Birthday Treats with the Art School Beauties

Yes, it has been awhile since my last post...unfortunately (or fortunately for the gamer in our household - ahem!) our main computer has had the biscuit. We are waiting for the arrival of a brand spanking new PC with all the works, so that I can continue to blog and mr. hubby can spend the next month making up for all the last gaming time he lost over the last week. Until then, I am trying to edit photos and update this post on a little laptop with the worst monitor known to mankind. Apologies for any strange colours - I'm not responsible!

Anyways, onto more entertaining updates... I had such a wonderful time yesterday! Five years after our graduation from the animation department at ECIAD, I finally got my act together and actually met up with my old pals. Not only were we celebrating the beautiful wendy's birthday, but we were also playing a lot of catch up! And sweet moses, were these girls busy! Let's see...Amanda just moved back from Halifax after working in the stop motion animation industry and discovering she has some entrepreneur blood in her, Helen has been to New York and got herself a long distance relationship and a whole new perspective on city life, Sascha is back from a temporary residence in London where she worked in British animation and had herself a sweet baby girl, and Wendy, being her true cultured self has been all over the place doing very well for herself as the talented and highly sought after photographer..hmm...have I forgotten anyone? Oh, yes - and myself...perhaps living a not so adventurous life but truly loving to hear every detail of everyone else's travels. Visiting with them has really got me excited about the trip to Europe we are planning for the fall. I can't wait to have some new adventures of my own!

And since it was Wendy's Birthday, of course I went knitting crazy and whipped up a Branching Out Scarf that I had been planning to knit for sometime now. What a perfect excuse to get some more lace knitting under my belt. For a long time I have been hating knitting with those complicated patterns, but this was an excellent project to start on. It was easier, although, don't get me wrong, I still could not carry on conversation or watch any tv as that would defenitely distract me.

Check it out!

And here is the birthday girl herself - sporting the scarf in all her glory :)



And here we are - all together for a photo. I have to chuckle when I see this because it was so funny watching Helen and Sascha run back and forth to set up their self timing cameras. Sigh, it was a defenite "had to be there moment"...

From left, counter clockwise: Helen, Amanda, Me!, Wendy and Sasha.

The Funkapillis disaster socks

Ok people, here is an example of a project gone horribly, horribly wrong. I call them the funkapillis specials and they must NEVER leave the house...ever! I can't get over how ugly they are! The yarn is just the nastiest combo of primary barf colours I could possibly find. I cannot remember for the life of me why I purchased this yarn in the first place. Seriously, I must have been on something. You can also see that this was a project poorly planned. I ran out of the ugly crayon yarn so I decided to use up this icky halloween orange colour cuz I thought - hey, go crazy or go home. I'm going all the way! The funny thing is that I cannot get rid of them because for however ugly they are, they are just as comfortable. I cannot get over how much cozier hand made socks are compared to mass produced store bought socks. My feet are in heaven - it's a good thing that comfort is blind otherwise I'd have to burn them.




On a more successful note, I finally found some ribbon to complete these baby booties. I've had these things completed for quite some time now, I just kept forgetting to get something to tie them up with. I think I'll give them away to a friend at work who is expecting a baby girl in September. They are so simple and cute - I'm quite pleased how they turned out.

That Cursed Sweater and Kool-aid spinning

So, work has been very frustrating for the last couple weeks (to say the least!) which is why there have been no posts since Razoir's b-day. But today I must post something to prove I am alive and creating. I have been knitting or spinning at least an hour every night, just to get rid of that nervous energy and unwind. I am finding that with age, I don't handle stress very well, even just compared to a couple years ago. Like many of you know, I have developed jaw problems due to clenching (from stress) and recently it has gotten worse with tension headaches and just pain in general. I think its time to quit the job, sell the house and move out to the country. I'm always planning my hobby farm and fibre studio...it's only a matter of time and money :)

To keep me sane at work I've also been checking out more blogs and reviews over the net - also, I am completely hooked on podcasts! It's like the fibre community I always needed - right there in my itunes. My favourites are Pixie Purls, KnitCast, The Fibre Cast and Knitting News. I love it that these knitters/spinners are just as obsessed about fibre as I am...makes me think I am not going loopy after all!

So, the last week or so I have been working on some socks and let me tell you, they are a peice of work! I think they look hilarious because the yarn is totally loud and I've actually run out of it so I had to use another crazy yarn to finish them. I'm nearly done so I'll post a photo tomorrow - until then, here are some other updates:

My ongoing sweater...sigh. What is up with this sweater? It is totally cursed because I just can't seem to get it finished! I'm so close, I just have to finish up the one sleeve, sew it up and put the zipper in. How difficult can that be? For some reason I have a block there - I must get past it...This is how far I've gotten so far...



Kool-aid yarn!! A couple weeks ago I dyed my left over roving with kool-aid - my first attempt at dying ever. And I think I found my calling because I just had so much fun! Next time I'm going to try painting the yarn to get more variation (I ended up mooshing the colours all together -oops!) The only thing is that the wool still smells really strongly like kool-aid. Is that going to go away? Maybe I didn't soak it long enough at the end...I'm not sure. But I sure am having fun spinning it. It really makes me want to get a wheel and learn to ply.



Here are a couple examples of my first attempts at spinning. I was really pleased with the plyed yarn, but the others look pretty funny. I just wanted to document them before they get tossed.





My blog has defenitely become my knitting/spinning haven, so I am thinking of changing some parts of this blog template and I'm going to try to make my own graphics. I just have to figure out some html. Yikes, that should be fun...not!

Well, the sun is out and it's time to go enjoy a day of gardening and chores. Have a great weekend!