Toronto

Let's pass over the fact that it's been so long since I've posted on the blog, and just be happy that I'm finally doing it. Vacations are great but they mess me up.

So we went to Toronto in July. It was a great trip.

The kids loved taking the train

















But not the noise.
We took the train in to downtown and walked around the city checking things out.
We happened to walk in to this nice outdoor art/craft show in a park. I still don't think I know what the name of it was.

What I do know is it was the location of the Great Pants Incident of 2008.

Molly accidentally stepped into that water (which was clearly marked no wading but had tons of people walking around in it anyway).

Well Molly can not have wet clothes on. Can. Not. I honestly think it might be painful for her. There was much screaming, while I tried to come up with a plan. I rolled up the wet part. Didn't matter. I took her to a place with fewer people (which was hard, the place was *crowded*). We had no extra pants, and we were a good 30 minute walk and another 30 minute train ride away from dry pants. I couldn't find any pants that I could buy. I thought about having her switch pants with Caitie, but they wouldn't fit. I thought about putting Sean's extra shorts on her, but that didn't work.

Finally it occurred to me. Cut the stupid things off.

I don't know why it took so long to think of that.



After that we had a lovely day walking around Toronto.

We saw the CN tower, which we decided not to go up in once we realized how much it was going to cost. Apparently it's spectacular, and has a glass floor. But we didn't see it so I'll have to take other people's word for it. There aren't many views that are worth $140.

There was a mad dash to our train, up some stairs, came up on the wrong side, back down, around, up just as the train doors closed. Grrr.

So we waited an hour for the next train, and finally made it back to our camp site.


We stayed at Glen Rouge, which is in Toronto (but only barely). Our site was nice, except for the crazy French Canadians who parked their popup about a foot away from our shared water and the proceeded to set up their kitchen around and in front of the water so we basically couldn't get to it, and who's kids were swinging around 25 foot long poles.

It's not that I have anything against French Canadians in general. They seem to be perfectly pleasant people in general. I only mentioned it in this case because they didn't understand me at all when I said "Could we please get to our water?" or "Could you please stop your son from trying to decapitate mine?" There was a lot of smiling and waving.

Fortunately they only stayed for 2 nights.

Caitie found great trees to climb. She is a monkey at heart.
And there were some ballsy, fat racoons that actually came up and stole a pound of bacon out of our cooler that was sitting about 3 feet away from where I was sitting.

I know racoons can open coolers and will steal your food while you're asleep, but I've never seen one so completely unafraid of us. I chased them and they HISSED at me. OK, OK... you can have the bacon.

*grumble*

On Monday we drove back in to town and Rob dropped Caitie and me off so we could go to Lettuce Knit, which was seriously one of the things about the trip I was most excited about. Lettuce Knit is a knitting landmark.

I'd tried really hard to make it there on Sunday but it was too far to walk at our speed, and we just never managed to be in the right place to catch a street car (which is totally a trolley, but if you call it a trolley in Toronto they will look at you like they have no idea what language you are speaking).

So we made it finally and I learned how hard it is to take a sock picture.

I finally enlisted Caitie to hold the sock for me.

I was so overwhelmed by yarn fumes that I forgot to take a picture inside, but dude, it's tiny.

You see the door that you can see inside? That's as far back as the store goes. It's a really big closet. But there is so much yummy yarn in there. And Megan is really very nice, even when she's hugely pregnant (which I can NOT say about myself...).
There were even words of wisdom in the bathroom from Stephanie herself.

Too cool.
After that Caitie and I took the subway to catch up with the rest of the family. If you ask her she'll tell you the subway was one of her favorite things of the whole vacation. We probably could have saved ourselves a ton of money.

More later.

Completely unrelated to skirts....

What's this? Another blog post?

Why yes, yes it is...

This is a custom order I just finished that I am particularly fond of.







And this is the new thing I'm making that I'm completely enchanted with.

It's a tank top for Molly and Molly. We're going to Chicago in July to get her, and This top will be just the thing.

Gauge is 4 stitches on the big one, and 7.5 on the small one. I'm having so much fun designing them. And now I'm into the solid part, just a little waist shaping for a while, so that should be quick work.


Oh, and one last thing...

We shaved the bunny a little while ago.

Angora fiber. Yum.

Skirt Vortex

I know I've been a Very Bad Blogger.

But it's because for weeks and weeks I've been working on this:

Which turned out to be a swirling vortex of time sucking insanity.
But now that it's finished, I'm calling it the Sheepy Skirt Collection , which totally sounds better.

The other reason is that my wrist has been bothering me whenever I got on my computer, so extra things like blogging have fallen off the wayside. A ergonomic keyboard and mouse, and a new (bigger, better) desk have helped that some, and also not needing to spend so much time working on the pattern helps, too.

The skirt pattern started out being like my other patterns, a few variations on the same thing, and then I just kept thinking of more variations and I couldn't stop myself. I may have gotten carried away. I never would have gotten the pattern done without the help of my test knitters (who now hold skirt licenses, by the way, should you want to buy a skirt from one of them...).

I am both very proud of myself and extremely relieved that it is done. It was starting to feel like a huge monkey on my back. But I really like the results, so I guess it was worth it!

For those of you who are wondering, it currently goes from newborn to Toddler, which is around 2-3T (sizes seem so un-standard). The size chart is on my site. But since I've already had lots of requests, I'm going to grade the skirt pattern up to sizes 4-10 girls and sell that separately. It will not have as many versions, since some are clearly baby looking, and it will not include the diaper cover portion, for obvious reasons. It will also therefore be a few bucks cheaper.

But first I have to catch my breath and catch up on some other things. Right now all my thoughts are dreaming of Annie Modesitt corsetts and American Girl Doll tops...

Working Hard...

I've been working very hard this weekend at my niece's high school graduation party.


It was grueling, let me tell you.




The water was 64 degrees but some of the kids got in anyway...

Not for very long

This is Sean doing a spectacular impression of Elaine from Seinfeld and her weird dance.

I really was working though! I knit an entire skirt complete with shorts (size Large even)
AND worked out a sticky problem I was having with a different version.

AND graded 3 versions into 6 sizes.

But the view didn't hurt. And I will probably need to double check my math when there is less beer involved.

Ow!

I have a really good excuse for not posting lately. I have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Or at least I think that's what it is. My wrist hurts, especially when I type, or use my mouse, or knit. Pretty much precludes knit-blogging.

It's only my right wrist, which happens to be the wrist I broke as a kid (which has always hurt a little since then when I do things that twist it). So I'm not sure if it's CTS or not, but it's definitely a repetitive stress injury, and the worst thing for it is the (old) mouse.

I've now shelled out $150 on an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, and it's getting better. The mouse is awesome. The keyboard is still weird, but I'm getting used to it. So I'm back to typing a little, but I'm trying to limit it.

I'm back to knitting a little, too. I've made some more skirts, they're all in various states of almost-finished. Pictures this weekend (I promise!)

Still trying to think of a name. Sheepy Skirt just seems too lame to me. I want something that indicates the Ultimate, comprehensive, gazillion-different-styles nature of the pattern, but that is also cute and memorable. And, you know... good.

In other news.... I got a cool new camera for Mother's Day. And by "got" I mean, I went shopping on Mother's Day and bought myself a camera. I was gone the majority of the day. My daughter called me twice to whine/cry because "Daddy is mean". My husband called me more than twice to ask me what to do about something or other. I came home and the house was a mess. It was great. BUT... I love my new camera.

Harlot

I spent the morning trying to figure out what to wear to the see the Yarn Harlot on tour. Do I go with the most impressive piece of knitting? Do I bring the really really bad sweater I made in 1987? Hmm.

I went with the Knit for Brains t-shirt, Purl necklace, and pi shawl. Oh and the socks, didn't forget the socks.

Except half way through the day I found I had a HUGE hole in one sock. I made these in January. This is not a good sign.

We arrived at 4 for her talk at 7, and we weren't even close to the first ones there.
We were a rowdy bunch of knitters.

I think we freaked out the manager a little bit.

She came out and took crowd pictures.

I took a whole bunch of blurry pictures of her. This is one of the only ones that came out.

And then my needle broke right in the middle of my cast on. VERY irritating.

That is an Addi Natura, one of my most favoritest needles. I didn't do anything at all stressful to it, it just broke.

Stephanie spoke and cracked us all up. Someone gave her a grey squirrel. (See, blurry pictures).

Her talk was hysterical. I haven't laughed that hard since I can remember. Awesome.

She talked a lot about the affect that knitting has on the brain, which I really got a kick out of. It was really mostly accurate too (which is unusual... usually I cringe when non-neuroscientists talk about brain research). Turns out I picked the right thing to wear!

My favorite was her quote of the conclusion of a Cambridge study that of course "it's not practical to carry emergency knitting for times of stress."

Ha!
We waited in line for a while by this guy who cracked me up with this very professional looking purple pointer.

I pulled out my sock to knit on in line and found out I'd broken *another* needle. This was a 1.5 brittney sock needle, so that wasn't terribly surprising. I probably squashed it in my bag. It happens when you knit with toothpicks.

When I was about 5 people away from the table the lens fell out of my glasses.

Now this was getting a bit ridiculous. Fortunately someone else in line had a swiss army knife. So I could you know, SEE when I got to meet her.

I have a couple of really blury pictures of her, but this is the only one that isn't blurry. She took a picture of me with my broken needles, and she said she'd been waiting for someone official to tell her if she was way off.

Nope, she got it pretty right on.