Monday, August 28, 2006

leaving on a midnight brain

Eyes are sandy. (read: eyes=itchy, rather than 'looking at our Sandi') Yawns are broad and world-encompassing. Brain has transformed into a creeping slug. Yet I'm sleepless and knitting in the blue glow of the monitor, playing Civ IV and knitting around and around on a sock in the dark. I'd forgotten how comforting socks are. It's like...not a palate cleanse, exactly - though it is that - but a means of coming back to earth, a re-rooting in the midst of a thousand-thousand projects and the daily barrage of transit trips, e-mails, meetings, phone calls and sundry little stresses.

Must post progress pictures soon and wax ambitious about my latest project-at-the-ready. The yarn-cannon is loaded...just waiting for the order to fire.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

sweet needles are made of this, plus a backhanded compliment

I should amend my title. The 'this' the sweet needles are made of would be plastic (shock + awe), and there are no backhanded compliments anywhere in their construction. They're freaky sizes, but the Denises knit like a dream. Am using them for Lace Wings, and am cruising through at a good clip - I'm now ahead of where I was before I frogged, am past the halfway point of the 6th repeat, and it's actually starting to look like something. I'd forgotten how gorgeous it is to knit without having to manage one's stitches over the tiny join-bumps that grace so many circulars.

Can you imagine how freaked out a civilian (i.e. non-knitter) would be in reading the above? It's laced (n.p.i. - and that's 'no pun intended', not 'needles per inch') with jargon. Heeeeehaha.

Here's where the backhanded compliment comes in: I'm knitting at St. Clair W., waiting for the eastbound bus, when this woman pauses in her whingeing about the bus not coming soon enough for her liking to say: "Oh! Are you knitting a hat?""No - it's a shawl," say I, wondering who in their right mind would ever consider wearing a hat even remotely resembling the airy confection in my hands. "Oh, well it's just lovely - but those are difficult colours to work with (3rd from the left)." SLAP! Translation: I think the colourway is fugly, but because I'm a well-bred woman I'm going to say something passive about it so you still know what I think, even if I don't have the balls to come out and say so - or, heaven forfend, the self-control to actually hold my tongue and say nothing at all. "I actually find them quite enjoyable to work with, and I like them very much."

So it wasn't exactly high-ranking in the comeback department, but I think I'm still justified in saying SLAPERANG!

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Tiddley zort

Happy birthday, Stanley McCracken (aka Billy Avenue)! He's the one on the right.

Quick snargle:

Ribbited the entire Lace Wings - sorry, those of you trying to convince me to keep going; I just wasn't happy with it - and have started agin. I've got some serious knitting to do if I'm to wear it for m'birthday in less than a month's time.

Speaking of bdays, happy 28 to mon petit frere Alex! Despite feeling like such poo that I missed the monthly drunken knitters' night and spent Sat mooning about like a particularly
consumptive John Keats (or, to be fair, perhaps Lord Byron. I could never claim to be Keatsian in my accomplishments...or Byronic, for that matter, but Byro was a bad, naughty man and so am I except I'm female) and could barely knit even in solitude, I dragged myself to Al's bday extravaganza at the Halton County Radial Railway Museum, where we rode vintage streetcars (on which I knitted, duh), and ate ice cream.

How's that for an insanely-crafted sentence? Who do I think I am - Lord Byron? Evidently.

Boom bag is at 70 rows and counting. And so am I.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Knitting ADD - now with added coffee

Early yesterday evening, my hair smelt vaguely of good coffee - a happy reminder of my day with Jacquie at Tango Palace. We spent over five hours knitting in a coffee shop. Five hours. Five hours of really good coffee/lattés. Five hours of knitting five projects between the two of us. Five hours drooling over their ridiculously good collection of snacks. Five hours of people-watching. Marathon knit.

And then Jacquie came by mine to borrow my ball winder. I cringe still at the state of my apartment. "Well," she said generously, "at least there's a path from the door. You can work with that." I think she may have been kind of freaked out at the state of the place. I certainly was. Let's just say that this afternoon will feature a serious tidy-up - after another coffee at the Tango Palace.