Wednesday, January 31, 2007

knitting gone wild

holy crap. i wish i was in new york. actually i wish i was in new york for a lot of different reasons...but this one is pretty cool too. the museum of art and design has an exhibit called "radical lace and subversive knits". check out these two pics from it:


i've seen this woman's work before - she knits with thread and pins. seriously. she makes some really intricate stuff. very cool. and tiny. me like the tiny things (why? why do i like miniatures? it's weird and odd and useless. but really cute.).

and then there is this one - look how big that is! crazy, i tell you. crazy.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

a light dusting

or, "why the weather man is a total moron"


here in newfoundland everyone always says that the weather people have no idea what they are talking about. part of me thought they were just being overly critical, until i moved here. then i realised that the weather changes so quickly that the weather people really don't have a hope in hell of making an accurate prediction. and then there was this weekend. on friday they were predicting between 5-10cm for today. by saturday night they were making announcements that the winds had shifted (that would be the winds of change i believe) and that st john's would only receive a light dusting. this morning we woke up to a weather alert of high winds and lots of snow (i believe they used the word "severe"....but since we pay little attention to the weather people....). they were still only predicting about 5-10cm though. so when it started snowing in the early afternoon we figured it would blow around a lot but not really accumulate much (or at least not more than 10cm). well. how wrong were we?

the wind is blowing fairly hard. we've got your nice standard sideways snow happening. and that's fine. already i'm being desensitized and thinking "whatever" at the sideways weather. but we are at 10cm at least already and it is not letting up. it's not even looking like it might let up. i just drove over to vernon's for dinner. my shiny new studded winter tires worked phenomenally. there were a lot of people stuck and i sailed right on past (after stopping to make sure they had phones/had a plan - the plan being getting the guy who happened to be walking by to push them out of their rut). but seriously - way more than 10 cm. i shoveled close to 15cm off my driveway before i left. and did i mention it's still snowing?

here's vernon's street, right after i arrived.


if any of you have been to my home over the past 8 years or so you may remember seeing these mittens hanging on my wall. they were bought in newfoundland in 1998 and they were WAY too warm for vancouver or even kamloops. i did attempt to wear them on a walk once at christmas with mom and i remember my hands completely overheated. today, i wore them to shovel my deck (which is my landlord's living room roof and i was concerned about the potential for too much weight - actually she was concerned so i shovelled). i've been having trouble keeping my hands warm when i'm outside for more than 15 minutes - my mittens don't really do it and my gloves don't really do it. so i dug these out thinking that the person who knit them knew cold and holy cow - my hands were so warm! i could have shoveled all day. :)



part of me feels bad actually wearing them because i think they are so beautiful. but that's what they were made for - so that's what i'll use them for.

here's the second part of my warm hand strategy. i knit these back in november and they have a lot of flaws. one of the thumbs is inside out, the cables don't match perfectly between the gloves, i used cheap yarn. they are actually "wrist warmers" which explains why i think the hands are thumbs are too short - i'd rather they came further past my knuckles. this photo doesn't show it well - but they actually cover more of my wrist and less of my hand than shown)... but if you throw them on under your mittens you eliminate that irritating cold bit of exposed skin that happens when you're outside and actually using your arms. yay! warm wrists! pattern is fetching from knitty - found here.


**update added 8:30pm - it's still snowing. hard. there are 6 people out shoveling right now. which is a high ratio for a street with 14 houses. weeee! my first newfoundland snow storm!

Thursday, January 18, 2007

-29

with the wind chill it was -29 today. seriously. are you kidding me?

on my way to work i had my coffee in the car with me. as i wrestled my purse and lunch bag (read: giant bag of food) out of the car, i forgot to grab my coffee. when i realised this i was already in the building and had my snow boots off and my coat off....so i said screw it and drank crap office coffee in the morning. because it was too cold to go back out and get the coffee. how cold does it have to be for me to ditch my good homemade auntie crae fresh ground dark roast in the car for crappy work coffee? apparently -29 is my breaking point. when i left work tonight i saw my mug and thought 'oh i'll just dump that out'. no such luck. it was a frozen coffee bar. tee hee!

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

feels like.....COLD

It’s official – I am Canadian. In case anyone was wondering. After living in a place where a person really doesn’t need winter boots (current year not included) or winter tires (current year not included) and where every season is patio season (current year not included), I now live in a place with temperatures in the minus double digits, lots of snow (to me, 20cm in one day is a lot. I understand that this will slowly change over time until I too, look out into the face of 20cm of driving snow at minus-*insert large number here* and say “oh this is nothing, wait until winter starts”), and where the patios are mere fleeting memories of happier, more tanned times. I have weather appropriate footwear, headwear, handwear and a goretec jacket that could withstand a hurricane in winter. (thank you mom and dad for the Salomon snow boots that pinched mom’s feet, the jacket which was a Christmas gift and the mittens that were another gift from years ago). And now, weather appropriate tires for my car. The little Rav now grips those snowy, slushy roads rather than skating along the surface. This is making the whole “getting about town” thing much better, seeing as how I haven’t actually figured out how to get out of going to work completely while still receiving payments….

The temperature today here is COLD. Very cold for Newfoundland. Everyone is all a twitter at it – all you hear in the halls at work “so cold, I can’t believe it, I know, so cold today”. It’s -15. the wind chill is at -26. v and I have a had a lot of “conversations” about wind chill and how I think it’s good to know (there is a fine line between needing to wear a toque to go to the store and deciding you can live on popcorn for one more day because there is no chance in hell you are going outside at that temperature) and v thinks it is all hype – a scare tactic to make people think the weather is really colder than it is. He’s sort of right. I was outside with no hat and it didn’t feel like -26. -14 yes. I would even hazard a -18, -19. but -26? Actually I have no idea how cold that would be. I haven’t been in temperature that cold since I was a kid. It took me 4 minutes to walk to the car and my head was frozen with no hat. is that -18 or -26? Anyone know? I have little hair, does that affect my coldness factor? At least we're not in Labrador - they are around -50 with the wind chill in Labrador City. Even without the wind chill they are at -30 something. Ouch.

So I bought tires from my new mechanic today. My new mechanic place is fantastic – I love them, I really do. When I spoke with Tom, the owner, on the phone yesterday he was really nice and funny and soft spoken. Not loud and brash the way I envision most mechanics to be. (my boss did in fact tell me that he was the most un-mechanic-type he had every known). And when I went they offered me a Globe & Mail while I waited which was very nice. I responded that I had brought a book and his wife said “oh! Our perfect type of customer.” I mentioned that I was reading The Shipping News and they told me it was a great read, be sure to see the movie and then proceeded to have a conversation with me about other Newfoundland novels and movies and the like. Did I mention that this was my mechanic? Who I was having the conversation about literature with? Maybe I have stereotyped all mechanics unfairly in the past. Maybe they all sit at home voraciously reading and then blogging about Proust or something. I don’t know. All I know is that my mechanic reads and I like him. He put tires on my car that make it stick to the road. He told me to drive aggressively and slowly. He also said my car is in fantastic condition. All in all it was a good trip to the car mechanic guy.


Sunday, January 14, 2007

v's new house

this weekend was spent working (from home mainly, not so bad), and helping vernon unpack things at his new house. the movers come on tuesday for the big stuff, but for now we moved some boxes and set up his kitchen - yay! i took a bunch of pics, of course - so here you go. the first day at his new house, in pictures...

we uncovered a bunch of WEIRD stuff that the owners left behind......like these two bottles of Purity brand strawberry flavoured syrup. apparently you add it to water for a refreshing drink. um. gross.

and this twizzler dispenser....how many twizzlers did these people eat that they needed this dispenser box thing? or did they go into the convenience store and just buy the display because they need 200 pieces of twizzler?? in any event, very odd...
and these crazy christmas dishes. seriously crazy. there is a complete set of 4 place settings....

and they have this super tacky charming picture on them....

and matching tea cups.......


part of me actually wants to use them. after a few runs through the dishwasher of course.

so then the cleaning continued.....

we found the cuban rum that caused paula to conduct her very own imaginary orchestra!:

we drank the cheap beer that the old owners left in the fridge...very appropriate as the house backs onto the Labatt brewery. Too bad it didn't back onto a good brewery, like Quidi Vidi Brewing. but these were free and we drank them and liked it.


and we had our first dinner in the kitchen (sharing the ottoman as a chair because he hadn't actually bought kitchen chairs yet - he has now. they're nice.)


then i think i may have passed out from the cleaner fumes because i don't remember much after that. at some point i went home, stressed about work, stayed up too late "tidying" which really means i wandered around the apartment moving things from here to there.

the weather last night was brutal - not a lot of snow came down, most of it was going sideways or up. the wind was howling and was actually LOUD. very irritating when you're trying to sleep. we're supposed to get another "trace" of snow tonight. nothing too exciting.

i guess i have nothing else to say. maybe i will later in the week. my sock is still the same length. i have several ideas for other projects but i haven't actually started anything. work and school are taking all my time (or rather, work is taking all my time and i really wish i had more time for school to be taking up).

Sunday, January 07, 2007

the sock...part 2

well. the first sock was....shall we say.....baggy? i think baggy is a good word. it's not as harsh as "so totally wrong and messed up that maybe they would have fit big foot but even that might be a stretch" although that one may be more accurate. i was looking at it thinking "so it's a little baggy" and then i was wondering how i was ever going to recreate the exact same bagginess in sock number two. and i realised i would have one baggy sock and one normal one. so. i took it off the needles, took a second look at my tension (or technically this could be considered the first look at my tension since this was different, better, tension), and then i pulled the whole thing out. it was sad. so then i started again, from scratch, and wow - it's so much better. i am actually further along now than i was before and i'm still not past the part in the yarn where it hasn't been used yet. check it out. it's about 3 inches long now (from the toe) and it totally fits! yay!



now, on to the weather. it's windy here. really really windy. and now it's started to rain. so now it's almost "stormy". although not quite. i still think that this classifies as regular weather here. the big gusts are just starting to bend the trees outside my window to the point where i think "gee i hope that doesn't snap off and come through the window" and when it gusts like that the house creaks (which makes me think, gee i hope the house doesn't snap in half).

some people just walked by on the path behind my place and they were, literally, bent over at the waist almost perpendicular in order to walk into the wind. it was sort of funny. but sort of not.

ok back to work. and studying. and knitting. in that order.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

my socks

my sock (singular) is about two inches long. not quite a sock. and yet i managed to spend 30 minutes fiddling with my blog instead of knitting. or studying (oh right - school - that pesky business). BUT - look at my sidebar. i figured out how to make it be cool with little buttons as the links instead of just stupid words. it involved many visits to several websites, a membership to some host thing that was free because i only needed teeny tiny space, and a few very stupid questions like "what's html and why do i have it?". but now i'm happy. and it's pretty.

yay!

ps - thanks paula, for the new name.

Monday, January 01, 2007

happy new year.

happy 2007!

on the last day of 2006 we:

had a great dinner of roast beast, roast veggies, salad and vino.....

went for a walk after dinner - we went past Winterholme, the house where we first met (makes it sound all romantic)...
and strolled through Georgetown...

then, decaf and sweet nibblies were had over two (count 'em - TWO) games of scrabble...



it appears that at some point we moved back to red wine.....
and then of course - on to the serious faux-champagne consumption. tee hee...


then a long winter night's sleep and bang-o, bob's yer uncle, it was a new year!