Aspiration

Day six: 2nd April. Something to aspire to.Is there a pattern or skill that you don’t yet feel ready to tackle but which you hope to (or think you can only dream of) tackling in the future, near or distant? Is there a skill or project that makes your mind boggle at the sheer time, dedication and mastery of the craft? Maybe the skill or pattern is one that you don’t even personally want to make but can stand back and admire those that do. Maybe it is something you think you will never be bothered to actually make bu can admire the result of those that have.

Having seen how my mom's sweater has turned out, there is a piece of me that would very much like to make one for myself, but I think it will take a year or two before I'd be ready to knit that sweater again.

I aspire to be a faster knitter, I think. I have lots of projects and lots of ideas, and I wish that I could find the time to get them all done. My guild has begun posting a monthly goals thread on Ravelry, and I have found that to be enormously helpful in figuring out what I want to make each month. Having a list gives me something to check in on, which is nice.

I also aspire to be a better designer. I'm learning a lot about pattern design, but I would like to get better at translating my ideas to paper and to yarn.

Finally, I would really like to learn how to embroider properly, so that I can embellish my knits that way.

A sweater for mum

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

It is, as of a few weeks ago, election season here in Canada once again. People are upset about this, for a variety of reasons. Some people are upset because they see the election as unnecessary and, if you're Stephen Harper, apparently dangerous. Some people are upset because the Conservative government was found to be in contempt of Parliament. Some people are upset because Canada has three parties that suffer from a lack of leadership. ¹

And I get that. I hate the attack ads that the Conservative Party of Canada runs about Michael Ignatieff--I hate that they are personal attacks, rather than attacks on policy. That said, they do resonate--it's not difficult to portray Ignatieff as an elitist blowhard who is out of touch with "the average Canadian" because, well, he comes off as an elitist blowhard who is out of touch with the average Canadian. If he was elected, he certainly wouldn't be the first elitist blowhard to lead our country, and I don't know that those qualities would necessarily make him a bad PM.

This will be an interesting election for a lot of reasons. We have three leaders who are likely fighting the last election battles of their careers: Layton, in addition to his health issues, has yet to lead his party to even Official Opposition Status. If Ignatieff fails to win even a minority government this time, it will be a death knell for him as Liberal leader. Anything less than a majority government means the same for Harper; after two minority wins, he needs to show that he is actually engaging Canadians.² Then there's the ubiquitous Green Party question: will Elizabeth May ever get to participate in a debate?

We are less than four weeks away from the election. I do not know what will happen in the next few weeks. I do not know what kind of dirt will be slung around, what kind of promises will be made, nor what crazy back room allegiances will be struck. I do know that our system is not perfect and that sometimes it feels very broken.

The other thing that I do know is that I, as a Canadian, am choosing to view this election as a positive thing. I believe in our system of government very strongly. I also believe in democracy and the right of suffrage. I am hopeful that everything that has happened in the world since our last election will serve as a call to arms to Canadians: Vote. Vote because we can, because our constitution enshrines it as a right and a freedom. Vote because others worked very hard to get us these rights. Vote because our country is worth investing ourselves in.

Above all else, I will not let the bastards grind me down. No matter how ugly this campaign gets (and given that the attack ads started before the writ was dropped, I think it's safe to say that it will), I will speak loudly in defense of our system and speak loudly in defense of ourselves. I will not let the bastards grind me down into apathy or subservience. I will stand up and be counted.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
===
¹ I know I'm pressing at least a few of your buttons by saying that, readers, but I'm calling it as I see it. Your mileage may vary.
²Speaking of Harper, he looks uncannily like my father in this pre-election ad for Conservative jingoism. His hair, glasses, mannerisms, and Beatles mug are all the same. I have no choice but to see this as further evidence of the Masonic-Reptilian conspiracy.

Whatever happened to...?

Whatever happened to your __________?

I couldn't think of one specific item that I wanted to focus on for this, so here are some photos of things I've made that have gone on to other lives:

(Youngest Sister in her Christmas cowl)

(Husband in his Christmas hat - if you click on the picture to see the larger version, you can see that his eyes are actually different colours)

(Mum in the Haruni shawl)

(Grandma in her Swallowtail shawl)

(Little Abigail in a baby sweater)

(Baby Will in his baby sweater)

Day Threeeee

How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry.

Like everything else in my life, my yarn is subject to what appears to be an organizational system founded on total chaos. It totally works for me, though, and I very seldom have difficulty finding what I want. I am lucky enough to have a whole room to myself for crafting. It was billed as a third bedroom when we bought the house, but I have strong doubts about that since a) it has no door, and b) it has no heat supply. It is upstairs between our two actual bedrooms, and it is currently in desperate need of reorganization. I have one plastic bin (won at an OPSEU Christmas party a few years back) which holds acrylics, cottons, cheap wool, and other things that you can buy at big box retailers. I have a three drawer plastic unit that holds my lace weights and my fingering weights. (I have two others that have recently been repurposed for sewing and fabric.) I have a wooden shelving unit that holds a lot of assorted crafting supplies. On it, I have several plastic shoe/sweater boxes that have my Three Irish Girls collection, sorted by weight. I also have--and this might be my one moment of true organizational genius-- three of the zippered plastic bags that comforters and duvets come in. I like these because they are strong, they have a convenient rectangular shape that makes them easy to stack, and they zip closed, which keeps everything inside the bags. I have one for workhorse yarn, one for fancy yarn, and one for odds and ends.

I will occasionally bag my yarn in freezer bags before putting them into other containers, if it helps to keep a sweater set together or something like that. I also have a large, fabric covered box that one of my wedding presents came in, which I use to hold yarn downstairs in the living room, in case I suddenly decide to cast on something else.

This was not the most interesting of posts; I think today might have been a good day to rock the wildcard topic. I apologize.

Skill Roundup

Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet (can you crochet cable stitches now where you didn’t even know such things existed last year? Have you recently put a foot in the tiled world of entrelac? Had you even picked up a pair of needles or crochet hook this time last year?

I actually don't have a lot to report in this category; perhaps my skill level has reached a plateau? My biggest skill this past year has been patience: between my mom's sweater (9 months in the making), my husband's kilt hose (which apparently took six weeks?), and all of the Giftmas knitting that I did, there wasn't much opportunity to try new skills or techniques. I suppose you could say that I've learned a lot about being a designer this past year. I had my first patterns professionally published (and my first patterns professionally rejected, for that matter) and it has been an interesting ride. I have some repair work to do on my patterns (charting problems mostly) that I need to fix tomorrow, and some language to revise. I don't think that I'll ever get rich doing it (nor, indeed, ever consider it a "career") but I do like designing in terms of thinking of "new" ways to use yarns, stitches, pattern, techniques.

A Tale of Two Yarns

Part of any fibre enthusiast’s hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.

I like yarn a lot, in general, and I can think of very few that I have genuinely disliked knitting with. There are a few, of course; the most recent of which is the Knit Picks Swish, which is a superwash worsted weight yarn. I am actually a pretty big fan of Knit Picks; there are several of their products that I really like, namely the City Tweeds, the Imagination sock, and the Wool of the Andes, all of which I've made things out of that have held up very well over time. I recently completed a Rogue sweater for my mother out of the Swish, and I was pretty much cursing it by the end. It was splitty, which lead to a lot of half-dropped stitches that I had to fix, and the small balls meant lots of ends to weave in. Mostly, though, I just didn't like the way that it felt in my hands. (I'm attributing this to the superwashing process.) I had picked it for this sweater initially because of the price, and while I did save a good chunk of money, I wish now I'd spent the money to buy a nicer yarn: it's much too big a project for a yarn that I hated.

In the yarn that I love category, where to start? I love different yarns at different times and for different things. I love the Peace Fleece that I bought at the Frolic last year. It's the perfect heathered green colour and it feels slightly rustic. I bought it to go with these buttons, which I'd had for over a year in anticipation of finding just the right green yarn. I also tend to love alpaca yarns. The yarn that I made my wedding shawl from, which I bought from a local alpaca farm, is like knitting with clouds--so beautifully soft and smooth, and perfect for shawls. I also love(d) Fleece Artist's Woolie Silk 2-ply, now sadly discontinued. I've made two shawls from it, and they are both beautiful and warm. I get compliments on mine whenever I wear it, and I think my mom gets some on hers, too.

The good, the bread, and two weeks left

This is actually the first of two posts for today, since today is the beginning of the Second Annual Knit Crochet Blog Week.

There are two weeks left in the term. This is simulataneously exciting and terrifying. I have quite a lot of work to do as a result of this (plus our exam is only 4 days after the last day of classes, which gives me no cushion) but somehow I always find myself dreaming of the things I will be doing once classes are over. I have big plans for the month of April, and the summer sort of snowballs from there--concerts, plays, road trips, sewing, painting, gardening, baking...maybe even running.

Speaking of baking, here is a picture of my second place winning bread:


Don't you want some now? I do. I'll have to make more this week. I am going to attempt a chickpea soup today, as well. We took a roadtrip to Sudbury on Friday to visit Chapters and Costco, and we got to have lunch at Respect Is Burning, which was serving a soup that was chickpeas, proscuitto, bacon, asparagus, white wine, chicken broth, and cream. I've found a recipe for one that sounds similar, and I'm going to give it a shot since it was a pretty tasty soup.

We also went to a hunting/sporting good store, which was in the process of a massive liquidation sale because they were moving locations. I was able to get both a Helly Hansen running jacket and a Cybersilk base layer shirt for my mother for under $40 (regularly $180). Very fortuitous timing, given that the next day was my mother's birthday...

Second Best

I've spent most of the last week cooking.

I made more of perpetual Nut-house favourite, Anna Olson's gyoza. Easy but time consuming, they are tasty morsels, and very filling.

I made blood orange sorbet in the ice cream maker attachment for the stand mixer. I haven't quite got myself motivated to make actual ice cream yet, because every time I look at a recipe that calls for more than a cup of whipping cream, I have a bit of a heart attack. Sorbets, however, are perfect--delicious, simple, and (relatively) healthy, since I get to control how much sugar goes in to it. (It also makes lovely daiquiris, too, and if the price of limes ever drops, I will be making margaritas by the pitcherful.)

I've also made bread--more specifically, caramelized onion beer bread. I have actually not made bread very many times in my life, but this recipe was so simple that it turned out incredible. The student services department hosted a "Northern University's Best Baker" competition today, with categories in cakes, cookies, squares, and bread. I chose bread because I wanted to try a savoury option. A brief visit to a friend's gourmet food shop/bakery last weekend suggested a caramelized onion and cheese bread to me, and the recipe above sounded the most delicious of all the hits that my google search turned up.

I made the first batch on Monday, omitting the cumin because a) I didn't have any cumin seeds, and b) I just forgot to add the ground cumin. It was delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I ate the two loaves by myself because Mat hates onions and wouldn't touch it. I used Sleeman Honey Brown as my beer of choice.

When I made the dough last night, I remembered the cumin. It smelled fantastic today while it was baking, but I couldn't taste it as much as I would've thought in the finished product, probably because it was just the ground cumin. The bread was even better the second time, I think, and the judges thought so too--I came in first in the bread category, and in second overall. (I lost to a very elaborate 4-layer cake.)

Other than that, most of today has been lost to cleaning--we finally trucked our unusable computer desk and broken washer off to the dump, and we moved the furniture in the living room around--it's so much nicer now. Almost like we live in a grown up house.

Walkin' in New Orleans

We are home now, at long last. The trip home yesterday was uneventful but long--it took longer to drive from Toronto to North Bay Rock City than it did to fly from New Orleans to Toronto. Once we arrived home, there were seven million cats to be petted and reassured and allowed to bite us very crossly for having left in the first place. The Little Cat is larger now--he's not a patch on Big Cat, of course, but he's still a titch bigger than he was. Middle Sister, who served Chief Cat Worshipper and Provider of Food while we were gone, has left her cat at our house through the end of the weekend, and I must say that our house is simply too small for three cats. They're everywhere--I am constantly stepping on them.

Anyhow. You don't want to read about cats. You want to know about New Orleans.

We lucked out with the weather--it was 24-28 degrees and mostly sunny all week. I even have the tiniest bit of a tan right now. The hotel, which was gorgeous and ornate, had a pool and a hot tub on its roof, and we spent a good chunk of time soaking up there, and looking out around the city. Our hotel was about two blocks away from the French Quarter, in the Central Business District. I chose it mainly because we got the best price on it through itravel2000.com, and it worked out amazingly well. At four diamonds, it was much more luxurious than anywhere else I'd ever stayed, and being out of the French Quarter was a blessing in disguise. Having seen how the Quarter was a full two weeks before Mardi Gras, I have difficulty comprehending what crazy Mardi Gras must actually be...

We visited Oak Alley Plantation and did a bayou tour. We rode around on the streetcars for a day, goofing around at City Park and wandering around the Garden District. (Also: American friends, HOW ON EARTH HAVE YOU NOT TOLD ME ABOUT COLD STONE CREAMERY? I mean, I know you've mentioned it in passing, but you've never explained how urgently I needed to go there.) We saw a space shuttle. We went to a cemetery (St. Louis #1, a.k.a. the one in Easy Rider). I bought yarn and a 70-300mm telephoto lens for my camera. We went to Mardi Gras parades and walked around with open containers of alcohol. We caught strings of beads thrown by strippers on a balcony. We pet and fed stingrays. We sunbathed and soaked on the rooftop of our hotel.

And we ate. Oh my goodness, did we eat. I ate tuna, oysters, redfish, crawfish, salmon, shrimp, crab, alligator, tacos, burritos, real barbeque, thai dumplings, sushi, po'boys, roasted chicken, buffalo milk cheese, homemade soppressatta, buttermilk pancakes, ice cream, bread pudding, pralines, and beignets. I drank wine, margaritas, beer (including a strawberry beer!), Hurricanes, frozen brandy milk punch, cafe au lait, and sweet tea. It was wonderful.

I have a number of observations on American-Canadian relations and differences, which I will share with you later, but for now I will simply link to my Flickr set of New Orleans pictures, and leave you with this particularly photographic gem:

The City of New Orleans

This city is amazing.

It's Friday night and we are both tuckered out. Our hotel is
beautiful--far and away the fanciest place I've ever stayed. We just
got in from a Mardi Gras parade, and we will likely see a few more
tomorrow. We have walked all over, eaten almost everything, and in
general had the best time.

We saw a seven piece jazz band play in a 150 year old hall the size of
my parents' living room.

But more about that later. I just wanted to say hey. Hope you're
enjoying your week.

Sent from my iPod

Testing

Sent from my iPod

The Social Network

I finally got to see The Social Network on Friday. The lovely Krista and I went out for Lebanese food (yes, that's right, we finally have ethnic food here) and after the raptures of shawarmas and donairs, we were ready to watch something good.

I watch a fair amount of movies, as we have a PVR and subscribe to the movie channels, to say nothing of our considerable personal collection. That said, I've become kind of a lazy viewer over the last few years--I frequently watch movies while knitting, reading, writing, or sketching. I'm an efficient multitasker so this usually isn't a problem unless I'm doing something particularly challenging. The Social Network was so compelling to watch that I couldn't do anything else but watch it.

I'm not sure what about it was so compelling--the script, yes; the acting, yes; the score, perhaps; the perpetual hope that someone would pop JT's Sean Parker in the mouth, definitely. I think that a big part of it for both Krista and I is that we are of an age with Mark Zuckerberg; we grew up in the same kind of world that he did, and that means that watching his life, however Hollywood-ized and exaggerated, is a bit like watching ourselves. I've been online since I was 14, and I've been a part of social communities online since I was about 15. It's very interesting to me to think back to how those communities began and grew, particularly seeing the LiveJournal sequences at the beginning of the film.

A lot of people have complained about the way that the film represents women, which I think is niether here nor there; women aren't really necessary to the story that the film wants to tell, which is obvious to me from the Facemash scenes. (Though I will agree that all of the "Erica Albright" stuff is a bit over the top.) The general white washing of the cast is more interesting to me (Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin; Max Mingella as Divya Narenda) but seems to have gotten less attention from the press.

I've never seen The West Wing, so I know very little about Aaron Sorkin and his style as a director, and apparently there are lots of things that bug other people about this movie that didn't bug me. I was surprised by how funny it was, and also by the fact that it didn't really go anywhere in the end: it just sort of...stops. I'm happy I saw it, and I hope that I get to watch it with my dad sometime.

Bingeing and Purging II

Since my first post about trying to take control of our stuff and our house, Mat and I have managed to take seven large boxes of stuff to the local Value Village. We have also filled about the same number of large garbage bags. It's kind of awesome.¹

I come from a long line of people who should probably be on Hoarders pack rats.² Mat and I dated for several years before he was allowed into the basement of my parents' house, which is a repository for all manner of stuff (and possibly still contains some unpacked boxes from when we moved into that house 25 years ago). My mom has been making a concerted effort to clean up the basement³ over the last few years

Sentiment is my biggest problem--I am a nostalgia junkie. If you have sent me anything in the last ten years, I probably still have it, be it letters, cards, bookmarks, yarn, etc. No matter how much I don't like, need, or want something, if it was a gift from someone else, I will keep it. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing; I like to think that it demonstrates how grateful I am when people give me gifts. That said, there comes a point at which I simply don't need (or, sometimes, want) the things that I am given. For example, in the big purge, I gave away 3 different dip bowl with spreader sets; I kept one.

I have been reading a few different sites about managing space and clutter over the last few months, and I've come across a basic principle that has been enormously helpful to me in terms of making me feel okay about letting go of things that I've been given. It's called the Six Months Rule, and it essentially states that if you haven't used it in the last six months and aren't going to use it in the next six, gift it, donate it, or toss it. (There are some exceptions, obviously, for special items, like my collection of beaded evening bags, or Mat's collection of Scotch.) It's such a simple thing, but it's amazing to me how much of a difference it has made in relieving my guilty conscience about getting rid of gifts.

Now, if only someone could make come up with a rule that would make it okay for me to get rid of books, I'd be all set.

=====
¹ I mean awesome in the sense that we got it done, not awesome in the sense that we had that much crap to throw out.
² On both sides, even.
³ I'm sure it helps enormously that most of my stuff came here when we bought the house, though I'm pretty sure there are still a few boxes of books at my parents'.

An exciting development

I had my eyes checked yesterday.

I am, gentle reader, blind as a bat. My glasses are coke bottle thick (or were, before the advent of featherweight lenses). When people ask me if I am near-sighted or far-sighted, I can't tell them, because I can't see anything beyond approximately 5 inches from my face.

I ran out of contact lenses about two months ago, and I've been waiting to order new ones until after getting my eyes checked, since I could tell from my glasses that my prescription wasn't right any more. Truth be told, I've never actually gone to the eye doctor and had the same prescription as the previous time. Bit depressing, really. (Actually, from the time I was about 9 until I was 14, I would go to the eye doctor every 6 months and get a new pair of glasses each time. Thank goodness my dad's health care benefits were pretty kick ass, as I have no idea how my parents would've afforded that.)

So, to come back to the point, I went to the eye doctor, and miracle of miracles, my eyes have actually gotten better since the last time they were checked. I've improved a full half-step. (Granted, this is a -8.25 instead of a -8.75, but I will take what I can get.)

Now all I need to do is get some new glasses.

Frakking cold

I would estimate that, in my lifetime, I have owned approximately 20 000 yarn needles. That's probably a conservative estimate, even, to say only 20 000. I own a lot of those things. Do you think I can find one right now? The answer to that question is obviously "no."

There are usually at least two or three floating around the computer desk, whether it's on the shelves or in the drawer, but I am currently coming up short. The drawer has an interesting assortment of other stuff (all of the American candy my parents gave us for Christmas, a small book of Oscar Wilde quotations, a diaper pin from when I was a child) but no yarn needles.

It is cold here, gentle reader. Yesterday it "warmed up" to -27 degrees Celsius; today things are currently sitting around the same temperature, although it should actually warm up this afternoon. The only good thing about the cold like that is that it doesn't snow here when it gets really cold because it is just too dry. We had a small incident in which the little cat decided to make a break for freedom and the great outdoors, only to come running right back in to the house before he made it off the front porch.

For the last few months, a few of my friends from the guild and I have been going out for "Fancy Ladies Night", which essentially means that we get dressed up and go out for dinner. One of the Asian fusion restaurants in town does a seasonal feast menu every few months where you are served a variety of dishes family-style, so we started there and are intending to make our way through the finer dining establishments of NBRC. This month, however, we decided to try "Fancy Ladies Stay In," where we stayed in and had fondue. It was a delectable feast.

We made pizza for dinner last night, which turned out really well. We used a dough recipe from one of the cookbooks I gave to Mat for Christmas, and it was pretty darn tasty.

Our house is a very very very fine house....

It has, as they say, been a hell of a week.

We have adopted a new cat. His shelter name was Jean-Luc, which I loved and Mat disdained (apparently only because it wasn't a name that we gave him). After spending a few days being referred to as "The Little Cat" (an apt moniker given that he is literally less than a third of Dorian's size), he is now Hob, after Hob Gadling from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman:

The adjustment has been interesting. It's gone better than I would have imagine in some respects, but Dorian is definitely a little sad about the whole thing. He has hardly snuggled and has not purred at all since Hob came. They have been wrestling each other and chasing each other around, but all of those moments are punctuated by moments like this:

The weekend was particularly stressful. The old roommates were in town to celebrate Ian's birthday. We wound up moving the festivities back here, and I was very excited to try out the ice cream maker attachment for my standmixer in making strawberry daiquiries (amazing, in case you were wondering). As we were standing around in the kitchen, I could hear something in the basement that sounded like a tap running. Assuming Mat had left the laundry room tap running for some reason, I went down to shut it off...only to discover that it was not the laundry room tap at all, but the bottom of our hot water heater, leaking water all over the basement.

This is not the sort of thing that's good to discover at 11:30 at night when you've been drinking socially with friends.

We couldn't get the intake valve on the tank to shut off, which meant that the tank kept trying to refill itself, and we wound up having to shut the water for the whole house off for the night to get it to stop. Thankfully, the tank was a rental, and the company came the next day and replaced it with a newer and more efficient model.

Then our washer broke on Monday. Like I said, a hell of a week.

Bingeing and Purging Part I

Over the last few weeks, Mat and I have undertaken a serious effort to re-organize our house. We've noticed, when we visit other people, that other people's houses are not cluttered like ours is: we simply have a lot of stuff. (I also think that the fact that we have wall-to-wall carpeting in our house contributes to this appearance, as does the total lack of storage space.) Thus, our co-resolution for the new year has been to try to make some sense out of our living space.


Mat will be the first to tell you that I am the problem here. He thinks (mostly correctly) that I am the source of all the clutter, what with my books and my knitting and my grading. While this is true, he's not totally blameless, since he does tend to leave Magic cards and video game paraphernalia lying around.

As a wedding present, we were given a dining room table, and we have just recently finally purchased the matching chairs. Yes, that's right: I am now sufficiently grown up and classy that I have a matching dining room table and chairs. Not a moment too soon, either, as two of our mismatched chairs had quite literally fallen to pieces the week before. Now that our living room looks classy, we're working on reorganizing the rest of the main floor. We've moved the computer upstairs into our spare bedroom, moving my computer desk out of the craft room to do so. The old computer desk is going to a second handstore, and we are going move the couches around and perhaps move the bookshelves into the living room, which will leave the dining room as open as it can possibly be.


I now have a 6' tall pantry cupboard in the craftroom to hold my crafting things, and I am in the process of sorting things out in there...very slowly. The thing that I need to deal with most is actually *not* my yarn stash; it's my fabric stash. I own an awful lot of fabric for someone who doesn't sew very much, and I think that now is the time to start looking for ways to weed out what I will use and what I won't use. I think that is an excellent job...for tomorrow.

I found four sweater quantities of yarn in a pale grey heather: a DK alpaca/merino/silk, an organic merino worsted weight wool, boring old Patons Classic Wool (also worsted) and an unknown fingering weight wool that my mom bought me in Scotland. Apparently I have a need for sedate, conservatively coloured garments?

The Handmade Christmas

I love the idea of the Handmade Pledge: giving handmade gifts is such a noble (and cool!) idea. I don't follow the pledge to the letter, since there are some people who would rather not get something made by a person instead of a machine, and sometimes a non-handmade gift can be more practical. I've also amended the pledge to include books and tools as acceptable gifts; I figure that if it can help you make something on your own, then I can't really ask for anything else.

I also don't do the second half of the pledge. I don't ask people to give me handmade gifts because it's a request that would (mostly) fall on deaf ears, and I don't want to put people under that kind of pressure. (Plus, I also like non-handmade things sometimes, like my awesome Scrabble pyjamas that my mom got me this year.) Thus, it was a big surprise for me this year to receive several gifts that were made by the givers. I have some very talented friends and family.

My sister-in-law made a bench for our entryway for us. She made the bench and then worked a mosaic design on the top in glass:



My friend Jamie made me a case for my interchangeable knitting needles:



My friend Steph made me a scrapbook page in a shadowbox:


And Youngest Sister made a bag. Actually, that's not true. She made me The Bag. The Bag To End All Bags. It's gorgeous:


The cat loves it too:


I am very, very lucky to have people who care for me enough to make me a gift of their time like this.

Broadcasting live from the house of my parents

To be honest, I kind of hate New Year's Eve: to me, it is the prom night of holidays, with tonnes of build up and little-to-no pay off. I've had some pretty crummy New Year's Eves in my life, or least ones that didn't meet up with whatever expectations were put on them. Thankfully, last night was not one of these nights: it actually went quite well. We joined friends for dinner at the Explorer's Cafe, which had a prix fixé menu for the evening. I had tuna tartare as an appetizer, with a rib-eye steak with a blue cheese and green peppercorn cream sauce as the main. Dessert was tiny portions of peanut butter and chocolate cheesecake, dulce de leche cheesecake, and a raspberry tart with minted cream.

We rung in the New Year at the new home of friends of ours amidst much food, and music, and merriment. I really couldn't ask for anything more.

Even though I don't like New Year's Eve, I am actually a big fan of the idea of the New Year. Starting over/turning over a new leaf/wiping the slate clean/whatever you like to call it appeals to me in a big way: it invites list making (a personal favourite pastime) and goal setting. I don't usually put too much stock in New Year's resolutions, per se, but there are a lot of things that I want to figure out for this coming year.

1. Be healthier - it's as simple as "eat less, do more," which is to say that it's not simple at all. That said, I've been far too sedentary lately, and I've eaten absolutely terribly at work this year, and that has to stop. With my new schedule this term, I have no excuse not to do more. I'm contemplating doing Weight Watchers again (because, two years later, I'm back to where I started).
2. Knit more; buy less. I haven't yet committed myself to any "11 in 11" memes like the rest of the knitaverse, because I can't quite settle on which I'd like. 11 pairs of socks? 11 sweaters? 11 shawls? 11 hats? More socks this year for sure, but I'm going to think about using more sport weight yarns so that they knit up faster. Lots of stash busting this year for sure.
3. Do more things around the house. Big renovation-prep type things, and smaller, let's-just-keep-this-place-cleaner things.
4. Travel more. Honeymoon planning is in action, but I also want to do more travelling within Ontario, and maybe even actually go to Stratford.
5. Spin more. I really like spinning yarn, and I'd like to actually be good at it.
6. Become a better photographer. I have an amazing camera, and I need to learn to use it to its full potential.