Plus One

So, it's been awhile huh?  But my absence from my blog is not without merit :)  Some time after I got back from my vacation in April I found out I was expecting a little one :D  That's right - my family is about to add a plus one!

Unfortunately one of the side effects of pregnancy is baby brain - my brain has been absolute mush over the past few months.  Early on in my pregnancy baby brain really took a toll on me - so much so that I could not knit for the life of me!  My friend had twins back in August and I attempted to knit them gifts 3 times (the 3rd time was a charm!).  It was absolutely ridiculous!  I found I couldn't follow patterns properly, and I kept making mistakes!  It was horrible!  But since then I've gotten my knitting groove back and I'm well on my way :D  That is, until the carpel tunnel sets it - I'm not looking forward to that!

Over the past few months I was able to knit my little one a baby blanket, and as I mentioned previously, some baby gifts :)  My sister-in-law also had a little baby boy in August and I really wanted to knit him a hat to keep his little noggin warm during the winter months.  I found this cute Aviatrix hat pattern on Ravelry and fell in love with it.  The pattern looks hard, but once I got going it was actually not too bad!  I used Debbie Bliss Cashmerino yarn.

I loved knitting this hat so much I made it for my friend's twin girls.  And I also plan to knit one for my little one too :D

Knitting on a Plane

As the hubby and I are slowly preparing to embark on our next adventure, of course I have to wonder - can I take my knitting with me on the plane?  Knitting is a perfect time-killer for me and it makes definitely makes time fly by faster.  But the biggest question is - can I take knitting needles on a plane?

I've been doing some research, and on the TSA website, it says knitting needles are allowed on flights, but cutters are not allowed.  But it fails to describe of what type of needles are allowed (circulars, metal vs. bamboo vs. plastic...).  And this applies to American destinations only. 

Now this is purely based on my own personal experience, and it may depend on which airport you fly out of, which airline you fly with or where you are flying to.  Or even which security guard you get.  I usually fly out of Toronto Pearson and I've never had a problem with my wood/bamboo 3/4mm DPNs.  I've also flown out of various American cities, Paris and Lima with my needles in tow without any issues.  But this time around, I want to take the socks I've been working on with me on my flight.  Because I've been knitting using the magic-loop method, the circulars I've been using are quite long, and they're metal.

I've read a few websites and I haven't heard anyone having major issues with circulars.  Some say keep the circulars to less than 30" and make sure they are not metal.  Others say to bring with you a self addressed envelope with postage so that you can ship your project back to yourself just in case you get turned away from security.  And always have your project started before your trip!

So now I'm debating whether I should bring my long-ass 2mm circulars - if they get confiscated I don't know what I'll do! 

... I'll risk it.  Stay tuned for what happens :D

TtV-ing

I finally got a chance to give TtV photography a go! 

I had the hubby build a contraption that blocked the light between my DSLR lens and the TLR viewfinder.  I was going to build it, being the engineer that I am, but I know how much my hubs likes building stuff - so I had him build it :)  The viewfinder is located at the top of the camrea, so I have to shoot downwards with my DSLR, meaning he had to build a tunnel-like contraption up from the viewfinder.  And this is what he came up with:

He built it out of some black foam board he got from work.  Right now it's held together with elastics -  a bit dodgy looking but it serves its' purpose!  He was going to tape it up, but if he did that I wouldn't be able to remove the camera.  I guess I'm not planning to the TLR for anything else huh?  I wonder if I can make a collapsable one so I can take it with me on trips. hm... :)

Here are a few TtV photos I took:

I'm loving it so far!  I can't wait to go outside and start taking photos :D

Hobby Hopping

In my last post, I mentioned that you need to try new things in order to find hobbies that you enjoy.  This week has been that sort of week :)  I've begun my adventure into 3 new hobbies that all have the potential to become my next big obsession! 

TtV Photography

I did mentioned TtV (through-the-viewfinder) photography in my last post - I finally got the TLR (Twin Lens Reflex) camera.  Introducing my new baby: the Argus Argoflex Seventy-Five.

*loves* I can't wait to give TtV a go!

Crocheting

My crocheting adventure began on Wednesday night, when I attempted to learn how to crochet via YouTube vids and how-to websites.  It might have been the yarn was I was using, or my lack of understanding of the instructions but it did not go well at all!  That's when I threw up my arms and said "I give up", tossed the needles aside and vegged on the couch. 

On Thursday night I had a wicked case of insomnia.  I went to bed around 12am, woke up at 3am and couldn't go back to sleep.  After tossing and turning for 2 hours (my poor hubby!  I'm sure I woke him up a few times) I finally got out of bed and headed downstairs and decided to give crocheting another shot.  This time I was successful :)  I got the basics stitch I think - I've been just making small squares with my left-over yarn from my wrist warmers.  I figure I can stitch the squares together later and make a blanket or something!

Cake Decorating

My friends Steph and Jenn approached me last week about taking a cake decorating class with them.  I've taken a cupcake decorating class before at a local grocery store, and I was horrible at it!  But I thought what the heck - the class was 50% off and it would be a great to do something fun with my friends :)  Here's the thing though - although the class is 50%, all the materials that are needed for the class are crazy expensive!  Luckily Ed took the class before and has a crapload of cake decorating stuff, so she's letting me borrow her tools :)  I figure if I end up liking it I'll buy my own stuff. 

So the first class we were told to bring 6 cookies to decorate for our first class.  Saturday night Jenn and Steph both came over to have a mini baking party.  We made a simple Empire cookie (it's a cross between a shortbread and sugar cookie).  We decided to make big cookies because we thought the more decorating surface area, the better (makes sense right?).  I'm guessing the lack of sleep from Thursday night was still lingering because I ended up throwing enough butter into the mixing bowl for 2 batches of cookies instead of 1.  *slaps forehead* so we ended up making like 30 big cookies! LoL! 

We get to our class today and most of the time was us just watching the instructor.  It was only the last 15 minutes where we were decorating - so in reality we only really needed to make 3 cookies each because that's all we had time to decorate!  And on top of that, our instructor took one look at our cookies and said "omg those are huge!" - meaning we didn't need to make huge-ass cookies.  LoL oh too funny!

So here's one of my decorated cookies.  meh... it's not very good... we'll see how it goes next week! haha

  

One Year...

It has been one year since we lost our beloved family dog Pepper.  Some days I still can't believe he's gone.  It still makes me really sad knowing he's no long with us, but so glad that I got to spend 13 wonderful years getting to know and love the cutest Cavalier King Charles Spaniel I've ever laid eyes on.  He was the most friendliest and loving dog - we often joked around that Pepper made the world's worst guard dog, and would probably welcome intruders instead of deter them.  He was also born on Valentines day, which is so suiting for such a loveable dog.  

I miss you every day Pepper - and you'll always have a special place in my heart.

Apparently I'm Interesting

Thank goodness for long weekends!  Finally one has come around :)  Ever since the new year started the weekends have felt short, and I can only assume it is because they have all been so busy!  With family functions for Chinese New Year, seeing friends, celebrating the hubby's birthday and baby showers, I am just tired and I want to veg out and spend some time on me - and that means catching up on my blog!

So for Valentines day I got roses :)  There's a bit of a story with these roses and it does invovle making fun of my hubby.  Before I got married I remember having a conversation with my dad on Valentines day.  On that particular Valentines day, Jimmy had gotten me a beautiful bouquet of roses from a florist.  My dad laughed and told me to wait until we got married - married guys buy their flowers from a grocery story.  Apparently that day my dad went out to a local grocery store to buy my mom flowers and was greeted by a line of other married men buying their wives flowers.  So flash forward to present day - guess where my flowers were from? :D  But you know what?  Flowers are flowers, and they were beautiful!

So yesterday my friends and I ventured downtown to check out the Canadian International Auto Show at the Metro Toronto Convention Center.  I really wanted to go because I wanted to check out a car that I had worked on back when I worked in the automotive industry.  I had worked on some of the parts on the interior dash and was really eager to see how it turned out :)  And the Auto Show was a great opportunity to take my Nikon baby out.  My friends Ed and Jay recently started a small little photography club and this was our little photography outting.  I have to admit, I wasn't quite inspired yesterday to take photos - maybe it was the crowd :s  But regardless, I think I got some pretty good shots.  I especially enjoyed looking at the vintage cars :)  Man I'm on a vintage kick recently!  A few days ago I just bought myself a vintage Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) camera - more about that on that another day!! :D 

So the other day I was talking with my coworker and she called me an "interesting person" because I appear to have so many hobbies that I am involved with.  When she said this it made me reflect on how far I've come in terms of developing interests that I enjoy and is actually good at.  A few years ago I really didn't have any hobbies or interests - and this made me extremely sad.  I knew I had travelling as a hobby, but it wasn't something I could do all the time (or afford - especially to the places I like to travel to!)  I struggled to understand why it didn't appear as if I was good at anything.  Fast forward a few years and I can't get enough of my hobbies :)  I still travel - we still go on at least one big adventure/trip a year, but now I have photography to compliment the travel, and the knitting to pass the remaining 11 months out of the year I'm not travelling :)  The key is to try different things to find out what you enjoy.  And I do credit Ed for helping me expand on my interests.  It's definitely fun when you have someone to share your interests with!

My Etsy have still been lagging lately :(  But now I have time to do what I have been missing most - knitting socks!  Boy I'm VERY rusty!  Im knitting a pair of socks that have a bit of a lace pattern and I keep screwing it up!  And because I'm knitting witht the magic loop method the screw-ups took me forever to fix!  I think I've restarted these pair of socks 3 times already :S  But I'm getting the hang of it again, and I have to count my stitches after each lace row just to make sure I didn't screw up!  So here's my progress so far... :D

     

Scaring Myself Silly

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!  If you thought you gained weight during Christmas, try being Chinese during CNY!  Oh boy!

It's kinda late right now, but I'm waiting for the hubby to get back home and believe it or not, I'm actually tired of knitting right now! haha!  I spent the night knitting a replacement pair of mitts I gave to my best friend Ri as a gift :)  She came over on the Sunday after we took a trip downtown with my sister to try on the wedding dress she bought last October (yes, my baby sis is getting married!!!). 

The hubby was out celebrating his upcoming birthday with his coworkers, so I had the evening to myself.  So what did I do?  I watched ghost hunter shows all night and scared myself shitless :S  I don't think a lot of people know this about me, but I LOVE watching ghost hunter shows.  I can't watch horror movies, but something about finding evidence of paranormal activity is fascinating to me.  It must appeal to the science geek in me I guess :)  So my absolutely most favorite ghost hunter show is Ghost Adventures - they don't show it in Canada so I have to find other ways to watch the show.  After watching that show, all the other ghost hunters shows seem too tame and drab.  Anyway, I watched 4 episodes in a row - I don't recommend doing that if you're alone at home, at night... yeah... LoL!  S-M-R-T!

.... now to make my way upstairs to my room... in the dark.... lovely!

My Bowtie Scarflette

As I mentioned in my previous post I've been working on some new items for my Etsy store.  Sales have been slumping quite a bit, which makes me a bit sad, but oh well, that's the nature of doing business - you have busy times and you have slow times.  But it has given me a chance to try out something new.

This idea all started a few months ago when I went shopping with my sis and Ed.  We went to Anthropolgie because for my birthday they had sent me a coupon that gave me 15% off my purchase.  While there I came across a bowtie scaflette that had a cotton liner sewed into it.  I thought - that's brilliant!  Especially for wool items, because I know a lot of people (including myself) have wool sensitivies.

I knew I didn't want to sew in the lining by hand.  My hand sewing skills are not quite up to par.  I actually don't think I have the patience for hand sewing.  I find that when I first start off, my stitches look even and alright, but as I keep going my stitches get bigger and bigger, and then it just looks sloppy.  Yes I know, I'm impatient (couldn't you tell by my other posts? LoL).  I began to read up on how to sew items with a sewing machine to a knitted item and found out it was not so easy.  Knitted items stretch, so you have to be super careful when feeding it in through the machine. 

So a couple of weeks ago I had time to knit up a bowtie scarf - I got the pattern off Ravelry and it's quite simple really.  I bought some cotton material with a nice print, cut it to size, then headed over to my parents house to use their sewing machine.  I read on a website to use a zig-zag stitch, which I started out using, but for some reason the machine would miss some stitches and some of them turned out to be just a straight stitch.  I had the cotton material on top of the knitted material, and I think the thread wasn't catching the knitted material at the bottom.  After about 4 cycles of sewing and  ripping, I decided to go to a straight stitch - I finally had it! 

Just make sure you use a ton of pins to keep the everything together - this will also help prevent the knitted material from stretching too much.  And go slow - it's not a race! :D

My prototype turned out pretty good, but the final product turned out better.  Before I had a straight rectangular piece, but I found when I put the scarf on you could see the corners of the material sticking out.  So I ended up chamfering the corners. 

And here's my final product!

It's now for sale @ my Etsy Store

The Salad Incident

Since I started this blog I thought I would keep it just on knitting, but sometimes I find situations in my life that I would like to blog about.  I guess I could start up my old personal blog but I like to keep my life simple and sweet, meaning I'm a one-blog girl :)  So I guess I can occasionally blog about non-knitting stuff right?

Or.. mention one thing about knitting - my Etsy store sales have been slumping lately so I've been bummed about that.  That's ok, after a full holiday season of spending, 'tis the season for not spending!  I could relate - I haven't bought anything this month besides a $16 Ipod FM tuner that I desperately needed for all the road trips I have been taking for work!  This slump has allowed me to come up with more exciting new things to sell at my store... more about that on another post!

So I'm away on business tonight, and whenever I travel on my own I usually order room service.  But in the case of tonight, the hotel I'm staying at doesn't have room service.  So every time I stay at this hotel I always go to a local chain restaurant to get food.  I hate eating out on my own, so I usually go to the drive thru to get food, then eat in the semi-comfort of my hotel room.

The last time I went to this restaurant (which was last week) they forgot to give me cutlery with my order, and I didn't realize until I got back into my room.  I wasn't too happy about that.  So this time around, I kept reminding myself to ask for cutlery.  I ordered a dinner meal and a salad, and when my order came I made sure I asked for cutlery (which they forgot to provide... again!).  When I got back to my room I was so hungry I started eating my meal.. half way through I had this sinking feeling something was missing... my salad!!  I was so distracted by the fact that I might not get cutlery that I forgot about making sure everything I had ordered was in the bag!

I called the store (took me a while to get someone on the phone.. no one likes to answer the phone there!) and talked to the manager and she said the salad would be delivered to my hotel.  Now there is one thing I would like to point out - the restaurant is literally a 2 min drive to my hotel.  It took them 45 minutes to deliver a salad... AND the delivery guy forgot the dressing.  WHAT?!?!  The delivery guy said he had to go back to the store to get it.  I figured it would probably take him another 45 minutes, so I just said forget it. 

..... and to make matters worse I brought a knitting project I wanted to start and I realized I brought the wrong needles :(

It's just one of those days..... blahh!!

Men Can Knit Too! :D

I came across this interesting article about some students from a school in Toronto that formed a knitting club, and a quarter of the club are boys :)

http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/article/914814--students-knit-scarves-and-friendships

See....men can knit too! :D