Sock Marathon!

I've joined the Limenviolet Sock Marathon for 2009 (Ravelry link)! I'm excited mainly because it gives me an excellent excuse to ignore my other projects and concentrate on sock knitting for six months. Here is my accumulated sock yarn, just under 3 miles:

Not a whole lot compared to some of the others in the group, but respectable considering how limited my income has been since I learned to knit socks last spring (i.e., about the same time I finished school and became unemployed). I am also hoping to win a spot in the Loopy Ewe Sock Club (spots are awarded by lottery), sort of...I have wanted to join a whole bunch of sock clubs but can't afford the $200-$300 hit on my credit card. I rationalized putting my name in for this one because 1) I might not get a spot so it's not like I'm definitely signing up to shell out the money (strange logic but it works for me) and 2) it is pay per shipment, not pay up front, so I can pretend that I will be in a better financial situation by the time the first package ships in March. That doesn't mean that I won't feel a bit guilty about spending money on sock yarn when the time comes - I probably will, but my sock yarn lust outweighs it.

I did not get any yarn for Xmas, because I didn't ask for any. I chickened out when it came to revealing my total geekiness (even though my cousin who lives in Seattle could totally have brought me some STR since Blue Moon is in Oregon...oh, just because I didn't ask doesn't mean I didn't think about it). However, my aunt did give me this:

A basket to hold my knitting! I think it is from a food gift basket but it has been successfully repurposed. The sheep is actually from Bath and Body Works, I couldn't resist, it was so cute (and only $5).


And on a rare trip to Wal-Mart, I bought myself this:

I have seen several people use these foam mats as blocking boards, and since my 2009 to-knit list contains my first shawl, I thought it was time to invest in a real blocking surface (as opposed to a stack of towels on my dining room table). That is 16 square feet of surface, which should be plenty. Yay!

Finally, progress on my belated Xmas gifts:

I am 2 1/4 inches away from starting the decreases for the toe, and then (oh-please-let-it-be-over) I will be finished with this sock.

That is about 3 1/2 feet of scarf. I will finish this up directly after I finish the sock, then put them in the mail and do a little dance of joy.

That's all for now...Fingers crossed for me for the sock club, and also for the government job that I still don't know about!

Dead Blog Talking

I didn't realize it had been quite so long since I'd posted here, almost a full month! Maybe I've been subconsciously putting it off because I am reluctant to admit publicly that I am still finishing up Xmas presents. Yes, still. All but one of my knitted gifts were given on the needles (except the single sock, but that still doesn't count as finished). I did manage to finish one coffee cup cozy, from this KnitPicks pattern, and gifted it to my cousin with a Starbucks gift card as I had planned. One win out of five - not great.
Progress? I have turned the heel on the Giant Blue Sock and am working my way through the gusset decreases. I have knitted to the end of the first skein on the My So-Called Scarf and need to wind up the second before I can continue on it. My sister's Druid Mitten, plus yarn and needles, are in a box back home, as I forgot to bring them back with me - she is supposed to send them along so I can finish them up but so far they have not arrived. My partner's Selbu Mittens are in my knitting basket beside the couch (since I no longer have to keep them a secret) and have barely been touched since we got back last week. (See original Xmas post for pictures and linkage).
The holidays were about as stressful as I had anticipated, although it was still nice to be with my family (which was the reason I had decided to head home in the first place, despite the crazy drama). I'm glad to be home now. Really, really glad.
That's enough for now - next time I will share my recent knitting-related acquisitions, and daydream some about what I am going to make after I finally, finally finish these gifts.

Dear Christmas, I hate you. Please go away now, kthxbye!

So, Christmas knitting is not going so well. I finally finished one sock of the pair of the Giant Blue Socks of Doom, and have finished the ribbing and about one inch of the leg on the second sock. Just to show you that I am not kidding about the giantness of these socks, here is a picture of the giant sock side-by-side with a "normal" (women's medium) sock:

Yeah. I am maybe a little crazy.

I cast on a My So-Called Scarf with the pretty Peruvia Colors I picked up last month, and have managed a couple of feet so far. I had to rip this back and start over more times than I care to admit, but I finally seem to have gotten the hang of this pattern. I actually really enjoy it.

I have made next-to-no progress on any of my other Xmas projects, including my partner's mittens. I am so screwed.

Besides the knitting-associated stress, I am just not looking forward to the holidays this year. My mother died around Christmastime (four years ago this January), and though it has gradually gotten better over the years (meaning I generally don't burst into tears at random moments), I still miss her most around this time of year. There is also some Family Drama going on at home that I don't want to be dealing with. It stresses me out. We are not a Family Drama kind of family, we actually are more of a repress-all-your-feelings-and-pretend-everything-is-okay kind of family, so I haven't had a lot of practice dealing with this kind of conflict. Unlike my partner, who seems to regard family in-fighting as normal and can't figure out why I am so bothered by it. Oh, well.

Anyway, here is a cute cat picture to make everyone feel better (please ignore my ghetto toenails in the background)!

Hope your holidays are shaping up to be cheerful and conflict-free!

Coffee

I often refer to coffee as the sweet brown elixir of life, and there is a reason for that. Like so many, I am literally non-functional in the mornings until I get my first cup, and if I go without I get the classic withdrawal symptoms (headache, fatigue and general crankiness). However, my relationship with coffee goes beyond the physical – I have a deep emotional attachment to coffee. It is so much more to me than just a simple caffeine source (of course, decaf is still blasphemy, or as Letterman put it “useless brown water”).
My love affair with coffee started very young. When I was small, my mother would let me (after much begging and pleading on my part) sip coffee from her cup with one of those tiny McDonald’s spoons with the long handle (does anyone else remember those? The bowl was about the size of my pinky nail). I genuinely liked the taste, but there was also the excitement of being allowed access to something so adult, and the pleasure of sharing something with my mother, despite her warnings about it stunting my growth.
Mom herself was a fellow devotee, starting most of her mornings with an extra-large from Tim Horton’s, picked up on her way to school (she taught first grade). I guess that’s why she never put up much of a fuss when I started to get serious about my coffee habit in high school, taking a to-go cup on the bus with me each morning and hanging out in coffee shops with my friends on weekends (hey, we couldn’t go to bars). Actually, I distinctly remember introducing her to the glory of the mochaccino with whipped cream one afternoon at the mall, likely during one of her epic Christmas shopping trips.
Coffee provided me with an income the first summer I lived away from home. I worked in a coffee shop in one of the downtown malls in Calgary. The pay was crap but the coffee was free! I think I did irreparable damage to my stomach and kidneys that summer, actually, and also my lungs since the shop was one of the few places inside the mall where smoking was permitted.
Coffee was my constant companion through my undergraduate and graduate degrees, and fuelled many a late-night study session in law school (there was a brief flirtation with green tea in there, but I rapidly returned to my true love). Coffee was also there on dates, and at meetings with friends. Even when I was at my sickest, and was told to stay away from it, I still couldn’t cut out that one cup in the morning, just that cup and five minutes to relax and organize my thoughts for the day ahead.
Coffee is a ritual. Grind the beans, pour the water, push the button – so simple I can (and probably do) do it with my eyes closed. Sharing it can also become a ritual. On Sunday mornings, I would make a pot and bring my mother a cup before leaving for church (I put in some time in the choir – I’m not religious but the choirmaster is a friend and desperately needed some sopranos who were not eighty years old). I love that we shared those casual, intimate moments, that without really thinking about it I found a way to show her that I cared about her and appreciated all that she did for me. I hope that’s the message I got across, anyway.
Independence and familiarity, stress and relaxation – these are all associated with the taste and smell of coffee for me. But most importantly, it is a tangible connection between my mother and me.
My mom loved coffee too.

Interview Preparation By Numbers

2: Number of eyebrows plucked
7: Number of times wondered whether I wanted a job where eyebrow pluckage would be important
1: Pair of pantyhose purchased
11,000: Number of times worried that hair would look "stupid"
2: Number of hours spent deciding what knitting to take for the bus ride (4 hours in total)
0.5: Number of hours spent actually knitting on the bus
3.5: Number of hours spent napping on the bus
0.5: Number of hours spent actually preparing for the interview

Actually I think it went pretty well. It is a government job and therefore the interview process is very structured - a lot of situational questions, and some reading and analysis, which I am good at now thanks to four years of law school. So I have gone straight from worrying about the interview to worrying about what I am going to do if they offer me the job, since it is in Ottawa and I live in Montreal. Although a four-hour daily commute would give me a lot of knitting time (due to my driving phobia I would be taking the bus), it would most likely involve me getting up at some ungodly hour and dudes, I am NOT a morning person. The idea that I might have to get up before 6am on a daily basis makes me feel physically ill.
So I might have to move back to Ottawa...BUT I DON'T WANNA!!!! I love Montreal, I love my apartment (that I lobbied hard for and that my partner cannot afford on his own) and I love actually LIVING IN THE SAME CITY AS MY PARTNER OF FIVE YEARS! We did the long-distance thing for four years while I was in law school in Ottawa and it was such a relief to finally move in together.
Why can't things just work out the way I want for once? Why can't I just get a great job here (or even a decent job)? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY?
Okay, seriously, there are other options. The government is pretty good about flexible schedules and teleworking, so I might be able to split my time between here and there after a few months. I still have a few friends in Ottawa so I might be able to find a place to stay for a couple nights a week, so I would not have to drag my a$$ out of bed before the butt-crack of dawn in order to make it to work at a decent time. And the promise of a steady paycheque, with benefits and a pension plan and all that good stuff, is oh so tempting to me and my negative bank balance.
Anyway, they haven't even offered me the job yet so all this cogitation is perhaps unnecessary. I should just get back to my Xmas knitting and stop with the obsessing (I can't help it, it is my nature).
Knit on, my gainfully employed friends! Knit on!

I think I need to lay off the drugs...

...because last night I had one of those weirdly vivid dreams that are only possible when you are on mood-altering substances. No, I don't have a habit - I am on medication for chronic stomach problems, and this is one of the side effects. This particular dream featured some James Bond-like plotlines involving sharks and nuclear explosions, followed by a visit to a convenience store that sold ice cream and yarn (STR, to be specific). That part was pretty awesome, actually. Maybe I'll keep the dreams.
I am also on drugs because I somehow managed to convince myself that the Seattle Seahawks colours are turquoise and purple. They are not. They are, in fact, a mid-blue, navy, bright green and white. It might be the result of wishful thinking on my part (see blog header...). Anyway, I had already bought some turquoise Cascade 220, which will now have to be repurposed. I also made the mistake of assuming I could mix purple Cascade Pastaza (llama and wool) with the gold Cascade 220 I bought for a stranded University of Washington coffee cup cozy - I cannot. The weights and textures are too different. So now I also have a skein of Pastaza that has to be repurposed (purple Cascade 220 is on its way to me now). The Pastaza keeps telling me that it wants to be a slouchy beret, but there are only 132 yards in the skein, which is probably not enough. I don't think it is justifiable to go and purchase more of the yarn I bought by accident for a project that is intended to use up said yarn (because of course I cannot return yarn..that would be sacrilegious).
Back to my Seahawks problem - I do have some navy and white Cascade 220, which is currently tied up in my partner's Selbu Mittens (literally...ah ha ha I kill myself). Should I ever finish those mittens and should there be enough left over, I would still have to acquire some "Seahawks blue" and some bright green. For a simple, inexpensive project this is starting to be complicated and expensive (relatively speaking, but then relative to my NEGATIVE INCOME everything is expensive).

Solutions:

1. suck it up and buy some more Cascade 220 in the appropriate colours
2. turn purple and gold yarn into a scarf instead of a coffee cozy and forget about the Seahawks thing
3. feign ignorance of actual Seahawks colours and use purple and turquoise anyway
4. give up on this whole handmade gifts thing and buy everybody a book

Option 4 is starting to look more and more attractive since it is DECEMBER FIRST, PEOPLE! Holy crap, where did that come from? Gotta get going with the Xmas knitting since I only have one gift completed (out of the multitude I have cast on, but we're not talking about that today). I also have to prep for a job interview on Wednesday (yay for interview, boo for job location that is NOT Montreal), which I am a little worried about since I think my brain may have atrophied.

Happy December everyone!

Snow!

The view from my balcony window two days ago:

I love snow. We haven't had a lot yet this year (and this snow is all melted now because it rained), unlike my hometown of London, Ontario where they have already had a couple of storms.

What do we do when it snows? We bake!

Chocolate chip cookies with pecans. I use this recipe, but I make normal-size cookies instead of the big ones - the recipe yields about 3 dozen. Bake at 350 F for 12 minutes for perfection!

Why am I posting pictures of snow and cookies? Because my progress on my Xmas knitting is not photo-worthy. I am about two inches away from turning the heel on the giant blue sock, and I did some work on my partner's Selbu Mittens. I also purchased the yarn to make the school colours mug cozies from Red Bird Knits (Robyn has a sale on right now) - it is on its way to me now. I might have also purchased some *cough* sock yarn - Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Pilsen, which I can now take off of my Loopy Ewe wish list. C'mon, it was on sale! And priced in Canadian dollars...I have to say that the exchange rate right now is definitely deterring me from making cross-border purchases (although if there was any Wollmeise at Loopy I would be all over that).

Hope you are warm, wherever you are, and that your Xmas knitting is stress-free.