And your bird can sing

I have spent the last hour playing The Beatles Rock Band and I have sung myself hoarse. It's marvellous! Sometimes I like to imagine a world where karaoke is made for people like me: slightly tone deaf, but with a love of music that makes up for. Someone who isn't interested in singing Top 40 hits. I want Crowded House Rock Band and Elliott Smith SingStar. I want to sing songs that actually mean something.

I miss the Albion Hotel in Guelph. I miss the jukebox, and the Strongbow (one of my least favourite things about this town is the total lack of cider on tap anywhere). I miss eating nachos and putting ten dollars of quarters in the jukebox and pissing other people off because the next ninety minutes of music were all mine and I was going to be drunk and enjoy every word out of that beautiful lighted box.

Today was a good day at the end of a long week. Mat went hunting for deer, which left me alone with a queen sized bed. There is something to be said for having a whole bed to yourself. He came back last night, as the hunting party reached their quota quite early in the week (and it was raining).

The winter Interweave came today, along with my skein of Dye For Glory yarn: Three Irish Girls' Father Time. It's beautiful and manly. I got it on Finley Fingering, which I'm quickly realizing is one of my favourite sock yarn bases. It's very squooshy.


I also grabbed a few snaps of some finished projects. First is Caitlin's birthday rpesent, the ubiquitous February Lady Sweater:



I also finished the Ripley hat from Whimsical Little Knits 2:



And I have cast on a Swallowtail Shawl as a gift for my gramma.

In which I participate in gratuitous acts of commerce

Ian and I took a trip over to Sudbury today to visit our favourite warehouse super store, Costco, and to take in the other shops. It was a productive, if funny, shopping day. I was quite excited to get a Friends and Family coupon for Old Navy worth 30% off the prices, and I picked up some sweaters and long sleeve Ts. Ian used it to buy baby clothes. It was quite touching to see him pick out the little pink dresses and sweaters. My favourite was the hooded fleece sleeper--it has ears on the hood.

I also managed to snag a new Roots hoodie from their new "We're Not the Official Clothiers of the Canadian Olympic Team Anymore, So We'll Just Happen to Come Out With a Canada-themed Line Right Before the Olympics" line. It has thumb holes in the cuffs, which I love. Hurray for warm hands.

Once we got home, I took a quick trip downtown to the new yarn store. It's been open for a few months now, and I haven't bought much there. The selection is great; I've just been broke/living under the delusion of 'stashbusting'. I needed to pick something up for a swap I'm doing, and this store carries Misty Haven Alpacas' yarns. (As my swap partner lives in the Netherlands, I thought it would be great to send her some local yarn.)

holding pattern

Gentle reader, the last few weeks have kicked my ass.

I managed to pick up the hinny, as we've taken to calling H1N1, somewhere, and while I have been better in every way that counts for about a week now, I'm still pretty tired and prone to taking naps whenever I can get away with it. The hinny was unpleasant: I was so miserable I didn't even want to knit. The worst part was the fever and chills. At one point, I was dressed in fleece pyjamas, wearing a housecoat, wrapped in a down-filled duvet, and wrapped in another blanket, and I still couldn't get warm.

Thankfully that is all in the past.

We had a beautiful day here today. It was sunny, and almost warm (about 11 Celsius); I raked some leaves in our backyard. The backyard is much bigger than I remember it being. (Our lot is 34'x125', so I know how big it is, but sometimes I forget what that actually means.) I really hope that next summer I can get my act together to give the backyard the TLC it needs, as it could be quite beautiful. Perhaps if it doesn't rain every other day next year.

I cast on my first knit sock in almost six months last week; I'm finding that my store bought socks are not cutting it in terms of keeping my feet warm. And it's not like I have a shortage of sock yarn...I was almost half finished my sock when I finally admitted that it was too small, and tore it out. Naturally, the excitement of yarn being frogged was too much for the cat to handle, and he grabbed the sock in his mouth and ran off with it. He managed to unravel it for me all around the kitchen and living room. He was having so much fun that I couldn't quite bring myself to stop him.

Now that I'm back in the land of the living, things should be more interesting around here.