Upper Canada Village

Myself, B and a few co-workers visited Upper Canada Village this past Saturday. I haven't been there since I was about 7-9 years old, and I loved it! It was better than I remembered and was expecting. My favorite parts were the spinning room:

The table full of yarn and what was used to dye them (carrot greens, onion skins, goldenrod, some Mexican beetle, roots, indigo, nutmeg and tree bark):

There is also a wool mill at UCV, where there are piles of sheep wool!

I also loved the printing press. All those letters! We even got to try our hand at typesetting. It was slow, but fun!

We also saw lots of animals... I loved the piglets.. one of them tried to suckle my finger and thumb!

And the sheep were so cute! This male came right up to us and posed for pictures.

Chef at Home

I was home sick yesterday, and had my first "Chef at Home" moment. I was desperate for something to eat for lunch, and looked in the fridge and was uninspired as I didn't want to stand at the stove for any length of time while not feeling well. I remembered back last year around this time when B's (my partner in crime) friend A from London, England was visiting and she made a simple delicious pasta sauce. I used this as my inspiration. It was so simple and I hardly had to watch it at all! I fried up some onion in the saucepan with olive oil (didn't have any garlic, which is an essential in pasta sauce), and added in some chopped carrots and zucchini. Then I added in some split red lentils (dry, but ones that don't need soaking and about 30 min. cook time), the tomatoes (from the can), salt, pepper and smoked paprika and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. It made enough for a few meals, so I've jarred it:

Tonight I had my second helping for dinner:

Thanks for the inspiration! The best part, you can put whatever you want in it! Just take a look in your fridge and see what's there...

Halfway through

I am halfway through my winter scarf! It is going very fast. I sat and worked out what I believe will be the pattern for the matching hat. I still haven't quite figured out what to do about the mittens, but I found a few simple patterns on Ravelry that I will try to adapt. Luckily I have a hat and mittens which fit me quite well (I have a small head and hands), so I could take measurements from them to estimate my new ones. Hopefully in another week or 2 my scarf will be done, and I will begin the hat.

Three Irish Girls

I've selected my first ever sock club yarn! I couldn't decide, so I got one of each! You can check out the colours on the Three Irish Girl's website. I should receive my shipment by the end of August. I cannot wait.

Winter Scarf 2010

I finally finished the baby blanket! It's shorter than it should be, but it's done! So I started the Ocean Waves Scarf, using Manos del Uruguay in Lava, and it's such an easy pattern! I've already done quite a bit in only 2 days (and one day I only did a few minutes and today I did about 20 minutes).



I think a hat from this pattern is going to work well, but the mittens might be tricky. I may have to make the "eyes" smaller.

Sock Club Fall 2010

I've decided not to join the Indigo Moon Yarns club this year, as it is not a sock club, but rather a yarn club. So, I looked at a few clubs, and really wanted a Canadian one (which I could not find - so if anyone knows of one, please let me know!), and one that ran for 3 months so I could try it out. I ended up joining the Sock Yarnista club put out by Three Irish Girls. The dyer is a woman named Sharon from Minnesota, and her yarns colourways are so nice! I get my first shipment in August, and I cannot wait!

Yarn! Yarn! Yarn!

I'm back from my amazing trip to the Canadian Rockies, and I went a little crazy while in Canmore at the Knit & Caboodle yarn store, and bought a ton of sock yarn!

So it might not be too much to some... but 8 hanks of yarn (5 of them being sock yarn) is quite a lot to me. My favorites are the madelinetosh (DK) and Anzula Squishy. I plan to use the madeleinetosh to make a bulkier pair of socks, and 2 hanks to make the Ocean Waves Scarf with it.

As I was in the car on the way to the airport in Calgary the next day I realized I should have purchased enough to make a matching hat and mittens (I currently have no matching set). So, when I got home I checked where to purchase the yarn and discovered there was a store right in downtown Ottawa - Yarns etc. - so I bought 3 more hanks. The yarn is Manos del Uruguay, so there are no dye lots. The winter gear will be my next project. I have almost completed the baby blanket for my friend. I only have 5 more inches left!! I never realized how long it takes.

On the sock front I have completed 1 sock, which was too big for my foot. I was working with Patons Basic Sock Pattern from their Next Steps Four: Socks and Slippers. I used the smallest dimensions (I have small feet) and they were still too big. So I looked up a bunch of calculators and am trying a second sock. It's looking good so far except for two little holes on either side of my foot where I picked up stitches. I needed to have picked up 1 or 2 more and there would have been no hole!

I'd like to get a book which talks about sizing, because the math is too much for me sometimes. Any suggestions would be great. I thought about Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Sock Book, or Sock Innovation, but the reviews for them were not that great. Also, while Sock Innovation has beautiful patterns, a few reviews mentioned there was no information about sizing. I read a few reviews for the book Sock Club: Join the Knitting Adventure, and it sounds like it might be promising.