frogging back

I've been having some problems with numbness in one of my arms, which has seriously cut down on my knitting time. I did no actual knitting for almost ten days. Not fun. (The 30-35 degree heat was another factor in the non-knitting.) I always forget how important of a stress management tool it is for me until I can't or don't knit for a while. Yesterday I decided to take matters back into my own hands and worked doggedly on a pair of Craic socks. Lovely (if challenging) pattern, and the product was lovely too...until I decided to try on the six inches I'd knit so far and couldn't fit the bloody thing over my foot.

I had no choice but to frog. Sure, I could've offered the socks to someone else, with smaller feet, but this is a) my Handmaiden Casbah, which is about the most luxurious sock yarn I own, with its 10% cashmere, and b) it's one of those patterns that only another knitter could really appreciate--and I am selfish enough to want to spend those hours of valuable knitting time on myself.

Since then, I've recast on for the Blackrose pattern from Knitty, and it seems to be working out much better.

Passchendaele premiered on the satellite tonight. I've been wanting to see it since it was in theatres, but couldn't quite sack it together at the time to do so. I fully expected to be quite happy with it--Canadian history, war movies, Paul Gross writing/directing/acting--but unfortunately the whole wasn't quite the sum of its parts. A friend had told me that it was superb except for the last fifteen minutes, and he was mostly right. I wouldn't call it superb so much as very, very good, but those last fifteen minutes are brutal. I want more from Paul Gross; I admire him and his work very much, and I think that what he does for Canada and Canadian film is so important...but this just didn't work for me.

In other news, there is a new yarn store in North Bay. I will write more about it later.