A little imprecision.

When I regained my sight yesterday I plunged headlong into the impending disaster silk corset. Here (for the purposes of the “What the (*&^%$!!! was I thinking!!” blog post I will be writing at four in the morning one day next week when the corset is not working out exactly the way the Hindenberg didn’t) is exactlly what I was thinking.

1. I’m using a dk weight instead of a worsted weight. This is a smaller yarn. I am, therefore, following logic and using a 3.25mm needle instead of a 4mm needle. This should prevent knitting a “fishnet effect” corset for which I would need to purchase a much better bra or one of those “camisoles” my mother tells me so much about.

2. The smallest size in the corset is a 35 inch bust. I have a 35 inch bust. Oddly, this is a problem.

3. Since I am using smaller yarn and smaller needles, I believe (I am a simple person) that I will get a smaller corset, one smaller than my 35 inch bust.

4. Swatching could answer this question, but swatching leads to mathematics. Since I am unprepared to do the math that swatching gives me, there is no point in swatching. Besides, it’s not like it’s going to take a long time to figure out that I’m screwed. I like taking knitting chances.

5. I understand that this may mean that I am going to knit the top of this 4 times and that at least one of those times I will likely take to an excess of strong drink and say unkind things about the designer.

6. Let me apologize in advance to her, and admit fully that I understand that if I decide to screw up your pattern by using all the wrong stuff and refusing to engage in even a little swatching, and then it turns out to be a tent cozy or, conversely – a rippin’ new outfit for a beanie baby, that this is not your fault.

7. Having determined (while sober) that I have smaller yarn, smaller needles and should therefore be knitting a smaller corset, I decided to go up a size to the 38 inch chest. I believe that this makes a good bunch of sense but admit that it’s unscientific and imprecise.

Oh well.

What I did on my summer vacation: Part one

(Note: if you don’t give a crap about my summer vacation you can skip this and I’ll never know. Really.)

On my summer vacation, I rode my bike, together with my children and my buddy Ken…400 kilometres from Brockville Ontario to Montreal, Quebec. (Joe, while he is a big fan of the annual bike trip, is a bigger fan of not running a recording studio into bankruptcy, so he had to stay here and finish mixing the sound on a film.)

On my summer vacation, we started at Toronto’s Union Station, where we got on a trip to Brockville Ontario, our stopping place the last time that we rode eastward.

Unionstation-1

I learned that the girls, now that they are teenagers, sit down and discuss boys, lip gloss and cellphones every single time they are not moving.

I learned that you can really freak a trainload of people out if all of the adults in your party are simultaneously knitting.

Kentrain

Ken’s working on a Kid Silk Haze scarf. You’ll see it again, it was his only trip knitting. (We also learned that VIA coffee resembles coffee the way that apples resemble lemurs.)

Landing in Brockville, we learned a couple of things. A) The train station in Brockville is operated by two people on duty. B) If these two people have to unload 5 boxed up bikes from the train they will be bitter (even if you offer to help) and they will suggest that if you are ever going to do *this* to them again, you should phone first or something, because even though they are baggage handlers, and the bikes are the only baggage coming off of the whole train at that stop, and that it only took them about 8 minutes to manage, that they would really get more people on that shift to handle the five boxes.

We learned that the bathrooms at the city run “St. Laurence Park” campground are darned nice, pleasant to use and almost (almost being all you can ask for) arachnid free.

We also learned that the 72 km the next day from Brockville to Kemptville are beautiful….

Bytheroad

but long. Even pastoral serenity can wear on a girl…you know what I mean?

We learned that llamas (there was a duck there too…) and sheep

Llamasheep

are not as interested in a travelling sock as donkeys are.

Donkeys

I suppose it’s possible that something about me, maybe the way I was holding out a product of their shorn woolly comrades, may have made the llama and sheep feel threatened. Really though, they shouldn’t have worried. I didn’t have room on the bike to carry a fleece.)

The sock in question here is a new friend…meet knitting project A. This was selected for it’s ability to be knit without a pattern, chart or adequate light.

We rode over the Ottawa River to Kemptville

Ottawariver-1

home of Rideau River Provincial Park where Ken and I discovered that we had selected, randomly and over the internet, the absolute best campsite in the joint.

Rideauriver

That’s the view from tent-side. The Ottawa River at sunset.

Here, more knitting

Kenfrowns

though its starting to be plain that Ken doesn’t love Crack-silk Haze as much as I do. (I gave him the blue post-it note too….he still didn’t have a lot of fun with it.) It could be that he would like it better if he wasn’t sitting on a bike weary arse, but I didn’t think of asking him to stand at the time.

Shortly after that picture (about 2 cups of coffee later) we rode on to Manotick, and after a late lunch at the Swan on the Rideau

Attheswan

we rolled into my Uncle Tuppers yard. (The funny thing about stopping at the Swan was that I’ve always thought it was really fancy-schmancy. The restaurant sits there on the edge of the river, lit up at night, and I suppose I had always imagined it in this really romantic way. We were desperate, so we stopped and I thought we would be turned away for being scruffy, but it turns out it’s a pub. Just an ordinary pub. I was too hungry to be disappointed that we could get in, but it did sort of shatter an illusion to be sitting there. ) Tup and his lovely Susan live on Susan’s family farmhouse, and we all engaged in a two day break that looked like this

Tuppswim

Oh, wait…Meet knitting project number two, a pair of koigu socks in a lacy pattern, selected to provide colour, relief from the incredible monotony of knitting project number one, and still fit in a bike pannier. Pretty pretty. Right after this shot was taken, one of my knitting needles fell down this crack on the pool deck, and Tupp (who’s feet are featured above) crawled under the pool deck, and retrieved the needle from next to a wasp nest. I’m pretty fond of him.

When the kids weren’t in the pool, they were here…

Fieldofdreams

out in the back 40. Checking out frogs and other non-city critters and looking for snakes. By the way, meet knitting project number 3. It’s the Lotus Blossom shawl from yesterday’s ritual blinding (There were, by the way…massive, insane errors in every single row that I knit while blurry yesterday. I didn’t even purl across the backside without incident.) and now that I can read the label it’s Running Wild Yarn, two ply fingerling in the colour “brick“. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a yarn this much. It’s cormo, and is stretchy and bouncy and soft and wonderful and I really, really love it. If I get nothing else at Rhinebeck this year, I’ll be hunting this vendor.

Tomorrow…ever wondered what the Canadian Parliament looks like? The sock knows.