I had to take the quiz too!

Like Not An Artist, I don't have a lot to say in the way of knitting progress right now. Work and the DKC have me running in circles! But I also saw the quiz on Sandi's blog so I thought, "What the heck?! All the cool knitting kids are doing it."

What Kind of Knitter Are You?

You appear to be a Knitting Purist. You are an accomplished knitter producing beautiful pieces with a classic feel. You sometimes lament losing half of your local yarn shop to garish novelty yarns. Perhaps you consider fun fur scarves the bane of knitting society and prefer to steer new knitters towards the wool and cotton blends. Some might call you a bit of an elitist but you know that you've been doing this craft long enough to respect the history behind it and honor it with beautiful piece that can last a lifetime. http://marniemaclean.com Take this quiz! Quizilla Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

I wouldn't say that I'm that big of a yarn snob. Or THAT accomplished. It was fun to take nonetheless.

Yesterday a surprise in the mail

My work visa arrived yesterday. And Immigration Canada wrote me saying that I meet the eligibility to apply for permanent residency.

OMGsqueeeee!

a slight pity party

Do you ever have that feeling that no matter what you touch turns to gold? Every new task you take to hand ends up like something you've done a thousand and one times? Like you wanna hold a master's class on how awesome you really are?

Right now I having the opposite feeling.

Everything I touch needs to be ripped, frogged, redone and thrown back in the basket with a big ol' "mea culpa" flying from my lips.

- I'm dropping stitches as if the pattern actually calls for them.
- I'm decreasing in new and imaginative (read: incorrect and lumpy) ways.
- And most importantly, I'm not getting any satisfaction out of the items I'm knitting.

Is Jupiter in retrograde, or what?!!! There has got to be some explanation other than I am not awesome. I hope.

Sunday High Tea...

Silly me! I was soooo tired last night when I made my weekend post that I completely forgot to mentioning High Tea at The Knit Cafe on Sunday. The funny thing is that I was *sure* I wrote something about it, but alas I didn't.

I met up with Sophie, Sandi and Mel for a late afternoon treat of delectable delights catered by Vanilla & Salt caterers. There were no finger sandwiches or quiches but what we did get was mouth-watering good. I can't remember the actual names of the treats but we had curried pumpkin wrapped in philo and mini cheesecakes with apricot(?) compote goat cheese and spinach and carmalized onions tarts and pear, apple and pistachio tarts. All washed down with the zingiest, perkiest lemony rooibos tea I've ever had. And we got to knit the afternoon away. Not only that, we got to meet Sully! Sully doesn't knit from a pattern. She doesn't need to. She showed off her beautiful hats and scraves and two sweaters -- all in original designs. And people, she knitted them without using a pattern. I'm telling you this is serious. Seriously beautiful stuff! Sophia was there as well and it was so nice to see her as she's forsaken our s'n'b for others closer to her place. Hopefully we sufficiently guilted her into coming back at least once in a while.

It was great fun and I highly recommend it! The Knit Cafe hold High Tea at 1:00pm and 3:00pm on the first Sunday of the month. Call them to make reservations.

What a weekend...

I haven't had email since early, early, early morning Saturday. Now I'm starting to feel disconnected from the world. Sigh!

I had a weekend full of yarny goodness. On Thursday (it's close enough to Friday, so it counts towards the weekend) I meet up with Amy to get The Socks. Amy also gave me the cutest mitten kit that she received from Moorehouse Merino. Love it! How did she know I needed mittens? (Other than she can't actually knit with wool and the ones I've been wearing are .99¢ special from Shoppers?) Thanks, Amy! You totally rock! So I started the socks on Friday night and then proceeded to riiiipppp them out. I found that I may be a good knitter but I am a lousy stitch counter. But I got back on that horse and casted on again Saturday morning.

Sunday, Sophie and I headed to a Secret Location where I was able to add to my growing collection of yarn 20 balls of Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed in "Night" (#409) to make Ubernatural and 5 skeins of Estelle's Wolly Bully in "Sunset" (#350) to make some sort of kooky top-down or bottom-up raglan sweater.

Ok, so now my stash basket runneth over. OMG! I mean, look at it. Loooook!


I know for some this would be just a mole hill not a mountain, a grain of sand on the beach, a drop of water in the ocean! But for me this is out of control. I'm not complaining, but this means no new yarn for me until I actually complete a project or two (or five). Which isn't the worst thing in the world because I have great projects in the queue.

More pictures to follow later when I have a bit more time and I can find the D70. (Blown out picture above brought to you by the tired, borken A60.)

Keep your fingers crossed that I can continue to count until I am finished with the first sock. Off to bed. Zzzzzzzz!

TTC Knit-a-Long...Ghoulishly Late Post

Of course I braved the soggy, cold Saturday so I could lead a group of knitters into yarn nirvana. Who wouldn't right? Katherine and I co-captaining the East Team was a lot of fun, and dare I say, I'd do it again! Mostly because the East Team totally rawked the house. I'm not kidding!

9:00am was the meeting time, and Pam's Coffee & Tea was the meeting place. I tend to ALWAYS be late to things, since I haven't had to go to a workplace in say... ummmm... a year, so I planned to leave my house twenty minutes earlier than I really needed. I've very glad I did because with all the flopping around I did before I left I ended up at Pam's at 8:57am. Christina and Rochelle were already talking up a storm about knitting related things and I was happy that I didn't have to sit at the café by myself. (Note: I normally like to sit in cafés by myself. That day I was chomping at the bit to s-h-o-p.) With the weather I was a wee bit concerned of no-shows, but luckily people's love of yarn was stronger than their hate of the weather, and we only were short 4 peeps when we walked the few doors down to The Naked Sheep. What a sight it was to see my team in TNS:

Okaaay, so I'm apologizing now for the absolute craptitude of my photography during this KAL. I'm mea culpa-ing now! I *knowingly* brought a old, tired and broken Canon A60 digital camera because I was too stingy with space to carry my Nikon D70. People, I wanted that space for yaaaaaarn. But now I'm sad because I have few pictures. At The Naked Sheep I bought 8 balls of Noro Silk Garden in colourway #245 for the Tithe sweater designed by Jane Ellison.

After the The Naked Sheep, we took the longest part of our commute which required us to take a bus then subway then streetcar to Romni Wools. Surprisingly we didn't get any weird looks or scare folks away. I guess that's kinda comforting. Although I am remembering a few blank stares on the subway, but we were riding the subway and I think if you ride the subway it is required that you perfect a blank stare otherwise no monthy pass for you. I think it's stated in the TTC Ride Guide. Here we are waiting for the bus:

Meet my team (from left to right):Cristina, Rochelle, Nadia, Mary Pat, Michelle, Christina and Melinda. Katherine, Lisa and I were huddling under the bus shelter to keep dry. Since it was the Saturday before Halloween we were "encouraged" to wear costumes, however the weather encouraged most not to wear a costume. Lisa, who by the way came allllll the way from Vancouver AND bought the most yarn out of all participants AND won a beautiful African mud dyed backpack to carry her haul in, ended up winning the "best costume" four our team.

No joke! She was the most dressed up! Her sign says "Will work for alpaca."

Romni was as always wonderful and overwhelming at the same time. We had two peeps join our team there, Carla and Tara. Even just adding two people made the team seem larger. Especially when we hit the Second Cup for a quick breather. We took over, yo! Thanks for joining our team Carla and Tara! Sorry I don't have any pictures of you because I basically stopped taking photos before we walked into Romni because my camera was broken and I was sad. To see some of the photos that didn't turn out too blurry or too broken, check out my flickr. At Romni I bought 14 balls of Noro Silk Garden in colourway #47 for the Fitzgerald sweater (also designed by Jane Ellison) for my Sweetie Pie.

Once everyone had a chance to take a deeeep breath, we all realized we were hungry. Nadia suggested The Queenshead Pub we dove in as fast as possible. What a great suggestion! The barkeep was awesome and didn't get all pissy when she saw our large group, although she did warn us she had only one cook so it would take some time. It did take LOTS of time, but the food was great (at least on our part of the table, forgot to check in with the other side). Since it took so long to get our food, we did get lots of knitting done but we ended up having to skip the bead store and a new yarn/luxury pillow (wuh?!) store and had to run to Lettuce Knit as both the North and West Teams were already done and were waiting for us at the Red Room. Ack!

So off we ran (Ok, we didn't run. We took a short streetcar ride. You get my drift.), feeling a little tired from the combo of food coma and yarn overdose. However, that feeling didn't stop me from buying two balls of Mission Falls 1824 Wool in Curry to make da' bear in Last-Minute Knitted Gifts and a skein of Misti Alpaca Worsted in a funky green/gold colourway to make arm warmers for my Sweetie Pie (not to mention the scarf for the bear) from the same book. Thanks for the alpaca recommendation, Nadia!

All three teams converged at the Red Room for yarn fondling, prizes and bevvies. Sophie once again amazed we with her yarn purchases and Sandi blew my mind her amazing KNITTED Elvis wig.

My haul (a recap): 22(!) balls of Noro Silk Garden, 2 balls of Mission Falls 1824 Wool and 1 skein of Misti Alpaca Worsted. Whew!

And of course, a knit-a-long wouldn't be complete without a knitted item to knit a long. This is what I was working on:

A simple garter stitch wrap for a friend who's having a baby and lives in Huntington Beach (not LA), California. Surprisingly enough, the yarn is 90% acrylic. Perfect to throw in the wash after your baby spits up on you. The bear is for her baby which is due in February and will be able to be thrown in the wash too. And my friend Keri, who couldn't make the KAL, created this little yarn cozy that you see in the pic to test out. I was able to avoid the same knitting disaster I had last year.

Hey East Team Rawkers! If you have a blog and you want me to link to it just leave me a comment and I will update the post. Also if anyone knows how to photoshare with flickr to blogger, please let me know. I'm tired of uploading my pics to my ftp site.

The End.

Somebody's birthday is tomorrow...

Have a knitalicous birthday, Amy!!


Psst... pass it on.


(Thanks for the tip, Jillian.)

new. yarn. store.

alterknit is the new knitting store in town and you. should. go. 1024 St. Claire Avenue West. They have a cappuccino and a slice of Turtle cake waiting for you. Plus a lovely wall of yarn that is only going to get bigger.

What I did over the Rhinebeck weekend...

Well, for starters I didn't go to Rhinebeck.

But I did go to the creativfestival with Sophie. We had a fun time , but it was just as I expected it to be from other people's experience. Basically, it's not the best place to go if you are only a knitter. But if you like to scrapbook, needlepoint, sew, quilt or any other needle art than this is the place for you. I only knit, so my overwhelmed/excited factor was kept to a minimum. However there were a few treasures that we stumbled upon like Jacqueline who created Soak, Anne & Jane (sisters!) who own Dye-Versions and The Black Sheep Company.

Jacqueline was such a delight and her products are amazing! She even has a limited time holiday sent called "a scent for celebration," which is devine. Plus she's a knitter. Check out her Jacqs-Hats. Anne & Jane are nice and full of energy. I believe they started their company dying cloth but have now expanded into yarn. They spent all summer dying yarn in their basement nd the colors are scrumptious. I have my eye on the peacock colorway. The Black Sheep Company only does trade shows and will be launching an online presense soon. They import yarns from Italy and have some very interesting yarns. I bought a 90% acrylic yarn called Gypsy because I couldn't believe how soft it is, plus it was in the most fantastic sunset colorway. 3 balls came with a quick garter stitch shawl that will be perfect for a pregnant friend who lives in Southern California. She doesn't need wool! Plus I want to make sure she can throw it in the wash (on gentle, of course!).

Jane Ellison, designer of delicious Noro patterns, was at the festival for a book signing. My rubber arm was twisted to purchase two books. She was so sweet, even after being wisked in, plopped down and immediately rushed by knitters. I have plans to knit at least two sweaters right away (which means they will be done by Summer 2008) and three more later down the line. Noro is going to get lots of my money. Sigh!

Oh, and my wine red leather chairs were delivered on Saturday. They are absolutely delicious. Paul sat in one all day on Sunday. I was sure he was going to take it to work with him today.

Good News Yesterday

A very dear friend of mine, whom I've known for a very long time but haven't spoken with in quite a few months, is going to have a baby. She's due in February and she'll be having a boy. It was so nice to talk to her and catch up. I do miss her and I'd like to knit her and the baby something special. Suggestions are greatly appreciated.

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Originally uploaded by jacquieblackman.

Tit-Bit is completed! One down, one more to go...

So little time, so much to do...

I didn't realize October was going to come in like a lion. I spent three days helping the dynamic duo, Amy and Jillian, on the photo shoot for their sequel to Big Girl Knits. It was a great day and Amy's post pretty much sums up the day. Paul and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary of living in Toronto. I'm working on getting donations from yarn companies and stores for the TTC Knit-A-Long. AND I'm working on the second meeting of the season for the Downtown Knit Collective. Oh, and I have a slew of non-knitting related things going on too! The most pressing was getting a furnace for my house. I didn't even know what a furnace was until four weeks ago. Now I'm an expert. If you need a recommendation, just contact me.

If you're reading this and you'll be in Toronto on Oct 18th (Wednesday) then you should come to the DKC and welcome Beryl Tsang, the amazing creator of the Tit-Bit. With October being breast cancer awareness month we thought we should do our part to help raise the awareness. At this meeting we will be taking donations of Tit-Bits (pattern here or go to the DKC website for a downloadable PDF file), scarves and/or hats. Please come to the meeting with a knitted item in hand and make a breast cancer survivor feel better with a beautiful gift. Plus Beryl is an amazing woman. I meet her for the first time at the last TTC KAL and I was blown away by her humor, energy and sassiness. The meeting, I'm sure, will be a blast. I'm working on a Tit-Bit and it's coming nicely (although there are a few small mistakes) out of Bouton D'Or Ksar. It is so luxurious against the skin so I'm hoping the mistakes will be forgotten once it's touched. I hope to maybe have two to donate, but I'm a really slow knitter.


I'm also working on a pair of socks (that I think I'll rip out). And I've started Lace Wings. I think I might get Lace Wings done around 2010. Seriously. It's hard. I've tried to make it look a lot more impressive than it really is but making the photo look all "arty." Are you impressed? I didn't think so.


I've also done a little stash enhancement. I was at Lettuce Knit on Wednesday to wrap up the photo shoot and do a little knitting. Very little, as I was exhausted. I mostly just dropped my pattern on the floor over and over again. But I couldn't keep my hands out of the 30% off basket and I came away with three skeins of Blue Sky Worsted Hand Dyes (50% alpaca/50% merino) in Ecru. Although one label says purple and one says light pink. The third didn't have a label. But everyone agreed that the three skeins matched and ecru just seemed like the right color, so I bought them. Also I received approximately two balls of Patons SWS in Natural Plum. I hope to make a hat/scarf or hat/mittens combo out of the Blue Sky and an earflap hat out of the SWS.

With the TTC KAL right around the corner, I'm feeling like I might just turn into one of those knitters with a giganto stash. Right now, my stash is manageable. It's in a cute basket that sits on the floor. When my friend Keri saw my stash she just shook her head and I think uttered the word "newbie" but I could have misheard her. I have a few projects that are in the "wait" queue, but it's not like I have years of knitting waiting around. Well, that might be debatable at the speed I actually knit things. I think this is a "Danger, Will Robinson!" moment in my life. Eep!

22 days later and I'm finally posting...

A lot has happened over the last 22 days. I've packed. I've moved. I've mostly unpacked. In between that I've bought a dryer, received furnace quotes, bought a dining room table with 6 chairs, bought 2 red wine leather chairs for the living room, found a couch but didn't buy it and agonized over paint chips. Things have been amazing and I'm still in shock that I finally own my own house. I' m just tickled pink. Although I do have that sinking feeling that someone is going to come by and say, "Oh sorry, we were wrong. This isn't yours." But luckily as the days pass that feeling also passes. But I digress. Everything has been wonderful, except one thing. For the last 16 of those 22 days I've been without a proper internet connection. I've been "borrowing" the neighbor's connection. For small parts of the day, the connection is wicked fast. For most of the day, it's worse than dial-up. But I digress even further.

The one thing I did not do during the last 22 days was ignore my knitting. In fact, even though I had precious little time to knit I did make the time that I had productive. And it felt so good! You may recall the episode I had with the Gigantic Clap which set me back with completion. Well, I'm proud to say that I finished the project with a small handful of yarn left. And you know what? It is beautiful. It's bright. Almost sickly so. And I love it. And I haven't really removed it from my body except to sleep and shower. I have to admit I was obsessed with starting this project and I would spend countless hours combing blogs for yarn ideas and FOs. But now I think the obsession is satiated and I can move on. If a friend or family member asks for one I won't hesitate but I don't think I need to make any more.


Next on the needles will be Beryl Tsang's brilliant invention, the Tit-Bit, and Lace Wings by Alice Cooley. The Tit-Bit is for donation at next month's Downtown Knit Collective meeting. (BTW - September's meeting was a success and I promise to write an update before the next meeting.) To add a little extra fun, I think I may learn how to knit socks in an extreme fashion -- two at a time.









CLAPOTIS
Started: July 30, 2006
Completed: September 19, 2006
Pattern: Clapotis by Kate Gilbert (knitty.com)
Pattern Modifications: did only 5 increase sections (instead of 8)
Yarn: Noro Iro (5 skeins)
Color: Rainbow (#18)
Needles: US11/8mm Clover bamboo circulars

Knitpicks Options (first thoughts)

Literally as I was walking out the door for the airport to head to Minneapolis last week my package of Knitpicks Options arrived that I ordered for my birthday. Now since I've been back I've been incredibly focused on the Big Move so I haven't had much of a chance to play with them. Yesterday, Paul was very sick and spent most of the day in bed. I couldn't do much else so I decided to get the needles out and give them a try. Well, I have to admit I'm off to a rocky start. I really like the weight, balance and sharpness of the needle tips, however I'm a little disappointed in the cables.

I ordered 3 packs (2 cables per pack) of different cable lengths and 3 of 6 do not screw into the needles properly. One cord you can visually see the damage to the threads (how did that get past Quality Assurance?). Two cords do not have visual damage, but refuse to go all the way to the bottom at the same place on both. I've tried multiple needle tips.

I left a message for Knitpicks customer service (as they are closed in honor of Labor Day -- that's labour without the "u") and I hope to hear from them tomorrow. I hope they send me new cords for free without making me return the old ones. Although I don't see that happening. I'm sure I'll have to pay some sort of duty or tax or whatnot to return $8 worth of cables. Sigh!

EDIT: Since I didn't hear from knitpicks yesterday, I gave them another call today (Wednesday 9/6). My interaction with customer service was... strange. I felt like I had to guess what information she wanted from me (plus she had a runny nose and she kept sniffing the snot back into her head. Gross!) which made me overcompensate with blathering niceness. Why I reacted this way I cannot say, but that's how I responded. Short story is that they are replacing my order for free and I don't have to send the broken cables back.

And there was great rejoicing.

Ball Winder To Capacity

To rival the Biggest Ball of Twine somewhere in the middle of the USofA, I thought I would create the biggest ball of Noro Iro. I ripped out the Giganto Clap and thanks to Wonderful Sophie and her Magnificant Ball Winder I was able to avoid a knotty mess. During the knitting of the Giganto Clap, I spit/split-spliced the skeins together so when I was winding it up I didn't notice that the splices weren't coming apart until I got very close to the end. I don't know how, but it all fit. This ball is a total of 360 meters which is 3 skeins. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to carry it around. It looks like a big hunk of rainbow cheese. Mmmmmmm... cheese.

Birthday Love Continues...

As you can recall, I think birthdays are fantastic! Especially birthdays that are unintentionally draaaaaaaaaawn out. It all started when I arrived at Wednesday Night Knitters and Wendy, who I had helped mostly untangle an incredibly tangled mess of railroad ribbon yarn before she jet-setted off to Scotland for a few weeks, had flowers for me. She said they were a "peace offering" because she didn't forget that she offered me a latte the next knitting night for helping her. Now I really didn't mind helping, even though it was an exhaustive effort. The unfortunate part was that we didn't get the whole thing untangled, but we did have partial success. Anyway, the fact that she offered was good enough for me. I actually had fun trying that tangled puzzle. So Wendy, if you're reading this there is no need for the latte! The flowers are gorgeous (even though I don't have a proper vase -- it's already packed)!

Sandi Purl surprised me with the most beautiful knitted rose (an "American Beauty" no less!) with a vintage knitting needle that lost it's mate as the stem. My camera was being too arty and wouldn't put the whole flower in focus (some day I'll actually read the manual) but on the leaf there is a ladybug charm. OMG!! I looooooove it.

I've found the perfect home for it! I house my straight needles, most of them I inherited from my Grandmother, in an old mason jar and it looks right at home there. (I would have taken a picture but I gave up on the focus thing.) She also gave me a bead bracelet with a little cowboy boot on it. And the first thing I said to her was "yeehaw!" Some may not know, but I grew up in Texas. I didn't take a picture of that either because I was wearing it.

Clapotis: Take II

Thankfully I had a long weekend that involved an airplane and I got lots done on the second Clapotis. The first Clapotis was of epic proportions size-wise and three skeins into it I realized that I wasn't going to have enough yarn to finish if kept at it's size. Already using 3 of the 5 skeins I had purchased, I decided to see how I would feel if I used slightly larger needles and did less increase sections.

This is what I landed with yesterday on my return. I think it will work. The larger one is the 1st attempt and that is using up almost 3 skeins and the smaller one is the 2nd and it is about 1 1/2 skeins. Basically, I am almost at the same place in the pattern as I was on the first.

As for details, I went from size 6mm to 8mm and did only 5 increase sections (as opposed to 8). The large one is 30" wide while the small one is 24" wide. What I really like about using the bigger needles is the detail of the yarn really pops. I felt with using the 6mm needles the stitches were tight and kinda scratchy. Now there is lots of room and the stitches all flow. It's soft now and I can't wait to drape it around me. Can you tell which one is the second try? (It's the one on the left below.)

I've only dropped two stitches on the second one, so I guess I'm a little more than one straight row section behind the first. But I'm very close.

Delayed Birthday Post

Birthdays are so fantastic! And this year was especially awesome, especially in regards to knitting. (Especially!) My special day did kinda sneak up on me and the day itself was largely uneventful, but three things did happen.

First, earlier in the week I found an American Express gift card languishing on my desk that was given to me back in October. With that discovery, I decided that I needed Knitpicks interchangeable needles, Options. I heard so many great things about them that I couldn't help myself. I have a feeling I will love them as the needles themselves seem very well designed and have a nice weight, but I will admit I'm not too crazy about the carry case as it seems very much like an afterthought. (Just assessing the line overall, Knitpicks needs to offer needles smaller than 3.5mm and the cables shorter than 24". But this is all before I even lock the first needle to the cable. More of a review later!)

Second, my mom sent me a gift certificate to The Naked Sheep and it arrived right on my birthday. It was perfect!!

Then, Sophie surprised me with the most awesome gift (in two parts). We meet up for a knitting afternoon at Tango Palace Café and she gave me some of the softest variegated merino wool I've ever felt. It's Malabrigo from Uruguay in colourway Cuarenta (#237). With the yarn, she gave me the Guantlet pattern made famous at Wednesday Night Knitters. Yummy! Then she went on to completely top herself by giving me the most fantastic bag that has plenty of room to carry my knitting around in. It has a classic pin-up beauty saying "I love not camping" on top of a vintage tropical leaf pattern. And it's true. I do love not camping. Squee!

Hmmmmm... now Sophie's birthday is coming right around the corner. I had better start doing somere-conn to find the perfect gift. *Begins tiptoeing around doing best Sherlock Holmes impression*