Harrow Fair

A couple of weekends ago - Labour Day weekend, in fact - I paid my second annual visit to the Harrow Fair.

I wasn't terribly surprised to find that not a whole lot has changed in the past year.  There were the same giant sunflowers.

 

The same very, very tall sunflowers.

I did notice the Lego category, which was new to me.

And last year, I don't remember seeing quite so many categories for flower arrangements.  They included 'Best single red rose in a white vase - 10" division', and the one below, 'People put flowers in the darnedest things'.

Those 'darned' things included a soup can, an old banjo or guitar, and a bedpan.

The critters were pretty much the same.  Though I'd imagine they were the next generation, as they were advertised for sale by the pound in many cases.

 

  

 

I didn't see one of these last year - a display on knitting and crocheting.

I guess I was still developing my 'fibre art radar' last Labour Day.

Unfortunately, the turkey was not one of little Kiona's highlights.  While she found it hilarious when I or her mum would 'gobble' at her, it was not at all funny when a giant, ugly bird did it face-to-face.

This was just before things got a little teary.

Which leads me to the biggest difference between last year and this year.

Last year (please note bulge):

 

And this year (please note bulge is now walking and has developed high levels of cuteness):

 

Who knows what next year will bring.

The Short Life of a Cute Cookie

My coworker is pregnant.

I found a ridiculously cute pregnant-lady cookie when visiting the Queen of Tarts a couple of weeks ago. I presented the cookie the next day.


Now, this is a friend who absolutely hates to use the dishcloths I knit for her, because she doesn't want them to get dirty. I figured the cookie would never get to achieve its cookie destiny, and would instead be kept on a shelf and admired as a cute memento.


I did not account for pregnancy hunger. Twenty minutes after gifting the cookie, I was informed that it was not long for this world, and if I wanted pictures, I'd better come running with my camera.

The carnage was somewhat disturbing. I think I got an arm.


Next up will be pics of my (relatively minor, I must admit) Knitter's Frolic haul.

Pumpkins!

At the last minute, a friend invited me to help give out candy at her house. So we carved a couple of pumpkins this afternoon at work, then ran to her place to roast the seeds (mmm... salty) and start dishing out candy.

I think they both turned out great. I haven't carved a pumpkin in years. It was a lot of fun, even if it did take some intense scrubbing to get all the guts off my arms.
Mine was the first - the one that (hopefully) looks like Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Most of my Hallowe'ens since I've been on my own haven't involved much festivity at all, so this was a fun break from lack-of-tradition.

Happy Hallowe'en!

WIP It

It's about time for a goofy, half-done sock picture, I think.



This is my second Christmas knitting project. This is the first sock of Coupling, from Knitty. Sorry for the horrid flash-shot, but it was night time and I was lazy.




I'm knitting this in Cranberry sock yarn from Sunnyside Ellen's Etsy shop. I like the feel of this yarn - nice and soft and kind of smooshy. It's a semi-solid, and I'm not quite sure yet how I feel about the bits and wisps of white that come through here and there. I'm reserving judgement until I see the whole sock, and whether the white bits disrupt the look.



This is a toe-up pattern, written to be knitted on two circulars. I don't have the right size circs, and am too frightened of another minor spending spree to go shopping for them. So I am adapting the pattern to knit it on my trusty dpns. I've never done this kind of thing before, but all seems to be going well so far. I started out making Widdershins at first, but didn't like the chunky look of it, and so ripped back. But I did really like the toe of the Widdershins pattern, so I stuck to that when I restarted using the Coupling pattern. For me, this is wild and uncharted territory. Using different pattern pieces here and there, all willy nilly - bedlam!























My first Christmas project is one for my brother - I'm making the Dark Mark Scarf, from Storm Moon Knits. This is my first illusion knitting project. It's rather addictive - I just want to keep knitting so that I can see the Dark Mark emerge. I was a little concerned that I hadn't used a bright enough green colour, but I asked my brother what he thought (yeah, I suck at keeping some things a secret) and he liked the stealth of it.

The knitting has stalled a bit now that I'm on the middle stretch, which involves no stealth, mystery, or illusion whatsoever. Thank goodness for socks.

The Joys (and sorrows) of Giving

Tomorrow, I'm headed down to Niagara Falls, to attend the wedding of a friend. The wedding is being held in Eastdell Estates winery, in, of course, "the heart of wine country". I love any opportunity to get back to the Niagara region, and I hope to have lots of wonderful pictures to share. And wine. Which may or may not be shared.

The couple getting married are one of those hard-to-buy for couples, as they've already got an established house. So I wanted to get them something useful, but a bit different. Something unique and beautiful. I clicked my way over to Etsy, and found the perfect thing.

This is from oladesign, on Etsy. As soon as I saw it, I fell in love with it. I almost ordered two of them.

I think maybe I should have. Because it's just as beautiful in person as it was on the website.

The set was a little bit smaller than I thought it would be, but that was more my mistaken assumptions than anything. The colours are just as vivid, and the scale makes it almost cute, but definitely not 'cutesy'.

The box isn't wrapped yet. Just sayin'.

In yarny news, I've still dealing with this new sock addiction. I can't seem to function if I don't have one on the needles. I've done three pairs so far - the first was toe-up feather and fan, the second was a pair of Jaywalkers, and the third was the lace-ish monkey pattern. I decided it was about time for me to do a plain-Jane, normal sock, with no frippery. Perfect for a self-striping yarn.

I'm really enjoying knitting this. Not worrying about following a stitch pattern is giving me the opportunity to really pay attention to the architecture of the sock (sockitecture?) and understand better how all these instructions work together to make a three dimensional sock, complete with heel flap and gusset and whatnot.

And! These will be my first socks that will not be all for me. When I started them, they were going to be mine, but I've come to understand that there is someone who needs them more than me. And so I am happy to know now that these will be handed over to someone who really, really needs handknit comfort right now. You may know who you are.

Having a recipient in mind makes the knitting more joyful for me. Of course, it also makes me more critical of my small errors, but I'm hoping that blocking will help with that. (I've never blocked a sock before, though, so who knows?) The cheerful stripes are multiplying quickly, and I hope to have the first sock done, and the second well started by the end of this weekend.

Great Time on a Great Lake

It's probably about time I finished up with my Labour Day tales.

On Sunday, aside from giving long-hidden gifts to (late!) babies, I also got the chance to go to a country fair and to go sailing for (I think) the first time in my life.

The fair was the Harrow Fair, one of the biggest agricultural fairs in the area. We got there late in the last day of the fair, so we missed out on some of the displays and exhibits, but we still got to see some interesting critters.

I had no idea feathers could be curly.

Pheasants are pretty! (and shy)

The gaze of a chicken can be intimidating.

If there was any yarn about, we missed it, sadly. We did see some sheep, but they weren't saying anything useful.

After wandering for a bit, and having the requisite grease and sugar in the forms of fresh fries with malt vinegar and fresh squeezed lemonade topped with chunks of strawberry, we headed to nearby Colchester harbour, and waited for Jodi's parents to sail in from the lake on the Dolphin.

We clambered aboard, both Jodi's mum and I casting nervous glances at Jodi's midriff. Jodi's mum declared that we were not going far from shore, in case of the sudden development of anything like labour pains.




It turned out that there really wasn't enough wind to do any decent sailing. But we had a very nice time just kind of tooling around near the shore of Lake Erie.



This was a great way to end the summer. And in a lame effort to tie in some kind of fibre content, I learned that the sails have little pieces of yarn tied all over, to give you an idea of how the air is moving.



Everyone loves yarn.

Labour Day Hijinks Continued

Sunday was another great day. It started with my finally getting to give this.



When Jodi told me she was expecting, I started to look for the perfect blanket pattern for her baby. Jodi likes strong, bold colours, and tends toward the non-traditional. So I didn't want to make anything in pastels or neutrals.

Boy, howdy did I find an alternative.



Pattern: Wild Stripes Blanket from Knitty's summer 2005 issue.

Changes: None, really. The yarn was Knit Picks merino style, as called for in the pattern. I love these colours, and the yarn is lovely to work with. The knitting, which I though was taking forever somewhere around the middle, was really straightforward. Maybe even a little coma-inducing, if it weren't for the frequent changes in colour. My size turned out to be a bit bigger than the pattern said it should be, but still a very good size. The backing is a slightly heavy cotton, from Fabricland. I chose to use the green piping to match.


The sewing of the knitted portion to the fabric backing and through the piping was rather brutal. But I knew if I put it down, I'd never pick it up again, so I began one Saturday morning, and finished late that night. The embroidery, which I thought would take only a couple of hours (I'm kind of dumb that way) took another few days.

But I do love the way it turned out in the end. Totally worth the time and boredom and pain.

Speaking of pain, I am suffering an aggravating end-of-summer cold, and I am a wimp about being sick. So I'm going to bed - further Labour Day adventures to come!

Party with the Babies

This was a good way to finish off the summer. I spent this weekend down in Windsor and environs, spending lots of time with friends, and a bit of time with family.

On Saturday, my high school gang of friends met up for a wee shindig at Carly's house, where we got to pass around the babies and the cookies. Sometimes both at the same time.



The bigger kids were eager to help with the more difficult tasks, like eating.



And boy, the twins are getting big so fast!



Their dad's pretty much the same size as before.

Tomorrow, my day in southern Essex county!

Gifts

When I think of good gifts, I often think of the story of Trudy's best gift.

Part of the reason the story of Trudy's gift has stayed with me for so long, and why it's always waiting in the front of my memory, is the pure loveliness, and thoughtfulness of the gift. And part of the reason is, as so often happens, due to the circumstances of my hearing the story.

It was the summer I spent in Scotland. In many ways, and for many reasons, that was not a good summer. It was the summer when I learned the hard lesson that family may be obligated to love you, but that doesn't mean that they will like you. Or you, them. It was a very lonely, isolating summer, and so very far from home. I don't regret that summer - life lessons, part of me and all that - but it was hard. Even the weather was the worst anyone could remember (yes, even for Scotland). It was dreich and dreary, and wet and cold and miserable, and the gloom took the place of the sunshine deep inside, making the white nights longer, and the lonely evenings that much more grim.



There were some exceptions - wonderful exceptions - to the gloom. And I came away with stories to laugh about, and to remember some sunshine. One of the brightest spots of that summer was the week I spent on a Haggis Backpackers tour. It was only a few days - the five day tour, I think it was, and many of the places we went, I'd been before. But never like that - with a driver and guide who was so full of enthusiasm and humour, and a group of people who were genuinely there only to have a good time. It was a diverse group.

It's funny the things you remember. We were in a little yellow bus whose name was Daphne. There were 23 people in my group. I was the only Canadian. There were 4 or 5 Kiwis, a few English people, 5 or 6 people from Singapore, one American (Tristan, from Hawaii) and Trudy, who was from Zimbabwe. We became friends on the trip, sitting together on the bus most days, and sharing toothpaste and teaspoons. We had a similar sense of humour, and she helped me to be more open and willing to be silly in the name of fun.

It was alongside Trudy and Tristan that I held my head in the Sligachen River for ten seconds in hopes of gaining the prolonged youth and beauty promised in a fairy tale of long ago. And it was with them that I wandered among the bleak hillocks and markers of Culloden. Trudy told stories of her manservant and her glass collection, and I shared the wonder that is Home for a Rest by Spirit of the West. I educated Trudy in Canadian beverages, too, when she argued that Canada Dry wasn't a ginger ale (it's the champagne of ginger ales!). She scoffed when we saw "Victoria Falls" and we all laughed together when one of the Kiwis was scolded by his girlfriend for 'staying up late with the sheilas' one night in a hostel in Drumnadrochit. We all climbed over the barrier into the grounds of Urquhart castle late one night, and wandered the eerily lit ruins on the shore of Loch Ness, serenaded by a mysterious, disappearing stranger playing a flute in the shadows.

And all twenty three of us crowded down into one tiny, dark stone dungeon that was quite literally no more than a hole in the stony ground of the Isle of Skye, and heard the story of Hugh the pirate, who was locked in that small space and left to die, with a plate of salted beef and an empty water pitcher.

It was just the kind of friendship and camaraderie that develops only on a five day backpacking trip through Scotland. No one stayed in touch, but I know that we all remember.



And one day we were talking about gifts. And Trudy told her story about her best gift. She had a copy of Jane Eyre that she had treasured for as long as she could remember. It was a well-loved book, with tattered pages covered with small notes and thoughts, and was very dear to her. And one day, her friend (a boy-friend, and I often wonder whether that hyphen disappeared later) snuck the book out of her room.



She didn't notice, and knew nothing of the pilfering, until her birthday some days or weeks later, when she was presented with a copy of Jane Eyre. It was in a lovely binding, and her name was embossed in gold in the corner of the leather cover. She was pleased to get the book, but it would never replace her beloved old friend. And then she opened it, and saw the same old, tattered and worn pages, and her little notes and dreams.

What a wonderful gift - for someone to know your heart well enough to take your thoughts and dreams and hopes and have them carefully bound and restored, so that you can continue to carry them through life without fear of losing a single page.

The Elephant in the Room

I finished a little project a couple of weeks ago, and am glad that I can finally share it now that it's been gifted.

This is Eloise.

This is the first toy I've knitted, and I really enjoyed it. I liked the feeling of bringing a little creature into being. When I stitched the second eye into place, I felt like I was meeting a new little person. And her name was Eloise, for some reason. (Have I mentioned that I live above the garage? It may be I am affected by fumes.)

Eloise is knit in Knitpicks Shine Sport, in Cloud colour, and following the Lovable Toys pattern in Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Aside from errors, I didn't deviate from the pattern except in yarn substitution. I wanted something that would be a little more forgiving of baby substances than the alpaca that the pattern called for. The ears turned out much floppier than expected, but I love them. They're soft, and I'm sure will be good to chew on, when the time comes.

This is Chelsea.

I hadn't had a chance to meet Chelsea yet, to ask what kind of animal she'd like. So I went with the elephant, because I know Chelsea's mum, Chrystal, is a big fan. Chelsea seems okay with this.

They're pretty well-matched in size, so far.

Eloise is far from perfect, but I like to think that Chelsea likes her anyway.

Overdue Mum Update and Some Boring Knitting

First up, a mum update.

She's doing really well. My mum's last chemo treatment was the Wednesday after Mother's Day, a few days before her birthday. We had a little party that weekend to celebrate the end of chemo, and the passing of another birthday - this one that we weren't sure would come at all.

Mum had another CT scan last week, and, in this case, no news is good news. They will only call if they find any problems. No call means that we can assume that all is well. Personally, I don't like this system at all. How long until you can know that you won't get a call? But that's me - Mum is okay with it. And the last CT scan, a couple of months ago, showed that the cancer was almost gone.

Mum's a little disappointed that she's not bouncing back as quickly as she'd hoped. She's still feeling tired and sore, and her fingers are still very sore and swollen, keeping her from doing many things. It seems that I spend most of my time on the phone with her scolding her for doing too much, too soon. Really, is now the only time to clean out the basement and paint the spare bedroom? Really? But overall, she's just happy that the meds are over with for now and she can look forward to putting her rings back on and growing some hair.

And now some knitting content.

There are times when my knitting projects are too boring even for this blog. Such is the case with recent projects.

The most interesting thing on my needles has become a slog. I'm working on a semi-secret blanket project. And, like all blanket projects, as it nears the end, it has evolved from something interesting and different and cute into something large and unwieldy and please-just-let-me-be-finished-already. I will share real photos once it's been gifted, but there's a lot to do before then. I'm going to try very hard to get the knitting part of the gift done over the next couple of days, since we're expecting a couple of rainy, cool days before another wave of hot and sticky weather. A lap full of wool is no fun in such weather.

Another set of needles is carrying a much smaller (and therefore less suffocating) project. I'm working to finish off the second feather and fan sock. I have no pics, but, really - it's the second in a pair, so just look back a couple of posts, and, since all is going fairly well, that's what this one looks like. This one I'm determined to finish off quickly, because there is a ball of a more fun sock yarn sitting on my shelf, calling my name and making fun of the darker, more sombre colours trailing from my dpns.

I've hit a problem that I've never heard anyone else talk about. This makes me worry that I'm doing this 'knitting' thing all wrong. When I use teensy needles, like the 2.5 mm ones I'm using for my socks, I always poke my left index finger over and over, until I get a crack in the skin, and it really, really hurts to continue knitting. It's then that I have to switch over to something on big, chunky needles for day or two. I keep hoping that I'll develop a callous, and stop being such a wuss, but in the meantime, I just pout about it and go back to my blanket.

But the most boring of my projects has been the one with a deadline. My friend Jen is the maid of honour for her friend Nicole. On Saturday, Jen hosted Nicole's bridal shower. A few weeks ago, Jen happened to mention (not so casually at all) that she thought it would be sooo nice if she could give all the guests hand-knitted dishcloths as gifts to take away after the shower. Now, Jen is a good friend, and she is also my cat sitter, which means she dares to go where many, many fear to tread. So I offered to start knitting. Knitting for 21 people. I agreed to give it a shot, with the condition that Jen learn to knit, so that she could help out with a few cloths.

Here are just a few of the dishcloths all done. I did a big chunk of them, but we were worried about not having enough at the last minute, so a few were knit up by Jen's mum and aunt.



We threaded them with ribbon and made them into little bags full of scented soap. I hear they were a big hit.



Jen may now have a mild addiction. I have encouraged this with Yarn Harlot books and intend to follow up with some cute baby patterns and fun yarns.

Another Weekend

On Friday, I came home to a great surprise.

This wonderful little zipper pouch made by Jennifer at JC Handmade.


A little while ago, I won a contest and I got this in the mail much quicker than I expected. Thanks so much, Jennifer! It's the perfect size for all the little loose stitch holders and crochet hooks that swim around in the knitting gadget bag. And the colours, inside and out, make it so cute.

The rest of the weekend was pretty good, too.

Another Jen (this one from work) and I tried a new place for haircuts Saturday morning. I like how my hair ended up, but I don't think I'll be going back to that particular hairdresser. There were several indications that things weren't going swimmingly:

1. The cut took an hour.

2. Blow drying took another half an hour.

3. I had to point out twice that my hair was (much) longer on the left than on the right.

4. She couldn't figure out how to fix the uneven problem, and had to ask another hairdresser to come over and show her how to fix it.

But all is well, and I'm happy with the end results, thanks mainly to Emergency Backup Hairdresser.

The rest of the day was spent knitting, teaching knitting, watching movies, and playing with a cute kitty.

Good weekend.