cosmicpluto knits!

weekend in Ottawa

I’m a bit behind in everything, not the least of which is my poor neglected blog! Let’s see about catching up. Last weekend I headed to Ottawa for a bit of a birthday trip. A friend and I drove (okay, he drove) and got there Thursday night. We stayed at his brother’s apartment in Byward Market – very, very convenient in terms of getting around, but it’s a bit wild on the weekends. Clubs and such.

Friday we walked around, took the bus to Hintonberg and checked out Parkdale farmer’s market (where there were berries all over the place!), a few little shops, and the yarn store on Wellington West, Wabi-Sabi. Bit of an adventure to get there with all the construction, but it was a nice little shop that carries a lot of Americo yarns – perfect if you want them but aren’t in Toronto.

Had a delicious pizza lunch at the Grand in Byward Market, then headed over to Parliament Hill for Fortissimo – a “musical extravaganza” put on my the armed forces. It was interesting, but they probably could’ve cut at least 15 minutes of unnecessary music.

Saturday we took the parliamentary tour and took lots of photos – including this crazy unicorn right outside the main entryway! Why’s his tongue sticking out? Weird.

This view should be familiar to Canadians who watch the news – this is outside the House of Commons, where all the journalists lie in wait.

My favourite part was the library – it’s the only part of the building that survived a big fire, and it’s quite beautiful.

Saturday night we went to New Edinburgh Park for the Lumiere festival, which was super fun – the park is super dark, but the trails are lit with tons of pretty lanterns.

(Candles-in-paper-bags maze)

Sunday was pretty chill – we walked around the Glebe area and went to the Landsdowne farmer’s market. Can you tell I love farmer’s markets? So much pretty and yummy produce! I ended up baking a pie on Sunday too, with blueberries from the market.

And then Monday it was back to Toronto and a full week of work at the store! Knitting news and some destashing is coming right up.

the big 2-5

Today’s my birthday, and I’m 25 years old.

In my stronger moments I realize that I’ve actually done quite a bit for my age – got a degree, written and published a book (!), started a pretty successful business. And I can get recognized in Hawaii! Of course, there’s still so much to be done and sometimes it feels like time it just slipping by.

Thanks for reading, commenting, tweeting (find me @cosmicplutoknit), and generally being awesome. I don’t know what I’d do without my fabulous Internet Friends and the knitting community at large.

Knitting’s pretty much the same old projects right now – but I’m hoping to move up and onto some new ones soon! In the meanwhile, of course I bought some yarn for my birthday – Koigu.

Got enough of the purple-blue for a sweater, and two skeins each of the pewter and pink – I’m thinking it wants to be colourwork. I ordered a Hanne Falkenberg kit that I’ve had my eye on for awhile too. I don’t know when the last time was that I was this excited to knit someone else’s pattern!

Have a great summer weekend. Mine involves cake!

the big island

I’m home! But I’ve still got lots to catch you all up on from the trip – the whole last week on the Big Island.

Monday we drove the northern route to get to Volcanoes National Park – it was a long drive (about 4 hours), but the scenery was interesting. There’s lots of different types of landscapes on the island, from lava fields:

To almost southwestern tribble-looking plants:

To lush green rainforest and jungle.

(Akaka Falls)

Unfortunately, it was super rainy, cloudy, and cold, and once we got to the actual park we realized that we couldn’t really see much of anything! Plus, the main short route around the caldera is closed because of new volcanic activity.

You can just make out the rim of the caldera there. I could process the photo and bring it out more, but really, that’s what I saw. We decided to drive down Chain of Craters Road a little ways before turning back, and it delivered – there were some pretty big craters!

On Wednesday we took the Atlantis submarine tour, which goes 100ft down to the ocean floor. Photo taking is hard because the water filters out colours and makes everything blue and grey!

That was pretty much it for activities, for me – one of my sisters and my mom went on a snorkel tour, but I wasn’t too into it. Other than that, I did visit another coffee plantation and bought loads of Kona coffee, shopped for clothes, and lounged about.

Fun time in Hawaii, although it’s rather far away – the trip home was over 20 hours thanks to an 8-hour layover at Honolulu airport. And lugging 8 pounds of coffee in my luggage kinda sucked.

But apparently the next trip is already booked!

kaua’i: beaches and cliffs

Kaua’i is beautiful. And a big change from O’ahu, which is the most developed island and full of tall buildings! There aren’t any tall buildings on Kaua’i, apparently because there’s a law that says that no building can be taller than a coconut tree!

We flew on Hawaiian Airlines, which was fine and super short – about 30 minutes total. Then we picked up our rental car and headed for the resort. There’s just one highway that goes around the perimeter of the island, where all the towns are – the interior of the island remains all rainforest and jungle.

We got to the resort a little too early to check in, so we took a drive up to Hanalei, where there’s this little shopping plaza. I found a cute bamboo jersey dress and the yarn store!

Strings and Things is half music store and half yarn store! They did have a little bit of locally dyed yarn, but otherwise a mostly mainstream selection. I do wish I’d looked for that yarn store in Honolulu that had Japanese stuff, but oh well.

Sunday we went for a drive up the coast and stopped at a couple of beaches for pictures and a little bit of walking along the water line. I’m a little freaked out about swimming in the ocean here because Kaua’i is known for rougher waters, a strong undertow and riptide. There was even a handout at the resort on “How to survive a riptide”. Yikes.

Hanalei Bay was rated #1 beach in the world on some list – it does have a pretty awesome view!

fits and starts

Whew, that flu really knocked me out – I didn’t even want to knit for a couple days, so you *know* I was really ill! But after that the crafting kicked right back in – and hard.

I finally blocked the slip-stitch ridged cardigan I posted about before – now it’s just waiting for some buttons. I’m going to be working on the pattern for this one for the next little while, but the yoke shaping might be a bit tricky to write up!

Although I haven’t had much time with my spinning wheel at all lately, I’m finally getting back into the groove. I’ve got this goal to spin down my stash as much as possible before MDSW (will I see you there?).

So far I wound off some gorgeous teal yarn that’s been sitting on a bobbin for a long while – this was mixed batts that I got last Rhinebeck.

Then I spun and plied up all the grey roving behind the teal there – it was a big fluffy cloud of fibre, also from last Rhinebeck.

I spun it really fast and furiously to a couple episodes in a row of Six Feet Under (which is awesome, but kinda depressing tv-watching) and came up with 460 yards of 2ply, worstedish weight. It goes really nicely with the teal, so they might end up together in something!

All this desire to work through some stash has also resulted in me picking up a hook!

This is my very first granny square – inspired by Joelle’s Giant Granny Square, I’m working up a giant granny square of my own. This is nearly one ball of Noro Taiyo, a little bigger than a foot square, and I’ve got five balls. This goes so quickly! I love the colour changes. Might back it with some fabric afterwards, but we’ll see.

Happy Easter, Passover…or just Sunday!

FO: more and taller socks

I started these ones in India but didn’t get very far – I think I was on the top of the increases when I got home. These started out with the intention of being knee socks, but once I hit the ribbing I just kept going! I thought they would end up thigh-high, but they’re more like just over the knee with the ribbing a bit scrunched.

In the front they’re just plain:

But in the back there’s a wee cable (mirrored between the two socks) right up from the bottom up the heel to the start of the ribbing.

Tough to photograph since the yarn is so dark! I used 2 skeins of Dream in Color Smooshy in Midnight Derby – a fantastic colour. My knee socks pattern (for the stripey ones) is nearly complete, so I’m going to add in notes on how to turn them into over-the-knee socks into that pattern.

Somehow I’ve been plugging away at several big projects so now I have one almost complete (just needs blocking and buttons) sweatercoat and one almost complete cardigan as well! Oh, I did take a photo of the cardigan last week, so here it is.

I still need to figure a collar and buttonband treatment, but I’m getting there!