My name is Kristina and I am a Fibrefool. (Hi Kristina!)

(And no, you are not on the Yarn Harlot’s website. It is still me. But I’m not feeling too imaginative today so I will just have to rehash a very tired old concept. Sorry ’bout that!)

Now, I know I’m not alone out here – as will be demonstrated later in this post. I’m not quite sure when the transition from knitter to fibrefool took place exactly. But I can assure you that the fibrefooldom is currently in full swing (great for me, not so great for my pocketbook!)

So – how can you tell if you, too, are a Fibrefool? The guide below is a good starting point, I think.
You keep buying fancy yarns…

(my latest acquisition – Handmaiden Mini Maiden. My three favourite colours in one perfect skein!)
…despite the fact that you have approximately 15 kilometres of the stuff in the house already.

You delude yourself into thinking that you can duplicate artistic masterpieces of ages past using yarn.You create effigies to sock needles which you have broken in your overzealous knitting efforts.

You then post pictures of said effigies to your blog in the mistaken belief that other people actually care.

You knit all of your clothing for work – even business suits.

You hallucinate that your toy ducks are making love underneath your sweater-in-progress…


… and then you pose one of them on top of “Niagara Falls”.

You see any knitting pattern (for example, this…

…or this…)

… and start mentally cataloguing the stash to see if you’ve got anything that will do.

You get a lovely leather coat as a gift…

… and the first thing that you do is head to the yarn store to get yarn to match. You don’t, however, actually wear the coat itself to the yarn store… because none of your 2,159 other knitted hats and scarves quite match!


You then decide that you want a contrast yarn instead of one of the skeins of yarn you bought, and go back to the yarn store.

However, you don’t return the skein you don’t want… after all, it will come in handy in future, won’t it?

When you’re in the yarn store, you often have internal dialogues with yourself about the wisdom of the (inevitable) expenditures…

(but, even more frightening, you find that you are having those internal conversations less and less – and just spending.)

About the only solace I can take from any of this is that I am not alone. There’s Holly, who is so fibre foolish that she makes hats out of baby sweaters when there are no babies left to knit for:

… and who also knits sweaters to cover up her other sweaters:

Then there’s Susie who has done so much damage to her eyes from fine lacework that she had to mug a coal miner to get an essential piece of equipment:

(Susie, I suggest you invest in bifocals like I did – a bit more expensive, but no potential for jail time. )

And now for some silly reason this headlamp has reminded me of the oldPeter Cook sketch:

Yes, I could have been a judge but I never had the Latin, never had the Latin for the judgin’, I never had it, so I’d had it, as far as bein’ a judge was concerned. I just never had sufficient of it to get through the rigourous judging exams. They’re noted for their rigour. People come out staggering and saying “My God, what a rigourous exam!” – and so I became a miner instead. A coal miner. I managed to get through the mining exams–they’re not rigourous, they only ask one question, they say, “Who are you”, and I got 75 per cent on that. I’d rather have been a judge than a miner. Being a miner, as soon as you are too old and tired and sick and stupid to do the job properly, you have to go. Well, the very opposite applies with judges.

But, as ever, I digress. Fibrefoolishness is a very sad disorder, isn’t it? However, you can help. For less than the price of your daily newspaper each day…

(Pardon? You read the newspaper on line? Well, for a third of the price of a Starbucks Mucho Grande Caffe Latte with soy mild, then…)

…you can Sponsor a FibreFool. Yes, that’s right. For only $27.99 a month you can give help and solace to those who need it most. In exchange, you will get abundant photos of finished objects made with your donations – and not to mention that warm glow that comes when you have done something very altruistic. For more information, call 1 (888) YAR-NCON and ask for Brouhaha.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation with my scam get rich quick scheme charitable endeavours!

Just call me Kermit, folks.

Why? Because I spent so much #$&*#$^*@#&$^ time ripping back while trying to complete the first Secret of the Stole II hint last evening that I no longer know how to speak… only to “ribbit”.

The knitting day had started off well. I made a lot of progress on my Moebius scarf – all but one row that you see here was knitted on the TTC!

So I came home, ready to tackle the Secret of The Stole. I figured I had mastered the relatively simple pattern by now.

Nope. I think I knitted the same six rows at least seven times again. On the sixth try everything was going swimmingly – until I realised that I had pulled the “skip the easy row” bit so that the right side now featured purl stitches instead of knit stitches. I would have taken a picture of this but I was worried that I might just fling it together with the camera over the balcony in a little hissy fit.

And, to top all this off, my lovely Malabrigo has not-so-lovely “stick to itself” properties which make it very difficult to frog without taking out all sorts of other stitches below. SIGH.

So, instead, I turned to one of my coping mechanisms:

What?!?! Have they put the Cookie Monster on a diet? What is wrong with these people!!! Is this some sort of anti-child obesity campaign? Goddess knows I hear enough about it on the news. Have they no shame? I mean, check out this cookie hating campaign!!! I mean, really.

Hmph.

Ah – that’s better. I was worried there for a minute.

Anyway, fortified and revitalised, I went for round seven of the Battle of the Stole:

Success!

I gave up at Row 44, however (there are 53 rows in the hint) – I decided it was time to leave well enough alone. Tonight I will tackle the remaining 10 rows.

It does look pretty, though, doesn’t it?

Well, that’s enough blather for now. Must get to the subway station and do some more knitting on the Moebius scarf. And then I’ll be logging into my work computer for another day at the coal mines:

Wishing you a wonderful frog-free day!

Well, here I slouch, victim of yet another tag game (this time, Joan is the culprit. #$&*@(&$*@&(# Why me again?!? Thanks, Joan. 🙂

Four Jobs I’ve Had

Hmm… what to disclose?

dishwasher
receptionist for an escort service
waitress
dominatrix

Four Movies I Watch Over and Over

Casino Royale (the new version)
Mary Poppins
Cabaret
Fantasia

Four Places I Have Been

Athens, Greece
Bruxelles, Belgium
Rome, Italy
Venice, Italy

Four Places I Have Lived

This is going to be quite boring…

Kingston, Ontario
Parkdale, Toronto, Ontario
Riverdale, Toronto, Ontario
Forest Hill, Toronto, Ontario

Four TV Shows I Watch

Law and Order (in all its flavours)
House
This Hour Has 22 Minutes
Rich Mercer Report

Four People Who E-mail Me Regularly
People who think I have a penis and are SADLY mistaken

Melissa
Paul
Jennifer
my mother

Four Favorite Foods
Again, only 4 – YOU GOTTA be kidding me!!

Pastitsio (greek lasagna)
Chicken Vindaloo
Fish and chips
Portuguese custard tarts

(I would have put four flavours of potato chips, except I don’t know that they count as food!)

Four Places I Would Rather Be

Home knitting
Bar Wellington having some pints
Home making mosaic
Anywhere but Toronto in January, essentially

Four Things I’m Looking Forward To

Winning the lottery
Becoming a world-renowned author
Becoming a world-renowned knitting designer
Going to the west coast (maybe later this year)

Four People to Tag

Although I’m bored right now, I’m really too lazy to go to the effort to tag anyone.

However, if the following people want to put this on their blog, I’d be happy:

Holly
Wannietta
Amy (knitandfallbackinit)
Sarah (Prairie Girl Knits)

Hello all:

Well, am I ever chuffed! I just learned yesterday that Holly Ogre has bestowed an extreme honour on me – I am now the “presidente” of the Toronto Chapter of the Zombie Prom Date Knitters!

Membership (to date – I think, anyway) – one. Does this mean that I am the Master of My Domain?!?. Hmm. Anyway, if anyone is interested in this fine and upstanding group of knitting citizens, check out the Zombie Prom Date Knitters Ravelry Group!

In other news – I made a terrific book purchase yesterday:

A book about the humble doughnut!!

(I do hope, however, that the book explains within why a Canadian book spells “doughnut” in the American fashion. This when it was published by the University of Toronto press – my alma mater! At least I’ll have another reason justifying why not to donate when they keep hitting me up for $$$. And this when the current first year entrance fee to law school is something like $16,000! When I started in 1995, it was $3,500 and when I left in 1998 it was $7,000. And I thought that was too much. But I digress…)

Here’s a little info about the book:
Hmm… seems interesting. Too bad I don’t go to the Gladstone anymore since they cleared out all the rummies and jumped up the prices threefold!

But I do hope it gives a history of Tim Horton’s though – as well as an explanation of stupid statements like this one on their website:

Tim Hortons understands the importance of good nutrition and is committed to offering our customers a variety of nutritious and great tasting food choices. We continue to evolve our menu in order to meet our customer’s changing needs and desires by offering choices that can fit into a healthy lifestyle. Whether it’s our coffee, fresh baked goods, or our homestyle soups and sandwiches, there is something for everyone.

Oh, donnez-moi un break, please! “Nutritious …food choices”??? Such as what – a double double? A boston cream doughnut?

It’s a doughnut shop!! Can I not go anywhere and not have healthy food choices being bashed over my head?! Bad enough that they don’t allow me to smoke when I’m chugging my extra large black coffee and small box of Timbits…

(Actually, I must confess that for quite some time I was boycotting Tim Horton’s. This is because they opened a store on the base in Kandahar – talk about captive audiences! – and as a result we all got subjected to even more war propaganda for a month. However, I am not consistent with boycotts, and recently learned, much to my surprise, that there is a whole raft of fast food joints on the base. So, I decided to relax my moral standards. The craving for a Canadian Maple doughnut had nothing to do with this choice. Really.)

Anyway, it may well be a caffeine high that provoked me to finish the front of my Gathered Pullover yesterday night:

I love this cable! And look Ma… no cable needle!!

And this with two jumbo Lobsteritas under my belt as well! Damn, I’m good!

Happy Saturday. Today we’re hitting the Danier leather outlet and looking for a new microwave. Exciting, eh? I’ve put on my shopping colours for the big expedition:

When I was wearing this cardi at work yesterday, someone told me that I looked like “a traffic cone, in a good way.” Hmm.

Well, last evening was all fun and games at the House of Brouhaha, I must tell you. First off, I started to swatch the Secret of the Stole II mystery project.

The swatch called for was meant to measure approximately 7″ x 5.5″. Here’s my first attempt, using 3.25mm needles:

Why did I stop part way through? Because I’m a lazy@ss slacker Because, with my usual stunning attention to detail, it took me approximately 10 rows to notice a big big boo-boo. This dayglo overexposed alien photo will probably show it better. The background of the pattern is meant to be all stockinette.
See what I did wrong? Sigh. How did I manage to skip out one of the “easy” (non-YO) rows that I look so forward to?

Perhaps it was my yiayia (grandmother) putting a jinx on me for having taught myself to knit despite her best efforts against this endeavour:

(This is the engagement photo of my yiayia and papou on my father’s side. My yiayia lived with us for a year or so way back when and did beautiful knitting and lacework. I asked her to teach me how and she refused, saying that this was a pastime only for uneducated people and that I should focus on my studies instead. I was resentful of this at the time and went ahead and taught myself to knit – although in later years I got her point and found it rather sad. This photo now hangs in my office as a reminder of my origins – and also because I think yiayia would be proud that her photo is hanging in a lawyer’s office!)

Anyway, I didn’t like the tightness of the fabric on that one, so did another swatch with 3.5mm needles.

My (lack of) patience with swatching, as you will note, is truly astounding. I managed to get through about 10 rows before packing it in… to work on something a tad simpler – the Gathered Pullover by Hana Jason:

This is my progress on the front/back of the sweater, knitted in the round. It is going very quickly. I’ve also made quite some progress on the sleeves, thanks to the increasingly slow service offered by the TTC:

These remind me of Santa Smurf hats at present. They were actually supposed to be knitted in the round on DPNs but I have found the experience of working with those very traumatic and avoid it at all costs.

And – here is the cable panel detail (halfway through the panel)!
I’ve done this without a cable needle! It’s like magic!

In other news: earlier in the day I popped up to . I was just looking for a book [ED: come off it! If you want to buy a book, go to the bookstore, not the yarn store. Do you really thing you’re kidding anyone?!?]

So, despite the fact that I have six other skeins of Alchemy Silken Straw in the stash, I just had to snap this up. Can you blame me? The name of the colour is “Clio’s Fancy”! I think I’ll use it to make a short sleeved top along the lines of the Oriel Lace Blouse but with a different stitch pattern (this pattern, by the way, is why I bought the other Alchemy in the first place. Now I find the stitch pattern a tad too femmy for my tastes… so, we’ll see.

(An aside: I don’t know why I’ve become completely addicted to lace knitting – or at least the concept of it. So much so, in fact, that I joined up for aYear of Lace 2008 club yesterday. Just what I needed – more laceweight yarn! 6.9 km of Handmaiden products just aren’t enough… but there is at least one pattern by Sivia Harding – the creator of the River Rock Scarf and one of my big heroes. Anyway, it beats the Fruit of the Month Club! And – I’m shopping Canadian (the shop is in Calgary…).

[ED: Enough with the rationalisations!] By the way, JJ didn’t even ask me what I wanted to use his credit card for, unusually. I think he simply doesn’t want to know about any more yarn coming into the house. Puir wee JJ!

Anyway, so today is a new day:

and Asteriz et al are fleeing from the oppressors! I live with one (at least, he keeps insisting he is Viking in heritage, as opposed to Irish, which is closer to the truth, methinks) so Asterix has a point when he says “Those Vikings are crazy!”

This morning on the way to work I rather stupidly walked by the John Fluevog shop.

I’ve been coveting these ones for months, and now they’re on sale!!! They had better have them left in my size…and aren’t these ones cute?

Hmm. Where is that JJs credit card when I need it?!?

And – I wonder what he’d think if I came home with this fancy chandelier this evening?

At $1,100.00, I don’t think I’ll chance it.

Happy Friday to all!

Holly has been torturing me with photos. So, here’s my revenge on her.

For some real entertainment, though, click here to access my real blog post for today (unless, of course, you’ve seen it already!).

Well, I woke up yesterday morning to find that the sun was shining in Toronto!

An auspicious start indeed to my PayDay celebration (deferred one day – I have such steely willpower, eh?).

So, off I headed into the winter chill:

…but with my soul warmed by the prospect of new exciting acquisitions (although that “steely resolve” look on my face belies this, I know).

First stop over the lunch hour – the big bad conglomerate bookshop which shall remain nameless. I try to avoid these places, but I had a $75 gift certificate left over Christmas.

So, that added up to quite a bit of light reading:

Obviously I’m in need of a bit of cheering up, having bought books by three comedians! And what’s that? you ask – another mosaic book??? I know, I know – I don’t really need another mosaic book. And in fact I was just about to put it down and walk away when I saw this pattern:

Stan and Ollie! My favourites! They’re the ones who have inspired me to think about going back to school, by the way:

Obviously, they have been huge role models for me:

(I wish I could show you the whole photo as it has far more comic value than just me alone. However, my good friend “Kenndra” – ahem – would kill me.)

So, this book was a must-have: and only $12.00! Other lovely patterns in the book:

And how about this “flower power” one?!?

Then at the smoke shop, I came across these:

Mozzarella snack sticks in a bag?! These ones will stay at the office for that 3:00 sugar drop time. Move over, jellybeans!!

I then went on a quest to the LYS to find yarn for the Secret of the Stole II knitalong. I was in search of 1,400 metres of laceweight yarn. Being the Handmaiden slut that I am, I thought I would have a problem finding that quantity in one colour (the shops tend to carry only a couple of skeins of various colours – probably because only insane people like myself would spend $120.00 on the yarn needed for such a large stole).

So, imagine my surprise to find that there are laceweight yarns other than Handmaiden! I came away with this Malabrigo merino in a lovely midnight blue shade:

And only $11.95 a skein! A far cry from the $40.00/skein for the equivalent amount in Handmaiden lace silk!

Which did not, of course, stop me from snapping up some of that as well:

This even though there was not enough for the stole competition. However, I’ve just upped my Handmaiden stash to almost seven kilometres. Sigh.

Incidentally, I took the photos of the yarn while waiting for the streetcar at Queen and Bathurst with about 50 other people. I did get some very odd looks. Hey, at least I wasn’t wasting my time grumbling “Where the #$&*$(@&#$(* is that tram? The service on Bathurst these days is $#&*@$(@* ridiculous!”.

Having said that, one indicator of the ridiculousness of the tram service on Bathurst is that I managed to knit this much while waiting:

Er – not quite. But, close enough to be depressing. And this at rush hour!

So, off to work now to pay for the Handmaiden stash – at this rate, I’ll have to rent another apartment for it!

Cheers,

Kristina