I'm so excited

...I just can't hide it!

I am going to have a job. A real 9-5 job. And, it is all to do with yarn, knitting and designing. I should put an exclamation mark behind those three sentences, because I am going to get paid for what I like doing best!! I kind of start hyperventilating every time I think of it. Hand me the brown paper bag, please!

About my present knitting project: I am labouring under the delusion that I will be able to finish a lace shawl till October 11 when my husband is flying to Germany to attend a wedding. It's supposed to be a gift for the bride, should I be able to part with it, that is. If it wasn't for the new job and other things I have to knit, I might have been able to pull it off. I could also try to put aside sleeping for awhile, Halloween is coming up anyway, so the ghoulish look is in, dontcha think?


And now please excuse my excited self - eight of us, i.e. Montreal knitters, will be off tomorrow morning to the Sheep and Wool Festival in Vermont to have a little fun. You know, just the girls...and lotsa yarn and everything to do with it. We're gonna stay over night and will be back Sunday evening.

How appropriate...

You are Mohair.
You are a warm and fuzzy type who works well with
others, doing your share without being too
weighty. You can be stubborn and absolutely
refuse to change your position once it is set,
but that's okay since you are good at covering
up your mistakes.


What kind of yarn are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
I am not so sure how I feel about the result of this quiz...

We had another knit thing last Sunday. While we were knitting, sipping coffee, tea or whatnot and talking about unimportant important things, this lady walks up with a basket full of MOHAIR which she produces herself with help from her angora goats on her farm. Audrey sold a couple of skeins - yeah, you guessed it, I had to have one, too. It's kid mohair and apricot. First I wasn't too impressed - with the yarn, yes, but the colours, no. Then she pulled out the apricot kid mohair...and I practically swooned, managed to get a hold on it and wouldn't let go again. You will understand when you hear about the price: 12.50$CAD for 125g of fuzzy delight. Miss D. and Melanie got a skein each - see, I am not the only impulse buyer in our lot!

A history of sock knitting

At our last knit thing we were talking a lot about socks. No wonder, Kadi, Anna and I were knitting socks, so it seemed only natural to talk about it. Knitting socks is something one either loves or doesn't give a damn about, I belong to the former group of people. This love came fairly late in my knitting life, I knit my first pair of socks when I was 22. I still have them. Wanna see?


I didn't make up the patterns myself, I copied them from a sweater I owned. But I did adapt them to make the sock fit my feet. I always used more than one colour for my socks - one colour would have been to boring, really - until there was the magic of self-striping sock yarn.

A couple of years later I was given a pair of socks which are today a prized possession of mine. They were knit by my then boyfriend Rolf, granted, he had help from his grandmother, but see for yourself:


The grey stripe in the blue sock says "MONA" and the red stripe in the black shows little hearts. No girl in her right mind could ask for a better gift, eh?

I knit that

Socks from blue Kroy modeled by Rolf. I am finally satisfied how the pattern turns out, took me long enough!



Disco glitter socks - let's hustle!



Swatch from the coral Szack - loverly, really.



First sleeve of the cabled sweater - I am not 100% happy with it because the pattern doesn't meet the pattern of the back where it is supposed to. Now what?

Montreal Knitters are the best!

Well, that'll be my personal opinion and someone dare tell me otherwise!

After my calling for an unscheduled meeting on Monday for Wednesday the gang (being Deawn, Molly Ann, Kadi, Véronik, Mary and Nadine) showed up, which, considering that we had met last Wednesday and last Sunday is really amazing. By now you might have figured out that I am addicted to our knit things, I even dare to go when I am in a crappy mood or in pain - they take it all in a stride.

I took photos. Guess what, they suck. But, to my defense, it must be my crappy camera, not I who causes the crappiness. Also, I get funky, artsy pictures no one else gets, see for yourself:


This proves that with "portrait mode" I have to ask the object of my desire - in this case Molly Ann with her fabulous knitted animals - to sit perfectly still. Of course no one in their right mind does that, and this is what you get.


This is Mary before she realized she'd missed the season premiere of "Gilmore Girls" - don't have an after picture, just a desperate e-mail...poor thing, really.


Nadine (sock addicted at the moment with great results) and Molly Ann in another perfectly flurry picture. So sorry to tell you the sad story about Nadine being allergic to the wonderful wool she bought on the Shetland Isles, I can tell you, everything you could say is cold comfort and sounds cruel.


Molly Ann modeling her shawl made of one skein of Slub Kasuri. It's so pretty and soft and colorful...I hope anyone posts better pictures of it on the Montreal knits blog and she might even add the instructions since it's her own design! Well done, I say.

No pictures of Kadi (who will be happy about this), Véronik (also picture shy), Deawn and myself - I am not only a bad photographer, I am also a lazy one and only take pictures of people who sit opposite me.

Now I get to the part where I feel a bit silly. Dear Nadine requested to see a picture of my pink measuring tape which I was so happy to have reclaimed. It's just your plain ol' measuring tape but it's special to me because it served me big time after moving to the north american continent since it has cm and inches and its 1.50m perfect length travels well. Even now I feel a bit dizzy when someone throws at me: hey, that's about 18 and a half inches...? HUH? Fabby pink measuring tape to the rescue!! So here goes nothing - i.e. more of my digital "art":


Tomorrow might be a good time to post a bit about my knitting, let's see how the pictures turn out...

Neither nor?

You Are 50% Weird

Normal enough to know that you're weird... But too damn weird to do anything about it!

How Weird Are You?

Got this from Nadine.

Tonight, tonight...

Isn't it pathetic for a full grown woman to wait for a new episode of a TV show as if she was still a girl and waiting for her 13th birthday? 13th because for me that was a big deal, with having the permission to invite boys and have a "party". Since birthdays at my age aren't really exciting any more one has to look for substitutes, no? Don't know about you but I find the suspense of having to wait for Luke's answer to Lorelai's question suffices nicely.

Maybe one day soon I'll even blog about my actual knitting again.

"O-tanjobi Omedeto Gozaimasu"

It's been a year since I started blogging. I didn't think I'd make it, but here I am and to celebrate a little I got something from Kiyoko yesterday at our Sunday knit thing:


A skein of "Szack R" laceweight wool from Japan in a delightful coral red heathered colourway. I am still thinking about what to make with the 1,300 m of it. Yet another great buy from AmiAmi, where good things come from.

Hence also the whole Japanese theme...at least I hope the title says "Happy Birthday". It could be awfully embarrassing if it said something like "go to hell" or worse, though I am pretty sure certain people - Miss D., for example - would enjoy other people's embarrassment - mine, that is - very much.

How about you check out the Montreal knits blog for some more japanese knits? Véronik's latest post shows great examples from Toshiyuki Shimada's book "New Style of heirloom knitting". Honestly, I got the book, and some of that stuff makes me wanna drool...

Edgar did me in

I consider myself a lover of "sophisticated" knits, i.e. I want intricate patterns, be it lace or cables or whatnot. But I do admit I do have a weak side when it comes to variegated yarn and quick projects. You know, self striping sock yarn and the like.

So what happens when there's the new knitty, one stumbles over a pattern like this and said girl just happens to have a couple of single balls/skeins of Noro-I-don't-remember-what-it-was lying around? What's more, Friday night one has to concentrate on to learn what not to wear and NOT on if one cabled the right way or decreased the correct number of stitches.

This, of course:


Meet my very own Edgar. To my shame I have to admit that it wasn't over for Edgar and me once this ball of yarn was gone, no, I asked for a second date:


See, we've become quite comfortable with each other, I kinda like this guy. I am also pretty sure no other one-balled dude would have shown up on my doorstep any time soon and decided that now's the time to find out if one ball can do the trick for me, too.

The much anticipated answer to this is: yes, one ball can deliver as much fun as two - which, incidentally, I would use for knitting socks, of course.

It's my studio and I can mess it up if I want to

That's the view from the door. It's exactly what you get to see coming into the room. Left of the shelf is a window. It's not in the picture because the view is crappy: the wall of the neighbour's house - at least it is red brick, I could think of worse. Naturally I miss the view of the Mont Royal as it was from our former living room - but then that was my "studio". So you won't hear me complaining about some old bricks, no siree.



This is what you see when you sit in the chair and turn to your right, shoes that don't belong there inclusive. If you'd come into he room right now you wouldn't find'em either, I have put them away in the meantime.

Now, there's one corner missing, the one with two more bookshelves (anything BUT knitting on there). I didn't have enough space for a big desk, so I got a small one that's now permanently cluttered with sketches, notes, doodads and files. Not that a bigger desk wouldn't be as cluttered, mind you. As it is I am forced to clear away everything once in a while, keeps you on top of things. (What the heck am I talking about, does this look at all as if I am on top of things? Didn't think so.) Apart from that I really have everything I need right beside me: scanner, printer, paper supplies...oh, and tissues. Of course, every respected knitter needs tissues in case she/he has to throw a tantrum and extracts a few tears - or snot, as impossible (and unsightly on top of it) that may seem. It's been a while since it happened to me, but some of the designs in magazines and books lately make you want to have tissues around, too.

Please, don't be misguided by the small amount of yarn on the shelves, I have more. But as any good (addicted - busted - yarn stashing - insert adjectives at will) knitter I know where to hide it (and why).

Last note for today: Can I just mention how glad I am that the boring, mindnumbing, repetitious tv summer is practically over and next Tuesday my personal heaven of glorious small screen entertainment will appear in my living room? The first episode of the new season of Gilmore Girls will turn one hour of the evening into one of the moments you wish would never end....*sigh* (Okay, "House" is high on my list, too...Hugh Laurie is just irresistible, don't you agree?)