etc.

Last night I dreamed that my sister moved to India and that I was so mad at the mister that I made him move out of the house. Both dreams, one hopes, were the result of being hopped up on cold meds and high-potency vitamins. I hate being sick. It feels like I am sick an awful lot lately, one of the perils of working public service in a high-traffic library, I suppose. Occupational hazard.

Due to the high ick level around here, I have done no sewing. None. At all. I’m having sewing-machine day-dreams and some low-level stress over sewing-related deadlines. I did manage to whip through a pair of these in some lovely green variegated merino (of unknown provenance; I picked up a few balls of it from a farm stall at a knitting festival last year, wish I had kept the receipt), and I finished reading that book by a former classmate that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. It was good, I commend it to you.

My sister and her mister went to France last month and they brought me back tea. Pictured at left, Mariage Frères Earl Grey French Blue. And, look! Blue flowers! In my tea! Opening the little canister was both a visual and olfactory delight! Blue flowers in my tea! I brewed myself a little pot this morning and boy-howdy, it brightened up a damp Sunday morning.

Outside my window it smells like rotting leaves. I wish I could get more excited about Fall. Turning leaves and falling apples, &c.

This week, I return to the sewing machine. I had fabric dreams last night (do you dream of craft supplies?) and I am good & ready for the soothing hum of my machine. I’m ashamed to admit it but one of the reasons why I haven’t sewn much lately is that I’ve been out of thread (who runs out of thread? Why, I do!). I can’t bring myself to pay retail prices for thread so I’ve been rabidly bidding on lots of thread on eBay and the online auction gods finally smiled upon me: a hefty bag of vintage thread landed upon my doorstep on Friday. I think I clucked with glee.

To-day, blue flowers in my tea!

So much for Fall colours, eh? I am quite literally obsessed with the brown/blue colour combination at the moment (also redesigned the other blog for this purpose too. That one is also still a work in progress) and squidfingers has some exquisite patterns that cater to this pallet, so I gave in. A few more things to tackle:

• get the blog title & description to show up in the header space (I’m almost stumped. Any ideas? Later: OK. Figured out the php. Now I just have to beat the css into submission to get the description to line up. One of these days I’m going to learn css good & proper; this trial & error method I’ve been relying on heretofore is not cutting the mustard anymore) later still: blatant cheat. I added the tagline to the title </frustration>.
• create a template for static pages check
• make it all play nicely with IE Safari & Firefox? No problem.

And if you could post a quick comment if anything looks broken on your screen, I’ll be your friend forever.

You know how I recently redesigned this site? Well, I’m doing it again. I liked the simplicity, but much of the structure just wasn’t working for me. So, if you stop by today (rss readers in particular), you might want to hit “refresh” a few times during your stay. Things are going to be changing by the minute.

It is somehow wrong to wake up, mid-October, thinking, “where did the summer go?” It is a question I should have asked myself on a September morning, more like. The where-did-the-summer-go lament stems from a few regrets: I didn’t plant any herbs this summer! I played not a single game of tennis (in April, weekly tennis games were planned)! We didn’t finish our lower deck! We didn’t re-brick the carport! These are the regrets of a cool, sunny, October morning.

To-day, my mum and I went to an open house, where we fondled some lovely jewellery. Speaking of which, there is a new bead shop on my street. A dangerous prospect, indeed.

And, I’ve done a Fall colour update. But you already noticed that.

That title is apropos of the roses I spied on campus this morning, on my walk from the parking lot to the library. They did, upon them, have juicy raindrops. I thought I might explain that.

Harold Pinter has gone and won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Hip hip!

Also in literature, I have just bought a book by a fellow who was in my graduate English class seven years ago. Of all the student-sorts in that class, he was the sort I had pegged to write and publish a novel. And he has. I will tell you if I like it in a few days.

And now, pardon me, I have to go & water my flagging begonias.

No SPT this week, instead a picture of Emerald Lake. It rained 4 out of 6 days I was there, this was taken on the last day (blue skies!). The thing about stunning mountain scenery is that it makes one look like a talented photographer when, in truth, you couldn’t take a bad picture there if you tried. More lake/mountain pictures are here.

Remember the DC sock? Meet her sister, the BC sock, named thusly on account of knitting the lion’s share in the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia. The mountains were brilliant, the hot tub was exhilirating, the Institute was transforming. I’ll stop now for fear of waxing lyrical but if you’d like to hear more about NEL, drop me a line.

As you know, this is Lorna’s Laces, a lovely, lovely yarn. I have a skein of Cherry Tree Hill on tap for the next pair of socks and, since I’m feeling somewhat adventurous, I’m planning on trying my hand at this pattern. Snazzy but suitably simple (I like a simple sock).

This weekend we celebrate Thanksgiving and plans include eating, knitting, reading, sewing, and visiting this exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre. I have plenty of mountain pictures to upload and I hope to get around to that too. Anticipate!