A taste of summer

So yesterday, in an attempt to not only have a virtual life but a real one, your local harlot packed herself off to Bloor West village. I walked. I walked because it was 19 degrees. That’s 66 F. 66, in Toronto in January. It’s an all time high for not only that date in January…but any date in January. Creeped out yet? Yesterday you couldn’t skate in Moscow. It was too warm. The warmest ever. I have one thing to say.

Get out of your car. Go get your bike, or get on the bus. Take the one tonne challenge and put down the aerosol can. Thank you. Just to freak everybody a little more and make it just like The Day After Tomorrow where the vortex of cold comes down out of the sky all of a sudden and turns those people into ice sculptures?… Today is -14 with the windchill. I repeat. Get out of your car.

So I walked to the village, and went to a local coffee shop and I took out my knitting and waited for my lunch date. When she walked in, I knew that we were going to have a wonderful time. We matched. We were both wearing the Toronto birth attendant uniform of Blundstones, handknit socks, random no-logo tee shirt and black cardie, with a coat from MEC. We had the same hair going on, and both carried backpacks. Having recognized each other, we assumed the position.

Alison

It’s Alison of the comments! (Psst, Norma? Jealous?) We spent way too long drinking coffee, way too long talking about knitting, and Alison has accepted the blame for depriving you of a blog yesterday. (It’s not really her fault…but she’s nice enough to suck it up.) She’s also nice enough to contribute this to the draw.

Lm

Somebody can kiss their life goodbye when they get that. Don’t even try to care about anything else when the Latvian Mittens come into your life. You will care nothing for your other knitting. You may dabble in other things…but you will always come back to the mittens. Proof?

Msfthumb

The MSF mittens and I found it impossible to go on without each other. I relented and gave it a thumb.

In other news, this roving

Snaproving

became these singles,

Tencelsingle

which became this yarn

Pinktencel

which became this “taste of summer” hat for this girl who is definitely pretty in pink.

Pinp

I’m working toward letting go of my pink bias. I planted the snapdragons in the garden that match this hat, and I didn’t think they were too girlie did I? No, I did not. Therefore, in an attempt to trick myself into not experiencing any sort of negative reaction to the girlie pinkness of the hat, we shall refer to it as “the snapdragon hat”.

(note: No pattern, just a head measurement, my gauge and my basic hat rules)

Finally, a thank you for my buddy Sinead. You don’t know her…but you should. I’m up against a deadline that is giving me the willies, and last night when I complained about the difficulty of the deadline, Sinead brought this;

Rescue

Red wine, free trade coffee and chocolate truffles. I don’t know what it says about me that I think any project that would take more comfort and fortitude than this trio provides is a crisis simply too horrible to think about.