Knitting Happenings

Well, some knitting is taking place over here at Casa Ripley. I've cracked open a ball of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn that was languishing in my stash since I purchased it at a Boxing Day Sale held by one of our LYSs. I'm making my first pair of Monkeys. I figured the thousands of Ravelers who've knitted them can't be wrong, and I'm giving them a shot. These are for me, which is kind a switch, seeing as almost all my knitting has been for other people lately. The one downside to this yarn is a lack of nylon content, but I'll reinforce with some woolly nylon and see how that works out. I'm almost finished the first lace repeat, and I'm having a wonderful time knitting these socks!

I've got to seam up and add the buttons to the Saartje's booties, especially since the baby they're for has arrived. Additionally, I need to get his sweater done and off to London. I'm really having a hard time getting this stuff done, and I'm thinking I need to design a reward system involving the Monkeys. For example: I force myself to seam a booty, I get to do 5 rows of the Monkey. Or maybe, I knit a repeat of the sweater, and I get to knit 3 rounds on the Monkey. 

I've resumed attending the knitting circle at my favorite LYS, and am really enjoying making a few hours in my week to enjoy knitting and chatting with the other knitting ladies. Also, I've attended two salsa classes so far, and it's a good time. I wish my Sweetie was attending with me, but alas, salsa may be his favorite condiment but apparently it's not his favorite dance. In spite of this, I found myself powerless to resist this lovely Arequipa sock yarn which I'm going to knit into socks for him. Eventually. It's so soft, being wool, alpaca and nylon. 

Something about this fall has really brought on a case of Sock Fever. In addition to the Monkeys and the planned socks for Sweetie, I stash enhanced and ordered a giant skein of the Lettuce Lesson (which I already own in sportweight), in the wool/nylon base yarn SeeJayneKnit uses. I'm trying to exercise control, but it's a challenge these days. I find myself skulking around Etsy, looking at sock yarn with lust in my heart. 

My last piece of knitting to share is a drop stitch scarf I knitted for my swap partner for an Odd Ducks of Ravelry Brothers Grimm swap. I had a devil of a time photographing this thing, and have really only one half decent picture to show you. Part of the problem is that I'm always taking pictures at night when I blog, or in the case of the scarf, early in the morning before I ran to the post office to send it off to Nevada. This scarf was ridiculously difficult for me. I unintentionally dropped stitches, and couldn't figure out how to fix them. Fortunately, wiser knitters than I were willing to help me (thanks Pearl, and to the kind woman at Mad About Ewe in Nanaimo, who helped me when my ferry knitting when horribly wrong). It's the simplest pattern in the world, but it was an ill-starred one for me. 

In other news, I'm thinking of giving drop spindling a whirl (literally and figuratively, I suppose). The only thing stopping me is a lack of time. Maybe I'll save the spinning for December, as a reward for completing the semester's coursework. 

I have a few more posts planned for this week, so there should be a little more activity over here, homework permitting. Thanks for reading!

Swap Goodness and Yarn Porn

As promised, here are some pictures of the treasures I received in the Brothers Grimm swap through the Odd Ducks Ravlery Swap. Silkydoll is the purveyor of all this goodness. Thanks silkydoll! 

She sent me a lovely hat, which reminds me of Snow White and Rose Red. The green reminds me of the forest, and the red nubbins are like little rosebuds:

As if she is psychic, she sent me lovely stitch markers which arrived only a day after I'd been bemoaning my lack of cute stitch markers. These are like little berries and are so sweet:

She also sent me some tea. I haven't tried any of these flavours yet, and with the advent of fall I'll definitely be enjoying them soon.

But there was another treat in the mail too. I received a lovely skein of the Lettuce Lesson that I purchased from See Jayne Knit. This picture doesn't fully capture the lovely colours of this oh-so-soft skein of sportweight baby merino. If you've not yet checked out Jayne's lovely yarns get over there! I don't know what it is, but lately I can't get enough of the colour green. 

Speaking of which, I think I'll be giving this site a fall makeover soon, so don't be surprised if you find a different look next time you stop by! I hope you like it!

Creativity and Confidence

September is here, and with it has come the first fingers of fall. The nights and mornings are cool, yet in the middle of the day it's easy to feel overdressed. Shades of brown, red and gold are creeping into the green palette of the trees, and the sky is beginning to take on the deep blue that is so unique to autumn. September means the start of school for me, and tonight was my first class. It's a class on teaching written composition, and as students we are required to engage with the writing process ourselves by doing a substantial amount of writing and workshopping of our own stuff. 

This both thrills and terrifies me. I've been edging towards reclaiming my love of writing, and the process of writing for a while. This blog is a place that has felt like a safe first step. I like to knit, and the idea of keeping a knitting blog didn't seem too onerous. I also felt that in addition to getting my writing feet wet it would allow me to document my projects. One of my writing goals is to develop a voice by writing regularly. I feel that I've been moderately successful in this endeavour to date. On the plus side, I'm writing somewhat regularly for a public audience, which is a big deal for me. On the minus side, I do feel like I censor myself partly because of the public nature of the blog. 

Recently I've found myself hesitating to post, or feeling like if I do I need to flagellate myself for not providing enough knitting content. I've never been successful at knitting during the summer months, and even the motivation of the Ravelympics was not enough to get me going. My cousin's baby is due in two weeks, and the first sweater is not finished, but I have made progress with it. My attempt at finishing my Sizzle has not been successful, though I did spend some time with it in August. And while we're on the self-flagellation bandwagon, perhaps I can note that I'm running late on my Brothers Grimm Ravelry swap. 

However, reading Materfamilias' recent blog post got me thinking. Why are we so quick to criticize ourselves, particularly around creativity? It seems all too easy to beat oneself up about any creative endeavour, and it's certainly a skill I possess. This does seem kind of antithetical to the creative process though. For me, nurturing creativity is a bit like trying to coax a reluctant kitty from under a sofa. The process would likely go a lot better if I didn't lose patience with myself for letting the cat get under the sofa in the first place, and beating myself up for not luring her our more quickly. 

So, here is one of my fall goals, set out for all to see. I'm going to try to post regularly on this blog, and I'm going to try not to beat myself up about what I haven't accomplished. I'm going to try to celebrate what I have accomplished, and I'm going to try to convince the damn cat to come out from under the couch by showing her how much more fun it is out here. 

Tomorrow, when I have some sunlight to work with, I'll take pictures of my lovely swap package, and some amazing yarn which just arrived courtesy of a wonderful Etsy yarn vendor! Woolly goodness! 

PS. The pictures are from a recent visit to the Nitobe Memorial Garden at UBC.

Good News, and Knitting Too!

Happy days! We found out that the dog does not have cancer. He has pancreatitis, which is treatable and we have him on a trail of drugs now to do just that. Also, he was able to get the majority of his stitches out but as there are still some located in a location that male dogs find, ahem, tempting, shall we say, his cone stays on. He's managing to get around it pretty well though, and is hoovering up crumbs like his usual self. 

Also, I realized that my cousin's baby is only 7 weeks away from arriving, and that I need to get my knit on. No, I haven't yet darned the ends in on that darn second bootie, but I did cast on to the Cache Coeur (Ravelry link- sorry non-members), a very simple baby sweater from Ashford's magazine The Wheel. I'm using Sandesgarn Sisu, and am impressed with it so far. It has excellent stitch definition, and superwash with a bit of nylon, so it should be good for a mom who doesn't knit and might not want to handwash baby things. 

It's going well so far, and I think I'll try to complete the BSJ I have planned as part of the Ravelympic challenge in the Baby Dressage event. I also hope to complete my Sizzle in the WIP Wrestling match. It seems like a fun way to try and tackle some of the knitting I'm scandalously behind on!

Troubles with Ripley

The last few weeks have been a series of ups and downs. On the up side, we went to the interior for the weekend for Sweetie's aunt's fiftieth birthday party. We were in the desert, and  it was wonderfully hot and dry. Extreme heat is so relaxing at times; it's as if the stress just gets beaten into submission by the blistering sun and hot winds. It was 40 degrees Celsius during the day, and still 35 degrees at nine o'clock at night!

Our drive there was a little bit longer than anticipated, as we opted to take the scenic route getting there. We missed a crucial turn, and were faced with a shocking "Road Ends" sign on the highway. Upon discussion with a helpful local in the tiny collection of houses we ended up in, we discovered that we'd missed a crucial turnoff. I couldn't fathom how that had happened, until we backtracked the requisite 35 minutes and found out the turnoff was the site of a police incident of some sort when we first passed by. I suppose the moral of the story is that rubbernecking is not just tacky, but may be hazardous to one's ability to navigate. 

Once we made the turn we discovered we were actually required to drive over a mountain to get to our destinations. This meant that the next 80 km took over 2 hours to drive, what with 13% graded hills! We were late arriving at the party, but fortunately there was still plenty of crab to eat. I really prefer the taste of crab to lobster, and one of the great things about Sweetie's family is that they are big crab afficionados.  

The knitting news, I'm afraid, is meagre. I have finished the second bootie, but have not darned the zillions of ends in yet. I have purchased the buttons, but not yet attached them. I have the yarn and patterns for two baby sweaters, but have not yet cast on yet. I have the offer of crochet lessons from an expert crocheter, but haven't gotten it together enough to email her. I'm going to try and get my crafting stuff together, but it's a bit of a challenge at the moment. The weather here has been hot, finally, and this really puts me off touching wool. Also, I am now teaching more than full time, and still working as a research assistant. I really feel like I have very little time to do anything for myself these days. 

The other big concern is my dog Ripley. Over the past month, he had three separate episodes of throwing up, just for a day or so. Still, by the third week in a row, we decided he needed to go to the vet. Changing his diet hadn't done any good.  The vet x-rayed him, and discovered he had a rotten molar, kidney and bladder stones, an enlarged liver, and a compressed disc in his back. As a result, on Friday of last week he underwent surgery. The vet removed two teeth, and biopsied his liver and small intestine. It turns out there is an unusual thickening of the small intestine where the pancreatic duct enters it. He felt it was too tricky to resect himself, and just did the biopsy. He also removed the bladder stones, which were sent off for analysis. 

So, the good news is that he isn't full of metastisizing cancer, which was my biggest fear. The bad news is I don't know what the biopsy results will bring. The sad fact of life with pets is that their lives are so much shorter than ours, and having the love of a pet means having to lose that piece of your heart. However, this is sounding quite morose, and I'm trying to be hopeful. Ripley is home from the vet, and hopefully on the road to recovery. He's wearing a cone, and has a huge incision on his belly, from his ribs to his penis. We had to call the vet to adjust the dosage of the pain meds they gave us, as they weren't lasting long enough. He goes in tomorrow to have his pain patch removed and his incision checked. He's also on antibiotics. I'll spare you any further gory details, but let's just say it's been stressful dealing with a dog who is in pain. As I type this, he's lying on the foot of the bed snoozing, which is great as he's been in a bit of discomfort tonight. 

This is not the usual subject matter for this blog, but I feel I owe you an explanation for the paucity of content. Please send a few good thoughts for Ripley out to the universe, if you feel the urge. He's been with us for almost 4 years. We adopted him from the Boston Terrier Rescue on his sixth birthday. He loves eating cheese, swimming, and playing tug of war. He's a quirky buddy, but his googly-eyed charm has won him a place in our hearts that is bigger than I could ever have anticipated. 

Saartje's Booties and World Wide Knit In Public Day

The booties have begun. I've finished the first bootie, and have the second bootie underway. They do knit up fairly quickly, and as others have noted, there are a lot of ends to darn in at the end. I thought about doing the Fleegle method, but I have only four dpns in the appropriate size, having lost one of my set of 5. Sigh. I did find a helpful tutorial on making button loops over at My Fashionable Life which made doing the button loops managable. I've made the requisite trip to the local button store appropriately named Button Button, and now I just need to finish bootie number 2 and attach the buttons. In the meantime, here is the first bootie:

Yesterday I went to one of our local World Wide Knit in Public Day events, held at Kits Beach, one of our local urban beaches. By the time I left there were 18 knitters and crocheters in attendance. A number were Ravelers, and it's always nice to meet people from Ravelry in real life. I'll try and hunt up everyone's blogs for a future post connecting to local knitters. Raveler Chrissythegreat has a podcast available on itunes. Kim Werker, editor of Interweave Crochet was there as well, working on a lovely scarf of Malabrigo laceweight in bright pinks. Seeing a number of cool crochet projects that were on the go further strengthened my resolve to learn to crochet this summer. There were a number of lovely people attending, some of whom I will have to try to identify later, as I didn't get their names. A big thank you to Rachel for organizing the event. 

The sun even made an appearance from time to time, which made sitting on the lawn a lot more pleasant! It was a real treat to meet new fiber people, and see what everyone was making. Only one of my close friends knits, so most of the time I don't talk about knitting. I hadn't realized how much I missed it. Due to my crazy schedule I haven't been to a stitch and bitch in ages, so this get together was really welcome. 

Seattle, and Yarn, Luscious Yarn....

Sweetie and I are back from Seattle. It was my first time in the city, and I really enjoyed it. We visited the famous (justifiably!) Pike Place Market, and had delicious chowder and a crab roll. What a delicious lunch! We wandered the market, ogling fresh seafood and the work of local artisans of all kinds.



We followed this up with some wonderful mini doughnuts.



Both of us love exploring new cities on foot, and we traversed downtown Seattle in every direction. Some of the highlights for me were the Elliot Bay Book Company. The truly great independent bookstore is a disappearing breed; this only makes me appreciate places like the Elliot Bay Book Co. even more. It is spacious, with high ceilings and cedar shelves reaching high overhead. The selection of books is incredible, and both Sweetie and I found a few novels. They also had a great selection of craft books, including knitting books. It was a struggle not to have a financial hemorrhage, but I managed it.

It was a pleasure to visit So Much Yarn as well, but I learned something I should probably have figured out in advance: don't bring your sweetie to the yarn store with you. I didn't really have enough time to do justice to the store, but it was a lovely place and the people working there seemed very friendly. It's definitely worth a visit.

We both really enjoyed the Capital Hill neighbourhood, and wound up there a few times during our trip. You can walk there from downtown in about 20-25 minutes, but be warned that there is a large hill involved! Alternatively, you could catch the bus (the 10 runs from First Avenue up to Capital Hill). The buses in the downtown core are free until 7 pm, which is pretty great. Capital Hill is outside the free zone, but only barely. You could easily walk from the last free stop if you wanted.

We had a fantastic lunch at Pho Cyclo (406 Broadway East), which we'd scoped out the previous night and which was the most delicious Vietnamese food I've ever eaten. Everything was incredibly fresh. I had pineapple-marinated shrimp on vermicelli and it was amazing. A lot of Vietnamese food I've eaten in Vancouver tends to be on the greasy side, with lackluster sprouts acting as filler. Both Sweetie and I agreed the food at Pho Cyclo was head and shoulders above any Vietnamese food we'd eaten at home. The one complaint we had was that the service, while prompt, was totally unsmiling. The food more than makes up for it though.

There is great service at Edie's Shoes though. The very pleasant salesperson put up with me admirably while I debated over two pairs of sneakers. One was a British Racing Green pair of Campers, which made me imagine myself as a gal in the 1950's riding my bicycle in a skirt and cardigan, and the other was a pair of Asics Tigers in olive green with orange accents, which had more of a 1970's track star feel. Here is the pair I chose:



Apparently I would prefer to adopt the persona of a 1950's college girl. Well, I did just reread Franny and Zooey...

Velouria is a great little store in Ballard which features the work of local designers, and which boasts a charming proprietress. One of my friends recommended Ballard to me, and Sweetie and I stopped there this morning on our way out of town. There are a number of cute shops and cafes only a few blocks away from a stretch of industrial waterfront. I wish I'd had a bit more time to explore the area, and would definitely return on another visit.

The one big downside to our trip was the weather. Both Vancouver and Seattle have been experiencing unseasonably cold weather this month. It rained almost all day Monday, and then became extremely windy in the evening. On Tuesday, it rained and was grey. Today was.... grey. And cold. I really hope that summer decides to arrive sometime soon, preferably this week while I'm still on holiday!

I've decided to start the Saartje's Booties. I'm using this yarn, which is Dream in Color Smooshy in a colourway called Beach Fog. It's a lovely mix of aquas and greens, which should be perfect for a baby of either gender. I do know that one of the fall arrivals is a boy, so this is a good thing.



Also, now that she's received her package, I can share the picture of the yarn I bought from local dyer Yummy Yarns and sent to my swap partner as part of our Neil Gaiman swap on Ravelry. That wasn't my original plan for this yarn, but I was late getting my package out, and decided my swap recipient's patience should be rewarded with some lovely yarn. The colourway is called Ravage Me. Wowza! However, like an idiot I forgot to take a picture of the Emerald Green Handwarmers I knit her using Berrocco Ultra Alpaca in a burgandy. This pattern is a a lovely one, and only had to be modified slightly to accommodate the thickness of the Ultra Alpaca. I love knitting with Ultra Alpaca. It combines the softness of alpaca with the pricepoint of wool.



Next post: Saartje's Booties!