Believe it or not, when I opened my first blogger account back in…..2002(?) 2003(?), it was meant to be a knitting blog. I had named it “knitwit” because, as you all know, I’m very clever. I was going to revolutionize blogging, imagine - a blog about knitting! Never mind that I had just picked up needles for the first time, I was going to share my painful journey as I learned to knit and was 100% sure that my audience would be enthralled. Really.

Alas, knitting requires money, of which I had none at the time. A knitting blog would also be kind of sucky unless you have some photographs to show what you are up to. I had a camera, but it wasn’t digital, and I did not bring my trusty ol’ scanner with me to Canada. So the blog just sat there sans posts for years until I renamed it and eventually moved it here.

I can’t say that I’m all that great a blogger in general, let alone a knitting blogger worthy of an audience. Oh well. The Harlot and Dooce can rest easy I guess.

However, I do knit, and since I am gainfully employed currently, I actually have the money now to pursue my various interests, of which knitting currently ranks quite high. So I thought I’d actually make a post about it for a change.

I am working on a couple of Top Secret projects which I won’t post about here, but I have finally discovered the amazingness that is known as elann.com, so I wanted to share. Yes, I know - what took me so long? Well, I didn’t realize they were a Canadian company for one, and I’ve been conservative in my online ordering due to the whole customs thing. I’ve been painfully dinged more than once with goods that cross the border, so that has made me a bit hesitant to order from down south. However, now with the US dollar being so weak, I’ve taken the plunge and have been pillaging etsy, ebay and other resources the past few months.

As I mentioned though, Elann.com is a Canadian company, so no border drama there. You have no idea how happy this has made me! They sell quality yarn at insanely low prices, and last week I finally placed my first order. My box finally arrived yesterday.

Arg! A monster is going to eat my yarn!

This yarn is called Incense, and it’s a blend of wool, silk, and bamboo. Very luxurious. And hard to photograph, but whatever.

I ordered it for a scarf named Serpentina. I have been eyeballing that pattern for quite some time. It was designed by a woman named Cyn (on Ravelry, at least), and it’s the first pattern that I can think of, where I wanted to make it in the exactly the same colour and exactly the same yarn as shown. That never happens!

So I cast it on some needles and knit a couple of repeats:

I absolutely can’t wait until it is finished! This is perfect knitting for me right now. The pattern is simple, but not boring. It is easily memorized, and if you happen to ignore it for a few weeks, you’ll have no problems picking right up where you left off.

Remember my friend from the old post about the Buddy Holly Memorial Garden?

I got this email from him today:

Of course there is a story behind this, but it will have to wait.

This has been the most boring weekend ever. It’s Victoria Day here in Canada, so we had a three day weekend which I was looking soooo forward to. At first we were thinking we’d go somewhere. Nowhere huge, just maybe to African Lion Safari, or even just have a picnic in a nice park. I was thinking brunch somewhere, then go to the boathouse for ice cream, then sort of laze around under the trees. Maybe knit a little, maybe catch a nap. You know - nice weekend stuff.

Too bad the weather didn’t cooperate. This is a picture taken of my backyard about a half hour ago. This is probably the nicest it’s been all weekend. It’s 5°C out.

And it wasn’t just the weather - oh no! Trinity decided to re-enact The Exorcist on both friday and Saturday nights, except it wasn’t pea soup, it was chocolate TimBits and macaroni and cheese. This meant we really didn’t want to tempt fate by dragging her around all over town.

However, we did need food. Badly. Naught but corned beef in the freezer and a can of fava beans in the pantry. Not very appetizing. Canada actually closes it’s stores on national holidays (unlike, say, NYC), but we have a 24 hour grocery store that is always open, so I wasn’t too worried when Sunday night came and I still couldn’t be arsed to get to the grocery store. We would just go to the Ultra, after all, the weather sucked for anything else anyhow.

So our big planned excursion for the holiday weekend turned out to be a family trip to the grocery store. We all got up and dressed and out and went across town to the 24 hour grocery store. The one that is open all the time, even on Easter Sunday. Even on Christmas.

But not on Victoria Day it seems. :-\

Yes, it was closed.

Trinity started wailing (for real, the kid loves shopping, don’t know why), so we figured since we had nothing to eat in the house, and no where to buy groceries to make anything with, we might as well go out for lunch. We went to a restaurant that was right in front of the closed grocery store. It was either called Casey’s or Kelsey’s, I don’t remember which. All those restaurant chains kind of meld together in my mind, they might as well all be TGI Fridays as far as I’m concerned.

Anyhow, I had an overdone burger, and Chris had some kind of Prime Rib sandwich that you dip in the au jus. I should have had that, my burger kind of sucked. The nachos were good though.

Here are some photos of our exciting afternoon. You can tell by the look on Chris’s face that he was having as much fun as I was.

That necklace that Trinity is wearing came from McDonalds a month or so ago and I’m having a hard time getting her to take it off. It’s magic you see, so she can’t just leave it lying about, it must be on her AT ALL TIMES.

I was impressed that the restaurant had sippy cups though. Points for that

It’s really hard to get a picture of Trinity lately where she ISN’T making a funny face.

Who has more fun than us?

Well, at least she was happy!

Oh, and this is what my living room looks like right now. Fun times.

I guess I should go down there and clean it up.

Today was a lovely day, made all the more special by the fact that it was my birthday. Normally I don’t care about birthdays all that much, certainly not enough to blog about them, but my husband got me some really nice gifts and I wanted to share.

I have wanted this book for years, but it’s kind of insanely expensive, especially up here in Canada. I’ve seen it marked down to a “still-expensive- just-not-quite-so” price every now and again, but never when I had any disposable income at hand. Well now I can cease my pining, because it is MINE! I spent a couple hours today poring over the pretty colour plates. I have big plans for this book, but I won’t get into what they are just yet. It’s a secret.

Here is an example of what is inside.

I also received a copy of Sensual Knits, a book of knitting patterns that I’ve been coveting for awhile as well. The book is worth it for the sweater on the cover alone, but there are a few other things inside that I would like to make as well.

Then I opened up a box of Godiva chocolates, and an Elvis CD box set. I didn’t get a picture of the Elvis box set, so you will have to make do with this picture:

Afterwards, it was lunchtime. Chris had got me sushi, which he doesn’t like at all, so he had to make do with leftover pizza. I dont’ think he minded though. Then I spent the afternoon sitting on the couch perusing through my books, eating chocolate, knitting a sock and watching Dr. Doolittle. The original. Not the one with Eddie Murphy.

All in all, it was a lovely day!

A meme.

The Rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 (or more) pages.

Thud!” Terry Pratchett

2. Open the book to page 123 and find the 3rd sentence.

Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.

3. Post the next 5 sentences.

He had nightmares about being too late. He had a lot of nightmares about Young Sam. They involved empty cots, and darkness. It had all been too … good. In a few short years he, Sam Vimes, had gone up in the world like a balloon.

4. Tag 5 people.

Boo, Madmouse, Tah, Neo and LaMa. Well, everyone really

Okay, well I decided that I hated blogger and have decided to move my blog (such as it is) over to wordpress.  The images are messed up, but I can’t be arsed to go back and fix them, so you guys will just have to overlook the mess on my past postings.

Now that it’s time
Now that the hour hand has landed at the end
Now that it’s real
Now that the dreams have given all they had to lend
I want to know do I stay or do I go
And maybe try another time
And do I really have a hand in my forgetting ?

Now that I’ve tried
Now that I’ve finally found that this is not the way,
Now that I turn
Now that I feel it’s time to spend the night away
I want to know do I stay or do I go
And maybe finally split the rhyme
And do I really understand the undernetting ?

Yes and the morning has me
Looking in your eyes
And seeing mine warning me
To read the signs carefully.

Now that it’s light
Now that the candle’s falling smaller in my mind
Now that it’s here
Now that I’m almost not so very far behind
I want to know do I stay or do I go
And maybe follow another sign
And do I really have a song that I can ride on ?

Now that I can
Now that it’s easy, ever easy all around.
Now that I’m here
Now that I’m falling to the sunlights and a song
I want to know do I stay or do I go
And do I have to do just one
And can I choose again if I should lose the reason ?

Yes, and the morning
Has me looking in your eyes
And seeing mine warning me
To read the signs more carefully.

Now that I smile,
Now that I’m laughing even deeper inside.
Now that I see,
Now that I finally found the one thing I denied
It’s now I know do I stay or do I go
And it is finally I decide
That I’ll be leaving
In the fairest of the seasons.

I got books!!

I finally had an opportunity to sneak out sans toddler to the second hand bookstore that I absolutely love! It’s not easy because it’s not the kind of place I can bring her too without her wreaking havoc in the store, and they have this frustrating knack of being closed the scarce times that I actually have a little money to spend and my husband is home to watch her.

I had tried going over Labour Day weekend, but alas, they were closed. Not so this weekend. The planets finally all aligned for me and I was able to spend a couple hours perusing the overflowing shelves of Sunrise Books at long last. I love the smell of old books, they really need to market it as a room spray or maybe as a perfume by that company who makes scents of odd smells, like Playdoh and dirt.

Here are my spoils:

I’ve been craving Sci-fi lately. I’m a fan of the genre, but so much out there is absolutely dreadful, that I tend to rely on the recommendations of respected peers. Both Transfrmr and Tah had urged me to read the Xanth series by Piers Anthony, so that was the main goal of my outing.

Ideally, I’d rather start with the first book of the series, but since this is a second hand shop, I had to make do with what was there. I picked up two Xanth books: Crewel Lye, and Centaur Aisle. I also grabbed another Anthony title - Gods of Tarot. I haven’t read them yet, so no opinions at the moment.

These aren’t terrible, but I can’t tell you how many times I look at the covers of Fantasy/Sci-Fi books and have an overwhelming urge to redesign them.

I love the cover of this one. It’s so cheesy 70’s. It reminds me of disco roller skating rinks and those rainbow striped knee socks with the toes in them. Those socks creeped me right out.

Keeping on the Sci-fi theme, I also picked up a favorite author of mine - Phillip K. Dick. I’ve read almost all his books, but the one that keeps eluding me, oddly enough, is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Yes, the one Blade Runner was based on. The one that is arguably his best known novel. For some strange reason, it’s never in the bookstores when I’m looking for it, and I have yet to find it even in the library. Well, no more! I finally found it. They actually had three copies of it.

I read it last night. Let’s just say that it would be more accurate to say the movie was “inspired” by the book as opposed to being based on it, lol. Not that I would let that little fact ever diminish my love for the film.

I also picked up a copy of Under the Net by Iris Murdoch, one of my favorite authors:

and Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence:

This should keep me satisfied for maybe a week.

One day I will have a house in Oregon. Or Maine.

It doesn’t have to be a big house, but it has to be either in the forest or on the beach — and it has to have a spiral staircase that goes up through a shaft that is lined with bookshelves.

My bedroom ceiling will be painted with stars.

And every Sunday, when the weather allows, I will go outside and take a bath in my purple bathtub whilst eating Eggs Benedict…

…and listening to Edith Piaf Leon Redbone…

So today I spent the better part of the day out in Brampton while my husband filed some paperwork and got a new trial date for an ongoing court case with his ex. The last time we went, back in March, it was a bit of a nightmare with long periods of waiting and trying to keep a two year old occupied. Not fun. This time, we decided early on that I would just drop him off and go find something to do to kill a few hours. I’m used to this where Brampton is concerned because that is basically all I do whenever I go there. Drop The Mister off…go find something to do…pick The Mister up. I hate it.

Anyhow, I ended up at this mall near the courthouse. I’ve noticed in my life that suburban cities and towns usually have two malls. One is the posh mall - the one with all the good stores you actually want to shop in, nicely designed interiors, perfect climate control, etc. The other one I call the “dirt” mall. You know what I’m talking about. The one with the crappy discount stores, that always seems in need of a good sweep and mop and never has any air conditioning in summertime. Sometimes the dirt mall will even have some of the same stores as the posh mall, but they are always…dirty. And poorly stocked.

I was at Brampton’s dirt mall.

I suppose that I’m unusual, as far as female stereotypes go, in that I really can’t stand malls. I’m not even all that fond of the whole ritual of shopping in general. I’m not one to spend hours browsing through things in stores. When I go shopping, I usually have a very specific goal in mind and know exactly which store I’ll find it in. I get in, and I get out. Preferably quickly. Shoe shopping is something else entirely, but I won’t go into that right now.

This particular dirt mall had a Winners in it, which is a store I actually like. It’s one of those “designer discount” stores, similar to TJ Maxx, etc., down in the U.S. However, it was a dirt mall Winners, that smelled musty and didn’t have much, so I left empty handed.

My daughter was being very whiny and hard to please, so I wanted to keep moving as much as possible to distract her. She was driving me crazy, being very whiny and not wanting to sit in her stroller even though I plied her with things she doesn’t normally get, like chocolate milk. And Smarties. I was about ready to give up on the dirt mall and just get back in the car and aimlessly drive around until I found an adventure (I used to love doing that), when suddenly I struck gold as I turned into the dark passeway leading to the entrance of the dirt mall Canadian Tire:

Kiddie rides!!

I remember when I was little, how the kiddie rides were the only thing that made being dragged to the store by my mother bearable. Of course, I was never allowed to actually ride them, my mother was far to thrifty to allow us that simple pleasure, but that didn’t matter. I had plenty of fun just sitting on them and climbing around them. However, because I had been deprived of the joy of little glittery cars and mini-carousels that actually moved, I had made a solemn vow that I would never deny my future children the elation that a simple coin in a plastic slot could bring. So I scraped up every bit of change I could find and let her rip.

There I was, completely sleep deprived, overheated, grumpy, in this filthy depressing mall, but meanwhile, my kid was probably having one of the most exciting days of her life thus far. My day was filled with hassle, hers with magic. That is why I hate being a grown up. That is also why I love being a mother. You get to relive a bit of it.