Two at a time and having a blast!

First off, a big thank you to everyone who took part in the sale/car-seat marathon. We ended up needing to get two car seats, as it turns out Canada has waaaaaaaaaaaaaay stringent rules about such things and our second car seat was about a month out of date. Yes, car seats have use by dates. Who knew? So the sale raised enough for one (phew) and so we could get them both and still breathe in a calm, un-panicky manner. Huzzah!

I'm waiting for His Nibs to get the camera pics off the camera and into useable format - the problem with getting a new camera (thanks Grandma!) is that my darling man wants to take pictures. OF EVERYTHING. Multiple times. Which means we have an ungodly amount of images of ducks, to my taste; each one of them using a slightly different setting than the last and All of them needing going through. I just want the pics of the holiday and my knitting, and I'm good. Well, maybe I'll share one of the ducks. The ducks were pretty cute.

However we have No Photos At All of our trip across the border into Americky, for two reasons - one being, we had no intention of going to Americky whatsoever, and were sadly let astray by our Tom Tom device - a device so dedicated to getting us along the shortest route between two geographical points that it gleefully ignores such matters as, oh, I don't know, INTERNATIONAL BORDERS. This, I cannot help but think, is a flaw in the device. Add to that the quirky sign that for all intents and purposes looked like a man in a peaked cap working on a laptop. I even was in the middle of wondering aloud whether the sign meant 'you must wear a peaked cap while using a laptop' when it dawned upon us that it probably meant 'Customs Official'. Given away by the teeny tiny plaque on the house we were outside with its line down the middle and 'USA' on one side, 'CANADA' on the other. And when I say tiny, I've fed my cat off larger plates than this sign. Pro-tip, border guards - BIG sign, maybe with flashing doohickeys, saying 'ONLY COME THIS WAY IF YOU WANT TO LEAVE THIS COUNTRY RIGHT ABOUT NOW'' would be more helpful.

The other reason we have no photos of this is because while you are trying to explain to a border guard with absolutely no sense of humour why you are apparently trying to enter his country with only a medicare card and a driving licence, taking lots of photos of him, his gun and his military back-up is probably frowned upon. Instead we sat in the car park, terrified to even set one foot on US soil, while they worked out how to send us back to Canada in the most official manner possible. It took two hours - time I used to cast on two-at-a-time toddler socks, in little leaf lace. I figured that no-one could possibly mistake someone swearing at her needles and concentrating madly on a lace chart for an international baddun.

We finally got officially refused permission to enter the US of A, and waving our piece of paper that effectively made us Canada's problem again, we drove back down the hill into our beloved Canada's metaphorical embrace. The border guard here declared me officially canadian for trying to use a RAMQ card as a passport, and said 'Oh, welcome home' in such warm tones that I had to be stopped from getting out and giving him a hug. We then drove the 2km to our friends' cottage very carefully, right along the border for the most part (Rue Canusa - one side Canadian, one side American - do not overtake slow vehicles for the love of all that's holy). Where we promptly slid into the lake and did our level best not to come out of it for two whole days. If you disregard the border violation, it was a wonderfully relaxing weekend. Chantal and Ron, we adore you.

Two at a time socks though, people! Two at a time! It's amazing what fear can do for your powers of concentration :)

Halfway there...

In the continuing mission to get a car seat, I've expanded the SALE!

So now, buy two blanket patterns, get one FREE! FREE I TELL YOU!

There are five eligible patterns, including the brand new Invaders From Outer Space,  Busy, Buzzy Bees, Elephant Blanket, Fairy Blanket & Outer Space Blanket!

The Sea Blanket is still available till Saturday at the bargain price of $5. Tell your friends!


All of these blankets would work very well in Cascade 220, Lambs Pride, St Denis, Brown Sheep and other worsted weight yarns - and whaddya know, the sadly-closing-but-awesome Ariadne right here in Montreal is having a going out of business sale where all of those yarns are AT LEAST 35% off. If you're local - it's worth running down there right now - otherwise give her a call!

baby needs a new car seat

Whaddya know, if you keep feeding them, they keep growing. Right out of their car seats, as it turns out, which means Little Man rather quickly needs a new one. So, there's a sale on Ravelry for my Sea Blanket pattern - half price till Saturday 13th August. Tell your friends!

Serendipity

So Pink Floyd's "Time" is playing as I open my email to find this:

How amazing is this? It's a clock, that measures time by knitting. Each half hour is represented by one stitch; a year is represented by a 2 metre long alpaca scarf (I love that it's alpaca - that woman is an artist to her toenails). A clock that represents what can be done as time passes. I'd love to have one of these on my wall - if only so that I could guarantee that every christmas, I'd have a warm scarf!

And speaking of christmas - the knitting list has begun. The knitting has begun. Although I will miss our beloved Ariadne store terribly, I intend to hit the frogging sale hard. Little Miss doesn't know it, but there are two Sindy dolls in terrible need of clothes waiting in a bag in the cupboard, so I need a fair amount of sock yarn, both for outfits and also, well, for socks. Turns out if you feed kids, they grow - one foot size in five days, on one notable occasion - so all those lovely woolen socks that kept their tootsies toasty last year are unfortunately too small for this. That's a fair amount of socks need making.

I'm heroically delaying the start of all those second - and first -socks by starting the Darling Man's present first. An absolute bargain in the exact yarn I wanted - Estelle's Ultra Wool, now discontinued - made it's way home, and without saying too much - hey, he reads this too - is now wound from the skein using the swift and winder Dad gave me for my 40th this year. I've done an inch so far - more if you include actual swatches - yep, for this one, I checked gauge. Astounding I know.

In the meantime, there are 3 weekends away planned - weekends where I will be taking my Official knitting along instead of the surreptitious knitting I yearn for - and a whole raft of school supplies to be shopped for. My Little Man starts school in just over 3 weeks. Five incredibly productive years, but whoosh, look how the time flies. Or, in another room, knits.

Counting down the days...

Back in March, I got asked to design a new blanket for Knitting Today! magazine, which was, as you can imagine, incredibly exciting and rather nerve-wracking all at the same time. There was an alphabet theme suggested by the editors, and an incredibly complex blanket image was sent as a guideline - one that had many, many colours, letters, and stripes, and polka dots, and stripes-with-polka-dots. It was pretty impressive, in a dear-god-who-has-time-to-make-that? manner, but there was something about an alphabet blanket that appealed - I do like coming up with ideas that would look awesome in a kid's room, from nursery to den, and alphabet blocks are a fairly universal toy.

But it needed a character. Sometimes, when I think about blankets to create, the idea falls into my head pretty much fully formed. The Sea Blanket is a good example of this - the image of the Great Wave has always fascinated me, and introducing that as a motif but exploring the cute ocean denizens below was just there in my head. This chap needed a little time and went through a couple of design mods, starting life as a bear, but then, BAM. Astro-Monkey was born and set the theme for the whole blanket.

Since getting to Canada, I've gone a little crazy with all the smaller art yarn companies out there - Blue Heron,  Hand Maiden, Blue Sky Alpaca; you know who you are - but in the UK I pretty much used acrylic blends almost exclusively. (And this is not to denigrate the UK artisan yarn industry, purely a reflection of my children's ages and ability to get clothes truly, awesomely messy). At three and five they still can show an astonishing affinity for dirt, but the days of wearing pureed foods as some kind of fashion statement seem to be behind us. And while I adore working with the fancy yarns (or merely squirrelling it away in case of some zombie-apocalypse-related-yarn-shortage) there is no getting away from the fact that a good acrylic yarn is awesome. I love a sweater that can go in the tumbledryer with no ill effects; a yarn that comes in strong child-friendly colours (I'm not one for babies in pastels, had you guessed?) that can survive an over-enthusiastic painting and play-doh session, and a blanket that can go under the shady tree in the park with no ill effects. And dear god, they're cheaper, which frankly if you're planning a blanket is a factor, unless the money fairy lives in your garden. It's lovely to make a blanket out of pure organic and karma boosting merino, but when it costs over $200 to do so, you do limit yourself to how many you can create in a year.

So when the magazine specified a particular yarn brand for this project (Red Heart Soft Yarn Solids) I was intrigued to see what colours would be available. And worried, in case they weren't right. But when the colour card came through, it was with a sigh of relief that I saw the colours the monkey had already been designed in were pretty much exactly represented. The light toffee of the monkey's face, the warm brown of his fur and the cheery orange of his astronaut's spacesuit determined the over-riding colour palette of the blanket; toning together while having the rich colour saturation that kids love. Choosing the monkey's activities became a fun blend of letters and colours (come on, a red heart made out of Red Heart? How could I resist?). Different monkey activities were championed by different family members ( "R is for..." being suggested by Little Man, and now being asked for in sweater format too).

The pattern has just gone up on Ravelry for people to queue and favourite (to the 61 people already who have given it their little heart icon - thank you!) and the first five squares will be published in the magazine on 12 July. I'm going to be stalking Chapters that day to get a couple of copies for family back home, and probably hovering around the Knitting Today! Ravelry board to see how it's received - but I'm so proud of this little Monkey, and I hope that everyone who gets him on their needles has as much fun as I've had with him.

A table full of happiness.

It doesn't take much to keep me smiling (although two children playing harmoniously together is a big ask, I realise!) Today has been a day of quite ridiculously heavy rain (the clay courts of the tennis club behind us is wrecked where the clay has just washed away - how's that for a first world problem?!) but my friend came all the way from her home on the other side of Montreal to spend a few hours with us. James was off work because of Jean-Baptiste day - thank you Quebec! I got to hold a three month old baby - and hand her back when she got a little fractious. I opened a pot of home-made, though not by me, peach and whiskey marmalade. I played with fabric and whipped up a pair of lightweight shorts for Little Man, and a pink A-line nightie for Little Miss. I'm going to end the evening watching Castle and maybe, just maybe, working on the Dagobah sweater - just the hood to go, and that all garter stitch; perfect tv knitting.

Other things that make me happy? My side table did a pretty good job:

My birthday card this year from James; a wedding photo with Mum and Dad; Zaki's 'Graduation' photo (taken as a surprise for the parents by the pre-school educators);my mum's button box, still with some of my mum's - and my nana's - buttons inside; my kindle; my first sewing project, which is an organiser for my beloved knit-picks harmony needles, and Po. Yes, a teletubby. Probably left there by Little Miss, Po is going to be forever linked with all of our children, and this ridiculous little plastic toy, when finally outgrown, will go into my jewelry box as one of my greatest treasures.

Still hurts to bloody tread on it though, so I'm also happy it was on the table and not the floor.

Back in BlogVille

Three weeks. Three weeks! What can I possibly have been doing to not have blogged for three weeks?

Um...

Nope, I got no excuse. I just got caught up in Summer. Oh yes, summer is here in beautiful Montreal and is making up for the long, long winter!

June's been quite a hectic month so far - first up was my birthday, when I got thoroughly surprised by my darling hubby and friends :)

There was a lot of cake, which is always nice, plus an awful lot of candles, which, well, I haven't worked out how I feel about that many candles yet! And more importantly, a lot of good friends, which just has brought to mind how fortunate we've been, moving here and meeting these wonderful people who so quickly have become part of the fabric of our lives.

I haven't got much knitting done - or rather, I haven't got much knitting finished, which as we know are two different things. The work on Little Man's Dagobah Sweater continues - slowly. It goes nearly everywhere we go - it's been to the waterpark, the sand park, the knit shop and to friend's houses, but the yarn is thick, the sweater warm and the pattern frankly a bit boring to work. It's going to look great, don't get me wrong, but it's mostly a stockinette variant. In dark green. When I've no longer been able to take the weight on my lap of 9 balls of Mission Falls and counting, in 30+ degree heat, I've transferred my affections to another Oriental Lily for Little Miss, in Classic Elite. Which is also just stockinette. I need something more challenging. Next on the list though is a camisole for me, in Blue Heron's Rayon Metallic. With such a statement yarn the pattern has got to be relatively simple, or you just end up with a frenzy. So, yes, you've guessed it, stockinette. Hopefully the shaping detail on the pattern will be enough to keep my attention going. This top has literally been on the needles since November, when christmas knitting and not one but three blankets took priority. I'm determined to wear it this summer. In the meantime, I'm mulling over ideas for another blanket...

What has been flying off one sort of needles though, are little somethings for the summer for the children. Outgrown legs on those trousers? That's three pairs of shorts for Little Miss. Funky IKEA pillow cases found at the Sally Army? Two pairs of bermuda shorts for Little Man. The IKEA cot quilt cover he slept under till he was two was re-fashioned into a pair of PJ's, with either shorts or trousers depending on whim. Thrifty!

Two sun hats each, a peasant blouse and two floaty skirts for Little Miss, and the sewing machine has more than paid for itself. Although it's been lovely choosing fancy fabrics from Effiloche and Emmeline & Annabelle, I'm proudest of my pillow case creations, including this outfit for Little Miss that came in under $5. And that's including the thread:

The skirt pattern was from 'Little Girls, Big Style', which, once you get past the crazy-but-oh-so-fashionable clashing prints, has some lovely simple patterns with sweet designs. The basic pants design, once you look beyond ALL the ruffles, is elegant and more to the point, fits Little Miss like a dream without any tweaking - perfect length, excellent instructions. The peasant blouse needed heavy tapering as it did initially make my super-skinny miss look like an egg, but the peasant skirt - oh, the peasant skirt! People have regularly stopped us at the park or on the street to find out where I got it, and anything that can make my sewing look that good has got to be a winner. The next book to try out is the divine looking Absolutely A-Line by Wendy Gratz. I have some strawberry fabric just bursting out of the fabric stash for this one.

Those photos were taken at Little Man's graduation from Pre-School. Such a fun evening! Quick little handmade gifts were required for his lovely educators, so together he and I came up with 'something pretty for their hair'. Little flower hairclip covers, one pink, one turquoise. I've no idea who got which one - that was his decision alone, and one that changed a fair bit the day before the last day of school! Fun little knits, and he even chose the button for this one.

Thank you to two lovely educators! He had a wonderful time at pre-school - next stop, Kindergarten! Yikes!