BOOYAKASHA!!!!!

I just noticed that I broke 2000 visitors! Love you all!!!

Zoom, zoom, zoom!!

So here is the Belle Epoque sweater, which was on hold for baby outfits and socks. Since I've finished the socken, I've been burning on this one, and I've finished the body and have just done the armhole castoff and have put the back stitches on a holder. For some reason I'm 10 stitches short on the back, but that's no big deal. I can fix it. Massive blocking to do on this one, too. Wet blocking, more than likely. Must make a blocking board.






Here is a closeup of the Crocus Bud pattern. You can see that it really needs some blocking to open it up like the picture in the pattern.

Look what a little inspiration can do!

Jeez, a trip to a yarn shop to add on more projects sure acts like a kick in the butt for me! Finished the second patchworksock tonight! Finished it with the worst Kitchener stitch ever known to Knittingkind! My Kitchener has always been pretty dicey, but seriously, this one was brutal! I was tempted to post a picture of it, just so that people would know that I wasn't exaggerating, but then I realized that any knitter who saw it would lose all respect for me, so I decided against it. Instead, you get a picture of the finished socken on my fussen. Excuse the lighting, it's rather dim in the 'guest room', AKA my old bedroom. No traces that I ever lived here, though, thank goodness. It's always kind of creepy when parents keep their kids' rooms exactly like they were when they lived there, like shrines or something. ((shiver))

Boo. Hoo.

There is a lyric from Justin Rutledge and the Back Forty that I love. "God damn my liver when it's thirsty; God damn my wallet when it's dry." (Too Sober to Sleep)
In my case, it's my knitting thirst and the dry wallet. I'm down in London visiting the parents, and my mum took me to a new knitting shop she discovered in St. Thomas, The Little Red Mitten.
Wow. Amazing place. Wonderful staff, a great selection, a whole room of pattern leaflets and books with chairs and a table to sit at, a work room at the back filled with women who were having a raucous time, and this amazing French silk that nearly brought me to tears when I had to leave it behind. Seriously. This skein just fell like a waterfall over your hand, smooth and silky and decadent like chocolate mousse. $42 was actually a very reasonable price for it, but I was on a very tight budget, and I learned long ago to set a budget for yarn shop visits, and then to take that amount in cash, and to leave the credit card behind.
So I did get a few projects' worth, and the latest Interweave, and I know that every time I'm down in London I will be back. If you live in the area, you must check it out!
Just don't you dare buy the French silk in mulberry. Or I will OWN your ass.

One Down!

And the 2nd cast on! I have so many projects that I want to do this summer, so no stalling like I did with the Bavarian socks. Fingers must fly!

So how much am I loving these socks? Socken? Like wieviel baby!! Actually, I'm surprised I don't have them done yet. But I've been spending a lot of time on the beach, and while I do take my knitting to the beach, not a lot gets done. And tonight I did my nails in 'honour' of the heat wave of which we snowbabies are dying. Notice my lack of dangling participles. Can't stand 'em. Yes, I be a Grammar Centurion. (I refuse to use the term 'Nazi', seeing as how they killed millions of people. Kind of belittles their crimes to be referring to grammar or soup, doesn't it?)
And tonight I am drinking a lovely white wine, which will hit me incredibly fast since my weight loss, so I will be losing fine motor skills rather quickly.




So here are the nails:


Right hand: Thumb: big ass bottle of sunscreen. Index: watermelon! (I ate a whole wedge of watermelon yesterday.) Middle: fluffy clouds. Ring: sun, the bane of a redhead's existence. Pinky: believe it or not, a popsicle.









Left: Thumb: Egg frying on the hot sidewalk. Index: itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini. Middle: that bastard sun again. Ring: thermometer about to blow its top. Pinky: clouds again.
I'm mildly shocked at how well the right hand turned out, considering that my left hand is pathetic at doing anything other than holding a knitting needle.

This is the LIFE!

I love living in Muskoka. It is just so beautiful. I've been up here for 9 years, and I still drive in to work every morning saying to myself, "I can't believe I live here!". Except, of course, during tourist season. Then I'm in self-imposed lockdown. I went into town yesterday and they'd already hit. The G8 was better than that!
So today is a gorgeous Saturday. I had planned to hit the beach, but I woke up with a killer headache (didn't sleep well), and I figured that hours of sun would only make it worse, so this is what I'm doing instead:


Ain't life rough? And Rosebud is alternating lying on the ground with, and carrying around a piece of cheese bread that she nabbed when I dropped it on the floor, Bronte is in the shade under my chair and Sulis is off playing jungle cat and stalking some poor critter.
Damn, I wish I had a cabana boy. Then life would be perfect!