Crazy, spiraling stripes. I like how each stripe is shaded as well, light in the middle and dark on the outside. Hopefully the other sock is at least similar.

At this point, I was worried about having enough yarn for the whole sock.

But I can tell you that sock #1 is completely done, with a little yarn leftover to boot! Sock #2 is up to the first row of triangles.

I’m going to be housesitting for 3 weeks soon, in another city, so I’m taking a lot of knitting. I’m going to take the Annetrelacs if they’re not done by then (I’m hoping they will be though), and my other projects will be…. well, let’s list them, shall we?

• The Dollar and a Half cardi. I started this more than a year ago, and abandoned it about a year ago. I am taking it with me with the goal of FINISHING it. I have 3 weeks to sit and watch the Food Network and knit. I can do this. If I remember right I only have a sleeve and one front left to do.
• The Druid mittens. Those lovely cabled goodies that are on the cover of the Fall Vogue. Yum. Doing these will use up some of my sock yarn stash (I discovered I have enough for 11 pairs!), I’ll be using yarn I got from the Zen Yarn Garden semi-solid sock yarn club in a pinky/maroony colour.
• a small triangular shawl, still unchosed as of yet. More sock yarn, more ZYG, this time in an orangey tencel blend. I think orange will give the lace shawl a nice punch.

I’m not certain yet if I’m going to take another project. I could bring all my ZYG, I want to make the Bacchus socks from the Fall IK with some blue bamboo blend I have, or I could tackle one of the worst offenders on my yarn-in-kilometres spreadsheet and do something with my skein of Helen’s Lace (it’s more than 1 km long! dude!)

I had a boring temp job this past week, and while there I downloaded a spreadsheet of all my stash from Ravelry, deleted all columns but Brand, Yarn, Colourway, Weight, and Total Metres, and added one blank column. I then went through that and wrote down what I want to do with each yarn in the blank column. I don’t have a project for everything, but it was a great exercise, and really helped me figure out what I want to do with which sock yarn. I also found I’d forgotten to add a few things to my Ravelry stash, so I did that and re-printed.

I highlighted yarn that was currently part of WIP in green, and highlighted sock yarn in pink, because that’s what I really wanted to sort out. Maybe I’ll scan it, and we can oogle.

I only ever go for work, I’ve never been to Banff for ‘vacation’. The work is fun, I always meet great people, and the mountain scenery is pretty spectacular too. But one of my favourite things about Banff is the wildlife

You can see why this guy is called a Bighorn Sheep.

I was late for work once (in 2006) because there was an elk on the path up the mountain. My roommate and I had to go around the long way. I got to see another elk while I was out there this time, luckily this time I was in a car. It was standing so still I was starting to think it was a statue!

And then, with zoom!

I bought my camera (a Sony DSC-H3) almost entirely because of the 10x optical zoom. 10x! And even more in the digital range, but I don’t use that too often.

And a gratuitous mountain-at-start-of-sunset picture, just because a Banff post wouldn’t be the same without it:

It looks like a painting, doesn’t it? Sometimes I don’t believe it is real.

And in knitting news, my first Annetrelac sock has a heel! I survived the entrelac! More on that in the next post.

I didn’t get much knitting done over the summer, but I have since I’ve been home! I finished Cara’s socks:

I only had the one foot left to do, and it went really quickly because Cara has teeny size 5 feet. The pattern is the Embossed Leaves socks from Favorite Socks by Interweave Knits.

The yarn was by All Things Heather; I got it for donating to a cause she was promoting on her blog. I love the colours, they are all my favourites, but also very Cara I think. And a good match for the pattern because we all know that green = leaves.

I immediately started a new pair of socks (naturally)! Another Interweave pattern, this time the Annetrelac Socks.

The yarn I bought off Etsy about a year ago, from Yarn Ahoy. It’s really cool in that the colours fade slowly throughout the skein from light to dark. It took a bit of time to decide whether I wanted dark or light on the feet, but in the end I decided that the cuff should be the light part, the feet dark. Otherwise I think they’d look top-heavy.

I’ve always been fairly fickle with my crafting, leaving half-finished projects and piles of supplies to gather dust. I’ve stuck with knitting for a long time though. Longer than origami or beading or candle-making lasted. Definitely longer than my short stint of sewing!

But still, I hear the call of a wheel. I can’t believe I’m even considering something that needs an investment of $500+ dollars to get started! “But a wheel would be so fun!” a little inside voice tells me.

Then I look at all the amazing fibre available on Etsy. It makes me wonder: is this a way to get around my yarn-buying hiatus? I promised myself I wouldn’t buy any more yarn until my stash was under 10km long. I’m getting closer, I’m halfway there from where I started:

Another reason I’m reluctant is my lack of time. I haven’t had time to podcast every month like I wanted to. It’s just the way my life has worked out this year: barely being at home. I suppose I did have the month of May off, but I was rejuvenating by discovering my inner domestic goddess. I got really in to cooking and baking. I’m fine with that hobby; we do always have to eat, after all!

Here is a list of all the things I want to be my hobbies:

• knitting
• reading
• sewing
• baking
• spinning
• podcasting
• beading (for stitch markers/Etsy)
• Gocco (I wanted to make witty cards to sell on Etsy)

Here’s just a few of the things I’ve picked up and left by the wayside:

• beading (jewelery)
• sewing
• origami
• candle making
• soapmaking (just the poured ones)
• scrapbooking (for my cookbook)
• podcasting
• Gocco (still haven’t tried it, but I’ve got one….)
• Polymer clay

I think I will go down that slippery slope of spinning. When I get back home from this contract (Aug 3 can’t come soon enough!) I think I’ll make myself feel better by listing some old supplies for some of the left-behind things on Etsy.

I’ve been checking Craigslist and Kijiji for use wheels, and have had nothing yet. I suppose I could post a wanted ad… I think I’m going to go for a folding wheel, or a Ladybug. I definitely want small, as our apartment is pretty close to full, even with the destashing I’ve been doing. Anyone have a spare hanging around?

I joined a challenge on Ravelry to get rid of 100 things in the month of June, and I completed it! Granted, the things aren’t actually out of the house yet, but they’re bagged and ready to go the next time I’m in town. Maybe if I do that again when I get back in August, combined with listing some supplies on Etsy, I’ll feel more ready to tackle spinning.

…and I think I may join a fibre club now. Just to get that stash started for when I get that wheel…

My car is plenty of car for me. I am very happy with it, with its size, with everything.

And yet it only comes up to the door handles of a Hummer. Why do people feel the need for so much car in the city?

That thing could eat my car! You can’t convince me people who are not in the army need Hummers. Sorry. I bet I get better gas mileage, with my little 16-year old Mazda.

Not only do I have yarn for sale on Ravelry, I recently went through my closet and various cubpards and storage spaces, and I have 75 items go be donated to a thrift store! The purse above and 3 others are on eBay. I thought I may as well see if I can get anything for them. If not, into the thrift store bag they go.

There’s a thread on Ravelry where the goal is to get rid of 100 items in June. It is amazing once you actually go through stuff, you find so much you don’t need. I love spring cleaning and sorting and organizing.

Doing this helps me with a few things on my poor neglected 101 in 1001 list.

I don’t have a life list or anything, no checklist of stuff I want to do in my lifetime, but if I did, you can bet that ’see a Tom Jones concert live’ would be high up on that list. And now my friends, I have done it. And it was awesome.

The boy did the load in of their stuff this morning, and on condition that he also help with the load out, we got to sit in the media booth for the concert. It was 90 minutes straight, no intermission, 100% Tom Jones. It’s even his birthday tomorrow! Personally I can’t believe he is turning 68. That’s madness. He was up there dancing and singing and it was just amazing.

I’ve loved his voice since I was a kid, and so many of his songs are catchy and bouncy and there is so much soul in that man. I remember being about 12 and singing along to ‘She’s a Lady’ on the radio.

And if you are new to this blog, make no mistake. I was not even born when he had his first hits. My grandmother was the one who loved him and watched the TV show in the 70s. Nope, I am 24 and love Tom Jones.

The boyfriend asked me if I was going to throw panties, or if I’dbeing going home with Tom tonight, and really? I could have been at that concert blindfolded and still be perfectly happy. What drew me to him was that VOICE. And now I know first hand that he can dance too! Crazy!

I leave you with a song he didn’t sing at the concert. I didn’t even know he’d covered it. It is one of my favourite non-Jones 70s songs.

Tom Jones - Mama Told Me Not To Come

Clementine Shawlette, started April 19th, 2008, finished May 22nd, 2008
Pattern: Clementine Shawlette, Spring 2007 Interweave Knits
Yarn: Rowan Cashsoft DK
Needles: 3.25mm
Pattern Notes: I made 0 changes!
Would I knit it again? It was quick, and easy to memorize the pattern (once you’ve done the fiddly bit at the end), but I don’t know if I’d make another.

I did a lot of this while at my parents’ in Victoria, and backstage at the opera. This shawl has heard a lot of good singing. I actually did some of the knitting during the performance, as I was trapped upstage on a balcony. I was between two windows, so I couldn’t go anywhere until the curtain came down, and the last act was almost completely dead for me.

I have now discovered something one better: lolgraphs, otherwise known as GraphJam.com. I love geeking out in Excel almost as much as I love lolcats and to have the two put together? Priceless.

My boyfriend and I just about died laughing at this one:

more graph humor and song chart memes

And I have to admit to immediately going through the site’s entire archives. I only made the boyfriend look at one per page or so.

more graph humor and song chart memes

more graph humor and song chart memes

But now, as I said, I live in a condo. I was never very interested in the garden as a kid (apart from it being a place to play) but now I want one. And can’t have one.

At least, not like that old garden. I can now have my own harvest!

The long low pot is mint, the big one has chives, basil, and parsley, and the little round pot (also shown above) is rosemary. The balcony does face north, but it gets some nice sun in the evening, when the sun sets:

Yes, I forgot to open the screen before I took the photo. We’ll see if it is enough sun for my little babies. I’ve already used some of the basil!

Mum said to pinch them so they don’t spread too far, and to stop them going to seed. I wasn’t sure where to pinch, so I just grabbed some leaves and used them in dinner one night.

We do have other plants, but they don’t count because you can’t harvest them. They do add some nice green to the apartment in the winter though. I put them outside for the summer, as they like dry and hot (I think?).

We inherited the rubber tree (tall one in the back) and the two pony tail palms from my boyfriend’s parents’ neighbours when they moved, the rest are all from Ikea so I don’t really know what they are, apart from succulents. I don’t really know how to take care of them; we don’t water them too much as they are desert-type plants I believe. We’ve kept the 3 we inherited alive for almost two years now, so we must be doing something right.

The rubber tree did need staking recently, and I spent some time trying to figure out where I could find something thin, straight, and pointy to stick into the pot, and something soft to tie it to the plant with.

Silly question, really.