White Knuckle(head) Knitting

It's not like I don't have enough WIPs and UFOs in my life. Currently, I am working on a grey mohair sweater that needs only the back, cast on in a fit of fury, a blue cable turtleneck for Eric I had intended to finish for Christmas 2009 that needs only the front, neglected because we went on vacation and I needed something more portable to work on (proudly adding said "filler"project is completed), and a single twisted cable glove missing two fingers and its mate, something I have intended to rectify for over a year now. On second thought, lets put that glove and its unfinished mate in the UFO category...

Also on my conscience is a recently frogged Malabrigo Merino worsted cardigan that simply wasn't ''doing it" for me anymore, dissected in the hopes its reincarnation would be more inspiring. When all else fails, there's always hope! That, my friends, is the beauty of knitting.

Add to that the 11 pair of girl's slippers I really need to get into the mail, but that's a saga all on its own.

No, that's clearly not enough knitting on my mind. Spurred on by the US/CAD$ being at par (which can induce many a sane person to attempt foolish cross-border purchases), I took the plunge and joined The Knitting Guild Association in the hopes of completing their Masters Program in Knitting. Three levels, each one harder than the next - how hard could it be?

Well, there's a story in there, somewhere.

I've been knitting for a long time. My parents are both manual, so I grew up baking and cooking, sanding and varnishing, sometimes it seems there's not a craft or fad our family didn't try. My father sewed jointed teddies for many years having learned the craft from the noted teacher, Helen Henderson, on top of many talents; my mother did pottery, quilting, counted cross stitch, and sewed our clothes, (I was the only kid with an emerald green melton wool rabbit-fur trimmed coat), as well as knit and crochet. I come by my procrastination honestly: I clearly remember my mother sewing away furiously on a green velvet dress the day of my Christmas pageant - I must have been in 2nd or 3rd grade at the time. I still remember sitting opposite her in the dining room, the light on her Singer sewing machine casting shadows down the length of the table. I can see her now, and hear her admonitions. "Never put the foot down unless the needle is in the fabric" was one of her favorite lines. She even sewed my Brownie uniform - no buying for this family if we can make it ourselves! In doing a quick inventory over the years, it seems there are few crafts we didn't attempt. We made candles and wax ornaments from the beeswax from my father's beekeeping exploits, we made soap and creams, did macramé, made paper, dried and pressed flowers, and experimented with natural dyes, as well as tie-dye t-shirts. We made paper arts: cards, scherenschnitte, and quilling. I had a little loom to make place mats on, we hooked rugs, did needlepoint (my brother too!), and I learned to crochet, knit, sew, embroider and generally concoct anything worth concocting! As far as I can remember, our family has always been making things.

Some habits die hard, I guess. Life is the biggest WIP, so you might as well broaden your horizons, non? 'Tis better to have tried and failed, than to never have tried at all. You can tell that person was a crafts-person.

But I do digress! It all seemed so easy. I already have an arsenal of knitting reference books, and the basics have been under my belt for many a year. But suddenly, I find myself second guessing everything from my cast-on edge, to my tension, to each actual stitch, right up to the final bound-off edge. White knuckle knitting indeed! Slowly, I am progressing through each swatch, painstakingly and laboriously. It's not so much the actual knitting that takes time, it's the dissection of my work that consumes me the most. I can bang off one of these swatches in an hour or so, but really, that's not the point, is it now? Sometimes I think I should throw caution to the wind and just steam through them all, send the whole shebang in to the reviewer, and get back to my regularly scheduled life and not look back.

But I can't do it. It's not in me.

Perhaps I am a bit too detail-oriented, too reflective, too judgmental of my own work and too insecure in my knowledge, but I suppose that's who I am. I am hoping that this Level 1 experience (or should I say experiment) will help me grow into a better knitter. I still have a few weeks to go before even hoping to have all samples knitted and the requested reports done, and something tells me I'll have learned a lot by the end of the process.

At least I tried, and that says something right there.

Spring Sunsets

We have had a mild spring so far. Save for flurries forecast tonight, I don't think we saw a flake of snow in April, but I might be eating my words when I open the blinds tomorrow morning. I know there is a reason the winter tires are still on my car. The fact the swallows aren't back yet might be a sign that winter isn't officially over.

The wind is howling outside right now, so maybe the forecast is correct. The peonies and hostas have poked their heads through in the past few days, and the daffodils and tulips are already in bloom. The ornamental cherry bush is nearly finished blooming, and the apple, pear and crab-apple blossoms seem ready to burst. I even picked a few stalks of asparagus yesterday, which puts us about 3 weeks ahead of schedule judging by the past few years.

This morning, I saw the first shimmer of the wheat that was planted in our fields 2 weeks ago.

Spring is around the corner!

The forests around our house are mainly mixed forest, where huge, gnarled conifers clash with the red blooms of the maples, which in turn clash with the tender lime green of the birch and aspen. Finding beauty and harmony in nature isn't hard - you don't have to look very far to see the harbingers of spring and the bounty of the landscape.

On that note, I leave you with yesterday's sunset. Enjoy.

Poppet Power

Poppy, aka Popina, aka the Poppet with the Moppet is the kitten we kept from Plumette's litter. Plumie found a home in the throes of cat-luxury with an old family friend. She is happy and healthy, and doesn't have to worry about having repeated litters of kittens and spending her nights out in the cold. She's a happy indoor cat now, fawned over by an elderly lady who thinks the world of her.

Popina, the little power-house of kitten cuteness, has a drive like no other:

Gaining access to the great out-of-doors is her prime objective in life. She's only 8 months old and is still too young for unsupervised visits outside, but given the opportunity, she bolts out of the house, her little paws barely touching the ground as she flies out the front door. We race out in hot pursuit, trying to corral her back into the house again. The little bugger is fast, and knows she can take shelter if she runs under one of our cars in the driveway, looking at us with beady eyes and a knowing glance as we flail our outstretched arms in the hopes of grabbing her. Obviously, these moments happen when we're already running late and have time-sensitive obligations to attend to.

Right now, she's preoccupied by the pair of grackles building their nest in the gutter over the kitchen window. She sits in the window frame, making furtive little sounds as the grackles bring their sticks and grasses to line their nest.

Just wait until the swallows come back...I think she'll really enjoy watching them as they swoop by the kitchen window.

GYPROC!

I think the most exciting phase, besides perhaps painting (which of course would signal the end of the renovations) is happening right now: Gyproc! Finally, we can both see the end in sight. It's been a long haul, and this latest step is perhaps the most instantly gratifying. One sheet of Gyproc covers 32 square feet! That's 32 square feet of CLEAN to this girl. YEEHAW!

For the detail-oriented among you, we're using 5/8" Firecode Gyproc.

After some reflection and thought, Eric decided it would be prudent to shim the ceiling in the guest room level:

It took quite a while to level out the ceiling, and personally, I thought it would be a waste of time, since not one corner of our house seems to be at a 90 degree angle anyhow, but once the first sheet of Gyproc was up, the extra effort was worth it:

Straight as an arrow, baby! So Eric is busy with this latest step, keeping fingers crossed the room will be ready for May 15th when his parents arrive for a visit. (There's nothing like a tight deadline to light the proverbial fire under your ass).

We were at the hardware store yesterday (something that has become a daily occurrence), and I threw a few paint samples in my bag on the way out for good measure. My imagination is on overdrive. I have also been fondling bed throws and pillows with a renewed vigour during my outings to home decor stores, because keeping one's eyes on the prize is what it's all about for me. My creative visualization (read: day-dreaming!) has kept me alive these past few months, considering the mess upstairs. If a couple of paint chips and fabric samples keep me sane, so be it, no harm done.

Probably the hardest thing about the renovations over the past year (besides the dust) has been the lack of closet space. Let's face facts: Half of our house went missing when we started the Knotty Pine Purge, and along with it, we lost 3 closets during the gutting of the upstairs. That's three closets of stuff that needed to be purged, given away, done without, and pared down and stored while we work and live around the mess. Renovations of this magnitude are really not for the faint of heart. Believe me when I say that I mull over the purchase of pretty much every single item twice before making a decision. Do I really need this, or do I want it? Where will I put it? Nature abhors a vacuum and empty closet space...

We already have the furniture that will go in the guest room, save for the IKEA Pax closets that will line one wall for desperately-needed storage space. The bedroom furniture came from IKEA years ago and is still going strong. Its classic design and neutral colour will last a very long time, and I have yet to tire from it. It also comes from an era where IKEA made high-quality furniture in eastern Europe, with a focus on combining quality at a moderate cost, rather than bottom-line cost-savings-made-in-China-basic-minimum $%^& that fills the marketplace today. IKEA remains one of my favorite stores, and I could probably live happily in one of them, but the decline in the quality of their goods has disappointed me in the past few years.

We're at the point where, at the end of the day, we're hunkered down beside the wood stove, Eric reading and me knitting, and one of us says, "hey, let's go check out the GYPROC!", causing us to race each other up the stairs two at a time, and wedge our way into the guest room, ooh-ing and ahh-ing as we admire the clean, straight surface.

The figurative end is near!

Renovation Time

We've tried but can't ignore the fact that our entire upstairs is in a state of flux, and that Eric still needs to do some major rebuilding before we're at the Gyproc stage of the game. We took the summer off - no point in working inside when we'd rather be outside - and to be honest, we were both exhausted from the work we did from January to May.

We passed the air-tightness test with flying colours. In fact, we're one point away from being as energy efficient as a new home, which is saying something considering our house is over 15o years old. (Or it says something about new house construction, but don't get me going on that...) We also got a nice energy rebate from the audit - let's just say it covers a chunk of the renovation costs. Our house is finally comfortable, and we're not heating the great out-of-doors any more. We've had a mild fall, but we've been heating with our woodstove downstairs for several weeks, and upstairs we often measure 23 degrees C. Considering we used to have -3, we are heading in the right direction.

In the above photo, Eric had to build a removable sub-floor using 2x4's and 3/4" plywood that he placed over the open stairwell. This was the missing link we needed to be able to complete the tear-down of the last section of wall in the stairwell. Thankfully, it's only large enough for one person to be on at a time - so Eric's the lucky one who gets to grace it.

GO Eric GO!
GO Eric GO!
GO Eric GO!

Whatcha doin'?

Just hangin' around.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Poppy can shred my arms and I think she's cute. Everything she does is a still-life waiting to be recorded for future posterity. This cat had me from the minute she was born, and I can't count the number of times a day I pick her up for some kitten-huffing.

Solitude

We used to have about 3,000 cars pass by our house every day. We're located near one of the busiest highways in North America, the Montreal-Toronto corridor. We're also located near one of the highest accident areas, and it was not uncommon for the Ministry of Transport to re-route traffic over our street in the event of an accident. Not only is our road very narrow, it is also pock-marked with potholes and features crumbling edges. It's so bad, in fact, that when the lines are painted in spring, most of the outside lines are painted in the gravel and last about a month before washing away. It's not the most conducive for 18-wheelers and morning commuters hell-bent to get to work on time. Traffic used to wake us on many mornings, signaling another work day ahead.

But on October 16th, all of that changed. Thanks to the construction of NA30, a new highway that will create a periphery around the island of Montreal, our road became a huge crescent, and our house, as luck would have it, is smack-dab in the middle of it. This means houses to the north go north to get on to the highway, and houses to the south go south to get onto the highway, and we're left in the middle, enjoying our peace and quiet. It makes for a 6 km detour for us to get on the highway, most of it in the opposite direction of where we want to travel, and has added at least 5 minutes to every outing we make, but the solitude we gained is worth every bit of extra inconvenience.

It is wonderful to have windows open on warmer days, and not hear the endless drone of speeding cars flying by. I'd say 90% of the traffic that went by was not local traffic, but people in a rush to get to where they were going faster than if they went by the highway, ironically. We complained to the city and police numerous times about the fact the posted speed limit was 50 km/h, but the median speed clocked closer to 80 or 90, not to mention trucks with over-size loads using our road to circumvent the truck scale on the highway, or drunks leaving a popular "cruising-bar" close by using it to avoid police. We'd hear them speeding by in the middle of the night after closing time, and wondered who their next victim would be.

Walking along the street was virtually impossible, but now that we've become a crescent, people can walk their dogs in safety again, and kids can ride their bikes. People can actually use the street again.

To say that we're delighted is an understatement. People who live near by are generally courteous and drive close to the speed limit. We finally have the peace and quiet we feel we deserve.