(stamping my feet).
Here is some proof that I do (deign to) knit for those other than myself (albeit on rare occasion):
Cool, eh? Pattern from Knit One, Felt Too. I know I said “no more socks” but these don’t count as they are knitted flat. Yarn = Brown Sheep worsted in Loden leaf and Red Passion Hot (or Hot Passion Red, or…whatever!)
Of course, I had to share the wealth and buy some stuff to make myself some slippers as well:
I routinely curse Brown Sheep for coming out with the Limeade colourway. They might as well attach a pulley leading me directly to the cash register, really.
At least the slippers won’t be hard to tell apart.
Unlike, for example, my eyewear. I’m trying generally to jazz up my life and look more funky as I am rather bored with my image. This can be an inherently difficult task when one has exceedingly boring taste in spectacles. I have just seen Holly Bee’s fantastic new glasses and am seething when jealousy. Fact is that every pair of new glasses I have had since… well, since forever has been dark brown except for the penultimate time when I funked up my usual look with, ahem, silver.
So, the time came again for new glasses – bifocals, sigh – and off I trotted to my friendly neighbourhood eyeglass emporium. They had fabulous glassed in red, purple, orange, you name it… but guess what I settled for – not one but two new pairs in… well, the usual.
(a) Wire Frames
(b) Plastic Frames
You noticed the difference right away, didn’t you? No? One word for you: BO-RING!!!!
Just picture my dilemma every morning “Oh, which glasses shall I wear? I can’t decide which ones go better with my outfit!” (Of course, the real choice is dictated by which ones I can actually locate without any glasses on and very poor vision… usually after stumbling around for 5 minutes I locate one pair in the living room and stick those one, whichever they are. The second pair inevitably are located at dinner time, inside the fridge next to the Diet Coke).
But wait – here’s proof that I am funky after all! check out the sidebar of the plastic specs:
Ignore the “mediterranean makeup” under the eyes (as my mother calls it). And if you suffer from this problem, a word of advice. Do not buy any expensive undereye creams. They do not work.
SIGH. Next time I will pay Holly Bee to come up to Toronto and be my specs consultant. My current specs consultant has equally good taste in glasses but is not forceful enough to twist my arm. At $450 per pair, however, this won’t happen very soon. (Just think how much Handmaiden that would buy!! See
their newest colourway. SIGH. And for more on yarn spending, this rambling post will get to it eventually.)
So – how else will I improve my look? I’ve decided (for perhaps the 512th time) to grow out my hair. So, quite soon I will stop looking like this:
… and instead look like this:
fancy shoulder length messy look
Er… perhaps that length is not too realistic, so let’s go with this instead which is the original style I liked:
Bourne Ultimatum
And not because I want to kiss Matt Damon either – eww.
There are some logistical problems with this plan, as usual:
* my hair is about 1/5th of the thickness of hers and probably far curlier.
* given my rather lackadaisical approach to makeup, hairstyles, etc. I require something fairly low maintenance.
* the only workout my hairdryer gets is in attempts to speed block knitted goods.
* I have no clue how to use hair products. When I do, the end result typically looks like I had an accident in the Vasilene factory.
The best hairstyle I ever had resulted from my trying to cut a particular hair colour out of it that I loathed when it had only grown out about an inch. I woke up the next day with bald spots and 4 inch length in the same do. The hairstylist had to do a brush cut to try to repair it. I kept the brush cut for 3 years because I liked the fact that I didn’t need to buy shampoo (a bar of irish spring worked fine) and because I had a day job at the time that required my wearing wigs (don’t ask).
So – please do wish me luck!!
Now back to me, me, I, I and yarn spending. The below, Emailed to a knitting friend and a non-knitting shopper friend (with some modifications taken out to protect the innocent), describes one of my forays this week:
I had thought that perhaps I should start up a group spend-a-long called “What I Sought and What I Bought”. It could be either knitting-related only or re. shopping compulsions generally Maybe a colummar format or excel spreadsheet style entry with the total (plus GST plus PST… AGH!!!!! I wouldn’t mind if we were actually getting services for all the taxes… but anyway)
I’m not going to do it on my own blog because it is depressing. LOL. Also, I don’t want non-yarnie friends/relatives to see just how much I spend (especially re whining about “I still rent, I’ll never own because it’s too expensive in the city, wah wah wah). I feel like Meg Ryan in that movie where she was a big alcoholic and Andy Garcia was her husband. Can’t remember the title. She was stashing booze and empties all over the place – in the linen closet, the clothes hamper, etc. I of course was never an alcoholic because I did all my drinking in the bar and did not have to resort to such tactics. Ah… the good old days. The more things change…
Anyway, the title just grabbed my fancy, really – on my way back from the yarn store. Today’s entry for me:
WHAT I SOUGHT:
– 2 skeins of Lamb’s Pride Worsted, 1 dark blue and 1 dark green. Total projected expense: $9.25 per skein = $18.50 total.
– intended use: slippers for JJ who has been hinting that he wants something for himself since he has to watch me knit all the time, selfish bastard!
WHAT I BOUGHT:
(Lamb’s Pride colours):
– 2 skeins of Lamb’s Pride Worsted, 1 red hot passion – M-197 on the website although they call it “red house passion” there!) and one loden leaf M-87 (apparently not on website – greeny brown) because I figured JJ needed a change.
Cost $18.50
So far so good… then:
AND…
– 2 more skeins of Lamb’s Pride Worsted (because why the hell should I go to all the effort to knit JJ some slippers and not have one for myself?!) – 1 blue boy (M-79 – and you can just have a look at the skeins I sent you because I’m sure there was a blue boy in there and which I think you did receive! hmm) and 1 limeade (M-120. They might as well call this colour “green crack” as far as I am concerned, really). Cost = $18.50
Not too bad… but wait for it:
AND…
– (ED NOTE: having just received 7 skeins of Berocco Suede in a swap with one of the receipients of the Email)You will surely laugh… 2 skeins of Berocco Suede. http://www.berroco.com/shade_cards/suede_sh.html 3775 Sangria (and it’s a good thing for me that they don’t put the colour name on the label – I wonder why not, anyway… Super 10 doesn’t either and the colour names are great! – anyway, otherwise I’m sure I would have walked out with 6 or so). Intended purpose: a cute page boy hat from Stitch Diva for which I bought the pattern yesterday. A necessary expense really, given that I am growing my hair out – and just think of all that money I’ll save on haircuts! The fact that I don’t really know how to crochet is just a minor barrier, really). Total cost 2x$12.50 or $25.00.
And then…
– a book – The Best of Interweave Knits. The worst of this is that I had talked myself out of buying it yesterday (where, by the way, I bought 6 skeins of Jo Sharp Aran Desert Cotton – but those were on sale so they didn’t really count, did they?). In fact – you said you enjoyed my Good/Evil Kristina debate. Well, part of the debate (the “good” part) took place verbally out loud at the store while I was looking at the book. I might write out the debate at some future point… And, I don’t even particularly like the sweater patterns in the book. I did like one lace shawl and one felted bag. The lace shawl is WAY beyond my capabilities and the felted bag I didn’t need instructions for. The way Evil Kristina ultimately won the battle (which continued during my subway journey to work this morning) was by convincing Good Kristina that, as someone who only started buying IK two years ago, this was necessary archival material for any knitter, really. See what I mean about “evil”??? Why couldn’t all the advocacy skills have gone to Good Kristina (it must be true what they say about lawyers, I guess). Cost: $31.95.
So – total spent $104.55 with GST, PST etc etc. Price of the intended purchase with the taxes: $21.09. Difference: $83.34. SIGH.
Phew!
And this is the end of Kristina’s Excellent Adventures for today. Off to finsh the slippers and then start on the River Rock scarf which I must have finished for 30 September as part of the Do Something New KAL. (augh!)
PS log cabin update (photographed on top of my deep freezer – 22×27″)
Bespoke By Brouhaha 
