Knitnut.net. Watch my life unravel...
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Posted by zoom! on February 17, 2008, at 12:04 pm |
Last night I got together with a couple of other bloggers and we went down to Rasputin’s to catch local blogger Andrea Simms-Karp’s show. She was playing with her cousin, guitarist Brian Simms, and her friend all the way back to third grade, Shawna Caspi.
Andrea’s great – lots of stage presence and humour and rapport with her audience, plus terrific music too. Real Fine Friend gave me goosebumps (you can listen to it here). And they did this trippy little Prince number at the end, which was MADE for them. They even danced, sort of.
Rasputin’s is so tiny and quiet that if you knock your beer bottle over, everybody looks at you and Andrea interrupts her own song to laugh at you. Ahem.
Fortunately she didn’t notice when I inadvertently tried to drink my apple cider through the cinnamon stick, although my companions did notice. (Did you know cinnamon sticks only look hollow?) It reminded me of a couple of weeks ago when I had lunch with friends at a Vietnamese restaurant and I complained to my friends about the sauce being kind of bland and they pointed out that I was dipping my spring rolls in the tea.
 What else is new? Well, I’m sorry to say that Mak’s Apothecary has been broken into. It’s still there, but the plexiglass was smashed and a number of items were stolen from the shelves. The Ottawa Police Street Crimes Unit suspects crackheads are responsible for the smash-and-grab, and are calling for increased policing. Ha ha ha ha ha!
And, on the subject of Mak’s Apothecary, I owe you all a big apology because I gave the wrong location!! I said it was on Albert just east of Bank, and really it’s on Slater just east of Bank. I’m sorry if you went looking for it and couldn’t find it.
Duncan has re-established the complete bedtime routine again after only several minutes of me playing hard-to-get. However, he did not greet me at the door today when I got home from my run, nor did he lick my feet while I did my stretches, nor did he wait on the bathmat while I had my shower. This is fine. I’m not neurotic about him or anything. However, I did experience a pang of concern when I stepped out of the shower onto the Duncanless bathmat, and I wondered if he had died while I was out running. (He hadn’t. He was just snoozin’ on the back of the couch in a puddle of sunshine.)
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Posted by zoom! on February 16, 2008, at 12:13 pm |
So this is how I spent my Valentines Day. I woke up with the same headache I’d had for the previous 36 hours, only worse. A full-body scan revealed that I was feeling lacklustre and lethargic. I emailed work that I wouldn’t be in, and went back to bed.
Eventually I got up and turned the TV on, which I almost never do, and knit and blogged. Basically it was just a lazy, layabout day punctuated by Anacins and naps.
Around suppertime, I realized I hadn’t eaten all day. I couldn’t find anything meal-like in my kitchen, so I baked myself a golden Duncan Heinz birthday cake, iced it with Betty Crocker chocolate icing, and ate a quarter of it for dinner.
I spent the evening the same way I spent the day: uneventfully. And then, around 10:00, I went to bed. This is where things got weird.
As you know, Duncan the Dogcat lives for bedtime. (This is a picture of him a couple of weeks ago, doing the pre-bedtime snuggle.) He’s the happiest, cuddliest, purriest, snuggliest bedtime cat ever. In the month and a half he’s lived here, he has gone from sharing my pillow to using my face as his pillow. I lie on my back with my right arm outstretched, and Duncan lies down beside me in the curl of my arm and then he lays his face on my right cheek and wraps his right arm around my neck, and purrs like a lion.
So Thursday night, I climbed into bed and stretched out my arm for Duncan, who is normally about one second behind me.
No Duncan.
“Duncan?” I called.
No repsonse.
“Dunc?”
Nothing.
I got out of bed and went looking for him.
 Halfway down the stairs I spotted him lying on the back of the couch.
“Duncan?”
He looked at me lazily.
“It’s bedtime, Dunc.”
He closed his eyes.
I felt soooo rejected and sorry for myself. I believe I actually whined out loud to my cat about how it was Valentines Day and how I wasn’t feeling well and if this was his way of telling me the honeymoon was over, well, his timing sucked. Then I marched over to the couch, picked him up, and MADE him come to bed with me. Pathetic, eh?
I actually like being single on Valentines Day, because it’s an emotionally manipulative holiday and I prefer to have nothing to do with it. So I couldn’t believe I played the Valentines Day card, and on a CAT at that. Maybe I was a tad feverish.
Anyway, the next morning I was telling my coworkers about it, and one of them told me that Christie Blatchford has a puppy and she writes about the puppy a lot, and one day the puppy wouldn’t go to bed with her. So she consulted a puppy psychologist who said the puppy now feels secure in her home and in her love, and no longer feels the need to suck up to her. AND, if she really wants the puppy to start sleeping with her again, she ought to play hard to get.
My coworkers agreed I should play hard to get with Duncan.
I haven’t played hard to get with anyone since Douggie Prince in eighth grade. (And not very well – Douggie thought I really wasn’t interested, and he just shrugged and moved on to the next girl.)
My coworkers offered tips.
“Just ignore him,” they said, “Avoid eye contact. Don’t dote on him. Don’t beg him to come to bed. Make him think he needs you more than you need him.”
So last night I didn’t come home after work. I went out for dinner with a friend. I didn’t even call Duncan to let him know I’d be late. I waltzed in around 10:00 and fed him but I didn’t get down on the floor with him and tell him how much I adored him and I didn’t brush his hair or tickle his tummy or kiss his toes or bury my nose in his neck and tell him how good he smelled.
And then, when I went to bed, guess who was one second behing me, snuggling up, using my face as his pillow, and purring like a lion? Playing hard-to-get worked much better on Duncan than it did on Douggie Prince. So of course I wrapped my arms around him and told him how much I adored him and how good he smelled. And now we are living happily ever after again.
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Posted by zoom! on February 15, 2008, at 6:09 am |
I was just flipping back to see if I hated winter yet by mid-February last year. Check out what things were like a year ago today!
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Posted by zoom! on February 14, 2008, at 10:33 am |
I have this idea for a series of blog posts, and I’d like to run it by you for input and ideas.
It would be a series of profiles of panhandlers and other people on the street, based on interviews with them. The purpose of the series would be to help break down stereotypes by focusing on the human beings behind the outstretched hands.
From what I’ve seen, panhandlers and street people are simulaneously highly conspicuous and invisible, because people can’t help but notice them but tend to avoid eye contact with them. This series of profiles would try to play some small part in bridging that contradiction.
The way I envision it, I’d approach them, introduce myself and the project to them, and ask them if they’d like to participate. If so, we’ll go to a coffee shop, have a snack and a beverage, and they’ll tell me their story while I ask questions and take notes. I’ll take a photograph of them if they’re okay with that. And I’ll pay them for their time. Then I’ll write up the profile and post it here on the blog.
I do have a few concerns though, mostly around ethics, privacy, and exploitation. I don’t want to exploit anybody. I don’t want people to let me invade their privacy just because they need the $10 I’m offering them. And what do I do with information they might provide that could potentially put them in jeopardy? (For example, if they share information about illegal activity, and they’re willing to be identified by name and/or photograph…should I not publish that information?)
Are there other considerations I haven’t thought of?
Finally, if I do go ahead with this project, are there any questions you would like me to ask them?
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Posted by zoom! on February 12, 2008, at 8:11 pm |
 I am trying not to hate winter just yet, because there’s still six weeks left of it and that would mean a pretty extended stretch of winter-hating. And winter-hating is emotionally and physically gruelling.
But I am not liking minus twenty-nine degrees and I am tired of all the crap that keeps falling out of the sky. I am sick of winter clothes and dry skin and yucky produce and trying to plan my runs around the sidewalk conditions.
I’m not depressed, but I feel that if I were to open the door even just a little bit to the possibility of depression, it would come flooding in and just take right over and make itself at home. So I’m not opening THAT door.
I’m going to try not to hate winter until at least March 15th. The Ides of March.
But I don’t suppose it would hurt to start looking forward to Spring, would it? That’s not the same as hating winter, is it? (Why do I always capitalize Spring and Fall but not winter and summer?)
Here are some of the things I’m looking forward to:
Crocuses
Canada Geese
Melting snow
The first day the sun feels warm on my face
Buds on the trees
Spring jackets
Taking pictures without the battery indicator flashing
Running on the bike paths again
I know I’m missing something….
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Posted by zoom! on February 11, 2008, at 6:46 pm |
 Andrew and Sharon ZRX finally have their baby! And judging by the pictures, he was definitely worth waiting for.
According to AndrewZRX, “He’s the biggest (and most gorgeousest – I kid you not) baby on the ward.”
Welcome to the world Bruce, and congratulations on your new parents.
Details are still scanty, but he was born at 3:12 am this morning and he’s nine pounds even. Doesn’t he make you just want to KNIT SOMETHING??
By the way, Andrew needs our help:
“I have a placenta on my kitchen counter and my wife needs it to be gone before she gets home. Please help.”
Posted by zoom! on February 10, 2008, at 8:12 pm |
 The Gathering of the Hermits – a rare and wondrous event – was scheduled for today at 3:00 at an undisclosable location. I got there at 2:30 and ate a club sandwich and drank a Guinness while waiting for the other eleven hermits.
Then I read my book for awhile and glanced at my watch periodically. Around 3:15 it occurred to me that I shouldn’t be surprised if none of the hermits showed up, being as how they’re hermits and all.
But then one of them came shuffling in and then another and another, lifting their eyes out of their collars just long enough to glance furtively around the room and locate the Gathering.
The hermits ordered beers gruffly and sat in semi-companionable silence for awhile, waiting for the liquor to loosen their tongues. There was throat-clearing and grunting all round, and then gradually, gradually, the conversation began. Some of their voices were rusty from disuse.
A few pints later I noticed some of the hermits had progressed to full sentences, and I even caught one or two of them interrupting each other. That’s not something you see every day.
At some point someone – I forget who – observed that all five hermits had blue eyes.
“The Gathering of the Blue-Eyed Hermits,” said Lux.
I said that would be a very good name for a band, and that’s how it happened: the hermits decided to start a band called The Blue-Eyed Hermits.
“What kind of music will we play?” asked Windy.
We kicked this around for a bit and decided to be eclectic, since we had to accommodate the musical tastes of all the hermits. The Blue-Eyed Hermits will be playing some jazz, some blues, a little country, a little doo-wop, a little hip-hop, a little bee-bop, a little Baroque.
Next, everybody chose their instruments. Theor will play keyboards and be the lead male vocalist. Lux will play tambourine and harmonica and be the lead female singer. DJ “I’ll be in your band but I’m not really a hermit” Sarcastro will play the turntables. Windy will play the recorder (which is enjoying a renaissance) and clarinet and sax (so he won’t be a laughingstock for playing the recorder). As for me, I’ll be sizzling on the zither.
Some time later the only Black hermit – Cagey Green – showed up very late and we noted with dismay that he doesn’t have blue eyes. He said he’d wear blue shades and play guitar. Some of us thought blue contacts might be better but Cagey said no. We compromised because what kind of band doesn’t need a guitarist? Besides, Cagey’s a real musician and that might come in handy too.
There was a bit of an issue around where we would practice and when. Theor’s the only one with a garage and he says it’s full of his stuff and he’d rather it be full of his stuff than full of people. We all nodded. If we had garages, we’d feel the same way.
Then we realized we didn’t really want to practice much anyway, since that would require getting together regularly. But what kind of band doesn’t practice? We resolved this dilemma by agreeing to get webcams. We’ll mostly just practice alone, and then get together online and do a kind of fusion/improv sort of thing.
Lux says she’s not getting a webcam though – something about her social and technological boundaries. I wonder how Herman’s Hermits managed, before the Internet.
Then all of the hermits ordered french fries and the waitress brought a wheelbarrow full of french fries to our table and we all dug in.
After the french fries I came home and googled zither. It doesn’t look too hard.
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Posted by zoom! on February 9, 2008, at 7:09 pm |
I’ve been asked by a couple of people how the Canadian Blog Awards affected my blog stats. Without a doubt they were a real shot in the arm. But, interestingly, the spin-off effects were more dramatic than the direct effects.
If you take a look at the following chart you’ll see that the craziest, most dramatic spikes occurred on the two days the Yarn Harlot mentioned my blog on her blog.
The Harlot, as the knitters already know, has a huge and faithful following. While some non-knitterly types were shocked that a knitting blog could win Best Canadian Blog of 2007, knitters were not surprised. She has a lot of quiet influence in the blogosphere. For example, in the last three years her blog has raised over $400,000 Рfrom the knitters who read it Рfor M̩decins Sans Fronti̬res / Doctors Without Borders.
When the Harlot generously mentioned knitnut.net as another knitting blog in the Canadian Blog Awards (once near the beginning of the Blog Awards, and again near the end), look what happened to my Statcounter graph (click to enlarge) :
Not shown in this chart is the meteoric rise in the number of subscribers, as measured by Feedburner. It took me two years to get the first 75 subscribers, and a month to get the next 150!
I’m sure the numbers will go back to normal, or at least settle somewhere in between what they used to be and what they have been lately; in fact they’re already retreating. And that’s okay, because honestly, I was feeling a little stressed by it all. I blog in part because I love to write, and I love to write in part because I’m kind of shy and introverted by nature.
It was exciting watching the numbers rise so dramatically, but I’m happy to be returning to my comfort zone, in which my blog’s readership increases gradually over time. (But for those of you who started reading during the last month, and want to stick around, don’t get me wrong – I’m very happy to have you here.)
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Posted by zoom! on February 8, 2008, at 7:40 pm |
 Look what popped up on Slater Street today: Ye Olde Apothecary, starring MAYOR LARRY O’BRIEN!
Here’s a closer look. (All the pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them. You probably knew that already.)
“This piece of art is intended as a conversation starter.”
This is what they sell at Ye Olde Apothecary: Medicines and Tonics for the Love-Seeking.
And this is how it’s made:
For Attraction: Essence of Mayoral Swagger.
For Virility: Cat Scrotum.
For Charm: Pompousness and Obscurity harvested from local hipsters.
And look! There’s a swap box on the wall of Ye Olde Apothecary!
If there was ever any doubt that Maks (aka Elmaks, and aka The Swap Box Artist) created the Mayor Larry Nativity Scene or this piece, I’m happy to report he actually signed this one.
Twice!
You should go downtown and see it for yourself, because it’s fantastic and I didn’t manage to capture everything with my camera, and besides, it’s just better in real life. It’s on the south side of Slater Street just east of Bank Street.
When I discovered it, Ginette, who is one of my favourite panhandlers, was standing right beside it, panhandling. Needless to say, most of the passers-by weren’t even noticing the Apothecary because they were making a point of walking past Ginette without looking at her.
She and I chatted while I took pictures of the Apothecary.
She told me she just had dental surgery a couple of weeks ago and had all her front teeth removed. She hasn’t been able to eat much since then.
I asked her where she stays, and she told me she’s got a place, but after she gets her cheque and pays for rent and other fixed expenses, she’s lucky if she’s got $100 left for the month. That’s why she panhandles.
I think she’s probably in her forties. Anytime I’ve seen her, she’s been quiet and inconspicuous, standing out of the way with her hat out, softly asking passers-by for a little help.
She said on a good day she might make ten dollars. Most people ignore her, but some people are nice and help out if they can, or at least smile and say hello. Some people aren’t very nice though: they just tell her to get a job.
“I guess they think it’s easy standing in the cold asking strangers for money,” she said, “It’s not. But I always smile at people, even when I don’t feel much like smiling.”
She smiled a bit sadly.
“I haven’t felt much like smiling lately,” she said, “ever since I got my front teeth out.”
“You still have a beautiful smile,” I told her. And she does. Her smile is not just her mouth: her eyes and her cheeks and her whole face light up, even when she smiles just a little smile.
I wish Mayor Larry could have seen Ginette today, standing in the cold beside the Mayor Larry Apothecary, smiling self-consciously and asking strangers for money.
I’d like to see if he could look her in the eye and still call her a pigeon, and then go put a dollar in the Kindness Meter instead of giving it to her.
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Posted by zoom! on February 7, 2008, at 8:11 pm |
Things I learned today:
 It is not easy for a cat to see a sweater being blocked without lying down on it, but it is possible.
Your brain can, without warning, temporarily flush all of its contents.
You will look like an idiot if this happens during a meeting.
The waiting time at the Passport Office is now under thirty minutes if you go on a snowy Thursday afternoon.
If you share a walkway with a neighbour, the shoveling of the snow on this walkway will not be equally shared.
This will bother you more once the novelty of shoveling snow has worn off.
The life expectancy of an ant is 45-60 days.
The ant I befriended in my kitchen might be multiple ants, since we’ve been friends since October.
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What else is new? Well, I’m sorry to say that Mak’s Apothecary has been broken into. It’s still there, but the plexiglass was smashed and a number of items were stolen from the shelves. The Ottawa Police Street Crimes Unit suspects crackheads are responsible for the smash-and-grab, and are calling for increased policing. Ha ha ha ha ha!
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