See you all in April
Friends and readers – I will be back.
Things are rather crazy with demands at work at the moment and I’ll be back to my regular blogging on April 1st! I do have some knitting and decor updates to share but not the time to blog about it all here. I’ve decided to stop beating myself up about it and just say when I’ll be back!
Head down to the grindstone for 2 more weeks ….
Knitting for Canada
What does this plum-colour worsted have to do with 2 weeks of square-eyed winter sports-tainment?!
I have joined the fun over on Ravelry with the Ravelolympics and I’m knitting for ‘Team Canada’ while watching ridiculous amounts of olympics television. Tea-man and I watch very little TV. As in, when we moved to our new place, we bought an indoor aerial and get 4 channels. But during the Turin Olympics in ’06, Tea-man remarked that for 2 weeks it was like we had a large winter games screensaver in the corner of living room.
Ever since I attended the Downtown Knitting Collective meeting and fell in love with the capelet the presenter, Kathryn Brenne, designed and wore, I decided to knit one for myself. I spent a good hour in Americo on the weekend trying to pick the right yarn, and eventually went with 4 skeins of Andean Simple Twist in a plum colour. I wanted this project to be as ’Canadian’ as possible, so Canadian designer …. check! Canadian store …. check! Canadian yarn …. boo! no! Ok, 2/3 isn’t too bad. The pattern called for Colinette One Zero, which is Welsh, and which I found hard to find from an online Canadian retailer, and Romni was closed, so voila – Americo it is. (Truth: I love that store, I have longed for an opportunity to buy something in that store, and so I have justified it to myself as above 
)
The yarn, Andean Simple Twist in plum, is lovely. I added it to my ravelry projects page and the plum certainly stands out against my usual and comforting favourites: pastels of blues, greens and yellows.
Bring on the games and bring on the knitting!
Weekending
Nesting, knitting and cooking. What a wonderful weekend! Above is the scene on Saturday morning where I was pulling together inspiration for our place. No complete colour boards to share yet but still, there has been progress! Faced with lack of seating (one can only sit on lawn furniture for so long) I’m plunging headlong into having my grandmother’s sofa and chair recovered. I was going to wait until I had finished a complete design board, but I need seating! I’ve met several reupholsterers, poured over sofa designs and fabrics, and those books on the left are full of fabric samples. I am finally ready to give over this gold brocade beauty for a facelift:
The bottom picture definitely shows the shape and true potential of the set. Originally made in the early 60s, I noticed that this appears to be a very ‘in’ shape and it has a very solid frame. Grandma’s gold brocade is off to the reupholstery shop later this week and we hope to end our garden furniture dwelling days in a few weeks!
In other weekend news, Tea-man’s ribbed socks are coming along beautifully. I LOVE the Madelinetosh tosh sock yarn.
And I was all domestic and used our new dishware and made the lovely Delia’s Vegetarian Shepherd’s pie with goat’s cheese mash. Yummy! Instead of meat, it is filled with black beans, lentils, split peas and lots of veg.
This week was my ‘canadanniversary’ – it has been 1 year since I moved back to Canada from the UK. And this was the first weekend in over a year where Tea-man and I indulged in making house and just doing the lovely, simple things in life that make a house a home. Bliss. I couldn’t be happier.
Our city pad
2 people. One 2-bedroom city apartment. No furniture. Blank canvas.
I’ve been living in my new city pad for, oh, 3 weeks now, and its time to start designing the place. I’ve decided to document this process as a new feature on my blog. Dearest blog readers, I don’t want to build up hopes that my interior designs will come even close to the fabulous Sarah Richardson (love you, Sarah!). But I’m going to give this blank canvas a go and make it a bit more like home.
In London we lived in a fun old one-bedroom flat on the main floor of a Victorian house near the Thames. It was, by our best guestimate, 400 square feet. We also had a lovely little garden outside, which made the 400 itty bitty square feet bearable. My style is definitely more suited to a Victorian older house. Which therefore presents my current challenge.
Flash forward 1 year and we are now in the heart of a North American city in our new city apartment. This is a temporary solution while we get to know this city and where we want to be, however, I want more than a place to drop my bags at the end of a work day. I want to create a home. I have no idea how to take my design aesthetic and apply it to an urban, modern place. I’m a little baffled and daunted to say the least!
My goals for this project include:
- Sustainability: Re-use, refurbish, re-fabulous as much as possible
- Hominess: You know that feeling when you enter a space and it feels comfy, alive, healthy, happy, loved.
- Personal touches: Using inspiration from our passions, travels, values and personality to infuse our place with ‘us’.
I’m using a variety of design places for inspiration. Some of my favourites are Ideal Home magazine (UK), Design Sponge (US), and sadly, the now defunct Domino magazine. If anyone knows of any other great places for inspiration that have a similar aesthetic, I would love to hear about it.
Over the next week I am going to put together some design story boards for inspiration. I did this for my wedding and it saved time, anguish and money when making decisions mid-way through the design process.
That’s it for me. Now over to the design magazines for the evening! Thanks for stopping in!
DKC Virgin no more!
Apparently we are getting internet in a week ….. In the meantime ….
Last night I attended my first Downtown Knit Collective meeting. It featured a presentation by Kathryn Brenne on sewing and creativity. I was blown away by Kathryn’s designs and really inspired by two items in particular. A gorgeous silk green jacket that used quilting as inspiration, and this beautiful purple capelet. This capelet is heading to the head of my queue and I’m going to go to get the appropriate yarn this weekend. I’m also picturing a fabulous fascinator from Americo to hold it together, too.
Ok, I should really be unpacking boxes and such ….
… tea cups have landed
Thanks to Tom for this fun wordle of words I used on my blog last year. Maybe I should make a late new year’s resolution to use the word ‘definitely’ less!?
Righty-o, we successfully moved! My grandmother’s china hutch which I adore has safely made it and is housing some newly opened wedding gifts* We are internetless. TV-less. Phone-less. Couch-less. Dining Table-less. And blissfully happy to have our first place in Toronto.
Last night I couldn’t find my current knitting project, Tea-man’s ribbed socks in Madelinetosh tosh sock in Bungalow, so I was forced to do more unpacking!
Now, I’m on the hunt for terrific, well-loved and cared for, second-hand furniture**. We did very well at a furniture liquidators in Oakville where we purchased a desk, 2 chairs, and a side table. My plan is to learn how to refinish them …. I’ll update here if I manage to do that! I’m going to a style workshop tomorrow night at Ethan Allen to get a bit of help with pulling my colours and ideas together. Right now I have a million different palettes running through my head, mainly leaning towards fresh, spring/summer shades and country styles, which I love, but will not look right in our city apartment! So hopefully the course will help with taking my preferred style and giving it a city-spin.
I hope everyone is having a terrific week enjoying winter, being back ‘in the groove’ after the hols, and fell0w-knitters, knitting something you love (I will, as soon as I can find my knitting project bag!)
*we JUST opened our wedding gifts this weekend, 2 years after my wedding shower and a year-and-a-half after our wedding. I really want to write everyone a second thank you note as I now have the opportunity to delight in and use the thoughtful and useful gifts everyone gave us!
**or, in desperation for somewhere comfy to sit, will I cave and buy new?
Packing up the tea cups ….
…. cause tea-man and I are moving! The last few weeks we have been popping champagne (Tea-man got his first job in Canada!) and pounding the streets of our city (finding a place to live!)*
We move tomorrow and I’m so excited to explore our new ‘hood, decorate our little place in the city, and set-up my first ever craft area! Yes, this was consideration when we were house hunting. Space for craft area, outside space and dishwasher were key criteria.
This is my second move in a year. And likely we will move again when we buy a place (which is definitely on hold during the crazy and inexplicable housing bubble happening right now in Toronto). So, I will return to regular(ish) blogging after the move. At the moment I’m up to my eye balls in non-knitting activities, such as packing boxes, booking moving trucks, sorting through legalities, appearing with it at work and keep my sanity.
*I just got a vision of tea-man and I walking around Toronto popping bottles of champagne which was really amusing We definitely felt like doing that this month!
Merry Christmas!
Santa brought in his bag of goodies a new yarn winder and I couldn’t be more delighted with my new toy! Pictured is my first wound ball, Madelinetosh Tosh Sock in Bungalow. These will soon(ish)! be socks for Tea-man – I’m still deciding on a pattern.
What I love about this time of year as I get older and have my own family is that we are able to incorporate some older traditions and make new ones for ourselves. An old tradition is making my dear Grandma Anderson’s shortbread:
And decorating the tree with ornaments that we have collected on our travels.
And a new tradition, for the 3rd year in a row, Tea-man and I make the Christmas fruit cake from Delia Smith’s recipe. I think it looked rather lovely on the table for brunch. This year I skipped the thick icing and topped it off with decorative bay leaves, evergreen and a dusting of icing sugar.
And the best bit as always is having dear friends and family to share a meal, laughter and love.
Wishing you and yours a very happy, healthy and joyful holiday season! Merry Christmas!
Reward Yarn
Is there any better reward for a knitter than some lovely lovely yarn!?
Last month I climbed up all 1,776 steps to the top of Toronto’s CN Tower. This was definitely one of the hardest physical challenges I have ever done. I completed the challenge to raise money for charity as part of a charity drive at my work. That afternoon, I went online and ordered myself some gorgeous madelinetosh sock yarn in posy as my reward. It just arrived and can’t wait to knit my second pair of socks!
FO: Autumn Socks
Done! My first ever pair of socks!
Pattern: Socks 101 by Kate Atherley
Source: Knitty
Yarn: Regia Hand-Dyed Effect
Needles: 2.25mm
Start: October 6, 2009 Finish: November 29, 2009
Mods: None
These were so much fun to work on and I learned so many new skills! Weird and wonderful abbreviations like ssk and k2tog now make sense. And I accomplished picking-up stitches and short rows for the first time too! As I talked about in a previous post, I learned how to knit socks with Kate Atherley at Lettuce Knit. I really enjoy taking classes to learn stuff as it is definitely the best learning style for me.
Of course, these socks are so very far from perfect. But they are perfectly serviceable and I’ll definitely wear them for snowy days this winter to stay nice and warm!
A word about the yarn. I truly detested working with the Regia hand-dyed effect. The ball was so loosely wound that for the first sock I was constantly unpicking tangles, no matter how extra careful I was. I ended up having to CUT bits that I simply could not untangle. It was really dissatisfying to work with.
Ok, next up, some Christmas knitting!
