The Fish Knits

Solstice Slip Socks

Hey check it out! Blog activity!!

Let’s just skip past the apologies this time for having been absent for so long, and get right down to business. This is a knitting blog, right?

It’s (well, it *was*) Olympic knitting time again, and I’ve joined in. Last time ’round, in 2006, I knitted a cabled bolero sweater. Blackberry, from Knitty. While I got it all done, I haven’t worn it since. I find it too bulky, it doesn’t sit properly, and (completely my fault) I don’t like the yarn I used. Oh well, it was an interesting learning exercise! This time though, I have changed my focus.

Socks.

Solstice Slip socks, from the 2007 Rockin’ Sock Club to be exact! I have only made 2 pairs of socks from the two years’ worth of clubs I was part of, so this is where I get serious about them. The patterns and yarns are so lovely that I ought to knit them up! I’m not the quickest sock knitter in the world, so this should be (was) a great challenge for me. And guess what. Success!!

Now let’s bring this up to date. I’ve got a good few things on the needles, and indeed some on the spindles. I feel the fire coming back. Oh yes…

February Lady

With any luck there will be more from me soon!

I love that I have a ton of pictures on my little pocket camera that I had completely forgotten about since I had misplaced the cable for my camera. Photos kept coming, but I couldn’t get them onto the computer. In light of this, today’s post is going to be sort of on the random side…

Let’s start with some knitting, since this is supposed to be a knitting blog, right?

Last week I went to Point Pelee to do some birding with a group from work. It was a lot of fun, and the drive meant lots of knitting time! My travel knitting at the moment is a pair of Knee High to a Grasshopper socks from the 2007 Rockin’ Sock Club. I found there was a little mistake in the chart for the calf increases, but once I got that sorted out (after getting frustrated with it, of course- tough to read long hand directions in a moving vehicle) it was smooth sailing.

The weekend just before the Pelee trip was a holiday, so Andrew and I took off to climb at the Montagne D’Argent, not far from Mont Tremblant in the Laurentians of Quebec. Anyone else find it cold?

The temperature dipped to 3ºC that night, after raining all the previous day. Which meant…

Wet rock!! Not a whole lot of fun when your feet slip and your hands get wet and cold and crampy. As usual, when you’re having a bunch of fun actually climbing, there’s no one to take photos of the good stuff! When you’re on the ground getting ready to climb though, and the black flies are feasting on your ankles, it’s picture time!

Yes. We love this.

More photo round up! An old one of Evan from the camera. Hat comes off, and look! “I have hair like Andrew’s!”

A spring surprise from the garden. I hadn’t looked at this side of the house for a week or so I guess, and SURPRISE!!

We have asparagus! How tall is that asparagus, exactly?

Very! I had to read up on asparagus, and it turns out we’re supposed to harvest it when it reaches 7-9″ tall. Oops..!

Last one for today is a funny one.

Really…?

Now that spring is well and truly underway here in Ottawa, I have the great pleasure of watching the garden come to life! The light was fading fast when I shot these photos last night, but I thought you might enjoy seeing what’s unfurling.

Yes, there has been knitting too… I am whipping along with my Grasshopper socks, and enjoying watching them grow. At this rate I’ll have them done in- no wait. That’ll jinx it!

The colour isn’t quite right as the sun was setting fast. I wasn’t sure I’d like the colour mix when I saw it in the skein, but I really like the way they’re coming out. Just wish I could have more knitting time of course!

I had a whole other post written, but in waiting to get the photos sorted out it sat there long enough to become stale. Oh well! I have something much more interesting to write about now, anyway.

Last weekend I attended the Level 6 Cup here in Ottawa. I was there working a booth for MEC, which was neat because I got the chance to take my camera along and shoot some pictures of the paddlers- something I’ve never done before. It was such a great time!

The idea here is that the paddlers ride that big wave there, doing as many tricks as they can in the 45 second time limit. There are 3 rounds, so if you mess up the first one you get 2 more attempts.

This paddler is sitting backwards on the wave, half way through a flat spin (she will turn 360º without sliding off the back of the wave), and she is doing it “clean”, which means not using her paddle. Cool.

This guy is in the middle of another trick where he flips the boat up and around onto its nose, then regains the surface again without sliding off the wave. Crazy!

I’m not sure that there’s any way to get a good shot of this one… He’s flipping his boat like a forward sommersault! Of course, it looks like a total miss…

There were even a couple of Tandem Whitewater boats! I can’t even imagine…

What a fun day. There were kids there hanging out, and dogs lounging in the sun, and a festival atmosphere. So great.

There’s definitely something to be said for starting ‘em young!

Thursday morning I found myself in an area of town I don’t tend to go to much any more, and remembered that there’s a great little yarn shop there. Knit Knackers has been around for ages, but you pretty much need to know it’s there in order to find it. It’s housed in one of the beautiful old brown stones in Centretown, and shares space with an aesthetician. They have yarn, fibre for spinning, wheels, books, tools… all kinds of things, and lots of odd balls to rummage through.

I was just coming out of an appointment with the endodontist, so I was feeling like I needed a little pick-me-up, so in I went, and wouldn’t you know they had my yarn!

Next on the needles will be Tempest, and I’m dying to start. Only 3 more big cable repeats on Cable Down before I finish the second sleeve and can sew in the ends and block. Any bets on how long that will take?