who died?

Been a long time since I blogged...and this one's a quickie. I don't have Harry Potter Fever myself, but I just love how much buzz there is about it. I went to see J.K. Rowling reading at the Skydome several years ago, and it was so great that so many kids were reading along with her, out loud! Books!!!

I'm on a mad dash to get out of town and little things are going wrong like running out of yarn and going to 3 yarns stores to find more, without success, the glass on the fancy beads I bought being spilled in so I couldn't thread it, but the lovely Sarah at The Rage had a marvelous sense of humour about my near meltdown and had a great time-saving idea...you should go buy something from her!

UPDATE: it wasn't really too terrible, fixed the yarn, bead and cookie conundrums. It was so neat to see so many young people out and about on Friday in Harry Potter costumes and I've been seeing adults solemnly reading the huge book in coffee shops and public transit all weekend. Plenty of ongoing media attention about it, but so far I've managed to avoid finding out who died! I don't want to know, in case I decide to read the series.

World Wide Knitting in Public Day 2007 and TTC Knitalong

World Wide KIP Day was on Saturday, and a knitterly good time was had by all at the TTC Knitalong!

Thanks, Melinda, for paying my food bill when I had to backtrack quickly to retrieve my un-lost wallet. Too much yarn on the brain! And thanks to Fibre Floozie for vegan cookies!

NXN Ears ringing

Did all your NXNE-dreams come true? I feel like I soaked a lot of live music out of my wrist band, even though I only saw 10 bands and a play. But I saw one of the bands play 3 times, so it was 12 separate shows, which is alright for three nights.


I didn't take many pictures, musicians move around too fast for my shutter finger. See:


Hey look, it's Mattias B's pick, placed directly into my hand by him. (See Kelly, I'm a fangrrl, too!) He's the one who goes all out with the Pete Townsend riffs and moves. There was an equipment problem at one of the shows, and he was actually polite and friendly with the guitar tech, I love that! I always wonder why most of them don't show the guitar techs a little more love.

"your kisses are wasted on me"

Were you at The Pipettes' show on Friday? It was sooo great. They were so cute in polka dots, of course, and their backup band was a gang of guys in yellow knitted vests.



Monster Bobby was good too. He played solo, but he was also one of the dudes in a yellow vest later.

The other support was Smoosh, which is a duo, and sometimes trio, of teenaged grrlz. Check them out, they're pretty good. I did sort of worry about their safety, though, and hope they have strong, sensible adults around them while they're on tour.

p.s.
Officially the most unusual and unexpected search that someone came to my blog through:
"how long does it take to go into labor after your 50 percent effaced?"

knitsters storm mega bookstore

Hi blogsters! MJM and I went to the Yarn Harlot book signing Friday night at a certain mega bookstore. Huge crowd assembled, and most of us were knitting while we waited:

Pierre Pettigrew wandered in, probably just to book browse. He was talking with a clerk and did knitting gestures and had that look on his face lots of non-knitters do when they recall with fondness watching their mother/grandmother/aunt knitting back in the day.

Here she is! She presented a solid hour of stand up comedy about knitters and knitting and CHOKE (cultural humiliation of knitters everywhere):

p.s.

meme: randomness times 7

I got tagged by MJM to type 7 random things:

1 - I'm almost never happy with the endings of books or movies.

2 - Speaking of endings, I appreciate that some radio stations play the entire song, without overlapping the opening or ending with talk or another song.

3 -I just got Do You Trust Your Friends? yesterday. It's a Stars tribute CD, a bunch of musicians who are friends with Stars 'renovated' the songs from Set Yourself On Fire. Every track is re-done, and placed in order on the CD. The cover looks a lot like the original. Sweet liner notes. I was slightly shocked by the familiarity meeting the changes, in almost every song, but then I was all smiles after a few bars. Go get it!!

4 - My Mom grew up on a farm and my Dad grew up in a fishing area, but somehow I ended up vegan.

5 - My unread email is in the 4 digits. Too much information is not informative, so I'm starting to unsubscribe from lists and alerts.

6 - I love steamed cauliflower with a bit of Earth Balance melted into it.

7 - My friend Benny is a Liverpool FC fan. Two years ago they played an important game against Milan, and they won, after Benny and I had lunch at the Korean Grill House. So he insisted we do it again today before the Liverpool-Milan game, for good luck. But unfortunately Liverpool lost this time.

Going with the theme of 7, I'm supposed to tag 7 of you, I started out doing that but then I wimped out because some of y'all are so busy! So grab it if you like, I'd love to read your list!

there's a bug in my earball

I spent part of the long weekend at my parents' cottage, my niece covered up to keep the bibites away, and said "there's a bug in my earball!"

Magnolia didn't mind the bugs:


I never thought of Lake Ontario as "mmm...so good," but someone's selling ice cubes with that promise:

In Ottawa, I kept seeing red, black and white flags on cars and thought, 'wow I didn't know there was so many people here from T+T.' But the flags are actually for the Senators hockey team:


Could've been the White Stripes, too, they're all about red, black and white. Speaking of, someone dressed up her Blythe doll like the gorgeous Meg White, exquisite!

Who watches Coronation Street? Charlie Stubbs is off his head! Quelle rat!

apparently I will laugh myself hysterically to death

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

I try not to skulk around or be evil, but I do laugh hysterically a lot when I'm walking along listening to podcasts. "this band doesn't even have a name, they've written no songs, and they are thee most important band in Canada." No toll booth operators in my circle.


I didn't get my camera out fast enough to get a good shot. The woman behind the car was wearing nothing but a bikini and walking her dog in that torrential rain fall the other day! I love Parkdale.

Magnolia's first Blythe Gathering

Some Blythe collectors met Saturday, what a hoot. I have so much to learn about Blythes, and so many things I'd like to make for Magnolia. There are so many customizations to do, and of course loads of knitting and sewing patterns. I whipped up this little sundress before the meet:


The other dolls were really decked out! There were some non-Blythes who were welcome, too.







There must've been a few thousands dollars worth of dolls and accessories!

And one nice gal brought treats for everyone!


After the sun went down, I hung out with some other gorgeous dolls:

"every little memory has a song"

Went to see Ted Leo + the Pharmacists last night!! Love his music, and he's vegan! Before the show he came out to look over the equipment, someone in the audience thrust a container of cookies at him, they exchanged a few sentences then he just pulled out a cookie and started eating it all natural-like! Nice guy. (He'll go on crying for our animal friends, and he'll be crying til their suffering ends.) I'm not a gear head, but check out the great amp he has!

He has the same birthday as Moby, but a different year (Sep 11), and he did a PETA2 ad.

And lookie, my favourite Broken Social Scene fella has a new video for his other band, Apostle of Hustle:

back from the eastern part of La Belle Provence

Hey hey blogsters! I just got back from a week away. Unfortunately I left by eco-fu*king airplane on Earth Day, of all days! Magnolia and I are trying to grrlcott excessive carbon emissions, but it's tough.


When we landed in Quebec City, the sun was shining bright but there were still snow banks! See the snow on the side? But still mild enough to skateboard in short sleeves.


Marvelous weather for being around Vieux Quebec, and the hotel was just 2 blocks from a Le Commensal. Learned lots at the conference I was there for, as did Nancy.

After the conference ended on Wednesday we went to Gaspe to visit my cutie grandparents. We took a very long bus ride, which was less eco-oppressive than flying, plus Magnolia loved to look out the window:


I just finished reading Lullabies for Little Criminals while I was away. What a sweet, sad story. It won Canada Reads this year and was defended by John K. Sampson (who is vegan and a brilliant songwriter, and has the magic touch for picking books). It's subtle, but it'll knock your socks off.


Here's my Grampa, he just turned 102 years old!! He didn't call me la bella Carla even once, which made me sad because he couldn't remember me. But we did have some grand chats and played cards.


There was lots of snow in Gaspe, but the weather was mild:

But there wasn't any snow or ice left at the beach:


A dude I met out there told me that the seal hunt would be different if seals would become vegetarians! He said there's less sympathy for the seals because they eat so much fish, and people want to make money from fishing. Hmmm. (Either way, the fish get eaten by predators, and some would still want seal pelts.)

Home today, and that's nice after a week of eating in restaurants and other people's houses. I was aching for some asparagus risotto, so that's what I had tonight, with lots of lemon, peas and pine nuts: