Now With Pictures!

It has been brought to my attention that some of you lacked the mental wherewithal or energy to do the "imaginary bag picture" I suggested yesterday. Therefore, I have taken a couple of crappy pictures. It is still daylight out, but the clouds are so thick, that the term daylight is being used very loosely. At any rate, here is the latest Everlasting Bagstopper from Knitty:

With flash. AND velcro kitty, otherwise known as Raven.

Without flash, but also with velcro kitty:
It almost looks like 2 balls of different variegated yarn. It's not, one is variegated and the other is solid yellow. The pooling that is happening is rather neat, I think. Didn't do it on purpose, but if a non-knitter asks me, then, yes, it is on purpose. You'll keep my secret, right?

Still Refereeing

Yup, around here, running interference between the kitties is a full time job. Hubby does it during the day, I do early morning and evening and hubby does deep night and well-before-crack-of-dawn.

That does mean knitting is curtailed. I have managed to get my second Campanula sock up to the point where I need to turn the heel. However, heel turning requires a block of uninterrupted time, otherwise I screw it up. So it shall be ignored until the weekend. I have been working on another Everlasting Bagstopper. But it is too dark to take decent photos, so you will have to imagine with me....a ball of yellow cotton and a ball of blue/green/white cotton. Knit 2 rows in each colour. Remember to twist the yarns at the beginning of each round to catch the float. Now superimpose that on the other pictures of the Bagstopper I have put up and you can see my creation.

Wasn't that fun?

Not nearly as much fun as trying to keep Raven from drinking my lemonade or my Tang or eating my danish! And this is the cat that turned his nose up at canned cat food and potato chips.

Weird....

Ciao

Aswatch!

Ha! Jenla is having a contest.

And the new addition to our household decided we should have an entry.

It seems Raven thought mine needed a kitty massage!

Now, With More Cat!

Finally got a couple of halfway decent pictures of Raven.

He seems to be settling in nicely. Pagan (the domninant kitty) still hates him, but Micha doesn't seem to care too much anymore. So long as he leaves her alone.

However, Raven is now comfortable enough to want to play. Which the other kitties are not interested in. This morning he tried to abscond and "kill" my bra! Argh.

And it appears that on the knitting front, Raven has expensive tastes. The cotton yarn is not nearly as interesting as my Apple Laine! Double argh.

In the working world, today was piss off little old ladies day. I had another one mad at me because of the government plan! I get why they are pissed off, but don't take it out on me. I didn't vote for the bastards! In fact, I voted against them in the last 5 elections. Possibly more than that, but I can't remember that far back. All politicians tend to meld together in my memory. I have no idea why....

I'm off to play "catch the pencil" with Raven. Get your mind out of the gutter. Yes, you. You know who you are!

Ciao

What Else is Going On?

Here at Chez Knot, it hasn't been all kitty, all the time. Even if my posts make it seem that way! I have snuck in a row of knitting here and a row there. That can add up.

To not quite 3 repeats out of a 3.5 repeat foot on a Campanula sock! Soon, I will be at the heel turn point. That always feels like the halfway point. Even if it's not.

As for the kitties, things seem to have calmed down considerably. We decided to call the new addition Raven. He doesn't know that name either. The training commences. Riiiiiiiiiight.....

Ciao

Kitty Newsfeed

Dude is sttling in. The other 2 girls are getting used to him. They don't like him, but they are willing to ignore him, so long as he doesn't intrude on their space.

He definitely was someones's spoiled pet. The first indication was that he wouldn't eat the canned food I put down for him. He didn't come running at the sound of a can opener. which I though was weird. Turned his nose up at it. That was chicken flavoured stuff. I had a tin of salmon flavoured food that wasn't pate but was sort of slivered meat, and he did eat about half a can of that. One piece at a time.

This morning he turned his nose up at the rest of the salmon stuff. So when I went out I got him som normal dry kibble. I picked up a cheap brand figuring that his previous owners couldn't afford to fix him, so they wouldn't have been buying expensive food. Appears to have been a reasonable surmise. Dude ate the cheap stuff....

Last night there was some more proof that he was a pet....he hopped up on the couch beside me, flopped over and did this:

A few minutes later he was asleep:

Yup, still on his back. Definitely not a feral beastie!

Those pics don't really do him justice as they were done with a flash last night. So his colour comes out weird. Here's another in the chair that he seems to have claimed as his. And since the other kitties didn't really use that chair, that is a good thing!

The picture is a bit dark, but that's the colour of the kitty! Dark. Maybe if the sun ever comes out again I will get a better shot. At least you can see the white locket on his chest.

Dude doesn't seem to think knitting needles are toys. (yet) However, the yarn is definitely fair game in his opinion. I put it down for a minute and he started trying to eat it. Sigh....

Ciao

C

New Member

My knitting time will be further curtailed, it appears. We acquired a new furry member of the family today! He is a humane society rescue named Rocket. Although, since he doesn't seem to respond to that name, we are going to rename the fellow. Front runner appears to be "Dude"!

He is a bit hard to photograph, given his colouring, but here he is!

Better pictures to come, I promise. At the moment we are supervising the integration of Dude with the other 2 kitties we have. There is a fair bit of growling and hissing going on, but no outright fights. Dude does not appear to be interested in any kind of fighting, so hopefully this will continue and they will all adjust and get along.

I have no idea how Dude will react to knitting. He does not appear to be feral as he jumps up on laps and demands head rubbings. But he isn't fixed (don't worry, he will be!) Who would have a male kitty in their house, unfixed for any length of time? Seems strange to me. At any rate, clearly he is accustomed to humans. I just don't know if "knitting humans" is in his continuum of familiar things. I suspect not.

More on that later, once I have had a chance to test it out

Ciao

I Planned on Irritating Old Men Today

I keep having to go to work. That means the knitting gets seriously curtailed. Which bites severely.

Today, I had 2 different cranky old men claim I was trying to rip them off.

Both were on the provincial drug plan.

The first one didn't understand that the first time you get a medication, the govt only pays for a 30 day supply. That way if you have a reaction or something, the other 70 days doesn't get thrown out. He kept asking for proof that this was a government policy and not a store policy. Naturally the government website does not come in a user friendly format, so finding the info was a major pain.
If I could have just thrown the pills at him and told him to get out of my face, I would have.

The second one didn't (want to) understand that he had to pay the $100 annual deductible. He kept saying he already paid it at another store. Which he hadn't, since the info is kept in the central government database that then shoots a message back at us when we bill online. That was just what he was trying to use as an excuse.

That's right folks. Today, when my alarm went off, I thought to myself,"What can I do to piss off my customers today? I know, I'll lie about the government drugplan to all the senior citizens."

Right.

What a day. Where's my daquiri?

Ciao

I HAD to Share!

If you hate lolcats, do not go to this site! On pain of laughing yourself silly, do NOT click on this link!

Knitting Makes Me Sore

I just spent most of my afternoon making this:

What I didn't realize is that hours have passed! I realized this because my back started to ache a bit. Which is hardly surprising, as I hadn't changed position for the whole time I was working on this!

I'm finding that knitting up the second sock is not quite as hard as I had envisioned it to be. Not sure why I figured it would be troublesome, but there it is. The reason why I kept putting it off. Which I now realize was silly. Although I did have to refresh my memory as to what a sk2p was....Which I wouldn't have had to do if I had just cast on the second sock right after I finished the first one!

And now, to pick up another wip that hasn't gotten much attention...more tomorrow..

ciao

My Sister Luuuuvs Me!

My sister came up to celebrate Thanksgiving. She brought me orange Fanta! This is something I can't find in North America. Whenever I go to Italy, that is one of my preferred drinks. That and Lemon Soda. Which you also can't find here.

My sister found me some in the big city! The flavour is still a bit sweeter than the Italian one. But that's hardly surprising.

Since it is Polish Fanta! Who'd a thunk?

Heee! I'm off to drink my world-travelling Fanta

Ciao

5 For 5

Today is October 5th. today is my 5th post for October. woo hoo! I'm on a roll. Speaking of rolls....

This is the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. Where we all eat too much turkey and drink too many recreational beverages. The turkey makes us feel like this:

Sleepy. Soooooo sleepy....

And the wine? Makes us do this: Dance, baby! Dance!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Yup, Another Post!

I am on a blogging roll this week! Woo hoo!

Due to the lost pattern fiasco, I had to cast on for something else. Perhaps this was nature's way of reminding me that I still only had 1 Campanula sock. So, I bit the bullet and cast on for the second sock.

Yup. Congratulations, it's a toe! Actually a toe and a set up row for the lace. Plus dental floss lifeline. Because I might screw up. It's been known to happen. Hey! You, over in the cheap seats, can it! Your sarcasm is not appreciated. Seriously, if I put the lifeline in, usually, I'm okay. If I don't, then I get into trouble. A variation on Murphy's Law, I guess.

What to Do?

So, I decided that I would knit the Fiber Trends felted clog pattern up with my new Harmony needles. Only 1 problem. I can't figure out what I did with the pattern. Unfortunately, I went on a big cleaning binge last week and now I can't find the pattern. I have a feeling it got thrown out with all the assorted paper detritus that built up on my table. That, or miss-filed. either way, I can't find it! I will have to re-buy it. At which point I will find the first one. You know how that works...

But I still had to do something with my new needles. So, I decided on a Baby Genius burp cloth from Mason dixon Knitting. Got this far:

Before I realized that I had only 1 ball of this colour in the Sugar & Cream....sigh. If I had planned ahead just a little bit, I could have done it as a stripe and alternate with another colour to stretch it out. So I frogged it. But I did get to use the new needles! Which was the point, right? They are lovely to work with. Nice and smooth. I love the colours. Yup, I'm smitten.

Ciao

Quest For Dinner

It seems that I would have made a bad hunter-gatherer-cavewoman. Yesterday I went out to get some ground sirloin to make meatloaf. they didn't have it at the first grocery store, so I figured I could pick it up at the second one. I have to got to 2 different store as a normal thing since I am picky about what brands of certain things I buy. So I figured it would be no big deal. It hasn't been in the past.

I got to the second store. No ground sirloin. Fine, I'll make ricotta & spinach stuffed manicotti for dinner. Nope, no spinach here, folks. Damn.

Go off to store number 3. No luck there either. They did have the good chicken, so then I thought I would make fajitas for dinner. The only fajita shells they had were cheese flavoured ones. Double damn.

At this point I wasn't far from the butcher shop I frequent, so I thought I would go there and see if they have the ground sirloin. Completely forgot it was monday and they are closed mondays....

I gave up, we could have grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. I had cheese and bread at home.

Get home, dinner time rolls around. We don't really want grilled cheeses sandwiches. Nor pizza. So hubby and I decided to order in chinese. The usual place is closed mondays. Which we forgot till we called. Sigh. Ordered, finally, from the other place. It was good. Thank heavens. I don't know what I would have done if the food was icky after all that running around!

To summarize, I can hunt, but the gathering? Not so much.....

It's Better Now

I have another fo! Yup. I, the finishing machine, have completed another knit objet d'arte. Ta Da!

It's another Everlasting Bagstopper from Knitty. I know, your eagle eyes already discerned that......

In other news, Canada Post appears to have gotten off it's collective ass and delivered my mail!Aren't they purty? Here, take a closer look,

Naturally after I got home, I opened up my email only to discover that Knitpicks shipped my replacement order today. Sigh. I shall have to return it. But YAY! I got my needles! What to knit? What am I going to knit????? I must knit something with these babies. But the official queue says my Campanula socks are next. The Harmony needles are too big for that. Waaahhhhh!

The irritating part is that this was one 4 parcels delivered today. Along with a mountain of other envelopes and such. Yet on Thursday and Friday I only got 1 or 2 pieces of junkmail, that I don't think the mailman delivers. Some guy that does flyers drops those off.....So I am forced to conclude that the posties only work when they feel like it and any mail that might show up at the end of the week, won't. Can you tell it's a union job?

I'm off to try to figure out what to cast on so I can play with my new needles.

Ciao

Seeing Red, Or Maybe Blue.

I am just a wee bit irritated at Canada Post. Okay, that is a major understatement. I am angry at them. Angry as the heat of white hot burning sun. They stole my Knitpicks Harmony needles. The tracking number says it was successfully delivered yesterday. To whom????? Not me. I called Canada Post and they said,"Oh well, it says "delivered". Nothing we can do. Call the company" Knitpicks is sending out another set, but really, is it too much to ask that Canada Post do their job minimally right? Bad enough my tax dollars pay them. Bad enough I still have to pay through the nose when I want to mail something. (just as a sidenote, it costs less to mail something to the U.S. than it does within Canada!) But for them to steal my mail???? I pay them for this????!!!! This is just too much.

I posted a bit of a rant on Ravelry and another lady said that she has had problems with Canada Post saying they have delivered something and then it still takes days to get to her. Hopefully that is right and I will just send back any extra needles I get.

Okay, deep breath...and ....out....

I started my Everlasting Bagstopper/Saturday Market bag hybrid. I decided to do it in stripes to use up a couple of partial skeins I have.

And just to add to my misery, Blogger won't upload pictures. Sigh, I had to grab this from Flickr.

I'm gonna stop trying to do anything now.
Ciao

Now With More String!

I finished another string bag!


This is the Saturday Market String bag. The pattern called for 6 repeats of the lace pattern. I did 8 since it seemed small. I did sub the yarn. I used good old dishcloth cotton. I think it's still on the small side. For comparison:

I knit it in the round. As suggested by a very nice lady on Ravelry. She doesn't appear to have a blog. What I did was just cast on twice the stitches and knit in the round. On the purl row, I knitted and dropped the yo's.

The lace is very nice.

But I didn't like having to seam up the bottom. So the next bag I think will be a cross between Knitty's Everlasting Bagstopper and this one. I'll knit the bottom solid, pick up stitches and knit the lace pattern!

I'm off.

Ciao

I DID Finish One.

I finally finished the yellow Everlasting Bag stopper. It's been knit up for a week. The handles finally got attached last night and I had a little photo shoot this afternoon.

It's not a great picture of me. (I should have put more make-up on!) but it was the best shot of the bag. And since this is a knitting blog, the knitting should shine, not the knitter. Right? That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Now to attach the handles to the red Bagstopper.....might be a few days.

Ciao

Taps

Today we went from this:

To this:

Goodbye Elisa's Nest Tote. RIP.

Taps

Day is done, gone the sun,From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.
Fading light, dims the sight,And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.From afar, drawing nigh, falls the night.
Thanks and praise, for our days,'Neath the sun, 'neath the stars, neath the sky;As we go, this we know, God is nigh.
Sun has set, shadows come,Time has fled, Scouts must go to their bedsAlways true to the promise that they made.
While the light fades from sight,And the stars gleaming rays softly send,To thy hands we our souls, Lord, commend

Getting My Ass Kicked

That's right. I am totally getting my ass kicked by the latest string bag pattern I tried! I have frogged it once already. It is about to get frogged again. The pattern is going to be drop-kicked into oblivion and I will try something else. Since, apparently, I can't count to 4 without screwing up.

Grrrr......

It's Fall!

It must be fall. The local fair was this weekend. So of course the hubby and I went. We ate some overpriced fries and pogos. Drank some overpriced pop in teeny tiny cups. We looked at the animals.

There was even a chicken that reminded me of angora bunnies!

There were ponies.

There was piggies!

Naturally there was sheep.

And, of course, there was cotton candy!

And a good time was had by all.

Ciao

APB!!

The new Knitty is up! I repeat Knitty is up!

Some good, some not so good. There is a preponderance of hats. I suppose because it is the fall Knitty. I do like the Cherie Amour and Mr. Greenjeans. Not sure if I will get around to knitting either of them. Christmas knitting is happening, you know. So other knitting will have to wait.

I kinda started 2 string bags at once. You see, the yellow one is from a 1 pound ball of string. That was too much to tote around with me while I was travelling this past weekend. So I started another one from a smaller skein. 2 skeins, to be exact.

This is the one I carried with me on the train and at work for the last few days. It's ready to start the garter stitch final rounds. Then it's off to find ribbon!

Micha has found something very interesting to stare at. Apparently having a camera pointed at her has become old news.

ciao

Doling it Out

Posting number 2 on my weekend. I wonder how long I can stretch out the telling of my weekend?

I have been on the lookout for a men's sweater pattern for a while now. The hubby has requested one. Howevver, he has a very specific type of sweater in mind. An aran, to be exact. Not just any aran, the aran. In his mind. which means Ihave been scouring patterns and books looking for a traditional aran that I can handle knitting up. this weekend past, I wandered by Romni Wools (Sort of accidentally on purpose. You know the drill) and perused their pattern bins. I think I found a winner! At least, the hubby likes it.

It's traditional, I think I can stand to knit it up and he likes it. So, all three requirements are satisfied.

Now, the yarn hunt begins.....non-itchy, easy-care, in cream, as requested. It sounds like I will be looking at some kind of non-natural fibre. I don't have a problem working with non-natural or acrylic fibre. The trick will be one that he likes and I like. In the right colour.

ciao

What I Did This Weekend

I went to the Knitter's Fair in Waterloo. Some yarn was bought. Lovely stuff. I'll show it to you another day when I have nothing to blog about.

While I was there, I saw Curlerchik and Mama E ! got so excited Iforgot to take pictures. Yeah, I know, lame ass excuse. True, though.

On my way home, I saw some of the walkers for The Weekend to End Breat Cancer going by the train station.

My camera was at the bottom of my purse, so by the time I dug it out, this was the best shot I could do! I circled the group's heads in breast cancer-y colours for you....I can't tell if you are in there Mezzodiva, but I said "hi"!

The string bag continues.

This is an easy, fairly fast knit. It would probably go faster if I actually picked it up more, but life (and new books) keep interfering. Having said that, I guess I should actually go knit, right? Of course, there is that book I got at the library....

Ciao

We'reff to See the Wizard....

Okay, maybe not the wizard...but we ARE off to go to the Knitters Fair in Waterloo! I'll be the one in the grey Tomato!

See Ya!

Knitting for Cancer Cure

It's not too late! Go over to the Campanula for the Cure and donate some $$$ and get a really cool sock pattern! You've bought sock patterns before, right? So just donate whatever you think is reasonable for a lovely, lovely sock and the money goes to a really good cause! Go now, I'll wait.

Done? Good. Something else they are doing there is contests. The current one is to come up with 3 ideas where you can "pay it forward". In other words, something you can do that will help or improve y our community, family, friends etc. Here's my 3:

1. Go throught your clothes and pull out everything that you don't wear. If it is in good shape, instead of pitching it in the charity bins at the mall, where it will be re-sold at a second hand shop, give directly to the ones who use it. Give it to your local women's shelter. They will be ecstatic to get gently used clothes. They will also take almost anything else. An old set of pots, that one coffee cup left from a set, mismatched cutlery, children's clothes, towels, sheets........Many of the women in the shelters get there with only the clothes they are standing up in.
2. Go through your books. Pull the ones you don't like, and donate them to the library. Even if the library doesn't put them into the collections,they can sell them at a book sale and use the money for new books.
3. This one seems obvious, but volunteer/donate at your local Humane society. Humane Societies (in Canada at least) do not get ANY government money. So they can always use some help. Or donate Canadian Tire money or newspapers! Often if you call, they can give you a list of unlikely things they can use! Pagan says thnk-you.


As for knitting around here, I decided to strike back against the corporate re-usable bag. I'm knitting my own, thank you very much. I mean, think about it. Bloblaws sells you their nifty bag for $0.99. (which I'm pretty sure makes them a bit of a profit. It might only be 1 cent I have no idea, but still) AND doesn't have to buy plastic bags anymore. The whole drive behind the re-usable bag thing is not because it will save the world. It's because they can save money on supplies and thus improve the bottom line. No corporation, regardless of what it says, is going to do anything that will have a negative impact on the profits. At best, neutral. However, my experience in the corporate world suggests that revenue netral is NOT what they ever do. Ever.

Moving on. I am knitting up the Everlasting Bagstopper from Knitty. Out of stash cotton.



I am sooo pleased with this humble square of cotton. The texture enthralls me. The almost perfection of it's rectangular shape pleases me.



I have no idea why this excites me so much. And yet....

I'm off to knit my perfect texture bag...

ciao

Finished!

I finished the Tomato top! I'm so excited. It turned out wonderfully.

The only thing I might have done different is make it a tad shorter. But I plan on wearing it this coming weekend at the fibre fair in Waterloo,Ontario, so I will know better after I have worn it for a bit. Regardless, it's wonderful!

Stats:

yarn: Estelle 100% silk 50g balls,5.5 balls main colour and 0.5 ball contrast

needles: Denise needles, 4.5mm & 4mm

mods: Made the sleeves longer by 10 rows.

Brush with the Elements

Fire is bad. Yesterday I burned my thumb on the element on the stove. I was reaching over to push a button on the console and brushed an element that was still hot. I know they put the console on the back to keep kids from messing with them, but I would like them on the front, since I have no kids and clearly I can hurt myself! Not long after that happened, this happened:

I reached into the oven to adjust the garlic toast and set my oven mitt on fire! Apparently I brushed another element with my thumb. The scary part is that I didn't notice the mitt was on fire for a few seconds. Which is how I managed to set my tea-towel on fire too.....

I know I didn't pay much for the mitt, but really, shouldn't it be made out of fire-retardant materials? Upon closer inspection, it's just cotton!

In other news, we have neckage!

Now to do some sleevage and I will be able to stick a fork in Tomato because it will be done! I hope to finish it today. Then there will be the baptism and the ritual of drying flat. Which means that, god willing and the creek don't rise, there will be a finished object around here tomorrow! woo hoo!

Ciao