Monday, October 30, 2006

Socktober delusion

So I'm on the train on Thursday talking to me new knitting buddy (salut Marie-Michele!) about the beautiful broadripples she's making and thinking I should find some yarn and join Soctoberfest.

She looked at me like I was crazy and said: "It's October 26!"



Okay, that was a crazy thought I had. Though in my typical delusion I actually found some stash sock yarn (which admitedly wasn't very hard...I've got enough sock yarn to make a dozen pairs!) and cast on.

Well knit as I might, I don't think I can humanly knit a sock tomorrow night but you know, it's not "Sockstober"... it's very clearly a singular affair and the loophole is built right into the name ;0)

And I think I can finish a sock for socktober...

PS - did you notice how my purple needles match my sockyarn? I can't tell you how much pleasure I derive from this. Must. Get. More. Colours.

And the baby is...

I had my first ultrasound on Friday afternoon and was very eager to find out if we are expecting a pink or a blue. Let me put this in the proper context for you...

I didn't really have a preference for either a boy or a girl because Stephen and I know there will be more kids in our clan no matter what (aka, more opportunites to give Julian a little sister or a brother to round out the family ;0) Though I really wanted to know because you see, my mother is a fortune-teller. She doesn't do it for a living or for anyone outside the family for that matter, but every once in a while she'll predict something that just happens to come true. Now that doesn't sound like much, in fact I don't really believe in that stuff either, but something got me wondering about two years ago...

Stephen and I had been married for about 6 months and decided to start a family (we just couldn't wait ;0) We tried for a few months to no avail and each time, we were both crushed. It was just so disappointing that it wasn't happening and I was already starting to worry that it just might not happen for us and my mother told me not to worry, that I was going to get pregnant on October 17th. I thought she was bonkers as usual because come on! What a weird, and precise, thing to say! Well guess what happened? I got pregnant with Julian on October 17!!! And that totally freaked me out. You mean my mom could be right about some of this stuff she predicts? Really freaky!

Especially since she predicted Stephen and I would have 6 children: five little boys followed at last by a little girl! Now we want a large family but let's be realistic, when we say that in this day and age, we mean 3 or 4...not 6! And 5 boys? Talk about scary! So when Julian turned out to be a boy, we were still laughing about it but deep down we were both thinking OMG, what if she's right about it all? Well she hasn't been wrong yet...


We're expecting another blue!

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

He really doesn't like to paint!

No you're not losing it. This post is dated October 17 because that's when the story happened. I actually posted it on October 30. Sneaky, eh?

When we moved into our house, we thought we could paint the whole thing in just 4 days! Okay, now we know that sounds crazy, but we were young and green then. We did give it an honest try though...painting through the nights, sniffing paint fumes, and listening to The Ventures CD on repeat f-o-r-e-v-e-r !

Sure they're lovely memories but we still can't listen to The Ventures! And anytime I mention we should paint something, my husband gets that look in his eye. So when I mentioned that I thought our living room was too dark and that we should consider either repainting in a lighter colour or buying a new sofa in a lighter colour, daddy didn't even hesistate! Okay he did but for like 5 minutes and then we were all in the car on our way to the sofa showroom ;0)

Our old living room furniture...


Our new daddy-really-really-really-doesn't-want-to-paint-again-sofa...


Good to know ;0)

Oh, and Julian approves too...

Thank you daddy!!!

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Happy late blogiversary to me!

Yesterday was my very first blogiversary...and I totally missed it! To celebrate, I thought I'd republish my very first post about how I learned to knit. Enjoy ;0)

{Hello World, October 3rd, 2005}

My mother was one of 24 chidren. Yup! No really! My grand-parents were farmers in rural Quebec and being good Catholics in the 1930s and '40s had a child every year they could. My grand-father passed away when I was 3, but my grand-mother lived to be 84 years old.

She spent the long Quebec winters in Rimouski with one of my uncles and his wife but in the summer she would pack her bags, her knitting needles and her yarn and travel down the St-Lawrence River to Montreal where she would visit with all her children and grand-children and great-grand-children. She would spend about a week at each of her childrens' homes and knit mittens and socks and slippers for everyone in that family and then moved on.

During one of those visits, she taught me to "tricoter a l'endroit" (knit) and "tricoter a l'envers" (purl) with some scrap yarns. (Did I mention she was french? In fact my whole family is...I'm the anomaly. More on that later, but now back to my knitting debut. ) My grandma would watch me knit and every once in a while, she would have to put down her mittens in progress and try to figure out where I went wrong. Somehow, I always ended up with too many stitches (which is weird because now I always seem to be loosing stitches!). Anyway, I would make a little square, get bored and go draw or play house instead.

My grandmother passed when I was a teen and it wasn't until my early twenties that I got the knitting bug from a Martha Stewart Baby magazine. I got myself some needles and cotton yarn and knit the garter stitch baby sweater. It was pretty much a bunch of rectangles seamed together into a buttonless cardigan but it looked pretty good. I made one for my nephew and put the needles away for another couple of years. I was working full-time and finishing my bachelor's degree on a full-time basis as well and just didn't have time for knitting. Textbooks occupied my commuting time.

I got married last year and moved to a new house in the suburbs. One of the implications was a 1h30 minute train ride each way to and from work and since I graduated and don't have any more required reading...I picked up one of Debbie Bliss' learn to knit books and the rest is history. The addiction began. I was encouraged by all the knitting blogs out there and now that I am at home on maternity leave with my 3 month old son, I have both the time to knit and a growing model for all those very cute and very quick knit baby sweaters and booties.

So expect to see a lot of baby knits 'cause he's always growing out of something...

Cheers!

{The continuation}

Of course Julian is now 15 months old and history is about to repeat itself as I am expecting my second child...so expect to see more baby knits in the future too ;0)

One of the things that really solidified my knitting career was that the week after our wedding, Stephen's job took him to Indiannapolis Mondays through Thursdays for 6 months! Here I was in a new house on an undeveloped street (basically, the woods!) far, far away from anything without cable or satellite which left me incredibly bored in the evenings!

Knitting really helped me get through this time. It was fun. It busied my commute and my evenings. And I keep such a good memory of that time even though I was seperated from my newlywed. All those nights spent bundled up on Stephen's side of the bed, wearing his woolies, listening to AM talk radio on our clock radio and trying to figure out different knitting techniques while I waited for our nightly call.

That's when knitting became more than a past-time for me. It became a part of who I am. So I'll always be a little grateful for those long lonely months ;0)