Brasov ethnographic museum

I don't have much to say this week, I didn't knit at all, because I was too busy doing my sewing homework.
So instead, I'm going to post a few pictures I took at the Brasov ethnographic museum, in Romania. That's a lot of pictures, I hope you enjoy!

The permanent exhibition is titled Textile heritage, and that's exactly what it was, a journey through all the textiles traditions that are handed down from generation to generation.

Woven veil. I'm not really there yet...

Thing to work with linen

There is no doubt that I fell in love with textiles while visiting Romania. I visited countless "nice rooms", filed with textiles woven, sewn or embroidered by women I met. Visiting ethnographic museum is almost like a pilgrimage for me.

I think that some friends who are wondering how to weave a belt will enjoy this picture! 

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weaving pattern

So many details

ribbon loom

 This was the most intriguing piece of the museum. It was huge!

The patterns are entered on a cardboard

And here is the result

It's still working!

Sample

There were several short videos of ladies showing their art, here it is Hardhanger

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I hope you enjoyed. Don't hesitate to write comments if you have questions. I bought the book of the exhibition, and it is in French, so I'll probably be able to find the answers easily! More pictures of the "textile trip" coming soon!

Back in 3R

We came back on Wednesday night, and arrived in 3R at midnight, after a long trip that had started at 5:30am, our time.

We had an awesome trip, my man and I. A perfect mix of vacations, visiting friends, partying , folklore-related activities, textile-related activities and tourism. I was so nervous going there, hoping he would like it, because our vacations together would have been seriously jeopardized  for the rest of our life, if he had decided never to go back again. Fortunately, he had a good time, despite the language barrier, the insane amount of alcohol and the running around from a place to another to meet more friends.

Although this was my 10th or 12th trip to Transylvania, I still managed to take over 1,000 pictures. They are still downloading as I write, so I won't add them to this post.

However, there is a picture I can add: the one of the dishtowels I managed to finish right before we left, and that I distributed to the ladies who have inspired me so much over the years. It was interesting to see their critical eye take a look at the finished object, and to be told that it was a good beginner's piece, and how much they liked the yarn used to weave it. One of them even told me she would not use it as a dishtowel, but turn it into a small table cloth. Oh, I was so proud!

The trip also involved other textile-y activities, such as the visit of 2 ethnographic museums (OMG), 2 days spent at a crazy, crazy market, visits of rooms full of sheets, dishtowels, table clothes and other magnificent objects, and frenetic knitting on my part to finish the hoodie that I wanted to give my friend's daughter for the birth of her son. I managed to finish it (well, without sewing the buttons on) as my man was putting our luggage in the taxi that brought us back to the airport 2 days ago. Somehow, that little thing did not want to let itself get knitted easily. And even less assemble (oh, that damn hood!). But I managed to take a few pictures before I left for the airport!

Yes, once again my favourite yarn, but this time, I didn't request it at the store, they suggest it to me when I said it was going to far far away in Transylvania! 

That's the only knitting that happened during the trip. I was ready to start (again) my folded on my trip home, but my needles (my brand new addi turbo lace, and another set of normal circular needles) were confiscated at the Budapest airport. Not at the Montreal airport this summer, or 2 weeks ago, not at the Toronto or the Detroit airports this summer, not at the London airport, no, the Budapest airport was their last trip.
I don't know if I should be pissed at myself, for taking a chance to bring them in my carry on, or pissed at the fact that they had gone through security several times in my carry-on without any problem, and that that day, a zealous employee decided otherwise. So no knitting on my way back. And no needles to start the sweater, so I'll have to find something else to start over the weekend. maybe Fuse, for which I have the yarn and the needles. Or some socks. I want to make a pair of socks, I think this is the right timing.

Off to unpacking, laundry and trying to find how to start the heating in the basement! have a great weekend!

September at the speed of the light

This is my 50th post! Who knew I would find so many things to say, and so many things to learn and do since I moved here!

September has not been an exception; it's been so busy, I feel everything has been done on automatic pilot.
I've always felt that September, for me, was the real beginning of the year. It's the time I take my resolutions, I plan my year, I rework my budget, I take a big breath and get get back in every day's craziness.

So, here are some general news, for those who know me: I now have 3 work contracts at the university, 2 in the chiropractic department (one for the neuromusculoskeletal affections research group, one for a Chair in Knowledge Translation for health, set at McGill University) and a third one in the nursing department in the cardiovascular health laboratory. Tree groups, 3 supervisors, 3 cultures, 3 ways of working, 3 sets of deadlines. I'll get used to it, and anyway, it's supposed to be temporary, but let me tell you that the past month has been brutal on a professional level.

But to get distracted from all that work, I had a lot of options:

1. Get ready for our trip. We both took only a week off this summer, and it was far from being restful, so we are leaving on Tuesday for 2 weeks in Hungary and Romania. I didn't get the chance to organize much, but the good thing with going back to a place where you've spent so much time already is that there is no need to organize. This year, I added a visit to Dracula's castle (my man said he could not go to Transylvania and come back without having pictures of the castle), but besides bringing a few presents, letting people who have access to internet know we're coming, all I have to do is to buy a phone card when we arrive, and let people know we will pass by. AAhh, vacations. I can't wait.

One of the places we are going...I've never seen it in fall yet, I can't wait. 

2. Can. I canned an insane amount of plum jam, grape jelly and tomatoes. All by myself, since my man was busy getting ahead in his studies. He's going to miss the equivalent of 3 classes while we are gone, so he had to spent all his evenings writing papers and homework since he started his class at the beginning of the month. The bad thing with canning is because it doesn't happen often, I forget what I learn from a year to the other. So I have a batch of good grape jelly, and another one that did not "jellify".  The plums are good, but a little runny. And by the time I got to my 3rd box of tomatoes, I had everything under control, but let me tell you that evening of the first box was messy and painful.

3. Sew. I decided to learn how to sew properly. It's been on my to-do list for, like, ever, and I've never done anything about it. I wanted to register for weaving lessons, but I would have missed a third of them while on vacations, so I called a sewing school instead. (Not really thinking I would also miss a few classes, but hey, there was not much thinking done in September, as I mentioned earlier). So I ended up in a year-long class, which I LOVE. I don't know what it is, if it is to put a method to whatever I was doing without knowing how, or if it is just the teacher who is so experienced both in sewing and teaching, but I'm very happy I decided to register. I love how we learn techniques while making something at the same time. I'm making this skirt (model B) to start, and the teacher said that by the end of the year, we will have 2 skirts  2 blouses and 2 pairs of pants.

4. Exercise. I told you, September is the month of resolutions for me. I have not been very good at keeping up going to work with my bike, because I just get so red and sweaty in the last hill that I scared my colleagues. So I decided that since I had access to a gym at the university, I would use my lunch hour to get in shape. I registered to power yoga and aquafit. One of the unfortunate thing about going to that gym is that you have a few people teaching every single course. I know they are kinesiologists, and they know how to tell us to move and what to be careful with, but I do not enjoy that everything is taught the same way. For example, I would enjoy my yoga class to be a little bit more "yogic", and last semester, my zumba class was aerobics with hips. So I think I have to keep registering for classes where I my only expectation will be to move and sweat, such as in the aquafit one. I've also been doing Pilates for the past 2 years or so, and I kept that, and asked my teacher if it could become a little bit more intensive. Hopefully all these, plus my 15-minute walks to and from the bus stop twice a day will give me more energy, which is really my primary goal.

5. Get sick. I managed to get a little sick...but it's okay, I finish my antibiotics today, so  I'll be fine for my trip!

6. Go to funerals. My 84 uncle passed away a few weeks ago. He had had a very good life, so even if it was a sad event, we all managed well. It was great to see relatives I had not seen in a very long time, so all that driving around to get there was well worth it!

7. Start the Farmers' year. I'm still part of the local Farmers' circle (a women craft association) board, and we kick the year with our first meeting at the beginning of the month. I think over 100 members showed up, it was hot in the hall!

8. Harvest. In the past years, we had an urban garden, in containers that my man had modified for gardening. This year, we didn't have any time to take care of our garden, but still planted 2 kinds of cherry tomatoes and some other things, including containers' carrots. (I forget what else we planted, because it obviously didn't work). The fact that we actually planted something this year was due in good part to the fact that a colleague came to visit a few months ago with his young child, and we had to keep that child busy while his mother used my sewing machine to make curtains. So my man showed him how to plant seeds, and it actually turned into a a few very nice tomato plants!

We even got a few carrots!

9. Shop. I got those buttons on Etsy. Love them, but realized they are too big for my Peasy, which I will talk about further in the next paragraph.

10. Go to Montreal. I took a Friday to go to Montreal for ice cream (beet sage ice cream!) with friends, a haircut in an Aveda salon (no aveda product in 3R) a crazy concert featuring musicians I had met at camp this summer, yummy Romanian food, quality time with a little guy I love and an awesome zumba class taught by the best teacher ever.

11. Knit. Yeah, I know, difficult to believe I actually had time to knit something, right? Well, if we count the trip to Montreal + the fact that I take the bus for 10 minutes twice a day, that's about how much time I had to knit in September. Minus the days I chatted with friends who also take the bus, minus the days where my man picks me up from work, minus the few times where one of my supervisors gave me a ride home.

But, yeap, I managed to finish (kind of) my Peasy, which I rename the humility reminder cardi. Or, rather, I will finish it AGAIN today. Why did I need to be reminded to be humble? Well, because after knitting that cardigan quite quickly, without any mistake (well, not any I can see!) lace and all, I was ready to believe that I had become a good knitter. or at least not a beginner anymore. Until I got to the button bands. You, know the easy part, where you pick up stitches, and only knit for a few rows, and bind off, and that's it? I'm not even talking about the other band, where I had to make the button holes, because that went not very well,  but let say, quite well.

So this button band story started at the yarn festival I went to in August, I had a lot of time to knit, and did my first band on the Sunday afternoon. Catastrophe! I did the bind off so tight, it looked like a corset. I undid that. Once, twice, three times. Both sides were never symmetric  Did the bind off 4 different ways.  Changed for bigger needles. Asked my friend and knitting mentor Elizabeth, who told me that I just didn't pick the same amount of stitches on both side. What? That could not have been it? How did that happen, I was convinced I had followed the pattern exactly as it was. Well, I still had to re-do it 2 or 3 times, but I think that now, that's it, it is done. Well, I also realized that I forgot to do 2 button holes, but I didn't have any energy left to panic with that, so I just decided that I would sew the whole thing and wear it as a sweater, and add buttons to decorate. Eventually. That cardigan-turned-sweater is bathing as we speak, because I am wearing it in Europe next week. So I have decided.

Old picture, it is now symmetric!

But wait, that's not the only thing I knitted! I'm also almost done with this hoodie, which I am hoping to bring as a present in Romania next week. the back and front pieces are done, and I'm halfway through both sleeves, which means that tomorrow, I hope to knit the hood, block and assemble on Monday to pack. I don't see a lot of sleeping in my near future, since there is a lot of other things to do before we can leave on Tuesday, but hopefully, I'll be bringing 2 finished objects in my suitcase, and maybe more, but I don't want to talk about it so it get jinxed.

I will take a lot of pictures while I travel, and promise this time I will also post a few on the blog with explanations when I get back. Enjoy the fall, and see you in 2 weeks.

You know fall is around the corner...

...when you see all the canning supplies getting featured in the grocery and hardware stores. That, for me, means minimally grape jelly, maybe tomatoes and hopefully cinnamon-plum jam.

Last week I went to my in-laws who gave me 2 buckets full of concord grapes. They have so much they don't know what to do with it. I spend almost all weekend transforming them in jelly.

Yum!

I love grape jelly, and I like it even more since I started making my own. Last year, it turned perfectly. This year, I'm not so sure what it will look like when I open the first jar. Cooking on our 1960's stove has been a challenge. I had trouble getting the right temperature and kept burning myself.

Today was plum jam. One reason I wanted to get plum trees in our garden is because I love plum jam. We did not get any fruit this year, so we got a few kilos at the market last week, which I transformed into a yummy plum-cinnamon jam today.

Tomatoes might happen next week, and I also have beets for an evening this week.
So no time to knit this week.

Canning on our old stove. Not fun.

I might have bought way to many plums

had a few of these last week: organic gin (thanks Cherie!), tonic, cucumber and wild blueberries

Final product: lots of plum jam!

Busy, busy, busy...

Where to start? Maybe with this, which I would really like to have a bit of right now:

Organic gin (Wow!). Is there organic tonic I can mix it with?

This week has been crazy. And it is not even over yet.
Today was probably the first time since I work at the university that I almost lost it. Which, if I compare to previous jobs, is not bad at all. After all, I've been there over a year and a half now.
By the end of the day, there were 2 funding proposals and 5 abstracts submitted, including my own. That's what I call a productive day.

Anyway, this nice bottle was offered to me by Cherie and Brad, friends from Wisconsin, who I just had the chance to have a coffee with on Monday morning, while I was waiting for my bus to get back to 3R. I'm more used to see Cherie late at night, when we party together at Hungarian events, but this quick early meeting was great.

So Monday, I took a bus back to 3R after having spent my weekend in St-André-Avelin. No, I had not heard about that place before either. However, some people had the great idea to organize the 1st Twist Yarn Festival there last weekend. I registered as soon as I heard about it, a few months ago. Then my friend Elizabeth told me that her and her sisters were going to be there too as vendors. A whole weekend knitting with my knitting friends? How can a weekend get better?

The magical very full yarn bus

Some of sweet paprika designs and yarn

Well, it can. If you invite one of my idols to run a workshop. So, for my first ever workshop, at my first ever yarn festival, I got to spend a whole day with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka the Yarn Harlot), learning all about knitting belts, Shetlands, lever knitting and  other tricks to knit more quickly and more efficiently. It was fabulous, although my head and wrists hurt a lot at the end of the day. I didn't even sign up thinking about learning anything. I was under the impression that I would sit down all day and just listen to her funny stories, so I was not really ready to work so hard, but I am glad I did.

OMG, OMG, I am TOUCHING the Yarn Harlot!!!

Being in that class felt very weird. I mean, I've been following her blog religiously ever since I started knitting, so I came to feel as if I know her personally. I don't think I was the only one in the classroom; everybody asked her questions about her recent activities. After a few minutes, when I realized (I mean, I knew!, but still...) that we did not, indeed, know each other, that feeling evolved into another one. I almost felt like I am stalking her...I mean, I know everything about her life, and she has no clue who I am. It is very weird to explain, but this is the closest to how I can explain it. I guess this is the downside of having such a popular blog. I'm just trying to imagine how many other knitters feel like me...that's a lot of love to handle!


Yarn festival means yarn shopping, right? Not in my case! I have no idea how to choose yarn between a vendor and another, and how many skeins to get, etc. So I bought a bunch of other stuff linked to yarn, most of them ceramic (because I didn't get the chance to go to the fabulous 1001 pots ceramic exhibition this year) :-(

Here is my new knitting bowl (céramique de l'érable bleu, no website unfortunately)

New buttons (just need to knit them something...) The blue and red ones are from céramique de l'érable bleu, and the green and khaki ones are from Laura Sheppard

I could seriously have bought everything from those 2 stores.

But, in a yarn festival, is there knitting happening? Oh yeah!

So technically, between my buses to and from Montreal, time spent at the booth, and during the workshop, I had time to finish my Peasy. Except that, as you can see, binding off the edge trim has made it shrunk by half an inch. And that's because it is the 3rd time I'm redoing it. The first time was much funnier (not for me...ok, a little), it looked so ridiculous. I've tried to bind off with bigger needles, I've tried with different techniques, I just don't know what to do anymore. I do not want it shorter, so I'll have to find a solution. I still have one bind off method that I need to try, I'm now just trying to find the courage to undo everything once again.

aaarrrghgghhh

Meanwhile, I've started to cast on my folded. Ouch, that yarn is tiny! Let's hope I finish it before the end of the winter, it's going to be a nice spring sweater.

Half a day left to my work-week, then it is a long weekend here in Canada. Hopefully I'll have plenty of pictures of (at least!) one finished room next week.

Good night!

Entertainement palace

Since the last time I wrote, our house has become a cool place to hang out.
It started with a barbecue with my colleagues, spouses and kids (about 25 people) on a Wednesday evening.

party backyard

The day after, my man, now confident that we could have people over, invited friends for dinner. Over the weekend, 2 other friends came from Montreal with a baby (the cutest one in the world, I must add).

I must say that it is easier to have people over now that our living room went from this:

the original living room, before we bought the house (picture NOT taken by me!)

to this:

May 1st, after my man spent several hours taking the old carpet off

to this (arrgggh!):

June

and now this:

July 2012

It's not finished, but I love the bright, almost empty space. I hope I can keep it this way when we are done, but knowing myself, it will be difficult...

Then this weekend, my parents came over. It was the first time they saw the house, and I think they liked it. We got to enjoy the backyard a lot, my mother and I knitting, my dad reading, and all of us drinking  watermelon-blueberry juice (my new favourite summer drink: put some watermelon in a container. Add whatever berries you have. Add herbs (I tried with chocolate mint and basil). Add some lime juice. Maybe a little bit of something sweet (I have agave nectar). Then I use my hand blender, bjjjuuut, bjjuuutt. Add some bubbly water. If you are not with your 80-something parents, add some rum as well, pour on ice, enjoy.

Having guests over means that we get a nice break from the renos (thanks guests! Please come more often!) and that we get to go to our favourite places to show them off to them.

Heaven

On the craft side, nothing much, I get to knit when I take the bus to work, and since I'm trying more and more to bike, my poor peasy is not happening very quickly. However, it has now made it to the stage of "thing I can see myself wearing in the future". Hopefully in October, when I need warm clothes.

I quite proud of it, mostly because so far, I've only needed minimal external intervention when I made mistakes. I'm now an expert at dropping stitches intentionally so I can go fix something. I'm going to knock on wood, but hopefully, it will go this way until the end.

Tomorrow, we are going to Montreal with my man's nephews to see a Star Wars exhibition and eat in Chinatown. That's a minimum of 2 hours of knitting on the way there, and maybe 2 more on the way back, if we come back before dark. How exciting!

Have a great weekend!