Finished Shedir

My Knityboard SP8 sent me 2 balls of Debbie Bliss Cashermerino Aran in a hot pink shade (602) and said I was to knit something for myself. I’ve done! I used the Shedir pattern from the Special edition Knitty and used only 3 repeats of the cable pattern instead of 5. It’s a little short for a real weather hat, but as a fashion statement, I like it. D was camera man and it’s dark out, so you get the following picture. I used maybe 1.25 balls of the cashmerino aran on US5 Denise needles and aset of double point needles from my mom. Here’s the picture, then more about my mom’s needles.

We were at my parent’s place for dinner on Sunday and I asked my mom if I could look in her needle drawer for some double point needles. She sent me up to the drawer – turns out she’s been holding out on me. As the last in a large family, she’s inherited MANY people’s needles and cases. I had a bundle of small double points (less than US7) about 5 inches in diameter. I had to go through them with a needle gauge to find the ones I needed. It took forever. I’m never going to buy needles again! WOOHOO!

Tomorrow’s supposed to be snow and freezing rain, so I might declare it a snowday even if the university isn’t closed.

D thinks we should go to Girona for our honeymoon. Off to go do some research!

New Week, New Outlook

Great News! I’m up to sorting out the references in my thesis. I think I’m done the writing part and once I’m done this reference sorting, I’m going to give it to the department head and let him deal with it. I’m writing a Master’s while working on a PhD because of a personality conflict that lead me to leaving a PhD project 3.5 years in. My former supervisor doesn’t want to have anything to do with me so I don’t think he’ll want to edit/approve my thesis (and if he does, I don’t want him to as one of the areas of conflict is about writing style). I have no idea of what is going to happen, but the head wants me to hand it in and get credit for the work I did, so I’ll let him handle the field of land mines that will be getting this approved.

In the bad news category, D and I spent the weekend using the majority of a box of Kleenex 3-ply tissues with lotion. Yup, we got “the cold” that’s been going around. Knocked us flat out. I can’t really tell you much about what we did (I remember eating Chicken and Gnocchi Soup and doing a jigsaw puzzle) but it’s now Monday evening, so I guess we survived.

I never did write about D’s birthday party. It was a party because despite having lived here for almost 4 years, we haven’t had a party yet and a lot of his friends had never been here. We picked a weekend, then noticed it was the day before his birthday, so a party it became. There were a few last minute cancellations (as can be expected with toddlers and flu season), we ended up with 4 people under 3 years old and 9 older than me (I made15 total). This highlight was a 15 month old getting a hand into a bowl of hummus and finger painting on the coffee table. I wanted to join in, but his mother looked so horrified that I handed her a paper towel to clean up urgently. Everyone was fed and happy and I got several compliments on my lasagna and monster quesadilla (like a Mexican lasagna with layers of cheese and spinach and refried beans – it’s from a cookbook by the Dietitians of Canada so it must be healthy right?).

What else has been happening here. Last night we went to my parent’s house for dinner and slid through an intersection on the way home – yup, it’s snowing again. I’m about ready for winter to be over. We didn’t get any pictures snowboarding 2 weekends ago, so I’ll attach one here from last year – this is my brother carving it up at Holimont. This same brother currently has offers from 4 prestigious universities to do his PhD and several have yet to respond. We’re gonna be a highly overeducated family!

Knittingwise, I’m up to the decreases on Shedir from the cashmerino aran my knittyboard SP sent. I’m hoping it’s not too big around. If it is, I’m going to redo it with only 6 repeats around so it’s a snowflake on the top. That’ll make my new supervisor happy. I’m past the heel on the second D blue sock. There’s only the 21 stripes to go up the leg. I did find a really cool bindoff today on the net – luckily I left a REALLY long tail on the first sock, so I can undo the cast off I did on it and redo it in this awesome way.

It wouldn’t be a good day without a gratuitous kitten picture right? Well, I have two. D really likes this first picture from when I was trying to picture the yarn the other day and the second one D got of Fred sleeping yesterday. He is the least cat-like cat when it comes to sleeping.

Fred has started testing gravity. He wants to make sure that the mammals with opposable thumbs that change their fur daily haven’t repealed the law of gravity in the last 5 minutes. If it moves, it’s fair game to be pushed off the ends of whatever it’s on. This has lead to an increase in the entropy in our house. That’s my excuse for the untidiness and I’m sticking to it!

It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood….

After my frantic post of last night, D came home and saw me cradling my memory key murmuring to myself. He quickly ascertained that I wasn’t going to do much else until my thesis was back and figured out how to deal with it. That’s why I married him (well, one of the reasons). He knew that I would not be able to sleep with my thesis potentially lost and that for his and our sakes, he should do something about it. We went to his office and got everything off the key and onto his computer, then e-mailed it to several different accounts and put it on several other memory keys. After a quick trip to babies’r'us to get a shower gift for a postdoc at school, we came home, he plugged in the memory key and it worked perfectly. His crazy wife wouldn’t let him put the key anywhere near this computer until she had the data, but it turns out she just didn’t give it enough time to download from the key before trying to open it (large word files with integrated pictures will do that).

So it was a happy night here at the Casa M-P. I took some happy cold drugs and went to bed.

Today I got up, went to school perked up with the help of a happy blue cold pill and got some samples in, then went for a yummy lunch, played around with some more ground bone and came home to a FINAL NOTICE from the post office in my mailbox. Funny that… I’ve been waiting (kinda) patiently for package my SP from the knittyboard sent. Apparently I missed the original notice (not bloody likely!) and they were about to send it back to the US of A without my getting a chance at it. The notice was to go to a different post office than usual and even the lady at the counter commented that she shouldn’t have had a package for this postal code.

SO, Finally! Without further ado, I give you the contents of my first package from SpoilingBoo! YAY! I love it! It was squishy and rattely all at the same time.

Two balls of debbie bliss cashmerino aran in a lovely pink (that matches the shirt I’m wearing today!) and a ball of “manly” striped sock yarn for a pair of socks for D, the aforementioned wonderhubby.

There were also several other goodies, and Fred wouldn’t leave them alone, so I present my version of “stuffonmycat“. I give you Fred (the orange one) and the fun knitting accessories – there’s stitch markers, row markers, point protectors, blocking pins and a circular stitch holder…. boy would that have come in handy a few weeks ago when I was working on Durrow.

This is what I was dealing with when I was trying to take pictures…
I think they’re fascinated by the sock yarn – it has jojoba and aloe vera which must smell yummy to kittens.

I now need a pattern for a textured cap to knit with the cashmerino aran to keep my ears warm on my way to school.

I do have knitting progress, but this is a long enough post, so I’ll sign off here. To my secret pal – thank you! It was the MAILMAN we should have been talking about, not the customs dude (it went through customs on the 10th and had been at the post office since the 13th).

please panic with me

my memory key isn’t reading.

I haven’t backed it up in weeks.

it’s got my thesis.. all 80 pages of it (ie. nearly done) .

There is hope – the USB ports on this computer all failed and were replaced on the weekend, but this suggested the disk is corrupt and needs re-formatting.

ACK!!

this is coming to you from School…

Yesterday was a snow day. You’d think I’d get my act in gear and get my thesis done, but the computer was against me – it wouldn’t read my memory key. I did look through the literature survey from my transfer report and I don’t think it will need much. I have to insert a section from a project I did that the head of my department says is worth a master’s on it’s own and getting it to flow well might be a challenge, but I think I’m nearly done!

We tidied the house last night in anticipation of our party on Saturday. Looks like 5 kids under 3, possibly 6 because one couple didn’t respond yet. Tonight I will be going through putting anything that’s not toddler friendly up out of toddler’s reach. Unfortunately both Fred and Ginger have mastered leaping onto things now – For Fred it was this morning. He’s been trying to jump up onto my lap, but my new computer chair has arms and he keeps running his head into them. He got smart and realised if he jumped onto the desk he could lower himself into my lap. So he backed up (yes, I was making beeping noises in my head for him), took a run and made the leap. I was so proud because that was a big step for him, but I didn’t want to encourage the behaviour. Ginger can leap onto the counter and she’s been eating leftovers of the human food if we don’t tidy it up right away. That has lead to some kitty vomit with human food, so we’re starting to get neater. Nice loop there eh? Started out talking about tidying, went though kittens and back to tidying.

The snow yesterday was ferocious. We ended up with about a foot and a half, but it drifted so much that there are bare spots on the driveway and other spots that were up to my hip. We shoveled it all out, then the snowplow came and put a stripe over 2 feet tall across the bottom of the driveway. Snowplowed snow is denser as it’s been driven on by cars, so that was a pain to move. A neighbour must have a new snowblower as well as he did the sidewalks, which the city will technically do for us.

I didn’t get much schoolwork done, but I did bake some mashed potato bread. It was really yummy. I also knit a heart for D as I forgot to buy him a valentine. D’OH! He got me a really cute one and signed it from him, Fred and Ginger (he gave me xoxo, they gave me LNLN for licks and nosies – when a kitten puts their noses up to you).

House on Tuesday was really good. A girl who could feel no pain. My sister’s in medical school and just started in the teaching hospital on Tuesday, so she’s learning all this stuff herself. My brother is just finishing up his master’s andhe’s off for an interview at a fairly big school next week. That’s exciting for him.

Knitting progress is slow… I’m working on a second sock for D and I’ve got second sock syndrome. A postdoc here at school is going on leave at the end of February and I really want to knit something for her (she’s the one that told D and I about our photographer for the wedding) but I can’t figure out what and I’m almost out of time. So much to do, so little time.

These are the pictures from our wedding that the photographer put up in her album. It’s really flattering that she put us as her first page in her portfolio!

no pictures today

I had taken a few pictures today to show my knittyboard SP8, but I can’t upload them. D thinks the cable that connects the camera to the computer is messed. We’ll have to find out, but we’re not going to tonight. There’s a snowstorm in town! The local school board has already cancelled school for tomorrow, so I have hopes that the university might close as well.

What was I going to show you? The snow on the tree in front of our front window and on the front walk. I’d been home for an hour and my footprints were gone. All in all, we are expecting at least a foot tonight, but since we’re close to the lake, that might be over 50cms.

I also have a picture of the sock I finished for D on the weekend. It’s from www.ramwools.com, the supersoxx surprise 4. It’s a self-striping blue and it turned out well. I found the missing bamboo needle that one of the 4 legged members of the household hid, so progress might be made tonight during House.

This weekend, I went to Ellicottville to go snowboarding with my family. It wasn’t the usual40 person raucous bunch – we were 9 including a friend of my youngest cousin. We stopped at a Walmart on the way home to get some peaches and creme yarn to make the Baby Kimono from Mason Dixon Knitting – but I only purchased one ball in each of 3 colours combos and the kimono needs 2 balls each. Anyone know how to get 1 ball each of Daisy Ombre, Faded Denim and Sea Mist in Canada? I did find one store and e-mail them, so we’ll see what happens.

I really love the log cabin bed sized blanket in the Mason-Dixon book, but that would be a significant project – maybe once I settle in a bit more and have fewer pregnant friends to knit for.

What else… I did a few more Kilometers last night one the bike. They don’t go as fast in the house as actually out on the road. I did another 30 minutes and I think it was only 10 kilometers. That’s going to take a long time to get around France. On the thesis front I had a talk with the department head today and he says to just get it done and in. It doesn’t have to be pretty.

OK, off to get ready to watch House. Wonder what’s going to happen tonight.

and she’s OFF!!

I did it – I finally started my attempt to bike the distance of the 2007 Tour de France last night. I did 12.2 kilometers on the trainer in the living room. I have attached photographic proof as well. There was a university cycling race on one of the new channels we get, so I biked along with them for a while. I’m very out of shape though, there was lots of concern in D’s face at a few points, he thought I was overdoing it.

According to the official 2007 Tour de France webpage, I’m done the 8 km prologue around London and I’m 4.2 kilometers from London heading towards Canterbury. I’ll have to find a more exact routemap somewhere and start marking it out with pins.

D just walked in and pointed out that I didn’t even cheat – my trainer has resistance that increases with the speed I travel, and my average speed wasn’t really low, so I really was pushing some resistance. On his, he could drop the resistance to nothing and fly through the kilometers.

Hopefully I can get set up in the basement for future rides as it was REALLY HOT in the living room. This picture was taken really early on – I lost a few more articles of clothing before I was done. Pardon the mess – funny how you don’t really notice it until it’s in a picture! I did crop lots of it out. The spray bottle was for D to deter kittens from entering the rear wheel while it was spinning.