Thursday, January 28, 2010
In Progress: The Squirrel Sampler Mittens
Slowly but surely I have been making headway. I finally finished the outside of the mittens...
I am now working on the lining. I've chosen a very thin and colorful silk yarn for it. Essentially you pick up the cast-on stitches on the completed mitts and knit the lingin from there. I'm thinking these won't take quite as long as the fair isle exterior took...
I've also started the acorn adornments, although I will not attach them until I've completed the lining.
Posted by Dre at 9:15 AM
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Friday, January 22, 2010
Grey Silk Habu
I'd picked up this yarn last autumn when I was at the Cricket Cove in Black's Harbour, and I've been looking forward to using it. I settled on the Juno Regina stole from Knitty.com. It's a beautiful & affordable ($18 for 400 yards) silk laceweight yarn that has a lovely tweedy texture to it.
I had been waiting to finish some larger projects, but last night I decided to start it, even though I have plenty of other projects on the go...
Posted by Dre at 3:00 PM
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Monday, January 18, 2010
Weekend Update
I spent Friday evening and most of Saturday working on the redesign for this site. I got a lot done, but I still have the portfolio section to do. That section will be a fair amount of work. Perhaps I'll just put a "coming soon" note up until I've got it done. Not only do I want to do an overhaul of the layout of the portfolio, I seriously need to update the content, which is probably about 7 years old.
Saturday evening I headed out to Jay & Lisa's and enjoyed a lovely BBQ'd steak dinner. We watched Up and the first episode of Season 3 of the BBC Robin Hood (where I seriously wanted to take a pair of shears to Guy's hair - and I'm normally fond of longer hair on dudes). It's was the first time any of us had seen Up and I was glad to have finally had a chance to see it. It's not something I'd own though. I thought the parts that were touching were really well done, and there were some really cute/funny moments, but they did go too far over the top with the dogs that could fly planes. I'm sorry, but my suspension of disbelief will only go so far.
Sunday was a quiet day in. I cleaned my apartment, made stew, and then watched the Golden Globes. I normally don't like cleaning on weekends, but I'm hosting Book Club tonight. I'd picked Girl With A Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. It's only 250 pages and was a book I quite enjoyed. In 2003 they made a movie based on this book, starring Colin Firth and Scarlette Johanson. I've rented it so we can watch it. I wonder what people thought of it. I hope I can fit everyone in...
Posted by Dre at 7:55 AM
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Thursday, January 14, 2010
Plans to revamp this site
I've been meaning to update this for a while but it just hasn't seemed to bu much of a priority. Now that I've got a wee break from theatre, I will have the time to give this site a little bit of an update. I think I'm going to remove the photos pages (back when I built this you couldn't put photos in a blogger feed) and I desperately need to update my portfolio.
I spent the evening looking at Wordpress as an option but it just doesn't seem to be a good fit for me, so I will stick with the format that I do have...
Posted by Dre at 10:09 PM
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Retro Photo Time
Following a facebook trend of featuring retro profile pics this week, I dug out and scanned these oldies but goodies...
This first one here is from the late 1970's. Mom made my Wonder Woman costume and Dad carved the pumpkin. They both do excellent work. I loved the costume but hated the straps because I wanted to BE Lynda Carter.
Here we are in the early 1980's. I think it may have been 1983. We're on a trip to Center Island in Toronto. I've got the braided pigtails. I was a proud keener.
Fast-forward to high school graduation, 1990. Big hair and I had not yet dicovered the benefits of tweezing the brows. Good times.
Posted by Dre at 6:07 PM
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Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Bridgewater shawl
I had started this laceweight shawl back in October. I could work on the pleasingly repetitve garter stitch central squaree before bed and it went rather quickly. By Christmas, I decided to revisit it and wondered if I could finish it over the holidays. I wound up completing this the evening after I returned to work in January. the whole thing is almost 1800 yards and it took me around 130 hours to complete. I love it. It's light yet warm and I wear it at the office every day. Thanks to Jared Flood for this Elizabeth Zimmerman-inspired Shetland Shawl design!
I had to make a point of stopping home at lunch so that I could get a few photos of it with natural lighting...
Here's Grace, who managed to wrestle the shawl from my grasp and wrap herself in it...
Of course, Hunter needed to investigate as well...
The rest of these photos were taken by Mare at the Lily Lake Pavillion at Rockwood Park in Saint John (which is a great little pub/restaurant if you haven't been there yet.)
Posted by Dre at 8:07 PM
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Saturday, January 09, 2010
Starting Girasol - a large circular shawl
Mmmm... rust-coloured Malabrigo Sock yarn. I think the colorway is called Bottecelli Red. It's a 3ply (light fingering weight) yarn that's a delight to work with...
The pattern can be found at Brooklyn Tweed's blog
Posted by Dre at 9:01 PM
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Squirrel Sampler Mittens: a work in progress
Thanks to Mare for gifting this great pattern to me!
Squirrel Sampler Mittens pattern link
Posted by Dre at 8:57 PM
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Friday, January 01, 2010
Happy New Years!
It's a pleasantly quiet start to 2010. I don't know where the last decade went though. It seems like it just flew by.
I stage managed Crimes of the Heart, and went directly from that to acting in One Flew Over the Cockoo's Nest, had a foggy summer that somehow flew by, and then Stage Managed Jekyll & Hyde. I need a bit of a break from theatre now. I think I got a little burnt out after the last show. Its not easy doing the full-time day job and stage managing.
In 2009 I also gave World of Warcraft a try, and through it I was able to reconnect with a couple of friends who have moved away who play. I also made my wayy through a handfull of games for the xbox360, most recently DragonAge and Assassin's Creed 2.
I have been doing a lot of knitting. No doubt that will continue in the new year. There are a lot of projects that I want to get done.
Oh yeah - my community garden plot! That was a fun new project last summer. I've renewed the lease to my plot and am already thinking about what I'll plant in it next year. The radishes, snap peas, beets, lettuce and catnip were very successful so no doubt they'll be back. I'm not sure if I'll try tomatoes again, although I might give spaghetti squash another go. I love the smell of the freshly-tilled earth. Only 4 more months of cold weather to get through first.
I didn't get as much hiking done as I would have liked to this year. It's tough when you can only really do big hikes on the weekends, and I think we had rain almost every weekend last summer. At least I managed to get out for regular runs at the Irving Nature Park. What better way to get a little exercise than going for a jog along a trail on a cliff next to the ocean (with a high chance of seeing deer/fox/porcuipines)?
Anyway, here's to hoping 2010 will be a fantastic year for everyone!
Posted by Dre at 11:41 AM
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