Pleasant Surprises

Number One Son and I came down from up north yesterday afternoon so he could attend his house league soccer game and I could get the week's laundry done before heading back today.

On the way down we stopped for something to eat - adolescent boys are very similar to newborns - awake during the night, sleepy during the day and they need to eat every two hours or they loose their minds - anyway while my boy, who insisted he wasn't very hungry, organized a 12 inch sub sandwich I went in to Micheals Craft Store and was very pleasantly surprised to discover they are carrying some very interesting new yarns!

For example Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool in huge 425m balls at some ridiculously low Micheal's price is worsted weight virgin wool with lanolin still intact in 5 natural colours. (Brooklyn Tweed or his muse EZ's patterns come to mind anyone?)

They also had two or three brands of organic cotton in the biggest range of colours and weights I've seen in any one place.

I was unprepared for these discoveries so didn't buy anything but it filled my head with ideas between there and home and helped me endure the second hour of adolescent music blaring through the car's audion system too.

Last evening during the soccer game, the boy somehow managed to slash the bottoms of both his big toes on the cleats that screw into the bottoms of the soccer shoes. At half time he took his shoes and socks off to see what the problem was and knew that was the end of his game. I won't go into detail about the wounds beyond telling you that thankfully they won't require stitches but they will keep us from heading back up north to the land of bare feet and rocks and water skiis, wake boards and sail boats etc. for a day or two to make sure infection doesn't set in. In the meantime he's pretty much incapacitated - no running, no skateboarding, no heading out on his own to see his friends.

So here we are but I must say I'm pleasantly surprised at the state of the city where, three weeks into the garbage strike I'm not seeing (or smelling) any evidence of it. In fact streets and parks seem to have almost no litter at all. Nor are there piles of garbage anywhere in sight. Beyond that, the lawns in parks and on boulevards have a froth of white clover blooming across them since the lawns haven't been cut by city workers and the clover actually smells quite sweet. I've driven around our neighbourhood in the north end as well as all the way downtown and over to the far west side of the downtown core. It all looks great as the local merchants are seeing that their areas stay nice and neat and in the public spaces there's clover blooming everywhere!

The cool weather that really hinders things up north (where its even cooler) makes working and travelling down here a lot more comfortable too!

I've also had some unexpected time to be on line a bit so I worked on my Ravelry notebook and in so doing saw Knitteroo's (blog link) version of the BSJ (Ravelry link) that is pleasantly surprising to say the very least! This version is single alternating rows of navy and white. I've seen it striped in less contrasting colours but this version is uber clean and graphic! I think the crispness of the colours are so well suited to the pattern's angular design, that for me, it takes the knit to a whole new level.

The final surprise for me today is that while I didn't bring enough knitting down for an extended stay, and all my needles are up north I think I can hobble together something to cast on tonight using the rag tag collection of dpn's that always seem to collect in the bottom of my knitting notions case!

Thanks for dropping by!

...oh and I've passed on the kind acknowledgments of how well you thought my menfolk did avoiding varying dye lots at Romni - I guess they've actually been listening at least occasionally when I drone on! They went quite happily though as a) I wasn't with them so they knew they could get in and out quickly and b)they were already in the neighbourhood and it allowed me to get their laundry done back here at home so we could all head back to the cottage ASAP - very motivational for them to say the least!