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Thursday evening we got word that there was going to be a snowstorm on Friday.  We didn’t think too much about it…after all, it wasn’t snowing at that point.  We kept an eye on the weather, though.  Our plans were to head down to m1 in the morning to take a look at the saxony wheel again.

Well…that didn’t happen.  We were going to give Bess some time to get opened up before we went, and by the time we stirred our stumps, the snow was falling.  Realizing that it was coming down like crazy, plans immediately reverted to “snowed in” status.  Hit the Safeway down the street for food for the next couple of days, and hunkered down.

For those not in the know, Fridays and Saturday are our days off around here, so that left us with the pleasant knowledge of not having to go outside again after we got home from the store.  We played a little Katamary Damacy (mad fun), then stuck in a movie or two or three.  I managed to finish the knitting portion of the Creamsicle BSJ, and the socks I’m working on are also not far from completion.  I had given myself a deadline of this weekend for them, so we’re doing better than I thought.  I have my next project queued up and the pattern printed, so hopefully that will be on the needles shortly, with another pair of socks to replace the current ones in the wings.

I’m looking forward to yet another day of cuddles, hot drinks, some knitting, and maybe capping the day with a little snuggling by the fire.  Not just the one on Channel 2, thank you Shaw – though we did tune in to hear a little crackling & popping last night.  We have a gas fireplace with a prepped pilot light.

btw…the yarn in the picture above is destined to be something nifty like a koolhaas or gretel.  I got a kick out of the fact that Tanis writes a little something on the inside of each ball band.  Cute!

Yes, I’m linking to Flickr searches instead of Ravelry for those patterns.  Why?  Because not everyone subscribes to Ravelry, even though they should

Leaving you with a picture taken by Robin during his shovelling of the walk.  Just a little background here…the two houses at the end of the cul-de-sac are assumed by us (and anyone who visits us) to be multi-family dwellings.  The sheer volume of cars seems to bear this out.  Often the overage will spill out in front of our place, usually at precisely the wrong time (ie: we are entertaining and need parking space ourselves).  One of the neighbours is a cabbie.  He couldn’t QUITE make it into his driveway this morning.  In fact…he’s parked in the middle of the cul-de-sac.  Not much better than one of our other neighbours, who missed his driveway entirely last night and parked in the space between  the two driveways (we were woken up by him rocking and digging himself out this AM).

Here’s the cab for your edification.  Whee!

BSJ stands for Baby Surprise Jacket, and while it seems a simple knit, this would be precisely the kind of wrong thinking that has you sitting there, looking at your hands, wondering why the hell you’re not actively knitting on it.

I have had to tink it back once already.  Now I’m at the point where I stop knitting the whole garment back & forth & only concentrate on the middle 90 stitches.  So close to the end, for those who have already knit this intriguing little piece of Origami.  It is at this point that I realize that after the second stitch marker, I’m short by about 4 stitches.  The regular increase-by-one will get me a little closer to my goal, but there’s still 3 extra stitches that I have to make up for.

Add to that the frustration of realizing that these sure aren’t the kind of colours I would choose on my own for a baby jacket.  They may be “insipid” colours, but I do like purple, and blue, and pink, and green for baby swag.  Really.  Particularly nice, bright colours.

The BSJ has been re-cast in a Lorna’s Laces colourway called “Childsplay” that has all these pretty colours in it.  Since I only had the one skein, I’m swapping in some “stripes” in black.  The mother of the pending baby likes black, so I think it will go over well as the primary neutral.

In other news….I finished my Koigu Yule Socks of Stripey Goodness!

I think they may be a little big for me, but that’s ok…it gives them a little room to shrink in the wash, if that’s what they’re going to do.  Otherwise, I think they’re absolutely beautiful.  You really do have to see them up close to really admire them…pictures just make them look like these weird pink & green striped socks that just look annoyingly loud.  They’re much more awesome than that.  Definitely.

Have been working on sock #2 of the yule presents that will be going out of the house this year.  I think I’m about halfway down the calf. Here’s hoping.  It’s a bit fiddly to have to knit, so I hope it goes faster.  If it starts getting tedious, I may just switch over to another sock on the go, or to the Noro striped scarf that can’t decide whether it belongs to Chelsea or Zoe.  I’m pretty sure that Chelsea would prefer to knit her own scarf, but every so often this one whispers her name while I knit.  The colours are such that it could go either way.  Both of these fine ladies would look wonderful in it.  I guess I’ll just have to wait til it’s done (or until Chels tells me that she’s already got her yarn & is merrily knitting away).

Sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone to do something nice.  Usually, if you suggest going to a resteraunt to someone, they will choose somewhere close by, generally only a few minutes away.

Of course, standing in line, waiting around at Red Lobster with the little pager-thingy proved to be a boring endeavour.  When we were quoted a wait time of about 1/2 an hour, we accepted it, but soon Robin was asking “Are you sure you want to stay here?  We could go somewhere good like Big T’s.”

Big T’s is a BBQ joint, and it’s excellent.  Try the brisket.  Seriously.

Sure, it took us an extra fifteen minutes to get there, but once we were headed west on 16th, it didn’t take long.  Plus, there was no lineup when we got there, and the place wasn’t over-crowded.  There were only a couple of folks with small children (a family with kids old enough to know what a dessert fork is, and a table that I inwardly called “boys night out” because it was a 1-yr old with his Dad & Grandpa), so the place was pretty quiet.

After that?  Grabbed a couple of movies at Blockbuster & settled in for the night.  Yay!  Reminder to self: Horror movies before bed are probably not a good idea.  Yay for comic relief afterwards…

Finished up work on Yule Sock #1.  Cast on for Yule sock #2.  Yay for picot edging!  Also have a pretty red vintage sock off the needles as well.  I’m going to have to cast its mate on fairly soon.  Only thing that’s holding me back is the fiddly-ness (is that even a word) of the pattern.  Sure, it goes quick once you get going, but I really had to make myself work on it towards the end.

Also put a few more rows on the Baby Surprise Jacket.  I’m finding that, of all projects, this one is the most challenging to do with my new knitting style.  For those who don’t know, I recently switched the way I knit, mainly for ergonomic reasons.  I knit English style, feeding the new yarn over the fingers of my right hand, and carrying the knitted work under my palms.  I switched to a style known as Irish Cottage Knitting, most notably done by the Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.  Again, it’s a matter of getting out of one’s comfort zone in order to get a better result.  I still carry the yarn on the fingers of my right hand, but it’s wrapped in a different way (over the middle & ring fingers instead of over the pinky & pointer fingers), and I carry the right needle between thumb & forefinger instead of under my palms.  There’s a video on The Anticraft that shows this method wonderfully.

Apparently the ‘Harlot teaches courses in ergonomic / production knitting, but I have yet to be able to get myself to one of ‘em.  Possibly someday I’ll get wind that she’s in Calgary and doing a course.  Might be able to pick up some of the finer points.   Til then…well…I can’t knit the way I used to anymore.  I started using the new method almost a month ago, and it’s stuck.  I’m almost as fast, if not faster, than I was before I switched it up.

(Actually, after re-watching the video, I’m going at about the same clip she’s going.  So that’s pretty good.  I think she’s holding back a bit, but hey).

As to the BSJ, the reason it’s a challenge is because you wind up draping the knitted fabric of larger projects over your thumb.  The BSJ is just large enough to be a bit unwieldy.  Hopefully this will change as the sweater gets bigger.  If not, I might be screwed

Obligatory sock shot!

This is that yummy Koigu that I mentioned in my last post.  I couldn’t help casting on.  They’re going to make a wonderful pair of Yule Socks, methinks.  I’m just turning the heel now (toe-up), so we’ll see whether I got the measurements right soonish.

New feature on ye olde blog: a link to a new page labelled “lifestream”.  For those who aren’t aware of what a lifestream is, it’s the feed of information generated when you use microblog (Web 2.0) applications like Facebook or Twitter or Flickr or whatever.  It may seem somewhat egotistical, but I include it as a stream-of-consciousness page for folks who would like to see what I’m prattling on about when I’m not blogging.  Since it takes comparatively less time to twitter or upload a photo to flickr, this includes the generated content in a relatively easy to follow format that keeps it all in one place for thems who are interested.  Those who aren’t can just overlook it and keep on going.  No harm, no foul.

I checked out a few Firefox addons today, as I realized that there was a potential to get rid of some of my various windows and/or extraneous applications.  Well…to make a long story short, out of a bunch of applications, I pared it down to a feed reader called “Feedly” that presents the sites I want to read in an attractive, easy-to-follow format.  Much better than Google Reader or bloglines (ah, how I disliked bloglines).

So yeah.  Slowly, but surely, the windows are coming under control.