Do They Know it's Halloween?

Halloween was my first experience in self control. Not talking *too* much about my costume before it was unveiled in a schoolroom parade through the halls, waiting until *after* dinner to race out into the streets & collect loot, trying not to seem *too* eager when hands tossed candy into my treat bag. Returning home to dump out my pillowcase full of candy onto the living room floor & trying to show my parents that yes, I had tons of candy, but I was a responsible young girl & they hadn't any reason to hide it, or freeze it or do other ridiculous candy rationing techniques. It was exciting!

Last night though, there was a distinct absence of this thrill - there were no distant sounds of children chanting 'trick or treat!'. My street was dead. The only people outside were people *waiting* on their front porches for children.

I sat on the front steps of my house, a large bowl of about 90 mini chocolate bars beside me - willing the children to come. Eventually a girl in her 20s walked by dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. I tried my very best not to sound creepy, but the words "Would You like some candy" coming from a stranger are almost always scary. She accepted the candy, expressed how disappointing it was that my street was so dead and wished me a Happy Halloween. Total number of kids to my door: 5.

Here's how dead my street was last night - ON HALLOWEEN!



The whole night I had the catchy part of this song bopping through my head.

cozy little me.

About a month ago I started knitting the sweater of many buttons. I shut my eyes & ears to the piles of christmas gift knitting/sewing I had on my list & allowed myself this project. I don't have a big warm wooly sweater & I felt I deserved one. A cardigan. In a colour I'd probably never think about.

It's done now, and dudes...I *love* it.





A top down raglan cardigan with assymetrical buttons. I used Lamb's Pride Bulky in a delicious colour 'Heirloom Blue' - I love the colour - but holy moley the mohair in this stuff is very fuzzy. I don't think I mind though.

Okay - so I started this about a month ago, knit it mostly on my lunch hour at work & finished it up on Wednesday. I rushed home from work, soaked it, laid it down to block & now it is Saturday & it is still damp. I'm wearing it, hoping my body heat will help it to dry quicker.

I am a bad blogger, but a good knitter - as proof, here is another completed christmas knit:


my first ever toe-up socks, knit 2 at a time using the magic loop method. I'm not sure I'm sold on the toe-up thing, I miss the heel flap that top down has...but magic loop sure was handy for matching those stripes, I really doubt I'd have been able to get those tiny stripes to match up so well if I'd knit them one at a time.

I used Regia Silk Colours for these & while the yarn is super soft, perfect for my mother who doesn't like wool right next to her skin, the colour saturation was a continual disappointment to me. I'd use Regia Silk again, but maybe the solid colour stuff. I just hope they wash okay. I read somewhere that this stuff shrinks a little in the wash.

more soon, since I have a bunch of *almost* completed projects elbowing their way to the finish line.

thanksgiving.

Last week was Canadian Thanksgiving - and the first time I've made it home for the holiday in a couple of years. It was lovely - some of the highlights being that I *finally* got to go to the Needle Emporium in Ancaster & snoop around the place. It's a really great store & I scored some sock yarn I'd never seen before.

My parents are really truly lovely people - I adore them, but I do not love Robin Williams. I was not forced, but rather...encouraged to sit down & watch 'RV' with them.


Which is when I got to work on knitting some of the yarn I had bought earlier that day into socks for Gord.(who is not on my craft calendar at this time - but my father is. And he was sitting very close to me.) Unsure of Robin Williams' ability to captivate my father enough so that he wouldn't notice I was making his christmas gift, I opted to just make something else. Maybe it's Mr. Mork's comedy stylings, but something made me knit like my hands were on fire & before I knew it I had the first sock almost complete. Please note - knitting at high speeds during a movie like this does not make the film any less bad.

In the morning I indulged in their Satellite tv to catch the Coronation Street Omnibus *2 1/2 times* in a row. I loved every minute of it, I said I loved every minute of it (that's my Fred immitation, it sounds better than it reads) By the end of it all, I was done the sock. A personal record.

Then I took a shower, got dressed & noticed my mother was outside....raking the millions of leaves they had on their front lawn all by herself. I went out to ask if she needed a hand & when she said she did, the idea of taking of my sweater crossed my mind - but not for long & before I knew it I was making jolly huge piles of leaves & taking cute snapshots of their effing amazing dog:


OMG! Couldn't you just eat her up with some jam & a scone & some tea?

The Thanksgiving sun shone down on us & I did more yard work that I had been called upon to do in the last 10 years. It felt good - even if I did do the most baddest job ever. (It was hot! I was wearing a cashmere sweater! I was *raking*)

After the lawn was (sorta) tidy my mother added the last dash of suburban Thanksgivingery to the front of their house:


(notice there's still tons of leaves on the lawn)

With the cardburkey in the Cardboven, the house smelled fantastic & soon the house was filled with my sister, brother in-law & my adorable nephew, Nolan. Lots of reasons to give thanks.

And here are the finished socks!

Only my therapist knows.....

I've been trying my best to be diligent about throwing old stuff away. Getting rid of clutter. Only bringing things into my house that I *need*. But it's hard. I come from a long line of stashers - You can't just shake your habits that easily. It's my nature!

But lately I've been looking around my place...realizing that I've lived here for almost 10 years (!!!!) & it doesn't say *home* to me. I want it to be a comfortable, stylish place that makes me happy. And so enters....... Apartment Therapy.

The 8 week AT Home cure online course starts now & I couldn't be more stoked. I even got my copy of the AT book from my great interweb pal Amber yesterday!

So this is week one & I'm going to be putting most of my focus on the Living Room & my bedroom. My bedroom has recently been painted (the most lovely colour in all the land! Limesickle!) & it doesn't need *all* that much work, just some help in the getting rid of books & CDs category..... I wonder if the Apartment Therapy has a chapter on when you have something living in your walls?

In other great books news, I pre-ordered my copy of Crafter's Companion the other day & I'm so so so excited to get it in the mail!


A lot of my favourite bloggers are in it & the projects look super! I caaaaaaaaaanot WAIT for it to appear in my mailbox!

Oh, and for those of you with short term memory & who may have already forgotten about how just paragraphs ago I said I was trying to de-clutter & de-stash & make my life a more simple & serene one, good - You'll be happy to know that I've very recently been bitten by the cutest little quilting bug & have officially allowed myself to start a stash of cute fabrics. Luckily, I was over on Repodepot & discovered they have added lots of stuff to their sale section. mmm! I was already going to this (which is unfortunately not on sale):


so why not throw some other stuff in as well?
like this:


or this:


or this!



Yumm!

of rutabagas, parsnips & Gary Oldman

Just so you know, I tried several photos before settling on one I took about 3 minutes before I loaded into the site & every single one of them came up with Gary Oldman as my highest celebrity face match. I just hope that now when people describe me to others they say "Oh, you totally know Nicole - she looks just like Gary Oldman!" Nana Mouskouri comes as no big surprise since even my own mother used to call me Nana when I switched to plastic frames.



Good news! I've finished the back & both fronts of the Ivy sweater! Here they are pinned to my Judy!
The bad news? All the pieces are slightly different lengths. This is for sure an error brought on by my choice of nighttime unwinding activities & not a pattern error. It's nothing I can't fix but it will require patience - something I have in very small doses. I cast on last night for the sleeves... I'm knitting both of them at the same time to prevent any more wonkiness. When this sweater is done I'll be halfway through my christmas crafting. And just in case you think it's crazy that I started in May, why not go here and see how much time you have to procrastinate before Santa comes? To help me with this intense crafting season, I've hit an all time high in my own personal nerdom. I printed out calendars from October to December & created crafting timelines for all my projects. I'm one of those people that has a million ideas - a billion awesome things going through my mind but an inability to just *start* - so far, this set up is helping me out a lot. Oh! On Sunday I bought my first Rutabaga! And my first Parsnips! And I made stew! With Herb dumplings! (also a first!) It was delicious - I took photos.
Me trying to figure out the rutabaga:
The stew! With dumplings! Dumplings are just big blobs of flour & vegetable shortening!
And Gord brought some delicious Pasteis de nata and we tried to take artsy fartsy photos of them with only a little success.
Doesn't Fiestaware make everything look lovely?

driveway to driveway....

Today I nestled into my sewing room, revisited some old favourite records & went to work on an idea I was hoping would turn out....
I wanted to extend the Built by Wendy blouse pattern (Simplicity 4111) into a dress. Could I do it? Turns out I could - quite successfully!


The fabric is from my stash - satin-y brown stuff with a geometic square pattern all over it. Not something I'd normally wear, but I needed it for a draping class I took about 5 years ago. We were told we needed 3 yards & of course I ended up using less than one. So it's been sitting in my collection for far too long. I figured if it didn't work out then it'd be no big loss. I also intended this to be a trial run & wasn't *really* expecting to like the finished dress as much as I think I do.

A close-up of the pattern:


The buttons on the front get a little lost with all the hooplah of the squares, but it's totally still cute.

Now I just need someone to take me somewhere where I can wear a satin-y dress. Anyone?.... Any takers?..... no?...

And about the "awesome graffiti" I made reference to in my last post..here's what remained of it when I finally got to take a picture:


It says "Sarah Polly is fucking GAY!" but the rainy weather we've been having washed away the good parts.

shhhhh!

The first time we noticed it was a couple of weeks ago. A scraping, a desperate noise of something that wanted OUT. A digging. A faint sound of crumbling. And then running.
There's something living in our walls - I'm sure of it. But they must have a daytime gig elsewhere because the noises only start happening at about 5:30pm. It sounds CRAZY. It's terrifying. It sounds big & hungry - like our house is alive & it hates us.

When I did a google image search for a suitable picture by typing in "Animals in walls" this came up:


Yeah, I *wish* it was that cute..... it's fucking nuts.


For those of you thinking "hmmm...pretty lame blog entry, Nicole" - You're right, and I have but one excuse - I have a lot of knitting in progress, so photos of that sort of thing are never that interesting....last weekend I went to Andrea's & Rachel's house for my friend Mary's birthday. The two were such gracious hostesseseses that I left their house a little tiny bit too full of wine & did something to my knee that made it so I couldn't walk properly for a couple of days. How does an injury like that keep me from awesome blogging? It doesn't, but when a girl needs an excuse, she'll take what she can get. And also I have about a billion ideas swimming around in my head but I don't want to share them until I have them set in motion. I don't want to jinx it. Wait...that's three excuses.

However, I keep passing one of the most awesome bits of graffiti on my way to work & tomorrow I'm bringing my camera so that I can share it with all of you. Today I saw the FATTEST cat in the whole entire city & I wished so bad that I had my camera - he was like a real life Garfield! mental note: bring camera everywhere - having camera at all times sets you on the path to righteous blogging.

(note to blogger - um, hey, how about doing something with your spell check function? I mean... the word *BLOG* isn't even in its dictionary......dude. come on.)

One Man's Trash...

So.....Garage Sales eh? Gord's mother is a master. She can weave her way through sales like no one I've ever met before. She uses a sweet but firm tone with them when suggesting a price for objects already stickered at a different, higher price. She gets what she wants.

This weekend I had the pleasure of going Garage Saleing with the Highs & I think these two scores speak for themselves:

Pin-Up girl beer mug (here I am drinking Soy Milk out of it.)
And another highly hilarious Beer mug!


When I got to the High's house on Friday night, Arlene had a little basket full of goodies she had picked up for me along her Garage Sale escapades:

Awesome button necklace!
And this *adorable* 'Knit Toys' book!




And some knitting needles & crochet hooks. I can't believe how thoughtful she is!

Last week the new Knitty came out & I was pleased to see the pattern for Ivy in there. I've been trying to find just the right sweater to knit for my sister this Christmas but couldn't find anything that screamed "Smelly Melly" to me (I'm "Sticky Nicky"...and my parents are rpoud of us, I'm sure) But Ivy is just the perfect thing. I bought some yarn & cast on for it on Thursday. Last night I just finished the back & it looks *lovely*. I'll post progress pics later on. But right now I got to get my Casserole Monday on!

Sweet child o' mine.

(I tried to get fancy with font size but I ended up messing it all up and now I'm super tired & don't feel like fixing it.)

I really do do more than just knit all the time - I'm often out experiencing awesome times with my awesome friends & I've decided to start sharing that stuff more on my blog.

This past Saturday Gord & I packed our bindles & set out to the Toronto Botanical Gardens to see my friend Krondor Stephen get married to his lovely lady Lorraine.


The ceremony was touching, the bride and groom were handsome & beautiful & Gord I were *starving. (This is forshadowing) After they said their "I Do's" there were cocktails & appetizers & funtime chit-chat. Unfortunately for me, there was far more wine than there was delicious little brie & Asparagus cups so it didn't take long for me to get high on the sass-o-meter.

Maybe it had something to do with the field of mushrooms we happened upon.
You know, I'm 30 now, and every once in a while I'm slapped in my (still extremely young looking) face with little social intricacies that I know nothing about. For instance, when we sat down to dinner I felt like a hillbilly bumpkin on account of I didn't know where to put my (crazy adorable merimekko) clutch. It wasn't until my 4th glass of wine that I noticed little clutches sitting neatly under the chairs of their owners. That's when I became.....a woman.


It should be noted here that I don't *really* think this photo is blog material, but as one of my few memories of the evening is of me exclaiming "I'm going to put this on my blog!" after I took this, I feel I should honour my own promise.

I also said I'd blog this photo:


It's well lit, so it at least looks a little classy.

My next social faux-pas came when I eagerly poured wine into my champagne glass. Egg on my face! Isn't it funny how far more dramatic situations seem when you're drunk. I mean, I felt this was photo worthy.


When clearly, it is not.

This however, was. A CANDY BUFFET!

I think i ate some jelly beans and a mini Goodbar. I don't remember. I realize these photos don't look all that "crazy" but imagine the hilarious audio dialogue that would have accompanied these photos....for 6 hours straight!


Gord really does deserve a round of applause for putting up with me. But hey, I came home with a bunch of condoms, some dental floss & a jar of Advil, so it's not like I didn't make up for my shinanigans. (They were COMPLIMENTARY in the women's washroom....free for the taking. I chose to fill my bra with them. That's what it was FOR.)

The next day was spent rejuvinating & finishing these Jaywalkers....for me!

Booooor-ring!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........Wha? oh. Wha? I forgot. This is a blog...*MY* blog where I'm supposed to showcase my hilarity & clever ideas & be witty & stuff.

I just read through some posts from the last little while & I think I owe everyone an apology.

This blog is JANK!

Stay tuned for a more *exciting* blog - with drawings! and jokes! and no more just "here are some socks I knit." "Here is a sweater I knit."

My promise to *you* is more ROFLs per post! More LOLs per post! More OMGs!!!

BRB.

Cruiser's Creek

CG13 wanted me to update to assure her that I was still alive.

To be honest, I swear I was going to update today anyway. I have things to show!

I've almost finished the bpt cardigan for my mother. I just have to put in a zipper & figure out what to do with the neckline. The pattern calls for a hood but a) my mom doesn't really wear hoodies and b) I don't have enough of this yarn to make one. I'm thinking I'll just do the attached i-cord around there too. To keep things even.


It's totally cute, and once I had the help of knittykat, the pattern made sense & it was smooth sailing. This was my first time doing an attached i-cord & for some reason (instincts? is that you?) I switched from my size 8s & did the cord with a size 6 needle - it turned out just right & I'm hoping those decisions from my gut are my newest knitting skill.

The other night I cast on for the Sienna Cardigan from the new Interweave Knits. I'm trying to use up all my stash yarn so this is knit from plain ole black Lion Brand Wool Ease. It's going so freaking fast that I'm thinking one in brown might be in my future if I like the end result as much as I think I will.


I'm almost done the back! Worsted weight & size 9 needles go wicked fast!

And here's this bit of information. Today is August 30th. August is just about over & I am in awe of my ability to stick to my "no new yarn this month" rule - in fact, I didn't buy any fabric either! I've even put off buying the zipper for bpt so I can say I didn't buy *any* crafty things (except for the new IK & Vogue Knitting) So what if this is due to my inability to manage my money now that I only get paid once a month - but it's good to see a little more room in my stash box(es). Now, if only September would get here.

Orangina.

Just moments ago I finally finished Orangina.


It's alright. The pattern was really simple & I loved watching it develop, but maybe I just have to get used to it since I don't have anything else in my wardrobe that looks like this -- my reaction to it when I put it on was 'meh.'

I extended the lace pattern & put less ribbing on the bottom - I wish I had a little more of the yarn because it could stand to be about another inch longer. Speaking of the yarn - yerg!

I used Estelle yarns 'Young Touch' - 100% Mercerized Egyptian Cotton. There was tons of thread seperation & it was hard on my hands - it's also a little too shiney for my tastes, but I'll just suck it up & wear the thing & see how I feel about it after giving it a chance.

All in all, this is a really great pattern - very simple, interesting enough to hold your attention & the end results look impressive. I just don't know if it's all that ideal for my body shape.

Whee!

T-O-BER-MOR-Y ALRIGHT!

With another looooooooong weekend at our feet, Gord & I decided to ditch the city & head for beautiful Georgian Bay. The events of the trip are somewhat long & hilariously sordid, so I'm going to skim over most of them but here is a very short synopsis of our trip.

We started out early Saturday morning from my parents house in Hamilton (long story #1) With many stops & a bunch of last minute shopping, we were finally on our way. Way, way, way up the highway. It was somewhere around Mount Forest (a town with a sign we thought was pretty hilarious)

that I cast on for some Jaywalkers. I brought them for the soul purpose of being car knitting, so I didn't get all that much done on them. In backroad camping, every inch of space is precious - so my knitting didn't make the cut of what went in the pack.

After hours of driving we finaly arrived at Bruce Peninsula National Park. Our plan was to hike in from Head of Trails to Storm Haven--the overnight rest stop where we had reserved a campsite. The next night we were supposed to hike to High Dump overnight rest stop - 10 km away from Storm Haven. We were told that if we parked at Halfway Dump side trail we'd have a 'nice calm walk in'. Neither of us were prepared for what that acutally meant. What that actually meant was 5.3km of fairly rugged terrain. Mostly rocks, lots of climbing, and lots of telling myself outloud "It's okay, it's okay, I can *DO* this." At one point when we were feeling pretty beat that Gord reminded me of why we came to this particular spot:
There were almost tears, there was more sweating than I've ever done in my whole entire life, there was a lot of looking up at the rock we had to get up in order to keep on trail & saying "What the FUCK??" But we finally got to our site. What do two city kids look like after a crazy hike in the woods? We were all like "is there wireless up here or what? OMG guy, we should have made a movie of that to post on youtube!" um, we weren't actually like that at all. We were mostly just a stream of expletives with a few "this is awesome!!"'s thrown in.

Because this part of the trail is right along a very rocky cliff, the sites have these little decks to pitch your tent on, which I thought was pretty good because that meant that maybe the Rattlesnakes wouldn't get us. We weren't expecting to be hiking such a difficult trail, and really, neither of us had ever done this sort of thing before (except for my portage trip last summer which was not nearly as tough as this) so the next morning we decided to hike back to the sidetrail & see how we felt. Would we *really* feel up to hiking another 5km & then 7km back the next day - when we'd (meaning Gord) would have to drive 4 hours back to Hamilton & then take the bus back to Toronto & then go to work the next day? I hope it's needless to say that the answer was no. We didn't feel up to that. Not one bit. To be sure, the camping was lovely, but we most definitely learnt some important lessons. Mainly that *less* is *more*.

And also, I learnt that I love this man so much it makes me dizzy.


Oh, and because there are two little ladies who are very curious to see, here's the progress on my bpt sweater for my mother's christmas present. Turns out, with this one that 4th cast-on is a charm. It also doesn't hurt to have a knitting guru help you along.