Send good thoughts!

My Grandpa is having heart surgery on Tuesday, so please send good thoughts our way! I'm sure he'll be fine, and this way he'll be a lot more comfortable.

So far I've gotten two marks back, both B+ :( I worked hard in these classes, and I wish I'd done better, but I guess it wasn't to be. No big worries yet though, as the marks to come back still are the classes I should do very well in, and as of right now my GPA for the year is still a 3.9.

The new Knitty is up!

First, Happy Birthday to my sister - it was her birthday yesterday and she turned 17!

Now, the new Knitty is up! I want to make Torque so much, that I'm actually going to rip out the sweater I'm making now (Knitty's BPT) since I'm only a few rows in and make this instead! I also love Isabella and Bauble, but they can wait a bit.

There were also 4 people on the express bus today who didn't realise it was an express and asked the driver to let them off (all at different stops of course)!!! Not only does it say "Express" on the front, Winnipeg also has a system whereby the Route number of Express routes has a yellow or white background with black numbers (the reverse of regular routes). Even if you can't READ you can tell the bus is an express.

I'm just saying that if you're getting on a bus that you haven't taken before you should confirm with the bus driver that it's going where YOU want to go. I always do this, every time I use a new route.

O is for...

Olivia! Here is my beautiful little cousin. After being diagnosed with CF this spring and beginning to receive treatment, she's rebounded in an astonishing way. She gained 6 lbs in about 6 weeks, which for a 4 year-old is an entire year's growth! She much more active and talkative now, constantly telling stories and making sure she gets a word in edgewise with her brother by putting up her hand when he's talking. I've finished her quilt, and I'm almost done her brother's. I'm hoping to have them done by thanksgiving.

I'm sorry for the icky picture, but I needed to put up a photo of my new hair - I like to experiment with my hair, as anyone who reads the blog regularly (or knows me in person) knows. I decided to bleach it, and used a home kit. Unfortunately I rinsed that one to soon, so I had to get it repaired at the salon yesterday. However, it was a decently cheap fix, and I like the look. It's still slightly brassy, but in the next few days that will fade. If it doesn't, I'll buy a violet shampoo and that will get the rest of it out.


Olivia chalk drawing. I spent the afternoon with my Aunt and cousins, and we sidewalk-chalked, played in the sandbox, and had a nice snack. The kids had a neat idea of using chalkboard erasers on coloured-in bricks, which gave a nice soft blended mosaic, really pretty! Something I'd never done before.


Anton chalk drawing. He and Olivia and I had such a great time! He was his regular ol' excitable self, but we had lots of fun. He went to his swimming lesson before I left.

Tomorrow Jamie, Susan, and I are going to Pirates of the Carribean, since it's cheap night at the theatre.

Oh I also went thrift shopping yesterday (I've become positively addicted, although I'm very good at only buying necessities, and it's mostly small things like bits of vintage fabric). I got some GORGEOUS shot "silk", a pretty brocade with black warp and shiny turquoise weft. The resulting colour is a deep, rich royal blue, and I"m going to make an evening bag with it. I also got 6 1970's juice glasses, since ours have started breaking. We're not dropping them or abusing them, just in the middle of washing they've been falling apart in our hands. These were at least only 3.99, so if they break it's no big deal. Plus they're kind of unique! I also got another 8 Agatha Christies - yes I know I'm moving Mom, but they're small and were .69 each. Plus it's nice to read!

M is for...

Two things actually. Mom and Music.


My mom, my sister, and my dad at Waterton Lakes National Park last summer. My Mom is a great, wonderful, fanastic person. She believed in me when I wanted to quit piano, and helped me to see that I should keep taking it. She knew I was struggling at Dryden High School, and neither she nor Dad hesitated in allowing me to go a better school in Winnipeg, even though it meant leaving home at 16.

My Mom likes to knit, sew, and make stained glass. She gave me my first love of music by singing to me as a baby. Despite being absolutely terrified she became one of the organists at our church.

I love you Mom.

Now for music. I love music. It's not something I can even call a passion, so much as a necessity of life. I couldn't live without music anymore than I could live without breathing. I whistle when I walk through the halls at school and work, and I sing while doing the dishes. Anytime I spy an unoccupied piano I sit down and play. The first big purchase Sean and I make once we have a (more) permanent place to live, as promised by him, is a piano for me. My favourite classical composers are Bach, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Handel, Vivaldi, and Rachmaninoff. For more contemporary music I like Rodgers and Hammerstein, Howard Shore, Andrew Lloyd Webber, John Williams, and many others. I am addicted to old musicals (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, anyone?) and always sing along. I even hum along to instrumental pieces.

I took voice when I was younger and completed my Grade 4 RCM. I belonged to University of Alberta Mixed Chorus for 3 years in university as a Soprano 1, and when I moved here I took Performance Voice from Tellie Kahara. Although I didn't do the RCM examinations, she believes that with some minor technical work and health improvements I could do my Grade 10 (which I will, and hopefully also complete my ARCT so I could teach).

I took piano starting I believe at age 4 or 5, until I was 17. I did finish my Grade 10 RCM, however I only have up to my Grade 8 certificate due to immense difficulties in writing the written theory components. I love to play piano as much as I love to sing, and as I say I will play any unoccupied piano I find. Someday I hope to own one of these but that will require me to be rich enough to not only afford the piano, but a house big enough to...well...house it. A grand piano this large and rich-sounding needs considerable space in order not to explode people's eardrums, as well as room to hear all the acoustical richness it offers.

Sockapaloooza, Haversack, and Grad

I finally recovered from the pinched nerve/sciatica/whatever-it-was enough to return to work and get pictures of things I'd promised.


My sockapaloooza socks from Dorothee! As I said, I was wonderfully lucky enough to get TWO pairs of socks (my own will be mailed out tomorrow, FINALLY. Please forgive me Lisa! You already know who I am because gmail isn't anonymous, to my dismay). I just love the first pair, they look a lot like Pomatomus socks. I adore the colour of both socks, and the blue-green pair is Regia Canadian Colors! (Really, if they're "Canadian" shouldn't it be colours, not colors?). Thanks so, so, so much Dorothee. I would have taken a picture of the chocolate, but it's already all gone, minus one last block (urp!).


This is the haversack I'm making at the Fort. It's completely handstitched using real wool and cotton thread on melton cloth. The leaves aren't stitched down yet, but will be stitched down with overcast stitch like the turtles. The fringe is made of czech glass seed beads in a pattern I came up with on the fly. The handle is braided leather with a navy polyester satin ribbon (sorry, no silk satin. I wish it was all natural fibre). I'm very, very proud of this haversack, and I think it's absolutely beautiful.


My cousin Chris, our Grandma, and I after grad. I adore this picture, and it's one of the best that turned out of that day. My grad portraits turned out gorgeous as well, but I have to wait for them. I thought they'd be in on June 5 for some reason, but oh well. I think I might call them just to get the date again.


My family, quite a good picture I think. Dad, Becky, me, and Mom. I do really like this one!


Sean and I. Although he insists this is a good picture, I don't think it's great. My eyes are partly closed, and I'm leaning forward since we were facing up a steep slope and I had heels on. Heels + hills + soft ground = funny angles in pictures. I made the dress myself, and I think it turned out pretty well. It was slightly tight, but a size up would have been too big. If the fabric hadn't been so delicate I would have basted it together first, then I could have used slightly less seam allowance. oh well. It was still pretty!

K is for...

Karlie! I've decided to be narcissistic for this letter in the ABC-along. Since I have a lot of time on my hands at the moment, we're going to have a great big photo essay.


I was born in Northern Ontario in 1983. This picture is me at 1 year old. I was very, very blonde, for a very long time. I'm still blonde of course, but my hair is no longer rather clear coloured.


I always did have a penchant for sitting on top of things. There's pictures of me on dressers, desks, shelves, even roofs. It explains why I like rock climbing so much! This is in 1986.


I looooooooved this bike. I would have been 4 in this picture. I remember riding it home from the Canadian Tire, and being absolutely thrilled! It took me a long time to learn how to ride it without training wheels. I think I was 6 or 7, and I took the bike out to the walkways in the backyard and fell over all afternoon finally learning. I'm trying to remember, but I think I may have taken the wheels off myself. Might have been Dad though.


In 1990 my little sister was born, and this picture is part of a series of family portraits we took after she was born. The dress is from when I was a flower girl at the wedding of the daughter of friends of my parents. I'm not sure if it's visible in the above pictures, but I had a grey front tooth. When I was two, I fell while on a set of cast-iron steps, and drove the baby tooth up into my gums. It eventually game back down, but it was dead and therefore looked grey (incindetally, it also damaged the forming adult tooth, and in some of the pictures below you can see its mottled colour). For these portraits my Dad, a dentist, put a white ceramic coating over the grey tooth so that it would look nicer. They had an awful time stopping me from running my tongue over the tooth under my lips.


A very cute Christmas picture of my sister, Becky, and I. This is in 1991. I think this is the year we gave Becky an orange and blue Little Tykes slide to go in the basement. Dad and I put it together out in his woodshop. Becky was thrilled, and it was a wonderful toy that was used for many, many years.


This was my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. Our dresses, as you can see, match, and were rather cute. They both had very stiff crinolines underneath, and fell straight down from shoulders and stood out in a (cute) circle all wround our feet. While my grandparents were opening gifts, my sister, who was sitting on the opposite side of the couch as me, decided she wanted to see the presents and stood up on the couch, and walked over everyone's lap to the other side. Lucky she was only 2!


My cousins, who used to come down for a couple weeks every summer from Yellowknife, surprised us and came during spring break as well. We're down at my cabin in this picture. Notice the gorgeous neon coat, which had matching slush pants.


*sigh* my Grade 7 picture. Grade 7 and 8 were the worst years of my life. Although I'd been constantly bullied as school until this point, over-sexed adolescents decided that adding new arsenal like how I ugly I was and calling me a man would be entertaining. Oh well, two of my worst torturers are not doing well in University, so meh.


This was my Grade 8 grad dress, although here we're getting ready for a piano recital. I was SO ANGRY that my Mom had let my sister get (near) matching dress to mine. Now it wouldn't bother me at all, but when you're 12/13, these things matter. My Mom now acknowledges that this was maybe not the best idea.


Another family portrait time, this time with my WHOLE family on my Mom's side. My cousins came down for only the second time for Christmas, and we had a good time. We all learned a dance to a Backstreet Boys song that my cousins had done for a skit night and performed it for everyone, with much hilarity.


Our trip to the East Coast! I look frighteningly skinny in this picture because I'd just finished recovering from whooping cough, and was 5'3", 85 lbs. Scary stuff. Green Gables was pretty, although busy and very commercial. The best part was actually Cape Breton Island, which was at least as beautiful as Hawai'i.


Ah, my 18th birthday party. I was about to go off to University of Alberta, I'd graduated on the Governer's Honour Roll from SJR, the high school where I found my niche as a smart, enthusiastic, and musically-inclined person. I was very, very happy! I discovered that I live best in a bigger city with more access to artistic opportunities. I know they say you can make yourself happy anywhere, but it's much easier if you can find a place you want to be.


This was the dress I wore to Jenny's grad. She didn't have a boyfriend, and we were best friends, so she decided to ask me if I wanted to go. We had a TOTAL blast, although the photographer was pretty amusing. He assumed that she'd brought me as a date, and kept trying to get us to stand closer together in the picture. We were like "Oh no, no no! Just friends!" but I don't think he believed it, lol.


More family portraits! I was really, really sick for this portrait (part of the undiagnosed stomach problem), and covered in blush. I think they turned out well though! I'm not wild about the haircut, since it makes my face look very round, but overall it's good.


Ah Hawai'i! I got to go thanks to my parents who gave me half the money to make the trip. It was an unofficial geological field school, so we spent 8 of 9 days hiking over the lava fields. It was wonderful, although I think more than one afternoon spent on the beach would have been greatly beneficial.


My cousin's wedding last summer. Here I am with my Aunt Brenda, who's daughter Heather was getting married. I love that dress, and I've worn it many, many times. both the shape and the colour are really nice. My Mom made it!

So that's my photo essay of me. I'm not sure what will be L yet, but I'll figure it out.

Catching up on ABC-along

F is for...

Family. This is my family, at my cousin Heather's wedding last summer. I'm down in the left hand corner in the yellow dress. It was certainly a gorgeous setting for wedding photos, that's for sure! This is all my Mom's side of the family, we don't see Dad's side quite as often (except for my Grandma!) because although my cousins live here in TBay with me only one is at the U and he's not in any of my classes or even in my program, and my Uncle moved down to Southern Ontario. I don't have a picture of my other Grandma on this new computer, but I do on Sean's laptop from the old comp so I'll try to remember to post one.

G will be forthcoming, hopefully tomorrow, because I need to get pictures off of Sean's laptop. I'll give you a hint though, it's something I've knit and it's from a book (and a movie).



Now some pictures of my startitis. Yes, I am severly afflicted. I think this is largely because of having so much schoolwork to do that I haven't had much time to knit, so I keep starting new things and leaving old ones. If my sock recipient is out there she'll be happy to know that I've finished one sock and am almost finished the guesset of the second.



Sockapaloooza starts off. It's just a basic red sock with the pink duplicate stitched on. I'm not going to reveal what's going on the other sock yet, but I hope my sockpal likes them!



This is yarn I dyed on my last day of spring work at the Fort. Susan, Kristy and I all made hand painted yarn, and mine is being turned into this:



Of course, now that spring is upon us I don't really need a hat anymore (now the snow gods will smite me and send 2 metres in a matter of hours). Oh well, it'll be ready for fall and for camping this spring!

Finally, we have socks being made from my prize yarn and the pattern is the ubiquitous Jaywalker by Grumperina. I'm knitting them on 2mm needles, and it seems to be just the right size for me since I have very narrow ankles and feet.

Don't forget I'm still knitting on Rogue, I have a pair of felted slippers on the go, and I haven't made the second mitten for my Scandi mitts.

Sixteen

A happy early sweet sixteen to my sister, who turns the legal driving age (ack!) on March 6th, the same day the lucky girl is leaving for Spain on her school trip.

I also WON SOMETHING! I don't recall ever winning anything (by luck) before, although Mom might remember something. I got the beautiful gift bag from Lettuce Knit (you have no idea how much I want to visit that store. If we can afford to go to Keith's wedding this summer we're going to try to side trip to Toronto, and Lettuce Knit is on the list) that I'm told has Socks That Rock in it! I LOVE making socks so I'm very, very excited.

My term paper for Classical Mythology turned out to be about 3200 words, and I hope I did well on it. I worked hard at any rate! I also finished the essay outline for Children's Lit. That leaves me with finishing my children's book for another Children's Lit class (all the illustrations are done, the text and pictures just need to be outlined in colour, and it needs to be covered and bound), writing my term paper for CanLit (3000 words/10 pages), term paper for Speculative Fiction (2500 words), term paper for Contemporary Children's Lit (8-10 pages), as well as various reading journals and group projects. My academic life is, shall we say, busy.

I'm working at Fort William again, 3.5 hrs Monday/Wednesday and all day Friday until the end of March. I'm just doing mending mostly, although once that runs out I'm not sure what they'll need me for. I'm even on the answering machine as currently running the Costume Department ;). The Fort is very flooded, in fact yesterday they were sandbagging around the administration buildings. It's supposed to stay warm around here for the next few days which could be VERY problematic, if the water rises another foot and a half the admin building will be flooded along with the driveway into it. I may not be working after all!

Not much knitting has been going on, although I worked on my alpaca Natalya gauntlets a bit the other day while watching "House". I really need to start my pal's socks, but I'd like to do something in sport-weight or DK. I think I might actually make them in Sidar Country DK (one of my favourite yarns) because it's so super soft. Plus, I still can't decide if I should finish my Rogue or not.

I need opinions on that actually. Before I knew much about yarn, the lady at the fabric store told me that DK and Aran were the same weight. So I bought enough Sirdar Country DK to make a Rogue out of, and although it shows off the cabling beautifully the drape is VERY fine, and it's almost baggy because of it. I'm partway up the hood by now, so does anyone have a vote as to whether I finish it or not? What would I do with 1200m of DK wool if I frogged it? The colour is absolutely gorgeous, and I love the sweater. I hate to rip it out!

D is for Dad...

This is a picture from two years ago of my Dad. It's also his 50th birthday this month (on Feb 2)! Dad loves to work in his woodshop, and go out to the cabin. He plays dominoes and cards with us all the time, and he's enjoying his early retirement. He's met his MS diagnosis (the reason for early retirement) head-on and hasn't let it stop him from doing anything.

Here's to you, Dad!

A is for...

My first alphabet post! There'll be two today, since this is technically the third week of January and I should be on B.



The person I think of with "A". These are the beautiful skeins of wool Angela helped me dye when she was here this summer. On the left we have a very thick wool that will become felted mittens (hey I should start those up!) and on the right self-striping watermelon socks.



The lady of the hour.

Edit: I also think of Anton! My little cousin. Blogger won't let me add a picture in edit, so go here.

Igloos

The igloo in progress. That's Dad and Uncle Dimitri lifting a block to put it on top of the others. I suppose igloo is really a misnomer, since it ends up looking more like a beehive. However, we love to do it and Grandpa likes how nice it looks outside their house.



The rather monstrous snow rabbit I made out of three left-over snowballs from the igloo-making. He's kinda scary looking, so he's now become the rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. ("What's it going to do, nibble our bums?")



The finished igloo, with a red floodlight inside, along with the snowman and snow rabbit.

Here's Anton and I standing in front of the igloo. I am wearing: brand-new longjohns and wool socks, cords, snowpants, sorels, undershirt, fleece hoodie, scarf, parka, ear covers (fleece things that slip on your ears), hat, and two pairs of mitts. Like I said, -34C. The igloo is quite big this year, it is almost always tall enough to stand in but this year since we have at least 60cm on the ground, the blocks are all about 2 feet thick. For reference, I am 132 cm, which is about 5' 3.5" .