Saturday 3 November 2007

Clapotis, How I love Thee

Yesterday I ran some errands. I got my flu shot at the free flu shot clinic at the Oshawa Centre. I also bought a pair of comfy, yet somewhat dorky, shoes than I can wear my hand knitted socks with. I then headed up to Myrtle Station to Ferguson's to find some yarn for the three projects I want to work on. I'm not sure which projects I'm going to take to Cuba. I bought a really funky shiny yarn for a fancy mini clapotis (pronounced cla-po-tee). It's Austermann Castell 75% acrylic/25% nylon. I tried to look it up on Ravelry but no one had heard of it. I bought some yummy purple tweed Drops alpaca yarn to make the Lacy Diamonds Scarf from the "Odd Ball Knitting" book. I'm using two strands to get the desired gauge and scarf width. I also bought some Soffice yarn which is 50/50 merino/acrylic for the Cece lacy cardigan. I started the Lacy Diamonds scarf and the clapotis. After yarn shopping I met some former colleagues for a drink.

Today Skip and I went into The Big City to run a couple of errands. We went to the Open Air Books on Toronto St. (just next door to Conrad Black's former place of 'business'). Open Air has an astounding number of travel and ecology books. The salesperson instantly directed us to the Cuban birdwatching books. We also bought a travel guide to Cuba. We also went to McTamney's (a high-end pawn shop) to check out their jewelry. I have recently misplaced/lost a favourite pair of earrings and a favourite bracelet. I thought I'd check out what McTamney's had that might replace my missing pieces. Lo and behold they had the exact earrings AND bracelet I was looking for so I got them. I will have to get the bracelet shortened by a half inch or so but it's really pretty and exactly what I was looking for.

After that we drove east on Queen St. to The Beach in search of a yarn shop I had yet to investigate - The Naked Sheep. Once there, Sarah showed me several yarns I could use for a clapotis. In fact she was knitting one herself when I walked in. I decided to purchase a skein of wonderful Handmaiden Lady Godiva yarn.

We then went for lunch at a Thai place and then strolled back to the car. I really like that area of The Big City. It is congested but has a really nice feel to it. It's also very accessible by street car if we decide to get there by public transit.

On the way back home, we dropped in to visit my MIL in the nursing home. Skip found her knitting bag at her house so I donated one of my Stitch 'n Pitch bags to put it in. I also printed the picture of her 3 sons that I took at the wedding we went to at Thanksgiving and matted and framed it for her room. She has been reading John Grisham's 'The Painted House' in large print and enjoying it. Hopefully the large print Reader's Digests will start arriving.

I've wound the skein into a ball and have cast on the second clapotis - thank goodness I have lots of needles kicking around - and I'm liking it very much. The mini clapotis (called 'Drop Scarf' by a gal who modified the Kate Gilbert clapotis) is an easy, quick project. It is very cool dropping the stitch and creating a 'run' in the project.

Tomorrow we're going to my MIL's house and my sister-in-law is meeting us there. We're going to do some sorting of stuff in preparation for clearing the place out.

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