Home

I'm home.

My voice was left somewhere close to the border of California and Oregon.

I had THE BEST time I've ever had on a trip.  EVER!

I'm kind of sad that it's over.

I'm going to bed.

See you tomorrow.

Boxing Day Guest Post

My sister posted this for me on my other blog, so I've copied and pasted it here for your reading enjoyment...

Hi! It’s Shannon posting for Darcy. I’ve had a couple bottles glasses of wine and a lot of turkey so do take your chances in reading!

Darcy and Sam are currently in a fancy-pants hotel in San Francisco….well….they aren’t actually IN the hotel right now, they are on their way to The Cheesecake Factory for a late dinner. (I am on the sofa in my pajamas drinking red wine and eating chocolate….in case you were wondering)

They’ve had gorgeous weather and lots of laughs and frivolity while the rest of us
have been dealing with relatives, leftovers and heartburn. 

Today they went on a 2 hour bus tour that extended itself to a freezing cold and unwelcome 6 hours due to a smash up on the Golden Gate Bridge….probably less fun for the participants of the pile-up than for Darcy & Sam but they were unimpressed and frozen nonetheless.

Tomorrow they are heading for some district in San Fran that I didn’t bother trying to remember the name of but it sounded similar to some famous Cuban dictator. Anyway, apparently there is yarn there and Sam was going to buy underwear. Like I said, I’ve had some wine, so that could be a bit inaccurate as far as usable information goes. 

Before Darcy revokes my password and rights to post here, I’ll leave you with some pictures from their trip.

Cheers!

Haven't knit a stitch still. Having a blast. Here is a pic to tide you over

Not one

Not one stitch knit. Didn't even take the knitting out of the back seat. Huh!

Having fun tho!

Enough? (Duplicate post)

I have just spent a week worrying about what items to bring to work on in the car and in the hotel for our trip… I think I finally have it figured out
Yarn and sweater in progress
Fingerless mitts that I cast on last night
Round silk scarf that is cast on
Yarn to make replacement pair of mittens cause I lost one
Yarn to make another pair of mittens and maybe a hat (in two colors)
Yarn to make yet another pair of mittens or maybe just a hat
33 pairs of circular knitting needles of varying lengths and sizes (not including the three pairs in the knitting in progress
11 crochet hooks of varying sizes
Around a dozen sets of dpn needles in varying sizes
Sewing kit with eight darning/sewing needles, two dozen stitch markers and other paraphanalia

I’m worried…. is that enough?  Well, I guess if it isn’t, I can always pick up more yarn in San Fran.

Ruined

 Okay, so it's no secret on here that I go see an accupuncturist named Dr. Ed.  I've declared him at the top of my list of people that helped to save me this summer.  He knows my innermost thoughts, fears, anxiety and hopes for the future.  He's more than a practitioner at this point, he's my friend.  I'm excited to tell him news and events that go on in my life and I know that if I'm having a bad day or in need of some soul help/cleansing, he's the guy to go to.  His office is one of the few 'safe places' that I had this year and I protect it vigourously. 

 

I've told Dr. Ed that I only refer him to people I know that I would feel comfortable with them knowing that I go there.  I've referred him to a couple of people and held back his contact info to many.  He understands this and equally protects my privacy and safe place.  I believe we all need a safe place...

 

So today, as I was referring him to someone I did feel comfortable with knowing, I heard footsteps running up behind me and one of the new-ish girls here ask me if I said 'Dr. Ed'.  It was at that moment that my stomach started to turn inside out and I wanted to hit the rewind button a million times.  Yes, I said.  Dr. Ed.  Well, then she wanted to discuss him, asked what he and I talk about, how long I'd been going etc... It's my biggest nightmare.  I don't want random people I know in my safe place.  I don't want her to mention to him that she knows me (which she certainly doesn't know a thing about me) and for them to even for a nanosecond discuss that they both know me.  I don't want Dr. Ed to say what a wonderful person he thinks I am (which I know he would because he loves me, as he's told me many times).

 

I sent him an email the second I got back (running) to my desk.  Please remember you are my safe place.  Please deny knowing me.  Please don't speak, whisper or breathe a word about me to someone else.  Please please PLEASE don't show even a crack in the armour of my safe place that someone else can climb into.

 

This situation is absolutely terrifying me for reasons unknown and potentially irrationally.  My mind is split between never going there again and knowing that I'd never give up that relationship.  There's a tearing feeling in my heart that I've ruined something pure and special and that it will never be the way it was ever again.  I've never protected something so ferociously as I protect my Dr. Ed space and now I don't know what to do.

 

What do I do?

 

Sad :(

Girlfriend

Happy Birthday To Me!

Yesterday was my best birthday ever!  Well, maybe not ever, I don't remember many of my little kid birthdays but in the last few years, by far the best day!
It started on Saturday, which was the day before my birthday.  My friend and I went down to the Button store (shocking, I know!) and played with the bin of buttons for a while and then went over to the discount fabric store next door and planned out some fabric for her to make a couple of skirts. 
We hit up the grocery store for some last minute baking ingredients and then we were off to home where we ate the world's supply of macaroni and cheese (bought from a gourmet cheese shop and consisting of emmental, guyere and something else... so delish!).  Our baking didn't exactly turn out... It's supposed to be a log and it looks like this:

Needless to say, we are not serving this at the work party this afternoon!

After our baking misadventure, we watched Elf on tv and then I went home.

On Sunday morning I was up with the birds at 6:20am.  I may have woken up my sister by sending text message at that hour!

At ten my two friends came over and we headed out to Coquitlam for a birthday breakfast with my mom, grandparents, sister, her man and the three of us.  It was very enjoyable. 

And then the birthday adventure began.  Sam and Kathleen and I decided to go to Horseshoe Bay for icecream.



We came home and had Red Robin for dinner and looked at pictures... the kitty wasn't used to us having company and not having his couch snuggle time so he made do and fell asleep on the counter... on the Red Robin take out bag.

We were in bed by 930... best. day. ever!

:)

Today I am 33 years old

 

Random bits

1.  Chocolates make me sick.  I can't eat filled chocolates... this makes me sad because even tho I shouldn't eat them, I do like them... until my stomach blows up like a balloon and I get a strong inclination to take my pants off at work... which is frowned upon at most places... especially in health care!

 

2. I'm addicted to stovetop potpourri... There's nothing I like more than a fresh pot of sliced lemons, oranges and clove stabbed apples with a sprig or two of rosemary and some cinnamon sticks.  Through the process of experimentation (read: overwhelming laziness) I've determined that if you top it up with water every day and cook it every day, it will last on your stove for up to two weeks.  And it smells super fantastic that whole time!

 

3.  My tattoo is 3/4 healed and I love it more and more every day.  It may be a placebo but it's brought me a sense of calm... I've mostly been accused of 'painting it on' and it 'not being real' but those people are what I like to call 'shut up!'.  Why would I fake a tattoo??

 

4.  My stomach is currently the size of a pumpkin and I"ve taken one leg of my pants off... so far no one's noticed!

 

5.  I'm all done my Christmas shopping!  That's right... ALL. DONE!  Now, before you start to firebomb my house, let me just say that I only had two people to shop for this year.  My sister and my dad.  And my sister's birthday... which incidentally is the same day as mine!  Weird right? ;)  I bought my sister all very cool things and was so excited for her to have them all that I've suggested we do our birthday AND Christmas exchange sometime before I leave for holidays... Hopefully that works out!

 

6.  I found something really cool that I'm really excited about but I can't say anything about it because it's one of the presents in #5!

 

7.  Saturday I'm going to hang out with a friend of mine and we're going to go to Richmond (remind me to pick up my suitcase!), Dressew, Button Button and then we're going back home to bake cookies and other junkfood style treats for our baking day on Monday.

 

8.  Sunday is my birthday.  I've never been less excited about my birthday as I am this year.  I'm most excited to give my sister her presents!  There's no party this year and no cake or balloons.  I'm okay with that.  There's also not a single Christmas ornament in my house, not a bough of evergreen or a red velvet ribbon.  Not a candle, a cookie or a wrapped Christmas package.  I'm actually quite astounded that it's Christmas in a week and a bit...

 

9.  Some how, even tho I've managed to keep my house really clean (okay... clean... really is a bit of an exaggeration) during this time of not feeling too well, the bathroom has evaded my touch... I have no choice but to clean it tonight... and the rest of the house... vacuum, scrub, clean... because tomorrow I'm going to see my beloved Dr. Ed and then I'm making THESE!  Chocolate chip cookie bars with a layer of caramel peanut butter inside!  I'm going to give the majority of them away... I have two people in particular that I'm making these for... and because they seem fun and I don't have anything else to do on Friday night.

 

10.  I think in the last few years I've actually become a pretty decent cook and baker.  I used to be TERRIBLE... as in celery salt in the cinammon buns, light garlic bread on fire terrible.  I'm not so bad now and people actually request things I make and/or the recipe for things I've made... it boggles my mind!

 

11.  I lost a mitten from my olive green arm warmers that I made.  I don't know how it happened and I'm pretty sad about it :(  I have yarn to make another pair, but I wanted two pairs, not one pair and a sad mitten.

 

12.  I made a new cowl last night.  Originally I had bought the yarn for a present for my Sam, but then we decided that we weren't exchanging gifts and he didn't want a black anything anyway... The stripe bit of yarn was a skein of core spun handspun that I bought at a craft fair last year... I originally tried to make it into a hat, but it was a bit goofy.  It worked perfectly in the gauge of the black yarn (Berocco Peruvia Quick) and I love the look.  It's very long... past my waistband, but looks pretty cool in one big loop.  It's also (obviously) long enough to loop around twice my neck as a nice warmer.  Next time I'd make it a LOT shorter... and I'm not sure how my math went that horribly wrong because I wanted it to be a short thick cowl... it's a long skinny one...

Endeavor to Persevere

I am absolutely thrilled!

I went back and forth on the orientation of this... the artist said it should be facing away from me, but after some research, soul searching and wearing the design on my wrist on a piece of saran wrap, I decided that I had pictured it facing me and that's how I wanted it.

So glad I went with my gut!

endeavor to persevere

Watch this!

This is 6 minutes and 58 seconds of your life you'll be glad you spent in front of the computer.  And don't forget to Smile!

Impulsive!

I'm sitting here in a tattoo studio waiting for my consultation for my new tattoo. I've wanted another tattoo since my last one healed 15 years ago. I always knew I would feel it when it was time. I never wanted to just pick a design out of a book or choose a random place on my body that seemed like a good tattoo spot. So I waited. A long time. And as I knew would happen, I had the feeling.

I thought about waiting until the 'time was right'. I thought that doing something awesome like a tattoo should be done at the perfect time. Much like I thought I should wait to knit a sweater until I was the perfect size. As we have now discovered, there is no perfect size. And there is no perfect time.  Such a time does not exist in life.  The only thing that exists is the time that is now.

Tattoos can be used to celebrate milestones, grieve the loss of loved ones or inspire you as you move through life... among many MANY other reasons... the reason to get a tattoo is as unique as the person getting it. 

So!  Thursday at 5pm, I am getting a new tattoo.  I've thought about it, mulled it, asked for advice and input and now it's happening.  I'm so excited, I can't wait!

PhotoShoot!

I met my sister for a coffee this morning and had a stack of handknits to give her.  The lighting was... well, let's just say that it was daylight and one can't be too choosey in December in the Northern Hemisphere, so we did a photoshoot in Starbucks.

 

Winter in Peru Armwarmers (pattern to come)

Lovisa chart on a hat

 

I'm a Barbie Girl triangle shawl with ribbon tie

 

Bulky Kitten Hat

All Five of the hats that I've made my sister.  Cables, lace, colorwork, pleats and a kitten.

Where do you sit?

I was sitting at my desk this morning appreciating listening to music, sipping my coffee and pinning things on pinterest... So I thought I'd give a little tour of where I am when I'm doing this...

First an unfettered picture and then below it, captions.  Everything on my desk (which is small, so there's limited space) is important to me or has meaning in some way.  No room for nonsense clutter in this space!

The Best Thing

The best thing about knitting is that there are no rules!  Oh, sure, you could have told the whole blogosphere (and by that I mean the 13 people who read this occassionally!) that you're obsessed with colorwork mittens... You could have either said straight out or implied very recently that you're going to have a pair of lined, full colorwork mittens done by the time you get to Alcatraz...

And then you can decide that the most important thing for your own well being, mental health and warm body parts is to get out the skein of sale yarn you bought on a whim, remember how much you love it and crank out one half of a pair of arm warmers in about four hours!  Yup!  You wanna know why?  Because there are no rules in knitting!  You can do what you want... when you want to... for whomever you want!

I present you my 'I see Machu Picchu' warmers.

If you want the pattern, I would be happy to write it up, just let me know.
These are made of Berocco Cuzco (now you get the name?) in the Olive colorway on Size US 8 needles.  The first mitten took 43 of the 100 grams of yarn.
I will get better pictures when the other one is done and I've washed and blocked them both.

And now I'm going to bed because I have been forbidden to nap anymore (omg, I know!) and prescribed an allotted sleeping time of 10pm-6am.  Yes, even on weekends. 

 

From my inbox this morning

It doesn't matter if the path you start down and the path you end on are the same as long as you start down a path.

A Smidgeon Obsessed

Uh... so I decided to challenge myself by doing something a bit different with my knitting.  I my friends, took on colorwork.  The first project wasn't that big... just one little fingerless mitt.  I figured if I sucked (altho, in knitting, that doesn't really happen to me, thank goodness), I wouldn't be out a ton of time... Then I knit the matching pair and I got good tension, both mittens were exactly the same size and they fit perfectly!

Then I decided to knit a matching hat.  There was no pattern for the hat but I winged it, having already knit about 194,693,236 hats already.  That worked out too!  I mean, I knit the whole thing a bit too small for my head but I'm sure it'll fit 'someone' and the colorwork was just as successful!

THEN, I realized that I wanted to knit a pattern I've been dreaming about since I started knitting.  A beautiful traditionally shaped mitten with a gorgeous colorwork pattern in one of my favorite designs in nature... Fiddleheads.  

I mean seriously!  Look how beautiful!  These are not mine, but there's not much to see on mine yet...  I did want to knit mine in this exact colorway but the yarn is no longer available.  I threw a TANTRUM last week... there was crying and everything!  Mine will be a nice light gray background with beautiful teal patterning.  And they are lined inside.  Mine will be lined with a charcoal gray 100% alpaca, because why the heck not!  They're going to be amazing!

Folks.... I'm smitten!  I'm only half way through the first mitten and I've already started scoping out Ravelry to find other more wonderful mitten patterns to make!

And now it's up to you.... to let me know which ones you think I should knit next!  SO EXCITING!

Finally Finished and Just Started

Good morning!

 

Here's a parade of pictures from the hat I just finished.  Forgive the quality... living here in Vancouver means that it's dark when I leave for work and dark when I get home... so taking photos is pretty difficult.  The hat was very well received and fits perfectly, which I'm so releived about because it was touch and go in my head.  I think it's going to be very well used.  When my friend tried it on, he only had it on for less than a minute and declared it 'very warm'.  It was knit at a very tight guage, partially by accident... that means that even tho it felt like a knitting black hole, it's also very warm and should keep the wind and rain out!

 

Also, a progress picture of my first Fiddlehead mitten.  It's made out of Cascade 220 but it's so soft and squishy thanks to the floats across the back.  When I get the alpaca lining in there, it's going to be like heaven on my hands!  It's pretty slow going tho... I'm hoping to have the outer mitts knit by the time we hit the road to San fran.  I'm going to block them first and then pick up the lining stitches.  My plan is that I can knit the lining in the car if it comes to that and then wear them in SF. 

More pictures as they grow... they're a lot of fun to knit... each round goes so quick it seems...

 

 

On a lighter note

Thank you to everyone who read and emailed or commented on the last blog.  Also to those of you that I had the pleasure of speaking to in person.  I'm not very good at showing my weakness, altho from what I understand, everyone has them... even invincible me.  Thanks for taking care of that part of me last week!

On a lighter note, I indulged in some retail therapy yesterday.  Glenda and I went downtown to go to one very terrible craft fair and one pretty awesome craft fair.  On the way we HAD to stop in at Button Button and Dressew of course!  The unfortunate part of the entire day was that it was torrentially downpouring on us the entire time and we had to park pretty far away from all the places we went.  By the time we got to the coffee shop, we were wet, freezing and starving!  Glenda treated me to my first eggnog (skinny) latte of the season and it was divine!  The skinny means that it's half eggnog and half milk. The perfect combo if you ask me... I prefer my food and drink to have more of a 'scent' than a flavor so it was nice to have the 'scent' of eggnog but not be consuming piles of heavy dairy/sugar calories!

Anyway, we went to Button Button and sat in front of the big bin digging for 15 cent buttons.  We both managed to find some awesome ones and we were pretty lucky to find a decent amount of multiples too!

I also bought some bug buttons.  A real crab and a real scorpion suspended in epoxy.  So cool!  Not sure what I'm going to put them on tho... they're each between the size of a quarter and loonie and they need to be front and center for sure!

We also went to Dressew and I bought ribbon to modify my big pink squishy shawl (which is currently blocking) and some more buttons.

  In other crafting news, I've started and gotten about half way on a gorgeous hat for a friend.  I somehow managed to convince him that this gorgeous dark cherry red color would be amazing on him and more interesting than black... It really is going to be beautiful and it's very hard to take a color accurate photo so you'll have to forgive me.  The yarn is Indigo Moon fingering weight in WestCoast Sunset colorway and it's divine!  I'm holding it double to get closer to a light worsted and make sure that there's no pooling or flashing... 
The pattern is a combination of a few patterns.  1x1 twisted ribbing for the brim and a P8xKtbl1 twisted 'rib'.  I'm knitting it inside out because who wants to purl that much!  So I'm knitting 8 and purling 1 through the back loop.  The pattern I'm basing the decreases on decreases pretty fast so you have to knit to 6.5 inches from the cast on edge rather than the standard 5" before decreases.  I hope this fits... I do NOT want to rip out or redo twisted ribbing... really!