knitting is kool

why won't the paparazzi leave me alone???

look - fishy tail!

i think the red mitts were a success. . .

ah, so cold and damp

so, i gather it's been a wee bit warm in australia, a bit toasty, a bit sweaty. it's five degrees and raining here. . . *stretches*

it even snowed earlier in the week:

i am toasty and stylish in my hat, mitts and scarf by jt!

i'm into week four of "spring" semester. my classes are okay. one is a hard core theory class where we talk about hermeneutics, mostly. i'm enjoying that a lot. the other is about visual culture studies, which is kind of driving me batty, but still has potential. last week i was so frustrated i nearly knitted a whole mitten!

(one pair for cass, one pair for me.)

i finally got off my bum and started doing PD stuff. i got two papers accepted for conferences! i'm giving two presentations at uni next week! i got a comic published! i'm knitting a hat shaped like a fish!


that's really it for my news. i spend a lot of time making To Do lists and muttering "knit three, knit two together." oh, and six feet under. did i tell you i discovered six feet under? droooool . . .

lots of v.g. maillove recently, including these snazzy valve-caps from DDD, which totally match the colour scheme of my bike:

soon the streets will be ice-free enough to ride, soon, my pretties. . .

australian christmas

nanny and nyx


campsite

visitor to campsite! (i have shown this photo to some canadian friends - they think it is fascinating and exotic)

cousin and puppy


photos from grot (or jt via grot?). thankyou!

[if anyone is uncomfortable with an image being on the net let me know and i will take it down.]

solstice, christmas, snow

finally got round to putting up some of my many speccy christmas photos - we had a white christmas! it was very beautiful and very cold and very difficult to get around (iced up sidewalks + cars bogged + buses cancelled/delayed).


oh, just before christmas was winter solstice. i went to a lantern festival at the local community centre. they had a flaming torch in the snow, and we stood around it singing winter songs, with the falling snow making our song sheets all soggy.


there was also a labyrinth made from candle-lamps, which one walked through very slowly, all the way in and all the way out. it was incredibly beautiful, and the whole night made me feel good about the world and the winter.


cass and i went to an orphan christmas at winifred's place, which was fun. lots of food, lots of bubbly, lots of presents. cass got a harmonica in the chris cringle. sweeeet.


the best kind of christmas present. . .


also there was a cute gus dog!


the view from the bus stop the next morning, mountains in the distance.

and cass with her stash!

we spent christmas day hanging out with some of cass' mates. some of the pretty things we saw on the walk there:




we spent boxing day doing *nothing*, which was perfect! it was snowing heavily and i was forced to valiantly snowshoe down to the shops:


the end!

hiking is nice

pantalaimon and i went hiking near deep cove today. the mainland has been deep in fog for the last three days, but up high on the mountains it was sunny, with glorious views:

if you look closely you can see hunks of frozen water in the bay.

not much else news. i have some new picturebooks and i knitted a pair of mittens. they are RED.

this is what i do with my time now

the pink ones are for nanny (ssssssh!) and the stripey ones are for me, as they are my first effort and a little lumpy as a consequence. knitting socks is very satisfying. i enjoy turning the heel.

so uni started again. i'm tired! i'm also sick again (booooooooring), which isn't helping the tired. my classes seem okay so far, and it's very nice to see my uni friends again. my little posse went out for brunch on the weekend, and bitched. it was sweet. i have a gilbert and sullivan play and a jug band concert to attend now (we're a talented bunch).

merry (white) christmas, y'all!

how to

what does one wear when the temperature is 10 below?

stockings
wool socks
wool pants
waterproof boots with good tread
wool singlet
cotton singlet
bamboo longsleeve
big down jacket
thermal-lined hat with earflaps
scarf
mitts


it is also vital to keep one's spirits up!

cold! cold! oh my ears and nose!

a shot in my new neighbourhood, when the snow was still fresh everywhere.


there's still little birds in the trees - i wonder what they eat?


and a view down an alley in my 'hood. this is looking west, you can see downtown in the distance.



today is a forecast top of minus 6, and there's a big snow storm coming. i'm rugging up good and loving on my big down jacket!

growing things is fun

nature just likes to keep us on our toes, you know?



eleanor and i are on a mission to green up the new house. it's kind of challenge cos we don't get a huge amount of natural light, so we're being very inventive.

this is my attempt to grow things from cuttings - ivy bits stolen from front fences, and african violet leaves planted in coffee cups and humidifying in a bread bag. apparently you can make a whole african violet from a leaf!


i'm particularly proud of this window shelf arrangment. eleanor conceived it, other roommate M built it, and i arranged and cared for the plants. i've had to bring in all the vegies growing in pots on the back veranda, because the soil literally freezes solid overnight. so that's rainbow chard on the coffee table (silverbeet is the closest australian equivalent), carrots to the left of the table and tiny baby corianders in the blue pot on the far left of the shelf. we also bought a beautiful chain of hearts (or rosary plant?) to hang. v.g.

there's seagulls flying around in the falling snow out there.

this is a strange place to live.

snow!

it's cold! it's puffy coat cold! it is, actually, freezing cold - the temperature is not expected to go above zero for another week or more. it snowed lots a few days ago, and there's 5cm predicted for tonight. here's hoping for a white christmas!


went for a nice walk in the suburbia north of here with eleanor and winifred yesterday, and checked out the stunning views of the snow-covered mountains on the north shore.


there's shipping yards and a rail-line between the 'burbs and the water, so you can't get down to the shore except in a few places.


and this would be a very pretty photo if my long distance focus was better - see the white mountain framed in the far distance?


i'd forgotten, since february, how cold it is when it's cold. oh my nose and fingers! there's also the hazards of walking on slippery pavements - the snow melts in the sun then refreezes as ice. but it is pretty, and there's nothing like coming inside and making a nice cup of coffee after a walk in the cold. i'm knitting my first beanie and watching dvds from the library. bliss!

scarf! (hair!)

thankyou for my lovely scarf, JT! it is beautiful! i love the 3Dness of that stitch!

scarves v. necessary, as winter has suddenly happened, wham! today will be a top of minus 3.

also, new hair. have i mentioned how much i adore my hairdresser? he was all "how 'bout we put a random short bit up near yr ear? and then a random long bit over here?"

when will it end??? oh. it has.

sorry about another long silence on this blog. i got distracted by writing all my end of semester assignments in two weeks. i just handed in the last one, thus marking the end of a craptastic semester, to borrow the phrase of a friend.

bring on next year! it has to be better!

achievements of this semester are making two good friends (my hiking friend, who nimmersatt and i have christened pantalaimon, and a jewish interpretative dancer, who i'm calling athena, unless anyone has a better greek myth name to suggest), meeting a bunch of children's librarians (they are fun! they taught me puppet hand!) and holding back from smiting Really Annoying Dude with a big shiny sword even though everyone would be happier for it.

oh, and while we're talking pseudonyms and internet safety - crackbook totally cut me off for having a fake name! the fascist overlords have spoken! the really creepy thing about this situation is that all my information (photos, messages, invitations, hatching eggs, shite gifts for academics, etc. etc.) still exists and the company will keep it *forever* but i am forbidden to access it, cos having a false name is "against the facebook spirit". fascists.

and while we're talking children's librarians: the latest in my "grad student for hire" adventures is crashing parent and infant groups and making new mothers fill in surveys about how often they read to their babies and use the libraries. i'm pushing infant literacy! today i spent two and a half hours in a breast feeding drop-in group, during the slow times chatting with the 70-something year old volunteers about their immigrant experience (one was a kiwi!). being marginally employed definitely has its perks.

it is supposed to snow this weekend! so far it has been cold and wet, but not in a puffy-coat kind of way, more in a "where's my toque?" kind of way. now - snow! top of -2!

okay, and waaaay too many exclamation marks in this post.

what else?

the government in ottawa has been, well, it's very complicated. the government has become very complicated, is the short version. i'll tell the long version soon, cos it's fascinating. i went to a pro-coalition rally and heard people sing "oh canada" for the first time. it was kinda weird.


i went to a bazillion craft fairs and got this cool "i dig gardens" t-shirt, and some elbow length wool gloves, which i will no doubt show you at some point.


we had our end-of-semester non-denominational department party last night, which was actually pretty cool. i giggled a lot and stuck christmas ornaments in my hair. as you do.


cass took me to her work christmas party, which was pretty spesh - held in a big ballroom downtown, with lots of incredibly buff people in suits and formal gowns. there was a band and free grub and late late dancing. So Much Fun.


we also went to a late night movie downtown a different night and had a hilarious but awful but really hilarious adventure getting home. it involves vomit and old ladies beating people with umbrellas. remind me to tell you some time . . .