Gung Hei Fat Choy

This weekend - there was eating (lots of it), shopping, and quilting.

There were a few sales that I went to this weekend. A local fabric shop was advertising a new stock of bamboo fabrics. I was curious to see what they had. I've read that bamboo keeps the body cool and wicks more moisture than cotton. Hubby is an avid cyclist and I thought I could make him a jersey to wear. But the bamboo fabrics were all woven and looked too dressy. I did pick up some silk thread for an applique quilt that I poke at once in awhile.

Hubby and I went to the Sandbar Restaurant for our 'eat out' Valentine's dinner on Sat. I highly recommend it. The food was great. Hubby ordered har gow (chinese shrimp dumplings) as an appetizer followed by wild sockeye salmon and grilled jumbo prawns with asparagus and risotto. I had the carmelized onion & feta flat bread and the ultimate tapas platter. The platter was huge (I knew it would be). There were spring rolls, wok squid, riblets, crab cakes, and pork dumplings. Yum! I couldn't eat it all by myself but there wasn't a single crumb left when the waitress came by to take our plates. We shared the apple crumble a la mode for dessert.

On Sunday, I was scheduled to go to a birthday party but I had managed to get myself double booked. So I sent hubby to the party and I went to my quilting gig. I helped make a raffle quilt to raise funds for the Burnaby Children's Hospital Fund. The quilt is wonderfully scrappy and I had lots of fun giggling with the girls. We only managed to make the 30 blocks. There is some machine applique that needs to be done, the blocks need to be trimmed and sewn together, and borders added. We're getting together again in April to finish the top. I'll take pictures when it's done. There was one major fatality. Adrienne managed to sew her finger. Not a little nick but right through her finger nail. EWWWWWWWW! Lucky for me that I was somewhere else cutting fabric. I don't handle blood/gore very well. She was such a trooper, tho. She was bandaged up, someone made her some strong tea, and shortly afterwards, she was sewing away with the rest of us. If it was me, I would've been a babbling idiot and crying for someone to drive me home.

Yesterday night, hubby and I went to my parents' house for Chinese New Year supper. I was expecting duck but there was none. My Dad's very picky about ducks and apparently, the local shop switched cooks and the duck isn't the same as before. So no duck. Boo hoo. No worries as there was lots of other good food. My Dad is a top notch cook (he's cooked professionally, ya know) so we're never disappointed. We were so full that there wasn't any room for dessert. And yes, I did get a red envelope (eventhough, I'm too old and married).

(Sorry about the picture quality. We left the camera at home so this is the best I could do with my cell phone's camera).



My Mom is a sock knitter! This is her sock. She knit the first sock with my supervision. She knit the second one (that's the one in the picture) by herself. She started a third sock with the leftover yarn but ran out partway up the leg. She decided that she didn't like sock #1 (gauge was too loose, mistakes in the short rowing, etc.) so she frog'd it and is reknitting it. I gave her more sock yarn to knit with and I'm buying more for her. Dad's getting a pair of handknit socks eventhough, he doesn't want any. Hee hee.

I got a tiny bit of knitting done this weekend but I got a lot done today. I'm still working exclusively on my test knit piece. I should be able to blog about it/post pictures as soon as the pattern's published!

ETA: ybtb is having a sale - 20% off basics; yoo hoo, Gladys...

You are evil

Dear Yarn Enabler (aka co-blogger),

You are pure evil. What are you trying to do to my wallet/credit cards? Don't I already owe you money for a KP order? You're going to force me to get a job so that I can afford to keep up with your yarn shopping habit. I already work for fabric and yarn and now I have to work for money. Yeesh.

Lack of funds didn't stop me from checking out the website, tho.

That Sea Wool looks very intriguing. What colour are you thinking of?

I see this place sells CTH potluck... Hmmm... I can't seem to find CTH anywhere else in Canada. And they've got some very pretty colours.

And they have Schaefer Anne... That I can resist since I already have some in my stash.

The Wensleydale looks tempting. It's Wallace's favourite cheese. And his dog, Gromit knits so I might have to get some of that yarn. Too bad there aren't many colours to choose from.

And don't order anything until after Sunday. I assume you'll be at Megan's party. I'll be dropping off her bday present and if I see you, I'll give you your present, too.

I'll post formal bday wishes on the actual day. In the meantime, Happy Shopping!

Regards,
Dotty

PS. Test knitting is going well. I found a bunch of errors in the pattern but I was able to correct them and keep knitting.

Birthday shopping

Hi Dotty,

It's my birthday next week, and it's the big one, so I'm treating myself to a bit of a yarn shopping binge.

That's when I found Red Bird Knits, which is a Canadian online yarn store. Even better: on your birthday, they give you 10% off and free shipping!

And to put the cherry on top, they've got the new Handmaiden SeaWool. The price is a bit of an ouch, at $27, but it is my birthday, and 10% off makes it $25.

But of course, a few other things have fallen into my cart accidentally. The store also carries Tiny Toes Interlacements (recently raved-about on Lime & Violet). And it has tons of other beautiful sock and lace yarn.

It's a few more days to my birthday, so I'll probably keep adding and deleting from my cart for a while. Let me know if you'd like anything!

Yarnival!

You've got to read the latest issue of Yarnival. As usual, it's packed with must-read blog posts and thoughts about knitting.

My knitting: almost finished my purple and red knitpicks socks — should be done sometime tonight, probably during Survivor. ;-)

Next up will be another pair in Austermann Step, a gift for my sister-in-law. Then I might try a sweater or a skirt, we'll see what comes out of the stash pile for swatching.

bits and bobs

Nothing cohesive today. My brain's still in a bit of a blur from last weekend.

1. I delivered the second sample sock to 3bf. The Tofutsies are selling very quickly.

2. I have been commissioned to test-knit a new Sivia Harding (the Sivia!) pattern. Until the pattern's published, I won't be able to show pictures. I can probably tell you what yarn I'm using - Indigo Moon's 2 ply merino wool.

3. Felicia's taking time off from work-work and dyeing yarn. She'll be gone 6-12 months! Double EEP! I only have 4 skeins of her sock yarn - certainly not enough to last me 6 months much less a year. There's only a few skeins left at 3bf but they're expecting more soon. I hope I'm one of the lucky ones to get my hands on some.

4. Felicia's also de-stashing. So keep your eyes glued to her blog. Oh and leave some for me.

5. I started my last boring ho-hum stockinette sock - it's the mate for my very first Tofutsies. I got a lot done while watching MI3 yesterday night. I hope to finish it soon so that I can start the test knitting.

6. I worked on my Night Weave quilt a little. I cranked out 8 more blocks. And I was lucky enough not to make any mistakes this time. Did I tell you that all the seams need to be pressed open? I Hate Pressing Seams Open.

I think that's it... I need to make some choux pastry for a luncheon tomorrow. Plus I need to get my Valentine butt in gear. I promised DH a gourmet supper - crab stuffed portobello mushrooms, bacon-wrapped scallops, pasta in white wine sauce, and a chocolate fondue with strawberries for dessert. Hey - I think I just gained 5lbs typing that out.

Happy Valentine's!

New Year knitting resolution

(Ok - I know it's Feb so I'm a little late. But Chinese New Year is Sat and I am Chinese so it counts.)

I haven't been knitting socks for very long. Sure, I owned sock needles and I even had a beaten up ball of Patons Kroy that I'd reknit a bazillion times. My friend (and co-blogger) gave me "Knitting on the Road" by Nancy Bush for my birthday last summer and it still didn't jumpstart my sock knitting.

I don't know what did. Perhaps, it was Socktoberfest or maybe I was finally tired of making scarves and mittens and I wanted other small projects to work on. In any case, I wanted to knit sox.

In Sept, I did some research and selected Wendy's Generic Toe-Up pattern (I like the idea of never running out of yarn before the foot's done). I ripped out the Kroy sock and tried again. I gave up fairly quickly because there were a million breaks in the yarn. I dug around in the stash and found the DG Confetti that I'd bought at Fibrefest International. In about a week, I had knit a complete pair of socks. These were gifted to a friend (hey, Pauline!).

And I haven't been able to stop. Twelve pairs (two pairs for my hubby's size 13 feet) and 3 singles later, I am addicted... With the exception of one single sock, all other socks are plain, boring, ho-hum stockinette. That leads me to my resolution... I want to knit non-plain stockinette socks. I want lacy, cable-y, interesting socks. My New Year resolution is (drumroll please) to knit non-stockinette socks. Pretty boring resolution, eh? I am going to try to knit all the socks that I like from Knitting on the Road - Canal Du Midi, Conwy, Dalarna, Denmark, Friday Harbor, New England, Spey Valley, Traveler's Stockings, Unst, and Whitby. I also have the book - "Knitting Vintage Socks" (also by Nancy Bush) so I may knit socks from there, too. We'll see how it goes.

Here is a picture of my second-to-last plain stockinette sock (I finished it today):

This sock was really annoying to knit - it pooled worse than the first one. There are sections where the colour repeats changed making it look like I had knit the sock from 3 different balls of yarn. The worst thing is that it doesn't match the first one at all. Sigh...

Cat picture of the day

We have a big sofa (almost 4ft deep, over 8 ft long, and big enough for my 6'4" husband). The back cushions are not attached and they're also down filled so they can be moulded to your body. Phoebe loves to sleep on top of the back cushions because there's enough softness to cradle her body but it's not so soft that she feels tippy. This is what stared back at me when I turned my head to the left:

Isn't she special? She looks mad because I wouldn't let her crawl into my lap. I was using the laptop and she tends to step on the touch pad/mouse buttons and mess things up. Maybe one day, I'll let her co-author a blog entry.

quilting without a brain

I am exhausted. The mystery quilt really wore me out. It was cloudy and yucky today so I didn't get a chance to take a better picture of the quilt top. There are pictures of other mystery quilts posted to the flickr site now.



The Night Weave quilt class was great. Stressful but lots of fun. I made so many mistakes. I had to make the same block 3 times before I got it right. And the technique is not forgiving. If you cut it wrong, the pieces are garbage. They cannot be reused anywhere in the quilt top. I currently have 3 boo-boo blocks that will be placed on the back of the quilt as a reminder that I need high functioning brain cells to work on this type of quilt. And everything has to be precise. I am definitely not used to being precise. I spend a lot of time fudging seams when I quilt but you can't do that with this one. What did I get myself into?

And here's the bad cat picture of the day. Ricky sticking his nose where it doesn't belong (from left to right: 2 skeins of Indigo Moon yarn, Tofutsies sock, and Malabrigo neck warmer).