Here are my feet modelling some socks. It is doubtful I'll be wearing these socks for at least four months. In the mean time, today is the eve of a holiday weekend. I was down on Queen street tonight, doing the promenade on a warm summer evening, had an ice cream at Ed's Real Scoop with the ex-husband. I think I'm going to have to review these blogger rules and read up on the etiquette. I have no clue what is de rigeur, crass or copyright infringement! I'd share the names of peoples and places in my life, but am I invading their privacy? Would I like to be mentioned in a blog? Not likely, unless I was being complimented about my shimmy walk or some knitty thing. Also, I wanted to share an online purchase I made, but the photograph isn't mine - I saved it off the website from the vendor. I don't tribal belly dance, though I love to see it. I'm amazed at the process that evolved tribal, and all the influences and schools of dance that percolated this spectacle. So I bought a coin bra, with just a wee band of embroidered mirrors on the edge. A really stupid purchase, given I'm unemployed and watching a dwindling bank account, and I'd never wear it.... Is it a sign of more than my impulsive nature... go tribal... or maybe I just bought a very beautiful thing that I can throw on a wall, and wear around the house and out in the privacy of my back deck. Knitwise today, I unraveled, you guessed it, a pair of socks, started some five years ago. I realize now that I completely messed up instructions on the heel - something about knitting with waste yarn (I thought I was supposed to hold the stitches on the waste yarn). Never mind, back to the ball it went. I'm fearless about undoing work. Better back to the potential of ball of yarn, than a half or three quarters finished project that I'll never touch again. I once unravelled an aran cardigan because there was no way that I could fit into it, or I messed up the sizing, I can't remember. Other pic is me this winter in a sweater that I did to wear under down vests, with some hugely thick slubby german yarn, a big collar that can keep my neck and ear canals warm. Again, a sweater that sat around for quite a while until I finished it. Then I didn't like the length, and snipped off the ribbing and added a couple more inches. I usually learn something on every project, except maybe the socks. But today, even on socks, I started a beginner sock, a tube, in some creamsicle orange wool, not hard wearing sock material, more a winter afternoon pickmeup warm sock to watch the film noirs with the fire burning sock (minimal walking). Later. Need sleep to wake up early tomorrow for my walk on the boardwalk.

Went for a walk on the boardwalk this morning. Started another pair of socks while I was waiting for my friend to join me. I've been making a lot of socks, but not wearing any of them. Stormy weather here today, thunder and lightening, torrential rains (certainly nothing like the US east coast), mostly hot, and humid. Not sock wearing weather. So why, why another pair of socks? Why not? The other undone projects need a bit too much thinking; the cashmere lacey cardigan needs a clear mind to put on the last sleeve, ditto on finishing the neckline on the burgundy silk sleeveless top, my pink coat/cape thing is too thick and heavy to knit while my pinkie finger heals, I need to work out a pattern for the shoulders on a cotton t-neck sweater, the ruby red velour/multi-colour ribbon sweater needs to have the yarn detangled, no brain for the little lace cashmere scarf for Mum. Socks can be finished, and unlike another scarf, they're more likely to be used. So the socks win while I work on my brain and my finger. I missed my belly-dancing class yesterday which I regret because I love this new teacher. She is to belly-dancing what cookbooks without pictures are. EEk, that sounds bad. What I mean is that her words fill my head with the image of what a move is supposed to feel like. Her descriptions flesh out where a movement starts from and what she intends it to express. I'm only a beginner belly-dancer, and I need the "motivation" explained, at the same time that I get to feel it out for myself. And she is a knitter, so she is to be trusted. My other teacher sent me a pattern for crocheting a hip scarf, but not having gotten the crochet gene, I'm going to try and adapt something so I can knit it. So I think that covers it; belly-dancing, rugs, and knitting....

Hector, my black boy killer cat, loves textiles, rather he loves to dominate them. Not the sort of cat that chases down balls of wool, he would gnaw on the end of a knitting needles if I used them, my preference being for circulars. Here he is perched on top of a pile of my rugs that had yet to be dispersed to the corners of the house. Stashing balls of wool is one exercise that got me ready for the olympian task of stashing rugs! Hector is also posed beside a purple Buffo shawl. I bought the Italian mohair yarn in 1983 when I was just new to the city, living in an apartment in Parkdale, working part-time at the bank, with no money. This yarn was a splurge of the decade, 10x balls, that I knit into a loose cable sweater, that made me look like a purple buffalo. And I was thin then too! Half finished (that means one sleeve undone), it was trotted out regularly as a work in progress until the mid 1990s when I unravelled it and put it away for some "future" use. A couple of years ago I was into mindless knitting, just interested in colour changes, and teaching people how to knit wash cloths. So the half square/triangle shawl was part of the repertoire of dull knitting. I used the buffo just to touch it, and see the colour play again. I later gave away the finished shawl to a friend of mine who was undergoing chemo, to keep her warm when she sat out in the garden. After a couple of years she gave it back, because she didn't need it anymore. Hurray!!!! And when my cousin got sick with breast cancer, I brought it out to her in Vancouver, holding the secret magical powers I thought it had to myself. She said it kept her warm, that she would sit out on her roof-top deck and watch the mountains and the sea. Two years later, she is still alive and still wrapped in the shawl. She can keep it for as long as she wants. And Hector sits whereever he wants.

I cut my little finger last week in a horrific cheese grating accident; parmesano reggiano into a beautiful blue israeli bowl which cracked, and disconnected a lovely little piece of flesh. shock, the angle of my finger looked funny, blood, firsthand experience of Canadian universal health care (totally ok), glued up, bandage, home to knit... Wait. I knit every day, have done so for 20 years, with much more intensity since this winter when my contract wasn't renewed. Egad! But I have to knit, and I ultimately found a way, with socks. Just the right gauge of needles, little hand movement, no touching of the pinkie finger, no splitting of building scab. Socks good, sweaters bad, coats really really bad. So the pink confection on 8mm needles that might be a coat or a cape will have to wait until I have a really good solid scab. In the mean-time, I'll finish another pair of socks.