Snippets of dinner conversation today.

Me: "Honey, take that off. No armour at the table."

Later, during dinner.

Mr. Munchkin: "BELCH"
Me: *horrified look*
Mr. Munchkin: "What? I'm a boy!"
Mr. Ninja: *falls on floor laughing*

And even later.

Mr. Ninja: "You know those little holes on the sides of Darth Vader's mask? I bet one of them is for his soup straw and the other is for his apple juice sippy cup. And no, Darth Vader can't have jello - it won't fit through his grille."

*facepalms*

We are such a geek household.

Oh, and in yarny news - went to Gaspereau Valley today. Fiber filled post to follow. Also, I think that I may have angered the household gods in some pantheon somewhere...came home, and noticed that there was a spider spinning a web on my Louet. I'm guessing that the bad karma that I'm going to get for squishing said spider is going to seriously jinx any spinning I try for the next little while. I always feel bad about squishing spiders - does anyone else apologize to bugs pre-squash?

Catching up...but no rye.

It's been awhile. Been coughing up a lung (that's why we have two lungs, kids) with a nasty cough. YAY for antibiotics! Have finally been feeling better. Anyway. Knit content, ahoy!


Two mini skeins and one jumbo one. The white skein is alpaca-silk with a bit of angelina tossed in. The raspberry-purple is unknown fibre content ... but it's damn touchable. Big blue is merino, and it's HUGE. Probably worsted weight, maybe around 600 grams. Spinning these was lots of fun - the original plan for the two mini skeins was to ply them together...but the resultant yarn was ooky. The raspberry one was dulled by the addition of the white, and the white just looked murky. So, plied them on themselves with the assistance of my ball winder.

Done one of my sockapalooza pals's socks...'tis lovely. Need sock blockers. Anyone have any suggestions for good ones? Haven't quite gotten around to finishing the second sock, as I've been distracted by Mr. Ninja's sweater (back to miles and miles of beige stockinette - someone put me out of my misery please) and more handspun socks. Toe down, reinforced heel flap. But I haven't finished these yet as I'm debating whether or not to make them into Christmas gift socks. The only problem with this concept is that I only know one person who *might* take care of these socks...and I'm not sure that she'd like them.


My Henry's Attic blanks from the co-op also arrived.

That's a big bag of several cones of Kona superwash - both the lightweight and heavyweight gauge and a one or two cones of various stuff like Andromeda and Licorice Twist. (Psst. I found out that Socks That Rock use Kona as their base yarn, if that tells you anything about this stuff.) Each cone should make me about 4 pairs of socks...I'd better get cracking. I'm debating whether to dye this stuff up and sell it in my etsy store (which is notably lacking in merchandise - *sigh*) or to just keep it around. You never know when you'll need 10 cones of sock weight yarn. Right? Right?

Henry's holidays - Episode II

So, after a couple of days of recovery (and much encouragement to drink water), Henry finally felt up to the task of travelling. Tragically, I had made plans to visit my in-laws cottage in Kingston, ON at the same time as the Yarn Harlot's book launch. *sigh* Henry was not pleased. And oh my, the temper tantrums...I'm pretty sure that Mr. Munchkin was giving him pointers. But I managed to bundle all of them up into a car, and got driving. We stopped halfway from Toronto at the Big Apple. (Mr. Munchkin included for scale)

They had sheep there, and Henry took some time to roll with his homies.

However, we had no time to get misty-eyed and reminice about Henry's wild youth, and thus proceeded to the cottage.

Beautiful place. But cabin fever sets in awfully quick there. I'll spare you the photos of Henry's boredom...needless to say, it's a good thing that he's already a felted monster. And yes, red wine does wash out of his greeny goodness. Quick trip up, quick trip down. Back in Toronto after the weekend at the cottage, I needed to re-urbanize, stat. So Henry, my lovely SIL and I took in some high theater.

Yup, that's a honking big copy of the Necronomicon. We went to see Evil Dead: The Musical. And it delivered on all the gore and fake blood that it had promised...and more! If you're lucky enough to be in Toronto during this show's run, go see it. Btw, fake blood also washes out of Henry's tough outer shell, just as an FYI.

The next day, Henry, Mr. Munchkin and I all went for a visit at the Ontario Science Centre. It's a lot smaller than I remember it being when I was a kid. But they have a kick-ass area just for little kids and monsters.

Steph, take a deep breath. He's felted, remember? Anyhoo, we were all tuckered out after the OSS, so I went to pick up some dinner.


This, my friends, is a chinese BBQ joint. Yes, those are whole roasted ducks, a whole roasted pig (behind Henry), a couple of cooked cuttlefish, and assorted other entrails and fun things like that. Amid much gagging (from Henry) and stern looks (from me), we managed to get some roasted duck and scooted on home.

Another couple of quiet days playing in the big backyard at my parent's place, and we finally flew back home to Halifax. This greeted me when I got inside...I think may have finally reached SABLE. That's mostly roving, with a few skeins of sock yarn included for good measure.

Gah. Time for a yarn diet.

Henry's holidays...

And lo, the continuing adventures of Henry are discussed.

Just before Mr. Munchkin and I left for a long visit back to Toronto, Steph kindly dropped by with some homemade cookies for the trip. Imagine my surprise when I was digging through my purse for my plane tickets and I found a stowaway. Needless to say, I let the boy have his way with the little green miscreant.

This is Mr. Munchkin enthusiastically showing Henry a close-up view from the plane window. You can almost hear the whimpering from here.


I vaguely remember Henry muttering something about no woman being worth this amount of pain and suffering, not even a Harlot. Too bad for Henry that I wasn't planning on being in Toronto for the Yarn Harlot's book launch. >_<

On landing, we were all starving. (6 am flights tend to do that to me.) So, I took the crew to a little strip mall around the corner and got takeout.

Surprisingly, Henry is quite the connoisseur of authentic Chinese food - he was trying to haggle with the woman behind the counter about the amount of bok choy in his dish. Unsuccessfully, mind you. I think it might have gone better, had Henry actually known Chinese. *shrug* Then again, he might have been distracted by the wall of Pocky.

The resultant sugar highs meant that the rest of the day was a write off for everyone in terms of sightseeing...so it was a lovely, quiet day.


Henry enjoyed this game, right up to the point where one of the checkers landed on his hand. Tears and wailing ensued. But a liberal dose of Pocky seemed to help. The next few days passed quietly as Henry and Mr. Munchkin amused themselves with the myriad assortment of toys that my Mum had collected and saved from the childhoods of me and my brothers. But on Wednesday, I decided to traipse down to Lettuce Knit and do dinner with some friends. Henry insisted on coming along to chaperone.

Frolicking in the sale bin at Lettuce Knit. Lovely store...but holy is it tiny. I may have gone a touch mad over the Koigu KPPPM.

Dinner was lovely - my friends took me out to Cafe Diplomatico, and we spent a fantastic evening sitting on the patio, eating antipasto, watching beautiful people go by and sipping adult beverages. Henry begged for a sip of my drink, as he said that Steph never let him try any of her "grown-up drinks". I cautioned him that it was rather strong, but what the hell - I was on holiday. He took to it like a fish out of water, Steph...


And it all lead to this...I have no idea what's going on here - I went to the bathroom, came back to a table of people and small green monsters looking very innocent. Apparently, this is the documentation of someone daring Henry to chug a Guinness. Which would explain the moaning and cursing that I heard from the guest bathroom the next morning. And on that note, I'll leave the remainder of the trip for the next post.

Reduce, Reuse...

Recycle.

I had a silk satin needle case once. After using it for awhile, I realised that it didn't work particularly well - the needles kept falling out. While I'd like to attribute that to the fact that satin is slippery as hell, I figure that the design probably wasn't quite optimal either. However, I love love LOVE the fabric. And after window shopping for a knitting project bag (fuelled by envy of the beautiful Lantern Moon bags), I took an hour out of my day and made this.


You can still see some of the holes that scar the fabric from its previous incarnation...but overall, I'm quite pleased. And it seems that karma's trying to get me into the mood for a little bit of slink and a little splash of shimmy...


My pre-order of Knitting Lingerie Style came on Friday. It's actually a wonderful book, filled with far more wearable items than you might think, judging from the title. And this is the first knitting book that I have ever seen Mr. Ninja pick up and browse...of his own volition. While he's been dropping some not so subtle hints, I am sticking to my guns and working away on my Sockapalooza pal's socks.


Hedera. In Natural Dye Studios - Silver Bud colourway. The stitch definition created by this yarn is incredible. Must. Have. Own. Socks.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, here I come!

So...I couldn't really let myself start another project (Sockapalooza socks) while I still had another pair of socks on the go. So I sat myself down with a bottle of Bailey's, a marathon session of Gil Grissom frowning at various corpses, and my handspun socks. Done like dinner.


They're squishy, slippery and thick. Perfect for the cold front that's just settled in. Totally mismatched, but I actually dig it. One of the socks is larger than the other - my tension was apparently affected by all the swooning that I did during the CSI season 3 DVD (Gawd, the men on that show are HOT) I'd like to say that the first sock was stretched by Henry's sojourn inside it...but I have to fess up that I think that my ankles are thicker than Henry's entire body. And since I only used the smaller of the two skeins for this pair, I still have enough to make another set of socks!


I wonder if I'll get another pair of mismatched socks - and therefore maybe possibly get 2 pairs of matching socks. What? It could happen.

ETA: Apparently...Bailey's + knitting = totally spaced out knitter. I just realized while looking at the photo of the socks together that I'm going to HAVE to knit another pair of socks. During the time between the two socks, I totally forgot that I did a mistake rib pattern on the first sock...and did the second sock in just a plain 3x1 rib. Man...I blow such huge chunks sometimes. >_<

In other crafty news, my package from Superbuzzy arrived!


I'm not too sure that I like the punch embroidery thingy...it sort of feels like cheating somehow. But the sheep clips are awesome for keeping track of where I am on a chart - well, I'm anticipating that they will be - and the car magnets make Mr. Munchkin very happy. So, now I've cast on for my Sockapalooza pal...let's see if CSI can weave some knitting mojo for me again.

Long Live Optimus Prime!

Well, technically - they killed him off in the series ... but his memory lives on. After seeing Geekzilla's awesome Decepticon mittens, I was inspired to whip up an Autobots chart. However, the only problem is that Excel (which is where I do the charting) doesn't let me put in right pointing slashes. *sigh* So, I substituted the right pointed slashes with the vertical lines. Use your imaginations, kiddoes.

As for the pattern itself, if you're doing it in intarsia, just knit the X's, and put the slashes in afterwards with duplicate stitch. And if you're doing it all in duplicate stitch, you're laughing. Me, I'm thinking that I need some Transformer socks. Eventually. And the beast? Mr. Ninja is getting a vest for his birthday. I'm not even halfway through the first sleeve. Stockinette fatigue is starting to set in. Grrrr.