I'm holding on.......

to this great weather we've been getting. ;) It's November 4 and the temp today is expected to hit +15C. Our average is around +1C, but hey the shorter winter is around here the better. I've been bitten by the touque bug, and the solution I've found is in 'One Skein' by Leigh Radford. Asymmetrical Cable Hat

I'm using some Drops Alpaca from my stash. Colour 6834, guage 23st x 30 rows, addi dpn's 4.0mm. This is more of a lace weight, but I loved the colour for a man's hat so I used all three skeins stranded together. I still had to increase my cast on to 81sts. to get the right guage for the circumference of the man's hat. This is going out in the mail today to my DD's boyfriend Nathan who is in hospital starting on another round of chemo.

Also in the same book there is a pattern for a baby hat. I have a friend who works in the maternity ward at one of our local hospitals and I thought I would love to do some stash busting and make up some to donate. So again I'm having to play around with gauge and I think I've got it down now.

Last but not least....updates on the basement reno. We've now got it insulated with rigid pink, and pink fibreglass. The framing was put back up along with the electrical back in place, and the vapour barrier. So now DH has been putting up the drywall. Slowly but surely the basement is coming back to us. I'm not sure if it'll be ready for Christmas though.

I have an azalea plant that was given to my mother-in-law back this spring. She lives on Vancouver Island, and didn't want to travel back there with it so she handed it over to me in full bloom. It was beautiful and I thought, oh I'm probably going to kill it with neglect. I generally don't keep houseplants because I'm constantly forgetting to water them. Anyways this thing loves my west facing window in my dinette. It's constantly blooming and it doesn't mind getting dried out. So far it's been the perfect plant! Who knew!

Next post I'll try to blog about our trip to Phoenix coming up this Saturday. I've got several yarn shops located on the GPS so hopefully DH won't mind coming along on my fibre hunt.

**An afterthought......I used Clover's Pom Pom maker to make the pom pom on the above mentioned blue touque. After some initial studying of instructions, and rotating it around and figuring out how it works I started winding the yarn on it. I couldn't contain my amazement at how wonderful that pom pom turned out. I've shown everyone who has been to my house. Like I'm hoping everyone tries this thing out because my exasperation at using half circle cardboard cut outs just never worked for me. So just a heads up if you see one and you've had the same problems making really nice round pom poms...you'll love this thing.

Welcome to my new back screendoor. How bad is it when I can get excited about something like that? We've lived in this house for 25 years, and it always feels great to replace something like an old aluminium screendoor that had to be the original going back 40 years.

My DH worked for approx. three days with this door as the exterior brickmould had to be taken out and sided with some metal to match the screendoor. Then came fitting all the deadbolts, and the new door handle on the inside metal door. So we were home, but felt like we didn't see each other......because.....

My DD and I went shopping on Saturday and headed to Michael's craft store.....I don't generally do my yarn shopping there, but I came upon something that I had to have and not in just a couple of colours, but several. It's SWS from Patons. SWS stands for Soy Wool Strips. 70% wool/30% soy, approx. 110yds, 2.8 oz, I started a new hat pattern (in colours Natural Geranium and (solid) Natural Berry) that was designed by Danny Ouellette. Danny has a Diamond waffle sock pattern featured in Knitty Fall 2007.

I was up to 2:00am Saturday night figuring out the Travelling Rib hat pattern which has some knitting techniques I've never worked with before. It was not hard, but I was so intriqued with the design that I couldn't put it down. He also has several other patterns for sale on his website and I got another one called Easy Head Hugger Hat.

I've been also slogging along on the vest for my DH's birthday. It's going fast, but I'm trying to knit on it when he's not around. So it's going slow, but the back is just about done....

I've also been sidetracked by getting our indoor fishtank ready for when we bring in our koi and goldfish from the outside pond. Our old indoor tank was too small to house them all over winter so we've had to get a bigger tank. We only have 12 fish, but some of them have doubled in size. So the new tank is ready to go now. We're looking forward to bringing them in and seeing how they've grown. I'll post pictures when we eventually do that.

125 Gallon Oceanic tank,
Eheim Professional II water filter,
Eheim Classic 2213 water filter.


The cats will have some new entertainment watching the fish when they're in here..........


Which brings me to another cute toy for cats....do it yourself homemade bendy straw cat toys from Wendy Knits

Our Anna had a crazy great time with these little triangles!