was checking out books last week. One of the exciting parts for me is that I knit it in less than a month, which is unheard of.

This month will mostly be a month of finishing things--there's another sweater to finish, a scarf that'll be a gift for someone (still don't know who yet), and some socks. I'm looking forward to it.

the necessity of daydreams

2011-07-25T22:05:00.003-07:00

I freely confess to being a daydreamer. It comes with being an introvert. The world inside my head is just too fascinating to stay out of. This can make me appear absent-minded to those around me, and it also means that if I've been quite for a long time, I may not hear the entirety of what you say to me the first time you say it.

Minor problems aside, it means that it's hard to be bored. Granted, I carry knitting everywhere with me, so staving off boredom isn't a problem (knitting + daydreams is a fantastic combo--then you really have to repeat yourself to get my attention). It's a good way to help myself fall asleep: I just tell myself stories and eventually I drift off.

I can't remember how long I've been telling myself stories, but it's been most of my life. Sometimes I re-live books I've read in my head, but more often I work through stories I've made up, either possibilities for life or possibilities for written stories. If I'm having troubles with a character, I put them into new scenes and hope that'll do the trick.

The story-telling doesn't stop with my daydreams, or with my writing. I love to tell stories to people. My mother's family tells stories whenever they get together (a memorable Easter included 3 people telling the same story from different perspectives all at the same time), and I've just sort of picked that up. It used to embarrass me--my mom would tell stories about me to my teachers or my friends and I'd be standing there rolling my eyes. Now I don't mind so much. If/when I have children, I'll probably embarrass them the same way.

But that's a bit off the path for what I'm attempting to articulate here. I suppose it's that I think stories are essential to the human experience. I realize that not everyone may feel this way, but story-telling is so deeply entrenched in so many human cultures that it's almost inavoidable. Our culture's version of story-telling made up of books and movies and television shows and computer games (the storyline for Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 is surprisingly interesting). My daydreams are just one form that stories can take. They are one of my responses to my need to explain the world around me.

sweater update

2011-07-21T19:00:00.004-07:00

The octopus-shaped sweater is coming on apace. I'm working on the part of the body where you get to knit the front and the back at the same time. Fortunately this very long row only lasts for one repeat of the lace pattern (okay, 24 rows. I'm currently somewhere around row 10) before you divide for the front and the back.

Cutting into my sweater-knitting time is a purse sock. I started it on Saturday, when we were going to be spending much time on the bus (visit to Vancouver and Lonsdale Quay), and I didn't want something large, like the sweater, with me.

I like purse socks. A purse sock is a sock that fits into my purse (the back pocket is reserved for knitterly objects), and preferably is not too complicated. A purse sock may have charts, but it's easier if it doesn't. This purse sock is a plain, top-down, stockinette sock made from self-striping yarn. I can do a plain, toe-up, stockinette sock from memory (for a given stitch count, granted, but working on that), and now it turns out that I can remember how to do a top-down sock heel from memory, too (yes, I only carry it in my purse, so I only work on it on the bus, at the bus stop, and occasionally at school, and I'm already past the heel).

Once upon a time I thought stockinette socks were boring. I've changed my mind. They don't capture my fancy like the intricate ones do, but their simplicity is not boring. It's soothing. Relaxing. I can think about other stuff and knit them at the same time. This will help me fulfill my quest to replace all my store-bought socks with handknit ones. I'm getting there.

But tonight at knit night, I will be knitting on the sweater. I have a deadline (the 31st, before midnight).

it may be an octopus

2011-07-14T16:48:00.003-07:00

In the words of a friend who recently saw me working on this: "WHAT are you knitting?"

Contrary to appearances, it is not part of an octopus, nor is it a fancy, lacy loincloth. It will be a sweater when it is complete. This is only half of it, minus the bottom ribbing and the button bands, of course.

This, of course, is what happens when, after mulling over the sweater patterns in the latest Interweave Knits, I finally decide that I actually want to knit at least one of the sweaters in the book, and this coincides with my getting a sweater's worth of yarn in the guild swap (I also came home with a lot more sock yarn). In the normal way of things, I don't really want to knit sweaters out of Interweave. I'm more interested in their hat and sock patterns, and I lean towards independent designers when it comes to sweater patterns.

This issue, however, I came to the conclusion that I would like to knit at least two of the sweater patterns in the magazine, which is unprecedented for me (not that I've knit that many sweaters). So the Adriatic Cardi and the Coral Cardigan got added to my queue (coincidentally, I actually had the yarn for knitting them).

This is the Adriatic Cardi. The unusual construction caught my eye, as did the simplicity of the finished product. It's captured my fancy enough that my plan is to finish it before the end of the month so I can submit it as this month's homework for the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup group on Ravelry (why, yes, I am a geek, how nice of you to notice). I'm going for a yardage bonus, plus extra effort for the fact that once the sweater is done, I'm overdyeing it so it'll be a nice shade of green, instead of the more blah beigey-brown (in an attempt both to knit a sweater more quickly than usual, and to live up to the name of Ravenclaw). Basically, this is the only thing I've been knitting for the last two weeks, except for the occasional round on the sock in my purse.

I'm looking forward to the day, hopefully in about a week and a half, when I can sew the seams so it'll turn into something that resembles a sweater. Also, blocking it will make it look like a sweater for me, not a cardigan for a lamp post.

2011-07-01T10:38:00.003-07:00

We have been without internet at home for the last week, which is why I haven't gotten around to posting anything this week. We're still waiting for the new modem to arrive, since the old one died (the green lights turned red and it refused to acknowledge our internet connection). The complexities of modern life are making me feel like a spoiled child whose toy has been taken away. "But I want the internet!"

I can use the internet at school, so I can do some things there, but it feels frivolous to be doing much more than checking my email there for some reason. Maybe because it's my workplace. Most of my fellow students don't feel that way, and happily check facebook and play goofy online games in-between checking their email and working on homework. Right now I'm at the Starbucks around the corner from my home, drinking chai and using their internet. It feels okay to be checking Ravelry, etc here.

Irritation aside, there are some nice things about being internet-less. There are fewer things to distract me (not that I cease to be distracted, of course. It's a good thing I'm not ADD or I'd never get things done). There are things I've missed, of course. Like webcomics. Maybe I am just frivolous.

2011-06-24T07:08:00.003-07:00

After the stash swap on Wednesday at the guild meeting, I now have more sock yarn. Yes, I brought some of my larger sock yarn leftovers to swap, and people took them, but other people brought more sock yarn, so I came home with lots. I finally have a ball of Trekking XXL to try--I've been wanting to give it a go but hadn't bought any. I even came home with enough wool for a sweater. I guess I have to admit that I am a yarn addict.

I'm still adjusting to my new schedule. Mostly this means that I am more tired than usual. I still have the inability to fall asleep quickly, but I have to get up an hour and a half earlier. Not that that's terribly important for any readers here--just that I am currently writing this while consuming my morning tea before I've woken up properly.

The only random thing that comes to mind that might be funny to share is that yesterday, J. dropped a jar of salsa on the floor in the kitchen. It went sploosh. He started cleaning it up, but I wasn't much help because I said something, then said, "I just said a phrasal verb! I have to go write that down!" (Look, there's another one!) So I ran to find some paper and a pen and wrote down the phrase. Then a moment later, something else popped out of my mouth which was also a phrasal verb, so instead of immediately getting the vacuum out for him, I wrote down another sentence, and then fetched the vacuum.

Yep. My priorities are language first, glass on kitchen floor second.

sock mix up

2011-06-11T00:21:00.003-07:00

Today I started two socks. I was at the orientation sessions today, which were fun, and I grabbed a ball of yarn before I left and cast on for a toe-up sock at the bus stop. The pattern has a textured cuff and a stockinette foot, so I figured I'd work on the foot. I knitted during odd moments of the day, finished the toe, and got a respectable amount of the foot finished. Then it hit me, at the bus stop on the way home.

It was the wrong yarn. This yarn was supposed to be for a pair of cabled socks. A different colour of the same kind of yarn was what I had intended to grab. So this evening I unraveled it and cast on the other socks; I've been planning to start them sometime this month anyway.

It wasn't wasted time. I learned that the colourway looks good. And what I wanted was something to help calm me down, and that's what it did.

Still. Drat.

2011-06-09T09:22:00.002-07:00

Yesterday seemed like a day that wouldn't be too exciting. I was wide-awake at six, so I went jogging (gasp, yes, really!). That seemed like it would be the most interesting thing to happen. Then, while I was at the farmer's market, waiting in line to buy tomatoes, my cell phone rang.

I've been lamenting the lack of structure in my life, and my inability to create enough structure to prevent my going a little crazy. This week's been pretty good as far as things go, which is nice, but it's still not at the point I'd like it to be.

Now I'm going to have structure, which is exactly what I needed to help me get going with the writing.

The call was about a TA position I'd applied for, hadn't gotten, and was now being offered. I said yes immediately, without even asking what the class was. Fortunately, it's one that I like. Since it's a morning class, I will have to be up and awake in the mornings, and I will be back in Academia. I was so excited I forgot to buy tomatoes and practically floated home.

This was one solution to my writer's block (or whatever it is--writer's lack of motivation?) that hadn't occurred to me, so I hadn't even prayed about it. Prayer gets answered in unusual ways.

musings on a retreat

2011-06-03T13:33:00.003-07:00

*Note: I don't usually write about God and my faith on here. I've avoided that, but I want to be able to share more of my thoughts than I usually do; I'm tired of just writing about my knitting projects. Knitting doesn't usually bring me to think more deeply, and this does (I hope). So here goes.

Last weekend, I went on my church's Women's Retreat. I was too afraid to go last year, afraid to step out of the familiar. This year, willing to face the challenge of the unknown, even for a couple of days, I managed to go, although before I left I was pacing up and down and trying to convince myself that I didn't really have to go. But I was packed, and we were past the refund date, so when the buzzer rang, I picked up my bag and headed down the stairs.

My experience with retreats has been mixed over the years. There's the retreat center that my family went to every year, which was a second home for me. I worked there for a couple of summers and the place has an indefinable sense of peace about it. Even J. noticed it the one time we managed to go there together. In the last few years, the retreats I've been on haven't been so great. I was overwhelmed by the number of people I didn't know, and not terribly excited to be there in the first place, so I would spend the afternoon free time sleeping.

This time, I was determined to avoid doing that. I wanted to actually listen to the message of the retreat, and hopefully get to know people's names. I don't do that much socializing at church because the fellowship hall area is so noisy that I flee from the sound.

I wanted to listen this time, and try to be more open. My sense of panic ebbed and flowed during the weekend. Sometimes it was because I needed to pray about something (fitting, since the theme of the retreat was prayer), and sometimes it was simply my anxieties rising up again. An odd side-effect of my anti-depressants at the beginning was the occasional panic attack, and that sometimes resurfaces when I'm stressed. I managed it better than I'd expected, though; other than the moment before I'd left when I seriously considered staying home, I didn't have any terrible panic moments, and I was able to quiet my thoughts quite a bit.

Retreats always seem out of time to me, like the few short days there are something else entirely, not part of the normalcy of life, even though when I return, I bring back what I thought about. The pages of notes, when I look them over, surprise me now, less than a week later.

I'm open with a number of people about my depression, but not with others. I think I've mentioned it on here before, but I don't remember. If not, well, here it is. It's been a strange journey. When I remember where I was a year ago, I thank God that I finally got myself together enough to get help. It didn't really happen until the whispers in my ear grew too loud to ignore. Counseling helped some, and when autumn came last year it was as though I'd been released--the first rainfall was a restoration. It was one which didn't last, of course. By December I was back where I'd been, and I was falling apart once more. A month or two later, my counselor once more suggested medication, which initially I'd been very reluctant to consider. When God finally shook me into going, I managed to hold myself together at the doctor's as I described what was happening, rather than dissolving into tears, and he listened. It took a couple weeks for the medication to start working, and then, all of sudden, the whispers were quiet. In the past, they'd always gone away on their own, but it had been over a year this time, and it had just been getting worse, until now. I began to wonder if I should have gotten help years ago.

Some days are still pretty bad. Others are good. Most are mixed, like today. It came to me at the retreat that there is something good that can come out of this. Is this a discipline in faith? I'm not saying that God gave me depression to give me faith, but that out of my brokenness, out of my awareness of my own inadequacy, can He bring me to a deeper faith, a better sense of trust?

I'm not always good at keeping up with a prayer life. I talk to God, but I don't always listen to what He's saying. Sometimes all I find myself asking for is grace. Or for healing, for myself or for others. I don't like feeling broken, but if this is what it takes to bring me closer to the God I want to love and serve, then so be it. Christ, have mercy. And bring me into a better understanding of Your love.

2011-05-26T10:56:00.002-07:00

If Tuesdays are for spinning, Thursdays must be for staring at the computer, lacking inspiration for writing. If I can write one page on phrasal verbs today, I'll be happy. Actually, that sounds like a possible accomplishment. I can do that. Once I've started some laundry and cleaned the bathroom.

I'm leaving on a weekend retreat tomorrow, and I'm working on figuring out what knitting to bring with me. I'm finishing up my sleeves for Fireside today (on the sleeve caps!), but I'm not sure if casting on one of the fronts is the best idea. The other thought is to cast on Hunter Hammersen's beautiful Afshari tomorrow morning (I bought Silk Road Socks a while ago and have been wanting to start a pattern from there. The difficulty has been picking the pattern, since they're all amazing). I have three hours in the car on the way there, and most of the afternoon on Saturday, if I decide not to go kayaking or hiking. The weather will determine that.

I could also cast on something in stockinette stitch, but I'm not sure if I really want to do that (although striped toe-up socks would be simple). I just ripped out a shawlette that I started on Tuesday because it was going wonky and I wasn't sure what was wrong. The yarn and the pattern were blah together, too. Maybe I should just overdye the yarn and start over. Or I could add beads. That might help.

In the meantime, to the laundry!

2011-05-21T22:50:00.002-07:00

It was one of those days. Quiet, grey, sleepy. The kind of day where I just wanted to sink down onto the couch and not move because I felt so dreary. Fortunately I have J. and he's a little more animated than I am, although he was sleepy, too.

The one thing I managed to properly accomplish today was re-organizing the kitchen cupboards that function as our pantry. We have a lot of cream of wheat that I didn't realize was there. J. doesn't like it so I'm pretty sure I'm going to be the one eating it for breakfast. There was also an additional carton of molasses. Sadly, it's cooking molasses, which tastes too sharp because of the sulphur, but I can still bake with it. I made a list of everything except the spices and stuck it to the inside of the cupboard door so I can check things off as they're used up. And we now have a section of another cupboard which is completely empty. I have a smoothie maker/blender thing to get rid of now (it doesn't work very well for blending and we don't really do smoothies; I'd prefer a proper blender or a food processor, and in the meantime we have this hand-powered thing that works well for smaller amounts of things, or for larger amounts if you don't mind splattering yourself with hummus or whatever it is--I tried to use it to chop up chocolate back at Christmas and was rewarded with chocolate in my eye--turns out the eyes do not have tastebuds so chocolate in the eye just hurts like getting anything else in your eye), and possibly a few extra teacups. Then I can get a tortilla press and not feel guilty about buying a kitchen gadget (it can double as a pastry or pita or naan press, too).

And...I was going to think of something clever to write, but it's not happening, so I'll go make roll dough for tomorrow and then go sleep. Good night, all.

2011-05-16T10:47:00.002-07:00

Today Value Village was having one of its 50% off sales. I went and bought jeans. I tend to buy one pair of pants, wear them as frequently as possible, and thus wear them out quickly. Sometimes I have two pairs. Lately, I have had one pair of jeans and a pair of brown pants which were a little too big. I can take them off without undoing the button or zipper, and I don't have a belt that fits them. So I've been wearing my one pair of jeans a lot and they are showing signs that soon they will rip in an awkward place. I'm trying to wear skirts more but the weather keeps discouraging me.

Anyway, I went and found two pairs of jeans this time, so I can rotate wearings and hopefully keep them longer. I also found a scarf with a wacky woven pattern. Scarves seem to be my latest thing. I love them. They keep me warm, and given that it's cool and wet outside, I'm still in need of warm things.

This is why I should complete my Fireside Cardigan. I'm going to finish the back today and I plan to cast on the sleeves, which I want to knit at the same time so I can be sure I've got the same number of repeats done. I'd love to have it complete by next weekend, when I'm off on a retreat, but that seems unlikely. I am supposed to be doing research and keeping our home clean, and I don't really know if I can knit most of a sweater in two weeks. We'll see.

where did April go?

2011-05-03T19:31:00.003-07:00

April wasn't a good knitting month. The first couple weeks were taken up with finishing papers for school and then marking the last few assignments that came in. There were some days of me panicking about schoolwork, freaking out about the work I have to do over the summer, and being anxious about my schedule change.

The last couple weeks vanished somehow into a vortex where I caught up on sleep (as I caught a nasty cold just before mid-month; I attended a final accompanied by a box of tissues), and read books. I love to read and I always make time for reading, even during the busiest parts of the term, but after I finished my final, I stopped at the library on the way home. I spent the rest of the day in bed, sniffling, coughing, drinking tea to soothe my throat, and reading.

I did some spring cleaning. We hosted Easter dinner at our place. I went to UBC with a friend and did some research (and I have to head back there next week to return books). I'm in the process of settling into a routine where I work on my thesis in the morning and then clean and do other stuff in the afternoon.

The thesis is slowly taking shape. I have a new outline, new sources to look for, and a much clearer idea of where I'm headed. There's a rough draft of the proposal in the works, too. It's going to be a lot of work. I find myself reading articles, checking their reference lists, and adding the odd source to my list of things to find and read. Part of me wonders if I'm ever going to finish it, but the rest of me hopes that I'll have it pretty much complete by the end of the summer.

The knitting, as I said, has been happening slowly. I finished a potholder on Sunday. Tonight I'll finally finish a pair of socks for my grandmother. I'm nearly done with the back of a sweater I started in February. Only two fronts and two sleeves to go! I also started crocheting a lap blanket as a gift for someone, but that's not done yet. I know crochet's faster, but I have a harder time counting my stitches in crochet.

In addition to that, I have two sweaters and a poncho to finish frogging. I picked up a light tan cashmere sweater a while back and had taken it apart but hadn't finished frogging it. Since it's lace-weight, I was going to ply it on the wheel so it would be a fingering weight, and then overdye it. The second sweater is a teal cotton, picked because this pattern I want to knit was designed for cotton yarn. The poncho is red linen and it is unraveling beautifully. Simple seams. Gotta love them. With the cashmere, there's figuring out how to take off the pockets, and how to undo the seams as carefully as possible, and with the cotton, there's figuring out how the collar was put on, since it needs to come off before the shoulder seams can be undone. The poncho, in comparison, is easy. The seams were sewn with thread, not with the yarn itself, and the yarn unravels very nicely.

With my spinning, things were at nearly a standstill last month. I have to finish spinning what's on the wheel right now, I have silk roving on my top-whorl spindle, and silk hankies that will need plying on my takhli. I'm thinking about spinning the camel roving on my Turkish spindle, but I think it's going to stay in its bag for now, until I get some of the other stuff done.

In the meantime, I should probably finish the last four rows on those socks.

2011-04-15T11:27:00.002-07:00

Wow, it's been a while since I've written anything for the blog. I am still alive, I've just been busy with school.

The knitting been pretty slow and the spinning's been at a standstill. I've managed to get through another repeat of the cable pattern on my Fireside cardigan, and I'm at the heels for the socks I'm knitting for my grandma. That's it.

Spinning-wise, I have some merino on the wheel that I need to finish up. I think I'll leave it as a single, so I'll just need to wind it into a hank and wash it.

There's the silk on my top-whorl drop spindle; that's going slowly because I haven't been spinning, but I love it. That's going to stay as a single as well.

There are some silk hankies that I'm going to spin up on my takhli. Those are spinning up so fine that I'm going to have to ply them.

The next project on the wheel is a frogged cashmere sweater. It's two-ply, so I'm going to add some twist to the yarn and then ply two strands of it together so I'll have something closer to fingering weight. I'm going to over-dye it, since it's beige. It'll probably end up being green.

And that's...about it for now.

Fibres West, part 1: the yarn

2011-03-27T08:55:00.003-07:00

While I did manage to go to Fibres West last weekend, for some reason it took me a while to get around to writing about it. This will be a two-part post, because I haven't taken pictures of the fiber yet.

What I typically do at events like this is walk around for a bit--make the rounds, get an idea of what's out there. Then I start buying things. I had brought a bag, a limited amount of cash, and a list. While I did stick to the list (sort of), I did buy a few unplanned things. For example, it was mostly fiber on my list, not yarn. I think the only yarn-thing on there was the vague "solid-coloured sock yarn." Then I went to Fun Knits, which had everything on sale, and saw this:

It was so pretty. I knit a shawl with Kauni last summer, using the colourway that goes from red to darker red. It's good shawl yarn, and the skeins are fairly generous in size. So I bought a skein of Kauni, unplanned. I don't know what shawl it's going to be yet. I have a few things in my queue on Ravelry. It'd be awesome for the "Heere Be Dragones" shawl, but I don't think it's enough yarn, and I think I want that one to be a single colour. It might end up as another Estonian lace shawl. We'll see.

Fun Knits also had sock yarn. I like to try new brands of sock yarn, so I bought this. It's solid in colour, and it's a nice shade of teal. It's actually a little greener in hue than the picture makes it out to be.

Later, on another walk-through with some friends who had just gotten there, I noticed something that I had missed my first time through the Fun Knits booth. I wound it up in balls at the Guild's table, so you can't see how it looked in a hank (but it was pretty). This is Hacho, by Mirasol yarns. It's wool, it's DK-ish weight, and I loved the colours, even though I'm not usually a fan of variegated.

It being so pretty and all, I just couldn't resist casting on, so it became this:

That's right. I knit a Multnomah in about a week. It's good bus knitting. Because of the yarn weight, I did fewer repeats than the pattern specified, which is good, because I nearly ran out of yarn while casting off and had to take out my bind-off and do one that used less yarn.

Other cool things about Fibres West: I got to watch someone making bobbin lace. Gorgeous. Amazing. Apparently there are two basic movements in bobbin lace, not unlike knitting. She said the pattern she was working on was easy, but then I asked her how long she'd been doing this. "Fifteen years," she said. It's something I'd love to learn but I don't have time for now.

I drooled over a spinning wheel with a lace attachment--it was cheaper than you'd expect, but still out of my price range. Then I drooled over a Knitter's Loom. Still out of my price range. I looked at some hand-carved Turkish spindles, the small, light-weight kind. More than I wanted to spend for a single spindle that day. I love my Turkish spindle, but it is heavier than I'd prefer sometimes.

Then I drifted over to Knitopia to look at their spindles. And with that, I'll stop until I have more pictures.

2011-03-15T21:04:00.002-07:00

I had a presentation in a class today. We're asked to get up and do 10-15 minutes on our paper topics for the semester. This actually isn't too hard, as I've done this a number of times in other classes since starting this program. It's not as scary as it used to be. But my professor asked me, as he was walking into the classroom today, if I'd go first. "Sure," I said, thinking it would be like the other days have been--he lectures for a while and then the presenters talk. Nope. First meant beginning of class first. This was actually a good thing. No time to get nervous. I just got up there and talked about meaning and metaphor. Tomorrow I have to get up in a different class and talk about focus. I still have to finish working on that.

Time was, I used to get so nervous I would shake like a leaf. When I took a speech class in high school, the first time I got up to talk, I burst into tears (and at 16, that's pretty embarrassing). I'll never forget the way the teacher handled it. I sat down, humiliated, and my teacher gets up and says, "Anna's got what about 70% of us also have: a fear of public speaking. This is normal. It's okay." He didn't make me feel worse--instead he talked about how this happens to a lot of people, and it would be all right in the end. And it was. I was confident enough by the end of that year that I could get up and wing it--just talk about a subject without having much prepared at all. It was great.

Of course, practice helps, I've learned. First time I taught an ESL class, my hands were trembling when I started talking. The more times I have to speak in front of other people, the better I get (I know this is sort of a duh thing, but it's helpful for me to remember it).

These days I save my fear of other people for large social occasions. Those seem more terrifying than giving a speech. (Oh, look Fibres West this weekend...but social occasions with knitty people are usually easier).

2011-03-01T20:14:00.003-08:00

So we are back from our trip to Portland (as of a few days ago, but I just keep forgetting that I have a blog where I can write about things so that total strangers may or may not read what I have written). I don't have pictures of the yarny stuff I bought yet because I haven't gotten around to it, but I did buy some things.

I went to Twisted, which was amazing. I found them because I'd been looking up yarn stores in Portland, and they had a great website. They actually had the tiny needles I'd been wanting. And they sell tea! Knitting and tea--two of my biggest vices under one roof. How could I resist? My mom and I met one of her friends there and after I'd wandered around for a while, touching everything, we had tea. I had a kind called "Captain Hammer's Corporate Tool Tea." Flavoured with apples and caramel. It was delicious (and I'm not much of one for flavoured teas most of the time). Sadly, the people who sell it seem to be in Illinois, so if I want more, I'll have to buy it online (and send it to my friend in Washington because their shipping rates to Canada are pretty impressively steep). The shop itself is very roomy, there are lots of places to sit, and, what I especially liked, there were loads of samples. I even got to see the Swirl Shawl in person (I may need to knit that someday). The people were really friendly, too. Anyway, after I wandered around the shop, I managed to pick up a few things.

I now own a set of steel Hiya Hiya DPNs. They are 6 inches long and 1.5 mm in diameter. Once I finish some of the stuff I'm working on right now, I will try them out on a sock project. They look tiny, and they weren't even the smallest ones there.

Also on my list was spinning silk. I've been wanting to branch out from wool and silk is pretty. I got 4 ounces of silk roving in a shade of crimson labelled "True Blood." It's Bombyx roving from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. I'm a little nervous about working with it, because it's so pretty already, and I know I want a fairly fine yarn. I'm debating between my Turkish spindle and my top whorl at the moment for spinning it up. Katelyn the spinning wheel is lovely but she's a double-drive, and since I'm just learning to handle a different fibre, I don't think the take-up speed will be a good thing (normally I love it).

I picked up a couple balls of Panda Cotton for making socks for my grandmother. She has very small feet, so I know I can get 2 pairs out of 100 grams. I'm on sock number 2 at the moment.

Lastly, I found some Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn on sale. The only shade they had left was apricot, so that's what I got. It's not usually my favourite colour, but it's growing on me. They had a lot of Louet Gems fingering but I didn't really feel like buying a skein, since I already have one that I haven't knit up yet (so I don't know if I like it or not).

We also dropped by Make One, which is in my hometown, just by the library where I used to be a volunteer. It's newish. I wandered around and found that they carry some Knitpicks products, so I ended up getting my chart holder after all (yay!).

J. and I went to Powell's and found some books, too (they actually had something by Peirce!). Mostly we hung out with my family, which was fun and relaxing. One morning my parents and J. and I walked over to Bob's Red Mill to get muffins for breakfast. Another day Mom and I walked over to my grandparents' house. It snowed a bit while we were there, just like it did up here.

Despite how good it was to see my family, it's really nice to be back home. Home is where you can leave your socks on the floor and not feel bad about it (unless company's coming over or if you are more into things being really tidy, which I am not).

For some reason, my body has decided that bedtime is now somewhere around 9 pm. I'm getting sleepy already, so I'm going to think about drifting off towards bed. Good night!

2011-02-14T22:58:00.002-08:00

So, I had one of those moments where I was pretty dang happy with my knitting self. Last Wednesday (the 9th), I cast on the toe of a sock because my mind didn't want to concentrate on reading anymore. I finished the toe and then I had a three hour class. I took the sock with me. I finished the sock and cast on the second one on Friday night. Then I bound off the second sock on Sunday afternoon (that was yesterday, the 13th).

Yes, that's right. I, Anna the crazy knitter, knit an entire pair of socks in less than a week. I can't do the very awesome thing that the Yarn Harlot just did, because I'm just not that fast of a spinner and a knitter, but I'm very happy with myself (also, I'm happy with myself because I managed to finish a reading report tonight instead of tomorrow morning--I'll take my victories where I find them).

Granted, these were plain stockinette socks. Very simple. No wonder people knit stockinette socks. They're like instant knitting gratification. I forgot to take a picture before I wore them and then washed them, but I'll try to post a picture once they're dry. I managed to get the stripes to match up, which is always nice.

I finished a sleeveless sweater, Shalom, last week, too. I finally got the buttons on yesterday. It's comfy but not exactly fashionable. It'll be the sort of thing I wear around the house and possibly to knit night and maybe to the grocery store.

And now I've hit a bump in my fast knitting, because on the needles I have:

The Tibetan Clouds Shawl, which I'm finally in a mood to work on, and for which I require the chart, and which have beads.
The Glass Slippers Socks, which have mini-cables, which are lovely and dainty, and for which I require the chart.
and, last but not least, the Fireside Sweater, which has large cables for which I require the chart, and also which, despite swatching, I keep having to frog and start over because apparently my actual size (based on the one listed on the pattern, at least) is too big and I need to go down one or two sizes (I have read in other people's project notes that this has happened before, so it may not be me--it may be the pattern sizing).

I'm thinking of starting a cowl just so I have something to knit on the bus.

2011-02-09T23:30:00.003-08:00

Random thought of the day: Some of the X-mas gifts this year included several lotions from the Body Shop. They're very nice, although scent-wise, I could take or leave most of them (the strawberry one is a little too much how I would expect Strawberry Shortcake to smell if cartoons were scented), but the mango one is amazing. For some reason, it makes me want to go get frozen yogurt, and frozen yogurt is something I never crave. Since we're out of yogurt, frozen or otherwise, I'm eating frozen blueberries.

* * * * *

In other thoughts...I wish I could write the kind of poetry I love the best. Free verse turns out to be very difficult to write. When I listen to a reading of a good poem, all the words flow and sing. Anyone can write a sonnet (whether it's a good sonnet or not isn't the question), but free verse that excels? That's truly challenging.

I suppose that means that I should practice.

2011-02-07T08:26:00.002-08:00

I'm not a morning person. I've had moments in my life where I could pull it together in the mornings, but this morning doesn't seem to be one of them. I just want to go back to sleep, and instead, I have to leave in fifteen minutes and I haven't decided whether I need a jacket or a heavy coat yet (okay, jacket it is, based on what the weather report says) and the fact that it isn't raining outside.

Maybe it's because I had one of those nights where I thought I would never fall asleep, and then when I did, I had really strange dreams punctuated by waking up at intervals. I really should start writing these down. Some of them might make good short stories. I dreamed the other night that I was going to have twins, and I was due the next day, and we didn't have anything ready (no bottles, no baby clothes, no diapers), and I hadn't knit anything, and I was trying to knit a baby blanket at the last minute...and all I had was scarlet eyelash yarn. The knitter's nightmare.

When thinking it over, the part that sticks out most is the yarn. I have no eyelash yarn in the stash. I have never had eyelash yarn in the stash (although, come to think of it, if I did, I might go for red, since it's a great colour). I have this kind of yarn that will make a ruffled scarf (which I'm thinking about starting soon), I've used ribbon yarn, and I've had boucle yarn (which I didn't like that much but I was knitting on needles that were too small for it), but I don't knit with the novelty stuff very frequently. I want to try chenille some time if I can find the type that has enough wool in it so it can felt, because pictures I've seen of that are really neat.

Anyway, enough of a digression. Time to find my shoes.

2011-01-29T15:10:00.003-08:00

Like so many days in January, today is wet and grey. When I look out the window, I see a greyish-white sky, with no hint of blue. The wind is blowing, and it's raining occasionally. I hear people talking about the weather, about how depressing it is, how it weighs on them, how they miss the sunshine.

When I go for a walk in the rain, I don't mind the wetness. I don't mind the grey skies. When I lift my face to the sky and I feel the rain coming down, I feel hope well up in me. Yesterday, it was raining steadily as I walked home from the bus stop, and the wetness felt wonderful. It wasn't so cold that the rain was deeply chilling. Instead, it was invigorating.

Over the summer, it was all sunshine and scorching heat. No rain. Few clouds. I hid indoors when I could and despaired because it seemed as though autumn would never come. Heat drains me of energy, and bright sunlight makes me close my eyes to shield them. The combination is wrenching. I grow unhappy in the summer, and for some reason, it's harder to handle than on the days when the sky is grey. I miss the rain, and I hide in the shade of trees.

The first day at the end of the summer when the skies opened and it poured down rain, I went for a walk, lifting my face to the rain.

It felt like a benediction.

2011-01-17T23:24:00.001-08:00

The semester just started last week. I think several trees have died as a result of the photocopying I've already had to do (the prof I TA for always uses paper handouts, and I had to photocopy a 60 page article to put on reserve, plus it seems like there's always a new handout for class, even when we haven't finished the last one. I'm not complaining, mind, since the photocopier is usually my friend--except for the time last week when the server had crashed and I was trying to scan something). Given the reading schedules for my classes, plus all the marking and reading responses I'll be doing, I think I can definitely state that I will not be committing to anything more this semester than I'm already committed to.

Last Tuesday, I went to language philosophy class. When your professor walks in, and he's wearing a tweed jacket, he has sideburns, and he starts by reciting a Dylan Thomas poem, you just know it's going to be a good class. Sadly, tonight I've been bogged down in Lakoff's thing on objectivism, and an excerpt from Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I've read Kuhn before, and while I understand him better now, I still don't agree with all of what he says. Fortunately this time, I have more intelligent reasons for disagreeing with him. Last time it was because I was so sick of trying to wade through what he was saying. I'm not too keen on objectivism, either. After reading that I wanted to go back and hide in the excerpt from Confucius' Analects on language and names. I still really love the class. I just want to read all the fun stuff on how awesome language is, and not read the people who have drastically influenced linguistics with all their formal, true/false, dualistic, "we're objective" stuff. Which is important, certainly, but it can be boring. And language shouldn't be boring. Language is---well, when I have a better-formulated concept of what is, I'll get back to you---truly incredible.

In the meantime, I've been doing that thing where I start a lot of random projects because I'm feeling jumpy. I finished a double-knit hat and a pair of mitts this weekend, I'm closer to finishing a pair of stranded colourwork mittens, and I have one sock out of a pair finished. I also started a sweater. And I finished the first half of a pair of mitts for a friend. Yeah. I know. I'm probably a little nuts. And on that note, good night.

2011-01-03T20:44:00.002-08:00

Way back in July, I found a sweater at a thrift store. It was black and beautifully soft. And yet this sweater was not exactly pretty (baggy and dowdy with buttons that didn't match the fabric). I brought it home and carefully unraveled it, deciding that it would be the sweater to match the very cool steampunk buttons I'd bought in April. So I swatched and I cast on, and then the heat wave hit. Did I mention that the sweater was a blend of wool, nylon, and angora? I set it aside until the weather cooled down.

Then, what with one thing and another, such as work, and school, and other projects, the sweater grew in fits and starts. Finally I said, "I'm getting this thing done by December 23rd (the day we were leaving to visit family)." And I did. The sleeves suddenly turned out to be not so hard to knit, and the last bit--attaching the sleeves and working the raglan decreases, went quickly. Several days before the 23rd, I bound off the last stitch and wove in the last ends. Then I blocked and jumped impatiently up and down while waiting for it to dry, and sewed on the buttons.

It is soft and warm and comfortable, and I like it very much. It's a sweater that makes you want to pet it, because it's made out of bunny hair. And I love the buttons, although they are a tad large for the button band.

After that, it was time to pack for our bus journey north. I thought very carefully about the projects to take along. We were leaving on the 23rd and returning on the 29th; we would be gone for less than a week. In the end, I packed J's scarf (which I finished on the 2nd and when I have a decent picture, I will put one up) and the beginnings of a second sock. Then, almost as an afterthought, I added the yarn for a pattern I've been meaning to do for quite some time. I printed out the instructions and the errata, highlighted all the rows which contained errata, and put them in my backpack.

That night, on the bus, I pulled out a crochet hook and started chaining.

I actually started this whole crazy yarn thing with trying to crochet. I was doing what I thought was single crochet and actually turned out to be slip stitch. Then I learned how to knit and I dropped the crochet hook.

One day, I checked out Wrap Style from the library. This is a book of mostly knitted patterns, with variations on what a wrap is. A little crocheted shawl, Chanson En Crochet, caught my eye and I lamented the fact that it wasn't knit, because I was hopeless at crochet.

What with one thing and another, I left things there until last January, when I finally figured out what I was doing wrong with crochet. I made a few dishcloths, picked up the yarn for the shawl when some stuff I liked was on sale this summer, and then the yarn sat in my stash.

No longer. (Actually, there's still some in the stash...a ball and a half....because the pattern lied about the yardage requirements). A few days before we left my in-laws' home, I had this:

I can crochet. But I'm not going to be trading in my needles for hooks. I can crochet, and it's an interesting exercise because it's so different, but it just doesn't feel as intuitive as knitting does. A lot of crochet patterns just don't appeal to me (not to knock crochet, since a lot of knitted patterns just don't appeal to me either; I've just found more knitted patterns that I like than crocheted ones). And knitting feels more versatile, in some ways. But I need no longer fear the crochet when I find a pattern that I like. Next on the list for crochet is broomstick crochet, since that just looks cool.

I'm learning to be as fearless with other crafts as I've been with knitting. This is a good thing (the whole fearlessness quest is a longer story than I really want to get into).

In the days following the completion of the shawl, I have finished J's Space Invaders scarf and a pair of slippers for someone at church, and gotten to the gusset on the socks I want to finish. There's one mitten left out of a pair to complete, and then I'm pulling two projects out of hiatus. A lace shawl and a pair of stranded mittens that I started last winter. I may start a sweater, too, but we'll see. I have to knit at least a few rounds on the shawl first. I really ought to finish what I've started, especially since I still like the patterns.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel...

2010-12-13T23:41:00.003-08:00

It's December. The weather feels warm-ish. I can get away with a sweater, mitts, and maybe a scarf. If it's not raining I don't need a hat. Fortunately we are spending Christmas with the in-laws in Quesnel, where it is expected to be down to -19 by the end of the week, complete with at least some snow. I'm looking forward to it, although before I bought our bus tickets I was panicking about the trip north. Now I am resigned to the will of Providence. Hooray for eleven hours on a bus. We leave a couple days before Christmas, so if I really need to knit myself another winter hat, I do have time. Mittens might be a better investment, since I do have several hats already. And there's this sweater I want to finish. I haven't finished the Christmas shopping yet, either.

I always feel ambivalent about Christmas. There's the pretty decorations, and the food, and the music. The goofy movies about the Christmas. There's the greed. The stress. The guilt. The worry. The futile search to restore the sense of magic we felt during Christmas as children, and the let-down that follows when we realize it's never going to be the same.

And there's Advent, which has become, in recent years, one of the most important aspects of the Christmas season for me. This sense of waiting in anticipation, not for Santa Claus, not for the presents, but for Christ.

I don't talk much about religion on here, but as it is an important part of who I am, it didn't seem so out-of-place, when this is what's been on my mind.

We Christians (well, some of us, I can't speak for all of us), during this season, remember the first coming of Christ, and look forward to the second. We harken back to the years before his coming, to that yearning for God's salvation. And we renew our sense of wonder every year, when, on Christmas Day, we retell the story. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." The chasm between God and man was finally bridged.

And so, despite the stress of the season, and despite some of the darker days I've had earlier this month, I keep returning to a sense of peace. I keep thinking about this Mystery: Christ has died...Christ has risen...and Christ will come again.

the return of an old obsession

2010-11-30T13:50:00.003-08:00

It is rare that I follow along with the trends in popular culture, mostly because I don't pay attention to them. I did read the Twilight books out of curiousity. But now I'm going with a book trend that was popular several years ago (yes, it's still popular, there's just not a waiting list that numbers into the hundreds for the library now). Yep. I'm reading Harry Potter.

I did read the first three books some years ago. I think I read the first one shortly after the third came out, and then read the second and third ones. I really enjoyed them and my parents were happy to let me read them, although my mum didn't think much of them. The third one definitely gave me nightmares (and I suppose reading it in one fell swoop didn't help that), but I waited eagerly for the fourth book to come out and got it at the library as soon as I could.

I started reading. I zoomed through the Quidditch match and the return to Hogwarts and then came up against the chapter where the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher shows them some particularly nasty curses, maybe one-quarter of the way into the book. He demonstrates the killing curse that was used on Harry's parents. Only a spider dies, but I didn't care. I slammed the book shut, horrified by the scene. I took the book back to the library, and didn't finish it. I didn't read the next three books. The only movies I watched were the first two. I ended up selling my copy of the first book, and giving my copy of the third book to my cousin, desperate to get the creepiness of the Dementors out of my room. My imagination has always been apt at creating scenarios for my mind to go over, both while I am awake, and while I am asleep, and I couldn't stop thinking about the scarier aspects of the stories.

That was quite a while ago. I am still careful about what I read and watch, but I am less fearful than I was then. I can handle more things. There are episodes of Fringe which I never finished watching because the violence in them was too disturbing, and there's an episode of Buffy which I haven't re-watched. But I can see the line between fantasy and reality more clearly now.

A friend whose field is literary criticism loves the Harry Potter books. She's writing her thesis on them. She's so enthusiastic about the stories that I decided to give them another chance. I put a hold on the fourth book, it came in more quickly than I expected, and I read it Friday night (and yes, I probably should have been sleeping or working on a paper, but these things happen). I'd forgotten that the books were funny. I'd forgotten that I liked the characters.

Now, since, for some reason, the waiting list for the fifth book is longer than it is for the others, I'm wondering if the thrift store or the used bookstore would have a copy of it. The urge to track down a copy of book five is pretty strong. I'd forgotten that the books had this sort of pull to them. The Twilight books were similar, in that I wanted to read to the end very quickly (I suppose my tendency to wait until the entire series is out before I read the really popular books is helpful that way), but it's a very different feel. I can poke a few holes in Harry Potter here and there (I still don't get why they don't integrate their world into the Muggle world more), but the writing's much more solid and there's almost something addicting about it.

Some things haven't changed. I still think that parents should be careful about letting their kids read these books. My parents trusted me to know when I needed to stop, which I was pretty good at, but I know not every kid is good at that. And after the first two or three in the series, I really feel that these aren't for children. I think I'm actually enjoying the series more this time around, as an adult, than I did when I was in my early teens and reading them for the first time. Now, if I finish my paper, I can go out and see if book five is at one of the local used bookstores.

2010-11-22T19:01:00.002-08:00

The weather has changed for the colder. Last week, I'd made plans to head down to UBC on Saturday and do some research at their phenomenal library (first time I went there I drooled all over the place), and I went in spite of the snow and the cold. The UBC Campus (or what I saw of it) was really pretty all covered in snow. The view from the Skytrain of all the houses with snow on their roofs was pretty, too.

I left early in the morning, and when I finally got on the bus to UBC, I put away my knitting and spent some time people-watching. I love watching people on the bus. It's fascinating to wonder what their stories are. I also love to see what people are wearing. I may need to knit a hooded scarf sometime. It looked warm.

I read and took notes until I couldn't concentrate anymore. I found a great facsimile edition of a book originally published in 1655 which provided me with some historical data I needed, and a fantastic treatment of my topic in a different theory that suggests a possibility I need to explore. Everything else I looked at was interesting, but those were the two that seemed most significant.

On the way back into the city, I made a couple of stops. Conveniently, Urban Yarns and Gina Brown's were both on the bus route I was taking, and I hadn't been to either one. I stopped off at Urban Yarns first, did some browsing, and picked up a couple skeins of yarn (Louet sock yarn and Cascade Fixation). Then I went into the bookstore across the street to see if they had a book I've been trying to find for my brother for Christmas. They didn't, so I hopped on the next bus and got off at the stop for Gina Brown's. By the time, I was in need of lunch, so I just admired their wall of Cascade 220 and got some yarn for J.'s Space Invaders scarf. Then I found some food, and, on my walk to the next bus stop, wandered into a tiny bookstore which had the book I was looking for.

My long journey back home wasn't quite so much fun as the trip out. I ended up in a Skytrain car with a lot of noisy teenagers and the beginnings of a migraine. My hands were tired from writing, so I didn't feel like pulling out my knitting. I just huddled there and counted the number of pairs of Ugg boots I could see in the car (a dozen: apparently all teenage girls are wearing them this year). I still don't get their appeal.

But most of the day was a good day. Good reading, good visits to yarn stores. Even some good work on the heel of my sock (I have turned the heel and begun the gusset).

Now, off to do more reading.

the writing process

2010-11-14T23:25:00.005-08:00

A couple of days ago I realized that I hadn't posted anything in a while. I think about posting. I'll even start writing. Then I get stuck or decide not to finish the post right now and by the time I remember it, a week has gone by.

In between everything else lately, I have been getting a good deal of writing done. Inspiration strikes when it will, and I spent the other morning, on a day when I wasn't busy, writing down a story. I don't know if it'll go anywhere farther than the dozen pages I have so far, but it was an enjoyable process.

Years ago I started writing a trilogy. I know, there's probably hundreds, if not thousands, of us, the ones who wrote trilogies in high school. But I wrote it for the sake of telling the characters' stories, not because I wanted other people to read it. While I'd love to get it published someday, the whole thing is in a constant state of revision. I wrote the first draft and then let it sit for years, coming back to it every few months and making minor tweaks here and there. Sometime last year I took a good long look at it and said, "What the hell was I thinking?" and cut the entire second book of the trilogy (It was weird. Like, really, really weird and strange). I chopped the first book in half, and turned that into the second book of the trilogy. This helped a lot, although it meant that quite a few things had to be changed. I realized that one of my principal characters wasn't well-characterized, compared to the others, so he's getting fleshed out. I'm re-writing the beginning of the first book at the moment, because it moved far too slowly, given the pacing in the rest of the story.

It's funny...I used to hate changing major aspects of this story. Now I see it as entirely necessary. I think perhaps I had to let it sit for a time so that I could mature enough to be willing to change things. The characters haven't changed much, although I'm (hopefully) making them more interesting. But I'm willing to re-adjust the plot for the sake of the story, which I wasn't willing to do seven years ago.

I hit a turning point with it last week (or was it the week before?). I was at my desk, doing reading, first for my thesis, and then for a class. I needed to take a break, and it was as though I was coming up for air. Concentrated reading always feels like that for me. I had to do something else, but the building was eerily quiet because it was late in the day, and I had an evening class that didn't start for a couple of hours, so there was no one around to talk with. I'd forgotten to bring a knitting project. So instead, I pulled up one of the books on my laptop, and started reading, thinking I'd do a little editing.

But instead, I read. I read and I was enjoying the story.

That was new for me. I've read over old papers, and either wanted to rail at my old self for writing such drivel, or been impressed that I wrote something decently cohesive (My academic writing style has been forced to develop rapidly in the last few years and while it's far from perfect, when I write academically, I worry more about what I'm saying than how I'm saying it, because that part's pretty automatic now). With my fiction...I can change it if I don't like it, and usually when I'm reading it over, it's with editing in mind. I haven't stopped to look at it objectively. This time, I got caught up in the story and forgot to edit.

I'm no genius, certainly, but it wasn't half-bad.

So now I'm writing with a different purpose in mind. I haven't handed it over to anyone to read since I was near the beginning of the first draft, which was at least ten years ago (argh, you think I'd have finished it properly by now, but no, of course not). Once I get the first chapters sorted out again, there's a couple of people whom I'm actually going to ask to read it. I've been scared to do that because I'm afraid they'll tell me it's rubbish. Maybe so. Maybe not. But for once, I actually want to find out.

handspun

2010-10-28T08:35:00.003-07:00

This is what happened to the BFL roving I bought during Yarn Harvest. I spun it up on my wheel and then plied it. It ranges from worsted to bulky weight, and I have three small skeins which total about 170 yards. I love the way it turned out. It's a soft red with bits of white and a shade verging on black in it. You'd think it'd look like candy-cane yarn, because of the red and the white, but it doesn't. Instead, it reminds me more of warmth. Not fire, because the red isn't orange enough for that, but when I look at it, I think of fire and heat.

It's very gratifying to be producing yarn that I feel confident about knitting with. I'm even decently happy with my plying job, although I think that's going to take more practice, too. Right now I don't have anything on the wheel. I have the last ball of some purple merino that needs plying on my Turkish spindle, and I have some of the Wensleydale roving on my top-whorl spindle. There's also some blue merino that I'll be starting on the wheel when I've finished those.

In the meantime, I have other things which need to be done. My cold's getting better. I woke up in the middle of the night last night and suddenly I could breathe. My voice is still a little rough, I'm still a bit congested, but I feel way better than I did yesterday.

home sick

2010-10-27T16:58:00.003-07:00

When I was a kid, I used to think it'd be nice to get sick and have to spend all day in bed and not have to do school (since we homeschooled, getting sick meant getting out of homework). I'd read about it in books--kids who got sick and got to stay home and have lunch in bed and read books all day. Once in a while I'd day-dream about how nice it'd be.

Then when I got my wish, I realized it wasn't so great as I'd thought it might be. I remember one day in particular. I was thirteen. That morning we were scheduled to go visit a school that my parents were thinking of sending my brother and me to the next year. I'd had a sore throat for a couple of days, and I woke up that morning with a case of tonsillitis. I got to stay in bed and eat lunch in my room, and read through T.A. Barron's entire series on the Lost Years of Merlin, but it wasn't that much fun, because my tonsils felt like they were on fire. Four and a half years later, when I finally got referred to a specialist who took one look at my tonsils and said they needed to come out, I refused to skip more than one day of school for the surgery (and the day I got them out, I made it through a pre-calc midterm and French class before heading off to the surgery center, skipped dance class that night and writing class the next morning, spent the weekend eating jello, and went back to school on Monday, and then the next weekend, I supervised preschoolers at the Thanksgiving retreat at the camp I'd worked at the summer before...and yes, it was rather hellish and I probably should have skipped a couple more days of school and really shouldn't have volunteered to baby-sit small children when I couldn't take my medicine while watching them because I didn't want to be high from the painkillers while making sure they didn't eat the crayons).

All this to say, I'm home sick today. It's just a cold. But it's the kind of miserable cold that comes with a sore throat, clogged sinuses, and the inability to sleep deeply because I need to breathe. It's not fun. I'm exhausted and lightheaded and I can't fall asleep and it seems like I'm cold no matter how many layers I'm wearing and I'm sure I've gone through most of a box of kleenex. I called in sick, since spreading more germs around and sneezing and sniffling my way through class tonight are not my idea of fun (the prof I TA for agreed; besides, I might make everyone else sick and that's no good). The hope is that by taking today off, I'll be able to function tomorrow. It's too bad I'm too sick to enjoy having a nice quiet day at home.

But I do remember how much fun it sounded like when I was a kid. Like a day off that you had to take. But it's even less fun when no one's around to look after you. It isn't romantic, like in The Secret Garden or any of those other books. It's just bleah.

Halloween

2010-10-21T19:41:00.003-07:00

One of the few things I like about Halloween is the candy corn. It's colourful, it's sweet, and it's relatively cheap. I'm sure it's full of all sorts of things I oughtn't to be eating, but I don't really care.

Halloween wasn't a huge thing when I was a kid. Sometimes we went trick-or-treating, sometimes we did something else. I think the years we did something else were less about being opposed to Halloween for various moral reasons (like some people we knew), and more about the fact that my parents didn't feel like getting four kids dressed up and walking them around the neighbourhood after dark so they could collect free candy which would then make them hyper. And whether or not we did go trick-or-treating, my grandparents always gave each of us a decent-sized bag of candy.

Add to that the fact that I was a very fearful child, prone to weeping if someone mentioned death (like the time my brother started talking about how the sun was going to blow up in a million years, and my parents tried to reassure me by telling me that we'd all be dead by then anyway. That didn't help). Halloween, where everything that terrified me was celebrated, wasn't bound to seem that great. Spiders, ghosts, skeletons...none of them made me happy. The candy part was fun but the rest of it wasn't.

So the years we skipped Halloween and did something else were actually kind of nice. More interesting than if we'd wandered around the neighbourhood collecting candy. If we had a party, my parents based it on whatever we were studying in history at the time. So once we had a medieval feast. Another time we had a mountain man rendezvous, complete with spitting contest. By the time I was in high school, we just didn't go trick-or-treating. Instead, we stayed home, made homemade doughnuts, and listened to "The War of the Worlds." One year I went to a friend's house for their annual Halloween party, where we watched Alfred Hitchcock and ate caramel apples.

We didn't always stay home, though. We did go trick-or-treating a number of times. I remember the neighbours who handed out fruit snacks and tracts. I wasn't impressed with them. I was impressed by the people who were handing out king-size butterfinger bars one year. I don't remember a whole lot about the kinds of costumes I wore. Once I was a princess. Another time I was Pippi Longstocking. I remember one of my brothers going as Spock one year.

Instead of going to the Halloween party at school my first year of university, my friends and I went Christmas-carolling. I'm not sure whose idea that was, but it did get us some candy. Something to do with people thinking we were funny.

Over the years I've ended up at the odd Halloween party, but it turns out I'm not much of a party girl. I'm sure buying my own candy doesn't really have the same thrill as getting it from strangers, but it's a lot more practical. Plus I can buy the kind I actually like (no more Snickers bars!). I'm a lot less fearful than I was as a kid; one of my favourite TV shows is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I still don't love Halloween. I just like the candy corn.

2010-10-09T21:05:00.002-07:00

It's been a busy few weeks, so I haven't been much in the mood for writing on here. A lot's been happening, but I don't really feel like writing about my thesis, since I do enough talking about it already. Nor do I feel like boring the few people who read this with details of literacy class (although literacy itself is not a dull topic).

I'm not really sure what to write about. Between school and work, I don't have as much time for knitting as I did over the summer, but I am managing to work on a few things. My Amelia sweater is still in progress. I've started the sleeves, but I have a couple more inches to go on the sweater body before I have to attach the sleeves and start the raglan decreases.

I don't recall if I mentioned the scarf I've been working on. It's red and the pattern is interesting. I'm trying to work through about 50 grams of fingering weight yarn. I'm knitting until the scarf is the length I want, or until I run out of yarn, whichever comes first.

And next week I start on a new shawl project for a KAL. I'm a little unclear as to how many of us are doing this particular shawl, but I know that I'm doing it. It's gorgeous and I'll write about it once I've started knitting it.

In the meantime, I should get back to work on something. Knitting, writing up literacy homework, or reading more Anna Wierzbicka. I absolutely love the book I'm reading right now. She's got some fantastic things to say. And I'm learning to love semantics, which is good.

2010-09-26T20:27:00.003-07:00

Sadly, I don't have pictures of these, because the camera's out of batteries right now, but I got some fun fiber yesterday during Yarn Harvest.

My team (Team Grand Tour) made it to seven stores. My budget being limited, I was only able to purchase a few things. At Black Sheep I got some hemp yarn. I'm excited about this. I haven't knit with hemp in a while and I like its texture. It is cinnamon-coloured. Then, when we went to Sweet Georgia (it was like walking into a rainbow!), I got 50 grams of Wensleydale roving in blue and green. I had to have it as soon as I saw the word "Wensleydale" on the tag. It reminded me of Wallace and Gromit. And then, at our next-to-last stop, Knitopia, I picked up about 125 grams of BFL (Blue-Faced Leicester) roving in cherry red with hints of white and black.

And with that final purchase, that was my budget for the day. I didn't really want to spend a lot--I was more interested in seeing what the shops had, since I don't usually travel very far afield to buy fiber. I would have liked to buy something at Penelope Fiber, because she has a fantastic selection of roving, but that'll just have to wait for the next time I get out to White Rock. And last time I went to her shop, I bought some merino that I haven't finished pre-drafting yet (I'm turning into a pre-drafting maniac---it makes spinning a lot easier). Turns out a couple hundred grams is actually a pretty good-sized amount of wool.

So in the meantime, I've started the BFL roving on my spinning wheel, and the Wensleydale roving on my top-whorl spindle. The Wensleydale is, of course, a longwool and has a decent amount of crimp in it. It spins up very easily, and my goal for this is to ply it so it will self-stripe fairly well.

And with that, I'm off to bed. I'm tired.

2010-09-06T14:04:00.002-07:00

Today being Labor Day, I cleaned the stove-top. Haven't finished cleaning the rest of the kitchen yet, but I will.

My knitting projects are coming along. The pair of socks that's been on the needles for far too long is nearly finished, and I'm coming up to the waist ribbing on my cardigan. The lace doily is at the stage where I have over a hundred stitches in a single round, and 100+ stitches in laceweight on 2 mm needles takes time. I've already accidentally dropped a few stitches that then had to be rescued. But I am getting to the outer edges of the lace pattern (at this point it isn't difficult, just time-consuming).

This week I have to do some sewing, though, rather than a lot of knitting. This will probably have to wait until tomorrow, after my sister-in-law gets her stuff out of our spare room (she came down too early to be let into her dorm at school and has left some of her luggage with us for the time being). Her stuff is in front of the sewing machine right now and I don't feel like moving it since it'll be gone tomorrow anyway.

On Saturday, we were helping J.'s other sister and her husband pack up a truck of their stuff to put into storage before they headed back overseas again, and they asked me to hem up a dress that they'd brought for my sister-in-law's husband's mother, since it's too long. And then, as they were getting rid of a lot of stuff, my sister-in-law let me go through all the clothes she was getting rid of and take the ones I wanted home. I now have what amounts to a new wardrobe, mostly in shirts and jackets and sweaters. There's a pair of really nice dress pants that need to be re-hemmed (hence needing to use the sewing machine). Most of it is the sort of thing one would wear to an office, which is great for me. I've been slowly turning my wardrobe into one with things a grown-up would wear for an office sort of job. Although, since one of the hand-me-downs was a Homestar Runner hooded sweatshirt, my wardrobe isn't entirely grown-up yet (I couldn't pass that up, since I was a devoted watcher of Homestar Runner and Teen Girl Squad five or six years ago).

I've been wanting to get some of my quilting things back out and finish a quilt top that I haven't been working on for a while. I have 2 out of 8 rows finished right now, and a lot of pieces cut out to make into the third row. I like quilting, but I don't like the piecing part of it as much. I like the quilting part--the bit where you sew all the layers of the quilt together in pretty patterns. So I really should get to the point where I can do that.

As it is raining today, I definitely need to go for a walk, probably very soon. I love walking in the rain, even though then I usually get soaked and have to come home and take a hot shower and drink hot tea to warm myself back up.

2010-08-27T20:48:00.002-07:00

Naturally, after I posted about my life getting better, it all went to hell. I had several of my bad days in a row, complete with careening into a doorknob and then jumping up and down because my arm hurt from the doorknob and then making my ankle hurt from the jumping up and down (that was Wednesday). There were a few spots of good stuff. I'm starting to feel more on the mend this evening, but am reluctant to trust it, given what happened last time--I felt pretty decent again and then all of sudden, spiralled back down into whatever it is that's not working quite right. But, list of good things:

1. I ran across some walking trails through a marshy park near here that I had realized existed (I knew about the marshy park but not the trails). They are pretty.

2. I got a copy of the pattern for the Ranunkel doily by Herbert Niebling from Doilyhead, and am working my way through it. I like it very much so far. I'm on row 18 out of 40. I have never knit a doily before, nor have I really seen much use for one (I have some crocheted ones made by my great-grandmother, and they live safely in a box so they won't be damaged), since I much prefer coasters and trivet-tile things for setting stuff on, but something about Niebling's patterns makes me want to knit doilies. Maybe it's just that I need something complicated to do.

3. Had to go to the bookstore today, and when rummaging through the sale books, found Diana Wynne Jones' House of Many Ways in hardcover for $6.99, but when I got up to the till, I was told that it had been further discounted and was now a whopping $2.00. A toonie for a brand-new hardcover Diana Wynne Jones book? Sweet. (Why don't they ever do that with the knitting books?)

4. It poured down rain today, which improved my mood no end.

5. And finally, I'm sitting here with a fresh hot cup of tea and just-out-of-the-oven ginger cookies.

So I'll risk saying it...life would seem to be getting better again.

2010-08-23T14:48:00.002-07:00

This summer has felt, weirdly, like a summer in Limbo. You know, that's the shadowy in-between place that isn't hell but it's not purgatory either. You're just stuck there, with no chance of moving foward. Granted, the days go by, so time moves on. It just hasn't felt much like that for me over the last month or two. We moved and then it seemed as though life slowed down. Or, at least, I spiralled into something where it felt like nothing was moving, and all I could do was get through a single day at a time. Sometimes I'm still in that place, and some days are better than others. So far this is a fairly decent day.

However, life seems to be getting back into motion again. The countdown to when classes and my job start up again has turned into a couple weeks, rather than a couple months. I'm both nervous and excited, since my job at the school this fall involves working with actual people, rather than shelving books. I'm also starting my thesis. That should be fun, but it's an intimidating project. I suppose it's a good thing that I have more than one semester to finish it.

I'm still knitting like a maniac. I have a shawl I want to finish up this week, as it's a gift. There's a sweater I want to finish within the next month or so. And of course, there's the list of projects I want to knit. Seems like every time I take something off the list, I add something new. One of the newest items is a Herbert Niebling doily. Just because I want to be able to say I've knit one. There are some Christmas gifts to knit, too. I promised my mother a pair of socks, and I've had the yarn for them since July. There are some small-ish shawls I want to knit for various grandmothers, and if anyone else gets knitted gifts, they'll probably be dishcloths.

Now I need to get back to the kitchen, since there's a cake that requires frosting. I promised J. a cake since it's our anniversary, and a cake isn't a cake unless it's been properly assembled.

2010-08-07T11:41:00.004-07:00

The rain came back! I looked out the window this morning and the lower mainland I love has returned (although, according to the weather forecast, just for a couple days, then it's going to get hot again).

I finished my Ballet Camisole a couple days ago. It turned out well. It actually fits, for one thing, unlike the Askew top I knit last summer, which didn't. I had the good sense to shorten the armholes by an inch on each side, so the neckline is low but not plunging. The only problem I can see is that I wore it outside yesterday, when it was still sunny, and forgot to put on sunscreen. It reveals just a tad more skin around my neck than anything else I have, so now I have a lovely bright red sunburn.

The sunburn's just in time for that wedding I'm in next Friday. Hopefully it'll fade by then.

The spinning is going well--I spun up a couple bobbins-worth of single-ply, and now I'm plying it into a 2-ply, which fills the bobbin up very quickly. Plying isn't difficult, but fine-tuning it is. Now that I have a spinning wheel, I'll have to learn how to Navajo-ply. I'm guessing that's more complicated but probably worth it. I think I'll want to refine my technique with the single-ply first, though. It's still messier than I'd like, but I think some of that is due to the wool. I'm using some of the Clun Forest wool I bought last year (something like 200 g for $6, so I bought it for practicing with). It's much rougher than some of the other ones I've tried (so far, just BFL, Corriedale, and merino) and there's still lanolin in it. But practicing with it before I move on to the merino seems like a good idea. I think I might use the yarn for a teacosy when I'm done with it, because the teapot doesn't mind having rough wool against it.

Speaking of tea, a cup of tea sounds lovely. I'm going to go make one.

2010-08-03T23:43:00.002-07:00

We have been living with sunshine and no rain for what seems like far too many weeks. I seem to be one of the few people who prefers the cloudy, rainy skies to the bright sunshine (although at least one of my friends is a kindred spirit in this regard, so we can complain about the sunshine to each other). I don't hate sunshine, but the heat and I are not friends. I feel like a wilting plant when it's hot outside.

Today, I walked to the library, and the sky was clouded over, but it was hot and humid. By the time I came out of the library, it had started to rain. I walked home in the rain, delighted with it. Sadly, our little cloudburst lasted a very short time, and soon the muggy heat was back. But there was rain. I got wet in it, I looked up at the sky and let the rain fall on my face. I felt renewed. Autumn will come, and bring with it the cool, damp weather I love. And that time is not so very far away.

introducing the spinning wheel

2010-08-02T23:11:00.003-07:00

This is Caitlin. I briefly posted yesterday, mostly to get pictures I could put up on Ravelry while I was asking a tech question. But here she is, in the living room, by the balcony.

And here she is in the spare bedroom/study/storage room/place where all the craft junk ends up. She has an eighteen-inch flywheel, and stands, at the tallest, about 35 inches. If you don't count the bit that looks like a distaff (I don't know if it is or if it's just meant to be decorative), she's somewhere between 28-30 inches tall.

According to my research, Caitlin is a bobbin-lead spinning wheel. There is no marking visible on the wheel, so I don't know where she was made. I do know that she was a fairly decent bargain, as most spinning wheels I've seen on eBay have been over twice what this was and we only had to replace the hooks on the flyer assembly. Also I need to buy a washer or two tomorrow because the bobbin slides forward a tad and then the fibre wraps around the spindle shaft. Other than that, she needed cleaning, and the spindle shaft had to be twisted back to its proper position so the hole for the orifice was actually visible. That's it.

I wasn't actually in the market for a spinning wheel, given how expensive they usually are. The last time I'd seen a used one for sale locally, it was at an antique shop, and then it was a couple hundred bucks. It was very pretty, but it would have been impractical at the time, and I don't even know if it was in working order. I was pretty happy with my drop spindles, although I wasn't really looking forward to spinning up some beautiful blue merino I bought at Christmas on my spindle, given that there was a decent amount of it. I haven't been doing much spinning over the last few months, but I'm slowly making my way through some purple merino using my top-whorl spindle. I love spinning but between school and moving and everything else, it's been easier to shelve it for a while and just knit.

J. dropped by Salvation Army on his way home from the produce store on Saturday, noticed the spinning wheel, and told me about it when he got home. We did the practical "can we afford it?" bit before I went to look at it, then we bought it and brought it home. I've been practicing treadling, and I started trying to spin when I ran into the problem of the bobbin moving a bit. That'll be fixed tomorrow and then I can practice properly. I have some practice wool I bought last year and there was a decent amount left over from my practicing with it on the drop spindle.

My efforts so far have not been encouraging, as coordinating treadling and handling the fiber is not as easy as it looks. I'm so used to the vertical aspect of spindling that feeding the fiber in horizontally feels very strange. A decent amount of practice should fix that, though.

In the meantime, it is getting late. Good night!

new member of the family

2010-08-01T15:54:00.002-07:00

Look what we found at Salvation Army! It's not in working order yet because it's missing the orifice, but I'm working on fixing that. Hopefully, in a few days, it'll be useable.

creative process

2010-07-25T23:07:00.002-07:00

I've been writing again. I go through periods, where the stories and the characters insist on being written, though I sit down at least once a week and try to do some writing, regardless of inspiration. I've been writing a lot more this last week. I feel like I'm moving out of my darker moods to somewhere else, and being in this in-between stage has made me want to write. I've been revising, filling in parts that I hadn't written yet in one story, and working on another I'd barely started just to explore the characters. That one isn't terribly good, but the characters just won't go away.

But the longing to write something solid hit me tonight. I was listening to some music and I realized, that, although in much of what I write, I make my characters unhappy on their journey, I do bring them to happy endings. But the endings I admire and find satisfying when I read are not by necessity happy ones. I love happy endings, I do, but when an author chooses the happy ending over the better one, I am disappointed. I was unaccountably annoyed with the end of the Harry Potter series, for example. When I watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog for the first time, I was stunned by the ending. It was the better ending, so, although I was sad that Penny died, I liked the story all the more for its tragic ending. I loved Sunshine because so much was left unresolved at the end.

There's a story I was playing around with a few months ago, and I had a beginning, an end, and a decent idea of the middle. But I really had several endings, and I didn't know which one to choose, and was dreadfully afraid that I wouldn't choose the best one. I thought of writing them all. I started on the happy ending. Looking it over tonight, I realized that the better ending is the less happy one. It makes more sense, for one thing. So now I have a beginning, and an end, and I have to fill in the middle. But it feels right. It feels better than it did when I started with the other ending. This is the story it wants to be.

2010-07-18T22:12:00.002-07:00

I finished the Peacock Tail and Leaf Scarf a few days ago (no pictures yet) and started on the Ballet Camisole. After some swatching, I learned that I needed to use the needles that were in use on the scarf for the camisole, so I spent all my knitting time working on the scarf and finally finished it. It is lovely, although I screwed up a little bit on the edging. The Kauni yarn I used shifted from red to darker red and back to the lighter red, etc. Since it had looked like the centre of the ball was the lighter red, I thought I'd be fine knitting both edgings from the lighter red on the outside. Sadly, the very centre was actually the darker red, so it looks a little off. Not enough to make me want to unravel and fix it, but enough that I've learned my lesson for next time. I ended up with a total of 33 repeats. Next shawl on the list is the Miralda Shawl, from the same book. I also want to do Madli's Shawl with some pink laceweight I found at the thrift store (definitely some type of animal fibre, based on the burn test--think it might be a wool blended with alpaca or some other fluffy-type fibre). That one will be a Christmas gift, I think, although I like the pattern enough to knit another for myself sometime.

The Ballet Camisole is knit from the bottom up, in one piece until the armholes. I'm a little over half-way through the waist-shaping decreases right now. I don't usually enjoy knitting stockinette in the round, especially with solid coloured yarn, but this isn't so bad. The next couple sweater projects on the list use worsted-weight, but since this sport-weight one isn't so hard, I might give a fingering-weight sweater a try sometime, too. I have promised to knit J. an Aran sweater this winter (yes, he specifically requested it, I shouldn't be invoking the sweater curse), so a fingering weight sweater for me may have to wait until next summer.

Other news...we went hiking with some friends yesterday. I couldn't move very well last night after that and was pretty out of it earlier today. It was fun but exhausting. And with that, good night.

2010-07-06T21:30:00.002-07:00

I'm currently making very good progress on a scarf/wrap, and not-so-good progress on a pair of socks. I also cast on for my lovely angora sweater, but I doubt I'll be spending much time on it for a few weeks. It is very warm, and there's a summer top I want to knit and wear before the summer is over.

The scarf is the Peacock Tail and Leaf Scarf from Knitted Lace of Estonia. It's a fairly easy ten-row repeat, so I have the main chart for the pattern memorized. I've modified it slightly (can't seem to help myself), and instead of working nupps in the centre of the leaves, I'm putting on beads with a crochet hook. I'm somewhere around 15 or 16 repeats of the main chart. The pattern calls for 32, but I will do less, or more, depending on when the yarn runs out. I've knit the edging for the end already, so I just have to make sure there's enough left to graft it on.

The socks are a pattern I've planned to knit for a long time, and in a colourway I love. But the lace is so much fun that I've barely been working on the socks. Since it's supposed to hit 30 tomorrow, I don't really feel the need to work on wool socks.

Which is, of course, why I'm going to start a summer top. I'm using the Ballet Camisole pattern, because it's pretty and simple. I might add cap sleeves, but I'll have to see how it looks first without them. The yarn I'm going to use is Berroco NaturLin. I wanted to get it in a shade of dark pink they call "beetroot" but since 88 Stitches was out of that colour, I got "cinnamon" instead, which is one of the many shades of brown that I like (yes, much of my clothing is brown). It really does look like cinnamon, though. I think I might cast on tonight.

Bunnies

2010-06-30T13:50:00.005-07:00

(Photo by NCP)

Some years ago (eight, maybe nine?), my youngest brother's pleadings for a rabbit paid off. My parents caved and began the rabbit search. Why on earth a family with a beagle would think that buying a rabbit is a good idea is beyond me. Fortunately, there was a method to the madness. That year, my brother got a black and white Rex rabbit for his birthday. His name is Joshua, and he is adorable. Rexes are good-sized rabbits, and their fur is incredibly soft. Petting him is a little like petting a skein of cashmere. He and the dog, Albert, actually got along pretty well, partly because we only let them be loose in the same room with a lot of supervision. When the dog died some years later, and my parents got another beagle, the puppy, Southwell, was delighted to find that there was someone his size in the house. He kept trying to get into rabbit's cage, not to eat the rabbit, but to eat the rabbit's food. Joshua, by this time, was middle-aged and not thrilled with this. His favourite pastimes are hopping around the laundry room or the backyard, nibbling on things and rubbing them with his chin. He was very fond of me, but then I moved away. Whenever I'm back for a visit, he's happy to see me, though.

Now, I hadn't really realized, until I started knitting, that you could actually find yarn made of rabbit fur. I hadn't tried it before, seeing it as one of those fluffy yarns that are a nightmare to frog. I've branched out a bit. I swore once I'd never want to knit with mohair. Now I have three balls of mohair in my stash. One went into a pair of mittens, as the liners. The outer layer is Manos del Uruguay. They are impressively warm. The pattern is Sheltie, by Robin Melanson, from Knitting New Mittens and Gloves.
The other two are going to be a pair of striped mitts, based on the ones Alice wears in the new Alice in Wonderland movie. I'm considering using the same stuff I used for the mittens (SandnesGarn Kitten Mohair) for a sweater. After knitting with it and trying the mittens on, I'm fairly sure it doesn't irritate my skin. Alpaca has a tendency to itch a little bit for me unless it's the nice, expensive kind, and that was the fluffiest yarn I'd use on a regular basis.

I've given a cashmere blend a try and loved it but cursed the yarn when I had to frog back a row, and discovered, after wearing the cashmere mitts I'd knit, that it was like wearing a furnace on my hands. I'm unlikely to knit a cashmere sweater because I get hot and cold easily. During the school year, I get warmed up on the walk from the bus stop to the classroom (it's a decent walk, after all), so I take off my sweater, hang it on the back of my chair, put my scarf, mitts, and hat on top of my backpack, and then by the end of an hour-long class, since the rooms are always cold, even in winter, I'm wearing it all again. Cashmere is probably not the best idea for me since it's so drastically warm.

Anyway, all this to say that I hadn't tried knitting with angora. It was a fluffy yarn, which I had sworn to stay away from, and it didn't really appeal to me. I've seen angora bunnies, and am forced to admit that they are adorable, although they look a little funny with all that fluff. If we had a rabbit, it probably wouldn't be an angora, but you never know.

I was at the thrift store yesterday, and as is my habit, I wandered through the sweater section, touching sweaters and wondering why so many sweaters are made of really heavy cotton. I don't like knitting with cotton, and don't feel the need for a sweater's worth of it. I always hope to run across a cashmere sweater that I could take apart and turn into a shawl, but that hasn't happened yet.

Then, I found it. It was really soft, and it was charcoal-coloured, which meant it actually stood a chance with me (bubble-gum pink does not). I dug out the tag. 54% nylon, 6% wool, and 40% angora. I bought it without even trying it on. When I got home, I did try it on. It was too big for me, and the shawl collar and buttons on the front didn't suit me. So I got out my seam ripper, reduced it to pieces, and started frogging. I've about finished the two sleeves, but the fronts and back still need to be taken apart. I can salvage some of the button band, but the buttonholes were cut, so that section is no good. It's coming apart very well--much better than I had expected. I'm probably going to use it for a cardigan. I think I'm in love. It's so soft, and it doesn't itch at all. I may have to see if the LYS carries angora in worsted weight. It'd be perfect for that one sweater that I was going to use mohair for. Turns out fluffy yarns have their charms.

2010-06-22T11:38:00.002-07:00

We survived the move but it took a few days to get our internet back up and running. I spent nearly two hours on the phone with Telus yesterday, and someone came and fixed it this morning.

My parents and one of my brothers drove up Friday night. Saturday morning was spent shuttling boxes to and fro and then, in the late afternoon, we picked up the U-Haul for the furniture. J. was really excited to get to drive a truck. He didn't squash anything, much to my relief. One of our friends showed up to give us a hand with the furniture, and with his help, the furniture was moved in pretty fast.

I've been doing most of the unpacking, since J. did most of the furniture arranging. Also, because he's at work most of the time. The second bedroom turned into The Pile for a day or two, but The Pile is much smaller now. Mostly some book boxes and the box of pictures that I haven't hung yet. We don't have enough bookcases, really, and haven't bought new ones yet, so the boxes of non-fiction are stacked against the wall right now. I unpacked the fiction on Sunday and re-alphabetized it, which wasn't too hard because I'd boxed it up in sections. The Pile will be our guest room slash where my desk and sewing machine go.

And I suppose that's about it. I've been doing a little knitting here and there but haven't had much time for it lately, and since the sewing machine isn't set up yet, I haven't done any of that, either. Instead I've been unpacking, re-arranging things, and having an unholy amount of fun loading the dishwasher.

If I get around to taking pictures, I'll probably put a few up on here. In the meantime, I need to eat lunch.

2010-06-17T13:05:00.002-07:00

We're currently in the in-between phase with the moving. I've taken a few things over to the new apartment, but since we don't have a car, I have to carry whatever I'm taking. So J's board game collection has been mostly transported over, since board games are easily put in bags and carried, but the place is still pretty bare, and over here, everything's mostly in boxes. The official moving day is Saturday. I might have to come back next week to do any additional cleaning that we don't finish on Saturday, and I do have to come back to go over the place with the manager and to hand in our keys.

It feels strange to be leaving--we've been here for nearly two years, and while I'm glad to be leaving (when you get a ride home from a fellow student and feel compelled to explain that "the rent's cheap, we're hoping to move sometime this year," it's probably time to move), I've felt a tad nostalgic once in a while during the last couple weeks. Not nostalgic enough to want to stay, though. Our new apartment is much better. There is a medicine cabinet in the bathroom, along with a fan and an electric outlet (if I ever want to buy and use a curling iron, I can use it in the bathroom, in front of the mirror). Yes, the new place has the normal, legal number of electric outlets. I will no longer have to unplug to microwave just because I need to vacuum. The windows have screens. The door to the balcony can be opened without a wrestling match (we have a really large balcony but because the door sticks, we don't use it often--the new one is much smaller but I think we'll be out there more frequently). The heaters are actually connected to the thermostat. And of course, the whole dishwasher, garburator, four closets, normal-sized fridge, and decent-looking stove are terrific, too.

I managed not to do any knitting yesterday, and a minimum of lifting and carrying, so my hands are doing much better. I might give the Endpaper Mitts a shot sometime later today, and see how my hands do with it. I'd still love to finish them this week. In the meantime, I should probably go run some errands.

2010-06-15T13:37:00.002-07:00

The other day, when I was checking my email, one of the newsletters seemed like fate. I'm not sure how it happened, but my wrists and hands have starting aching in earnest. Badly. This isn't like the strain I had last summer when I was simply knitting too much and hanging onto my needles too tightly. This is in my wrists, not just my thumbs. Typing isn't really painful, and oddly, knitting mostly isn't either, but picking things up, especially in certain ways, is painful. It may stem from hauling boxes home from the liquor store last week--they don't have handles and I have to carry them by holding tightly to the box flaps. My hands start hurting after less than a minute. But it's been in the last couple of days that it's been really bad. And, of course, I'm supposed to be picking things up and putting them in boxes.

Anyway, Sunday night, I was looking up the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome and worrying that I was developing that. I don't have all the symptoms, though (especially not the numbness and tingling, yay), so I'm probably just worrying too much (lately I feel like the Peanuts collection, My Anxieties Have Anxieties, was written about me). Monday morning, hands still aching, I checked my email. The Knitting Daily newsletter was about exercises to help prevent hand problems in knitters. So I've started doing those, in the hopes that this will help. And the Endpaper Mitts may not get finished this week. Now I'm going to stop typing, since I'm sure that isn't helping.

it's a blur

2010-06-12T23:32:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago, I hit the point with the packing of the boxes where I couldn't really pack much more until next week. I think I'm stressed about the move. So stressed, in fact, that I finished a pair of socks in less than a week. An entire pair. Cast on sometime Sunday late afternoon, finished the second sock Friday evening. Oh, and I finished a hat somewhere in there, too. Now my wrists hurt a bit. I need to slow down.

Thankfully, this week, I get to clean like the OCD person I'm not, and finish the packing. I will have more things to do, which is good, since I've been going a little stir-crazy. We get our keys on Tuesday, so I can take a few things over to our new place and decide how I want to organize the kitchen. We're moving Saturday, which means I have to skip WWKIP day. I skipped today's events because I was kind of tired. My wild and crazy dreams last night included watching Wicked (finally!) with Data from Star Trek NG and several people who were apparently transformers in disguise. I haven't been watching Star Trek or Transformers, or listening to Wicked at all lately, so I have no idea where this came from. But the wacky dreams left me feeling a tad off-kilter today.

Anyway, because of that, I anticipate doing less knitting this week, which is fine. I started the Endpaper Mitts a few weeks ago, and the first one is done (except I have to undo the bind-off and re-do it again because it looks weird), and the second one is well begun. Ideally, I'll finish it sometime this week. The red and black looks very cool, and I'm definitely happy with how the project is turning out. And that's about all for now.

the packing saga

2010-06-07T13:52:00.005-07:00

My project for today was to pack books. I've packed up a lot of the kitchen things that aren't always required (all of the teapots except one, most of the teacups, the double-boiler, the wine glasses, the ramekins, etc). So today, I headed off to the liquor store to fetch boxes. They told me on Saturday that they get their shipments Mondays and Tuesdays, so they'd have boxes then.

Turns out I can only manage about half a dozen boxes at a time. I made three trips, so I have eighteen boxes with assorted labels on them. I didn't even know they made blue raspberry flavoured vodka. I started with the non-fiction bookshelf. That took about six boxes, with a few books left out. Turns out I have four or five English dictionaries. So I'm getting rid of a couple. I don't really need two versions of Webster's or two thesauri. I left the enormous Webster's dictionary out because it's really heavy and I should probably pack it in a box with lighter things, like socks.

Then I moved on to the fiction. Twelve boxes later, nearly everything except the shelf with all the extra-large and children's books was packed away. I left out a couple books. One because I know I can pick it up and re-read it for the next couple weeks, and the other because J. is working his way through that series and he'll want me to leave the last book out so he can read it.

Anyway, now I'm tired. And dusty. I need to remember to dust more often.

some knitting but mostly waxing lyrical about a dishwasher

2010-06-03T23:05:00.000-07:00

It's the beginning of June, and I am contemplating mittens. It's been cool and damp and cloudy, instead of sunny, and I'm not complaining. There's this pair I want to make that have an inner layer of mohair and an outer, lacy layer of wool. They'll be great in the winter. My hands and feet get cold really easily (so does my nose, but wearing a nose-warmer is really reserved for people under eight or so), and something that warm will actually be nice. I'm finishing a pair of socks right now. When I catch up to where I bound off the first sock, I'm going to undo my bind-off, join the other end of the ball of yarn to it, and put it on a second set of needles. I want to use up the entire ball of yarn.

Since I have put most of my yarn in a box, except for a couple projects that went into the knitting bag, the mittens will have to wait. If I start something new, it will be more socks. We're moving in a couple weeks and that means lots of packing. It's happened pretty fast...we gave notice at our current place on Tuesday and officially have a new place as of today. We get our keys on the fifteenth, which gives us lots of breathing room to move in between then and the last day of June. I'm looking forward to moving. Our current apartment isn't bad, and we've been pretty happy here, and the building's gotten better since we got a new manager, but we have been wanting to move for a while.

I was so surprised to find out for sure today. The lack of pets and the non-smoking thing helped, I think. That and the fact that I'm a geeky grad student with a love for language who likes to knit in her spare time, and J. is a geeky soap maker who likes to play board games. When we have people over, they come over for dinner, and we hang out, talk, watch movies, and/or play board games. Or they come over just to play board games. Sometimes my friends come over for tea. We don't do wild drunken parties, and when I play music, I usually turn it down because I think it's too loud when it's at less than half as a loud as it could be. A night out at its craziest might consist of going to a pub. Well, there was my sister-in-law's nineteenth birthday...we went to the casino because she wanted to see what one looked like. We all thought it was boring, left, and went to a pub so we could buy her a drink to celebrate. Anyway, all that to say that we're fairly mild-mannered.

Our soon-to-be home is bigger, it's on a quieter street in a more residential area, there's a park really close by, it has a dishwasher, it has very decent storage space (and shelves!), and the hallways do not reek of cigarette smoke. My allergies will be less severe. The building has an elevator, which will make my family happy. They've volunteered to come and help us move, and I remember the last time they helped us move, my mother wondered why we couldn't find a building with an elevator. And I feel certain that I will not get "The Look" when they see our new building. I got it when we moved into this one. The building is older and looks like it. The new place is also an older building, but either newer than the one we're in, or better preserved. We still have to pay for laundry, but that's okay, because there's a dishwasher. I'm sort of stuck on the dishwasher. It makes me happy. And the kitchen is bigger. J. thinks it's at least a "one butt" kitchen, instead of the half a butt kitchen we have now.

And while I thought we really couldn't get much closer than a block from a liquor store, we will now be less than half a block from a liquor store. This isn't a plus or a minus, just interesting.

All in all, I'm really happy. But I'm not looking forward to boxing up all the books.

in other crafts

2010-05-26T22:22:00.003-07:00

I don't just knit. While I do a lot of knitting, I also do some sewing and the occasional embroidery. The current sewing project is a dress made from fabric I got when my mum's mum was getting rid of fabric she'd had around for years. My mum let me and her awesome costumer friend divvy it up (the awesome costumer friend let me keep some really nice stuff). I tried to lay claim to only things that I really wanted to use. One of those was about 5-6 yards of fabric with Viking boats printed on it. It's becoming a sleeveless summer dress. I have the bodice mostly finished and now need to cut out the skirt and attach it to the bodice. I'm putting in a side zipper so I can't properly finish that part until skirt's on. So far, I'm pretty happy with it. It looks like it will fit (modified shirt pattern with a basic A-line skirt added), and I think it's going to be fun to wear this summer. Well, if it ever stops raining. I may need to knit a shrug to accompany it.

warming the hands

2010-05-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

Apparently this week's "knit two over the course of three days" thing are mitts. I am very fond of knitting these because my hands get cold easily, but I hate gloves, and mittens are inconvenient when I want to write or type.

I recently bought Robin Melanson's book, Knitting New Mittens and Gloves. I knit one pattern out of the book a few months ago, but it was one that's also available online (Rusalka). Mostly I would check the book out of the library and drool over the patterns. They're all so pretty. Now I own it. There are 28 patterns in the book, and I would like to knit almost all of them, even the gloves. I have a feeling I would like hand-knit gloves better than store-bought ones.

I started on Sunday night with the first pattern in the book, "Accomplice." These are mitts with a pattern that looks like ribbing, but is actually made from passing yarnovers over knit stitches. I used a ball and a bit of Filtes King Kiki yarn, which is sadly discontinued. I really like it, and bought a few balls last year when they were on sale. The colourway I have is a blue-green with glints of gold that makes me think of the ocean. The yarn itself is a blend of cotton, linen, viscose, and acrylic. Part of me wishes I'd bought more when I had the opportunity, but I still have a ball of it left, and I have about a ball and a half in a short scarf that I never wear and plan to frog so it can be something else.

Accomplice is basically a tube with a crocheted chain at the top for the thumb, so they fit differently than most of the mitts I've made. The top of the mitt is well below my knuckles. However, they do not hinder my typing, which is good.
I finished Accomplice on Monday and started another pattern Monday night. This one is "Filigree," another mitts pattern. I'd planned to use a teal bamboo yarn for this, but when my husband and I wandered over to the thrift store the other day, I found three balls of the Bernat Bamboo for 99 cents apiece in a pale yellow. This is an earlier version of the yarn, I think, since the label has a higher percentage of bamboo, just blended with a small amount of acrylic, unlike the listing for the yarn on Ravelry. It's very soft and a little bit fluffy, and it worked up nicely for the Filigree pattern. The teal bamboo yarn may end up as another pair of mitts from the book (possibly Glaistig, which has a fun lace pattern).

Filigree knit up really fast because, although the pattern calls for worsted yarn, I used bulky. I also cut out a repeat to compensate for the bulkiness of the yarn. It was a nice, easy pattern and I liked the result. The yarn may be too fluffy, since it's already starting to pill a bit, but that's okay.
I started one more set of mitts this week. This time, they aren't from the book. Instead, they are Eunny Jang's very popular Endpaper Mitts. Mine are in red and black and so far, they look great. I'm on the thumb increases for the first one. Either I'm getting better at stranded colourwork, or these are easy. Or I'm spending an inordinate amount of time on them. Not sure which one.

I like this "two small projects done in a few days" thing I've done the last couple weeks. Now if I could only make that work with socks.

going to be inundated by hats

2010-05-24T10:59:00.006-07:00

I've gone a little beret-crazy in the last week. I knit two brioche berets in the space of three days, so now I have three. This one is the Tree Beret from Nancy Marchant's website. The yarn is Bernat Alpaca Natural Blends again, in Fern and Tomato. These knit up fast because I'm using bulky yarn. I have plans for at least a couple more to use up the yarn. And I cast on a tam with some handspun I finally finished a while ago, but haven't gotten past the ribbing yet. Basically, unless I decide to give them away, I'm going to have a lot of distinctive hats to wear this fall. I can be one of those quirky grad students.

I also finished the Raha Scarf I was knitting (pattern is from Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush). I had this discontinued yarn I picked up at the thrift store. It's a wool, somewhere around a DK weight. You can't see it in the picture, but the yarn has some glints of green and lavender that add a nice depth to the blue. It was a great pattern. I had it memorized about half-way through. It ended up over five and a half feet long. It's going to be a belated birthday gift for my mum.
I'm still working on the Skew socks but I'm on the short row section of the leg on the second sock, so they're almost finished. And then when they are I can hide my 2 mm circs in my knitting bag and pretend they don't exist. This is the second pair of socks I've knit on circs and I don't like it it any better this time than I did last time. I'm definitely a DPN girl. When I finish these, I'll get back to one of my other pairs of socks that's been neglected. I'm knitting Skew for SKA's April challenge, so it has to be finished by the end of this month. Maybe I'll get it done today.

need to start wearing my cloak more often

2010-05-20T10:12:00.006-07:00

Lately, the weather has been acting like it is confused. I went to visit a friend yesterday who lives in a different area of town. The walk there took me a while (a good hour of walking) in part because I got lost and walked about kilometre farther than I was supposed to. When I'd glanced out the window before leaving, it had looked a little cloudy, so I wore long sleeves, trousers, and grabbed a sweater. And then it was warm and I was wondering why on earth I had grabbed a sweater, since I felt like I was melting. By the time I arrived, I had to drink several glasses of water just to rehydrate.

In the hour or so I was at my friend's house before having to leave to walk home, some clouds rolled in and it cooled down. I walked down the hill back into town, enjoying the clouds and the breeze that had sprung up. Then it started to rain. The wind kicked it up a notch. And suddenly I was walking into wind that was driving rain into my face with only a long-sleeved t-shirt and a cotton sweater for protection. And I'd decided, on a whim, to leave my hair down that afternoon, so it was getting whipped out behind me and soaked. All I needed was a cloak to complete the image. And yes, I do have one. It usually gets worn in the fall, but apparently late spring is also a good time for it. The wind and rain were so crazy I half-expected to turn a corner and run into Heathcliff.

I had to run a couple errands on the way home, so I went into the grocery store soaking wet with my hair a mess. When I finally got home, I changed into warm dry clothes and had some hot tea. Last night, I curled up with my knitting and listened to the wind's wailing.

And I finished a hat. This is the Yin Yang Beret by Nancy Marchant. I used bulky yarn (in an attempt to rid myself of some stash yarn...and had to buy another ball of the brown so I could finish the hat). It's knit in stockinette brioche stitch on 4 mm needles (went up a size from the pattern's recommended needle size because of the yarn weight). This is the third brioche beret I've knit (the first two were the Pecan Pie Beret from Knitty--one for me, one for a friend). I really like the beret patterns. They're fun, unusual, and easy to knit. Brioche stitch was actually my first introduction to colourwork knitting, which probably accounts for my frustration with stranded colourwork (although it's gettign easier). This took me a day to knit--bulky-weight hats work up fast. I used the Bernat Alpaca, which is a blend of acrylic and alpaca. The green was left over from Sedum, and the brown was left over from the first brioche berets I did last year.

The pattern has a braid at the bottom edge, which was fun to do. I haven't done a braid before, and now I don't have to be intimidated by them anymore.
I'll have to go somewhere today just so I can wear the hat. It turned out well. I like this style of knitting. I may have to invest in Nancy Marchant's new book on brioche knitting sometime.

jumping on the Clapotis bandwagon

2010-05-16T13:10:00.001-07:00

As I wrote in an earlier post, I've been working on a Clapotis. Here's the story:

Shortly after I learned to knit, I discovered Knitty.com and spent a long time browsing their archives. I remember running across the pattern for the Clapotis scarf and thinking it looked nice. Then I joined Ravelry and found out that Clapotis is one of the most popular projects on there and that there are thousands upon thousands of the scarves in existence.
I hadn't really intended to knit one, but I had this lovely rose-coloured ribbon yarn in my stash that I'd gotten in a destash swap a few months earlier and thought three skeins of it might make a smaller sized Clapotis. So I cast on one evening.

I only did 2 repeats of the increase rows, noted where the yarn for the first skein ran out (two repeats of main pattern), didn't bother counting my repeats for the second skein, and then worked two more repeats after joining the third skein and started the decreases. So it's a much smaller version, but it turned out well. I like it.

One of the the delights of this pattern is the dropping of the stitches. It has an illicit feel, since dropping stitches is usually bad and I've taken the time to learn how to pick them back up properly. It's counter-intuitive, but it's very fun. The pattern is easy to knit and after a couple repeats, not hard to remember. And the finished product goes well with a dress of mine, so I am looking forward to wearing it with the dress (once I adjust the shoulder straps on the dress, since it was designed for a somewhat more well-endowed woman than I).

It did feel a little strange to knit something that's been so popular. I usually try to avoid that, out of a misplaced stubbornness. However, Clapotis has been a popular pattern for the reason that it is a good pattern and the result is lovely. So, that's okay, then. It gets to me when something mediocre is popular, but when it's excellent, then I'm happy to go along with the crowd.

update!

2010-05-12T23:37:00.003-07:00

Seemed like it was time for an update. I keep writing partial entries and then not finishing them. Some of them will get finished when there are pictures to accompany them.

Well, I do have socks on the needles, as per usual. Working on the second Skew sock. First one turned out great and fits like a glove (although not literally since most store-bought gloves are too big for me). The heel was a lot of fun and the grafting wasn't hard. I bought the Spring issue of Interweave Knits almost solely for the grafting tutorial. Also for the ad with Franklin Habit in it. And the Wasabi Peas socks. I have 1 sock out of 2 finished on another pair of socks from Socks from the Toe Up. My goal is to eventually knit each pattern in the book.

And, strangely enough, I have two scarves on the needles. This is unusual because I don't really like knitting scarves. I never did a garter stitch scarf like most beginners do. I knit a moss stitch scarf last year to use up a ball of yarn and a narrow ribbed scarf for my little brother as a birthday gift. There have been shawls, some cowls, and a head scarf, and I crocheted a scarf as a Christmas gift a couple years ago when all I could do was what I thought was single crochet but turned out to be slip stitch. And still, so far, I've only knit a couple scarves.

Part of this is that I have a couple pashmina scarves which get worn all the time in the fall and winter. One is brown, the other cream. They are comfortable and warm enough and long enough and coordinate well with my wardrobe, which is mostly brown with a few other earth tones and the occasional red shirt thrown in. So part of it is I haven't felt the need to knit myself another scarf. The friends who wear scarves already have lots. And most of my family members are not scarf people, other than the younger brother who specifically requested a scarf (and when I gave it to him, wore it on a very warm April day, even though it was wool).

The other part is that scarves are kind of boring to knit. This is why I rarely knit plain stockinette socks (Skew doesn't count--its construction is complicated enough that much of it has been knit in front of the computer so I wouldn't have to print the pattern out). So a scarf, for me, has to be interesting enough that I'm not going to get bored. I'm thinking of trying one that has reversible cables just to learn the technique.

Right now, though, I felt the need to knit something simple that would use up stash yarn. I got this rose pink ribbon yarn in a de-stash swap a few months back and have been idly debating patterns ever since (I think it was from Holly but I'm not sure). Then it came to me. I could give a wildly popular pattern a try and use up the yarn at the same time. So I cast on a Clapotis (smaller size, though). I'm almost done with ball 2 out of 3 and am happy with the result. I can knit a couple of the main repeat with the third ball before I have to start the decreases. I should have not too much yarn left at the end.

And then a couple nights ago, I was tired but not sleepy and wanted to knit something before I went to sleep, but didn't want to take the Clapotis to bed with me. I grabbed some wool I'd found at the thrift store (really nice blue with a hint of green in one of the plies), and started a pattern I've had in my queue for a while. This one is from Knitted Lace of Estonia, and it is the Raha Scarf. One repeat of a lace pattern, garter stitch edges. Interesting but not too complex. And I'll just knit until I have enough yarn left for the border and finish it off there.

And that's all for now. I need to sleep.

Spoke

2010-04-23T10:18:00.006-07:00

I saw the pattern first. I was knitting my first sweater, and while I knit it, I decided that Spoke would be the second. It was simple (fitting my criteria for a sweater I will actually wear--crazy-complex stuff is saved for hats, gloves, and socks), elegant, and still visually interesting. And I wanted to try knitting a seamed sweater to find out if I liked it. Turns out I do, and I don't mind seaming.

I thought of the sweater in blue, perhaps. I knew I wanted wool. The first sweater I knit was in an alpaca-acrylic blend, which, nice though it was, sheds like there's no tomorrow. I wanted wool, and I wanted something a little less prone to pilling. So I bought Briggs and Little yarn at Fibres West in a lovely shade of blue.

I cast on with the first sleeve, remembering how long the sleeves took when I knit my first sweater. A month later, I had finished and seamed the sleeves, the back, and the smaller front piece (though I hadn't sewn the sleeves into the body yet), and made a good start on the half circle front piece, which I finished a couple days later. Yesterday I finished it, did the last seams, and washed and blocked it.

So, now it is finished and I am wearing it even though it is technically not quite dry yet. I made it into a pullover, since I don't have a lot of pullovers that aren't hooded sweatshirts. I'm glad I made the XS size, since it's almost a little big after blocking. It knit up very fast. I may have to try a sweater in DK yarn just to see the comparison in how long it takes me to knit. Also, to compare the thickness of the seams. I only used just over four balls of the yarn, so I have about 100 grams left to make something else with.

And now I'm going to do small projects for a little while before I buy yarn for the next sweater.

2010-04-16T09:17:00.002-07:00

The group from the knit-night I attend is having a get-together this weekend. We are finally having our Christmas gift exchange. It was supposed to happen in January, to give us time to make things, but it kept getting pushed back.

I'd finished a couple things back in January, but realized I needed to add something else, so I decided to sew the gifts, instead of knitting them. Sewing is faster. I have one more thing to finish, and I will take pictures, but I will put them up Sunday evening.

I rummaged through my fabric stash, and there wasn't anything that seemed like it would work with the person whose name I drew. What there was, well, was in bits and pieces. So I went to the fabric store yesterday. I haven't bought fabric in quite a while. I usually go to the fabric store to buy notions, since I have a decent amount of fabric to work through. I'm at the point now where I have enough to finish the current quilt I'm working on, and enough vintage material for several dresses, but most of the scraps I had for small quilts, are well, scraps. I like fat quarters, since you get enough material to play around with, but not so much that it breaks the bank. But this time I thought I'd buy a half a yard of some batik and use that. Then I got a look at the prices and nearly had a heart attack.

I realize that things often cost more around here, and I realize fabric is expensive. I do know that. But fabric that used to be 7.99-10.99 a yard when I bought it in the US is 20.00 a metre! The other thing is, well, if you join the sewing club that this chain of stores has, you get discounts. You get a whopping 50% off on the quilting cottons, and 20% on almost everything else. Which means that it's way more affordable that way. I just don't know how much this club costs, since their website is unhelpful in that regard. I'll just have to ask next time I go in. But it feels a little like extortion.

I browsed around for a while and finally bought a pack of fat quarters and some bias tape. Two quarters each of three different fabrics. They've worked well in what I made, but I'm still reeling from the cost of my favourite fabrics.

Next time I go to Vancouver, I am definitely going to Dressew. I didn't realize it was right around the corner from Button Button, so I didn't go last weekend. Although my husband says that's probably a good thing, since we'd probably still be there. I laughed. Of course we wouldn't. Maybe.

day out

2010-04-12T01:00:00.004-07:00

Since I had to go all the way down to UBC to return some library books on Saturday, my husband and I made a day of it. We went to UBC, admired the gorgeous campus and the really cool library book-drop (seriously, the library I work in could fit on one floor of the Koerner Library). On the bus on the way there, we went past Urban Yarns, so now I know how to get there. We didn't stop there, however. We got on a different bus and went to Gastown instead. I hadn't been to Gastown since J. took me there on a date several years ago. I had been told, by friends at knit-night, that there was a really cool button store down there. They were not wrong.

Button Button is a very cool button store. They have a really nice selection of different kinds of buttons and clasps. I loved the Beatrix Potter and Paddington Bear buttons. We spent a while browsing there, but I ended up buying what were almost the very first buttons I looked at there. I did debate about the medieval style ones, which were simple and elegant. Next time I end up at the store, I may buy those.

So now I have six of the above steampunk-style buttons. I already have a cardigan in mind for them, but I haven't decided on the colour or the yarn. I'll need to go hunting for it sometime this summer. I'd like to use Cascade 220. I've only used it in hats so far and I really liked it.

And sadly, somewhere between lunch, Skytrain, and the bus, I managed to lose my hat. It was the green one, the one that reminded me of the forest. I have a matching scarf which I managed to hang onto. I think I left the hat in the restaurant. I'll probably call them tomorrow to see if they do lost and found. If not, well, I hope whoever finds it can use it. I like the hat, but it's not my favourite. It wasn't quite the shape I wanted, so I rarely wore it.

Spoke is coming along nicely. I have both sleeves finished now, and I started the left front yesterday. I started Skew earlier this week but haven't worked on it much this weekend. I grabbed a different sock for Saturday. Those brown men's socks I was working on months ago came out of hibernation just because I needed something simple for the bus. I'm on the leg of the sock--just a few more inches to go and I can bind off the first one. Also, today I finally set the twist on some handspun I finished plying last week. I'll check the yardage and ball it up tomorrow when it's done drying. I know I have enough to make a hat, for sure. And since I'm sans one hat, a new one will be nice.

the lint is everywhere

2010-04-08T23:03:00.003-07:00

Yesterday, I cast on for Skew. I'm working my way up the foot right now. At the moment, I'm just alternating plain rows with increase/decrease rows, but can hardly wait to get to the heel. It looks like fun. I am using the really great Zauberball yarn for these. It has great colours and long repeats. Short colour repeats might be more interesting for Skew, but we'll see how it goes at the heel. I can always knit a second pair.

For Spoke--I have one sleeve finished and the other started. I'm alternating rows on this sleeve to mix the dye lots. They're so close that they are only really distinguishable in very strong light (and not at all in Starbucks, even though Starbucks has better light than my two favourite coffeeshops), but I want to avoid being discontented with the sweater.

I still really like Sedum, but if I ever knit it again, I will use different yarn. It stretches more than I'd prefer (that may be my gauge, though), and it sheds. By the theories of Chomsky, it sheds! Last time I washed it, after it was dry, I used one of those lint brushes that has the sticky paper you peel off. I peeled off a lot of sticky paper that evening. I had to lint brush the ironing board, where I'd blocked the sweater, after I hung it up. It sheds all over my clothes, and I find alpaca fibres everywhere now. When I'm wearing the sweater, sometimes I find myself with alpaca fibres getting into my mouth (not sure how that happens). And I am a person who has long hair that sheds like crazy (my husband has blamed my hair for a broken part on the vacuum that he had to replace), and because there is a lot of cloth and yarn in my home, I have a lot of lint floating around. And yet, the amount of lint coming off of this sweater seems truly extraordinary. I still like alpaca, but I think that inexpensive alpaca may not be the best way to go if you want a hard-wearing sweater. I'm going with a sturdy Briggs & Little wool for Spoke. It may have the occasional piece of vegetable matter, and it may be a little scratchy, but it does not shed.

The other day, I was knitting a dishcloth as a bus project. The cotton I grabbed from my bag happened to match my shirt rather well. I was coordinated! This is unusual, since I frequently wear socks that do not match my outfit and often pair my practical black waterproof shoes with my favourite pants, which are brown.

busywork

2010-04-05T16:37:00.002-07:00

In between trying to write today, I've been knitting on a sock. I started the pair last month for a group on Ravelry: Sock Knitters Anonymous. Each month, they have a challenge, and if you finish the pair of socks within the time limit, you get entered in a draw for cool stuff. I've thought about doing it before, but the challenge was never something I wanted to knit. Last month, it was lace. You have to cast on before the end of the month, and finish before the end of the next month. I started the Butterfly Socks by Wendy Johnson, because they had double yarnovers and because I'm trying to knit my way through that book. Also, I was using up some leftover yarn.

The first sock was a pretty fast knit. I started it a little over three weeks ago and finished it before a week had gone by (given that I knit a few repeats and realized I had to frog it and restart because I was doing the pattern wrong, I'm proud of that). Then I set it aside, frustrated a little with the yarn (bamboo heels and toes and corn fibre foot and leg) and the needles (circulars don't seem any faster than DPNs, plus, the dangling needle gets tangled up in the yarn). Finally, a couple days ago, I cast on the toe of the second sock. As a break from writing, it's been nice, because it's easy. I have a couple more lace repeats to go, followed by the picot edging. Then it's done. I don't love them. The butterfly pattern just doesn't work for me. I like the yarn better now, since I like the way it knits up. I might even buy more someday. And in the meantime, I have some appropriate socks for summer. Lacy, and not made out of wool.

2010-04-01T16:43:00.003-07:00

I took a trip to the LYS today, and there I met a little girl (3 or 4) with excellent taste. While her mom was busy selecting skeins in the corner with all the baby yarns, she took a basket and made right for the Malabrigo. She tried to give me some, too, but I had already selected my yarns (Araucania, rather than Malabrigo, although I really need to get me some of that yarn one of these days). She even picked up the colourway I liked best and tried to give it to me.

2010-03-29T07:56:00.002-07:00

Fibres West 2010 was this weekend. I went with my friend E., and we had a pretty good time. I spent only about half of what I intended, which makes me want to take my temperature and see if I'm coming down with something. I bought enough yarn for Spoke and a new spindle. And that was it.

I spent of a lot of time at Treenway Silk's booth, looking at the fibre they had available. It's beautiful but I don't feel like I have enough spinning experience yet to do well with silk. I'm doing well with merino, and maybe I'll give silk a go sometime this summer.

I'm over half-way finished with the first sleeve on Spoke. It's doubling as a gauge swatch. I plan to sew the sleeve seam after I bind it off, try it on, see how it fits, and go from there. So far, it looks about right.

bits and pieces

2010-03-25T22:43:00.003-07:00

This hasn't been the greatest week for knitting. I finished a sleeve on the baby jacket, and am in the process of finishing the edging around the lapels and collar. Then it'll be on to the last sleeve.

I finished the first in a pair of socks last week, and have yet to cast on for the second sock. I will do it, but I'm knitting them on two circular needles, and that doesn't make me happy. They're way more fiddly to work with than DPNs, and the only reason I'm doing it is to practice so I can knit the Skew socks. They pretty much have to be knit on circs.

The entrelac socks I started a while back got frogged. They weren't working out and I couldn't figure out a way to be happy with the end result. The yarn will be used in Skew, since it has a nice striping pattern.

I did start a pair of mitts on Monday night, in need of something simple to knit at church (we're in a class where I'm supposed to sit still for 2 hours straight--if I don't have knitting or something, I will go nuts). I couldn't cast on the sock and the baby jacket was at the hem of the sleeve. So I started the very popular Susie's Reading Mitts. I finished the first one, except for the thumb, but now I feel a little confused about where to do some of the decreases on the second one (my version has more decreases to improve fit). I don't have the right number of stitches and I don't know why.

I also have some new yarn in the stash. My SIL had promised me yarn for Christmas. We didn't get around to setting a date to go yarn shopping, so she finally went on her own. So now I have a ball of blue Tove (Sandes Garn, sport-weight, good for gloves), and another ball of bulky, fluffy yarn in shades of green, blue, pink, and yellow which are reminiscent of cotton candy. I think I see a hat when I look at it. A tam, probably. I found a top-down pattern which should work pretty well.

Fibres West is this weekend. Saturday morning, a friend and I are off to drool over yarn and only spend the cash we've brought and designated for yarn (as opposed to being designated for lunch). Should be exciting.

Now I need to have some fresh tea and do a little more writing before I go to bed. I am having the hardest time concentrating lately.

new (old) hobby

2010-03-19T07:52:00.004-07:00

When I started reading A Dress a Day recently, it reminded that I do like sewing. I'd been hoping to do some more sewing this year, after all. I have quite a bit of material lying around that I've picked up over the years. My fabric stash is actually larger than my yarn stash, but since it's had more time to grow, that's only to be expected.

I found a pattern at the thrift store of a dress that was about what I wanted to make. I wanted a dress that would button up from waist to neckline, with an A-line gathered skirt. I had a shirt pattern that would work if I just wanted to add a skirt to it, but finding a pattern for an entire dress was nice. Then I re-measured myself, since I hadn't taken my measurements since July, and took a look at the pattern's measurements.

According to the pattern manufacturer, there should be 8 inches difference between my waist and my bust. I think the difference for me is about 4, and even if I go down a couple dress sizes (a couple favourite skirts are in the size 6-8 range and as I'm a size 10 right now, they are too tight, so I'd like to get a wee bit smaller), it's not going to make enough of a difference. My bust is not going to magically grow so I fit the pattern's proportions. Instead, the pattern will have to be tweaked.

The plan is to make a skirt or two, using the Sew What? book. They make it all about what your actual measurements are. This is so I can get a feel for sewing things that fit well, and just to get back into practice with sewing. Then, using some inexpensive cotton that I don't care about and that isn't vintage (like most of the fabric I have for making dresses is), I'll make a muslin and figure out where the pattern needs tweaking. If it turns out wearable, that's great. If not, I've only lost some fabric that wasn't expensive and that I've been trying to figure out a use for since last year.

So I have the pieces for the first skirt cut out and I've zig-zagged stitched the seamlines, so I can press the seams open, but I still haven't cut out the pocket pieces yet. Just not sure how big I want them.

remember when I could count?

2010-03-09T16:27:00.002-08:00

While tidying up the corner of the living room where my yarn stash resides (the fabric stash lives mostly in the bedroom closet, the tea stash--not to be confused with Stash tea--lives in a kitchen cupboard, and the books live, well, everywhere), I picked up the bag where the yarn for my now-finished sweater had been stored. I had been under the impression that I'd finished the sweater with two complete balls of yarn to spare and was delighted at getting a whole sweater out of just under 600 grams of yarn. Well, I was mistaken. There are three complete balls of yarn left. Plus the little bit of a ball that I didn't quite finish. That sweater took just under 500 grams of yarn, and it's not exactly a short sweater. I was under the impression that hip-length, long-sleeved sweaters took more yarn than that, but then, it's really my first sweater.

Maybe I can make a vest with the leftover yarn.

Book Review: The Magicians

2010-03-07T21:54:00.004-08:00

Have you ever picked up a book, flipped it open, read the first few pages, and gotten that little tingle that tells you it's going to be good? That happened to me this week when I got The Magicians, by Lev Grossman from the library. I read about the book on Unshelved's book review about a week ago (maybe a little longer). I put a hold on it and it came in much faster than I expected, so I read it Thursday evening. And it was a good book.

It reminded me, at the beginning, of Harry Potter, except it was much better. Magic in this world is difficult and there are some very awful consequences for mistakes. It's not a matter of pointing a wand and saying a few words. It's really, really dangerous, and it alters the characters drastically.

I found it difficult to like the main character, which I think may have been the point. He's all too human, but his faults become emphasized during his years of studying magic. At times I wanted to whack him upside the head and tell him to get over himself. Of course, he has his good points, too, but he's a hero who is flawed, and that makes the story all the better. It's easier to identify with him if he's not perfect.

There are some interesting references to the Chronicles of Narnia, but when the characters actually arrive in Fillory, the Narnia-like world which the main character has become obsessed with, they find that it's much darker than it seemed to be in the books. That was a part I enjoyed, too. I love the Chronicles of Narnia and have read them many times. I wanted to get into Narnia when I was a kid. But if I actually did get there, wouldn't I find that it's a lot scarier than I think it is?

It's definitely a grown-up book. There is swearing, sex, alcohol, drugs, and violence (if those are problems for you). I wouldn't hand it to a child. But then I wouldn't hand Harry Potter to a child either. Book 3 in that series gave me horrific nightmares when I was twelve and I had to stop reading them. However, adult content notwithstanding, The Magicians is definitely a fascinating story.

I can't wait for the sequel.

The Seedy Cardigan

2010-03-07T15:40:00.004-08:00

There is a sweater on the floor, in the section of my living room where I block things and where I often have a rack set up for hang-dry clothes. Here it is.

I washed it in the bathtub, as per usual, rolled it up into a towel to squeeze out the water, rolled it up into another towel to squeeze out more water, and then laid it out to dry.

Here's a detail of the button band. The buttons I used were ones I got at at the Button Emporium a couple years ago. I've been waiting a while to use them. They have the claddagh symbol on them, so my sweater matches my wedding ring quite nicely.

I will have to go over the buttonholes with embroidery and/or sewing thread once this has dried. I wore the sweater to church this morning before I blocked it (one compliment so far), and the buttonholes were already stretching a bit too much (and they're only 1 stitch wide!).

This is an accomplishment for me. I've knit a couple of sleeveless tops and neither of those came out well. One (made from Phentex, which was really the biggest problem) is living an ashamed life, hidden in a bin. The other was worn in public a couple times and then frogged. It's going to be a vest in its next life, I think.

Anyway, I'm very happy with how this sweater came out. I made a few mistakes here and there, but I doubt anyone's going to come up and demand to examine how I picked up the stitches on the underarm of one of the sleeves.

The only thing I'm not sure I like about the sweater is the length of the arms. Nearly everything is too long for me, so I always fold up the cuffs on my sweaters. I don't have to do that with this one, and it feels strange. The sleeves are actually the right length. Crazy.

2010-03-07T00:03:00.001-08:00

I finished my Sedum cardigan! (as of about 5 minutes ago; those minutes were spent trying it on, looking at myself in the mirror wearing it, waking my husband up to show him, and then hanging it up in the hall closet). I used almost 6 balls of yarn for it, so I have two balls and a bit left over. I'll post pictures later.

It's finished! I have finished a real sweater!

2010-03-05T11:41:00.002-08:00

I don't think I mentioned this when it happened a while ago, but it was a little flattering. I was sitting at the bus stop, reading. I was wearing my Fetching mitts because it was a bit chilly. The woman sitting next to me on the bench said, "Oh, those are a great idea. My dad could use those because he has X disease (can't remember what it was) and his hands are always cold. Where did you buy them?"

"I knit them," I said.

"Oh."

I guess that means they look really good, but I've never seen cabled mitts for sale in a store before.

at least the ankle's getting better

2010-03-01T16:10:00.003-08:00

The last week was reading break at school, so I just had to work and didn't have to go to class. It was a nice break, but then I got sick. According to the doctor, it's only a cold, but I'd forgotten that colds could be this malicious.

I coughed my way through the weekend, then went to one class this morning, and realized I shouldn't be at school. I absolutely have to be there tomorrow, so I skipped my next class and went home to rest. Now I'm taking a break from homework to write this. I also bought more cough drops and some cough syrup stuff so I can go to school tomorrow and possibly not cough too much.

On the plus side, I finally finished a pair of mitts for my husband last night. Since I was using white wool from an old sweater, I dyed them. They were supposed to be grey, but they're closer to black. We'll see what he thinks of that when he gets home. He liked them undyed, but he wanted them to be a "manly" colour (says the man who wants me to knit him a pink chicken hat next).

In other knittings: my Olympic project did not get finished in time. I got distracted by J.'s mitts and a baby jacket for J.'s cousin's daughter. But the important thing for me, at least, is that I totally could have finished it, if I'd really wanted to. Which I didn't, since it turned out I wasn't in the mood for knitting socks most of the week. I'm just not competitive enough, I guess. The baby jacket's almost done, though.

it's that day with red hearts and stuff, right?

2010-02-14T22:20:00.004-08:00

I completely forgot that today was Valentine's Day. J. and I went down into Vancouver for a few hours today, mostly as long as my ankle could handle, and on the trip home, somewhere on the bus or the Skytrain, I suddenly remembered that it was the day I used to call "Singles' Awareness Day" (acronym, SAD). It had slipped my mind before that.

This is a day which I liked when I was a child, because my grandparents would give us candy on pretty much any holiday. One winter when they were in Arizona (back in the days when they were snowbirds), they sent me and my brothers candy for Groundhog Day. So I liked that part. I liked making valentines with construction paper and giving them to my friends. I didn't really dislike the holiday until high school. Suddenly, I was head over heels in "love" with a guy who thought I was okay, but wasn't interested at all in me (he was head over heels for a friend of mine, instead). I was miserable. Valentine's Day sucked, because all the happy couples around me were giving each other flowers and candy and going on dates and going to the Sweethearts' Banquet our school hosted. That year, my dad gave me some really great socks for Valentine's Day and took me to the bookstore to cheer me up (where I bought Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility). I have great parents. I'm still amazed they put up with me in some of my moodier moments in my teens.

So, I made it through high school, tending towards grumpy every Valentine's Day because it would remind me even more that whoever I happened to like at the time didn't like me. Then I went off to university and met J. Our first Valentine's Day together happened about three weeks after we started (officially) dating. I told him I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, and being a guy who was still learning to read me, he took me at my word. I wrote him a poem and got my best friend to write it out for me in calligraphy. He said, "Oh yeah, happy Valentine's day" right before a class we had together. It wasn't the greatest day, since I had hoped he would do something in spite of what I'd said, but even so, I didn't exactly hate it anymore.

These days, we might go out for dinner, or stay in and make dinner together. The year he decided to make me Indian food was interesting. We had homemade palak paneer and some flatbread with grated horseradish in it. And that was it. Although, palak paneer is very filling. We went out for dinner tonight, but more because we didn't want to cook and Valentine's Day was as good an excuse as any. If he gives me red roses, it's never on Valentine's Day, it's because he thought it would be nice to bring me flowers.

I'm far less romantic than I used to be. I used to daydream about a guy who would do the grand gestures, but it turned out that what I really wanted was someone like J. He's not usually terribly romantic (although the occasional bouquet is really sweet of him), but I never doubt that he loves me, and I know that I love him. We don't play games with each other, and while it's not perfect (I doubt I could live with perfect--it'd drive me crazy), it's good. And we're happy.

Plus, wandering around Vancouver today was much more fun than an expensive candlelit dinner with roses. We had burritos and got to see a snowboarder jumping on a trampoline.

half-way down the stairs

2010-02-09T08:31:00.004-08:00

There's something about being cautious on stairs that I should have learned when I was a child. I mean, really, I remember vividly falling down the stairs at my grandfather's retirement party when I was about two. I've slipped down a couple sets of staircases since. And each time, I've survived with, at most, a couple bruises. I usually instinctively fall the right way, ever since I took a self-defense class (usually being the important word there).

Yesterday afternoon, I was walking down the stairs in the linguistics building, going to class. I was chatting with a classmate about the options of thesis vs. comprehensive exams, and then, at the bottom of the stairs, I saw a friend I haven't seen since before Christmas. So I shouted hi, and as I was asking him how he was (with about two steps to go to the bottom), I placed my foot wrong. Down those last two steps I went, viciously twisting my ankle along the way. I managed to turn the word that almost came out of my mouth into "shoot!" and sat there at the bottom of the stairs, breathing carefully so as to keep from crying.

I've twisted my ankle before. Many times. It'll hurt, I rotate it a bit, and it might ache for a half hour, at most. Then it's fine. The stabbing pain of this suggested that this injury might be more serious. So, I sat through my class for an hour and a half, trying not cry or move my ankle, and then got a ride home with someone so I didn't have to face the walk to the bus stop, the bus ride, and the walk home from the bus stop.

It still hurts this morning. Badly. I think I will be stopping by the doctor's on the way home. In the meantime, it's been wrapped up and I believe ibuprofen and walking carefully are my friends.

Edit: Yes, the doctor says it's sprained. I spent close to two hours at the clinic waiting for him to tell me that I was already doing all the right stuff. Then I managed to strain my thumb a bit (either because I was a bit tense while knitting at the clinic, or because I managed to sleep on top of my hand, or both), so I have to take a day or two off of knitting. It's easier than it was this summer, but it's still annoying. I want to work on those socks.

pre-Olympics

2010-02-07T17:44:00.002-08:00

We took a trip down to Vancouver yesterday and spent the day wandering around Commerical and Granville Island with some friends. Commercial is a really fun, quirky place with interesting stores and some great restaurants, and that's where we spent most of our day. Then we took Skytrain and the new "Olympic Line" streetcar over to Granville Island. The streetcar on loan from Brussells is very nice, and very similar to the MAX trains in Portland, Oregon, except the ones from Brussells have leather seats and signs that are in French and what I think was Dutch (since the signs are only a few words long, I wasn't sure if it was Dutch or German, since those can look a tad similar, and both are official languages in Belgium). And the drivers for these were driving much more slowly than the MAX drivers do.

I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about the Olympics until this weekend. We've been hearing about it for years, and so far, it's just seemed to result in lots of construction and road repair. And now, all of a sudden, this is something really, really neat. There were banners everywhere, people wearing maple leaves, and we actually saw the Slovakian Olympic team while we were waiting in line for the streetcar. This is real. It's no longer something we talk about, not something that's happening next year. It's happening now.

We're going back to Vancouver next weekend, the day after the opening ceremonies. We can't afford to go to any of the events, but there's free concerts and cultural stuff happening, and I want to be able to say that I was there when the Olympics were in Vancouver.

cracking the crochet code

2010-01-27T07:29:00.005-08:00

When I learned how to sew, I did pretty well. I could sew by hand or by machine, and as long as I took my time with it and didn't take shortcuts, whatever I made would turn out fairly well. With practice, my stitches grew smaller and more even, and my skill using the machine got better.

When I learned how to knit, I'd been struggling with crochet and knitting was so much easier (I can think of at least two people who had tried to teach me to crochet and I had failed to learn). I was invited to my very first knit and crochet night. The evening I picked up those needles, my friend Sherie showed me how to cast on, and then how to make my first stitch, and all of sudden, I was sitting there on the floor of Emma's living room, knitting. Everyone around me was either knitting or crocheting and doing it much better than I, but I will always remember that moment. It was like magic.

I finished the scarf I was crocheting as a Christmas gift, tried to figure out how to crochet a hat, and then just gave up and concentrated on knitting. Periodically, I would pick up the hook and try it, but the most I could manage was a chain and what I now know was slip stitch (not single crochet, like I thought it was). I tried reading instructions and I tried watching videos. Nothing seemed to help.

Since I wasn't particularly interested in crochet for its own sake, it didn't seem important to learn. Then I got Wrap Style from the library. I loved most of the patterns for their quirkyness, their beauty, and the challenge they would pose for knitting. Then I turned a page and saw it. Chanson en Crochet is a crocheted capelet that made me forget my dislike of the look of crochet. I wanted to make it. So I filed it in the back of my mind ("I will learn to crochet enough to make that") and let it go for the moment. I was working on a lace shawl and some socks and a few other things.

A few weeks ago, I tried to learn again (New Year's goal!) and felt like pulling my hair out. It was so frustrating. Why had someone invented this blasted craft and why did so many people crochet like there was no tomorrow? So I set it aside once more, figuring that I could ask a friend at knit night sometime to give me a hand. Maybe what I needed was a real live teacher, not a video where a right-handed person did it so fast I couldn't see what was happening.

Three days ago, something happened. I had gotten Wrap Style out of the library again, and was looking at the instructions for the crochet project. I turned to the basic crochet instructions in the back, and read through them. And it clicked. Something, somewhere in my mind made the connection I'd been waiting for. Later that evening, I picked up a crochet hook, and I picked up a ball of dishcloth cotton. I made a chain. Then I made a few rows of single crochet. A few rows of double crochet. A few rows of half-double crochet. Some slip-stitch. To use up the last of the yarn, I single-crocheted around the edge.

It's not pretty. I skipped a few edge stitches by accident, so one end is wider than the other. It's reminiscent of the blob I made last November that turned out to be slip stitch, not single crochet (the blob is now a rice pillow). But it is, unmistakeably, crochet.

Obviously, I need a little more practice before I can get going on the actual project, but I will do it. Crochet is no longer my Waterloo. I'm positive it will never replace knitting for me, since I prefer the look of knitting to crochet, but I will no longer fear the projects with the crocheted edging.

2010-01-22T07:38:00.002-08:00

I haven't had as much time for knitting in the last couple weeks as I did during the holidays. It's been back to work and school. I do spend more time on campus now, which reminds me, oddly, of the hours spent on campus when I went to community college. Back then, I spent a lot of time in the ceramics lab or in the language department (which was in the same building as the machine programming department where my dad works--never quite understood why). Now I spend most of my time at the linguistics building, of course. Today, for example, I have class at 9, I'm done at 10, but since I also work the closing shift at the university library on Fridays, I have this enormous gap of time until 3. It's good for doing homework in. I have some writing to do today, some reading, and some math (acoustic phonetics is forcing me to remember algebra and trig, and making me wish I had taken stats when I had the chance). And, of course, I always bring my knitting.

Right now my project of choice is a pair of entrelac socks. My sweater is too large to bring with me and the mittens are too complicated, since I spend most of the time working on them staring at the chart (past the thumb gusset and working on palm, but not to the decreases yet, and still on first mitten). Entrelac mostly doesn't take a lot of concentration. I don't have a picture yet, but I'll try to take one when I get to the heel. The yarn I'm using slowly changes colour, and the colour change usually hits about when I start the next entrelac row, which is what I was hoping for.

And that's about all for now.

day trip

2010-01-09T23:13:00.002-08:00

J. and I spent most of Friday and Saturday with his family. We went down into Vancouver today, and we made several stops, mostly along Broadway. Mine was supposed to be at "Three Bags Full," which was having a sale. It must have been an awesome sale because we got there and the line was out the door and down the street a ways (I've gotta wonder if they were selling Malabrigo half-price or something crazy like that). A guy half-way down the line said he'd been waiting for about an hour, and since none of the family really wanted to wait two hours for me to get in, we left. If it had just been J. and me, I would've done it, but it wasn't really fair to ask them to wait. I'll have to check out the store another time, when they aren't having a sale. Or, the next time they have a sale, I'll get there early.

So we left and got lunch instead. Then we went to a tea place, as my SIL wanted to stop there. That was fun. I got a couple new teas to try, and J. and I shared a pot of their Earl Grey. It was beautifully understated. There was enough bergamot flavouring to make it a proper Earl Grey, but not so much that it obscured the taste of the tea leaves (one of my biggest complaints about cheap Earl Greys).

We went to a music store so my MIL could look at harps, and I ran across a book I've been keeping an eye out for. Rise Up Singing is a collection of lyrics and chords for over a thousand songs. I know quite a few of them, but I often forget the lyrics. With this, I can have a reference for the lyrics, and I can work on learning to play chords properly on my mandolin. I kept trying to follow J. around the store with my head buried in this book, humming along with different songs. I ran into a couple of people doing that.

And I fell asleep in the car on the way home.

knitting resolutions

2009-12-31T15:53:00.004-08:00

I've never been terribly good with New Year's resolutions. I resolve to exercise more, be tidier, read more classics, etc, and this rarely happens. I did end up getting more exercise than planned this year, but that was partly because the car died and I had to switch to walking or taking the bus (which often involves walking, too). And I'm not tidier or more organized than I used to be. I still wish I was, but the closest I've come is getting rid of old school papers from my undergrad that I have no use for (goodbye, chapter summaries from IDIS 400!) and organizing my yarn stash a bit. And I did read Wuthering Heights. And Emma, and I've never made it through that one before. Middlemarch and The Brothers Karamazov are still on the list.

However, I do plan to make some resolutions for knitting/other fibre arts this year. Since I already do a lot of knitting anyway, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea to plan some of it. In between school, work, and trying to remember to take out the recycling, I plan to:

1. Finish Sedum (as I'm almost 1/4 of the way through the pattern already, this shouldn't be difficult).

2. Get to the point with fair isle where I can do it competently (I'm working on a pair of mittens right now: slow going but it doesn't look bad).

3. Finish the Leaf in a Leaf shawl and knit at least one more lace shawl this year (probably Percy, since I have the yarn for it already).

4. Make something larger than mitts with my handspun yarn (how about a hat? or can I spin enough to make something lacy?). Also, get better at spinning.

5. Knit a rug for the Knitting Olympics using wool rags (rags need to be wound up into balls and I need to choose a pattern).

6. Knit something out of Knitted Lace of Estonia (the Raha Scarf is the one in my ravelry queue right now).

7. Knit another sweater (maybe Spoke?).

8. Learn to crochet enough to make Chanson En Crochet (crochet has been my Waterloo--my spinning is fairly decent for a beginner, and when I learned to knit, everything clicked and it worked, but crochet drives me batty. And I still want to beat it, and actually be a little competent with it).

9. Learn to do intarsia and double-knitting (I promised my dad argyle socks sometime, and double-knitting looks like fun, too).

10. Knit the Maple Swirl Socks by Debbie New (you should see the chart for these: it's insane! there's arrows and swirly sections and she even includes fair-isle).

11. Finish my wedding ring quilt (it's been a goal for a while, and I just need to take some time, sit down, and sew for a couple days, and then I will be at the fun part. I like the quilting better than the piecing).

12. AND finish those Christmas knitting projects. I've knit something fast for those people for this Christmas, but I'd like to get the projects I started this year done for next Christmas.

And I think that's about it. I'd like to work my way through more of the items in my queue, but some of those will take longer than others. And working my way through some of the stash would be good, too (no, it's not a huge stash, but if I don't buy yarn unless it's for a specific project, and knit mostly from stash, I can get through lots of it this year).

odds and ends

2009-12-29T14:31:00.006-08:00

This was an interesting Christmas, and it's not exactly over yet. We've done Christmas with my family, but we don't get to do Christmas with my husband's family until next weekend (I may finally meet his elusive, furniture-making grandfather who refuses to leave the island).

I did do some baking this year. I made my very first fruitcake, and it was delicious. I've discovered, in recent years, that I actually like fruitcake, and now that I know how easy it is to make one (I didn't do one that has to sit for weeks wrapped in paper and brandy), I plan to make more. I made my first batch of divinity that was not crunchy (although I need to fine-tune some of the process since it was more like a giant marshmallow in consistency), and the fudge turned out okay. I can get it to taste exactly right, but I'm still having problems with it being too soft. It takes practice. I made pumpkin butter a couple days ago. A friend made some a while back and it sounded really good, so I hunted down a recipe. It smells good and the leftovers that I put straight into the fridge taste pretty good. I canned most of it. The batch made more than I expected.

My parents and brothers came for a visit. The hats I knit my brothers were popular and the camera cozy for my dad was put to immediate use (it fits his underwater camera pretty well). They brought me some bamboo yarn from Yarnia in Portland. I have a plan for it at the moment, but I am open to changing it if I run across a pattern I like better.

We spent Boxing Day evening at the hotel my family was staying at. We cooked dinner on the minuscule stove, played a few games, and set a Christmas pudding on fire (so much fun!). I had forgotten how incredibly loud my brothers are. J. can be loud but if you put him and my three brothers in the same room, the noise is deafening. And my dad already has hearing loss, so having a conversation with him with the rest of the family in the same room is difficult. I guess he and I should both learn ASL and then he and my mom and I can all talk in spite of the noise.

The next morning, their car started having problems. It was hemorrhaging oil and came to a stop at a gas station. A friend at church generously let them borrow a car from him and recommended a mechanic a block from where J. and I live (we don't have a car, so we're not really up on the best mechanics in the area--now we know). So Sunday afternoon was spent arranging a rental car so my dad and brothers could get home on Monday. I couldn't do much, other than allow them the use of our phone and internet, so I baked pumpkin pie. Brother 2 immediately informed me that it was "not as good as Mom's." He got scolded by Mom for that. She thought the pie was great.

So my mom spent an extra day with us, getting the car fixed. It was nice to spend some more time with her, although I would have preferred it if their car hadn't had problems.

And now it's New Year's Eve. We're staying in. I'm not a party person and I've no interest in getting drunk. We have a couple seasons of Fry and Laurie out from the library and I'm working on my technique with fair isle. It's going pretty slowly right now, but if I get frustrated with it, there's always the sweater or a pair of fairly plain socks. I'm nearly finished with the increases for the sleeves on the sweater. I have hopes for this one, since I've already knit my disastrous first sweater. This can be the fairly decent second sweater.

an outing

2009-12-23T13:45:00.004-08:00

I went on a little adventure yesterday. One of the LYSes moved to another town a couple months ago, and I've been planning to go visit and see their new store. I finally went.

White Rock is a seaside town, and it has the requisite adorable little shops and interesting restaurants in addition to the beach and the pier. I still find it weird to stand on the beach, look out at the ocean, and see land on the other side (since it's in a bay, and you're not in a bay, along the coast here there's always Vancouver Island), since where I grew up, if you went to the beach, you looked out across the ocean, and there was just ocean, seemingly going on forever. However, White Rock is very nice, and there are some gorgeous houses in the area, too (I like looking at houses). Since it's a good hour on the bus to get there, I haven't been since sometime this summer.

I stopped at the used bookstore (which has shrunk, sadly, since the last time I was there), and next I headed for Knitopia, where I chatted for a bit. Bought a ball of wool. And then I went over to Penelope Fibre. Oh, man, it's amazing! It's a little like walking into a high class jewelry store but with spinning and weaving supplies instead. I was restrained and only bought some roving (really pretty roving reminiscent of the Northern Lights), but I spent a lot of time looking and drooling. They have swifts and niddy-noddys and some nice spindles (although I think the spindle selection at Knitopia is a bit better). I was tempted, a bit, but I just settled for the merino roving.

And back to everyday matters. I should check on the fruitcake in the oven. And then off to the grocery store. We're almost out of eggs.

the world inside my head is a strange place (but there are croissants)

2009-12-20T21:53:00.004-08:00

We ventured out into the world of retail this afternoon. I suddenly realized that I'd forgotten to get my mum a Christmas gift, and that I'd planned to get a couple other people some small gifts. So off we went. I wandered through the craft store and laughed at the 25 mm needles. They look so clunky. I want a set that can live on my coffee table in case of vampire attacks, but I don't want to pay twenty dollars for a set of straight needles that I'm rarely going to use.

Then we went to Chapters, which was a bit of a madhouse. And there was a display of romance novels right there, available for ridiculing. Part of me wants to work for one of those publishing companies and be the one who comes up with those titles, because they are hysterical. There is an entire series devoted to Nascar, and a number of others featuring billionaires. He's got to be rich, drop-dead gorgeous, and a man of the world. She's got to be drop-dead gorgeous, not rich, and innocent (i.e., not a woman of the world so she can be ravished by the billionaire). There are titles like, "One Cowboy, One Christmas" and "The Billionaire's Secret Love-Child" and dozens more that are even funnier. J. and I tend to read the titles out loud in dramatic voices and then laugh at each other.

Most of the people there probably thought we were very strange. I didn't notice anyone quietly backing away, but I tend to be in my own little world when I'm at a bookstore. I thought about counting the number of vampire-themed books in the teen section, but decided that would take too long. Is it just me, or do the new covers for New Moon look like the book now belongs with the Harlequin novels? It just needs a funnier title now.

While waiting in line, we discussed what to do on Christmas Day. Friday will have the novelty of being the first time we don't spend Christmas Day with family. We're at a bit of a loss as to what to do. We're keeping the croissant tradition of his family (homemade croissants are fabulous), and we've talked about watching a movie. Maybe a Christmas-themed one. But there are no fixed plans. Everyone we know is already doing something else, and we do have family coming on Boxing Day, so I guess it'll just be a nice, quiet day together. With croissants.

just a few days to Christmas and...

2009-12-19T22:25:00.003-08:00

Christmas knitting:

3 hats: finished.

One camera lense cozy: about 50%

One pair of socks: about 25% (needs to be finished by Jan 8)

One pair of mittens: about 15% (same as above)

I also couldn't take it any longer and started Sedum. The Serpentine Socks are done, and I am wearing them right now. The wool was a bit itchy until I washed it. I used shampoo and some conditioner. It's wool, and wool is hair, right?

Since relatives are coming to visit for Christmas, I'm using this as a good excuse to re-organize some things. Yesterday I cleaned the stove and got rid of some pots and pans that we don't use. Today I tidied out the corner where I had a stack of old class notes and binders and sorted out what I really wanted to keep and what wasn't worth saving. Then I put a plastic storage tub in that corner and put yarn in it. Now the baskets in that area in front of the small bookcase have yarn (some of the stash but not all) and spinning supplies. Most of the spinning fiber, except what's actually on the spindle, went into the plastic tub, too. The basket just has what I'm spinning up right now. That corner looks so much tidier than the rest of the living room now.

When it comes to Christmas decorating, I'm more of a minimalist. We have an Advent candle thing on the table (it should be a wreath, but it's actually just a holder for four candles that has no Christmas theme whatsoever, so I can use it during the rest of the year, too). And I got a little fake tree on sale the other day. It has one ornament hanging on it, because I need to finish organizing things in the living room before I'm willing to finish decorating it.

And I still want to do some more Christmas baking. I've done some cookies, but I want to make fudge, too. I'd like to get better at divinity, too. Last year, it didn't go so well. My husband was stirring the egg whites, and I was pouring the sugar syrup in, and, sadly, the syrup, although it wasn't meant for his hand, still ended up there. Boiling sugar syrup and skin don't go together. He still reminds me of this sometimes. This year, I think the mixer will be going while I pour the sugar syrup in. The bowl and the whisk don't mind if I pour hot syrup on them.

Well, back to the camera cozy.