Meet me at my new place:

www.knitche.net

I'll put the coffee on.

I have no electricity at home. As it turns out, every bit of happiness in my life requires me to be plugged in to a power source. /sigh

Also, drying and curling your hair at your desk provides lots of amusement for your co-workers.

I'm contemplating moving over to Wordpress. I have no particular argument with Blogger...but Wordpress just seems so cool with neat little buttons to push and flashy little themes to play with when I'm bored.....if any of them were already "knitting themed" I'd already be a memory!

I've had a great weekend. Some visiting, some tinkering, some knitting, some viewing, some shopping -- little bits of lots of things that made for a fun couple of days.

Saturday morning, I went to the Langley Spinners and Weavers Artisan Show in Fort Langley, BC, with Tammy. She was my secret pal a few months ago, and invited me to go with her. I'm so glad I did - she's so much fun, and so funny! There were some lovely things there, and I'm pleased to say that I was quite restrained in my purchasing (and not at all because Tammy had already bought everything! I'm kidding!) I bought some Opal sock yarn and some gorgeous handspun llama. I'm not sure yet where the llama will end up (for now I keep it close to hold against my skin every now and again).

As for the Opal, I originally thought of socks for me - but I think Lisa & Anna will like the colours a lot more. I'm going to stick to an easy pattern - speed is the name of the game for me at this point (since there are sweaters intended to be Christmas gifts for each of them languishing somewhere in the basket).

After the fibre show, I met up with my mother, my sister-in-law and a friend of Mom's to see "The Queen". I'm not going to gush, too much, but it was an amazing film. Helen Mirren, who's work I have long admired, was simply astounding. She brings to a role, no matter what the role, such dignity and intelligence. She is, in my opinion, too good for an Oscar. In any case, I highly recommend the film.

I've turned the heel on my socks - I'm too lazy to snap a shot right now. I've decided to make them plain all the way up to the ribbing. Boring, maybe, but it suits the patterns in the yarn. The heel turn wasn't perfect -- but the video about short rows here made it so much easier to understand. But...be sure to watch it to the end. and not try as it goes....there's a crucial bit of information you need which made all the difference!

I'm having way too much fun with this:



That's my married name. My maiden name is a little more exclusive:



Statistically, my first name is the 14th most popular. My husband and kids are 2,397th (or 227th if you use his full name), 2,397th and 2,762nd. My kids had 3 & 2 other people with the same first and last name. My husband also had 3 -- but it jumped to 145 when his full name was used.

What have I learned from this? Not a damned thing. Now I'm going to go plug in the names of everyone I know.

Some months ago, Tammy sent me this yarn as my secret pal. I was a little intimidated by it -- I desperately wanted to make a pair of socks, but the needles I needed were sooooo tiny and I've never had great luck turning a heel. But, finally, one night last week I could no longer resist its siren call. I absolutely love the colouring -- it's far less orange and much more burgandy than the picture would have you believe. I'm also loving the toe-up pattern, but I've run into troubles with the heel (no surprise there). I'll be making the second attempt as soon as I work up the nerve.

I can't say enough about how wonderful the fabric feels...it is the very definition of comfort. I find myself knitting the sock and being impatient about getting to wear it.

I do need to start setting some priorities for knitting -- there's no way in heck I'm going to make my Christmas list, but there's still hope of knocking off a few more items. I think I might take a project to work and fiddle with it on my coffee break. The problem there is I don't always take a coffee break so that might not get me much further ahead.

Seriously, could this post have been any more boring? I was contemplating entering the NaBloPoMo but, really, does the world need a month of posts like this one? Yeah, I didn't think so either.

So these are the mittens I scrapped the Jaywalkers to work on (not that I've gotten a lot of knitting done in the last few days). In any case, it's a fun pattern and there's a good chance I'll do another pair. Though I think I would like them better with a more subtle change in colour than the black and yellow (which is supposed to be gold, but gold is awfully hard to find) that I picked.

In the background of the pictures is a new table cloth. I went to a "Women's Show" today and was pleasantly surprised at the variety of displays (though not a single knitting related booth!). There was something for everyone - from the woman who works outside the home, to the stay at home mom/wife. Booths for weight loss products stood shoulder to shoulder with "empowering" displays which were lined up with those that showed you how to decorate your home and be a good hostess (which is where I got the tablecloth). If this is what the women's movement has accomplished - I'm good with that.

The tablecloth is stain repellent (not just resistant - repellent!) and though it was a little spendy, I like it well enough and I did need one for the dining room. The only irritant is that I was a little pressured into buying it by my mother. She does that frequently; finds something and tells me how much I should buy it, how perfect it is, yada yada yada. I know she means the best, but honestly, sometimes I just want to tell her to buy it herself. I never do tell her that - most often we just move on or, less often, I tell her why I don't want whatever the something is. But sometimes, I cave and buy it.

I guess I should have stopped at that "empowerment" booth for a bit longer.