Best day of the week?

Without a doubt, it’s Saturday.  You’re a day away from whatever you do to earn money (if you have civilized banker’s hours) and you’re at least a day away from going back to said earning place.  It’s the magic day.  Sunday, not so much.  You start fussing about going back to work and not just enjoying the day for what it is.  Sucks the joy out of the day.

Today was quite perfect.  There was a fair bit of laundry done.  Most of it got to dry outside on the line in the sun.  As an aside, nothing smells better than laundry that has dried outside on the line, nothing.  It is sunshine encapsulated.

I think every plant in the garden grew by at least 4 inches.  I keep telling those little green tomatoes what I’m going to do with them once they are all grown up and red.  That’s creepy, right?  I’m thinking extra virgin olive oil, some soft unripened Italian cheese, and some crusty bread.  Oh yeah!

There was also a fair bit of knitting, unfortunately, I did not take any picis.  I’ll try to remember to get some tomorrow.  I’ve been working on my Almost Safety Orange Featherweight cardigan.  I’m hoping to get to the separating for the sleeves & arms tonight.  I really need to book it on this if I’m to have any hope of finishing it by the month end.  This WIP’s Wrestlemania is brutal!  I am almost finished my socks though, so that’s good.  I’ve been militant about knitting to and from work, and any time I’m on the bus, no matter what sort of weird looks I get and how many cracked out chicks ask me if knitting is hard and could I teach them.  Swear to Bob, happened to me last Tuesday.  Me – knitting a sock and heading to the knitting picnic, her – jonesing for a fix and all twitchy on Skytrain.  I think I miss when my city used to be just sort of a town and not so much a city.

Okay, one last thing before I go.  Think of it as a public service announcement.  Never, ever, and I mean EVER, leave your camera unattended.  You’ll go to upload your picis and find things like this:

Oh yeah, how jealous are you right now?  Uh huh, I thought so.  Back away ladies, he’s all mine.  What I also failed to notice awhile back was his addition to the following photo:

Note the vaguely creepy green eye over my left shoulder.  Again, back away ladies, he’s all mine! 

Happy Fourth of July to all my American friends!

If you’re a very good appliance repair person…

you sometimes get tips.  Sometimes they are really adorable tips, like this one:

Mr. B is thinking he’s pretty darn special, I tell you what!

Summer continues to…well…be summer.  The garden is exploding.  This is the first year that our little apple tree is really putting on a big crop of apples.

If even half of them make it to fall I’ll be canning apple sauce & drying apple rings for days!

Teeny tiny little tomatoes are popping up all over the place:

One day soon, you will be a nom, nom, nom!  I wonder if they feel threatened when as I’m watering them I tell them how they will eventually be prepared & eaten.

And, the Sweet Peas are just a blooming like fools!  They smell so nice too.

No, we don’t water the lawn.  Sorry.  I hate cutting the grass and I’ve learned – if you water it, it will grow.  Not interested.  Plus, it’s a weed, it always comes back no matter how many dry days we have in a row.    Although, if it’s a really long dry spell, I will spray where the dogs pee, ’cause that’s just good hygiene.  LOL.

In other news, go over here and check out Heather’s blog entries on Book Ninja.  She won the honour of being one of their guest bloggers, (actually, she was the winner by a landslide, I do believe), being a crazy cat lady totally pays off once in awhile.  Anyway, check it out.  Heather is very funny, wicked smart, and has a better than average appreciation for how close the zombie apocalypse really  is.

Also, also, look how cute these are!  Now if only I carried a wee bag and not the monster size bike courier bag that is currently my transit buddy.

Oh Canada!

My home and native land!

Guess what today is!  Yep, it’s Canada Day.  Love it!  Makes me all proud stuff.  I’ll be humming the anthem on and off all day today. 

Got some stuff done recently.  Went to a Picknit in the park last night.  Totally forgot to get many photos but here is a nice one of some socks in various stages of doneness:

Mr. B also ran the electrical and we installed the oven:

Mr. B has to made a special sized drawer front for that bottom bit.  We were a little bit creative in our spacing of appliances and Ikea was not convinced that creative was a good idea.

Whoo hoo!  You know what that means don’t you?  We had bacon this morning for the first time in weeks!  Nom nom nom.  It was a Canada Day miracle I tell you.

You’ll also notice a plethora of handles on the cupboards now.  So much easier to open than using bits of blue tape!

Okay, I’m off.  Got some WIP’s that need working on and the momma and the poppa are coming over for a visit.  I should prolly vacuum.

It used to be just the dogs & cats helped with the photo shoots…

It seems that everyone wants to get in the act now:

Thanks honey, that totally makes the scarf look better!  Snort.  Now, sans obscene finger gesture:

This is part of my WIP’s Wrestlemania for July.  Noro Silk Garden in colours 211 & 244 using the Brooklyn Tweed scarf recipe.

Hands up all those who didn’t think we’d make it to Friday!

Yeah, me too.  Brutal week, yes?  I realize it was a new moon on Monday but that was not a good enough reason for the level of general weirdness I was encountering daily out there in the world.  But that’s all behind us now.  It’s Friday and it’s all good.  How good?  Well, this is my dinner:

Best dinner in the world!  Pot noodle (Ichiban, Mr. Noodles, your regional instant noodle soup name inserted here) with broccoli, carrot, and some thinly sliced leftover beef kebab.  Nom, nom, nom!  I swear, I could eat this every night of the week.  Okay, maybe a break here and there for some fried rice or the occassional butter chicken.  Oh man, I’m eating dinner and I’m making myself hungry!

Anyway, the papa had a little surgery of a nature I”m pretty sure he wouldn’t want me sharing here.  Yes, he reads the blog sometimes.  Hi Dad!  He’s doing really well and should be home tomorrow.  Be nice to Mom!  Men make the worst patients.

I’ve been getting ready for the WIP’s Wrestlemania (Rav link) on Ravelry for the month of July.  I think I’m being overly ambitious though.  I’ve put up four projects that I want to finish, one of them is the Almost Safety Orange Featherweight cardigan in Malabrigo lace weight.  Seriously!  What am I thinking that I’ll finish that AND three other projects in one month?  Meh, hope springs eternal.

I’ve also been sewing lately.  I was inspired by the lovely Plae and her super cute fairy bag that she brought to our knitting group last week.  Go have a look at it.  I’ll wait here.  See!  adorable, right?

I’ve got one blouse cut out and I’ll be sewing that up tomorrow.  I had to get lightweight fusible interfacing today.  Look at all those weird words.  Yet another new language I’ll have to learn.  I’ll let you in on a little secret though, I could absolutely break the bank buying sewing patterns!  They are like potato chips, you can’t have just one!

Okay, that’s me done.  Y’all have a wonderful Friday night.  Avoid the weirdness, unless you’re the cause of it of course. 

Oh hey, summer showed up

I know this because Jane is suddenly shedding an entire dog.

She must be at least a couple of pounds lighter!

Happy Father’s Day to my dad.    Love you!  I’ll cook you a huge barbecued steak next weekend!

No time like the present,

Instead of prcrastinating on that whole plying thing, I decided to git ‘er done!  Said in my best Larry the Cable Guy voice.  WIthout further ado, here she be:

I don’t even know the yardage/metrage yet.  I know that I”m quite smitten with it though, so that’s good.  I’ll give it a soak and hang it to dry tonight.  8+ ozs will take a fair bit o’ time to dry I should think.

The big skein is 8+ ozs of two ply, prolly about a sport/dk weight.  That wee skein is the leftover from the last bobbin, about an ounce and a half that I did up in Navajo ply.  I love the look of the n-ply but it’s just too much work for me to do for an entire pound plus of yarn!  Plus, I don’t think I could N-ply for that length of time.  I get a bit spastic when I N-ply and tend to treadle so fast it’s insane, giving my yarn a wicked over twist that soaking and hanging almost doesn’t deal with.

Okay, that’s enough of that.  Today was a bit challenging, as in I think that pre-pubescent boys should not be allowed on transit unless on a leash or in a box, so I’m going to go have a nice bath now.    Happy Tuesday all!

In a spin

That whole Knit in Public Day that I missed?  Well, it wasn’t a total loss.  Mr. B worked on Saturday and then was fighting a nasty cold on Sunday so I had a weekend off.    Sweet!  Look, I spun up a little over 9 ozs of IGOR.

83% Island Grown Organic Romney and 17% silk.  You may remember it looked like this last year when I acquired it from Hummingbird Fibre Arts (sadly, no website):

This stuff was fun to spin.  I had 2 x 250 grams of it.  Turns out they will be more fraternal than identical, but that’s totally okay.  Now I just have to ply all that up.  Sigh.

World wide knit in public day?

Um, yeah, every day on transit is knit in public day.  Today, I just could not face taking transit for more than an hour each way to hit the sort of local WWKIP event.  I know all my knitting peeps (gosh, I’m so hip) were all there.   Me?  I was here:

Spinning this;

I also had some company:

Then later, there was more company:

Then I was overwhelmed with company:

Turns out, I’m wicked popular with the four legged/hairy set!  I think it’s  because my opposable thumbs can open their bags of treats.

Oh yeah, we also built the final kitchen island the other day:

We ended up rotating that far right cabinet and made it into a drawer cabinet instead of a shelf cabinet.  Now we have a place near the fridge for pop…and chips…and pretzels…and cookies…damn, I just gave away the snack drawer.  Didn’t I?

Island?  Um no, that’s a continent.  I’m going to call it Australia.  Wait, that’s not been used, hasn’t it?  Hmmmm, okay, how about Beentsylvania?  Right, I like it.    Today we built some drawers and stuff and now it looks like this:

That’s my favourite spot to sit and read, Internet, snack, everything really.  I’ve spent more time in the kitchen in the last week than I have in the last year.  It’s just so much nicer than it was before and I’m deeply, madly, passionately in love with this little corner of it.

There are shelves and doors for the left hand open space and an end cover piece for that light coloured bit on the right.  The entire thing is something like 6 feet by 5.5 feet.  We’re prolly going to cut it down to about 5.5 by 5.5 feet.  That seems somewhat more logical for a household of two people!  That way we can seat 6 comfortably.  ‘Cause we’re always having dinner parties for 6.  ANYWAY…

We absolutely over planned and over built this entire kitchen.  Story of our lives.  You should see when I make chili.  I could feed a football team.

Okay, I’m going back outside to spin some more.  I have 8 ozs of that fibre and it is calling me and begging to be made into yarn so I can knit it up for something lovely.

What? Ikea has come out with a laptop?

No, it’s just the cleverly disguised packaging of a new kitchen step stool.