Category Archives: Diary

Winter: Present!

Yesterday after doing a bunch of HTML for the pro site (yay me), I spent much argh-filled time whacking at php and css code about which I know, well, exactly nothing (argh, why does WordPress hate me so?). Then I played the cello very loudly for about an hour, polishing up the recital stuff for this coming Sunday. I toyed with the idea of suiting up in my down-filled winter coat and going out to vote (because here in Canada our punishment for being less than stoic about sub-Arctic temperatures is being forced to vote in YET ANOTHER ELECTION — did I mention that my municipal riding has a by-election I must vote in next Sunday as well?) but decided to wait for HRH and the boy to come home so we could all do it together. I played more cello instead. I’m really happy with how my technique has firmed up over the past two months with my teacher: my sound is so much better.

Going out with the boys was kind of fun, because we looked at all the Christmas lights that are up in the neighbourhood as we walked to the polling station. And also because the boy carried my voter card and handed it importantly to everyone who needed to look at it, telling them with confidence, “I’m here to vote.” He went in with HRH, and as HRH and I swapped places I could hear the ripple of “He’s so cute!” comments coming from the tables of scrutineers. Apparently he helped HRH hold the pencil to mark the ballot, and put the actual ballot in the box. (Which isn’t entirely legal, but evidently the cute factor won out over hard-hearted scrutineers who might have insisted on By The Book electoral activity. Everyone seemed to approve of the Start Them Young attitude we have about it.) (Oh, the election results? Our province elected a Liberal government for a third term, this time as a majority. The PQ has surged back into the position of official opposition, the leader spouting all sorts of rabid separatist rhetoric in the post-results speech that wasn’t really heard during the campaign. Thanks for stirring up local anti-Canada sentiment again with your idiocy at the federal level, Stephen Harper. You idiot, you’ve thrown our province back into the late seventies.)

Today, however, the boy is home with a cold. He impressed his teachers to no end yesterday by asking to have his nose blown when necessary, and then actually blowing his nose when a tissue was applied to it. “We have five year olds who can’t do that,” his teacher said in astonishment. I’m hoping he’s over the really bad part so he can go to school tomorrow, otherwise I suspect he’ll be home until Friday. (And as if on cue, there is a call of, “Mama, can you blow my nose please?” from the living room.) With the number of colds making the rounds of schools and just about everywhere else, I shouldn’t be surprised. Most people I know are sick, too. This is the part of winter that isn’t so much fun.

Last night I also cast on my second armwarmer and am two-thirds of the way done. Amazing how quickly it goes when you’re curled up in front of the election coverage. I might even be able to start my scarf today, if I feel up to trying the lace pattern that I twisted so badly on my test yarn.

Right. Off to return to the boy, who is watching Richard Scarry cartoons on TV while I check out what’s going on in the world. I intend to finish that armwarmer before lunch. I need them: my office is on an outside corner and is poorly insulated, so I get all sorts of cold radiating in from the corner in which my computer is set up. Yesterday I wore woollen tights under my jeans and a shirt under my heavy woollen sweater. Also, they’ll help my hands warm up faster when I play the cello.

Wiktory Too!

Gentle Readers, Mousme’s hat v2.0 is finished.

I would have finished it last night, in fact, had I brought my DPNs with me to the gathering we attended. Had I been extra conscientious I would have stopped this morning and bought another ball of yarn to do a few more rows, but I decided the hat didn’t really need them, and cheated used a six-inch length of acrylic to run through the stitches at the crown and pull them together.

Today I bought the new skein of black merino yarn I need for my second armwarmer while on a yarn shop recon mission with Ceri, as well as a ball of licorice-coloured wool/silk/cashmere blend to knit up a quick scarf to use. I would have invested in three lovely skeins of cashmere to make a long full one, but I have a sneaking suspicion that my mother has bought me something very nice to fill in the neck of my new red coat (which continues to garner approval) and so I’m not sinking sixty dollars into yarn just yet.

Wiktory!

Gentle readers, at 22h42 last night I sewed up my first armwarmer.

I cannot start on the second because I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH YARN.

Augh!

Well, theoretically I could start but I’d run out of yarn very quickly. So I am soothing myself by knitting up Mousme‘s hat.

The armwarmer? Lovely. Ripped out the sixish rows I’d done in HRH’s office earlier this week and tried the DPN thing, did sixish rows of that and decided it would drive me bonkers in another half an hour. Ripped it all out, cast fifty stitches on straight needles and knit it widthwise instead of lengthwise. Knit it up in the space of threeish hours yesterday. I am brilliant. And I even worked out a bind off most/knit a few more rows thing at the elbow end so it would all fit sleekly instead of being looser in the middle. And it is warm! I seem to have done a single unintentional yarn over along the way so there is a coy little hole on the underside, but I love it with much love and it is mine. Ceri and I have a little yarn shop recon mission planned for tomorrow, so I will show her Tricot Quartier and, erm, pick up a second skein of the Mission Falls merino, since I will have money again. I am also tempted to pick up Really Big Needles and two more skeins and knit myself a fluffy loose scarf in the same colour.

*headdesk*

Can it be tomorrow now, please? The universe has kicked me in the head enough for one day, thanks. No, nothing end-of-worldish, just millions of tiny nibbles and pokes and kicks, all adding up to an increasingly rage-tinged point of had-enough.

When the boy goes down for his nap, I will knit. That will help. I did not in fact knit yesterday or the day before; I practised the cello instead. Which I needed to do. So yes: I will knit. That will calm me down. I may knit the hat (which would be the smart thign to do) or I may try to figure out how to use DPNs to knit an armwarmer, thereby cleverly avoiding the whole having-to-purl thing. Ha.

Argh!

The bread machine is dead.

Good thing I asked for a stand mixer for Yule, because that whole fibro thing, where I don’t have enough power in my hands to, you know, knead bread as long as is necessary? Yeah. That.

I think we’ve lost a bit of metal from the bottom of the mixing pan. The motor turns, but it’s not engaging with the bit that turns the blade inside the pan; it just scrapes across the bottom. I seem to remember a ring or something on the bottom of the pan that’s no longer there.

The loss of the breadmaker isn’t the end of the world. I’ve made at least one loaf of bread a week with it since I bought it over a year ago, more often two or three. The main reason I use it is because I can’t knead. Often I use it to knead the bread and the first rise, then I take it out and use a regular loaf pan in the oven. So as I paid under fifty dollars for it, if it’s not salvageable I’ve still saved money over the past thirteen months, even taking into account the cost of the breadmaker, the ingredients, and the electricity. Plus the bread has been awesome.

I’ll look into repair. I’d hate to toss it in landfill somewhere.

In Which She Admits A Growing Fascination

Merino superwash for the win!

Oh, it is so soft. So lovely and soft. It slips through the fingers and strokes them. It rewards you for knitting with it with pats. It practically purrs. I am serious.

I had a lovely morning and lunch out with Pasley yesterday. We wandered all over Pointe-Claire Village. There was a rogue flake or two in the air, but apart from that the snow was the only thing missing from a perfect Christmas shopping trip. Apart from the not really buying anything, that is. It was more of an appreciative viewing of all the lovely things out there. I did pick up fudge as a treat and a pair of secondhand boots for the boy, and a very inexpensive hand-held milk frother for our hot chocolate, but I was very good indeed and did not buy any of the other stuff I sighed over, including piles of gorgeous ornaments, smoked Cheddar, and Green Mountain coffee.

After dropping Pasley off at home I realised that there was no point in going back home; I’d just have to turn around again to leave for the South Shore, fight through traffic, and collect the boys. So, having recently done a search online for the knitting shop Ceri and Mousme mentioned last time they were over, I knew it was a couple of minutes away from Pasley’s place. I’d stop by, poke around, see if I could find a good yarn to do Mousme’s Hat v2.0. And maybe something soft for my armwarmers, because the Berocco Geode is a bit too loose and I keep splitting my stitches.

I found Tricot Quartier no problem, and it’s just lovely. I’m so glad I put gift certificates from this shop on my wish list! I poked about for half an hour and ended up with the Mission Falls 1824 Wool 100% merino superwash in black for my armwarmers, a pair of size 10 straight needles for them (because I love the size 10 circulars I’ve just finished using with much love, and of course I am working with wooden needles), and I decided on a yarn for the hat. It’s a wool/silk blend, not as fun colour-wise as the acrylic I used for the trial run; more sedate, but still with a touch of whimsy.

And I got to HRH’s office in twelve minutes. Stupid non-existent traffic! Good gods, world, can you not even be consistent in your trafficky habits? Usually there is miles of traffic on the 15 south and around the bridge at that time! Good thing I’d bought yarn and a pair of needles to occupy myself while I sat in the office for an hour, otherwise I’d have gone spare. (No, I wouldn’t have; I’d have gone to the school supply shop and bought myself a notebook, and done some writing instead. Still.)

Anywhats, did several rows of the first armwarmer (v1.5) and realised that my straight needles weren’t creating the lovely stockinette stitch that the circulars had (duh). Which meant I had to teach myself to purl.

May I say right here and right now that I hate purling? Passionately, even. I mangled a length of test acrylic at home while watching television last night by casting on, trying to purl, ripping it out, and repeating the whole process. After ninety minutes of stabbing at it and lassoing needles, I got it. Sometimes I managed to do it. I could do it several times in a row, even. But when I tried to alternate with a knit stitch it all went to hell. Eventually I noticed that the yarn lies in front of the needle while purling, while knit stitches have it coming from behind. I pulled out my how-to-knit book and finally found, long after the how-to-alternate-knit-and-purl-stitches section, a sidebar that said, “Hey, you may have noticed that the yarn lies on opposite sides when you alternate knits and purls! You have to watch for that and move it to where it needs to be for your next stitch.” Gee, thanks. Maybe putting that information before or next to the how-to-alternate section would have been helpful? Instead of twenty pages and a chapter later?

Yes, this is one of the drawbacks to working from a book. Had I been sitting next to an experienced knitter they’d have taken one look at my laborious attempts and said, “Oh, hey, I see your problem: you need to have the yarn lying in front of the RH needle before a purl, and behind it for the knit. Just flip it over.” And a two-foot length of acrylic would have been saved from a horribly mangly torture and eventual death.

So now I know how to purl (go me! though I still don’t like the stitch as much as knit) and can produce rib! I personally like the look of seed stitches, so I suspect that’s what I’ll do the armwarmers in. Or even that may be too ambitious. I should probably do stockinette or 1×1 rib and be thankful that I don’t have to think about what comes next and what stitch starts each row.

This knitting thing is so interesting. It simultaneously engages my brain and lets it relax. And on top of that, it has tangible, visual reinforcement: look, the article I am knitting is getting bigger! This works! I am producing something moderately useful! And I can see how easy it is to start a yarn stash. I spent most of my time wandering around the shop petting the yarn. I want to bring piles of the merino home and cuddle it. I love working with chunky needles and yarns. Although I have absolutely no interest in knitting socks (she says, knowing it will horrify most of her knitting readers — too small! yarn too thin! DPNs of doom!) one of my next projects will be sock-based: I want to make slipper-socks and sew a suede-ish sole over the bottom. Nothing fancy; cables scare me and I want a single colour for them. No stripes or patterns. Just a really nice yarn.

And maybe seed stitch. And ribbing at the top.

In Which She Shares Her Knitting Triumph

Not only did I reach the double-pointed needles part of the project yesterday, I finished the hat. Go team me!

It is lumpy and somewhat misshapen and not quite long enough and the decreases happen in odd places, but I love it. I was so excited about it all working that I didn’t stop and rip out the place where the decreases started to go wrong.

If my excitement seems out of proportion I will tell you only this: I have hated knitting since a Brownie leader handed me a set of needles when I was tiny and told me that to obtain whatever badge it was I’d have to knit a 3 x 3 inch square. She eventually took pity on me and gave me the badge anyway. I’ve tried knitting once or twice since then and have given up. This time? I did it. It worked. And in the space of a day, too. And also? I didn’t work from a pattern. So yes, go team me!

Now that my trial hat is over (it is now officially a Trial Hat because I cannot give it to Mousme; she would heroically try to wear it and I would never do that to her) I know I can Do This. Actually, I started a different project first earlier in the fall. I bought some lovely yarn in shades of grey/silver/black with a touch of brown and started knitting myself armwarmers, but (a) Gryff tore the ball of yarn apart because it has real wool in it and rendered it knotty, and (b) it’s a loosely spun yarn, which means I keep splitting my damn stitches. Fighting with the yarn is not a good way to ease myself back into knitting. So when Mousme had her head shaved to raise money (over two thousand dollars, yay her!) for breast cancer research I asked her if I could knit her a hat to keep her newly bared scalp warm, and she said yes. (Because she is a Good Friend, she also said that didn’t I hate knitting, and was I sure I wanted to do this?)

I need more yarn now. I could rip out the hat but I knotted the end and besides it is my very first knitted thing and I love it with much love. Kind of like those trunk novels that will never ever see the light of day but I can’t bring myself to burn them.