sundown

when i was born in altona, manitoba, i was issued with a birth certificate, a complete internal prohibition against littering, and a penchant for gordon lightfoot. it's a canadian thing. (if canadians litter - even on another continent, they spontaneously combust. or they should.)

i love sundown - the cadences of the course lines repeated -
first "sundown you better take care if i find you've been creepin' round my backstairs",
second "sometimes i think it's a shame when i get feeling better when i'm feelin no pain",
then back to "sundown..." with a second of "sometimes i think it's a sin when i feel like i'm winning when i'm losing again"
and a grand finale of "sometimes i think it's a shame", two "sundown you better take care"'s and a "sometimes i think it's a sin".

it reminds me of classical poem construction - the ordered repeat of line and/or rhyme, whether sonnet or haiku.

and i love love love the line "i can see her looking fast in her faded jeans". i don't know why.

socks and drugs and rock'n'roll

i knit a sock!!!!!!

yep - i know it's blurry. but even in it's befuddled state, it is, undeniably, a sock. another synonym for blurry is woolly. how appropriate.

i am so proud of this sock - it was so much fun to knit - i can even overlook the fact that it is (somehow! ha ha) not perfect.

now of course i have to make another sock. this will be fine. i'm totally not the kind of person that's going to lose interest as soon as the tricky bit is done and leave half-finished projects moping desolately about the house (cough mitten cough). no - of course not. a finisher, that's what i am (cough lacy scarf cough).

excuse me my conscience needs a lozenge.

(ps and yep - i did just change the title of this from stitch london's fab "keep calm and carry yarn" to what you see now. it had to be done.)

n has a gig tonight in one of our locals, the elephant. if all goes well it could possibly lead to a regular booking there which would be great. he and s are so excited - they've just left with the myriad of gear that seems to underpin these evenings - both completely buzzing.

i'm terrified. i always get the most almighty case of nerves on these evenings. it's not that i think they will be bad in any way - they are both a) incredibly talented and b) professional enough to recover from anything so no worries there. i guess i get nervous because for me, doing what they're doing, would be pretty much the scariest thing in the known universe. so because i would find it akin to a relaxing dip in a great white shark tank, i get nervous on their behalf, even though they view this like six-year-olds on day passes to disneyworld. not logical at all but tell my stomach that.

the nerves always pass about 4 songs in and i'm sure we'll have a great evening. i have three goals for the evening:

1. not to drink too much. not out of nerves, not out of fun, not out of the bizarreness of english round buying system which can lock you in for more pints that you bargained for. several reasons for this, one of which leads to goal 2:

2. i will not dance like an idiot. this probably means that i should not dance at all. i once asked n if i looked stupid dancing and he gave me one of those looks and said, "well - i think everyone looks stupid dancing". take from that what you will.

3. to be proper - to remember names, buy the right drinks for the right people at the right time, to ask questions of people instead of blathering on and on about whatever inane flight of fancy has struck me.

none of this will happen of course. i will drink too much, i will dance like a monkey and i will spend the next two weeks trying to remember who people are. i'm wearing a necklace (i never wear jewelry - a certain bracelet excepted) - perhaps this will help anchor me to a grown up, rational action reality.

yeah ok you can stop laughing now.

my favourite wall plaque

this morning at work started with a robust debate between myself and two co-workers over the stylistic merits or lack thereof of various fonts, ending in confessions of our favourites and several google searches to compare/contrast. i truely do work amongst my people.

having thus established my utter geekiness, it will come as no surprise to find i have favourite wall plaques as well. what? you don't? i'm not sure why faversham has these, but they do, and yesterday i found a gallery of them, with photos and explanations.

this is my favourite:

do you think he found it anti-climatic after all that? or was he just relieved to have a bit of peace and quiet?

some christmas pics

a slippery, muddy walk through the marshes to the shipwright arms but so worth it. i am undoubtably knitting in this picture. very hard to leave for the homeward squelch through the fields back home.


humph having a duvet day


noms


kisses

some seriously fab yarnstorming

OLEK AND THE CHARGING BULL ON WALL STREET from olek on Vimeo.

damn you auto-correct!

we have just spent about an hour in hyesterics in our office laughing at the best of archives in damn you auto-correct. here's a few of my favourites:

bedtime he says

uh huh i say

(look from him which says, hey - it's not me who has to get up at 620am tomorrow morning after 11 days of seldom opening the eye shutters before 9am and even then under duress, and not me who has to have an entire set of post-apocalyptic floor layout designs ready for a big meeting next week who has not even started data-crunching for such plans yet because the whole week before xmas was lost in mulled wine, bad dancing, and mince pies, and not me who has an entire move (albeit small, but complicated) to organise for saturday, and, ha ha too bad that you - unlike me - don't naturally wake up at 6am all lively and full of beans)

now i may be reading too much into it, but only in the detail.

i hate it when he's right like that.

happy back-to-work.

(but - oh - what a lovely holiday!)