Domestically Challenged

Vesper Sock Yarn

As I was getting ready to go for Brunch with Costin on Saturday, I noticed an email from Lettuce Knit in my inbox with the subject title: "Vesper Sock Yarn!".  I had to sit down.  Ever since I saw it on the midnight knitter's blog last April, I have coveted this yarn.  At one point, I was even considering buying it through kpixie even though the shipping fee, taxes and exchange rate would have made it quite the expensive skein.  I call LK right away.  It was busy even though they had only been open for 3 minutes.  On my third try, I got through.  I bought these two skeins over the phone and 2 hours later, when I went to pick them up, the Knit and Tonic colourway (the blue and green one) was completely sold out.  Knitting socks is just so HOT right now!

          

Ah, Montreal

I love Montreal.  Something about just being here can move me to moments of sheer decadence.  Maybe it's hearing all of the French that fools me into believing I'm in a foreign country, living as a doe-eyed, waifish, dark-haired French woman who consumes truffles and tea for lunch.

            

Well, I got the truffles and tea part down.  I spent my last afternoon in Montreal at the Camelia Sinensis Tea House in the Latin Quarter enjoying Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife.  I'm not big into romances, but this book is phenomenal.  Right now, I am Clare.

But when I wasn't caught up in my rich fantasy life, I was visit Amy who was in WeNous' production of Howard Zin's Ema.   Not only did she play Alexander Berkman, Ema Goldman's partner, but as part of the WeNous collective, she also wrote and directed the performance.  An interesting twist of WeNous' version was that every cast member also got to play Ema, including Amy.

            

I especially like this scene because Amy is wearing the Very Harlot Poncho I knit her.

Speaking of knitting, this sweater is intended for my niece to be who should be here any moment.  I used the Ribbon-Edge Cardigan pattern (sans ruban) from Debbie Bliss' Special Knits and FABLE yarn to knit the smallest size.  I think I only used 2 balls.  The yarn was like a dream.  Finding buttons though, was an absolute nightmare.  I managed to find these sweet ones in Montreal at Rix Rax.  Why doesn't Toronto have a good button store?

            

When Did You Become a Knitter?

I often post about sue's flirtation with knitting.  It all started with a dishcloth, which was closely followed by a few more and then by a whole family of dishcloths for her family.  Next, she was wild and knit an LL'ed inspired skinny scarf with yarn that she picked up herself, unassisted, at the scariest yarn store of all.  So then I did something I thought was harmless, I nonchalantly suggested that sue try to knit socks. She loves handknit socks.

A few days ago, sue emailed me about how she was contemplating buying the MDK book.  Sue’s first knitting book!  I was very encouraged.  So I emailed her back telling her I thought she should read the Harlot's new book because it really explains how to knit things conceptually...like socks.  A few emails later (sue and I email all day long), sue suggested we go to LK to get sock yarn...for HER. It was hard to hide my enthusiasm.

We picked out some Trekking XXL, sue fell in love with it when she saw the socks I knit for my sockapaloooza sock pal, and some dpns in a matching colour.

Sue worriedly asked me, “Does knitting socks make me a knitter?”. I think she was apprehensive that her knitting experience was not extensive enough for the moniker. I wasn’t sure what to tell her. When does one become a knitter? Is there a specific project or volume of knitting that needs to be accomplished as a right of passage?  I couldn't even remember what it was that made me consider myself a knitter.  It was unclear.

       

The next day, sue had knit a few centimeters and had her first knitting adventure. Sue had been following Ann’s progress on her Trekking XXL socks and learned that a dropped stitch with this yarn is very difficult to pick up.  Ann suggested having a very small crochet hook at the ready. Sue was very careful no to drop any stitches, but as she was about to start knitting on the next needle of the round, she realized she had pulled out the wrong needle and now had 20 live stitches.  20 LIVE stitches!  That's like 20 dropped stitches.  Sue does not have a very small crochet hook at the ready - she doesn't have a very small crochet hook period.  But sue is a very bright woman.  She went to retrieve her straight pins from the sewing room and wrestled each and every one of those tiny, tiny stitches back onto that needle.  When I heard her story, it became clear.  It isn't a specific project or amount of knitting that needs to be accomplished that makes one a knitter.  It's surviving a particularly devastating knitting disaster relatively unscathed and willing to pick up the needles again.  Welcome to the fold, sue!

Socks That Rock!

 

I'm sure you've all gotten the email by now, but Lettuce Knit just got a new shipment of Socks that Rock yesterday.  They have some great colours.  I showed great self restraint in only getting this one skein of waterlilies.  I may go back today and get another one.

The 6th Half

Last weekend, Costin and I drove up to Sudbury to run in the Sudbury Rocks Run for Diabetes weekend.  My sister Mary and I had been training for the last 16 weeks to run the half-marathon, our 6th half marathon to date. Costin, caught up in the running hype, spontaneously entered the 10K. 

The day of the race it was overcast and raining.  Luckily it was only a light rain and not unbearable to run in.  At the halfway point, I spotted my mom with her camera:

   

It is so nice to have a fan!!!  It really cheered me us up to see her there.

This was the first half were I felt comfortable the whole way through.  I don't even think I got any foot blisters, which is a miracle.  The last 1K was a steep downhill but my quads wouldn't cooperate.  It was here that a lot of people passed me but I just continued at my own pace.  I crossed the finish line after 2 hours and 30 seconds of running.  This is my second fastest time (the first fastest was in 2003 at the National Capital where Sue and I crossed at 1 hour and 59 minutes).

Costin also survived his race.  Why is it that men can just randomly run long distances without training?  As I was typing this, Costin said, "Not men...me!".

New Job? (Part 2)

I started my blog when I was working on my Masters.  I thought it would be a fun way to spice up my life, or at least to record for posterity my feelings toward graduate studies.  Now, I can't believe how busy my life is: full time job, new project in old lab, half-marathon on the weekend, planning le wedding, etc.  It's no wonder the blog's been slighted.  Let me catch you up a bit, starting with the denouement of the new job story:

At the interview they told me that they couldn't tell me when they would decide whether to give me the fellowship.  I took this as a bad sign.  Then, Tuesday, the very next day, I got an email from them with an outline of the draft work plan and a request to set up an informal phone interview the coming Friday.  I took this as a good sign.  Then Friday came along and I spoke with one of the members of the panel for an hour.  I thought like I sounded like a complete flake and felt like I totally blew the whole interview.  I may have even uttered something about wanting a career that works toward improving society.  I would have made Miss America proud.  The panel member told me that she would tell me either way early next week and as I hung up,  I definitely had a bad feeling about the entire thing.  I took this as a bad sign.

Tuesday, the following week, the same member of the panel called me back.  They wanted to offer me the fellowship.  WHAT?  I was ecstatic.  However, I didn't think it was a good idea to accept right away.  The member of the panel agreed and we thought it would be fair if I let them know by the end of the week. 

For four days I made a pros & cons list.  Costin was amazingly supportive, despite the fact that taking the job would mean that I would have to move to Ottawa, away from him, for 2 years.  But not only would I be moving away from him, but from my friends, my family, my neighbourhood.  However, I couldn't shake the feeling that if I stayed, I would just bob along in my little life, moving wherever Costin's career pulled us, and that the only defining characteristic of my identity would be that I was Costin's wife.  Don't get me wrong, I want to be Costin's wife, but that's not all I want to be.  So I'm Ottawa bound with my fingers crossed that everything will work out. 

             

This is the yarn I bought in Ottawa.  So far, I want the toes and heels to be yellow and the rest pink, but it's possible there will be some striping on the leg.  What is up with me and socks lately?

New Job? (part 1)

Last Monday, I started the day off in a cold sweat.  It was 1:30 am and I had woken up from a nightmare that the alarm had not gone off and I was so late, I was about to miss my flight.  The dream was so real that I was actually shocked when I realized I was in bed - moments before, I was trying to get a cab driver to get me to the airport from downtown in 10 minutes during rush hour.

Despite this ominous beginning, the day went very well. I woke up on time and using public transit, made it to the airport on time. I was very nervous though. I kept going over my presentation slides, convinced I had no idea what I was talking about. That's when the woman next to me on the plane started talking to me. Usually, I am pretty introverted when I'm nervous, but it turns out that this woman was also going for a job interview about developing policy, but in a different field. She was also looking at a director position and not a fellowship.  If I ever believed in Divine Intervention, it was then.  This woman completely put me at ease and gave me so many interviewing tips.  She also gave me a few questions to ask them at the end of the interview. The plane got to Ottawa on time and using public transit again, I got downtown in 20 minutes.  Using the map I had sketched the night before, even made it to the place of the interview on time.      

As soon as I arrived, I only had time to freshen up before the receptionist handed me a cup of coffee and whisked me off to the boardroom.  A panel of four greeted me and they were not as scary as I thought they would be. We joked around for a bit and then they started with the hard questions. At one point, they even started speaking to me in French. Luckily, I was as fluent as I claimed to be.  I wonder how many times people told them they could speak French, but when asked questions in French had their lie exposed.

Overall, I think the interview went very well.  I didn't even screw up my presentation.  Also, I got to finish with a bang.  I asked them one of the questions the woman on the plane gave me: "What is your vision for your organization over the next five years?" .  No one seemed to want to answer this question.  Finally, Guidelines Development Director fielded it and then the Chair.  They looked relieved when they had finished.  I think that the question looked good on me.

After the interview was over, I headed out in the rain to visit the Parliament buildings.

I have been a Canadian for 27 years and this was my first visit. Once inside, I knew why.  Politics are not very interesting to me and architecture can only hold my attention for so long.  Plus, most of the MPs were away at workshops, so there was no chance of me seeing Stephen.  So after about half an hour, I took myself out for a decadent lunch. During lunch, I estimated how long the walk would be from my current position to the yarn shop.  Normally, long walks don't bother me but it was raining and my interview shoes actually are not that comfortable. I decided to walk anyway with the idea that I would be learning more about the city I may be moving to.

   

Yarn Forward is located at the north end of the Glebe.  The women who run it were very nice and they had a lot of yarn.  I just wasn't interested in it.  Something drew me to the sock yarn.  I ended up getting three balls.  Even after this happened, I am still in denial that I like knitting socks.

After some stash enhancement, I walked around the Glebe and pretended I live there.  I visited the bookstore, three different coffee shops and the pharmacy to get bandaids for my foot blisters.  It wasn't too long before it was time to go back. 

At the airport, I tried checking in using the kiosk but it wouldn't recognize my confirmation number.  Luckily there wasn't a line up and I approached on the clerks for assistance.

"Last name, please."

"Guy.  I am on the 8 o'clock to Toronto."

"You were on the 7 o'clock."

WHAT!  I have never missed a flight in my life.  I think I was in shock, but it was nothing compared to how I felt after she told me it would cost me $160 to get on the 8 pm flight.  I don't even think my original ticket cost that much.  She only took credit cards so she sent me and my debit card to the ticket counter to sort it out.  There was a short line, which gave me enough time to call the bank and ensure that I did have $160 in my bank account. After I explained my story to the woman at the ticket counter, she told me there would be a service fee to make the change. 

"That will be $32."

I'm not sure what happened to the other $128, but I wasn't about to ask.  I was fine with $32.  Ecstatic even.