One Stop Shopping

There's knitting coming up, but first: autumn splendour!

Or more specifically, one park, so many looks.

That's the hill we climb sometimes, if it hasn't been too rainy and there's too much traffic on the paved hill, to get up out of the ravine in the park we like into this...

 

I mean can you even? 

I took these pix in the early part of the week and then we went back toward the end of it to find this on a different path:

 

I feel so lucky to live near this incredible green space that has other colours too, and so many textures.

Speaking of colour and texture, I did in fact stop writing for a couple of hours to watch the last instalment of the second season of Karen Pirie (excellent) which meant I needed *some*thing to knit, and since I still can't decide about heel flaps, I did the colourwork on the second blue sock.

 

I even lined up my next project, which is not socks, even though I am writing on a very very tight deadline now with just four weeks to write and polish about 60,000 words that tell a story and aren't just slapped onto the screen. 

A new screen at that, since my computer died with almost no warning between both sets of foliage pix. 

Think I can do it and still post here all four Saturdays? I'm not sure, but I'll know by next Saturday and update you then. Meanwhile, I hope you have beautiful colours around you and have a lovely weekend! 

 

 

Stranded

I started a new project and it's stranded!

Around here it's been all about the stripey yarn for so long, or maybe speckled or otherwise colour-mixy, I have neglected the possibilities for combining colours more manually. (Unless you count the sweater that killed my arm last January, of course.)

Also, it's finally getting cooler and I was excited to bring some Stoddart boot sock yarn back into play. This is, if you may recall, a now out of production wool/mohair yarn produced from the fiber of local animals, then hand-dyed by a brilliant colour artist and farmer. I will cry when I eventually work through my stash. In fact this week I spent valuable downtime hunting for someone else producing anything similar. Got nada. Either it's wool and mohair and undyed, or it's dyed and not the fiber combo I want, or it's not super local, or it's dyed in pastels instead of these vibrant hues. 

Lesson learned: there are times when it is one's duty to overbuy a favourite rare yarn. And thank goodness I did. No beating myself up for that choice!

Anyhoo, I got through the leg on sock number one and then stopped because I couldn't decide whether to make a tweak to my heel flap plan.

Normally, I start the heel flap at the start of the round. But that means the messy seam of the sock, where all the colours came in and no amount of tidy finishing conceals the fact, is on the side of my leg. 

 

What if I started the heel flap one-quarter into the next round, so that the messy seam goes down the back of my leg, were nobody's going to see it unless I'm already walking away from them? 

Like I say, I couldn't decide. I might do the other sock and get it down to the heel flap too, before I call it. I also have to choose whether to strand the heel flap this time too, to make it more hardwearing, or actually hold the yarn double. 

hmmmmm

AND I still haven't decided whether I'm felting the giant stranded sweater from last winter. But I'll get to it. I'm pretty focused on writing the next manuscript right now, a job I have only about four weeks left to complete. WHAT was I thinking lining up editorial feedback with such optimism.

But that's a problem for another panicky day. Right now it is SATURDAY and Saturdays are for happy times. Hope your weekend is great, whether it's a long Thanksgiving one like I'm having (hello fellow Canadian!) or just a regular long one or not a long one at all! See you next week and thanks as always for joining me, even if my head is kind messy and exploding with ideas and overcommitment.

 

 

Sweater makeover

Hello again! Gorgeous and sunshiney here today and I am... not going outside to enjoy it. I mean, I probably will, but I'm more than usually preoccupied with this sweater. Remember her?

 

The super pretty yoke sweater that broke the nerve running down my right arm while I was knitting her? 

I wore this thing a ton in the few weeks of cold weather we still had after I finally finished, and it shows:

Don't ask me now the name of this yarn but it's one of those super underspun and luxuriously soft 100% wool options, so underpriced for what it is you should know there's going to be a problem. See above: Underspun.  And oh, the pilling!!

All that work and it looks like a sloppy sweatshirt already. In fact, it is sloppy. 

What is that, a 46-inch bust? A tad more generous than I require. Plus, the length. If you remember this sweater, you remember I accidentally knit it so long I had to hem it rather than rip back from 'finished' to under the yoke. Like, by this much:

Yep, that's three and a half inches there extra. If I unpick that hem, I'll have a mini dress. Which is not a practical wardrobe item in heavy underspun wool.

It does however complete the ingredients needed to knit something and then felt it.  

I'm not committing to that just yet. I mean, right now, I can wear this sweater. If I felt it in the washer, I might need to pass it down to a neighbourhood child. Or maybe it will turn so dense and stiff I'll have to use it as a wall hanging or carpet. I'm just quietly debating whether to felt it gently by hand in a sink full of warm, soapy water.  

Got any thoughts about this? Because I can tell looking at her, this sweater doesn't trust me not to mess up.

 

Oh, and...

 

The Halloween socks are done, except for the grafting! 

That's me you hear, squealing with delight over having finished a pair of socks this quickly again. 

... and now, quietly squeaking in panic. I really need to get on the ball (ha - geddit?) about my next knitting project, now that it's dark early enough to curl up and binge watch films and other stories before bedtime.

 

Hope you have a great weekend and as always, thanks for coming to spend this time with me! See you next Saturday.

Mini madness

Oh dear... it's happening again... and not just reclining socks, which I continued to work on because I seem to have slipped from compulsive reading to compulsive miniseries watching.

Today's title does not refer to that sort of mini, unfortunately. I managed to get my hands on a Filofax mini sized planner this week and I am smitten!

It's so compact and cute... much smaller than the pocket size which I had originally, and which I still think is utterly tiny. 

It's barely 5 inches long! If I were an out-and-about person, like I was when I first started using Filofax planners, I would be in heaven and carrying a very, very small bag. 

Of course I had to make covers for the inside of it immediately, and decorate them.

This particular mini is a Malden, in stone, and Maldens are as terrible for their punchy hard zipper pull as they are delightful for their gorgeous squishy leather. If you don't make a nice card stock cover page - this one is heavy watercolour paper cut to size by me - you get a dent in all your other pages. 

And on the back it's nice to have a separate page to lift all the rest of the content out of the way, to get at whatever you're keeping in the card slot storage area.

I don't like to use the pen loop you can see there on the right. It's far too small, and also, gets in the way of the pages. It's quite convenient for tucking loose cards underneath though, if you have some to stash.

The mini is about the size of a wallet and small-size Maldens come with a billfold at the back. I bought it intending to use it that way but now I'm thinking it might be nicer to carry around as a planner (because I don't already have 8-12 others up on the shelf in my office, and in my stationery cupboard - everybody has at least one of those, right? - and scattered over my desk.)

So: doom, basically. I am once again investing in planners even though I have a system now that I absolutely love and works for me without any compromises. Admittedly, since it is A5 sized and hefty, it would not be fun to carry around to the office and on shopping trips. But since I work at home and never shop long enough to need more than a wallet and phone and housekey, that's pretty moot. 

I simply must think of a purpose for this new tiny baby planner, that's all. 

Like, maybe I should jot down my basic knitting patterns to clip in there so I stop losing them? My sock instructions alone would be worth adding. 

Or a second calendar because look:

 

I already have it set up with a steeply discounted diary for the rest of this year.

And a compressed week-on-two-pages diary for next year. I love how the tiny day sections are the right size for a Post-It flag sticky, don't you? Makes it easy to highlight an event you find out about while in transit, and/or to transfer that information to a bigger planner back home.  

 

Or... nope, I've got nothing. 

What would you do with a tiny notebook you can slot paper into and out of at will? 

And while you're thinking about that, let's admire my socks again. They might be done next week, and wouldn't that be exciting?

Ahhhh, new socks. Just in time for the temperatures to drop enough for me to need them. Thanks so much for dropping in again this week and I will see you next Saturday!

 

 

 

Socks n Walks

Phew! It was looking a bit dicey around midweek, and I did have to work till 3 this morning, but I pulled it off and my manuscript is finally ready to go! Let's ignore the next paralysing stage of the writing process (shhhh... querying agents) and look at the delicate smudges of colour on these *completed sock heels*:

Aren't they gorgeous? And all I have left are feet and toes, with more than four weeks to go before Halloween.

This time of year is my absolute favourite and today in particular is a dream - chillyish temps, just enough for a light sweater, and clear skies with sun spotlighting the leaves which are just starting to fade from green. Perfect conditions for walking. Here's what our usual trail looks like:

and if we get in with enough time before dark, also this:

 

which means you need shoes with enough tread to handle the slope you can just see in the background there. Plus the other slopes.

I kind of like these Merrells - they're Moab 3 if that means anything to you, a budget hiking shoe which our local store happened to have in stock in my size when I realized my other shoe options were too worn to be useful on this terrain. 

They did fine for a 90 minute walk and that's about our normal, plus the colours are so muted and friendly for whatever sock I might throw in there. 

The other day Pete spotted something interesting on a run and brought me back later to take pictures:

 

I have never seen a mushroom like this, have you? Apparently it's called Chicken Of The Woods because it can sub in for chicken in any recipe. It tastes like and has the consistency of chicken. 

I decided to take the internet's word for its being delicious and was just glad to be able to see it in its glory

... before it starts getting nibbled by insects, like this tree.

Really gives me a craving for Halloween candy corn though! Even nature knows orange and yellow go great together.

 

Okay that's me for today - got a house to clean after all that neglect while I was working so hard! Hope your weekend is relaxing and delightful, and I look forward to seeing you next Saturday. By then, maybe my chompy socks will have finished their conversation and grown up into useful warming Halloween sockies!

 

 

 

 

 

In a flap

Two flaps in fact - matching heel flaps!

I've been knitting on revision breaks. Wish me luck to finish one (manuscript) or the other (a sock) before I see you next week... 

Knitlove

All week I've been poking away at my Halloween socks and am almost up to the heel on one of them!

I'm either starting now, or in ten rounds, depending on what my recount tells me. 

I've dropped this fine book into today's lead photo because it's never too early for Christmas shopping and omigosh Francesco Marciuliano's work on cat (and now dog) communication is so funny. This one, You Need More Sleep, is just an honest caption for practically anyone. We also have an earlier poetry collection, I Could Pee On This, and highly recommend it. 

Back to Knit Love: My arm still gets sore if I work too long at my needles so I am having to accept the snail's pace...

... and for totally unrelated reasons I may have vacuumed off about seven years' dust on my spinning wheel this week. Spinning might be easier on that irritated nerve, right? Like I have *so* much time for spinning, and relearning spinning, I'm sure. When I unfolded it for the dust removal I realized I no longer remember which bits go where and why. Thank goodness it's an Ashford, with loads of how-to videos on YouTube.

Because I can't knit sweaters now, I feel highly justified in buying them, and was very pleased to find this Eileen Fisher beauty, pre-loved, on eBay. 

It's worn purl side out which is such a a fave thing of mine! Two or three stitches in the front were looking frail so I reinforced them with black button thread in a duplicate stitch. I should have used wool really, but the button thread was the exact size and texture for the black yarn used in the sweater.

(this pic is from before I did the fix, and I'm not sure what that greyish blob is in the lower left. maybe a pulled thread I tugged back into place? there were one or two of those needing attention.)

If I'd needed to fix more stitches I'd have had to use wool instead... as it is, the rigid cotton thread is like a brace on that fluid drape. I've done so much with textiles over the years, I was surprised to be surprised by what a difference it made!

The week ahead is going to be very busy here, starting pretty much as soon as I post this, so I've decided in advance I will not post next Saturday. I mean, maybe a single photo, but no chat! Gotta keep my head clear for a ton of revisions on my current manuscript. 

When I come back I might have a sock heel to share. Well, honestly, what I'm really hoping for is a LOT of sock heels to share because I am long overdue for a serious darning fest. 

Either way, I hope you have a lovely couple of weeks and a delightful pair of weekends too! Thanks so much for spending this time with me.

And aren't you grateful you don't have this pile of stripes to fix up before the temps drop?

 

 

 

Field trip

While I wait for the perfect conditions to go outside and plant bee- and butterfly-friendly flowers in place of the boxwoods we lost earlier this year...

... let me take you out on a field trip I took immediately after posting last Saturday's Hug!

If I lived here, I would put a long chaise under the below-stairs arches, plus a little table for tea and snacks, and curl up to read for about six years.

But nobody lives here. Toronto has two city halls, located on either side of Bay Street, one being very old and beautiful and the other, newer and iconic with two towers that may look like brackets to some, but make me feel like they're about to hug. 

Surprise! This gorgeous marble space is in the old one. It got leased to the province, as I understand it, and unless you were attending court in the capacity of a prosecution or defence you didn't get to see it. But it's no longer in use for judicial purposes and the building's been open for self-guided tours a few days a month, so of course we jumped on that.

PAY PHONES. When was the last time you saw a pay phone? I kinda welled up when I saw these twins.

But also when I saw the marble column beside it. Isn't that wild?

Here's one on the other side of the space, with matching stairs..

... but less matchy marble. I like this one better, if I'm honest. It's kinda like lightning bolts as opposed to cat sick overgrown meadow.

One of the fancier courtrooms was open for viewing and to sit in the judge's chair, which I did not do, being too busy admiring more arches.

At the time this building opened for business in 1899, Toronto was still pretty small, so this place was definitely future-proofed. It takes up a city block and all these gorgeous details speak to the expectation that the city would grow in size and importance. I can't help wondering how we'll make use of it next, and whether regular folks like us will get much say? 

Because I really wasn't kidding about that chaise by the window.

And back to the plants! Aren't these colours lovely?

When we were choosing them, there were SO many bees on the display. We had to move our own plants carefully away and then check them before we put them in the car, lest we be displacing any of them. Or, you know, sitting in a closed, moving vehicle with a confused bee. 

 

I'm hoping these guys will attract more bees over the next few weeks, and next summer too! which is why they won't be going into the ground too near the chairs, ahem.

Hope you have a great day and a lovely week to come - thanks for stopping by and I'll see you next Saturday.