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Watch my life unravel...
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We’re on the brink of a global infestation of bedbugs. So far they’re making their bedquarters in New York City. Ah, but rest assured, you’ll probably never see a bedbug:
Sleep tight.
I finished my third Inka hat by Cabin Fever (AKA earflap hat, peruvian hat, and Inca hat). Like the first two, this one was supposed to be for me, but the universe made a very compelling case for giving Inka hat #3 to my sister Kerry.
Here’s Kerry wearing
There’s nothing to brighten up a dreary, winter-weary, soot-greyed city like a fresh coat of snow. Ottawa is phenomenally lucky to have lots of green/white space and dedicated recreational space within the city limits. We have hundreds of kilometers (maybe thousands of kilometers) of recreational pathways (for biking, walking, running, roller-blading, etc.) and many acres of cross-country ski trails through various urban forests. We also have the world’s largest skating rink, the Rideau Canal, which winds it way from Dow’s Lake right to the heart of downtown Ottawa. One of the very best things about Ottawa is you can get out of it quickly – in half an hour I could be up in the Gatineau Hills if I wanted. But today I stayed in the city and went cross-country skiing in Ottawa’s urban heart.
Across the street from my house is a small dog park. (The park is small, the dogs vary in size.) Here are a few snapshots of some of my furrier friends.
My dog Sam (who at the age of 13 developed a phobia of cameras, so now I have to sneak up on him to take his picture): Max (some day I’m going to do a whole photo series of dogs in clothes): Jessie (who trudges to the park, lies down, and doesn’t get up until it’s time to trudge home again, so we were all astonished when she got up to investigate the camera):
It’s a photograph of Dave X at one of his garage sales. Dave doesn’t actually have a garage, being homeless and all (he’s quick to point out that he’s technically not homeless since he inherited a cottage from his father, which makes him homeless only in the winter months – but really, living in Ottawa, if one had to choose, most of us would likely prefer to have our seasonal housing in the wintertime). The lack of a garage has never stopped Dave from having garage sales. He just borrows his friends’ garages, yards and driveways. Because he won’t work or apply for welfare or panhandle or steal, Dave lives on an extremely limited income. The weekly garage sales from April to October net him about $50. The living’s much leaner in the wintertime. He literally lives on what he can find. Last year he found just over $200 in (mostly) change lying on the ground. In Canada, the smallest bill we have is $5, and on rare occasions he finds a $5 or a $20, but mostly it’s change. The secret of Dave’s success in finding change is: Dave eats a lot of bread, bananas and peanut butter. My friend’s mom gave him some Indian butter chicken a while ago, and he rinsed it off under the tap and ate it. He loves to watch Jeopardy, and he’s pretty good at it, but he has all kinds of rules that we all have to abide by – for instance, no yelling out the answers: we must proceed in an orderly fashion and take turns answering. But I digress. The Dave X Change Challenge came into being when I declared that all my co-workers and I (there are 23 of us) could find more money in a year than Dave could. Dave loves a challenge, and he accepted this one on the condition that we only refer to him as Dave X. (Don’t ask.) At the end of the year, my co-workers and I will give half of our found change to the Humane Society, and the other half to Dave. Well, we’re 21 days into the year now, and Dave has found $7.12. My 22 coworkers and I are up to 77 cents. Naturally we’ve started making excuses and Dave has started gloating. Our #1 excuse (and really, it’s not so much an excuse as it is a reason) is that we’re cooped up in an office during all the daylight hours, while Dave’s free to wander about town finding money all day long. Dave says our lifestyle choices are not his problem. We haven’t given up yet. I have great hopes for Daylight Savings Time, when Dave starts spending more time at the cottage and the rest of us start spending more time outside during daylight. I’m sure we’ll start to close the gap then. Dakota tagged me for a MEME – my very first MEME! “The rules are simple: now that you have been busted, you must confess to 3 things that you do that others don’t know about.” Hmmm. Three things that others don’t know about, but which aren’t deep dark secrets (because I can’t tell you those), but which might still be of at least some interest to people. That’s a tall order. Okay. 1. I correspond with Paddy Mitchell. Paddy’s serving a few hundred years for robbing banks and escaping from prisons. He was the ringleader of The Stopwatch Gang, and they robbed banks but never hurt anyone. Everyone liked Paddy, even the cops and the media. Paddy’s current cellmate is the guy who sent white powder to all the abortion clinics and threatened to kill all the employees of all the Planned Parenthood offices in North America. (Personally I can’t imagine too many things worse than being locked in an 8×10 cell 23 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 40 years with that guy, but Paddy likes him. ) 2. I feel sorry for inanimate objects. For example, when the wind really howls on a brutally cold night, I feel terrible for the trees and houses. 3. I count everything. I count all the stairs I climb, I count how long it takes for lineups to process each person, I count the ceiling tiles in the dentist’s ceiling, I count the number of steps in a block, I count everything. I’ve always counted, and I’ve even had a couple of counting jobs – once I was an inventory clerk (I counted stock) and another time I was an enumerator (I counted voters). I loved reading my son’s Sesame Street book about The Count out loud – “One two three four five six seven eight, EIGHT seven six five four three two one EIGHT seven six five four three two one EIGHT seven six five four three two one, eight beautiful notes!” Maybe I’m obsessive-compulsive…I think counting might be a symptom of OCD. There are six symptoms. Okay. Now I have to tag three more people to tell us three things they do that others don’t know about. I tag:
I kid you not, in the very first day since the Knitting Olympics was announced, literally hundreds and hundreds (maybe even thousands) of knitters have leapt at this bizarre opportunity to make themselves
So, thanks to Yarn Harlot and Marmalade, I am now officially a member of Team Canada, and scheduled to compete in the very gruelling Clapotis-knitting event. I’d offer to carry a torch or a flag or something, but I have to conserve my energy. I think I’ve decided who to vote for in next Monday’s election. I looked up the predictions for my riding, and was happy to see the NDP in the lead. It was one of those lightbulb moments: if I am happy to see the NDP in the lead, I should probably vote NDP, right? Screw the strategic voting strategy – it’s only one vote, how strategically can I place it? Besides, why not just let the Conservatives get their majority, do their worst, and destroy their future chances of ever gettting elected again….maybe that’s better than having them half-way in with a minority, unable to reveal their true colours, and leading people to the false conclusion that they’re not so scary after all. Here’s my riding: Ottawa Centre:
Other 1.4% You can check your own riding here. My third Inka hat (also known as an Inca hat, a Peruvian hat, an earflap hat, or a chulla) is coming along nicely. I should be done in a day or two. I meant to make this one in all natural and neutral colours, but I couldn’t resist playing with splashes of colour. Every time I make this hat, I learn more about colour and how it all works together. I learn from the combinations I love, and also from the combinations I don’t love. I’ve learned that a combination can look fabulous until you put another combination adjacent to it, and suddenly it affects the first combination in an odd way – the balance is thrown off somehow. I’m not sure I understand how it all works, but I am intrigued by the phenomenon.
By the way, that’s my knitting needle case (I love that thing), and in the background you can see my stock pot. That’s because I’m just a little bit off-balance myself. I went to a meeting tonight, and then at 9:20 pm I went out and bought a fresh turkey, which I’m now cooking. The turkey will be cooked at about 1:30 in the morning and I have to be up at 6:00 to get ready for work. I’m doing all this because I want some turkey soup. The first pair of socks is coming along nicely. It’s going much faster than I expected (although it’s not exactly sock wool…and they are ankle socks…but even so). The first part was easy (ribbing the leg section) – the only part that could be considered tricky is getting used to knitting with four double-pointed needles. However, they get easier as you get more experience, and also as the tube starts to take shape. It’s not as hard as it looks, at any rate.
The second part is the heel. That was fast and fun. You’re slipping a lot of the stitches, so it goes very quickly. I’ve finished that part now, and you can see from the photos that the heel is formed.
The next part, which I haven’t done yet, looks more complicated. It probably isn’t as complicated as it sounds when you’re reading the directions. Basically it tells you how to collect all the stitches back on the needles in the right order (including picking up and knitting some from around the heel). I think once that’s accomplished, the rest will be easy. ..except for that Kitchener stitching at the very end. I will say I’m glad I have a knitting group to guide me through this project….socks seem to be easier to do than they are to explain. I’m knitting again. I’ve got two projects actively on the needles right now.
I decided to knit my socks in tandem, because I’ve heard of one-sock syndrome, which is when you get bored after knitting the first sock and never get around to knitting its mate. This is purely a coincidence, but 2006 has been declared Year of the Sock and there is a real bona fide sock-knitting contest to commemorate it. |
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Dave has requested I identify him only as ‘Dave X’ when discussing the Change Challenge. In keeping with his wishes for a somewhat cloaked identity, I have rendered this photograph tiny and indistinct. 
That 
Then 
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