One thumb short

I am one thumb short of a pair of mittens! No problem, I thought! Today's Sunday. Chris is working. I have a whole day of knitting, cooking (and unfortunately, I had some cleaning planned too) ahead of me. Plus, the weather is gorgeous and I thought I'd go out and take a walk...

... and then my phone rang and, fool that I am, I answered. It was work. Someone is sick. They ask if I can fill in tonight. *sigh* I am nice, so I said yes. The good thing is that I'll get paid overtime.

I'll probably finish the thumb tomorrow, and then there will be pictures.

I also wanted to write about Christmas knitting, but I think I'll save that for November. See, I'm a bit nuts, so I signed up for:



One blog post a day for a month. It will be quite the challenge since I can barely manage to write a post a week right now. But it should be fun. Anyone else wants to join?

Mittens in progress and a little bit of yarn

So, while the whole world (or so it seemed) was getting ready to go to Rhinebeck (NO, I'm totally NOT jealous), I decided I needed my piece of knitting goodness too, so I went to Ariadne's knit night on Thursday.

It was well worth it, cause I got to see Mona's beautiful daughter Hannah, who is only a couple weeks old. And beautiful, let me tell you! Congrats again, Mona.

I had planned on buying myself something, but I ended up being VERY VERY good! I only got:



A skein of Classic Elite Desert, 3mm bamboo circulars (not pictured) and Steppin' Out Too, since I already have the first one and love it (I've only knit two patterns from it so far, but I will knit more for sure).

As for the Desert yarn, I want to make a hat out of it. There was a beautiful one on display in the store, and I found out I already had a pattern in my Ravelry queue (Halley's comet hat)! But then, while browsing Ravelry, I also found out about the Madge hat, and I sort of want to make it too. So I don't know which pattern I'll choose. We'll see.

I've been knitting on socks, and also on the Bird in Hand mitt #2. As promised (I think I promised it), here's a pic of the first one, with the one I'm working on.



I can't wait till they're done! It's getting colder and I want brand new mittens!

I also want to write about Christmas knitting, but it'll wait till next post!

The Day After

I'm soooooooooo happy the election is over (but sooooooo sad Harper won again).

Election night went very well, we didn't have any technical problem and I was able to send three stories. Because I got the results for my candidate so late, I didn't have to do a radio interview, which is good because I was nervous about that.

I think I'll go to Ariadne tomorrow. I need to reward myself with yarn!

BTW, 2009 will be here soon, do you have a calendar? If you don't, here's a suggestion:



Hehe. You can buy it here. (Oh and I got the link from Lime & Violet. Gotta give credit where credit is due.)

Is it October 15 already?

I gotta say, I can't wait for the Canadian election to be over. I am stressed out like you wouldn't believe! Now I've worked election night before, but always in the newsroom. Tomorrow night I'll actually be at a candidate's HQ, I'll have to write two stories, get sound clips and send them AND I'll do a 5 min. thing on the radio. It may not sound like much, but it's going to be stressful and I'll be praying that I won't run into a technical problem.

I've been stressed for a week now, so yesterday, Chris and I decided to go for a relaxing walk on Mont Royal. All you Montrealers know how much fun can be had on the mountain on a Sunday.

There were tamtams (how do you say that in English? Drums?):



There was beautiful foliage:





And there were Dungeon and Dragons fanatics pretending they were in a real battle (or something):





I thought one of them really looked like Sayid from Lost, so I had to take a pic. :)

As far as knitting goes, since I finished my Woven Cables scarf, I decided it was time to knit the second Bird in Hand mitten. I had finished the first one last spring and decided to wait till Fall for the second one.

(I was going to post a pic of the first one, but I realized I don't have one. You'll get one next post).

Everything was going well with mitten #2 -- though I still hate to make the braids and there are three of them on each mitten -- until I realized I was following the instructions for the right mitten when I was making the left one! So I had to frog an entire chart repeat, which was not that long, but it still sucked.

That's it for now! Canadians, don't forget to go vote tomorrow! I think I'll buy myself some new yarn after the election!

Best scarf ever

I finished my Woven Cables Scarf!!!



Pattern: Woven Cables Scarf, by Keri McKiernan.
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca
Needles: US 7 and US 5 circular needles

I love love love it! It's warm and soft and just perfect. And I realized that I didn't have to knit it as long as my usual scarves, because it's very thick so I don't need to wrap it twice around my neck.

Next UFO that I want to transform into a FO: the Bird in hand mittens!

Also, in honor of Socktoberfest, I started a new pair of socks.



It's the lucky clover socks, that I got in the Robyn's nest sock club last March. I love the yarn and I love the pattern so it's going to be a fun knit.