Super Fast Gloves

Here's a speedy quick knit, great for the morning streetcar ride. They took just three days from start to finish. These are a gift for a friend of my kid. She requested black with a pink stripe. She's getting dark gray as it was the closest appropriate yarn I had in my stash.

Pattern: Evening Light, Knitting New Mittens & Gloves

Designer: Robin Melanson

Yarn: Cascade 220 & Magic Garden Buttons.

Needles: 3mm straights. The pattern calls for 3.5mm

The Apartment

Yes, I am knitting. In fact I have four WIP's at the moment. I even finished something today. Alas, no photos yet.

Instead, here is my pretty new apartment. Red wall? You bet! Also, I know the new couch is strangely ugly. I knew it as I was paying for it. It just called to me across the floor at the Sears clearance sale. It cried out,

"Look at me...I'm ugly and sturdy...You know you want me."

O yes.

Scratch

I understand why Richard Ouzounian, theatre "critic" for the Toronto Star, disliked the play Scratch, playing currently at Factory Theatre. It is not pretty, nor tidy, nor is it fun for the whole family. All qualities he admires.
It is messy and uncomfortable. In it people ache and hurt so openly that it is painful to watch. In their pain, these characters behave inappropriately, indeed badly, toward one another. Wanting to smack down the main character, a 15 year old girl with a dying mother, is not a comfortable feeling to have as an audience member. Asserting, as Mr. Ouzounian does, that this is somehow the playwright's fault, that the protagonist should have been more "likeable", says more about him than it does about the gifts of the writer, Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman. For she is gifted. This is a poem, a love song to her mother and to her own younger self. The language is spare and true.
Here are people struggling so deeply with loss, that they are unable to meet each other's needs. The Father, grieving for his beloved wife, cannot help his daughter. The Aunt who has always relied on being useful, but is rejected and therefore lost. The best friend, a budding artist, who wants to say good-bye to her mentor but cannot because she is not "family". Even the Mother doesn't have the decency to die in nice, movie-of-the-week fashion, refusing to "waste her energy on making them feel better."
And Anna, self-centred yet, so lost, so infuriating. For Charlotte to play her fictionalized self this way is brave and heart wrenching.
Read Layne Coleman's article:
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2007.06-memoir-oasis-of-hope
Read Carole Corbeil's work if you can find it.
Go see Scratch.

Thanksgiving

Well, I am thankful. That much is true. In every single way, things are better for me than they were this time last year.
Except one.
I miss The Daughter terribly. It's been a very long, long weekend indeed. This morning she went back to Dad's and I spent my day off lost and aimless. How does anybody ever get used to this part?

Stash-o-Rama

How do you spend your Saturday nights? Last Saturday, my main activity was this:

Stash sorting! I am not embarrassed to admit that it was one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had in a long while. I dumped all the various boxes, baskets and bags onto a sheet on the living room floor and went to town. My! I own a bit of yarn!

I sorted by fibre; cotton, wool, and blends. Later talking to other knitters I heard of some who sort by colour and others by weight.

I've been buying quite a few sheet sets lately what with the move and two new beds. I kept the clear plastic bags they came in. You know the kind. Some have snaps. Some have zippers. Well, they are excellent yarn storage bags. Recycle baby!

Day 7 - Green Tuesday

Well, The Ribon Project has ended. I'm so glad I participated again. It makes a nice break from the sleepwalking nature of going to and from somewhere routine to stop, look, tie a ribbon and take a picture. The project Flickr Set is here.

This may be my favourite shot of the week...
This one is pretty...

This one is whimsical...

Day 6 - Orange Monday

This morning on the way to work...

This evening in a Thai restaurant on the way home...

Day 5 - Red Sunday

How appropriate that red ribbon day was spent knitting more roses for Michelle and Adam's wedding. Guinness the cat enjoys a spot of red!



On the way there I passed what is now 'The Basement', but what used to be Jeff Healey's first club. I used to ride by it every day on my way home from work and sometimes spotted him outside. Now, it's just black and ordinary. All the magic is gone.

Day 4 - Purple Saturday

I voted in the advance poll today. I had a hard time deciding this time around. There are two excellent candidates in my riding. One Liberal and the other NDP. Either will be a fine representative on Parliament Hill. The troubling part is that they're running against each other here and that doesn't help get rid of any Tories. Good candidates (I'm talking to you Mr, Kennedy) should be effecting "change" by unseating the Conservatives, not playing politics against other good folk.

Day 3 - Yellow Friday

I worked the football on Friday. This is what I saw during my break.

Day 2 - Blue Thursday

Blue, blue sky this morning. My ringless hand.

Ribbons! Day 1 Pink Wednesday

It's time again for Hannah Godfrey's Ribbon Project. Yay! I considered not participating this year. You know...busy and all that. Then I realized that I was worried about re-visiting the space I was in this time last year. It was such a struggle finding little causes of cheer to mark. I was so low then.

That is precisely why I need to ribbon my spaces this year. I intend to really feel how this feels. What's it like to create art from a place of peace and curiosity rather than one of pain and striving?

So I toasted the project's beginning around midnight last night then had a giggle on the King car this morning.