if it's spring, it must be time for new Birks!

It is hard to describe how I feel about Birkenstocks. Before them, I had foot troubles that kept me on my ass for a long damned time. After them, despite custom-made [insanely expensive] orthotics, I could walk. A year in them, and the plantar fasciitis was under control.

Saying i <3 them doesn't begin to cover it.


I have Arizonas, a pair of Gizehs, Madrids in silver, fading lilac nubuck Floridas and of course my olive suede Bostons. But you must welcome the newest additions: Pittsburg. [yes, spelled like that.] They're part of the Footprints line, which takes the Birkenstock footbed and puts it in more shoe-like stuff. I ordered my on eBay and despite the $42 customs charge I had to pay [the shoes were only $89us), I am t.h.r.i.l.l.e.d. They fit perfectly, they are freaking adorable and they will do very well for me when I'm in Italy.

There are other adorable styles in the Footprints line and I believe I'll be watching it more closely. I'd thought Footprints ran more narrow or slim or something than the standard Birk line, but thankfully not. [And I have had problems with the Tatami line, which doesn't have the same height in the arch support area, so this is a huge relief.]

Yay for cute & happy feet!

the great fishy lie

So it's a beautiful day out today -- spring-verging-on-summer weather, at least for the next few hours. That means a walk at lunch, so out I went.

I stopped into Orvis, because it's the kind of place that fascinates me. I don't care for fishing [though both my grandfathers loved it] and it's not the flies. It's the little gear boxes they have. I found something I couldn't live without and went to the cash to pay.

As I'm standing at the front, waiting for the Interac [debit machine] to do its thing, I can't help but overhear the conversation of the three guys next to me. Couldn't help it, cause they started talking quite loudly. Nearly shouting at the end. About what? About when it was legal to fish for trout in this province. The guy behind the counter was certain of his facts, and the others were just not having any of it.

I looked at the other guy behind the counter as he gave me my receipt and said, "I thought fishing was supposed to be relaxing."

I'm sticking with knitting. [and no, the thing I got in Orvis wasn't the thing I was looking for. search continues.]

i loves the shwag

I can't help myself. Yesterday, I was browsing stuff online and remembered how much I loved the loteria* cards I saw people using as embellishment at the Renegade Craft Fair last summer. So I went looking for them. And then it hit me.

24 hours, one photoshoot with the obliging husband [the yarn is Silken and the needles are a pair of my Grandma's], linguistic input from several kind people and a lot of Photoshop work later, voila.

I hope you like. The stuff is in the Knitty shop. I'm gonna order some right now.

*loteria = mexican bingo

urgent spanish query

"el calcetero"

does this mean "the knitter"? please let me know, and thanks!

near Tivo disaster

So I come home from work today, ready to enjoy an evening of Tivo. And somehow, the channel won't change. It SAYS it's changing, but it's stuck on CITY-TV. I don't love Gord Martineau that much.

So I go through the troubleshooting, until I remember the mantra of the Knitty household: when something suddenly stops working, go check the cords.

Yes. A nice clean nip through the IR cord, probably by Boeing. She's the real destructo bun.

Hub was able to splice the wires back together, and we have reinforced the area where the wires sit behind the TV. We thought we'd secured it before, but we've added a big sheet of masonite that is as bunny proof as anything we can put there.

As for the people that told me it would change my life, they're absolutely right. There's no urgency to watch anything. I don't have to schedule my life around TV schedules. I can pee when I want. Even my favorite Sunday morning ritual [programming Knitty pages while watching Sunday Morning on CBS] was more enjoyable, since I could pause whenever I needed to concentrate, and then pick up where I left off.] Don't even start about the 30-second skip button. I would have its children, I love it so much.

Networks: you no longer control me. No more commercials for disgusting foot fungus or the rude Pepto-Bismol rap dudes. I am free!

Now it's your turn

Don't be shy. :-)

You don't need an Odeo account to do this [so they tell me]. Just a computer with a microphone. Come on. You know you wanna.
---
First in, Mary-Kay from San Diego! She's having a blast dyeing silk hankies, she sez.
Next: Courtney from Iowa, who absolutely can wear a CanKnittyAn shirt if she wants to [she asked]. Dang it, anyone who wants can wear it. If I could find a similarly adorable US-related pun, I'd do one of those up too. Mazel tov on the crochet and yes -- I wish I had a Target close by. Instead, I fulfill my Target needs every time I visit Jillian.

this is fun! who's next?

Knitty yarn preview 2

I promised you Uruguayan yummies last week, and here they are.


What is this stuff? It's Rio de la Plata yarn, made in Uruguay. According to the newsletter they sent me, the company's been around since last year. They have a new Candian distributor too [Nordic Imports], so I expect you'll start to see this yummy stuff at your LYS soon.

It's really lovely stuff and seems like a close relative of Malabrigo or Manos. In terms of softness, you'll have to fondle it yourself. I'm hardly an expert on the softness of wool.

Specs: 140-164 yards per hank, 14-16 sts/4", US #9/10 needle. Comes in solid, faded, multi-color, merino, twists, artista, melange solid and melange multi.

abusing technology for the sake of amusement

Thanks to Mary Burr, I found Odeo tonight.

You can listen to my frivolous waste of bandwidth here. It's just over 3 minutes long.

For some reason, the last few seconds weren't recorded. All I said was something like, "well, that's it. I'm not sure if I'll do this again. Leave me a comment and tell me what you think."

I'm kind of scared to hear what you think, but what the hell. You gotta live on the edge, eh?

i like clevah knittahs

Have you met mishka? She's a clever girl...and the new merch in the Knitty shop is thanks to a post she made recently.

To thank her, she's getting the very first shirt from that shop. A good shwag slogan makes my day, especially one so patriotic!

ca-razy!

If you asked me what I was doing this evening after work, would you be surprised if I answered, "chatting up Marie Irshad, the host of Knitcast"? Cause that's what I just did!

Marie and her dishy other half are just wrapping up a short visit to Toronto [they live in Wales, see] to stock up on vinyl and yarn. I got to finally meet Ms Marie, when we took the express bus to the beach together and stopped off for a visit at the Naked Sheep.

As a result, guess what famous faux-blogger you'll get to hear interviewed on the next Knitcast? Yes, our Denny. She was adorable, funny, and you must listen. I babbled on a bit too, taking the listener on a virtual tour of the Sheep at Marie's request, with extended gushing over Charlie, the shop dog and the Fleece Artist/Handmaiden section. I've been told it'll be on the site on Monday next.

We followed that craziness up with dinner at the Goof and now my Welsh friends are on their way back to their hotel for a last sleep. They're fun people, and were very kind about my complete inability to remember that Billy Connolly is Scottish. I do know the difference, really.

Most interesting tidbits learned this evening:
- Nigella had her own chat show last fall, and it didn't go over very well. But she is still widely loved, thankfully.
- Naveen Andrews is living with Barbara Hershey. That's a stunner.

I now have a much better understanding of the difference between a Bristol and a Manchester accent. And a killer hankering to fly to Wales, raid the Colinette shop for all the Fandango I can afford and knit a robe. [it's on the podcast.]

I'd better go sleep this one off.

le Tivo, she has arrived

eeeeeeeeeeee!

hub is out now getting a wireless net adapter so we can get plugged in, and fingers crossed -- we should be setting up stuff tonight!

i'm guessing that the reason i can't set things up on their website is that you put your postal code into the actual DVR, and then it tells the system where you are that way. cause there ain't no way to input your location on the web that i haven't done already.

found a few messages on the tivo forums from happy canadian users, so i'm staying encouraged.

i send most sincere thanks to the best enabler in the world, Ms J, and also a mighty fine package packer.

---

p.s. IT. WORKS. not wirelessly for the moment, but it works brilliantly. if you live in Canada and you have an accommodating friend, get yourself some Tivo. i'm giddy.

p.p.s. thanks for all the well wishes. that, plus some matzo ball soup and i'm feeling close to 80%. that's not too bad.

ann called it.

yup. this is one hellish case of the epizootics. i was in bed ALL. FREAKING. WEEK. Saturday morning right through till today, when i really wanted nothing more than to continue bedness. the day job folk have been exceptionally patient with my ookies, so i had to go clear up some stuff today. which i did.

and then back to my jammies and my bed, which i deeply love.

so no, not really better yet, but better than i was two days ago. sort of.

they'd better start ramping up that flu shot they're giving us [i got one last fall. ahem.] cause clearly they're missing a few bad bugs.

---

meanwhile, not much else is new around here. i did get a killer dollop of uruguayan yummy which i'll be showing off soon. nothing i can knit, but the rest of you will love it.

oh, and there's this big ol magazine that i've gotta get out for early April. so i'll be kinda busy for the next bit, between coughing bouts.

---

mostly, i'm very grateful that i got the cold THIS month, and not next.

ciao, tutti!

woof.

sick as dog [post duke, btw -- clearly this is a trend. what do they put in the beer there? just kidding].
bed is my friend. bye.

Knitting my husband understands

The man reads physics texts before bed. So when I pulled out my new copy of A Treasury of Magical Knitting to cast on a Seasilk Moebius [you can just let those words dribble over you for a moment...], I showed it to him.

"Yup," he said.
I said, "this is mental."
He said, "don't try to understand it."

Which is the same advice Stephanie gave me last night. Just follow Cat Bordhi's clear instructions and don't think about it too hard. I have not the slightest idea how any human being could expand their brain sufficiently to grasp the spacial concepts required to create a Moebius Cast On and make it work. But Ms Bordhi has done it. Is "genius" too strong a word?

If I'm very lucky and this does actually work [aka I don't mess it up], I'll be knitting Seasilk/crack as I tip a Strongbow back at the Duke tomorrow night with the Team Canada folks. I figured I'd better get the hard part done tonight.

Friday. Blessed Friday. Some weeks it seems further away than others.

complete insanity

As Jillian will testify, when things start to freak me out badly, I internet shop. This time, it's a bag to carry my stuff on the plane to Italy. [What, I don't have enough bags? Shush.] I don't always buy, but I do look...rather obsessively.

I decided on Freitag, cause they're the coolest. Except I couldn't find a color combination I liked, after leaving my ideal bag [custom] in the shopping cart. Because it would have cost more than $200. Never mind.

I figured Freitag can't be the only company making bags out of used truck tarps, and it turned out that I was right. My best discovery came when I figured out, thanks to Google's translator, that "LKW-Plane" means "truck tarpaulins" in German -- the home of such bags, and then I was off to the races, babies. [Freitag, btw, is in Switzerland. Which, I hear, is a more expensive place to do business. Hence the higher cost.]

Without further ado, my list for your enjoyment:
- Kultbag -- my personal favorite, though they're totally out of stock on almost everything. The owner, Bernd, wrote me a nice note and told me an Asian wholesaler bought out everything they have, but they'll be restocked within a month. Definitely worth watching, cause they make cool bags, and very affordable. They also make bags with OLD AIR MATTRESSES as the front flap. Could you plotz?
- Cays -- cool, but only in German, so I never went past making my own customized bag. I prefer not to order stuff in a foreign language, in case they're also asking for a kidney along with my credit card number.
- Berlin Bag -- the ultimate winner. I uploaded my own image, got a 15 euro discount [they've got a sale on right now] and chose my own colors for the top, back and sides of the bag. The bags are smaller than Freitag and Kultbag offer, but they're still made with truck tarps and the custom front panel was too hard to resist. Not recycled. Can't have everything.
---
eta contributions from the comments [thanks! keep them coming!]
- Atelier Scrap from Briana...brilliant French-Canadian company with a French-only website that's not quite ready yet. Definitely cool.
- Demano from Betty...brilliant Spanish [Barcelona!] company with a Spanish-only website that looks like it works quite well. My Spanish sucks, but when I have time, I'll take another look. I think you can pick from a selection of advertising banners and the style of your bag and they make it up for you. Look at the rainboots on the front page! Eee!

it's our first review for Big Girl Knits

And we're happy to report that she liked it! Thank you, Janelle!

litter system for rabbits

For Kaphine (sorry, hon -- i don't know how this will help...)

http://tinyurl.com/n73ta

This is a four-part litter pan. Two identical litter boxes on the bottom, a sifting layer and a keeping-stuff-inside lid that locks.

For rabbits, clumping litter is a no-no. And we were going through a huge bag of Yesterday's News every two weeks. Ridiculous.

So, here's what we do:

plain box 1 sits on the bottom, unused for now
plain box 2 is immediately above it, lined with several layers of newspaper
locking lid is put UPSIDE DOWN inside plain box 2 to act as a spacer so that
sifting layer can be put on the top. [which means it doesn't lock. unless the buns are mental, they should eventually leave it alone as ours have]

This means the buns poop on the grid [which is gentle on their paws, btw], some of the poop drops below and all of the pee drops below, sopped up by the newspaper.

It requires you to change it daily, since there's no odor control, but it also means the buns don't stand in wet litter, should we be a little late to clean the box, and we're not going through tons of bags of litter stuff all the time.

To clean, take the top sifting layer off, slide it into a bag, rub through the bag on the underside of the sifting layer, to get the wee poops to come loose. Dump in bag.
Dump plain box 2's contents into the bag.
Line plain box 1 with newspaper, put sifting layer and locking layer in place and you can put it right back in the cage.
Spray plain box 2 with Nature's Miracle, or similar non-toxic neutralizer, rinse and place plain box 2 under plain box 1, ready for next time.
When necessary, spray and rinse the sifting layer as well with Nature's Miracle.

I don't know if it's that much easier, but it does go quite quickly and seems to be doing the trick.

The end.

[apologies to those who find the subject of bunny poo distasteful. it's quite inoffensive, really, and those of us with more than one rabbit probably find we're confronted with handling quite a lot of it. yes, you can put it in the garden as mulch, if you want. our city has a green composting program, so the newspaper and poo are getting recycled on a grander scale.]

Things I have done since Saturday morning

- confirmed that hub and I *are* going to Tuscany in April
- found a way to see the folks, the week before, for Passover [hint: Amtrak + Jillian = good times] and booked tickets
- tried a new litter system for the amazing poop-producing bunnies, with reasonable success
- wrote a lot of e-mails about a lot of stuff, mostly knitting/business related
- dreamed my little dreamy dreams of my knittish future
- finished listening to "Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil" on my iPod [yes, I *am* the last person in the universe to have pseudo-read this book]
- started listening to the Martha Rules on my iPod
- started panicking about all the stuff I'm not doing that Martha thinks I should be doing
- felt good about much of the stuff she told me to do that I'm doing already, and have been for quite a while

Stuff I need to do before this Saturday morning:
- finish the pinwheel blanket that doesn't want to be finished. dear lord, this thing feels huge, even if I still need to keep knitting the thing. time to switch to the Addis, i think. I need me some SLIDING.
- get a big care package sent off to Libby tonight for No Sheep
- do so much other No Sheep stuff that there's no way I even want to list it all here, but it's a lot, trust me
- book the tickets to Tuscany [eeeeeee!]
- make reservations for poop-factory bunnies at the Bunny Spa for while we're gone
- spring Knitty up the ying-yang
- calm down a little

Ha.

Rest. Less.

and i shouldn't be, cause i just got back from the great tranquilizer: First Markham Place. visited Teresa in the yarn shop [hi, Teresa!] and got to fondle her new cottons. really nice. she's getting more in next week, she says.

visited Toys2, where i picked up a wee dunny, hoping to get the Joe Ledbetter version. and i did! when you're dealing with blind-boxed stuff, it's a real crapshoot.

why did i want the Joe Ledbetter version? to go with the REAL Mr Bunny [the yellow one]. which i bought at magic pony some months ago. it's one of 400 made, is signed on the bottom, and a totally silly impulse purchase, but it's also really beautifully made. looks exactly like Ledbetter's illustrations of Mr Bunny.

bought a bottle of unsweetened green jasmine tea [iced] to drink on the way home.

and stocked up on timothy cubes [kaytee brand, clay-free] for the buns to munch at the Petsmart next door. it sounds like they're eating concrete when they eat these things. they love them.

and that is all. now, back to the mission falls cotton pinwheel blankie that i'm knitting for a friend's fresh new peanut who popped out too early. peanut is doing well, and i just want to get the blankie done so it can keep her cuddly as soon as possible.

guess who's coming to our house?

thanks to the loan of my US-based sister's amex card [you need a card with a US address to buy the thing] and the impending postal enabling services of my friend J, Tivo is coming home to mama!

thanks also to Stacey for making the call last night for me. you were right!

for any other canucks similarly tempted, the key points are:
- order from the Tivo site and you can get the $150 rebate deducted from your purchase price, so the box plus one year's service is $225us. nice.
- you have to have a credit card or Amex with a US billing address to pay
- ground shipping is free
- you have to have a friend in the US to mail the box to
- the friend then has to forward the baby on to you

this isn't circumventing the rules. this is how Tivo has set it up. hey, at least we've legitimately got the service up here, so once the box comes and hub installs it [he's designated installer, since he actually will READ the instructions], i'll let you know how it turns out.

so
freaking
excited!

Today isn't April 1, is it?

I feel like I'm dreaming.

SIGN. ME. UP!

---

eta: would someone please call the TIVO 800 number from the US for me [and the other Canadians who are now drooling along with me]? I want to know if we would receive the rebate they're offering if we have a US address to mail it to. I can't see why they would exclude us from this. It's $150 off, for heaven's sake. We need it! :-) If you could call and leave a note with what you learned in the comments, all of us would be most grateful. (877-289-8486)

Team Canada lives on!

We ain't giving it up just cause the Olympics are over. Team Canada will be meeting the 2nd Friday of every month at the Duke. Deets here. I'll keep the upcoming meeting date in my right navbar --->

What, you weren't a member before? Well, join us now! Bring your knitting, your friends and your love of beer [or your beverage of choice]. Beerman will be waiting for us, and he knows what we like.