Becoming a Mom

I'm delighted to announce that sometime around early September, there will be a new addition to the Hedgehog Knits family.


Nick and I are expecting a baby, a daughter actually. We're very excited first-time parents-to-be, and our families are just over the moon about it. This will be the first little girl on both sides of the family (with several little boy cousins already). Now, the real question is what to knit first?! To be fair, I have already knit and put away a Cardigan for Merry:



But, it's size 18 mo, and I made it before I found out the gender. Now that I know that I can knit girly things, I have a lot more patterns to choose from. By happy coincidence, a new LYS is opening up in my neighbourhood in the coming days (bringing the total in the city to 2), so I will be heading over there this weekend to pick up something fun, and possibly pink!

Still here, still knitting

Wow, I've become a very bad blogger. It seems that over the past year Ravelry and Facebook have been meeting my needs for documenting my knitting projects and staying in touch with friends, and as a result, I just haven't had lot to say on here. I have been considering shutting down altogether, but I thought that I would keep the blog for sporadic updates when the mood strikes me. Who knows, I may even get around to writing up the patterns that have been languishing in my notebooks one of these days and post them here.

Life has been very busy these past few months. Paid work and volunteer work have been keeping me running around quite a bit, and I've been trying to keep as active as possible, though the snowstorm that we're experiencing today probably marks the end of the outdoor running season and the start of regular gym going instead. This time of year when the days are so short and it's dark so much, I find myself going in to hibernation mode, sleeping as much as possible, and curling up knitting at home in the evenings.

In the meantime, if you're a knitter who would like to keep in touch and you haven't found me on Ravelry yet, please add me as a friend and say hi. I'm "kbh" in the Ravelry world.

Have a few minutes?

There's a neat thing going on over at the Girl Guides of Canada website. It's an online film festival of short films centred on the experiences of girls in today's world.

Worth checking out.


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Grey and Soggy

We've just lived through an extremely rainy and cold week in eastern Newfoundland. "Well, there can't possibly be much more rain up there to come down, can there?", I thought to myself this morning as I trudged to the office in the mist and the fog.

No such luck.

(Depressing image, courtesy of Environment Canada)

Fall was a beautiful time of year when we lived in Ontario, and I always wondered why I hated the fall so much when I was growing up. Now I remember. Well then, I guess it's time that I gave up on outdoor running and went back to the gym. Hrmph.

We did get a bit of a break from the rain (but not from the freezing cold) on Sunday for the Run for the Cure. I organized a team at my workplace this year, and 20 of us, including some family and friends, participated. Nick and I both ran the 5 km. It was his first organized run, and I beat my previous best time by a couple of minutes, so we're both pretty proud of ourselves.


Since the weather has turned so chilly, it is a good time of year to have a newly completed woolly vest. My Ivy League turned out just lovely, a perfect fit.

Ivy League Vest from Interweave Knits Winter 2007, knit in KnitPicks Pallette in colourways twig, cream, tidepool heather, blue note heather, brindle heather, and mist.

I knit it exactly as written with no modifications, which worked well for me because I'm short. The vest is a very nice addition to my fall work wardrobe. I definitely like this Fair-Isle business, and there will certainly be more of it in my future. Steeks aren't so scary - you just have to show them who's boss.

Summer Bliss

We are having quite the summer here in Newfoundland. I understand that much of the rest of the Canada has been colder and wetter than normal over the last few months (except perhaps British Columbia, where the heat and drought have been causing a lot of forest fires), but this the weather in Newfoundland is better than any year in living memory.

I've been taking full advantage, spending as much time outdoors as I can manage. I've been running regularly, and even started a running group at work. We're going to take part in the Run for the Cure in October.

Summer in Newfoundland also means that it's folk festival season. My dad and both of my brothers play in a Celtic/Newfoundland folk group, and I make "special guest appearances" with them on occasion.


Here they are last weekend in Ferryland, at the Shamrock Festival. Left to right, that's Tony (younger brother), Chris (older brother), Dad, and their good friend Derm. The show was very good this year, and we had a great time. Next weekend is the big one, the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival, which happens in Bannerman Park, just a couple of blocks fom home. Being so conveniently located near the venue, I'll be making a big pot of chili next weekend, and expecting a lot of drop-in visitors. This will be the first time the guys will be playing at this festival, which is by invitation only, and they're very excited.

The other thing I've been up to lately is puttering in the kitchen. I raided Nick's grandmother's rhubarb patch last week (rhubarb grows like a weed in many people's gardens) and made a batch of rhubarb-apricot chutney and a rhubarb upside-down cake. Both were highly successful.


Today it was time to clean out the freezer a bit, in light of the fact that the wild raspberries and blueberries are almost ripe, and it will soon be time to start picking and putting away more for the coming winter.

I made a batch of blueberry-patridgeberry jam and a patridgeberry coffee cake. I understand that outside of Newfoundland, partridgberries are known as lingonberries. They grow wild in boggy areas all over Newfoundland.


I like my jam not too sweet, so this is kind of tart, and works well in sauces with red meat.

Nick and I have also spend some time trout fishing.


We haven't caught much, but it's peaceful just to stand at the side of the pond and take it all in. I never get tired of the landscape of glacially-scoured barrens.


I hope that wherever you are, that you are also enjoying the summer, and taking some time to relax and soak it all in.

Lost and Found

This is a mouse I made for Lassy last weekend. The pattern, from Oddball Knitting, is extremely simple, and a little catnip in the stuffing goes a long way.


Lassy spent a great deal of the weekend torturing this new friend, attempting to tear it to shreds, rolling around in a sunbeam.


Check out those claws!


But later in the week, we had a bit of a nightmare on our hands. Lassy went out in the morning, as he usually does when the sun is shining, and went off to play with the other neighbourhood cats. Now our block has a lot of outdoor cats, and Lassy is well loved by the nieghbours. It's a fairly low-traffic area, and since he came to us as a stray, he really does like to spend some time outdoors wandering. Usually, if not before, he's on the doorstep waiting to get in when I get home from work (Nick is home during the day to let him in and out as he pleases).

On Tuesday, we were a bit distracted by a plumbing problem that my dad arrived to fix, but became concerned when Lassy stil hadn't come home by the time it got dark. This is a cat who doesn't like to go too long between meals!

To make the story shorter, he was still missing on Wednesday, and we started canvassing the neighbours, putting up posters at the corner store, and even got an announcement on the local radio station. By Thursday morning, after two nights missing, we were losing hope, assuming the worst.

But on Thursday afternoon he appeared out of nowhere. Absolutely starving, and meowing for food, but he was home! It's such a relief to have him back.

Our best guess is that maybe he got accidentally locked into a shed or garage in the neighbourhood for a couple of days. There's no other reason really that he would be out so long and come back so hungry. What was that about curiousity and cats?



Things are pretty much back to normal. The catnip mouse has gotten such a workout that it's completely felted now, and Lassy has been even more cuddly than usual.

In the stress of last week, I knit a Swallowtail Shawl (photos to come), and a few more mitred squares for a blanket.


I hope we never have to go through that again!

Bunnies!

I don't really "do" Easter, but we do get together for a family dinner, and I can't resist making cute cookies for the nephews. Their moms seem to appreciate this more than if we added to the piles of chocolate that the boys will be given today.

If nothing else, it's a great time to celebrate that spring has finally arrived in these parts (I'm in complete denial that the weather man is predicting a couple of cm's of snow in the next few of days.) The crocuses are out and we've had a few nice warm days. I'm taking the studded snow tires off the car and proclaiming it officially spring at my house!

It's a boy!

My newest nephew was born on Friday, and by chance my cousin gave birth to another baby boy on the same day, at the same hospital. Only two hours apart!

The new little guys and their moms are doing very well, and of course have lit a fire under me to get my latest JoJo finished asap.

Never one to focus on a single project for very long, I've also been dabbling in spinning a little.


This is a small (60g) batch of merino I bought at Lettuce Knit a couple of years ago. It's my first time spinning pure merino, and it's going pretty well. I find myself always wanting to spin very fine lately, although I generally prefer to knit finer gauges, so that's probably not a bad thing. It just takes a lot longer!

I don't know a lot about the technical side of spinning, and I only have the one spindle, but still dreaming about owning a wheel one day.

An Ending... and a New Beginning

It's been a pretty crazy week of ups and downs. St. Patrick's day was celebrated over the span of three days at the pub. What can I say? We really like all things Irish. Several of my family members play in an Irish folk group, so this is our favourite time of year to go out and see them play. The place was packed, and though many beers were consumed, fortunately none of them were green. Who thought that up anyway?

I also celebrated my birthday last week, on the same day as my mother-in-law. In what is now a bit of a tradition, we celebrated with a big family dinner and two birthday cakes. You can't have too many options when it comes to cake, I always say. I received several great knitting books, including Cookie A's new sock book (well, actually, I received a printed copy of the Amazon order for that one, as the book hasn't actually been released yet!). I also received a new GPS, which will inevitably lead to more geocaching during hikes this summer.

The sad news last week was the passing of Molly, the hedgehog mascot of this blog. We have had Molly since 2003, so she had a pretty good shake of it, for a hedgie. Over the last year or so she had been really showing her age, getting slower, rather wobbly on her feet, and crankier all the time. She was never as sociable or friendly as our first hedgehog, Pokey, was, but she had her own personality, and nobody can dispute that she was impossibly adorable! We'll miss hearing her wheel squeaking as she ran late into the night.

The new beginning that's getting very close is the new niece or nephew who should be arriving within the next couple of weeks. The whole family is pretty excited, as this is only the second grandchild for my parents. I also can't wait to see how the big-brother-to-be is going to react to the new addition. He has been the centre of our world for the last four years, so I'm afraid he may be in for a bit of a shock.

So this cardigan is in reserve in case it's a girl:

JoJo cardigan pattern by Holli Yeoh. Knit in GarnStudio Fabel (stripes) and Sandnes Garn Sisu, on 2.5 and 3 mm circs. Size 6-12 months.

This is the second time that I've knit this pattern, and it is becoming my go-to baby sweater pattern. I love that it's machine washable, and the self-striping sock yarn keeps me entertained. There are so many possible yarn combinations, that I'll probably start another one soon. I am also quite smitten with the little floral buttons that I found at Fabricville.


And if it's a boy? Well, let's just say that I've gotten a bit behind in my knitting and need to get moving on that!

With almost every bit of snow gone by last week (foiling my plans to take the Guides out on an overnight snowshoe trip), we were rather depressed to wake up to another dumping of snow on Saturday morning (causing the cancellation of the backpacking trip that we had scheduled to make up for the lack of a snowshoeing trip!). Sometimes you just can't win.

Even Lassy is tired of the white stuff. Come on spring!

Sorrow

There's been a huge tragedy in the waters just offshore this week. While Newfoundlanders have always been a seafaring people, and tragedies at sea have a long history here, this is different.

The helicopter that went down yesterday morning was carrying 18 workers to offshore oil platforms. While one survivor was rescued, another has died, and 16 people are still missing and presumed lost. Though we were starting to think that spring was on the way, the temperature plummeted to -19C today with wind chill, as if a stark reminder of how unpleasant a place the North Atlantic can be in March.

Our oil industry is still young - the first commercial crude was produced in 1997 at Hibernia, and only two other fields are currently in production. But in those 12 years of permanent offshore installations and daily helicopter trips to the rigs, the safety record has been remarkably good.

St. John's is a small city, and the oil industry here is even smaller. Although I have never had to travel offshore, I work in this field. Many of my co-workers travel offshore regularly. While I am very fortunate that this tragedy has not affected my family directly, I have friends and co-workers who will have lost colleagues and friends. So many people have been visibly shaken by this, and it has been strangely ominous to sit in a downtown office building reading about the search efforts on various news sites, while occasionally looking up to see a search helicopter coming in overhead from across the harbour.

I'll be keeping those 17 families in my thoughts over the course of this weekend, as they live through some of the hardest days of their lives, and as the recovery operations continue offshore.

Boring

Isn't it funny how knitting mimics life sometimes?

Case in point: a photo of my desk today:


I've been studying for months for a big exam tomorrow morning. It's the professional practice and ethics exam, which all candidate engineers and geoscientists in Canada have to pass to be considered professionals, as apparently, having a Ph.D. in geology does not qualify me, legally speaking, to call myself a geologist! Pretty dry stuff, most of which applies far more to the engineers than to the geoscientists. (There are far fewer of us, so we get lumped into the same process).

My post-gnome-invasion knitting is equally boring this week (refer to plain stockinette sock above). I have had a few false starts. I knit one Delicato mitt out of some sock yarn leftovers, and then when the suspicion that I was running out of yarn was confirmed by the digital scale, I frogged it. Then I tried starting a second JoJo sweater, but after trying several combinations of colours and patterns from the stash (one self-striping yarn that looked red in the ball was looking very pink knit up, totally unsuitable for the little boy I intended it for!), I couldn't find anything that worked together at all. So I stuck my hand in the sock yarn bin at random, pulled out a ball, and started these plain vanilla stripey socks. When all else fails, I usually revert to stripes.

I'm also knitting a sweater for my brother, which right now is just a big tube of unphotogenic grey stockinette - equally uninspiring blog material.

I'll have to work on getting something more intersting on the go, for fear of boring myself to death. Maybe when this exam is over, I'll be feeling a bit more creative. Then again, once the exam is over, I won't have to procrastinate so much on studying, so I'll probably slow down to my normally slow blogging rate again.

Wish me luck!

Cables are taking over my life

The cables are becoming a bit of an obsession lately. I finished the Merike gloves (post-blocking photos to come soon), am sewing up the cabled pillow cover, and somehow while watching the federal election results roll in (let's not even talk about that!), I cast on for a pair of Green Autumn mittens from the Fall 2008 Vogue Knitting.


Hopefully these will be another Christmas gift - if I don't decide to keep them for myself!

This is the first time that I've bought Vogue Knitting. I saw the mittens on Jared Flood's blog, and actively went hunting for the issue. It took me three trips to Chapters to finally track down a copy (and we only have one Chapters in the city!). There's one other pattern in there, a sweater, that I might consider knitting one day, but most of the stuff is just over the top.

But these mittens, wow. This is an intense pattern - fully charted luckily. Cabling on every row, a crazy slip-stitch pattern on the palm, and bobbles. Who doesn't love bobbles?! (Well, actually lots of people hate bobbles. But not me. I'm firmly entrenched in the pro-bobbles camp.)

In other news, I quit my job last week. And it was a good thing! I have landed a much better one, and am very excited to be moving on. The new job is going to be much more condusive to building a long career, and it's only one block from my house. Perfect. I'm taking a week off between jobs to relax a bit and do a few things around the house. Looking forward to it.

Big Cables, Little Cables

I'm on a bit of a cable kick lately. The big cables? a pillow cover for my living room. This has been dragging on forever. Well, forever since last January. Lately, I have picked it up again, and am determined to get it finished before... well.... before Christmas at the latest! In my defense, the pillow is an 18" square, so it's really not that much smaller than knitting a sweater! I'm making it up as I go along, but basically it will be two squares sewn together with a flap and some buttons.

The little cables? That's the start of my Christmas gift knitting, 2008 edition. The pattern is Merike's Gloves, from Folk Knitting in Estonia. This is my first time knitting a Nancy Bush pattern, and I really appreciate her attention to detail. (Though I don't think I'm going to become a fan of this style of thumb anytime soon. I guess it would be an afterthought thumb... I should look that up.) I'm using up some leftover Elann Devon, which although it's supposed to be sport weight, gives me a gague smaller than I usually get with fingering weight. I went up a needle size, and am still slightly under the recommended gague. I read on Ravelry that the fingers come out a little large with this pattern, so with the smaller gague and leaving out a stitch or two from each finger, I have a glove that fits me really nicely. Now, I just have to figure out who on my gift list has hands similar in dimension to mine! (I guess I should have thought about that before I started knitting!) Anyway, the pattern is quite fun to knit, and has really kept my interest. Let's hope that it holds through the second glove.

I should also show you my finished Helena.


My only modification on this pattern was to add three buttonholes instead of the i-cord ties. It was fun and very quick to knit up. I highly recomend the pattern

In other news, it has been a great year in St. John's for music lovers. A couple of weeks ago one of my favourite folk singers, David Francy, was in town, and we treated my brother to the show for his birthday. It was fantastic. Later that week, we joined my family to see the legenday local music/comedy group, Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers, at the Arts and Culture Centre. And while I missed my chance to see Leonard Cohen, Feist, Bob Dillon, and Lenny Kravitz, who have all been here recently, last night I got to spend an amazing night at Mile One being entertained by Elton John. He brought no band or backup singers; it was just him and his piano. And yet the sounds was amazing, and he held everyone's attention though a show that last almost three hours with no break. Just amazing.

I'm incredibly appreciative that artists who routinely play to massive audiences for far more money, take the time to come to St. John's and play at our smaller venues, our even our biggest stadium, which only holds 8000 people. I think a lot of them come because they personally want to visit Newfoundland - it's certainly a beautiful place here, at least when it's not foggy, and the audiences and the people are great. I was thinking last night, as I left my highly livable downtown neighbourhood, and walked fifteen minutes to the stadium to see Elton John, how much I love St. John's. It sure is good to be home.

July catch-up

Wow, I was doing really well there for a while with the blogging regularly, and then June happened....

My most recent adventure was a five-day camp with my Pathfinder Unit (Pathfinders are Girl Guides aged 12-15, and I have been so lucky to have ended up with the most amazing group of girls!). Even though the weather was crap-tastic and cold, we had a lot of fun. More adventures are planned this summer with a couple of weekend backpacking trips coming up.

So, back to the main theme of this blog... what am I knitting these days?

My main focus has been my Mystery Stole 3, which I abandoned last summer somewhere around my second house move. I picked it up again a couple of weeks ago, and it is now my concentration knitting in front of the tv. Unfortunately, it just looks like a big black blob, so I haven't photographed it in a while. Further updates to come.

My mindless travel knitting has been this plain stripey sock. I bought the yarn on a whim on my last trip to Wool Trends, mostly because I loved the colourway - these are definitely my colours. The yarn is called Boston, and the company is Wisdom Yarns. I'd never heard of it before, but it's very similar in structure and price to Regia and Jawoll sock yarns. Nothing too special, but gee, I do love those blues and greens! Just one more sock to go.


I was actually at Wool Trends to pick up this:


It's a Lady of the Lake jacket kit by Fleece Artist. I had been admiring these at my LYS for some time, but the only colour they had left was a bright turquoise. It was way too loud for my taste. But then I found out that Fleece Artist will custom dye kits to order, and that was just too amazing to pass up. This colourway is called Paris, and I chose it by looking through a piles of skeins of SeaSilk. It came out a little brighter than I expected in the kit (though still not quite as bright as it looks in this photo), but I think it will look great when the colours all get mixed up together. I haven't examined the pattern too closely yet, but I think that it's knit holding together strands of the two different yarns together - Curly Locks (or the right) and Kid Aran (on the left). Now I just need to decide which to start first, this or my Ivy League Vest.

Something I've been doing over the last months is trying to catch up on all those things that I wouldn't allow myself to do while I was finishing my thesis. It's been a strange experience, catching up with the rest of the world on a number of fronts. I finally read the last Harry Potter novel (Sigh. So good. Hard to believe it's all over), and continuing the trend of being last to the party, i joined Ravelry. I've actually been on there for a few weeks now, but I haven't had time to do too much with my page yet. Come find me if you haven't already - I'm KBH over there.

I've had several requests for kitty photos, so I'll try to get some of those soon. Lassy is doing well, and has started going outside now. He seems very happy running about the neighbourhood and checking out the neighbour's garden.

I can't promise that I'll be updating the blog too frequently in the coming weeks. I've got a business trip to western Newfoundland this week, and off to Calgary the following week. Hopefully I get lots of plane knitting accomplished anyway! I'll leave you with a FO photo of my latest Swallowtail. I gave it to Nick's grandmother on her 80th birthday. As a life-long knitter, I think she appreciated it.

Discovering my Roots

I've been spending quite a bit of time lately delving into my heritage. I've had a little knitting heritage project on the go (more about that in the near future), and I recently started recording my family history at ancestry.ca. It's amazing how much genealogy you can dig up in just a few hours of internet research. The next step will be picking the brains of my relatives and undertaking a little research at the provincial archives, just up the hill (I love living downtown!)

Cabot Tower (built in 1897), atop Signal Hill

I've also been rediscovering some of the great walks and historic areas of the city. A hike last evening on Signal Hill proved a little chilly, and the trails were very icy, but I'm sure we'll be heading back up there when the weather warms up a little. The hill, overlooking the very strategic narrow entrance to the harbour, still bear physical signs of a military history dating back to the eighteenth century, and as recent as artillery from the Second World War.

Fort Amherst, as seen from Signal Hill. The grey structures below the lighthouse are the remains of a WWII gun battery

What an amazing, rugged bit of coastline we live on. It's prettier and a little greener on a sunny summer day, but sometimes you have to wonder what the first settlers from Europe were thinking when they made landfall and decided to call this home.

What I've been doing while I haven't been blogging

Time is seriously flying this winter and I've been enjoying the feeling of being very busy but not stressed about it. It's been a fun kind of busy, mostly involving family events - baking birthday cakes (three in two weeks!), going to family dinners, attending several concerts (all involving different family members on stage - we're a rather musical bunch), and taking in a little of the great outdoors, with a smattering of volunteer work thrown in. Life is good. Nick and I took a little jaunt around Pippy Park (a campground right in the city) last weekend on snowshoes. It was a beautiful day. I've been wanting to get him on cross-country skis, but it rained a lot this week so the snow is not so great. Maybe next weekend. My knitting on Gatsby Girl was interrupted again for another birthday present. Nick actually picked up a copy of a KnitPicks catalogue that I had left lying around, and requested this scarf. He so rarely asks me to knit anything for him that of course I had to oblige. After a couple of minutes of squinting at the pattern, I had it figured out. Now why didn't I think of that - reversible cables!
I cast on 66 stitches, knit a couple of rows of 6X6 rib, and then proceeded to cable on the first (right side), and 6th ("wrong" side) rows in a 10-row repeat. Continued for about 7 feet, and cast off. It took three balls of Patons Classic Merino (the shade is called "new jeans", a little bluer than it looks in the photo above) for a pretty hefty scarf. If I were to do another of these for myself, I would make it a little narrower and a little shorter, but Nick thinks his is perfect - a nice warm scarf for chilly days.


So now I'm back to Gatsby Girl. I finished the first back/front piece, and am now plodding through the first sleeve. It's endless 1X1 ribbing on 3 mm needles. To be honest, it's starting to try my patience a little, but I have another cabled, lacy, beautiful front/back piece to look forward to. The second sleeve is going to be a killer on this one - I can see myself getting easily sidetracked.

Year-end FOs (in Knitting and Life)

2007 has been rather a monumental year for me - finally moving home after so many years away, buying our first house and car, starting a career. I feel incredibly blessed by the good fortune that has come my way. It has been very exciting, yet stressful at times. Mostly, I have felt very disorganized and scatter-brained, no doubt resulting from moving twice and living out of boxes for the better part of the fall.

Things are finally starting to come together. The unpacking is mostly done, and the first floor is exactly as we want it. With the recent addition of furniture, if I may borrow from the knitting jargon, I'm now happy to declare the living room an FO:


We now look forward to painting some of the upstairs rooms and feeling a little more settled in the new year.

A few other recent FOs to report on. The interminable Brigit socks have finally been completed, and were gifted at a family gathering yesterday.

Brigit socks (link to pdf), in Meilenweit wool, 2.25 mm bamboo dpns. Altered the heel to an "eye of partridge" heel flap.

Also known as the "Smurfy Cables", these socks were the cause of much blue dye staining my hands over the last few months. I started them on a train trip from Toronto to Ottawa, and the first sock came very easily. However, I tried taking the second sock out to knit night, and it proved to be wholly incompatible with anything that distracted my attention even remotely. The repeating cable pattern is the same every time, and really shouldn't be that difficult, but every time I started feeling comfortable with it, I would cross a cable the wrong way, or turn the heel and then realize that I had mistakenly added an extra pattern repeat before the heel. Soon the Smurfy cables became the cursed cables.... Nancy and Leanne can attest that even a couple of weeks ago, as I was attempting to turn the heel for the third time, these were still giving me grief. I'm happy to see them finished, and I really like the way they turned out. Surprisingly, I think I would even knit these again for myself, but would make them a little longer. The yarn? The Meilenweit is a perfectly serviceable wool sock yarn, but not destined to become a favourite of mine. It just didn't do it for me, you know?

I've been off work over the holidays, and decided to finally organize my stash closet. I rediscovered all kinds of treasures that I had forgotten about. Among them was the end of a cone of very furry mohair blend that I bought on a whim at Woof Designs last summer (mostly a machine-knitting sweater business, they sell off their cone ends and discontinued yarns by weight. I always love to pop in and see what new on the yarn shelf at the back). Inspired by the cold snowy weather we've been having, I decided that I needed some very warm mitten for the daily trek through the snow to work.


These were knit holding together a strand of the mohair (burgandy) with Elann.com Peruvian Pure Alpaca (sherwood forest). Together, it gave a bulky weight, and and incredibly dense, warm, fuzzy fabric. These may well be the warmest knitted mittens ever - and much less bulky than my thrummed mitts.

The biggest FO of the year though, is my Ph.D. thesis. I was in Ottawa for my defense on December 13, and my presentation and oral exam went very well. The corrections were minimal, so I managed to get them all finished and submit the final copies before the week was out. It was all a bit anticlimactic really, as I had worked myself up into a nervous frenzy over it, and since we were heading into the holidays and many of my friends had already graduated and left, there weren't really many people around to celebrate with. More than anything, it brings me an enormous sense of relief to be finished. No more guilt over procrastinating, no more self-doubt about whether my work is good enough. It was wonderful, for the first time in 11 years, to be able to sit back this Christmas with my family and know that there would be no more term papers or exams, no more frantic late nights at the library, no more frustrating encounters with university administration (perhaps that last one is a little premature - I haven't got my diploma yet!). But I have regained a lot of peace and sanity these past couple of weeks, and hopefully I'm a nicer person to be around than I have been recently!

This year, the new year brings a lot of opportunity, as I have re-gained a lot of energy and free time to devote to non-academic pursuits. I plan to get myself off the couch a little more (off to research gym memberships this afternoon), and I will finally get around to checking out the class offerings at the Anna Templeton Centre, a fantastic textile arts centre just around the corner. My sister-in-law is even interested in taking a pottery class with me. I may do a little more volunteering, and I also have a little freelance writing project that I'm anxious to get working on.

I would like to wish everyone a very happy new year, and may your knitting continue to bring you joy in 2008.

FOs and the start of the tour

Ah, it feels good to finish something. Especially when it feels as though the unpacking and organizing of the new house will never end. A couple of little FO's to show today.

Here's the Swallowtail shawl, finally blocked and dried, and looking lovely if I do say so myself. I'm very happy with how this turned out.


And, at long last, I have finished the Tofutsies socks.

Ribby cable socks (my own design) in Tofutsies. 72 st on 2 mm needles.

I have been dragging these around with me since the summer, mostly as commuting knitting. Squeezed in between other projects, they seemed to drag on forever. The ribbing is K4 P2 cable2 P2, although the detail of it is rather obscured by the striping.


I can't say I'm particularly fond of this yarn. I heard good things about it, so I tried it when it became available at my LYS. To me, it's not much different from cotton, and I am not a fan of cotton socks. It's also fairly dense, and not very stretchy, so I think the socks would pool around my ankles after a couple of hours. These are going to be a Christmas gift for someone with slightly skinnier calves who I think will get a kick out of the colours.

In other business, I promised you a tour of the house. There still aren't many parts of it that are fit to be photographed. We have open and emptied most of the cardboard boxes at this point, but there is still a lot of clutter sitting around, each item waiting to be given its designated place. And we certainly haven't gotten around to details like hanging up the artwork. So, if you'll excuse the clutter, I'll show you my office:


Here's the part I know you'll love.... built-in yarn storage!


Have I mentioned that I love this place?

Now, I hope you'll bear with me for another couple of weeks of scarce postings. I'm off to Ottawa next week for my Ph.D. defense, and that means I have a presentation to prepare, studying to do, and general nervousness and self doubt to get over. Moreso than wanting to do well, I just want to get this over with and never have to think about it ever again. Wish me luck!

This cat can block...

or at least get in the way! Lassy and I blocked the Swallowtail Shawl yesterday. She was very helpful with setting out my blocking mats.


Then she chased a toy beetle under the mats.




And then, the all-important naptime.



This is her natural position, lounging importantly. She already knows that she owns the place.

Finally, I had to bar her from the room to get this blocked out. I hope she'll understand.


The new blocking wires are a godsend.

Traveling again

Whew. It feels as though I've hardly been home this fall. Following the late summer trip to Manchester, I had to go to western Newfoundland for a little field work. Then there was a quick weekend for meetings in Toronto (sorry to my Toronto friends, I didn't have a moment to spare this time! But I'll be back in February.), and now I'm in Calgary on a week-long training for work. I'll be back home for a couple of weeks before I have to head off to Ottawa again for my defense. Don't get me wrong, it's all been rather exciting. But sometimes I'd like to be able to see my husband in person and enjoy just lounging in the new house. Oh, the house? Right. I promised you more pictures. I have only one with me right now:

This is what hubby likes to call "Kelly in her natural habitat". That's the first test drive for knitting on the new couch. I'll have to take some more photos when I get home. Lassy, the cat, has finally joined us in our new home, so I will have to provide the long-awaited kitty photos soon too. Yup, it's a real knitting blog now. I have cat photos!

My flight to Calgary was ridiculously long, but the upside is that I managed to get more knitting done during the trip than I have in the past month. I started a Swallowtail shawl (the second one for me) as we took off from St. John's, and after several hours lounging around Halifax and then Toronto airports, I had the rosebud lace section finished by the time we touched down in Calgary. I've been working on the border in my spare moments since I arrived. Here's a shot of it - please excuse the ugly hotel chair!


It should be ready for blocking by the time I get home, and will likely be a Christmas present. The yarn is Knit Picks Shimmer (70% alpaca, 30% silk) in the Turquoise Splendor colourway. I'm not delighted with the stripy pooling that's happening - I was hoping for something a little more random - but I can certainly live with it. Re-knitting this pattern has been a really interesting exercise. The first Swallowtail shawl that I knit was my first project in laceweight yarn. I found it pretty challenging, especially at the beginning. It felt clumsy, it was hard to "read" my knitting, and the P5tog nups really tried my patience. It has several obvious mistakes in it. Now that I've been knitting lace for a while, this project is going really smoothly. I haven't frogged once - although as you can see, I'm still cautious enough to have put in a life line before the borders... can't be too careful. (Note to self - always carry dental floss when traveling!) Even the nups seem much more manageable. It shows me that my skills are definitely getting better. I have been thinking about tackling a major lace project, like a full-size shawl. This one has really caught my interest. Maybe in the new year.

It occurred to me recently that, in the craziness that has been my life lately, I completely missed the passing of my one-year blogiversary. I've been pretty bad with anniversaries in general - I have been away from Nick and out of the country for our first two wedding anniversaries! I'll mark the date on my calendar (for the blogiversary - I know when my anniversary is!) and try to do something special for next year.

I'll up again from Newfoundland next week. I've got a great little FO there to share.