3 for the price of 1!

I'm behind on a few Blogstalking assignments, so I'm mashing them all into one post.

Behold all of my needles in one place (minus the ones in projects, of course):

This photo is missing my Denise set (because I forgot to get it to add to the photo) and there will shortly be more needles to add to this collection, because I just bought a set of 15 sizes of bamboo dpns on e-bay!!!!

And a photo of something in my favourite colour? That is, if the blog header above and the title of my blog didn't clue you in? Tadaa:

That would be my bedspread, with purple curtains at my windows. I live on my own, so there's no one around to complain about the overabundance of purple in my apartment!

I know that I haven't posted about something I'm thankful for, or my year-end assessment, but I've decided to skip those ones. (Shame on me.)

What I will share with you is just how cold it is up here right now. This is what my bedroom windows look like most days now:

Daytime highs have been between -25C and -30C, with windchill warnings most days for the past week or so (which means that the windchill has been at least -35C, and has been as much as -46C at night). Yay for Winterpeg! :) I don't know if many of you have experienced temperatures quite that cold, but it basically means that exposed skin will freeze within minutes, if not seconds. And yet, you still see people walking around outside with no hats, no scarves, no mitts. Me? I wear longjohns as a rule when it's this cold, as well as the hat, scarf, mitts, parka, and today am wearing a knit woolen peruvian sweater. There's not much shape to it, but damn is it warm!
Right now, it's 2:30pm and it's -22C with a 15km/h wind giving us a windchill of -32C. And it's supposed to be the same tomorrow or colder, with a windchill of -46C. Minus Fourty Six Celcius. Grrrr. Or is that Brrrrrr?

Here's hoping that you're in a warmer place than I am right now!

I'm not that bad, I swear!!

91%DRUNKARD

Ultrasound diagnostic

Happy New Year!!

Why is it that New Year's Eve is always so cold over here?
Dec 29th and 30th were so nice - warm, even, for this city (it was -5C) - and then the 31st hits and it's -25C again!
Ah well. It always happens, so I guess I should expect it by now.

Merry Christmas!

Or Happy Holidays...whichever you prefer.

I'll be taking a bit of a break this week, to enjoy some chill-out time and time with family.
Hopefully you all get to do the same!
See you in the New Year!

All Done!

Just the photos for now...details will follow later.

Look what I'm making...!

I took a basic mitts pattern and put a celtic cable chart that I found on the internet on the back.
The celtic cable chart is the Simple Cable Chart from The Girl From Auntie (my link tool isn't working right now, but google it - it's the first result), and the mitt pattern is one that I got from a LYS in Osgoode, Ontario.

If anyone wants the pattern, leave me a comment, and I'll try and get it posted in the next few days. I'm finished the RH mitt, but am still working out the kinks for the LH mitt.



(And I'm going to try and get to some of the blogstalking posts that I've missed, but I'm making no promises!!)

-27 and ice crystals

It's an amazing winter day here today...-27C and "ice crystals", which only happens when it's really cold out, and really sunny out. It's like any moisture in the air freezes and shines in the sun. It's gorgeous, actually, and it made my morning walk seem like I was walking through fairy dust!
I wish that I could capture it on camera for you, but that's just not something that translates to photography well (or at all).

Knitting-wise, I've finished the Celtic Cap that I'm giving my brother for Christmas, but I don't have a photo to show for it, because I never have the time in the morning, and I never get home while there's still daylight. Cabling just doesn't show well with a flash, so I have to wait for some daylight to take a good photo of that hat.
I've started on some celtic cable mitts for a "handmade gift" exchange I'm doing with some girlfriends - I have a mitt pattern that has a simple 3x3 cable on the back and I'm adapting the pattern so that I can put a (way) more complicated celtic cable there instead - I think it's going to take up pretty much the whole backside of the mitten! It's looking really nice so far, so I'll post a photo when I get a whole cable section done.
I've also started a toque for my BIL - a simple 4x4 moss stitch (is that still called moss when it's that big?), with a 2" brim he can fold up, with the top few inches just in st.st. I'm making it with the black/grey SWS, and it's looking really nice. Plus it'll be warm for the -30 weather in which he'll be wearing it!

I haven't gotten to the last couple of blogstalking assignments - they're harder ones than the previous, so I'm going to think about them some more and hopefully get to them later this week...

It's Winter!

This is the same shot that I've posted here in past seasons, just to give you some perspective. (Taken this morning.)

Look what I did this weekend!

I finished one thing and started another!

Finished: the third Foliage, for a friend overseas. I hope it gets there on time, because I think I missed the official cut-off date for shipping things overseas from Canada.


Pattern: Foliage, from knitty.com (even though these photos don't really show the pattern too well...evening flash photography will do that - argh)
Size: "Worsted", even thought I used bulky yarn.
Yarn: Mystery bulky yarn from the dollar bin at Michael's in Edmonton
Needles: 4.0mm dpns and circs.
I must say, I really like this pattern. (If my knitting it 3 times in a few months didn't tell you that already!) This time, I used bulky stash yarn, but I didn't have larger needles to make the "bulky" size in the pattern. So I made the "worsted" size with 4.0mm needles, and decreased on the last knit round before doing the ribbing. I did the same decrease that the pattern calls for (Slip1, K2Tog, PSSO) without putting in the yarn over increases instead of a straight knitting round, decreasing 24 sts total. It made the ribbing band a perfect size instead of changing to smaller needles. (Frankly, since I was knitting on "too small" needles already, I didn't think that going any smaller would make a difference.)
It fits me perfectly, so I hope it fits her!

Started: my Christmas gift bags!
I've decided to make fabric gift bags to "wrap" all of my presents in this year. Why? 2 reasons. (Well, 3, really.)
1) It's more environmentally friendly - no waste paper after one use. (Yes, I know you can reuse gift wrap, but not with some people in my family. My sister especially still likes tearing into the paper like a little kid! She's not going to be happy with me this year!)
2) It gives me an excuse to use my (still relatively new) sewing machine that my mom got for me this summer!
And, well, I'm crafty. What can I say? :)
If I had started these earlier, I would have posted some up on my etsy site to sell! I'm pretty sure that it's too late now, though, to make the bags, post them to my etsy site, sell them *and* get them shipped out in time to be used for Christmas! Maybe next year...

On Parking Lots and Idiots

Why is it that as soon as people drive into a parking lot, they forget all about the rules of the road????

I almost got into an accident this weekend because some fracking idiot decided that he was going to play chicken with me in the grocery store parking lot.
Let me just say this: whether or not you have an actual, physical stop sign, you're supposed to stop when you reach the end of an aisle before crossing the "road" (or designated thoroughfare, or whatever you want to call the "main drags" in parking lots). Now, if someone is coming at you down that "main drag", you don't GO!
This is what happened.
Imagine a "T" shape. The left part of the T is the access to the parking lot from the main street. No stop sign. The top and bottom of the T are the "main drags" of the parking lot. Both have stop signs. The right of the T is the actual parking lot, the aisle where cars drive between rows of parking.
So I'm stopped at the bottom of the T. Fine. No cars coming from any direction. Fine. I go to turn into the left part of the T to get out of the parking lot. All of a sudden this idiot comes screaming up the aisle (the right part of the T), doesn't stop at the end of the aisle and tries to cut in front of me, honking all the time.
Now, I don't know what the rules are in the rest of the world, but up here, that counts as an intersection. And at the end of an aisle in a parking lot, there's an "unspoken" stop sign. Plus, I was already established in the intersection, so whether or not there was an actual stop sign, he was supposed to stop!!!
Grrrrrrrrr.

That's why I don't, as a rule, go grocery shopping on the weekends, let alone on Saturdays.

(Thanks for letting me rant.)