Half a Finished Object.

I finished 1 hubby sock. Halfway, babeee!

Cat included for scale. "It makes a fetching scarf, don't you think?"

Ciao

What to do?

I got up yesterday morning all ready for my day of appointments. First up, 8:30 to pick up an FM system to use with my hearing aids. I look out my window at 8:15 because I hear an odd noise. Turns out the city has decided to do road repairs. Right in front of my house. At exactly the time most people would be going to work. What pisses me off is that my car was parked in full view and no-one bothered to come tell me I would be blocked into my house. I went out and asked the workmen if they could stop for a minute so I could pull out the car. They were gracious at that point and actually stopped traffic so I could pull out of my driveway. But really! A little common sense would have been nice. A few minutes later, this was the view from my door.

Good thing I noticed before they had the road torn up at the end of my driveway.

I spent the rest of the day running around. At the end, I looked like this:

So, no knitting occurred. Maybe today.....

ciao

Tomato, Tomahto

My Tomato progresses nicely.

I'm quite pleased with the houndstooth booby-band. The fact that thetop is in a tweedy black makes the houndstooth pattern look very classic. which was what I had hoped when I picked out the colours.

Alas, I had to tink back 1 row because I screwed up the colour change. But it's fixed now, and I plan on zooming forward!

Ciao

8 more things

I was tagged and so had to come up with another 8 things.....

Players start with eight random facts about themselves.People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I have no desire whatsoever to go bungee jumping
2. I have no desire whatsoever to read Harry Potter.
3. I love the colour red and yet, whenever I am in a yarn shop, I pick up blue yarn first. Always.
4. I am obsessive about applying cream to my skin. Face, hands, body, all of it.
5. Play video games better left handed even though normally I am right handed.
6. Don't care what kind of car I drive. So long as it goes when I tunr the key, I'm happy.
7. I can't eat at potlucks. Did everybody wash their hands before cooking?
8. I have yet to see E.T.

This has made so many rounds, I'm not sure who to tag. So, if you haven't done it yet, consider yourself tagged....

Sheepish

In addition to nursing my sick tooth, I am working a whole lot. Summer is high season for relief staff. Today the worksite I was at was an interesting drive. I took some pictures to show ya!

And then there was this place, a bit more pastoral.

Or at least, the pictures turned out more pastoral. I have no idea what breed of sheep these are and whether they are meat or wool sheep. But it was kind of neat to see on my way to and from work today.

Knitting progress is slow. I'm up to the toe decreases on the sock for hubby. Tomato was ripped and the colourwork band has been re-started. I did a preliminary try-on of Tomato and I am really pleased. The yarn looks nice knit up, but once I put what I have of the top on, I was blown away with how nice the yarn looks. Can't wait to finish it. I also realized this morning that Tomato will fill a hole in my wardrobe! Woo hoo! I need a nice, easy top that is work appropriate. (I fixed the neckline so it won't be too low).

Ciao

Lolcat!

Your Score: Sad Cookie Cat

54% Affectionate, 36% Excitable, 53% Hungry

You are the classic Shakespearian tragedy of the lolcat universe. The sad story of a baking a cookie, succumbing to gluttony, and in turn consuming the very cookie that was to be offered. Bad grammar ensues.

To see all possible results, checka dis.

Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Updating

Which is what I have been doing on Ravelry. That site is a serious time sucker! I am soooo behind on my Bloglines listings that it is not funny.

Unfortunately, my root canal got infected. That bites big time. The dentist put me on another course of antibiotics. This is the 4th round of antibiotics in 2 months. I have been taking lactobacillus acidophilus in an attempt to keep the antibiotics from messing with my system too much. Didn't work. Today I had to buy something to fix a common problem ladies have when they take antibiotics. And yesterday my stomach was sooo upset. Also because of the antibiotics.
If the pain wasn't so bad, I'd say the antibiotics were worse than the problem. They're not. But it's a close-run thing.

On the bright side, my "all-soup-diet-all-the-time" has resulted in my losing another pound. Which puts me at exactly the halfway mark. I decided a while back that I needed to lose the 12 pounds I gained at the hell job. But I refuse to do the deprive yourself kind of diet. I have been trying to eat better and get off my ass more. It's working. Slowly, but hey, I'll take it!

Entering my stash into Ravelry gave me a chance to review what I have. I decided on a few projects. One of which is the Morning Glory Wrap. I will be using the lovely Team Knitty yarn that Mama E dyed up.

I also have enough wool to make a knit coat. Now to find a pattern......

Ciao

Now With Knitting!

I have been knitting. A little bit. in between painkiller doses and Ravelry updates! Here it is:


A new hubby sock! this is the same army sock pattern that I did on the last one. Needless to say it is taking a while. I started this one a month or so ago....and it is still the first one. Sigh. But it makes good mindless knitting.

ciao

Dancing Kokopelli!

That is family code for "something way cool happened!" And what is this cool thing, you ask? I got my Ravelry invite! And talk about good timing. I can spend the time recovering from my root canal distracting myself with Ravelry. If you are looking for me, I am Csquared.

'kaythx
Bye

Quick update

Just a quick note to let all 3 of you know that I have survived my root canal and am now dazed and confused on painkillers. Not much knitting. I don't dare. I ripped back my Tomato and left it at that.

ciao

Manic Depressive

I'm feeling a little bipolar.

First up, progress on Tomato. Yay!

Too bad I'm going to have to rip back a few rows. Boo. I decreased 2 stitches too many before starting the contrast colour. So the design is coming out wonky. Naturally, I didn't actually count the stitches until it started to look wonky. Sigh.

But it's only3-4 rows worth I have to rip. So it could be worse.

On the happy side, I got my new fridge today! Yay!

On the sad side, I am having a root canal tomorrow. Boo! The bright side is that the pain in my mouth should stop. Yay!

I'm gonna go make soup now.

Ciao

New Book

No time to blog, I got a new book! Nightseer and am turning pages as fast as I can!

Oh and The Heathen Housewife is having a contest with a copy of Victorian Lace as the prize! go over there and leave her a comment. Oh, and say that I sent you....You'll see why....

Ciao

It's Fresh!

I have something fresh. A fresh Tomato. If you will.

Black sure is hard to photograph! Here is a close-up of the knit. I really like this yarn.It's Estelle, it's 100% silk and it is nice to work with!

I am still struggling along with the tiny fridge until my new one gets delivered. You don't realize how much you use somehting until you can't use it! 3 days till delivery. But who's counting?

ciao

Wherein there is a LOT of swearing....

You have been warned. If profanity upsets you stop reading now.

On Tuesday evening my husband said a dreadful thing to me,"Does the fridge seem like it isn't cold to you?" I got up and went to see for myself. Sure enough, the fridge isn't cold. Now it WAS really, really hot out, so we thought maybe the heat exchanger thingies were covered in cat hair and therefore not working efficiently enough to deal with the heat. We unscrewed and vacuumed up kitty hair from the front, back, under etc. We were really hoping at this point that it was just the cat hair, because next week I have to have a root canal (oh joy!) and since I am self-employed, it's gonna cost about $1000. Buying a new fridge would stretch the budget pretty fucking tight. Like drum tight.

Then we put an indoor/outdoor thermometer in the fridge and checked it the next morning. Nope, still warm. Approximately 70 fucking degrees Fahrenheit. Right. It was room-fucking-temperature INSIDE my fridge! We put the thermometer in the freezer to see what the temp was there. Barely 32 fucking degrees! Fucking wonderful. I had to go to work, so the hubby started calling around to find a repairguy to come. Apparently the store that we bought the fridge from 12-13 years ago only services appliances under their "wonder guard" warranty program or some such idiotic name. Which they started 5 fucking years ago. Thanks for nothing. So then the hubby started calling repair specialty guys. Apparently everyone in my fucking town has crappy appliances because no repair guy could come out for 10 days! Lucky for me, I still have my crappy little cube fridge from university days that we were storing beer in. We brought that upstairs, I washed it and we moved the stuff that we could save into that.

We thought, maybe we could just buy a new fridge. Nope, delivery on that is at least a week. At this point I was really fucking pissed. I'd just lost about $300 worth of food, not to mention all the time I had put into preparing the freezer meals that we had to throw out. So I went on the internet and started trying to figure out if I could fix the damn thing myself.

Found some basic instructions, decided to try. What the hell have I got to lose at this point?

The evapourator coils (which are the thingies that make the fridge cool) are always in the freezer compartment of your fridge. I opened the freezer and saw this:

Frost, in my frost-free fridge. Which means that the problem is with the defrosting system.

I took the back panel off my freezer on my side by side fridge.

Yup, a solid sheet of ice! I figured maybe I could get the fridge working for now, so I pulled out my hairdryer and melted the fucking ice. This is what it is supposed to look like:

So I screwed the panel back on with a couple of the screws and while the fridge cooled, I went hunting on the internets again to figure out what part of the defrost system was the problem. I found a really good step by step here.

It says I have to wait for the fridge to cool before doing the first test, so I went hunting for where to buy repair parts. Ummm, apparently, the company that made my fridge has stopped making large appliances and only makes toasters and the like now. Fucking wonderful. So any repair part I need will either be hard to find or really expensive or both. At this point I gave up and started checking out the flyers to see who had a fucking sale on appliances.

I just got back from the store where I bought myself a new fucking fridge. $1000. Fuck.

The heat, it is dangerous!

It's so hot around here, the kitties are having a meltdown!

Ciao!

Finally!

It appears summer is finally making an appearance around here. I know many of you have been sweating your patooties off, but up here we've been wearing jackets until recently! It is currently 24C with a humidex of 31. I know many people complain about the heat. Not me. I only get around 2 months worth of heat and dammit, I want my 2 fucking months of heat! I mean, it goes down to -30C in January, so there has to be some compensation, right? Unfortunately, I tried to sit outside and within 3 minutes had swatted 3 mosquitos and I think I missed another 2.

Mosquitos I will complain about. But I have my sister test driving a new product. Alison found it. Mosquitoes think my sister is delicious . So if it works for her.....I may just invest in the company buy some for myself! And my husband, my MIL, my aunt, my cousin, his wife, their kids.......

Yup, missed at least 2. Itchy, itchy. Okay, I'm gonna go rub some hydrocortisone cream on them. Here's a funny picture to keep you occupied.

"I love the couch. The couch is my friend. I will head-butt the couch so that it knows I love it"

silly Pagan

Ciao

sock pattern for the cure!

.

Quite a while ago I test knitted a lovely sock for Mezzodiva. She is now offering the pattern to all individuals for a nominal donation to the breast cancer fundraiser "Weekend to End Breast Cancer". It really is a very pretty sock. The pattern is not too difficult, as I , the lace neophyte, managed to knit it up! So, go look, donate and knit!

Ciao

Purse Handle Repair

When I was in Italy, my aunt gave me a fabulous purse. She said that when she saw it, she thought of me. No surprise there. My husband says I'm like a crow. If it's shiny, I like it! Unfortunately, the handle came off it a week or so ago. I was quite irate since it is a nice bag and a good size to carry my crap stuff.

At first I thought I would just sew it back on, albeit with stronger thread. Turns out the handle was just sewn together with regular thread! No wonder the handle parted company with the bag. A closer inspection revealed that the other handle was also coming loose:

Although "loose" seems to be a bit of an understatement! So, I ruminated over this for the past week. Then yesterday, while photographing my birthday loot to show all of you, I realized that the answer was right in front of me! The bag in yesterday's post had a chain for a handle. Why couldn't I do that?

So I went to my local fabric store and asked if they had decorative chain. They did! Then the problem of how to attach the chain presented itself. I thought maybe a jump ring would work. Although I was concerned that the ring might open up and leave me back where I started...a bag with no handle. I went to my local big box craft store and perused the jewellery making stuff. Ha! I know, I'll use split rings. Decision made, little bag clutched in my sweaty hands, I rushed home to try it.

Half an hour later....

I threaded the chain through the channel where the handles were originally. Then I attached the split ring. I threaded the chain through the split ring and then attached a second split ring to the other end of the chain. At that point I decided how long I wanted the handle and attached the 2nd split ring to the chain far enough along to make the right length! I repeated the process for the 2nd handle and I was done.

Yay!

I'm off to load up the purse.....

Ciao!

The Haul

Yesterday was my birthday and what would a birthday be without presents? Y'all already know about my ball-winder and swift, since I broke into them a bit early.....Here is a couple of the others from yesterday....

My MIL likes me and we get along well. As it happens, we pretty much have the same taste in most things. She got me this:

There is a lovely silver necklace. There's a figurine of a kitty that swings free within the heart pendant. Veeeeery cute. And then an adorable leopard print clutch purse. Totally me.

My hubby got me something (George Foreman grill) I have been wanting for a while now. Sorry, Blogger won't load the pic for some reason. I have the small grill and use it all the time! But if I am cooking chicken breasts for example, I have to crowd to get 2 on the grill at a time. So hubby bought me the next size up which looks perfect!

My sister took me out to a Greek restaurant a few days ago, while she was in town. Sorry, no pictures of that. You'll have to imagine me eating yummy souvlaki.

Yesterday the hubster took me to a yummy Mexican restaurant with great strawberry margaritaas. Where I promptly bought a large container of their salsa to bring home to nosh on. We also stopped by the farmer's market and bought freshly picked strawberries!

Which I then turned into....

Homemade strawbery daquiris! Mmmmmm....

All in all, a successful birthday!

Ciao

Happy Birthday to me!

Today is my birthday. I'm gonna party, party, party! Okay, maybe just 1 party. But it'll be fun!

Interesting things that happened on my birthday:
On July 5

1. In 1946, the bikini was introduced in Paris, France.
2. 1951 - William Shockley invents the junction transistor
3.1954 - Elvis Presley has his first commercial recording session. He sang That's All Right (Mama) and Blue Moon of Kentucky. Widely considered to be the birth of Rock and Roll.
4. 1975 - Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles title.

People that share my birthday:

1.1675 - Mary Walcott, American accuser at the Salem witch trials
2.1810 - P.T. Barnum, American circus owner (d. 1891)
3.1943 - Robbie Robertson, Canadian guitarist (The Band)
4.1946 - Paul Smith, British fashion designer
5.1976 - Marina Dias, Brazilian model

A holiday that shares my birthday:

Church of the SubGenius: X-Day (1998).

I must say that I had never heardx of the Church of Sub-Genius, but it appeals in a very silly way!

I'm off to drink strawberry margaritas.....

Ciao

The verdict is in.....

The top is done and it is wearable! yay!






































This is Coachella from Knitty. Done up in Mission Falls 1824 Cotton. It took 5 balls with a good dash left over. I did a couple of modifications. I put edging around the armholes al la Knitting Spaz and did 1x1 ribbing around the bottom because the twisted stockinette was too firm for my taste.


I ripped this thing back 3 separate times. The first time was for the bust shaping I didn't need. The second was becasue I wanted it longer. The third was because I ddin't like the twisted stockinette bottom. I think next time I would decrease a few stitches in the front. It feels a little big around the waist. Not enough to really bother me, but it could stand some improvement.

As a side note, I am wearing a convertible bra with the straps done up in "x" mode.

On the bright side, I can now fit into my "skinny" jeans. They are tight. But wearable. YIPPEE!

Ciao

Wherein I spread the Love....

My sister picked up her sock knitting supplies and came down for a visit. We have documented her journey. Check out her blog and give her some sock knitting mojo!

Micha says, "You woke me for that???"

Ciao

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day , eh?

Not much interesting going on around here. Coachella continues to be worked on. I'm soooo close to being done. But not yet! So, I bring you old knit pictures. My cousin and his wife had their first kid in 2001. So I knit them a baby blanket. The only pic I could find was this one:

That's Carlo (the baby silly!) and my sister. The green blob is the baby blanket.

Fast forward 6 years and 3 kids. Look what I spotted:

Cute baby and the blankie I knitted up so long ago! Ya gotta love it when your knits are so well appreciated. Makes it worth the work.

I'm off to enjoy some Canada Day libations!

Ciao