flurries
January 26, 2010
Allow me to introduce, after having sat out a full season between bindoff and blocking, the Flurries shawl:
I started it at the end of August in order to have something simple to knit on my flights from Windsor to North Bay and back when I had my interview for the teaching position at Nipissing. Upon returning home I knit away at it distractedly during repeated watchings of Dollhouse, then flung it, completed, back in the basket to ferment for a spell while I worked up the energy to weave in the ends. There were 6 (six!) of them, due to my switching out to a contrasting yarn for the edging and then back to the main yarn for the bindoff row. Six ends is, like, ten minutes of work, people. And yet the fact that I only left it for four months is a vast improvement over my usual pattern of behaviour.
The pattern, of course, is the ever-popular Ishbel by Ysolda Teague. The main yarn is handspun from fibre I received from Mama E (Ceyeber Fiber), and the contrast yarn in the lace edging is a pale gray mohair blend that I reclaimed from an ugly thrift store find. It’s not too contrasty against the main body of the shawl, which I like, but it provides a distinct contrast against the (returning to the main yarn) bindoff row, which I love. Our gracious model is Miss Bones, an employee of the department of Fine and Performing Arts, Nipissing University.
I had a conversation with one of my colleagues today about the importance of video documentation and how I tried (and failed) to get into the habit of making weekly little studio videos. After this photo shoot was over I wished I’d made a video of myself carrying my model around the snowy parking lot with her broken stand, or gently brushing the snow from the bottoms of her feet as we re-entered the building. I have a feeling it must have looked pretty funny.
So. I mentioned yesterday that there were two cockups in the shawl: one fixable, one bearable. Well, on closer inspection after blocking I realized that what I’d thought was a “bearable cockup” in my knitting was actually just a part of the pattern, executed perfectly, that I’d just been examining wonkily in my haste to get the thing pinned out on my way out the door to work. The fixable mistake, a dropped stitch in the bindoff, was easy-peasy. You’ll never notice. I DEFY you to notice it.
And just so y’all don’t think I’m tiring of snow pictures just yet, we had a fresh snowfall today:
Just yesterday I photographed those same branches dripping with water as a warm rain fell, turning much of my hard-packed snowy walk to water and slush:
Posted by jodi on January 26, 2010 at 7.53pm
powerlines, winter sky
January 10, 2010
People in North Bay keep telling me how lovely it is here in fall, in a tone that suggests they’re apologizing a little for the winter and for the fact that pretty much my whole time here, from now until sometime in April, will be winter. When, in fact, I’m walking around the place grinning like a goon and taking pictures of the snow and the bare trees and the cold sky like someone who’s in that giddy first phase of a brand new love. And then posting them online like they’re something special and not totally boring in that special way that someone else’s new-love-giddiness is: crushingly, eye-rollingly boring. Sorry, y’all. The novelty will wear off eventually, once I realize that North Bay farts in the bed or cuts its toenails in the kitchen or something like that. Once I get tired of being cold.
Posted by jodi on January 10, 2010 at 9.54pm
dorkitude
January 6, 2010
I’m pretty much just keeping my camera in my coat pocket all the time right now, so I can whip it out at a moment’s notice to take umpteen jillion more photos than anyone really wants to see of snow and snow and MORE SNOW. But, look how pretty it is, all perched atop the bush in its luscious little piles:
Here’s one of the screen block wall at Monastery Hall. I would build a wall like this on our house if I could figure out a tasteful way to integrate it into a 1911 Sears kit house.
Deer tracks crashing through a snowbank at the side of Monastery Road.
I’ve taught my first class in both of my drawing courses, and will teach my first printmaking class tomorrow afternoon. Soon I’ll have things to write about that aren’t snow related, I promise. But for now the novelty is still fresh, and, you know what? Also? There’s all kinds of really nice snow around here. Really!
Posted by jodi on January 6, 2010 at 4.04pm
cold (and getting colder)
January 2, 2010
It’s currently minus-11° here; minus-22° in North Bay. Which is where I’ll be moving tomorrow, for the next four months, for a limited term teaching job at Nipissing University. I bought extra long johns.
Posted by jodi on January 2, 2010 at 11.40am
daily walk
February 4, 2009
Minus ten (-18° wind chill), clear and sunny. I should have taken my bike.
On days like this I love winter.
Posted by jodi on February 4, 2009 at 3.10pm
shored up clean against a stiffened sky
December 17, 2008
Just as I was getting ready to go to bed last night I heard scraping on the sidewalk outside, and looking out I saw the drug-dealer neighbours across the street out there shovelling their walk. In the -10°C weather, snow still falling, one of them had on a white tank top. The other wasn’t wearing a shirt at all.
Not being under the influence of anything chemical that might offer me protection against the cold, I bundled up a bit more than that this morning to shovel my own walk:
I don’t know who left those kitty tracks on the steps but it certainly wasn’t Miss Cleo, who refused to come outside into the cold with me. It was probably one of the alley cats. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Old Kitty either, though: this past Monday marked a full year since the last time I spotted him, and I’ve finally admitted to myself that he’s dead. I wish I could have found him and buried him in a safe spot in the backyard with my own cats, but his body must have gone back to the alley long ago, feeding the rats who in turn feed the wild kitties. And on it goes.
Posted by jodi on December 17, 2008 at 11.42am
