Bad...bad...terrifyingly bad.

"He's a big bad wolf in your neighbourhood
Not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good"
- Run DMC

Hoooo boy. Yarn id, yarn id, what do you see? I see projects - one, two, three!

- So I'm trying to be a little more responsible with me' dosh, and what happens? A giant, tongue-lolling appearance of my yarn id. Twice. Resulting in stupid quantities of yarn. How many projects can a girl do at once, I ask you?

So last week I'm in Romni, all innocent-like, looking for a) yarn with which to attempt Fair Isle for the first time, and/or b) yarn with which to knit the amazing Elizabethan collar vest from Loop-d-Loop, when Louisa Harding sashays up and clouts me over the head with 10 balls of Fauve. [Read: I browse through her Beachcomber Bay publication for the umpteenth time, end up fondling her yarn, wistfully imagining buying some, and then like the werewolfy change comes over the title character in Ginger Snaps, I find myself pawing through the colours, whimpering because there are only 9 balls in the colourway I like. Then I see it: Number 10, snuggled in with some Flotsam a couple of shelves up. Sold.] I just barely made it out of there before buying 10 balls of Flotsam for a second project. And (she said dramatically) I didn't even have my $25 gift cert with me - though I did get the DKC discount, thank heckins.

And then on Wednesday, I'm still thinking about the Elizabethan collar vest when I discover that Haley at Knit-o is having a sale on Van Dyck yarn - the stuff needed for said vest. It requires only 3 balls, and she's selling it for several dollars off. I leave work early. I find yarn for the vest:


...and for the leaf lace sweater. Le sigh (glee).

I'm pink, therefore I'm spam

After his death, Réné Descartes shows up at the pearly gates and is greeted by an enthusiastic St. Peter. "Ah! Professor Descartes! We're so glad you're here! We were hoping that you'd teach a series of daily classes in order to share your knowledge with heaven's less educated souls." Descartes, looking irritated, cried: "I think not!" and disappeared.

You scored as Existentialist. Existentialism emphasizes human capability. There is no greater power interfering with life and thus it is up to us to make things happen. Sometimes considered a negative and depressing world view, your optimism towards human accomplishment is immense. Mankind is condemned to be free and must accept the responsibility. Existentialist 94% Cultural Creative 88% Romanticist 75% Idealist 75% Postmodernist 56% Fundamentalist 50% Modernist 44% Materialist 44%

Four Things

Sandi Purl, you temptress, you. Now I won't get to bed in a million more years, thanks to your tag.
Here we go:

Four Things

Things you may not have known about me:

A) Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Saturday Morning Club kiddie wrangler at the Royal Ontario Museum
2. Manager of a vitamin department at a big health food store
3. Shop girl at a quilting store
4. Conference organiser

B) Four movies you would watch over and over:
1. Howl's Moving Castle
2. Nightmare Before Christmas
3. Ultraviolet (It was so horribly bad it was good. Words cannot express the cheese-covered joy this movie brings me.)
4. The Princess Bride

C) Four places you have lived:
1. Leeds, England for one year
2. Toronto
3. Havana, Cuba for one month
4. Waterloo (thank you, university)

Four TV shows you love to watch:
1. The IT Crowd
2. Doctor Who
3. Black Books
4. Coronation Street

E ) Four places you have been on vacation:
1. England (everywhere)
2. Venice
3. Prague
4. Dublin

F) Websites you visit daily:
1. google
2. Toronto's knitting meetup message board
3. Knit-o-matic!
4. Toronto Star

G ) Four of my favorite foods:
1. Fries!!!
2. Salty black licorice (i.e. the real thing)3. tea - it may be a drink, but it's also a lifestyle
4. cheeeeeeeeese

H) Four places I would rather be right now:
1. near the ocean
2. a yarn festival
3. in England
4. on sabbatical

I) Four chix I i will tag:
I'm going to cheat a little and take a couple of cues from Sandi's tags:
Mel, Jacquie, Jen, Lisa

Zero, Italian-style

I've spent the weekend being a glamour- puss. Got my hair cut for the first time in nearly a year and a half, and Richard (stylist extraordinaire and martinet rolled into one) declared he was going to take a straightening iron to my curly locks just for fun. It looked pretty darn fascinating, if I do say so me'sel, but it'll never happen on a regular basis. I'm a roll-out-of-bed-at-the-last-minute-and-go kinda girl, so me and electric hair implements aren't even remotely acquainted. Add in the length, and there's no banana in hell that I could ever do this myself. A flock of hair gnomes would be required to pull it off. Or one Richard.

One of the major bonuses of getting Richard to cut my hair is that he's the owner of my favourite living canine, Cirro. 'Cirro' means 'zero' in Italian, though R pronounces it 'Sih-row'. Cirro's an Italian Greyhound, and he's the closest you can get to a cat in dog form. He's litter-trained, he loves sitting in your lap and having his head stroked, and he likes sleeping. He's also very affectionate, and gives people hugs. I am so charmed by this little guy. He makes it hard to get any knitting done, and my black velvet jeans are liberally coated in short, tan doggy hairs, but how can you hold a grudge against this face?
T got shorn as well, and looks well handsome, I think. Of course, I was more interested in capturing the interaction between him and Cirro, so his hair has taken a back seat here. :)

And in knitting news, I'm all over the Tropicana sock pattern from the latest issue of Magknits. I started one in Socks that Rock 'seastone', then realised I needed to knit some sox for T's niece Laura, who's turning 12 next month and who's all over the idea of hand-knit socks. So I tried a pair using Opal's Chameleon, since said niece is also all over the idea of chameleon sock yarn. Alas, the composition of the yarn is too stretchy to do a nice job on it - looks cool, but the yarn ends up pulled too thin and the sock seems too tight. So I gave up on it and started on a pair using Fleece Artist's Basic Merino Sock yarn in rainforest, and it's looking pretty sweetie-o so far, don't'cha' think?