"My country is not a country, it's winter"

These are the first words of a song written by one of our poets. And boy, this week, was he right.
The past week has been cold. Like, very cold. Like, feels-like -38-Celsius-because-of-windchill cold. Getting out of the house at  7:15 am and walking for 12 minutes to the bus stop have been a little bit of a challenge. It felt like the cold air went straight to my brain through my nose, and that my thighs would fall of. But at the same time, there is a great feeling of being strong about being able to just carry on with our life in that kind of conditions. And it makes -25 feels like spring.

In that past week, I managed to finish something (Hurray!) and wear it at work (double hurray!)
It's the skirt that I very, very slowly sewed together.

Picture sucks, but it is because I am home alone, and I'm too comfortable with my  warm clothes and do not want to expose my legs to the cold air, so I am not wearing it and taking a picture of myself. 

I took this picture in a hurry, because I have to bring it to my sewing class this afternoon to show my teacher.

In other news, despite being very happy to have finished one sleeve of my folded, I am very sad to announce that I still hate DPNs. I still keep loosing them, or they get in the knitted part and pull on the yarn, or they fall off and I have to fix several stitches, or they get stuck in the sleeves of the sweater I'm wearing. Moreover, the knitting doesn't look good and regular. I'm hoping that a good blocking will fix it (or part of it). I'm starting the second sleeve today, and I hope to finish it soon so I can go back to my circular needles. Now, I know that you will say that I could have done it all on circular needles, and then you would not have to read all my complaints. But the problem is that I am a very stubborn person, and I wanted to learn how to knit with DPNs.  So I did. Next step is to learn to enjoy it. I see a lot of socks coming up in the next months to teach me that.
Meanwhile, I've been telling myself regularly that I would not need to sew anything, at least. So it's not too bad. I'm trying not to think how much easier, faster and prettier this would have been on my circular needles...

The other craft I'm thinking about a lot right now is weaving. I'm obsessed  about fixing my small Meco loom, and warping my 60" Clement again. I'm planning to take some time off from work to shop and warp. I'm thinking baby blankets overshot. I've been pinning in my weaving board like a maniac, and now need to find time to go explore all these sites. But I am stubborn, and these blankets will get woven. I'm just not sure when.

Have a great weekend, I'm off to my sewing class!

January blues

I think it is normal to feel a little blue in January - it is still winter, it is dark, it is colder then it was in December, but we do not have the Holidays to look for.

In my case, I had planned for a cozy January. I knew I would get stressed with starting a new job while continuing for a little while with the old one, and I knew that going to Cuba or anywhere else warm to calm down is not an option until I finish my contract in Montreal, so the only plans I made were to knit while drinking tea.

At the beginning of the month, I caught the famous "startitis", which, according to my (blogs) reading, seems to have affected a large portion of the knitter population out there. Unfortunately, not being a very strong knitter yet, I also caught, almost at the same time, the "mistakitis". I have 4 knitting projects waiting for me, each of them with a mistake that I cannot fix in it (and believe me, I managed to fix several mistakes before I gave up!!!).

So I have the nice cardigan I started back in April when I first learned to knit, the nice warm hat I started after our knitting trip to Montreal, the baby vest I started over the holidays when my mother came to visit, and the socks I need to get going for a course that is coming up soon. I also have 100 other ideas of things I want to start, but I think I should finish at least one thing before I start another one. I mean, I don't mind working on several things at the same time, but I have to finish something from time to time to keep me going.

unfinished work

I'm impatiently waiting for my friend, teacher and mentor Elizabeth to come back from Cuba. We need a serious Skype knitting session. We've been talking about doing it for ages, and now is the time to do it.

I'm also looking forward to see my mom, so she can explain to me where she left the baby vest at. She has this bad habit of jumping on my knitting when she sees me, and then, she just says, oh, that's really cute and easy, can you send me the pattern as she knits it at the speed of the light, and then I have no idea where I am in the pattern. (I'm a beginner! I still have trouble counting my rows!)

Until I see any of them, I keep staring at my whanabe knittings, and I'm looking forward to February, it should get better, no?