Category Archives: Uncategorized

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

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St. Patricks Day...Gillianknits.com

No Barbara today…just ribbing and stockinette, with a bit of intarsia.St. Patricks Day..gillianknits.com

Mum stayed over last night and was using words like “interesting” and “different”.  This morning she said it looked much better in the light.

St Patricks Day...gillianknits.com

not entirely happy with the pot of gold…or the seam beside it but hey..it’s done

St. Patricks Day..gillianknits.com

Originally I was going to knit the rainbow in, but I lost heart and just crocheted it separately and sewed it on.gillianknits.com

I used 10 points of decrease and decreased with knit 8 knit 2 together around, one plain round, then k7, k2tog, one plain round, etc. until I did just k2 together around.  I kept going with the k2tog another time and finished off the 5 stitches by running the tail through.

Happy Valentine’s Day 2016

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Very simple hat today…no Barbara stitches…Just I love you in 6 different languages and an i-cord rose on top.gillianknits.comThis is the last picture on my phone before the hat ones…my very own valentine, Alan.Alanand this is for Albertina and Carole…hope it is spelled right!  After all, if you can’t trust google, who can you trust.gillianknits.com

A short foray into a time BC

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gillianknits.com Before we were parents, Alan and I took a considerable number of book binding courses together.  It was a big interest of his.  He had been to Library School and had an enduring love of books.  He kept trying to take classes which got cancelled for lack of enrolment.  I started signing up with him to create a critical mass for the courses to run, so we took lots together and he took some alone as well.  We drifted away from it as we moved away from Toronto, then had the kids and moved to Ottawa.  He noticed a class which ran yesterday, so we signed up.  It was nice to be back in the paper mode for a day.  I think we will do some more in the future.

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The class was called Crossed Structure Binding put on by the Canadian Book Binders and Book Artists Guild.  In the morning we did a quick paper decoration and then made the smaller book. It has eight sewn signatures and the cover is made by cutting a single sheet of paper with tabs that link around the spine and weave into the opposite cover.  I cannot resist the temptation to change things up a bit so I cut my tabs on angles in the afternoon.  I have shown front and back of both books.

I’m on the road again…yahoo!

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Screenshot_2015-10-07-20-49-41

I am going with my sister Phil to Peru for 10 days…short trip but THERE WILL BE MOUNTAINS, MACHU PICCHU, AND AN OCEAN!!!!IMG_20151008_090929Phil has informed me that she will be taking a rolly suitcase.  I guess that means I will have to suffer through taxis…sigh, lol.  i personally can’t wrap my head around anything that is not carry on and carry-able on my back.

I always look like a knob when I travel because I use the fanny pack, but if you want a fake wallet, a rain poncho, an emergency blanket, compression socks, knee braces, earplugs, sunscreen, insect repellent, a tiny plastic case for your sim card, blindfold, binoculars, etc.  then I’m your gal.  It is always packed and ready to go because I just wash the compression socks when I get home and leave them in it.    I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it at home!  Last night I cleaned out the dross of Bhutan and India and got back to the clean slate.

big week….

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I have been meaning to post, but when I am at work, I don’t do much else.  I am paid to be communicative there and have nothing left over for my personal life.  I don’t see or speak to friends unless they initiate it, and I don’t feel like writing much either.  This week a couple of things happened.

 

Heather is fine. What used to be our car, is not.

Heather is fine. What used to be our car, is not.

Thank goodness Heather is fine, not a scratch or a bump.  Luckily they don’t make cars like they used to.  Now you can roll one three times and the super structure will protect the driver as long as they are wearing a seat belt.  I am looking into one of those skid schools so she can get back behind the wheel with some confidence.  She is not up for it now and we don’t have a car for her to drive anyway.

Finally...the end of candy crush...

Finally…the end of Candy Crush…

On a happier note, I finally managed to get to the final level of Candy Crush.  I have been determined to join the 70% of players who don’t give King Games any money along the way.  This extends the agony since you can buy your way through some of the harder levels with real-world purchased gold bars.  I have an obsessive need to finish things I start, which is why I will finish the Barbara Walker project even though I am the only person on the planet who would possibly care (btw…I will post the latest few items on this set of days off).  Sadly, it appears this victory was to be short lived, as they have already added another 15 levels yesterday.  That is fine, I can pluck away at them as they come.  I had a temporary hole in my life where Candy Crush used to live anyway….

Loving Quebec City…

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We are in Quebec City because Alan won 4 nights in a Delta hotel. The hotel is great, quite close to the old city. It is way swankier than any accommodation I usually have. We have a love seat and a desk in the room, which makes it easy to spend time in. The hotel has a good restaurant if you don’t feel like venturing out for a meal, although the meals we have had out have been spectacular. Since we aren’t paying for accommodation, we have been paying a little more for food than we usually do also. Maybe we are just lucky, but the food seems better here than at home.
Even though we are only a little over 4 hours from home, it seems more exotic than that. And the weather is fantastic-hovering around 0 (32 in Fahrenheit) and sunny every day so far. After our long, cold winter it seems positively balmy. I love the fact that most of the conversation you hear around you is in French, so it makes you feel more like you are away. You hear French sometimes in Ottawa, but mostly English in our area.
We got here on Thursday late afternoon, taking it very slowly to get here. We will return even more slowly as we have a few stops planned.
On Friday we started with a bus tour of the city. I find these to be very helpful when travelling to orient yourself and give you an idea of what to visit later. In the afternoon we hung around the hotel, then I went across the street to an observation deck on the 31st floor of the tallest building in the city. It was OK until I hit the east side, then it was FABULOUS. The view over the old city and out over the St. Lawrence and Ile d’Orleans was one of those views I never want to leave. I think it may be amongst my top ten ever views. I stayed there for about an hour just watching the ferries and tug boats floating through the ice floes, making wakes behind them that stayed for ages before they filled back in, and looking at the old city I had been walking through in the morning with its ramparts.
Google decided on another photo array…so here it is
https://plus.google.com/u/0/112081205643155371059/stories/a2312fec-b923-3a69-850e-f480fee3fc3314c627a4185?cfem=1

Throwback Thursday #4

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Maitland at sunrise...from lower deck

Maitland at sunrise…from lower deck


This is a picture from a few years ago. When I visit my mum’s house in Maitland, I often get up at dawn to see the sun rise over the St. Lawrence River. I was looking for a picture from my trip to Spain in March a few years ago with my eldest sister, Jane. I looked through the camera roll on my old ipod, which I thought I had with me in Spain. This was one of the first, i.e. oldest, pictures on the device…sadly no images of Spain were to be found, but I do love a pretty sunrise.
I was at my knitting guild meeting last week and I mentioned to Nancy, whom I know reads the blog, that I had once knitted a sett of each of my in-law’s tartans for them one Christmas. Here they are about 25 years older-the original owners both since deceased. We have them on the living room couch now and I think I should probably remove the knitting from the pillows and give everything a good wash…maybe later…
My father in law's tartan...MacIntosh

My father in law’s tartan…MacIntosh

My mother in law's tartan MacDonald

My mother in law’s tartan MacDonald

Throwback Thursday #3

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It struck me as I was changing after aquafatness that these throwback Thursdays fly directly in the face of the philosophy of my favourite children’s movie character, fashion designer to the super heroes, Edna Mode “I never look back dahling, it distracts from the now”. The Incredibles was a movie I watched time and again with my children and never once minded. Ah, well, I am real and not a movie character, so here I go.

Alan on the roadside in Nepal

Alan on the roadside in Nepal

This is Alan on the side of the road in Nepal, in March, 24 years ago. At this point, we had been cycling in Europe for 6 months, followed by a month in India. He had been ill with an intestinal complaint in India–surprise, surprise, thus the somewhat gaunt appearance.
Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Sam enjoy a sunny fall day together surrounded by the stars of friendship

Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Sam enjoy a sunny fall day together surrounded by the stars of friendship

On a happier note, here is a quilt I did in 2001 for a guild challenge. For about a decade after my ceramics phase came “the quilting phase”. I actually taught quilting, amongst other crafts, for a long time too, when the kids were little and I had to do my working in the evenings and weekends when Alan was home. It has 3-D Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Sam under a tree in the fall. The challenge was to use fuschia, kelly green and royal blue together. I remember I used 140 different fabrics in this quilt, 20 of each colour in the quilt-the three already mentioned, plus red, orange, yellow and brown. It was the 20th anniversary of the guild and I had been quilting for 7 years.

Throwback Thursday revisited

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From left: Jacob, Alan, Me and Heather

From left: Jacob, Alan, Me and Heather


This is my favourite ever family photo, taken by the photographer from our day trip to the Great Barrier Reef, in March, 8 years ago. Jacob was 12 and Heather was 10. I think I have mentioned before that we took them out of school for 6 months and took them travelling. The fifth country we visited (after Singapore, India, Thailand and Cambodia) was Australia and the kids LOVED it. We stayed in Cairns for a week, then rented a car and made our way down to Sydney. Australia is so similar to Canada and they had been in Asia for a while. Asia was a bit difficult for them, with the constant worry about water and food hygiene. It was nice for them to be able to have ice in their drinks, etc. I think it was also eyeopening and difficult for them to see kids their age begging and working to scrape by. We live in a neighbourhood that, while not affluent at all, is not poor either.
gillianknits.com
I am primarily a knitter these days, but there was at least a decade where, if you asked me my main craft, I would have said ceramics. I got a diploma in Ceramics from George Brown College in Toronto. It was a two year full time course and I had already taken numerous part time classes when I started. This is a teapot I made in a workshop during my pottery days. It was influenced by the workshop leader, whose name I can’t remember, but if any of my classmates had had to assign a name to it, it would have been mine. I have recently reconnected with one of my classmates from this course. She, of course, attended MANY crits with me and knows my pottery really well. She claims that she could have picked out my hats, because my aesthetic remains constant. If you follow my throwback Thursdays, you can judge for yourself. I am going to go round my house in the future and pick something to show each week.

Throwback Thursday

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Being one step behind the times, I just heard about throwback Thursday recently. It is my sister Nicky’s birthday today. She is the second youngest of my 6 sisters and today she turns 51. I would wish her a Happy Birthday on the blog but she is one of the non followers. Mum found this picture of 5 of her 8 kids in a drawer recently and sent us all a copy. Sorry about the quality but it is a picture of a copy of a 30+ year old picture…what can I say.

from left: Philippa, Charles, Me, Nicky and Penny

from left: Philippa, Charles, Me, Nicky and Penny

Alan has always loved Paddington. With the movie coming out recently, he is back in vogue I guess. When we were first dating over 30 years ago, I made this sweater for him, one of my very first attempts at designing in knitting. Heather found it in the attic a couple of years ago. She says that it is one of the 5 pieces of clothing she misses wearing most since becoming a clothing minimalist. I am glad something I made made the cut.

Heather in the Paddington Sweater

Heather in the Paddington Sweater


from the back...

from the back…


If I had it to do over again, I might move Paddington higher on the back, although I am not sure. I put him in the same number of rows up from the ribbing on both sides so that it would be like looking through the sweater from the back, but I did not realize until the sweater went together that the back is actually taller than the front because of the collar. This way he does look more forlorn from the back though, so maybe it is ok.