Woops. Where did those last two months go? I have obviously fallen behind on my blog updates but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping up with my regular online haunts. However, a lot has happened since the last time I posted way back in April!

1. I got a new job! I’m working at a women’s clinic and learning tons about women’s health, public health policy, doctors in Victoria (particularly those who are/are not pro-choice), and have met so many pleasant midwives and women’s health care professionals.

2. At the end of May we drove down to central Washington for Sasquatch and met up with friends from Vancouver, Saskatoon, and Toronto. After three days of roasting in the sun and listening to excellent indie bands, we drove for 19 hours straight to Saskatchewan for a week long visit there. Saskatoon will always and forever have a place in my heart. You know those places where everything just feels right? The city and community just seem to open their arms and give you big hugs? That’s Saskatoon for me. It was lovely. We went to Silas’ parents farm for a few days as well where I always feel so humbled. Seeing hard-working communities that feed people makes me feel so appreciative. Farmers do not get enough respect.

3. After being back home for only two weeks, Silas and I packed our bags up again for a weekend trip to Calgary to see our dear friend Samantha marry a lovely man named Jason. We got to catch up with Calgary friends, including some of whom I have known for 6 years all thanks to the internet, as well as my old roommate Barry whom I lived with in my third year of university.

4. Summer has finally granted Victoria with its presence. Today for example, there isn’t a cloud in the sky and the market was bustling with people, and I was soaked with sweat after my bike ride home. It was a chilly spring, so chilly in fact that we were worried about our composting worms being outside. But no need to worry about that now. Which gives away number 5 on the “new things since last post” list…

5. We started vermi-composting!

6. I’ve been biking to work which is about an 8.5km ride each way. Silas read this book called The Blue Zones for a freelance story he was writing; it’s about areas of the world where people live the longest and their habits and diets that may contribute to long active lives. One of the things is incorporating exercise in to your daily routine (like communiting to work or gardening) instead of putting time aside for exercise (such as going to the gym or running marathons). I’m not biking every day but I’m hoping to keep it up for at least 3 days a week.

So. That’s what’s been going on with me. We have dedicated ourselves to paying off some credit card debt, so Silas and I have been on a very tight budget for the past month. Once the debt is gone, we’re going to start some serious saving to start a little cushion for when the time comes to (eep!) get a mortgage. This is very difficult for a spendy person such as myself. Silas is very good money and I am terrible with saving. The only major planned purchases are new bikes for ourselves, which won’t happen until after we sell our car. Luckily we have interested buyers and we’ll still have the luxury of driving for the rest of the summer (for day trips and camping) as the interested buyers aren’t moving here until the end of August.

As for crafting, I’ve been kniting a few different projects and finishing some long term projects that didn’t need to take as long as they did. Currently on the needles are my Tangled Yoke cardigan and the Lace Ribbon scarf. I finished up a pair of socks for Dan’s birthday and a few nights ago sewed up a pouch (with my sister’s guidance) to hold my current knitting project. Here are some pictures!

That’s all for now. I promise I won’t be such a stranger any more.

Things are springy here in Victoria and I wish I could say the same for my homies back on the prairies. There’s nothing quite like the promise of spring on the prairies with the snow melting and people wearing short pants only to be reminded of winter with a blistering snowfall. You have my sympathy, prairie pals. We’ve had our fair share of weird weather too, although I’ve been told that this is quite normal for spring in Victoria. But snow is rare at the worst of times in coastal BC, and last week we received weird hail-like snow shower. The ESL students at my work were going crazy with the squealing and the taking pictures.

Is it weird that I start out all my posts talking about the weather? Anyway.

It was my sister-in-law’s birthday at the beginning of the month and I finished up a pair of Monkeys for her. It was so sweet, she sent me an email saying that she should be framing them instead of wearing them because of their intricate pattern. I knit them with Sweetgeorgia Yarn that I got in last year in Halifax at Tangled Skeins. It’s a lovely yarn but if I were to knit them again I think I’d pick a lighter colour so that the pattern would really pop.

A few days ago I just finished up a Koolhaas hat for Silas. Mission Falls is quite lovely and I want to use it for more projects. I’d really like to make Annie Modesitt’s Backyard Leaves scarf with it. Or maybe Stefanie Japel’s One Skein Wonder with 1824 Cotton? My queue on Ravelry is getting out of hand.

Dreamy yarn & boy.

Silas at the Seattle Public Library, which was Jared Flood’s inspiration for the Koolhaas hat.

Speaking of spring and Earth Day, here is a list of things I am looking forward to in the next few weeks:
· starting my new job at a women’s clinic! yay!
· getting a worm bin from the Compost Education Centre
· going to the Moss Street Market for fresh fruits & veggies!
· checking out the rummage sales Victoria has to offer
· general spring/summer time fun like drinking on patios, bike rides, and sunshine at 9pm!

Speaking of rummage sales, I scored on a $3 box of yarn at a sale last week. The contents weren’t amazing but there is some Patons Beehive wool and other vintage goodies, including that whole pile of small skeins of tapestry wool. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it yet but that is the case with most of the yarn I buy. Perhaps some kind of scrappy scarf or maybe I can use it to practice colourwork. Joyce (my sister) and I went to two fairly large rummage sales, one at Central Middle School and another at Christchurch Cathedral school, and got some vintage earrings, books, housewares, and jewelery. This further proves that people who live in Victoria have a lot of good stuff and tend to give it all away at ridiculously cheap prices.

This will have to be quick since it’s 7:33pm and Earth Hour is in 27 minutes. Are you participating? BC Hydro will be tracking electricity usage and I’m really interested to see the results. We’re quite power smart already using florescent bulbs and switching off our power bars at night. Silas and I might play Carcassone by candlelight.

Here are several pictures of my latest finished knitting project. It’s the Tulips baby sweater kit by Dream in Color, knit with Dream in Color Classy. I bought the yarn in Seattle (as mentioned in a previous post) and started it last weekend on Gabriola island, finishing it up and blocking on Thursday evening. It fits her very well and will (hopefully) fit for another few months. Instead of using the blue for the border, I bought a skein of Classy in Cocoa Kiss for the darker edging because Tomma looks very good in bold, dark colours.

Notice Silas in the background offering Tomma some beer.

The wonderful thing about living in BC again is that this province observes two statutory holidays for the Easter long weekend, instead of just one. I like this stretch of a four day work week, four day weekend, four day work week.

My plans for the long weekend:

- go to Gabriola island with Brian, Sarah, and Silas
- knit a baby sweater
- finish my book
- use up some film
- finish some long overdue letters
- drink some wine
- hang out with Deanna

Have a wonderful four days!

We went to Seattle three weeks ago taking advantage of a winter special on the Clipper ferry. We planned the trip around seeing one of our favourite bands at a venue called Neumos. I visited Seattle with my family several times as a kid and a few times with friends as a teenager, but it was always in a car and usually just for a day. Exploring a new(ish) city is best done by foot and we had amazing weather.

Food:
We had Indian food at a place called Pabla the first night after wandering around the same streets for about an hour. It was delicious, incredibly spicy, and reasonably priced. The next morning we got up early and left the hotel by 7:50am and had coffee at a cute little bakery (and the name is escaping me now) in the Belltown district. We planned to have breakfast at Cyclops which was recommended to us by Mary but because it didn’t open until 9am, we had around an hour to be tourists and went up to the top of the Space Needle (see above). We headed back to Cyclops and I had a black bean omelet. Silas had salmon eggs benny. We also treated ourselves to American junkfood, including Tim’s Cascade chips which are seriously the Best Chips Ever. I remember eating them all the time when we would visit Bellingham when I was a kid and I am so bummed that we didn’t bring some back with us.

That night we went exploring around the Capitol Hill area looking for a place to eat and settled on the Broadway Grill, which we discovered later is known as “Gay Denny’s”. I had an awesome greek turkey burger and I think Silas had some sort of cajun burger. Then we went to the show.

Music: To be honest, at the beginning of the night I was feeling really tired. We had spent the whole day walking, at times carrying several shopping bags (more on that later), and my feet were sore. I began to feel like I was too old for shows and the crowd was annoying. Luckily there was a couch on the second level. The second level was also the all ages section of the show and it was nice to see people so excited and giddy about music and less pretentious and aloof like the crowd below. Jeffrey Lewis opened and his lyrics are brilliant and witty and my energy level was slowly rising. The Mountain Goats set was fantastic and I sang along like everyone else. But then it was getting late, and I was ready to leave after the first encore. BUT. Then on the second encore, John Darnielle says “my friend Ben is going to join us on this one” and Ben f-ing Gibbard came on stage and they sang Palmcorder Yajna. It made me feel all young, giddy, and excited about music again. So in the end I had a great time.

Shopping: Collectively Silas and I bought: a pair of shoes, a hat, a scarf, a dress, a pair of jeans, a book, socks, and some yarn. I only got to one yarn shop So Much Yarn, recommended by Elisabeth and bought some fiberlicious Dream in Color.

Favourite: Best part of Seattle? My favourite part was visiting the Seattle Public Library. It is an amazing building and exactly what a library should be: functional, attractive, welcoming, and beautiful. Why don’t more city planners get that pleasing aesthetics, cool architecture, interesting art, and bright vibrant colours in buildings make people want to be there. What an amazing building. I can’t even describe how much I loved it and how I could have spent hours there. It is definitely a must see.

Note: the Clipper ferry is very fast and sometimes the water is very rough. Walgreen’s store brand Gravol (or as Americans know it, Dramamine) is VERY effective.

The end!

Did you miss it? That blink of time that was February? Am I the only one that thinks it’s weird that it is already March 4th? This year is speeding by and I feel like I need to stop and smell the flowers more often which is quite possible now that I’ve seen flowers buds and cherry blossoms blooming. I forgot that spring in this part of the world starts when the rest of the country hasn’t yet begun the thaw. I’m certainly not complaining.

In my attempts to get started on spring cleaning, I organized my embroidery floss one evening last week. The tangle of threads and hanks were kept in an old plastic “Le Kit” (remember those?) pencil box from elementary school, when my craft of choice was making friendship bracelets. I should have taken a “before” picture complete with the purple box covered in Lion King stickers but alas. Here is the “after” picture which is a cheerful reminder of the coming spring colours.

Last weekend I went to Vancouver with Joyce and Tomma. My niece Jessica’s 4th birthday is tomorrow, so she had her birthday celebrations on the weekend. Jessica had three birthday parties: one with her mom’s side of the family, one with us, and one with her friends. I finished the Molly bolero (from Debbie Bliss’ Junior Knits) that I had started last year as a Christmas gift, but didn’t finish by the time Christmas rolled around. Jen (my sister-in-law) wrote me an email on Monday to let me know that Jessica wanted to sleep in it on Saturday night and insisted she get to wear it her party. What a sweetheart. Jen also told me a story about how they had found an old Barbie doll from Jen’s childhood (in the late 70s) who was wearing a handknit sweater. Jen was trying to remember who knit that sweater for her doll (it was most likely one of her mom’s friends) and little Jessica said “Maybe Auntie Jen knit it!”

The sweater is a bit too big because my gauge was a bit off. Bigger is definitely better when it comes to kids’ knits though. I would be so choked if she grew out of it in a month. I recommend the pattern but I don’t think I’ll work with Cotton Ease again because I am a yarn snob and didn’t like the feel of it while knitting.

Let me tell you about some yarns that I loved working with. I made the “Out of Retirement” hat from the Yarn Girls’ Guide to Knits for All Seasons out of Shibui Baby Alpaca and Berroco Ultra Alpaca held together. I’ve looked at a few of the Yarn Girls’ books before but nothing really caught my eye. But after seeing SouleMama’s post with her version of the hat, I was sold. Plus, I found the cutest heart shaped button at Three Bags Full on the weekend. Three Bags Full is easily my favourite yarn shop in Vancouver; you should visit if you get the chance.

In non-craft related news, my dear friend Rachel has been in town staying with us for the past two weeks and soon my other dear friend Dan (Rachel’s partner) will be joining us. It will be pretty cozy with four people sharing 650 square feet, but their company is definitely worth it. Oh! A couple weekends ago Silas and I went to Seattle to see the Mountain Goats. I went to So Much Yarn so I’ll show you what I got. I also have cheesy touristy photos of us in front of the usual touristy things (Space Needle, Pike Place Market). Next time, I promise!

There’s nothing I love more than a lazy weekend. After a particularly hairy week at work, I came home on Friday night, put on my pajamas, ate comforting food, and let my brain go mushy while watching back-to-back-to-back episodes of CSI: Miami. How sweet it was.

The rest of the weekend followed suit: sleeping in, moving slowly, shopping for groceries, eating good foods, drinking coffee, and doing whatever I wanted.

I finished Silas’ birthday socks (three weeks after his birthday) and he agreed to model them for blogging and Ravelry purposes.

Today I wore my new favourite shirt, my most comfortable pair of jeans, and my favourite toque. I made soup and read some of my favourite cookbooks.

I’m anticipating a particularly dreadful Monday morning. I really hope Wiarton Willie is right.

Are you all as excited about the Spring Interweave Preview as I am? I don’t know if it’s the promise of warmer weather (although I’m now living in Victoria, so I can’t really complain) or simply my love of a good cardigan, but all the projects look wonderful. I was really disappointed with the Winter issue of Interweave. Nothing really jumped out at me, which is partly the reason I went out and spent $8 on Holiday Knits.

Mind you, I haven’t yet knit anything from Holiday Knits, but I do have the yarn for Koolhaas!

Speaking of Koolhaas, I’ll get to visit the Seattle Public Library next month. We’re going to see the Mountain Goats on Feb 22 and we’re making a weekend of it. Any suggestions for cool things to do in Seattle would be greatly appreciated! (We’re not interested in the Space Needle or the Experience Music Project, but thank you anyway.)

Hi there. Perhaps you’ve found me through Jen Likes Knitting. Welcome! I found that keeping a blog solely dedicated to crafts was restrictive. I was feeling all kinds of weird pressure and was beating myself up for not having any interesting content because I was knitting at a snail’s pace, so I decided to move everything over to a URL that wasn’t so specific. It may seem like a small detail, but I like this address much better. I hope you will too!

I am continually amazed by how much inspiration can be found online. Hours have been spent pouring over Flickr groups, or click click clicking through all the bazillion blogs and tutorials. I need to remind myself that all that time spent on looking at crafts takes time away from actual crafting.

So. It is almost the end of January, and I’d like to remind myself of the simple resolutions I’ve made for myself this year.

1. Sit up straight.
2. Read more.
3. Write more letters.
And two more late additions:
4. Take better photographs.
5. Do less and do more.

Sigh. I didn’t finish my Christmas knits. They are oh so close to being finished, and I fully intend to send them to the recipients in the mail after this week. I don’t know what it was. I was on schedule to finish them, even if it meant knitting into the wee hours of the night on Christmas eve. Then on December 22, I started shopping for other gifts. You know, to supplement the knitted gifts I was going to give, because really what three and one year old child gets excited about a sweater on Christmas? Little did I know, I was self-sabotaging. Somewhere in my subconscious I thought “If I have these other toys to give them, then it’ll be okay if I don’t finish the kniting.”

Oh well. The kids will never know and the parents will be thrilled to get a little surprise in the mail in early January, amongst all the credit card bills and belated Christmas cards.

I did finish a pair of baby legwarmers for Tomma. They were knit with Knitcol Trends by Adriafil. I love the striping sequence and the brown and white bits that resemble a siwash.

I think 2008 will be a good year for crafting, as I have acquired a few tools for expanding my craft repertoire. More on that later!