The Bestest Day

Ask a knitter: What's the best way to start the day?
Answer: Yarn!

Ask a knitter: What's the best way to end the day?
Answer: Yarn!

Ask a knitter: Who are the best people to hang out with?
Answer: People who give you yarn!

Et cetera.

Yesterday, I arrived at work, and on my desk, I found this:

It's a skein of laceweight yarn from one of our favourite Etsy shops, At Knits End (who I've mentioned in previous posts... such talent!). I'd been admiring it for a while now. I had a pretty good idea of who the Yarn Fairy was, so I picked up the phone and called dkzack's extension. "The Yarn Fairy came last night!" I said.

With a smile in her voice, she said, "Oh, she did, did she?"

"Yes," I said. "And she even took the tooth I left for her."

That made her hesitate for a split second, then she said, "I didn't know the Yarn Fairy did teeth, too."

"Oh yes," I said. "She is part of the same union as the Tooth Fairy. She has to get the same amount of work, you know."

Later on, when she visited my desk, I thanked her, even though she told me to thank the Yarn Fairy instead. She also brought along a bunch of yarn she had ordered that had just arrived. She piled it all on my desk and I laid my head on it and breathed deep.. ahhhh...

That evening, dkzack and more of my coven knitting friends came over for a Knit Night. Susan brought along news of sources for undyed roving and knitting book sales. Oh man, I love that kind of news. Time to save up my pennies so that I can buy books and make the yarn I've been wanting for a skirt I really want to make for myself...

Tara also brought along a huge basket full of... what else? Yarn! But not just any yarn, but yarn she dyed herself and is now selling at her Etsy shop. (You should click that link, by the way. You know you want to.) And we all jumped on, looked through each and every skein. And well, you should support your friends in their endeavours, so I decided that these three should stay at my house... you know, because I wanted to help out...

Clockwise from the top are: Pumpkin Spice, Honeydew and It's Grape to be Me (named by her genius daughter).

I also shared some of my own acquisitions, including this braid of roving from the aforementioned At Knits End. It's a merino/bamboo blend in the colourway called Ewe Win Some, You Lose Some. I think I really won this time:

So, it was a great day, topped off with a great visit from my coven knitting friends, lots of good Strawberry Rooibos tea and some of my homemade gluten-free Raspberry Tart based on this recipe (I made it with a rolled oatmeal base - YUM). I might rapidly be reaching SABLE status (Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy), but could you ask for a better end for the week?

Oh yeah, and I swam next to Captain America yesterday morning, too... but that's a whole other tale...

Inspiration Mondays: Not the Only Obsession

Cure for an obsession: get another one. -- Mason Cooley 

I'll admit it: I talk a lot about knitting. And when I'm not talking about knitting, I'm talking about yarn, and when I'm not talking about yarn, I'm talking about spinning, and when I'm not talking about spinning... well... I'm usually not talking.

However, I do have another love:  old stuff. Old letters, old postcards, old newspapers, hats, jewelry, books, teacups and colanders.

Yes, colanders. Among other things.

I've recently fallen into the world of vintage ceramics, specifically teacups and teasets. As I was trawling through the web a few weeks ago looking at cafe au lait bowls, I turned to my husband and said, "Did you ever thing you'd be married to an old biddy like me?"

Wisely, he said nothing. At least he smiled.

One of my recent acquisitions was this sweet little cream jug that I purchased from an Etsy seller called Ancien Esthetique. All I knew of it was that it was made by Villeroy & Boch and that it was old and sweet and pretty. I held back from purchasing it for a few weeks until I realized that I had not seen anything quite like it before. When it arrived and I took it out of the box, I cooed in delight. What a nice wee treasure.

Since then, I've been thinking about how nice it would be to find a sugar bowl to complement it. Since I don't know the first thing about identifying old dinnerware, the first thing I did was look up the Villeroy & Boch website. I scanned the page, read a bit about the company, and then promptly gave up. Pah, I said. They aren't going to be able to help me.


Weeks passed, and I faithfully searched online. I looked at images of Villeroy & Boch cups, plates, teapots, platters, even kitchen fixtures and toilets (apparently, if you're in the ceramic business, you also make toilets). I Googled villeroy, boch, pink, cup, tea, ceramic, peach, cream, jug, sugar in various permutations. I learned about pottery marks, learned about other ceramics manufacturers, looked at more modern patterns. At times, I thought about commissioning one to be made to match, but it just wouldn't be the same as getting the real, aged treasure...

Finally, I sent a message to the Etsy seller and asked her if she knew what pattern it was. She replied, "I don't know I'm sorry. I presume you have researched all Villeroy and Boch related sites."

Ehm, well... not really.

So, I went back to the Villeroy & Boch site and the FAQ section showed this question: "Where can I get help about historical products?" And the answer?

"Please contact Ester Schneider for assistance." And there was an link to her email address.

So, I emailed Ester, and by the next morning she had an answer for me.

Thank you for writing and for your interest in the products of our group.
This jug belonged to a dinnerware named "Santos" and was available during the 1950ies. Sometimes there are offers to find under "Karslruhe" which is the name of the shape.
I hope, I can help with this information and remain with kind regards
Ester Schneider

So, I could have saved weeks obsessing over Google searches by just biting the bullet and asking the experts. Heh.

Well, I'm glad to finally know where my little treasure is from, and hopefully, armed with this information, I will find a little partner for it. And in case you're wondering, my obsession has not lessened one bit. If anything, the interwebs will be buzzing with all my future searches... something like, sugar, bowl, santos, vintage, pink.

Ah, sweet insanity. What fun you bring to my life.

Life in a Snow Globe

Have you ever felt like your world is like a great, big snow globe that has been picked up and shaken for fun? Since I was sick last week, I feel like it's only now that all the snowflakes are starting to settle. The world is finally looking clearer and I look less like a zombie and more like the jolly dolly I am. 

Yeah, I'm not sure what a jolly dolly is. It just came out like that, ok?

I've been working steadily on my Paprika Moody. It has been decidedly slow-going because of the mistakes improvements I've been making along the way, specifically:

• Adding bust darts to the front to give my "girls" more space.
• Ripping out the bust darts because I ended up with way too much fabric on the front.
• Making super-stretchy buttonholes for the big buttons I wanted to use.
• Stitching my super-stretchy buttonholes closed so that I could use smaller and less distracting buttons.

So, I'm still kinda hovering where I was around this time last week. I think it's for the best, though. These are the buttons I was going to use:

And here are the buttons I decided to use instead:

I think these buttons are much better for the sweater. It meant spending about an hour hand-stitching the buttonholes so that the smaller buttons would sit properly. I can now say that I am now a button-stitch expert. Send me a buttonhole, I'll stitch 'er for ya!

I don't know how anyone would send a buttonhole, but you get what I mean...

I had an out-of-town appointment this afternoon. I usually bring my knitting along to work on in the waiting room, but I happened to arrive a bit earlier than I anticipated, so I decided to have a short walk around the town to explore. I found a second-hand charity shop and spied these:

Size 10, pretty, shiny, sparkly shoes! And the price? Wait for it...

One dollar and fifty cents. Wha?!

I was so happy with my purchase that I actually took one of them out and placed it on my dashboard for the drive home. It was only after I'd been driving for 20 minutes that I realized that the sequins were probably reflecting the sunlight and dazzling oncoming drivers. I snatched it off the dashboard and tossed it onto my passenger seat. Imagine having to explain that to the police...

I guess I could tell them that I was trying to replicate the snow-globe-effect for everyone. Yeah... that'd go over well...

Inspiration Mondays on a Tuesday: Respiration

I've had a cold for the last few days (in case you didn't know from the last post). Woo boy, that one was a doozy. I haven't had a cold for a couple of years, and man, this one sure made up for that time. I'm happy to say that I'm just about back to normal - a real walking, talking, breathing person.

I don't really have much to say except that, it's days like these that I really appreciate the ability to take a full lungful of breath. There are so many who can't... they live with daily health issues, or have been born with problem lungs, or a problem heart. When I walk outside to take Rascal for a walk, I think I'll remember to stop and take a big, deep breath and enjoy the air while I can.

And well, when you breathe out, the biological term for that is exhalation.

And the biological term for breathing in?

Inspiration.

Heh, I love when it works out like that.

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Rascal's Blog Post

Hi, I'm Rascal. I'm writing my mom's blog post today because she's been sick. I usually sit around looking cute and watching for intruders, but I thought I'd help out and give you an update about what's been going on around here.

My mom came home at around lunch time on Thursday, and this is what she looked like:

Since then, she's been sleeping a lot, drinking a lot of tea and water, eating a lot of soup, and taking a lot of baths. I don't know how the baths are going to help her because, if you ask me, baths are bad news, but she seems to like them.

One of my mom's friends came over in the afternoon on Thursday to drop off this stuff. She likes this stuff a lot. She has lots and lots and lots of it, but she said she was lucky enough to get it at a great price from someone in Canmore who didn't want it anymore. She said she had another friend who even drove there to pick it up for her. She seemed pretty happy to get it. 

She even took this stuff upstairs to bed with her on Thursday night so she could look at it before she went to sleep.

I know it's strange to sleep next to this stuff, but forgive her. She's not feeling well, after all.

On Friday, my mom decided she wouldn't go to work, even though she slept a lot. I usually sleep the most in this house, but I think she's trying to beat my record, because I think she slept for about thirteen hours (I can't really count, but that's what she said). She had more baths and ate more soup and drank more tea and water and slept even more. She said she didn't really want to knit too much (I think that's what she calls that sticks-and-string-thing) in case she made a mistake, so she used the thing I tried to chew up during our last trip to the mountains to wind this stuff for her next project:

Today, my mom seems to be feeling better. She even took me out this morning for a walk and even she was sniffing the air a lot, just like me! It's nice to have her back outside with me, because there's so many cool things I've been meaning to show her since she's been sick. She's not always interested in the piles of leaves and the new peeing places I've found, but it's still nice to have her outside, even if it was just for a little while.

This afternoon, she worked on this. She says it's supposed to be a sweater, but I'm not so sure. She says she keeps finding little errors in the pattern (whatever that is). To me, it would make a great napping place.

Anyway, I'm trying really hard to look after my mom. She usually takes pretty good care of me, and it's nice to help her out sometimes. She's not too good at remembering to take as many naps as me, but I'm trying my best to teach her how to do it.

I'm gonna stop now, because this typing thing is pretty hard for me to do with these paws. Happy sniffs and tail wags for now!

Inspiration Mondays: People First

When I first clicked on this video, I was really not expecting to be inspired by it. It's about how things are packaged in some warehouses across America. I know, not that exciting for a title, really.

When I heard him say that this had to do with thousands of mobile robots, the first thing I thought was, "Oh great. Here's another story where people lost their jobs to robots."

But it wasn't.

It was about how someone thought of making their business work better, AND make working conditions better for his employees. And not only that: it improved their employees' quality of life.

He made the employee the centre of the solution, and everybody won. To quote something he says in the video:

We catch [them] on testimonial videos saying: "It's so stress-free that I've actually stopped taking my blood pressure medication."

I'm so glad that someone thought of a way to make money, but without, for want of a better term, screwing their employees out of a decent livelihood.

And not only that, I liked when he said this:

When you let things start to think and walk and talk on their own, interesting processes and productivities can emerge.

He was talking about giving this ability to the inanimate products themselves, but I think it also applies to the employees themselves. What I mean is: if your boss allows his or her employees to think and walk and talk on their own, the problems that need fixing tend to get fixed. However, if you put people into offices and command them to solve a problem and shut the door behind you, well, you're not really going to get the result you want.

Something to ponder, yes?

Not Just For Egg Salad

There are four things that you need to make an excellent egg salad sandwich:

1. Nice, fresh bread
2. Miracle Whip (or other mayonnaise with a pinch of sugar)
3. Farm fresh eggs
4. A good sprinkle of paprika on top

The paprika really makes it for me. No paprika, and it's just not the same.

I'm knitting my first sweater of 2012, Andiomena's Moody which is the adult version of her child's sweater, Cinnamon. I first saw it on G+ on someone's "must knit" list, and I liked it a lot as soon as I saw it.

I've had a ton (well, maybe about a pound or two) of yarn I had ordered last year from Elann.com that was still waiting for me to use. It's Patons Classic Wool in Paprika.

 

It even looks good with eggs!

I had originally ordered it to make CanarySanctuary's Corona, but I slowly fell out of love with it the pattern. Then, I thought I'd make indigirl's Slow Curve with it, until my friend, dkzack, pointed out that it was very like another sweater I'd made almost a year and a half ago. I might still make it, but maybe with a yarn with more depth and more shades of colour.

So, I've been working away on Moody, and really haven't made it that far. I've been having a discussion with the pattern designer about some of the instructions, and we've both agreed that there are a couple that need tweaking. Luckily, she was glad of the feedback, but this discussion has held me back a bit in terms of progress.

The longer I work with this yarn, however, the more I am enjoying the colour. It has a richness in it that I really didn't expect to find. I had a hard time capturing the colour in the photo, but when I get the sweater done, I'll be sure to photograph it in natural light. I feel sure that the Paprika is really going to make this sweater pop.

Meanwhile, in other news, I have been breaking my yarn diet with great fervor. I've been watching skein after skein of beautiful yarn appear at At Knits End on Etsy. Below are two of my most recent acquisitions: Oompa L-ewe-mpa (in orange) and Sparkle y-ewe-r ass off, a beautiful blend of greys and the palest greens with a touch of real glitter.

It's only after I took these photos this evening that I realized that I seem to have an orange-red theme running through my veins at the moment. I'm not sure why. Maybe my mind is slowly working through the colourwheel (I recall writing posts about blues and greens not long ago). Maybe I'm longing for yet another vacation to sunny climes.

Or, maybe I just need a little spice. Some paprika, perhaps...