Secret Grinch

So, with our local knitting group, instead of having a Secret Santa gift exchange, we had a Secret Grinch. What is the difference? You get to mutter grinchy things to yourself as you're making the presents. Here are a couple of the gifts I made for the person whose name I drew:



Manly socks! Guys are notoriously hard to make gifts for, but you can't beat a comfy all-purpose pair of handknit socks. The pattern (Thuja from Knitty) was pretty basic, although the seed stitch rib required just enough attention to keep this project from being boring, which is good because mens socks take a good bit longer to knit than womens socks, bigger feet and all. I sized them based on my brother's feet, hoping that they'd be the right size, and they turned out just right! Whew.

I also made an adjustable mug cozy, with three buttons to be able to fit small Tim Hortons cups, regular mugs, and large mugs respectively. I liked this pattern so much that I'll probably make it again. I used a self-striping yarn, and the gradual colour changes matched really well with the mug. Sadly, I only have a picture from one perspective, but if I make some more I'll take better pictures.



Now, onto my loot that I got! So, hilariously, the guy whose name I drew, also drew my name, so we ended up making gifts for each other. He's not really a knitter, more of a socializer, so everyone had been expecting that he would just purchase his gifts for the exchange. However, he completely exceeded everyone's expectations, and came up with these wonderfully creative handmade gifts for me.

First off, he made me what will forever be my most favourite set of stitch markers. He scoured the city to find a set of mini dice, and assembled them into stitch markers, so now I can geekify my knitting works-in-progress. Aren't they the most adorable stitch markers you've ever seen?



The other gifts were candles, but not ordinary candles. These are gel candles, with DnD minis embedded inside them! How cool is that! One of them was a female character that I have already freed from it's jellied home so that I can use it in an upcoming DnD campaign. It fits the character that I have planned perfectly!



Here's a closeup of the dragon, by far my favourite of the set.



Overall, I couldn't be happier with this gift swap. I was completely surprised, and the gifts for me couldn't have been more appropriate.

Tagged (delayed reaction)

Yes, Aesderina tagged me way back in December. And since then my poor little blog has been languishing in neglect, thinking about all the wonderful things I've been knitting that it hasn't had a chance to display. But no more! Very soon, this little blog shall proudly display the various and sundry items of knitting made for Christmas gifts and those received over the holidays. But I digress. Back to the tagging.

The rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random, arbitrary things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

So, here are my six random things.

1. I've been to the East Coast, and to the West Coast, but somehow I've never managed to get to those elusive in-between provinces. I almost made it to Manitoba one winter, but then we totalled our car right before the border at 4am, and had to take buses all the way home. I also nearly made it out to Winnipeg this winter, but due to Greyhound being silly, I ended up flying straight to BC instead.

2. I love Hello Kitty pyjamas. I probably would never wear anything Hello Kitty outside of my house, but somehow the pyjamas are strangely addicting.

3. My favourite chocolate bar (or biscuit, depending on your terminology) is the Penguin, sold in the UK. Mmmmm, penguins. One time my friend and I bought a whole pile of them, and took pictures of them all over her city.



4. I have a fondness for heavy metal music. My older brother got me into it in highschool when he was in a metal band, and I found I rather liked the genre.

5. Being in large crowds makes me feel claustrophobic. I'd take the open countryside over a city any day.

6. I've never been 'rebellious' per se, but I sometimes like to show a blatant disregard for certain rules. As such, I'm only going to tag two people. Mwahahahaha!


Now, I shall tag Sean and Susan!

New arrival!

Well, it's been a busy week to say the least. It looks as though I'll be working on assignments and essays right into my holidays, because there's no way I'm going to finish everything before Thursday when school ends. The two things I absolutely have to get done are two presentations that I have on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. I wasn't very excited for my presentation for my Survey of Linguistic Theories class at first. However, this whole class has been a discovery for me that I don't dislike theory as much as I thought I did. The theory I'm going to present next week actually makes a lot of sense to me, and reconciles some of the differences between formal and functionalist views in linguistics. So, for those of you in my class, you can look forward to that this week.

As you can imagine, not a whole lot of knitting has been getting done. I've been working on the Christmas present for my sister. It's a secret, but maybe I'll give you a sneak peek next post.

The biggest news this week is that my friend Sean has become a father and welcomed his daughter Rena into the world. Check out the pictures of the new little one on his blog. She's absolutely gorgeous. I've got a knitting project for her nearly finished, but again, no pictures yet, because it's a surprise!! You'll get to see it after I mail it off and it arrives in Singapore. If you're on Ravelry, pictures might appear up there sooner.

2am Adventures

It's fairly unusual for me to make this many posts in such a short time, but it's been an unusual couple of days.

I was woken up at 1:30am last night by my housemate shouting, "There's water pouring out of the wall!" And sure enough, their WAS water pouring out of the wall. Around where the water pipes are, to be exact, and the torrent was turning the floor into a floodplain. Luckily, the floor slopes down right about there, so it was taking longer to spread into the kitchen and laundry room. I ran to get some towels to form a barricade, to keep the water from spreading into the carpeted area, my roommate heroically waded into the torrent and found the water shutoff valve, and our housemate went to go find our landlady who lives above us on the 2nd floor of the house.

All 3 missions were successful. Well, nearly successful because our landlady wasn't home, but her son was and he assured us that the necessary calls would be made in the morning to have the water fixed. In the meantime, we were busily sopping up the water with towels and squeezing it into buckets, with our pyjama pants rolled up to our knees. Once the water was stopped, we were fairly efficient in getting rid of all the water, and removing anything that was at floor level to higher ground. Here's an action shot of my awesome roomies working hard to get the water cleaned up.

The morning was fairly uneventful with the exception of a small but persistent trickle of water which refused to stop running, but luckily was small enough that we could contain it. After having an expert in to assess the situation, we now have cold water (a VAST improvement over no water at all) and hopefully should have hot water back by tomorrow.

Also, my other reason for writing is to let you know that my awesome friend who goes by the name ifihadaboat in the online world is having a sale at her Etsy shop! She's offering free shipping for a limited time, so if you have a chance you should check out all of her beautiful handmade jewelry.