Just Fun Stuff

Knitting time has been at a premium these days... Partly because of the summer knitting blahs, and partly because of stuff like this:

BBQ! *insert men and BBQ jokes here*

We took off early from work last Friday for an "offsite" meeting. Heh heh... I'm so lucky that my new work group is full of a bunch of great people. The BBQ was held on the rooftop of the condo building one of my co-workers lives in. It was a beautiful day, a bit windy, but just perfect for mojitos and souvlaki. Yum!

Mmmmm...mojitos...

A shot of the Toronto skyline from the rooftop, looking south onto Lake Ontario. The stick on the left is the CN Tower. You know, I really take it for granted that I work in downtown Toronto, and see these sights every day. People come from all over and pay to see what I have for free! It's a great city, Toronto is.

And of course, after that shot the batteries in my camera decided they were done for the day. That's ok - we pretty much just fed our faces and had a great time! And - there were leftovers. A great way to wind down the week...

As for the knitting...I have been doing some, but it's of the stealth variety, and I can't show pics of it. At some point I will.

Ooooo! Ahhhhh! Wow! Just imagine how it looks! It's wool. It's Fair Isle-ish. And no, I haven't mentioned in on the site before. And yes, I'll knit in wool 365 days a year, as long as it doesn't felt on the needles from the heat.

I'm off until next Wednesday, I've extended the Canada Day long weekend, and given myself some extra time of knitting and leisure.

I think the Little Dudes are pleased that I'm home.

"Dude, we're going to have to change our Internet surfing strategy now that Mom'll be home for the next few days."

"OK Atticus. Like what?"

"You go distract Mom by doing something stupid, and I'll go and boot up the PC."

"Something stupid! I can do that!"

"Uh huh. Like no one else. Now let's just stare out the door and act like cats."

This Is Really, Really Going To Bug Me.

So, I need your opinions...

This is the tank I decided to knit with the wool/silk yarn I had in my stash. It's black. Don't worry about the picture too much - what I really wanted to have show up is the bottom section. See the "shadowing"? Well, let's just say that the black yarn was not dyed evenly. As a matter of fact, there are blobs of colour that are nowhere near black!! I noticed it just now when I went to photograph it. Not. Happy.

Part of me wants to ditch it. It's going to bug me. What do you think?? It's not a bad camera shot - you could almost draw a line in the picture to highlight where that first ball of yarn ends.

I really like the pattern. It's not that short - there's still the top section to complete. You join the back and the front by knitting up a fancy ribbing along the front, which continues to create the shoulder sections, and then continues along the back and up the next shoulder. Quite nifty... I wish I could give you info on it - I know it came from an Easy Knitting magazine - but which one, I don't know. I just cut the instructions out of the magazine, and didn't keep the rest.

Stay? Go?

Ugh. I've also been spending time these past couple of evenings trying to figure out what I want to knit up for a friend of mine at work who's due in 5 weeks. Of course, I started off wanting to do a blanket fit for a king or queen, but now...I'm thinking it might be too ambitious, especially in the summer. So, our wonderful friend Carrie K., never one to mince words, said - "how could you not have figured it out?? Chris. You know. Chaos and Mayhem's Mom??! Bibs!".

*whacking forehead*

So, I'll be making a trip to a LYS, and picking up some suitable baby yarn to make a few little things - bibs, maybe some booties and a hat. She's a good friend, so I want to make something special. Duh. Bibs! Um, Chris? How many stitches do you start with?!

Thanks everyone for all your get well wishes! My ears are on the mend, I was at the doctor yesterday (and Lorraine? You just know I got caught smack in the middle of that storm we had yesterday!!!). It's not an uncommon thing for me to get ear infections. I have most of my life. The eustachian tubes in my ears are "deformed" and as a result, I am prone to infections. Oh well...

As I was completely bummed out because of it on Monday night, I waited for the Rogers technician to show up. (I decided to change service providers for my telephone service.)

Leave it to Goofy Gandalf to completely cheer and brighten me up.

"There is a strange man in the house. No problem. I'll just sit here in the sink...look tough...give him the scary Gandalf Look...no issues here. Even though it's wet. What?"

He was too funny! Curious to see what was going on, yet still too apprehensive to stick around. So, like a little kid, he'd peek around the corner into the room, and as soon as the Rogers tech would spot him, he'd run away. And find these "hiding" spots, like the kitchen sink, and this one classic one -

*blink blink blink*

Here he is, behind the toaster over. Yes. Behind the toaster oven. It sits on an angle on the counter, and he's wedged himself partially behind it. Thinking he cannot be seen. Still trying to be the tough guy. Look at his big eyes!

Oh, all my guys are little funny faces, but he's just such a character! He can always, always cheer me up.

Atticus? Nothing bothers him, except thunderstorms and heavy rain. Mae? Nowhere to be found... I have no clue where she finds her hiding spots. Obviously, they're more effective than Gandalf's!

On The Right Track

Your Life is 9% Off Track

No doubt about it, you are living the right life.You've made some great decisions, and they've definitely paid off.Keep it up. You're on the right track!

Are You Living The Wrong Life?

*sigh*

Must try remembering that as my ears protest the hot weather and changing barometric pressure... Don't ask how. Hasn't been a good weekend at Chez les Petits Dudes - ear infection and a perforated ear drum. Nice.

It could be worse, I always remind myself of that.

So - check it out! I'm doing pretty well, I must say! Only 9% off track! Yay me

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there!

"My life is 0% off track! I've got it good!"

Do You Feel Tom Is More Talented Than Jerry?

What to do, what to do...

When I was going through my yarn stash, deciding on what to sell, I came acrosss this little number - http://www.whiteliesdesigns.com/patterns/llingerie/122.html - in kit form, from White Lies Design.

I thought it would be something I'd like to try, so I decided to keep it, even though it had been sitting in the stash for, oh, 3 years. So...me and lace... After 3 attempts at the startup row (which includes the casting and re-casting on of 193 long-tail cast on stitches), I did manage not to mess it up. I managed around 8 rows of it last night...but you know? After sleeping on it, and mulling it over today (my priorities at work, heh heh), I don't think I'm going to go any further. I'm just not that woohoo'ed with it. And that's the way it's been lately. I haven't worked too much on Amphora's sleeve, so I've been playing around with this and that. So, I think I'll probably work on a tank of some kind with the yarn - 50% wool/50% silk in black. We'll see... Summer knitting blahs really suck when you're primarily a traditional knitter...

Anyhoo.


Hey! So, look at what Gandalf got in the mail from his cousin Finnegan! A pressie for his first birthday!

Crazy Cat Lady action figure! He, uh, hasn't allowed me to open it yet... And there's this quiz on the back of the package - "Are you a Crazy Cat Person?" - answer "yes" to at least 7 of the 17 questions, and you are one!!

Like - "Do you feel Tom is more talented than Jerry?" and "Have you ever had to explain to a police officer that the stuff in the bag really is catnip?". So, I, uh, answered "yes" to more than 7... Moving on.

YUMMY!

Every Thursday over the summer, the city of Toronto invites local farmers to hold a Farmers' Market at various city locations, and lucky for me, one is just outside my building. So, we end up taking an extended lunch, going to all the stalls, then hitting one of the food vendors - yummy stuff like back bacon sandwiches, roast pork, roasted corn and yams, and bunch of others. AND - they have live music too. Until the end of July, it'll be jazz and big band acts, in preparation for the huge Toronto Jazz Festival! It is just the best way to wind down the week. And the weather has been perfect so far. Here's my haul today:

Some homemade organic guacamole, zucchini, really new new potatoes, AND - some of the season's first strawberries! Not shown are the yellow cherry tomatoes that were scarfed back at work... Oh, and I'm sparing you from seeing a picture of the "elk-meat cat and dog treats". Trust me. But - here are the Little Dudes sampling the unusual treat...

*sniffsniffsniff*

Atticus - LOVED them. Gandalf - LIKES them. Mae - pretty MEH about them...

Then again...Atticus and food go hand in, well, paw. Well see. Next week I'm going to try and remember to bring my camera to the Farmers' Market, and show you how lively it all is.

So, I'm going to look through my stuff, and see what I can figure out to do with this lovely black wool/silk yarn. Hopefully, I'll have something done by the weekend.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Happy Birthday Atticus!

Wow! Who's the little baby with the big paws?! And a smile on his face?!

It's Baby Atticus, at 6 weeks old. All together now - AWWWWW!!! Wasn't he the cutest little guy?!

And today, he's 9 years old. When I look at that picture, I can hardly believe how quickly the time has gone. He came to live with me when he was quite young - 5 weeks and 5 days. But from the very beginning, he was out and about the apartment, exploring everything he could. He was always good natured, loved when people and dogs came over for visits; it didn't matter to him. I wouldn't say he had a temper, but he did not like to be told he couldn't do something. To this day, he's very much a cat who likes things on his own terms (as Lorraine well knows!).

I don't have as many pics of him as I'd like, after all, digital cameras were just coming out and expensive. But I did get some goodies of him. Look at how small he was! And his big tail!

Atticus, September 1998

But, what makes Atticus so much different than Mae, who was an angel, and Gandalf, who's just plain goofy, is that he didn't know his own "strength". He LOVED getting into everything. And I mean everything. No cat of mine has ever demolished more things than he did.

The biggest? In the old layout of this apartment, I used to have a waist-high shelf in the kitchen, under some cabinets. On it, I had my toaster oven, my blender and my coffee machine. I came home from work one day to find that he had *somehow* managed to jump onto the shelf (no easy task as there would not have been much space), and take down EVERYTHING on it - coffee pot broken, toaster over door warped, only the blender survived the fall to the floor. And he was fine, luckily he hadn't managed to walk on the glass and cut his wee paws.

Nice.

Then there was the time he managed to jump from my washing machine (an apartment sized one), to the top of the fridge, walk across the cookbooks on the shelf, and knock down every book and container on the shelf. Containers of tea, oatmeal, and BEST of all - a FULL crockery container of rice, which landed on the floor, and shattered to pieces. To the day I vacated the apartment before they renovated it - I was still finding bits of rice all over the apartment. Again - he was fine.

Real nice.

By then I'd figured he needed some company, so in 1999, Mae came to live with us.

By then, he had mellowed out. And from the first day I brought her home, he showed his sweet, nuturing side by being very gentle and patient with her. This was taken a week or so after she arrived. He was much more svelte back then. We shall not speak of his waistline on his birthday...

He is the only cat I've ever had who will shadow me - he needs to be around me all the time! He's so intuitive, knows when I'm under the weather, or feeling a bit down in the dumps, and sticks by me even closer. And of course, he wakes me out of bad dreams (as I mentioned in a previous post!). I remember being SO OFFENDED when the vet asked me if he had some kur in him, because he was so rambunctious and HATED being probed at the vet's. Hmmph! Then they put a sticky note on his file advising that you had to "handle him with care"! So. Pissed. Off. My Atticus? Never! Anyway, funny how subsequent vets didn't seem to have that issue with him... Kur! Handle with care! Hmmmph! *grumble*

And he will always be my Baby Atticus!

"Aw shucks Mom...!"

What else have I been doing of late? De-stashing! I've managed to offload quite a bit of stuff on eBay and through the KBTH's "Shameless Commerce". But, I won't be doing the eBay thing anytime soon... I was successful, and sold everything - but I had just as much success, and probably made more money through the KBTH's Shameless Commerce. And instead of an auction taking 5 days - everything I posted on KBTH sold within 3 hours!

And I'm also all Canada Post'ed out. Sending out all those packages - very time consuming, so if I do so again, I won't be selling so many items at once.

Next post - knitting, honest!

Just For Fun...

Reeses Peanut Butter Cups

Very popular, one of you is not enough.

What Kind of Candy Are You?

Oh, that's so funny. Peeps - one of me? MORE than enough!

Mmmmm...Reese's Peanut Butter cups...