Today is Remembrance Day. Hopefully, you’ve worn your poppy (I’ve lost two of mine in the week since I started wearing it). Hopefully, you had a quiet moment of silence at the 11th hour today to pause and reflect and most of all remember. Today also marks the 90th Anniversary of Armistice, or end of World War I. Canada’s last known surviving WWI soldier is Jack Babcock, 108 yrs old. Go ahead google him. I just watched a Doc. on him, his story is pretty interesting. The numbers of our WWII veterans are also dwindling, making it all the more important to honour and remember them.

My day today is going to be spent watching the History channel, watching documentaries and knitting.

Remember our soldiers, both past and present and also thank them for the sacrifices they made!

Seriously. When did WordPress get so difficult to use? My pics won’t re-size or move! Le Sigh. I guess I’ll deal with it. So don’t judge me on my poor page presentation.

So I had a fairly productive day. Went to Wal-Mart, applied for a job, carved a pumpkin, roasted pumpkin seeds, made chicken fajitas and made homemade oatmeal! I also managed to upload photos of my knitting and crochet! So feast your eyes on these photos!

The body of my retro poodle bottle cover is nearing completion! Except I wish I had used a different colour of cotton yarn…

Next up, the frogged wavy scarf is now turning into a pretty scarf for my mum!

Here’s my lame attempt at crochet. I can make a chain and a round…but building on the round is beyond me.

And here is my lame attempt at a jack o lantern…Hence the question where’s the dremel?? I wanted to use one because of course Ms.Martha recommends it and most templates on her website require a vast array of tools — awls, scrapers, saws, drills, dremel etc–that I feel to be a great carver of pumpkins I need a dremel! Wal-mart didn’t have one. Superstore had a fake one. I just found out Home Depot sells them. For 29.99$. Seriously. If I was employed I would totally buy it!

Lastly, my delicious oatmeal! It’s a recipe from Rachel Ray’s cookbook Yum-O. Which is a decent cookbook. I mostly enjoyed her breakfast options. One downside is that she never lists nutritional information. I know many of her recipes aren’t very low-cal or low fat, but you would think that she would list the info since this is a cookbook that is aimed at kids and families. But anyways, it’s a good recipe and made a heck of a lot of oatmeal!

Now I’m off to watch Dragon’s Den on the CBC and sip some green tea!

Today was a fairly ordinary day. I bought pumpkins. I checked the job bank (some good leads!). I also acquired a bag of acrylic yarn. I didn’t really want said yarn. I don’t dig acrylic, but I didn’t have the heart to say no to someone who was obviously thinking of me and actually remembered I knit. I set the bag of acrylic down and promptly forgot it existed until hours later, my nosy pooch Rocky sniffed around and dug through the bag. I decided to pull out the yarn, it’s all those econo-balls of Red Heart; navy, plum, banana. Nothing special. But then I found a pattern book! Alas it was for crochet. Next, I discovered some granny squares (at least I think they were!). The greatest treasure inside this bag? A crochet hook! Now maybe I’m over-excited, but I always wanted to learn to crochet, but didn’t necessarily want to buy hooks, in case I was horrible at it or just gave up. Was it fate that I received a bag of yarn that also included a crochet hook? I don’t know but I’m willing to try it out! Yay! I have my very own hook and alot of acrylic to practice with! I can chain and join to make a round, but that is where my skills end. I also think my technique is waaaaay off but I end up with something resembling what the instructions show. I can’t wait for Jen to return from her travels to assist me with crochet!

In my last post I said I needed to charge my camera’s batteries, which I still need to do, but I just found my charger. Yes it took me a month to find it. It was under my laundry hamper. Don’t ask. I don’t know how it ended up there. So be ready for some picture of my knitting progress and CROCHET!

Good Night!

On my bookshelf : Civil and Strange by Clair Ni Aonghusa

adjective; irritably or peevishly sensitive; touchy. First known English use was in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. (Courtesy of Miriam-Webster Dictionary)

So I joined the Word of the Day email list. I’m a word nerd I guess. “Tetchy” is my favourite word thus far! Maybe because I am in a tetchy mood alot?

I mentioned that I love to read awhile back yet I’ve only recommended one book! A good book, but still only one! So here are some others I recommend:

• Eat, Pray, Love. – Made me hungry. And want to travel.
• Hip Tastes: The Fresh Guide to Wine – I thought I should learn about wine, so when I order it I know what I’m doing!
• The DYI Bride - I wondered if I should help my sister craft her wedding…the answer is no.
• The Almost Moon – Very odd. And disturbing. Read The Lovely Bones as well.
• Food and Cooking in Victorian England: A History  - Combines my love of food AND history!
• The Last Summer (Of you and me) – Just a good read.

Of course I’ve read alot more books than that…but most are Chic-Lit which sometimes I feel guilty about reading. But oh well.

Knit Night YARN ART NIGHT is back up again, which includes but is not limited to knitting, crochet, and spinning. That little correction was for Miss Jen over in Ireland! Sorry for not being inclusive to all of the yarn arts : ). I was unable to attend the first one, but made it to the second. We’re a bit smaller this year, but hopefully more people will join in on the fun : ) I’m working on a retro poodle bottle cover, which is going smoothly so far. My cam’s batteries are dead so when they charge up I’ll take a picture of my progress and post it!

I’m off to job hunt!

Have a marvelous Autumn afternoon!

(For those who care my header picture is of the Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto).

My sister got engaged a few months ago…I’m maid of honour and am learning that my duties are to do everything but get married…so it’s been busy.

My contract at work ended…I was happy for a few weeks because I really didn’t enjoy that job but now that I don’t have a paycheque (meagre as it was..)I’m feeling the crunch to get employment…with health and dental benefits to boot!

Absolutely no crafting has been done. I’m lacking in the creativity dept. at the moment. But here are some pics from recent times to keep you up to date…

Glads

Apron with Chairs!

Oops…Sorry for the teaser. My photo program doesn’t seem to want to work. I even managed to delete a nice picture at Nathan Phillips Square…I’ll figure this out tomorrow.

i have been doing a lot of reading..mostly chic-lit and cookbooks but it’s the summer my reading list can be light!

I re-instated the healthy life plan..TODAY! Eating well took a backseat there for awhile. But I was begining to feel gross so it’s back. Even though I had those damn Bear Paw cookies…And I will certainly miss that Bailey’s Irish Cream Cheesecake with Tiramisu Ice Cream from Caffe Demetre’s, and that Almond Joy Ice Cream from the Marble Slab…but I’ll get over it. At least I hope so….

Anyways. There’s a poor excuse for an update!

Check out www.jennsylvania.com then go and buy her books. They are ridiculously funny. Seriously. I’ve read “Bitter is the New Black” and am reading “Such a Pretty Fat” at the moment, some how I missed “Bright Lights, Big Ass” and am finding myself upset for having been living under a rock or something and missing the release date. Anyways. Read the books already…

(No crafting has been done. My knitting needles and sewing machine are taunting me. I promptly hid the knitting bag from sight and covered up my sewing machine. It’s too hot out to craft anyways…I heard humidity was bad for creating stuff. And when I say “heard” I mean I made it up.)

Oh Value Village…Here’s the run down of the loot I scored

• set of 6 PYREX mugs with green flowers (matches mixing bowl set I already own)
• salt and pepper shakers (1 lid is corroded and stuck on… a little elbow grease and it came off!)
• breakfast tray
• hand mixer
• tin foil holder? (Buyer’s regret with this one. I snapped it up b/c it looked cool and matches my green canister set, but now I am not sure I even want it now.)

Now a photo!

I’m so glad people give away their old junk…

Well I’m back from Toronto and wishing I was anywhere else but here. Little mini-holidays make me feel like I never want to head back to my normal life of work and general boring-ness. So what did I do that was so fantastic? Royal Ontario Museum. Shopping.

The ROM has become my favourite place. Except that I loathe the new “Crystal” addition to it. It’s awful. And ruins the gorgeous old architecture. But I digress. Oh wait I need to digress once again. I’m a very tactile person, I like to touch things. Except you can’t touch things at the museum. It’s bad etiquette according to the map and probably bad for the artifacts as well. So this visit was definately an act of self-control! Anyways, the Darwin exhibit was great, except I couldn’t take pictures. It was quite interesting and strangely enough most of the information I possess on Darwin I learned in my History of Psychology course…The dinosaurs were also cool. One of my favourite parts was the Wedgwood exhibit and also one on furnishings through the ages, I think it was called Europe: History of Style. You must visit the ROM! Go on 1/2 price Friday nights if money is an issue….

Now shopping. I love to window shop…And I window shopped on Bloor. Because I can’t afford to shop in Chanel, Coach or Louis Vuitton. Unfortunately! I went into Winner’s though and held a Badgley Mishka purse. I couldn’t rationalize spending half a paycheque on a gorgeous purse…as much as I tried!!!  I did score some cool stuff at Micheal’s though! (Which wasn’t on Bloor…) Everything was on sale or clearance! i bought 3 dresses. I don’t wear dresses. But I guess I will now! I also bought 2 books for 2$ each : ) Yay for bargains!

And then my mini-break ended. And I was back to reality.

p.s. I also recommend travelling by VIA trains…I was in VIA1 class which was amazing…more expensive but you get a three course meal and bar access…don’t get the red wine. 

[ I have more pictures...maybe I'll add them to FLICKR....]

for reading this!

I’ve officially made it to 301 hits on my little blog! I’m pretty excited about it! I know I have some faithful readers because they have left comments, but there are some annonymous ones too who have reached this place by some pretty random searches! But I welcome all readers and comments! I feel pretty special to have people actually reading/looking at this site! So thanks!

Well not much has been going on…I started knitting the body for a Poodle Bottle Cover, started a new Ballband and while at a supper/creating night at Jen’s, I made a pin cushion! The progress on the knitting is so miniscule I’m not even going to bother with a picture. But here’s the pin cushion:

I’m heading to the city for a friend’s 25th birthday in a couple days…I hope the weather is nice….I detest driving in the rain…especially on the highway!

I’ve derailed on the Healthy Living Plan…Sometimes life gets in the way and I make poor food choices…such as Irish Cream Cheesecake…which when you try to limit sugar and chocolate and generally really good desserts, once you eat something like that your body totally craves it all the time. Or at least that is what happened with me! I’ve lost 10 Lbs so far which is nice, another 10 to go, but I am worried that the work I’ve done has been undone by poor food choices of the last two weeks…Guess I better get in gear and try to stay on track!!!

I’m off to Value Village!