Study Study

In continued new-school-year efforts to procrastinate at every turn, here I am on the eve of a terrifying bell-ringer exam on the upper skeleton. The whole thing. All the little bumps, grooves, tubercles and epicondyles. Add to that the stress of endless readings, my honours project looming in the background and the even bigger, darker cloud of grad school.

Nonetheless, I'm still knitting.

That's a swatch I worked on last week for a hat for James. He's heading off to Europe for a week on Friday, and it's my duty as knitter and girlfriend to keep that head warm from afar. I had him choose a yarn from Mr. Yarn and he chose Madelinetosh Tosh DK in Fig. It's great to work with, and I even got a skein for myself to play with later. The hat's coming along nicely as well. It's morphed into a hybrid of the Jacques Cousteau hat and the decreasing in Turn a Square. He's tremendously picky and never wants to be knit for, so I hope it comes out to his liking in the end.

Apart from that, here are some small joys around these parts:

A fancy and beautiful new necklace from Kate Miss of For Me, For You. I spent way too long admiring her jewellery and took the plunge.

My new latte making suite. I also invested in a Moka pot and an adorable bowl from Anthropologie. I'm hoping to accumulate a set of them over the next year, and 1 is a good start. Not to mention it's the perfect size for a sleep deterring caffeinated treat! This weekend's project is to perfect the pumpkin spice latte as I just can't afford to buy them every day at Starbucks.

Autumn in the river valley. Simply the most beautiful thing. It was also quite hilarious to watch Birch try and get the boats full of rowers coming down the river. (Don't worry, we kept a close eye on him to make sure he didn't get taken away)

Happy Monday!
(Also, most of the photos were, as you guessed, taken with the Instagram app. I drank the Kool-Aid and it's oh, so sweet)

Hibernation Fare 101

Living way up in the Northern part of the world has it's advantages. We don't have to deal with insane high temperatures in the summer, we can see the northern lights (which were out last week!) and we have lovely long summer days.

What's not so good is that the leaves are already changing and the crisp breeze of fall is in the air. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to pull out  my hand knits again, but it's a bit sad seeing summer die before September is over. To help combat this chill (and the cold room in which I study) I've been a soup making machine.

I first saw this crazy delicious curried coconut zucchini soup on Steph's blog last year and made it almost instantly. It's super easy to make and has a pretty small list of ingredients that aren't hard to get a hold of at any time of year or state of produce. In the case of this batch, everything but the curry powder and coconut milk had come from a CSA delivery.

It only takes about 40 minutes from start to finish and is a hundred times more satisfying than opening a can  of Campbells.

I actually have an FO to show off soon, so I'll be back once I have some pictures of it! For now, I get to read about food and identity while devouring a fresh batch of soup.

Happy Monday!

Foxy

Now that my classes don't start until the early afternoon for half my week, I'm afforded a bit more morning relaxation time. So I've had a giant breakfast, knitted a bit, caught up on Pinterest and my blogs and now I can come show you the fruits of my weekend creation!

I've been totally inspired by a fox-like brown/red/orange colour lately. I'm not usually a fan of those types of colours, but I guess Pinterest has and I've been dreaming of a gauzy cowl to accent the boring black and grey wardrobe that comes with fall and winter. Not to mention that all of my knitting projects require a bit of focus, so I have nothing to work on while reading my hefty load for the term. Thanks to some organization from some lovely knitters I was able to bring this skein of yarn to life!

It's almost exactly what I had envisioned. It could probably have gone a bit darker, but it's always hard to gauge what a colour will look like when dried. Either way I'm thrilled and I can't wait to have some luscious BFL/Silk hanging around my neck!

What colours are surprising you lately? I'm usually such a blue/green girl that I'm still amazed this colour thrills me as much as it does.

Happy Wednesday!

The Lost Summer

I had such big plans for the last summer months. I was going to spend more time spinning and knitting. I was going to learn how to can my plethora of CSA veggies, read more and run farther. Instead, I spun just about nothing, knitted very little and am still afraid of canning. I haven't really read anything extracurricularly and have been merely maintaining my running distance.

Instead my time was consumed by a disappointing summer class and this handsome fella:

He's not mine; he belongs to James' mom and we're the official acting puppy-parents while she's away. He takes up much more of my time than I expected, but it's worth it. I mean, look at that face! (And, if you're so inclined and into dogs, check out this adorable video James put together with footage we took a couple weeks ago)

In my knitting world, nothing much is happening. I feel like I've been knitting my Matsuri forever, so I starting a sanity-saving Meritursas beret. I'm doing it in Canopy Worsted which, like all Fibre Company yarns I've been working with recently, does not disappoint. It's like knitting with a butter/silk blend. Delicious.

So, there's my afternoon in summation. I'll be sitting at my desk working on my hat, watching old episodes of Buffy and drinking a beer. I spent the afternoon dyeing up some laceweight BFL/Silk which is busy drying up in the hot second floor of the house, so I'll be back soon to show off my handiwork!

Happy Saturday!

Slow Saturdays

Good Morning! The first thing I have to share with you this morning is that I did an interview for Deborah over at interrobang knits this week! You can check it out on her blog here, she frequently posts about some really interesting topics so you should run over there even if you don't want to read about me. I was super flattered when Deb asked me to kick of this feature for her. I had so much fun answering the questions she sent over, I hope you enjoy reading my ramblings. I'm looking forward to reading about more people! And if this is your first time over here, welcome!

This weekend, I have actual knitting content for you! I was finally reunited with a camera. I'm posting from my deck while trying to dodge baby raindrops and getting ready to go for a run. It's almost embarrassing how little progress I've made on my Wicker Cowl, but at least I can say I'm over halfway finished. The pattern calls for 5 repeats of the lace pattern but I'm confident I can squeak out 6.

One of the things I love most about lace is how it so naturally pulls fabric into interesting directions. I'm loving the rippled edge on the bottom of this thing.

This project is also my first attempt at using the Zephyr Needles from Knitpicks. I had a bit of a startitis emergency at one of the houses I was cat-sitting at, but realized that I was in the house of a knitter and found these. I was expecting them to be pretty terrible and sticky, but I've been quite impressed overall. The movement is quite good, without being too slick. I think they would be great for working with slippery silks, but there is one flaw that would drive me over the edge with smaller yarns.

You can see right through the needle to the other side, and consequently the other half of the stitch. This project has been pretty easy in terms of having to monitor my stitches, and the yarn is large enough that it's not a huge issue, but I can foresee that driving me bonkers on some projects.

With that, I'm going to finish my breakfast which happily includes tea made from the monster mint plant growing in one of my boxes. All this rain we got has turned it into a beast. A tasty, tasty beast.

It's a chocolate mint plant, and I highly recommend getting your hands on one if you can. It grows like gangbusters with almost no effort and, while I loathe mint tea 90% of the time, makes fab non-gag worthy tea. Do you have any favourite homemade tea ideas? Once the sun comes out I'm planning on making some minty sun tea, but I'm stumped for now.

Happy Saturday! And don't forget to head over to interrobang knits!