Slippers Stage 2

So I shrunk the slippers down and I really hope they fir their owners. It's hard to guage, but I have my fingers crossed. I still need to cut out the ears and sew them on as well as sew on a nose and eyes, but I am very pleased with them. The pattern is fantastic.


Below is an afghan I made for AJ and I. I have all the strips done, now I just need to sew them together. Anyone who knows me with my knitting knows that I hate sewing up most of all. That is the reason I have had the afghan done for months now, but haven't finished it. Also, I have a cardigan that has also been done for months but I just cannot sew it up. Brutal, I know. I will probably sew this up after Christmas. Same with the cardigan. Probably.


I have started a wicked slouchy beret for a friend and I love it so much. A new favorite pattern that will probably see a lot of use. Christmas is approaching fast and I have lots of pressies to make so the blog should be updated more often. BFN.

Quickie just because

It's been a long while since my last post. This is just a smallie to tide people over and to fill the gap because it is a crazy time and I have lots to say about the past couple months. Below is a tuque I crocheted for my darling frenchie Julie. I started it when I was in Montreal for training, hanging out with her, and I just sent it to her last week even though it's been done since October. I even wore it once, naughty me. I love this hat pattern.


The slipper below if for my darling cousin Jana. But it is huge and needs to be shrunk. Plus I am going to add ears and make them pink bunny slippers. I will post them when they are done.


Yes, I like pink. Anyways, I have to go, that's all for now. But I will definitely post pics and stories from Vegas soon. My 30th in Vegas. Best birthday ever!!

30 in VEGAS - aka the best birthday I've ever had.

So I am so slack but the end of last yer just absolutely FLEW by. Below is a picture of me at Beth and Ryan's housewarming. I am wearing a helmet because... All I can figure is that the game of ping pong I was watching was pretty intense. AJ and his brother are pretty competitive.


We had Thanksgiving at our house this year after I got back from training in Montreal. AJ, his dad and his brother Ian closed the fence in which makes the backyard look much better. Now we can get a puppy!! We're gonna wait until spring.



Our kitchen is a bit small for Thanksgiving with 8 people, but the food was good and the company even better.


After dinner we had a big ole game of Cranium - boys vs girls, which, I find is always a disappointment because the girls I play with are all about fun and don't care about winning. And that always leads to the boys beating us and gloating and being completely obnoxious (it's happened more than once). But after Cranium, came Twister. It was just Ian, Melissa, AJ and I after quite a few bevvies. AJ and Ian are, surprise surprise, ridiculously competitive at this game too. AJ nearly crushed me in one match.



At the end of October, for my 30th birthday, AJ and I met 10 of our friends (from Winnipeg originally) in Las Vegas!! We got their for Halloween. We were staying in Caesar's Palace, which I am sure must be the nicest hotel in Vegas. The 12 of us dressed up like gangsters and flappers. I must say, we looked good. We had a great dinner and then hit the strip, aiming to check out all the bars along it. I think we got as far as two. It was hard to leave Casino Royale with it's $1 Margaritas and Michelobes.



The boys hit the back jack table and played for a good hour, but I don't think any of them walked away any richer.



Saturday Greg came and met us (drove down from California for the night) and we had a big evening. We went to Pure on top of our hotel and could look down on the strip. Expensive drinks, but tons of fun. AJ went out with the boys that night and sent me back to the room :( Ended up being a good move as I went outlet shopping with the girls on Sunday and AJ couldn't function!! Then Sunday night we went out for dinner at a high end restaurant in Old Vegas before going to see Cirque du Soleil "O", which was absolutely amazing. We probably should have gone to bed after that since we all left the next day, but we stayed out late one more time. It is Las Vegas after all, and who knows when we'll be back (next year for Halloween!!!!). AJ and I had a brutal Monday, most of which we spent in airports trying to get home. We got delayed due to weather and had to stay the night in Calgary. Thank god Pre and Leanne were there too and we stayed with them.

Anyways, best birthday I have had yet. Tried to convince AJ we should get married but it was a no go. Stay tuned...

Overnighting in Yorkton

With my new job comes a lot of travel. For instance, I had lunch with a very important doctor today in PA (Prince Albert), which is an hour and a half away from Saskatoon. I got there with lunch at 11:45 am. The receptionist just laughed at me and said, "Oh, we're nowhere near ready for lunch!!" So I sat patiently in the waiting room for an hour and a half until my doc was done with his morning patients and we could sit, have lunch and chat. It was SO worth it. I had a great discussion with him, and he was very respectful and let me do my Novartis thing, and then gave me his feedback on what he likes, uses and his thoughts on treating hypertension. (I know you're thinking, god you are such a dork, who else would be happy about that? But I'm new in this job and I really like when docs converse with me instead of nodding and walking away.) Anyways, then I hopped back in the minivan for another 4 hours on the road all the way to Yorkton. I will stay here tonight and tomorrow. It's kinda neat, although I miss AJ... already. I'm going to grab some dinner, but just thought before Hayley sends me another hint about being terrible with my blog, I'll whip out a quick one.

I am going to Novartis formal training in Montreal from Sept 28 to Oct 10. I LOVE Montreal so it will be fun, but it will also be super intense and full of reading and role play. Plus I will definitely miss AJ TONS for those 2 weeks. We got used to being together every day and I like it... I'm gonna fill the freezer full of meals for him so he doesn't have to cook for himself every night. I like to take care of him.

So for the knitting/crocheting part of the post, I am once again going back to an oldie. Simply because I have no pictures of the blanket I am almost done crocheting for AJ and I, and I have no pics of the slippers I am knitting my cousin Jana. Instead, here is a picture of a touque I crocheted for Jana last Christmas. It is a cream mohair and I love mohair. I got the pattern of CrochetMe. It was a snap. But most crochet patterns are.


Stay tuned. I have 3 things that are almost done, so should have some goodies to look at soon!!

No excuses... really.

Ok, sorry. So a lot of shit has been happening. Yeah, so I moved to Saskatoon and was jobless and broke for what seemed like forever. But I got a lot of painting done in our house and went from absolutely hating our house to absolutely loving it. It's quite amazing what paint can do, isn't it? Here are some before and after pics.

Guest room before:


Disgusting nauseating torqouisey blue, hideous.


Guest room after:
Beautiful green, soft and delightful.




Then there is the HEINOUS purple rooms. I will let you know that not only was my get-ready room (girl closet, my office) a revolting purple, but the bathroom was the exact same colour, and the ceiling matched. Barf.


You hate it. I know you do because it makes me sick too... Just imagine a dark small bathroom with a dark purple ceiling. Disgusting.


So now the office is a softer, prettier, lighter brownish/purple. My room. I friggin love it.


And AJ and his dad put up a shower in our bathroom after I painted it a pleasant blue, with a white ceiling and I LOVE the bathroom now.


Our bedroom is ok. It matches the main room, a tolerable taupe colour. I can handle it, what I can't handle is that the idiots that painted it were completely careless and painted all over the ceiling as well. But I will fix it, because I take pride in our house.


And don't even get me STARTED on our backyard. The dipshits that owned the house before had a pond in the back. We didn't want it and they were to take it and leave the yard intact (fix it afterwards). They took the pond, but left 3 giant craters in our yard. We had to fill the craters and sod the yard. I'll be honest, I had a hand in filling the craters with dirt, but AJ's family did all the sod-laying. Thank you McCannells!



Now I absolutely LOVE our backyard.

Ok, so I should probably get into my job a bit. But it's late and I am tired and I don't feel like it. Just know that so far - love it. Think it will be awesome. But because this is a knitting blog, here are a couple oldies but not yet blogged knitted things.

First up, a headband I knitted myself. Pattern is from the knitty.com website. I love it. It's called quant and it rocks. But I have to say that I did use the modification by MissJen, because as much as I am all for asymmetry, symmetry looks better on this headband.



Next is the boy hat I made for Liam, my good friend in NZ, who wanted a brim camo hat. I tried to get camo by using a strand of camo varigated and a strand of brown, but this is what came out. Still pretty money. Hopefully he likes it!


Oh yeah, this is Bruno, my cousin Jana's chihuahua who I adore. He is so friggin cute!!


Ok and even though I'm not gonna get into my job details tonight, here are some pics of me driving what I WISH was my company car. It's a Chevy Silverado that I had on loan until my Dodge Caravan (SO NOT as hot) was done being serviced and detailed. I felt like a monster driving this truck. I want one.




Ok. Well that about does it for tonight. I hope that this has been enjoyable for those that feel I have been slacking (which I have). I promise I will try to be more on top of it. I am crocheting AJ and I a beautiful multi-coloured afghan for the winter, because we will need it. And then it is right into Christmas pressies. Stay tuned y'all!!

I miss my dog

I miss Tiki. This dog is the greatest dog ever. I am so in love with him. I want a dog because I miss Tiki so much, but I am afraid that my dog won't be as amazing as Tiki. He is so adorable and so well-behaved. I miss walking him and playing with him. Look at him!! He is so great.




My Noro came in the other day so I have to get cracking on my sister's legwarmers. I hope to have them done when AJ and I drive through Regina. So much to do with moving all my parents stuff, I hardly have time to knit!

Ridiculous

I have a couple completed knitted items to post once I take a photo. My green cardigan is being sewn up and then it's done!! I know, I can't believe it either. It's been a WIP since August. I almost didn't bother. But so glad I did.

Below you will see a photo of my darling little Ella. She has taken to "nursing" her toys, just like mommy nurses little baby Lucy. I can't think of anything cuter at the moment, can you? I would like to point out that Ellie the elephant (the toy that Ella is nursing in this photo), is an elephant that I knitted for her. I love it.



As soon as I finish the green cardigan, it'll be here. I hope to finish it today!

Back in the Peg

It's way too late. I am SO tired and I NEED to go to bed. But I realized that I am still being so bad with posts, so now that I am home for 2 weeks, I am going to knit my little face off, and do lots of fun stuff and blog blog blog.

Here are some new pics of my family trip in New Zealand. Since my sister and my Mum and I are together again, we are trying to compile them all. There are about 900 (I took only 49, the rest is my Mum and Chels), but here are some of my faves.


This is me and my fam in Kaikoura. We loved it there. We stayed in a killer bed and breakfast called Admiral Creighton Bed and Breakfast and all of us HIGHLY recommend that place if you are in Kaikoura.



You know how you're not supposed to take pictures in museums and art galleries and such? Well, Chels doesn't really pay attention to those rules and took a bunch of pictures of this neat exhibit in the art gallery in Christchurch. It had all these cute little helpful hints. I'm quite fond of this one.


I went to Marine Land in Napier 3 years ago at Easter when I first moved to New Zealand, and held a cute little blue penguin then, but since pengies are my FAVE animal, I had to do it again. So worth it. They are so adorable.


Dad, Chels and I in Queenstown. We stayed in the most MONEY hotel there. It's new, so it was super reasonably priced, but I'm sure it's going to skyrocket when the owners realize what they have. It's right on the lake. Beautiful.


Oooooh, here's a goodie. Colin, Jenny, Roxane and I with my freshly bound thesis!!! Yes, that is it. That little purple book is my blood, sweat and tears from the past 2 years. Cute isn't it? You'd never know it almost sucked the life outta me.


So now I'm back in the Peg. I was in California, as I mentioned last post, as well as London. Then hit Vic, Van, Stoon, Gine and now home. This is me and my adorable little Gramma. One of THE grammas that taught me how to knit 22 or some crazy amount of years ago. I am almost done my army green cardigan that I started last August or September (that's what I am knitting in the pic). So close!! Can't wait!!


Here are some legwarmers I knit myself out of Noro Kureyon wool that I bought while in Victoria. I think they're friggin rad. Chels loves them so much she wants me to knit her some EXACTLY the same. So I had to order the same colour from Beehive in Vic because nowehere else I checked had the exact same colour.




AJ and I are looking for couches for our little house. I want leather. What do you think of these two sets? I love both and they are both a steal of a deal. I lean towards the brown for looks but the taupe for comfort. I'm gonna look around.

Well, that's me for tonight. I am so beat. Have to go to bed NOW. Later Gators.

I have a bad case of the travel bug

Holy crap. Last post Feb 20th? Seriously? Wow, I guess I have just been all over the place. Literally. So had a fantastic time travelling NZ with my family. I love this picture of my Dad and Chels. This is at a B and B we stayed in in Kaikoura.


I managed to knit my friend Steve and Renae's new baby Luke a little tuque and sweater.



And my friend Erin's new nephew a little skull hoody. Chels has warned me that I will be responsible for outfitting any babies she has since I knit for people I don't even know.


Then headed to Cali to spend a week with Chantal and Greg - which was totally amazing. It was so great to catch up with them and I haven't been to Irvine to stay with them before. We had dinner on the beach in Newport (the OC) and watched the sunset. It was great.


Then I went to London to spend a week with Ben and Alaina, which rocked beyond belief. I am very much in love with London. My favorite attraction was the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge.




I wish I could have stayed longer, but time and money didn't allow. Now I am in Victoria and LOVING it. It's my favorite city and I really hope I can live here one day. Next Wednesday I am off to Vancouver until the 20th, when I finally get to see my hot boyfriend. After a year apart I am so looking forward to being with him again, for good. I haven't been knitting that much. With all my flights it's hard and I could crochet, but just haven't. I'm itching though. Itching to knit. I am going to try and go buy some wool today so I can at least whip up a tuque or something! Now that I'm back in my home land, I'll probably be better at posting.