Tuesday = Brown

Monday = White

and a fun thing here

Things I want to start/continue/finish:

-flowered shirt dress
-granny smith sweater
-baby sweater
-quilting
-headband
-repair pants
-more socks!
-scooter skirt
-paint living room
-bedspread

Gosh! Isn't that just the beginning?!

Best day ever!

(What is this, 3 posts in a row?!)

Well, I didn't get around to baking bread, again. Instead I brought home this beautiful bike! For only twenty dollars. I love it!!! Gosh I love it! I just love bicycling.

This is a list of things I want for my home:

1. Crockpot
2. Plant stand
3. Dog

I really want a dog! More specifically, a greyhound. Or a terrier. But a greyhound I could rescue and they are said to be good for apartments. Gosh! I can't stop thinking about dogs lately, reading about the different breeds and keeping them. I just love dogs. One of the main things I love is sitting down next to them and hugging them. Also walking them. And hopefully how they would keep my cat in line. So hopefully I will be able to bring home a beautiful greyhound one day soon!

The other thing I did today was go to the library ( I am that cool ) But really, the library is SO Interesting! You just never know what you might find. They have gotten a bunch of new knitting books, that's great. I brought home two decorating books to get some ideas before I paint my living room. Besides, I just love decorating books. Besides this, a novel and an interesting John Holt book.

This is what I did today, brought home nice new plants! Cute, huh? I just love them. I want to get a plant stand for those little ones, and put geraniums in the kitchen window instead. I've been wanting that for quite a while, I think that's lovely.

I also cooked my favourite sweet-and-sour red cabbage with rice. It also did not turn out terribly photogenic. A food stylist, I am not.

I also meant to bake bread but instead I took a nice afternoon nap. Mmm, wonderful!

Yay!

Finally!

I am a very slow knitter, I admit. But Jaywalker is a great pattern! No wonder everyone has knit it, it's so fun and the outcome is great! The first sock took me forever to cast on, I ripped it out about 5 times trying to decide what to do. I'm glad I decided on this. So anyway, this was, in fact, my April Project Spectum project. Don't ask about May.

More talk tomorrow, I have the day off!

Gosh! Where have I been?

Well, we've had some excitement here this week : A fire in the apartment above us! Thank God our apartment had very little damage. Just some holes in the ceiling from the water :


The landlord will repaint the walls (although they aren't damaged), which saves me from having to do it myself, which I was planning on! Overall I am so so so thankful the damage wasn't more- from fire and water. Phew!

Craft-wise... well... plugging away on the Granny Smith sweater, but it's slow going.

Lately I've been working on school more. I'm taking German in summer semester. I already studied this in high school, so it's more a review course for me. In September I'll be taking Russian and Hebrew, very excited! Yesterday was the birthday party of the little Russian boy I tutor, it could have been very helpful to speak it already! But, I was told I look like a Russian speaker, not an English speaker, that made me glad. And meanwhile I am still studying Italian, to be prepared for fall...

More knitting news coming soon!

What an exciting thing!

I got the yarn yesterday for the lovely Granny Smith cardigan. Four balls of Kid Silk Haze, gosh! It's lovely and fun and I'm quite excited for the result! I was tempted by a turquoise shade, my favourite colour for clothes, but I like the green because it reminds me of something Amélie might wear - and somewhere between my second and 33rd watching of «Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulin» I made a personal vow to make Amélie-like clothing choices whenever possible. Besides, May is Green Month!

Today is sunny! Yesterday poured rain, very conducive to knitting. But I was feeling a bit clammed up in the house so when the rain stopped I climbed the mountain and then ran back down. It was the odd type of sky where half is sunny and the other half steel blue and I tried to take some dramatic photographs.



I think my neighbourhood is the most beautiful in the city. The richer you are, the higher up the mountain you can afford to live. I live at the bottom. Just kidding! Well, I really do but it's not a bad thing at all, better, unless you have a family and need a whole house. From the top you can see right to the South Shore.

I didn't do any cooking this weekend, unfortunately. Maybe when I get home from tutoring. I still need groceries. Gosh. Sorry to ramble! I'm just thinking how this weekend flew by! It almost feels wasted, though I did get a lot of knitting and studying done.

Well, I'd better get busy now!

dinner

I should probably make more of an effort to cook appetizing food.



This is just eggplant and tomatoes and it tastes delicious, but God it looks disgusting.

The Weekly Post

What's wrong with my Jaywalkers?!

I guess nothing. But they don't seem to have the same nice ridge of stiches as everybody else's.

These socks are good for April Project Spectrum, not so much for April Use What You Have month. I do have a dress in the works that fits both but it got sidetracked since my co-worker was sick this week and I had to do both our jobs - eleven hour days, yuck! So much for my crafty week. But I will be raking in the cash, so who cares, it was actually great!

Have a great week everybody, hopefully I'll be back shortly!

Yesterday was my official last day of this term - exams are done! It's all over! (for three weeks, anyway)

But the end of term is a bit anticlimactic. All this week when I was stuck there at my kitchen table, conjugating verb after verb and writing essays and occasionally pausing to do chores and gaze out the window, I kept waiting for this moment. Now it's arrived, and... ? Now what? I guess the last day is never as thrilling as it was in primary school.

That said, I'm still very excited for a couple of weeks without class, and just as the weather is turning nice. I have some nice plans especially for what I'll do around here:

I'd like to get some geraniums for my kitchen window
Do some painting
Finish up a bunch of sewing that's gotten stymied in the middle

Now I hope I'll keep this in mind and not get bogged down by work - that is to say, my office job.

it became spring!

I want to go outside SO BADLY.

I have been stuck inside revising for the past three days and this is as close as I can get:

It's torture!

10 lovely things

Grabbing an idea from Lisa

1. It's Passover! I love Passover. And Passover cooking. It forces you to be creative. And eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Although I mostly end up suriving on apples and tam tam crackers.


2. It's also Easter, we brought home a beautiful lilly, and I have to-day off work!


3. My boss is keeping the clinic open on Monday, the official holiday, and I'll be working, which means I'll be paid double time AND another day's full pay. It will be like earning... well, a lot per hour!

4. Blue skies. Spring in Montreal! I always feel a sense of accomplishment upon making it, sanely, through another winter.



5. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go home for the holiday this year, but... my wonderful mum is taking adantage of the long weekend and finally coming to visit!

6. My Kitten may not we well-behaved but she does take a nice photograph


7. Last week a friend I haven't seen since high school and I finally connected for the first time in years. It was so, so nice to talk again, when I was expecting we'd never hear from each other again.

8. School term is over! except for exams next week, one in-class and one an essay. Summer semester starts in May and I'm excited: German and biomedical ethics. Since I took German in h.s. I'm hoping it will all come back to me for an easy pass. I'm even more excited for fall semester : Hebrew, Italian Advanced Grammar and Composition, and two more very interesting courses.

9. I'm the most excited for summer! and swimming at Oka! and summer clothes! and sunshine! and dancing to rock'n'roll and open windows and geraniums in the kitchen sill!
I just can't get enough of that blue sky

10. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Johanthan Safran Foer. I highly, highly, highly recommend it.


11. Mini-legumes!

Stay tuned for a "use-what-you-have"-themed sewing project.

saturday!

it looks like spring here, but it's still below zero out. I hold by that bit of green grass, though, and that blue sky, as my proof that spring is not coming, but here!

while we're on a pink kick

My pinks for project spectrum

The good news is, I finished the second sock. The bad news is, I figured out why the first one turned out so huge and had to rip it back to the heel. Oh well, live and learn.

Happy Holiday!

I made some Hamantaschen yesterday for Purim. They are delicious! But the recipe is terrible, oh it's so bad for you. But, it's only once a year. I prefer the jam filling, the chocolate are too sweet. I couldn't find any poppy filling this year either, but the apricot jam is really, really delicious.

The recipe called for four cups of flour but I only had two, so I used matzah meal for the rest, and it worked out very well. They just absorb the liquid and you can't really tell. It's a bit of a stiffer (is that the word?) texture and very nice.

mmm printemps

Yesterday I caught the bug of spring cleaning!

First I cleaned up my stash a little bit :



I didn't realise I have so many knitting needles hanging around here !



I found this five dollar dress I got at the Le Château Entrepôt :


My intention when I bought it was simply to rock it as a dress, but now I'm wondering if I'll just cut it up for the fabric. What do you think ?



I also tidied my art supplies. I didn't get much farther than that. The trouble here is you start cleaning and you are quite excited but soon your enthusiasm fades - but nevertheless you just keep finding more and more mess! If you are me, at least.

Later I made this for a baby shower, and as well a little bit Project Spectrum :



And it was a beautiful day, the first this year ! I had the windows wide open, it was delightful.

I spend a lot of time in this corner, knitting, reading, snacking...

Corner, belated.

Here's a corner, where my bed meets the radiator and above it the window. I have a big thing for white in this room - and I love those sheets! I think they're from the Martha Stewart line. I did try for a Corner on thursday but that tends to be rather a long day around here and I just didn't make it.

Project spectrum has started, how fun! I think I may already have a project for June (blue month):

Painting my living room! Finally this insufferable orange might be gone. Now that I've decided at last on blue, after months of contemplation and searching - I was originally trying to find a rich cream that incorporated gold and rose like you find at the centre of a blush-coloured rose, which is not as easy as it might seem - comes the hard part of choosing just the right shade. Do I want more green, more red, duller, brighter, paler, deeper - gosh! It's a tough one! But really so much fun. What I have in mind is that blue porcelaine with the white overlay - I can't think of the name just now. I think it would be just right.

Happy weekend! On the menu tomorrow : knit, crochet, read the newspaper.