Bigger than me little

16 years ago today something happened that changed my life permenantly. Nothing could ever make it go back to the way it was, and I would never wish that for all the riches (or yarn) in the world. I was three years old. My baby brother was born. For the longest time he thought that his birthday was actually Halloween because he always had his parties on Halloween, but really it's always been the day before. My first memory of him is of him screaming his head off while the nurse was giving him a bath. I was standing looking through the glass with my dad. He is no longer my baby brother, or even my little brother. At nearly 6 feet, he's my bigger-than-me-little brother. And he always will be.

ps. If anyone found the card that I made him please return it. It fell out of my knitting book on the TTC on Sunday evening. It's one piece of white paper, has a big 16 on the front, and pictures of Veronica Mars and Scarlett Johanssen in it.

I Knit in Public.

I knit in public. Partly because I like to knit. I like to knit every chance I get. Also, lectures can get boring. In order to not completely waste my parents money, and to not completely zone out all the time, I knit in class. I knit on the bus. I knit in restaurants. I knit during movies. I knit all the time. Because I knit all the time, I expect people to notice. I've got pointy sticks in string in my hands for godness sakes. I like it when people ask me about it. I like to hear people's stories. I like to change people's ideas about what knitting is. I do not like ignorance.

Today in class I was knitting. At break the guy next to me turned, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "So when are you going to knit me a sweater?" He said this in the kind of way that told me that he had zero clue about what knitting a sweater means. And he invaded my personal space. I mean, I have never seen this guy in my life before. These are the kinds of people who's ideas I want to change. These are also the types of questions that make me not want to take my needles out. I don't like it when people assume that knitting is really easy, lightening fast. That it could be done for everyone. I barely knit for anyone else, much less complete strangers.

But that's my gripe.

I'll still knit in public every single chance I get.

Braaaaaaaaainsssssssss.....

Yesterday was the zombie walk here in the good old T dot. I didn't think that I was going to participate, but I went to see Rufio do the Thriller dance. Then I realised that the route stopped about four blocks from my house, then what's a girl to do? I let my coat hand from one shoulder, pulled my hair over my face and drew lines all over my cheek with an eyeliner I happened to have in my purse. All that, a limp and a few groans and badaboom! Insta zombie. It pretty much rocked. Even better than that is that this coming Sunday the 29th, some people are going to try and set a Guiness Book of World Records for the most zombies doing the Thriller dance. If anyone is interested check out www.inessens.com for more info. They're still looking for a venue if you know of anything, let them know. I will be there. I will probably be knitting at some point! This is me from this past Sunday. The scarf I'm wearing is my mohair Branching Out scarf. I think I wear it everyday now.

I Stuck!

Despite having moved into residence in order to avoid being home all the time, I have slept at home at least one night a week every week so far this year. Bugger all. Some of it is for cast-y reasons, but mostly it's for family reasons. This weekend my cousins are visiting from Chicago, so I'm required. The house is full to bursting since my sister-cousin, Katie, is staying the weekend too. That means 5 kids between the ages of 19 and 4. My uncle Chris is an interesting character, yesterday was spent explaining how my knitting works. I refused to show him how it unravel it all.

My mom and aunt and I may go to the craftshow that is at the Metro Convention Centre this weekend. Maybe. I read Diana's blog though, and she wrote that there wasn't a lot of fiber stuff going on. So I don't know whether or not we'll make it...
Katie has been working on her scarf though, and it's really coming along. She keeps asking me to do a row here and there, but I told her that the only way to get it done was to keep going. She also told me that I knit too fast and that I should savour it. Pfft, I knit just as fast as I need too. Any slower and I would never get anything done! Plus going slow is for nerds. (and people just starting out, but they get faster, so they aren't nerds)

Oh, and I just found out that my roommates band, Pictures for Postcards, is playing at the Free Times Cafe on November 10th. I will most likely be there. My other friends band, Goodbye Parker, is playing at the Horseshoe Tavern on November 2nd. I will be knitting and rocking out at both... come say hello! In a bid for both band's awesomeness, Goodbye Parker has a song about Braveheart that absolutely rocks my socks, and Pictures for Postcards did a cover of Snakes on a Plane by Cobra Starship. Which I sang the chorus of when they played at Acoustic Night at the Absinthe Pub on Monday. Hehehehe, we rocked hardcore. And if they play Snakes at the Free Times then you would probably see me sing! So you really have to come.

I should start some music socks, that I only knit at band shows. I could do it.

Version 2.0 - now with opposable thumbs!

I now have a regualar thumb! I got my cast off on Tuesday, and now have a splint. I'm far from normal though, I have very limited movement, and it hurts to pick up a lot of stuff. But I'm still knitting, and that's the important thing.

On the weekend I took my cousin to Romni's to get her yarn for a project. She picked out pink and green and blue varigated yarn. I think that she's only going to work on it when she's at my house, which is cool. She's practically my little sister, so she's over a lot. Her family is also going through some interessting (and very complicated) changes, all of which she is in the middle of, so hopefully the knitting can really help.

Hey Ruthie, you got any avacados?

Today being Benny and Joon day, (so declared after having watched the movie on Sunday night) we made grilled cheese sandwhiches. With an iron. Yes, you are allowed to be a bit confused. It does work. The only dubious part about it was the cheese we used. The only convenience store on campus is a bit sadistic in their prices, so we picked our cheese on price alone. Which gave us lactose-free processed cheese. Unmelted it was like a nacho with out the chip, cheesey and crunchy. It had a grainy texture and tasted like cheese curds, which is fine, except that cheese curds aren't grainy. Our methods were as followed.
1. Aquire cheese and bread from General Store.
2. Take a nap while watching Power Rangers Ninja Storm on YouTube.
3. Go to Intervention training.
4. Rent an iron from the Porters station, that's right people, we used a public iron.
5. Doubt the integreaty of the sticky brown stuff on the iron.
6. After trying to scrub said sticky brown stuff off, decide that the heat will kill any germs and that we'll survive.
7. Butter one side of a bunch of pieces of bread.
8. Put the cheese on the side of the bread that has no butter. This involves putting the buttered side of the bread down on the counter of the communal kitchen.
9. Giggle for a bit and while getting the courage to actually apply the iron to the bread. We used a wool setting as recommended in the movie, however a cotton setting might have made things go a little more quickly.
10. Apply the iron directly to the buttered up side of the first piece of bread and let it sit for a bit.
11. Flip the sandwich over and repeat #10 to the other side until the cheese has melted.
12. Eat the grilled cheese.
13. Verdict: aside from the minor sketchy-ness of the cheese, which tastes much better melted, the grilled cheese is a complete success!
14. Repeat numbers 10 - 11 until there is no more bread or cheese.
15. Bring the stack of sandwiches to your friends and explain that the reason they are so flat is because you ironed them. Yep, ironed them.
16. Eat the grilled cheese with ketchup, which makes it taste even better.
17. Get kind of groosed out while afore mentioned friends decide that what would make the grilled cheese even better would be to add Marshmallow Fluff.
18. Get really grossed out when the Fluff and ketchup grilled cheese sandwiches are pronounced to taste like birthday cake. Note to self, never eat the cake.
19. Fall asleep on your friends bed.
20. Wake up when they threaten to put Fluff on you.
21. Write a blog post about it!

On the next Benny and Joon day we are going to eat Captin Crunch blended with peanut butter and milk, and tapioca with the raisons picked out. And maybe we'll even make mashed potato's with a tennis racket.

In the fights of life, essays will make you explode

More butt kicking going on over here chez Tricotastique, but there are sadly no pointy sticks involved. It's all essay-town over here. The second one is due this afternoon, and the prospect of not finishing in time is starting to loom ominously over my head. Very scary. But after that I will get to knit knit knit my heart out all evening. Clearly I will win.

I have gotten some knitting done, I turned the heel of a sock in a lecture yesterday. I'm using the stuff I dyed pink and blue stripey before I went to England. I'm using the undyed yarn for the toes, heels and cuffs because otherwise I don't think that I would have enough yarn. I should be okay right now though, just based on an eyeball guesstimate. They are only going to be little footies, very plain. Perfect for bringing to lectures!

The other day I went to the York bookstore to just stare at the knitting books, as I am in the habit of doing every once in a while. I picked up Wendy Knits, and started to flip through it. I didn't look very closely at the projects, so I have no idea what the book is like, but something else caught my eye. I'm not sure if it's every copy, but in the particular copy I was holding, there was a section of about 20 pages that had been bound in upside down! I giggled to myself for the publishers sillyness, and then put it back on the shelf. Very amusing.

Fair Isle kicked my butt.

I started a pair of Fair Isle leg warmers on Friday. I was getting bored of straight knitting, and have zero big projects to keep me interested right now. I restarted them on Saturday morning. By Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday I had a good 5 inches down, two inches of corugated ribbing in navy and white, and then three of navy background with white flecks. Then I asked my brother what pattern to do next. And he said diagonal stripes. So I added a third colour (purple) and knit an inch and a half. And then I tried it on. They look cool, but there is no way that that baby was fitting over my heel. So I ripped back to before the stripes. Last night I reknit using size 3mm instead of the 2.75 mm I had used for the rest. I managed to get it on, but I nearly ripped the thing apart in the process. So I got to thinking. I got to looking. I got to sketching. I got to erasing. I got to redesigning. I think I now have some real designs that will work, instead of figuring everything out by the seat of my pants like I usually do.

I'm itching to start, but I have these two very annoying essays due this week. Neither of which have been started very well. Bah, maybe they will be my reward for finishing bits. Come up with a thesis? Rip back what's already been knit. Write a page? Knit an inch. etc. Though, knowing me, I'd probably get distracted and just end up knitting the whole dang thing and not actually end up writing the stupid essay. Which would be bad. Grrr.....