when bad things happen to good knitting...

if you have a sensitive stomach i beseech you to look away now.

look at how far i had gotten on my Peacock Feathers Shawl. row 203 (out of 249) to be exact.

but... wait... what is that up in the right hand corner??


a closer look at the disaster. look at those two ends hanging free there. look at the unraveling. my eyes are filling with tears!


in another knitting scenerio, one which doesn't involve yarn overs and decreases i would splice those two ends back together and slowly patch up the hole. but when there are yarn overs and decreases involved i am at a loss. i can KNIT lace, i can't FIX lace. even if i could rip back past the hole and put the stitches back on the needle i would. but again... yarn overs, etc. i'm lost!

and rather bummed.

i know who the culprit is. she also attacked the toilet paper roll and my shoes last night. soon there will be nothing in this house without her little teeth marks in it.

more spinning

Superwash Merino with Angelina (which i got at the Kitchener show from The Black Lamb), plied with 55% cashmere, 45% silk (from Colourmart):


(a shot with an unplied ball... i will get around to it asap):

100% Merino from an Etsy shop:

another Black Lamb batt (100% wool with red yellow and blue thread bits)... drop spindle made by my father (isn't he freakin' awesome!?):


and a gratuitous new kitty shot... say hi to Summer, aka Freakazoid:

second spinning attempt

it's turning out much more consistent than the yarn i showed you all the other day. i split the roving in two (almost) equal parts and am spinning two balls from it. the first ball turned out quite blue and the second has a lot of purple in it. i think it will look nice when it's plied.

and i'm on a freakin' roll... i just can't stop buying more fiber!! exhibit one. exhibit two. exhibit three. and i am coveting this one in such a bad way. i need more $ in my paypal. i hate how that account seems to empty so fast. ;)

we gave Burban a lovely funeral. she's buried just under our kitchen window so she's still nice and close to us.

crappy day.

rest in peace Burban :(

thanks for the suggestions about the shawl edging :) i would like to continue knitting in the direction i am, that way i don't have to attach anything and it's done when it's done, kwim?

i was thinking a ruffly sort of edge myself, but was hesitant because it might be too much with the colours/pattern. i think a picot edging is what i'll go with :D thank you!

in other news... Pop Rocks is gone. she's off at her new home... near Marsville. Sharon came to pick her up today and bring her home. the kids were happy Pop Rocks was going to live with Sharon, they gave her some "tips", packed up the kitten's favourite toy and said goodbye. it was all good until Sharon opened the front door with Pop Rocks in the carrier... and Pop Rocks meowed...

and Juliet started crying.

Jake held it in until Sharon was out of sight. then he cried too.

but they know Sharon and her family will love Pop Rocks and she'll be happy there.

.phew. i'm going to miss the wee little bugger, but i'm glad it's done before we fell more in love with her.

shawl edging... ?

i'm trying to decide what sort of edging (if any) i should use for my Harmony Feather and Fan shawl.

... it's going to be a bit larger than i was planning. i'll definitely have enough yarn for any type of edging.

see... i had four balls of the Harmony wool. i was going to use two for the shawl and leave the remaining two for some future project. well... i went to bed last night in a bit of a rush (a migraine struck AGAIN), and left a ball of it on the sofa.

... within the kitten's reach.

the temptation was too much for her because i found it this afternoon. mostly in the basement. part of it in a tangled mess going down the stairs... some of it wadded it up in a bunch near the kitty litter... much of it wrapped around the legs of the mini trampoline, the remainder in what resembled the last bits of the ball near the laundry.

it was really hard to be mad at her. and i just left it there for her to play with tonight, since it's so tangled it's not worth the trouble to try to salvage it.

so i figured i might as well continue into the third ball of Harmony with the Feather and Fan shawl... use it for some sort of edging.

but what shall i do? suggestions?

here's an old photo of it if that helps... you can really see the pattern in this one, unlike the recent photo above where it looks like a lump of pastels:

why is it so hard...

to GIVE AWAY a kitten?!

pet stores have no trouble SELLING them. but try to give one away, free, no charge... gah!

is it some psychological thing... if it has no monetary value attached to it's not worth anything or there must be something wrong with it...?

yes, i am a little frustrated. the longer poor Pop Rocks stays with us, the more attached to her we become, the harder it is going to be to see her go to a new home. frankly, the whole situation sucks :(

maybe i should just put her up for sale... maybe the $ value attached to her will make her "worth" something?

:(

i'm back :)

wooooot!

the whole problem was that we let the landline phone go. no point in paying for something we don't use, right? well, duh, we have Sympatico internet... we need some sort of phone line for it. John finally had some time to call up (remember, i don't do phones) and got it sorted out. we have a "dry line" phone line now. no actual service, no phone number, just what they need to run the internet in.

yaaay!

in other news, the shawl is still coming along nicely. it's really hard to take photos of because it's getting rather squished on the needles. i ordered some longer addi circulars to finish it on. their new lace needles. we'll see if they're really any sharper than the regular addi turbos :) they should arrive by the end of the week, early next week. so, sorry, no shawl photos until then :(

and in other other news. we're moving. the official day is July 31st. but we'll be moving slowly before then and want to have everything out a week before that so we can come back and do repairs/paint in an empty house. it's so much easier than trying to paint around furniture!

i am so stressed about this move though. i have felt nauseas every time i think about it.

we're moving into my MILs.

she has a duplex, so we will have our own space. but it'll always be over our heads that it's HER house, kwim? and i have quite a colourful history with the woman. oh lordy. please let it work out.

on the bright side, the main floor is much bigger than our current place. and we'll have four bedrooms instead of three (which means John will have his own room again... yaaay!). any renovations we do she's willing to take off the rent. maybe i can get a part time job at the local yarn store.

we'll be heading over there this weekend to do a little painting before we start moving stuff in. Juliet's room has no "real" flooring... just wood slats painted white, and she's been given permission to do what she wants with that. so she wants to paint it. no, not a solid colour (it's white right now), she wants to paint vines and flowers. and John has to do some minor renovations in order to open up the fourth bedroom to our side of the house and close it off to her side of the house (it was awesome of her to offer that extra room for no extra rent).

one big downside... Pop Rocks can't come with us. :( MIL's allergic in a BAD way to cats. she's fine with us bringing Burban, because we've had Burbs for years and she is such a part of the family; she's willing to put up with any cat issues that sneak over to her side of the house because she knows how much family pets mean to people, having had quite a few of them herself (on a side note, when she's rented to non-family she doesn't allow ANY pets at all. so we're lucky to be able to bring Burbs). she's really nervous about Pops because the more cats, the more dander, the more litter... etc, etc. i am pretty upset. i think we should find her a new home asap before we become even more attached to her :(

sorry this got so long. i'll leave you with two photos. one of Juliet with her pink streaks (she was opening a birthday gift from her aunt). and one of Jake during homeschooling time... he had a rough night and during our daily reading time he passed out (on his book) with the kitten:

blog filler...

cuz i don't have any new photos of the shawl to share. honestly, i haven't been knitting all that much lately. i've been feeling too blah to seriously work on the shawl. so unmotivated. if i could stay in bed all day i would.

that... and last night i timed how long it takes me for one row... 22 minutes. yes, i knit slow, but dude, that's a long time for a row. and the shawl isn't big enough to wrap around my shoulders yet. by the time it gets that big i'll be working an hour on a row! yikes!!

so instead i have some photos of my newest yarn from RubySapphire. it's their Luster sock yarn again (LOVE the stuff), it's called Juliet. sweeeeet.

a shot of the fun stuff sent along with the yarn... a magnet, some candy (yummm), and a coupon for 10% off. lovely :D

a picture with the flash so you can see the lovely sheen of the tencel:

and now i must put it away... up high... because this lovely fur ball is a girl after my own heart and is also loves yarn:
i'm trying to kill some time while i'm waiting for my bangs to bleach blond. from black (i just put the black in a few days ago... if i had thought ahead i would have left the bangs so they'd bleach faster). it's gonna take a while. it's been almost an hour already and i'm just at the ugly orange stage. Juliet is rinsing the bleach out of her hair as i type... we're putting pink streaks in her hair and "vampire red" on my bangs... so i'll resemble the photo of me you see on the right there again. now that this blog post is done, what shall i do?

i could clean, but no thanks. i have a job to do for John, but that involves going out to the garage and i'm not going to do that with goo in my bangs.

i guess i can pick up the shawl and do a row... that'll fill up at least 20 minutes and maybe my bangs will have gone from orange to yellow by then.

Pop Rocks...

freakin' adorable. she's about 9 weeks old.

and John didn't freak out when he came home from work yesterday to find a new kitten has joined the family.

somebody shoot me

i don't usually complain much about real life here... do i?

but the last few days have sucked so much ass.

so... it all started on Friday. we've had a LOT of trouble with Butters the cat. she is such a sweetheart, cuddly, soft, a very lovable cat. but she kept pooping outside the litter box. we tried everything... we changed the litter, changed the food, moved the litter, had an extra litter box, got a bigger litter box, tried catching her "in the act" to startle her from doing it again... but every second day (at least), there was an awful smell and big pile of cat poo somewhere in the house.

and then on Wednesday i caught her squatting just beside the sofa, startled her (not scared her, just made it known i was there), she ran off. a while later there was a nice package in the basement for us.

that was the last straw for John. Butters went back to the shelter. :(

Juliet has been extremely upset. she really loves Butters.

she decided to stay home from my parents' house this weekend, which meant coming to the dentist with us. the kids sat through one heck of a long dentist appt. on Friday afternoon with much patience, although they didn't feel patient on the inside, they were very well behaved on the outside.

in the midst of Juliet being upset she got an upset tummy. no worries, right? probably just because she was so emotional.

wrong.

dude. it's not been fun. add Jake into the upset tummy mix and the house has been rather ucky. the kids rarely get sick like that, so it's drama-city when they do.

so the weekend was spent rubbing kids' backs, cuddling, getting up at all hours of the night to "mum... i think i might puke!"

blech. on an up note though... John and i seem to be fine! we both had a few hours of queasiness the other night, but nothing since! *crosses fingers*

the weekend finally comes to an end. the tummies are much better. not perfect, but the bad stuff seems to have passed.

but because life was on a roll...

the fucking car breaks down. so John takes the day off Monday and takes it in. $more-than-we-could-afford-later, the end result is that i had to call up my parents last night and ask to borrow $ until the end of the week.

hello. i'm almost 32 and borrowing money from my parents (my birthday is on the 13th. woooot!)

and just because she sucks, AF showed up on the weekend too.

goddamn it... i hope this is the end of the crap for a while.

so... yeah... no knitting content to share today. no new soaps either (no way i was letting them near the soap "studio" while they were ill).

we haven't seen the outdoors in days, i think we're going to try to take a little walk to get some fresh air now.

(to end this on a brighter note... John *did* get a new video card for his computer (before the car broke down), so i can play the Sims2 again! and he bought Juliet and i the new expansion pack... Seasons. wooot!)

the house of one sock wonders...

one down... one to go. feel like you've heard that here before?

This is the York Minster sock for Juliet. i still have to teach myself crochet so i can add the lovely crochet cuff.



and... ta dum!!! my beeeeyoooooteeeeful RubySapphire yarn arrived today!! it is LOVELY! i think i see another cast on in the *very* near future. Butters was kind enough to have her portrait taken with the yarn. does this count for Project Spectrum? she is white and grey after all ;)

along with the yarn there was a lovely little goodie bag of candies and an adorable little yarn keychain! look at how well it matches my wallet/keychain :) love it!

and what do the kids do...

while mom is busy knitting with friends on Thursday evenings?



LOL!!

Butters Mc PooPants

yep... we got her. her shelter name was Deb, but we had to change it to something to reflect her personality a little more - Butters Mc PooPants works perfectly. have you seen Butters on SouthPark? and Mc PooPants... just use your imagination. she's freakin' ADORABLE!! she's HUGE. fat cat. she's timid and rather shy. Burban (our older cat) isn't terribly impressed, but there haven't been any major issues... just a little of Burban hissing at Butters, Butters looking at Burban like "who the hell are you?" and then Burban running away.


and look! an FO! my Log Cabin throw is done! love the colours. it's rather smaller than i thought it was while i was working on it... but the garter stitch is pretty stretchy, so it still covers me from toe to chest when i use it :) the yarn i used is NY Yarns Gypsy. all *gasp* acrylic.

adoption

not of the human kind... of the animal kind. Juliet and i went to the Orangeville SPCA and filled out an adoption application for this lovely:


the only snag i can see is that we already have a cat (adopted from the SPCA a few years ago)... and haven't had to bring her to the vet, so on the application we had nothing to put in the "list your vet" part. i explained that Burban is strictly an indoor cat, she's healthy and doesn't need vaccinations (i have some concerns regarding vaccinations, i don't even vaccinate my children). otherwise i don't see any reason we wouldn't be granted the adoption of another cat.

Juliet is especially excited. i think she'll be crushed if we're turned down. here's hoping for the best!