Easter time = mini time.

The little bunnies I knit following a free pattern from Mochimochi Land. I've added noses. There are a whole lot or variations on Ravelry.


Delicious mini Cadbury creme eggs. Much more appropriately sized then their regular-sized counterparts. And served up in this egg carton packaging.


Little jelly beans again from one of my favourite blogs, Mochimochi Land!


Teeny tiny cream egg from i'm so tiny!

Astounding Knits!

I need and want this book about knitting. It's the kind of knitting I want to look at and read about. And then be inspired to make something cool. On Amazon you can look inside!

Busy, busy. busy.

Look what I've been working on!


Tiny Brian still needs his little hammer and buttons for his shirt. Mini Em now has a little black apron and a petite pie box. I'm going to make her some shades once I acquire some black jewellery wire.

The case they are sitting on contains even more components of this project I'm working on. Much more to come!

Also, this was shot at Nat's family's cottage. We had a bit of a Guelph time reunion last week. What a great weekend! We ate like queens, swam about 5 times a day, and roasted (Well, Louise charred) s'mores every night. Lovely summer mini vacation.

"Will you forgive my single-mindedness, and my tendency to see knitting in everything?"

August 9, 2010 marks what would have been the 100th birthday of British-born knitter, Elizabeth Zimmerman. EZ, as she is known amongst the knitting community, was influential in shaping the craft into what it has become today. She was one of the first knitters to publish patterns in magazines. Her Wisconsin-based Schoolhouse Press was one of the first mail-order knitting pattern businesses. It is still producing countless well-thought-out and creatively designed patterns today.

EZ, herself, wrote many books about knitting. Her writing style is direct and logical. I have several of her books and they are my favourite works of knitting theory. I enjoy the mathematics and geometry that is involved in knitting. Elizabeth has managed to take these aspects of knitting and use them to design incredible techniques and guidelines for creating sweaters that fit perfectly and mittens that have such interesting construction. Really, EZ epitomized what being an arts and scientist means to me.

Not to mention, EZ was just one clever lady. Her personal motto was "Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crisis."

I have several favourite EZ quotes, but my all time favourite is a perfect example of Elizabeth telling it like it is, "really, all you need to become a good knitter are wool, needles, hands, and slightly below-average intelligence. Of course superior intelligence, such as yours and mine, is an advantage" (from Knitting Without Tears).

Above and beyond all of this, everything EZ made or designed was absolutely, simply beautiful. I think I will pull out my copy of The Knitter's Almanac tomorrow for some mid-summers knitting inspiration.

Thank you for everything, EZ.

Wool Blacks.

Once upon a time I was a Knit World visitor too. I actually dropped in on the knitting group at the Knit World in Wellington, NZ. This group is out of Dunedin. I was only in Dunedin for about one hour while waiting to catch a plane. Not enough time for, even me, to find a wool store (the airport is just a tiny little place out in the sheep pastures).

I like this video because I have always thought of knitting a sports jersey. Hockey jerseys were knit by hand when leagues were first starting. This group of women are knitting the jerseys to raise money for charity.

Appropriate and inappropriate uses for googly eyes.

Sometimes googly eyes can be used for good. For example, quickly and easily turning a little purple tea cozy into a little purple hedgehog tea cozy.


On the other hand, googly eyes can sometimes be used for evil. For example. on this poster advertising a breakfast deal in downtown Peterborough. Sunny-side-up eggs shouldn't be able to see you. Also, none of this egg's food friends have googly eyes, so how come it even has googly eyes, in the first place?


Of course, definitions of good and evil are up for interpretation.

Stitch Yourself exhibit.

The London Science Museum's Who Am I exhibit opened on June 30th, 2010. Two hundred and fifty nine little stitched selves crowded into the entrance way display case. I can't display the pictures here, but here are links to the overall exhibit and the Science Museum Logo in the foreground of the exhibit.

There are several close-ups of the exhibit, but I haven't been able to spot my little doll. Stitch London says that they catalogued each entry and will be featuring all of the dolls in blog posts over the next few months. I'll keep an eye out for mine. Hopefully she made it to the UK and isn't lost at sea.

Little mini me (a self-portrait in wool and the science of who we are).

Awhile ago I came across a collaborative knitting project organized by Stitch London and the London Science Museum in London, United Kingdom. The project is part of a re-opening of the Museum's permanent gallery entitled Who Am I? The gallery encourages visitors to investigate what it means to be an individual by exploring various art installations and interactive displays. The organizers of this project requested hand-made stitched selves from people around the world. They asked that the little look-alikes be 15 cm tall and be made from crochet, knitting, or sewing techniques.

I made my little me over a period of two days. When I first heard about the project, the deadline was already approaching, so I had to have her put-together and shipped off to England quite quickly.

I crocheted the body and then made knit each of the little accessories from left-over bits of wool from projects I had completed over the past year.


Her main garment is my Town Sweater, made from special Manitoulin Island wool that Nat and I found at a farm during one of our roadtrips north. Her socks are made from Dyeabolical wool that was sent to me in Yukon in an Alice in Wonderland themed package! Her mis-matched left legwarmer is made from Wellington Fibres wool and angora blend (one of my favourite wools in the entire world...a staple wool while I was in school at the University of Guelph). On her right leg is a striped warmer made from handspun wool all the way from Nelson, New Zealand. Her mittens are bubblegum pink alpaca merino blend, also from Fibre Spectrum in Nelson, NZ. The feather and fan neckwarmer is made from a luxury alpaca wool from Romni Wools in Toronto (one of the most impressive wools stores I have ever been to in the entire world). She also carries a little mitred square bag in SWS (soy wool stripes) which contains a tiny blue silk-blend Calorimetry, a replica of my favourite brown beret, and a teensy tiny WAANAA fan toque that I made Matt for his birthday.


The toque she is wearing is one my favourite knit items, made from Manos Del Uruguay silk blend in a slip-stitch pattern I made up on the fly.

Here are a couple of the life-size items, for you to compare:




Once I had her finished, I was actually impressed by the resemblance. I've worn this outfit on more than one occasion.

Mom took her to the post office with mailing instructions. When she came back, she told me that she had a hard time sending her away and thought about keeping her. I'm glad she managed to put her in the mail (even though I thought about keeping her for a little bit too).

The people at Stitch London are going to be writing about the project and posting pictures of all of the littles on their blog. I will keep an eye on it and post here when I find my little one.

Also, I am working on my own new project. I mentioned this awhile back, but things have been moving slowly here on the blog front. I have decided to take on the 101 Things in 1001 Days Challenge. The challenge is fairly simple. An individual writes down 101 things they would like to do and completes the things over a 1001 day time-frame. The things must be clearly defined. I actually created a list on a bus ride between Hokitika and Fox, NZ. The landscape was inspiring and I had thought about taking on the challenge for awhile. I officially started my challenge on Monday, April 26, 2010. My 1001th day will be my 30th birthday. The 101th thing is to throw a big party. Two birds, one stone.

Of course, when I started this project I was in the Yukon with little to no internet access. I was maintaining a paper journal instead. I have to backtrack and add the things I was working on earlier, but I thought I might as well start with this (I haven't been feeling over motivated to work on projects these days, but that's why I want to do this challenge and I have always decided it's better to keep this place running than to worry about the order of my posts). I'll be documenting my progress here and labeling each of the relevant posts with a 101/1001 tag. I'm also going to post the official list in a new page of my blog so that I can keep track of my overall progress.

That's all for now. I am officially declaring this Thing 1. Knit a self-portrait. And now I'm heading to bed.

Knit outside.

I'm going to this event in a couple hours. I love knitting outside. It'll be great to see the local knitting group again. I haven't been out since before the Yukon. Unfortunately, my needles are in the shop (long story) and I might only have a crochet hook and some cotton at the party tonight.

They sell Tim Tams in Haines Junction and they cost $4.89.

What a rush! Our town days are so busy, I barely have time to squeeze these blog posts in. I also don't have any time to prepare them ahead of time because work is so busy. We have so many squirrels to trap, tag, stretch, monitor, it never ends. Not to mention, all the things we have to do to keep camp running smoothly.

My camp day was last Sunday so I made everyone a huge Easter Dinner Feast. This included creamy, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted acorn squash and beets, steamed greens, bread stuffing, and hardboiled eggs. I decorated the eggs with wax drips and elastic bands and dyed them in beet juice and boiled onion peels. The elastics made stripes and the wax made spots. They turned out quite well and everyone was very pleased with dinner. I also hid the 61 chocolate Easter eggs that Mom and Dad sent (thanks again!) and Frances' parents sent. It was so funny to watch everyone search for their surprise eggs. They didn't notice any of the hidden eggs before dinner and it was a lot of fun.

I'm off to dinner at the Alcan tonight. I have to put up some pictures of places around town one of these days! Here are some from the past week.

Self-portrait in mid morning sunshine on Chitty. My hair is growing so quickly.


Little Y!/Y!. I made a movie of him for the blog! Unfortunately, it will take 2 hours to upload all 30 seconds of it here. I also have an hilarious one of little Purple/Blue digging out a cone and squeaking at me from her midden. One day this will be a videoblog.


Sprout update! Look at our little guys! We're so proud. This is the kale. That's why it's so pink and pretty. Will make a tasty half sandwich, or so.


Dylan and his current project. He's staying here for the entire 6 months and he monitors Agnes grid. It's huge and is a food add grid, so the squirrel population density is high. He's also got a whole lot of pregnant mothers and babies to look after. This is a map he made to keep track of everything and aid in navigation. I hope it helps him stay on time. We carpool together and he is frequently late which means I have to wait patiently because we don't like to rush each other when handling the squirrels.


A shot of the map. Someday it will be a rainbow of colours and symbols, we hope.


And by waiting patiently, I mean, knit in the truck at the pullout off the side of the Alaska Highway. To be honest, this is not a bad part of my day. Here, I'm working on my bright blue sock. I purchased the wool in Ottawa and it's almost finished. The goal is to finish it by the end of the week and cast on it's mate. I designed the whole thing with a cool chevron pattern. Close-ups to come.


And I almost forgot!! I've been finding buried traps in the snow on Chitty this week. All along, I've said I didn't really relate to the namer of the traps on Chitty. I don't really get his references and why he'd name the traps the things he did. This week I found Pancakes, though. I promptly took out my Sharpie and corrected that mistake. It's now called Pamcakes, after one of the most special kittens I know. Next though, and this freaked me out a bit, I dug out Agamemnon. That's the dude from the old times who the prophetess Cassandra was murdered with. Good thing I'm not that superstitious. I am a little though, and I haven't actually set the trap yet. Ha. I might trade Dylan for a different trap this week. Just to be on the safe side.

Don't be scared! Got to run! Miss ya lots! Cass

Dawson Creek, BC.

Today we drove 591 km from the University of Alberta to the Super 8 at Mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway in Dawson Creek. It's 10:00 pm here, but it feels like midnight to all of us and we're really tired.

This morning Dylan, Lindsey, and I had to take hour long driving tests. We all passed. In between the tests we loaded up the truck with a huge couch and all of our gear. We left town around 1:00 pm. Also traveling with us are the spring crew leader, Devan, and another field tech, Kristen. We stopped in Valleyview, Alberta for gas, Grande Prairie, Alberta for dinner at a grocery store, and then decided to call it a day here in Dawson Creek.

Tomorrow we will be back on the road at 8:00 am after a complimentary continental breakfast and reloading all of our gear into the truck.

Today I also received a note from the Urban Cozy Project at Winterlude. They have loaded all of the pictures up. You can see pictures of both mine and Bronwen's contributed tree cozies along with a lot of other interesting pieces on Flickr.

I have a bunch of other neat photos from my week in Ottawa, including pictures I took when Mom, Dad, and I visited my cozy at Jacques-Cartier Park. Hopefully I'll have a chance to post them in the next little while. When we went to find my cozy we went inside an historical building at the park and found the Spins and Needles crew. That was cool. They all liked my cozy a lot :).

That's all I've got for now. Goodnight.

Walter Weldon on knitting.

"It does not distract the attention or check the powers of the imagination. It forms a ready resource when a vacuity occurs in conversation; it impairs neither body nor mind, and requires no straining of the eyesight. It may be interrupted without loss, and again resumed without trouble. The whole apparatus is so cheap, needs little room, and is so light that it can be kept and gracefully carried about in a basket, the beauty of which displays the expertness and taste of the fair worker."

Weldon was a chemist, journalist, and fashion publisher working in London, England during the mid to late 1800s. He produced hundreds of leaflets outlining Victorian knitting patterns and needlework techniques. They were bound together into several volumes under the title Weldon's Practical Knitter and sold for six pence a piece. Recently, one of the largest publishers of knitting patterns in America has turned these leaflets into a series of four ebooks. Interesting. Maybe even a little ironic. You can purchase them through Interweave for $8.99 USD each.

The publishing house has been sending e-mails with little bits of patterns from the ebooks and I have to admit that I am intrigued. I'll certainly be keeping my eye out for these the next time I decide to wander through an antique shop.

West coast sweater love.

Is there anything better than modern Cowichan sweater styling?


I came across this little knitwear company from British Columbia, called Granted. Their products are inspired by the adopted European intarsia patterns of the Cowichan people of Vancouver Island. Really, about as Canadian as one could be.

They make me even more excited to be heading west for work. Next Sunday I fly to Edmonton to begin the two day long trek to Kluane National Park and Reserve, home of the Kluane Red Squirrel Project. I hear the Yukon is lovely this time of year and I will be taking it all in for the next three months. I'll be working as a field technician on the spring crew. And of course, I'll be taking my knitting because warm layers will be required.

I've got so much to do this week. I've decided what I want to take, but now I have to dig it all out of storage. I've spent the day organizing though, so I'll have everything done in time. At the top of the list is updating this space because once again I'm going to have a travel blog! I have been getting a little behind on things, but I've been keeping a list of posts I want to make. Of course, the more I let things stack up, the less likely I am to write anything at all. That's for tomorrow though, because the Olympic Ice Dancing is on and it would be nice to see the home team take control of the rink.

Spins & Needles Winterlude 2010 press release.

Cool, eh? I saw some pictures of the contributed cozies on their blog, but I couldn't see mine. Hopefully it made its way to Ottawa safetly and is keeping a tree warm. I'll try to find it when I visit next week.

Happy Australia Day!

Today I mailed my contribution to Spins & Needles Urban Cozy Project at Winterlude 2010.

Spins and Needles is a knitting group in Ottawa. This year they have designed a large-scale outdoor art installation made up of knit pieces from all across Canada. They have invited many organizations to participate. Bronwen sent me the call for submissions the other day and I decided I'd send something in.

My something is a large garter stitch patch made of three smaller garter stitch patches. I used a lot of balls of wool that I will never use for anything else. Mainly what I could dig out of my packed-away wool collection.

This is it. It will look better when it is cozy-ing a tree in Confederation Park or Majors Hill Park or Parc Jacques-Cartier.





This is an in-progress picture of CP carrying out the kneading stage. This is a very important part of the knitting process ensuring a properly risen final product with a nice even crumb.

Some cool tutorials I've found over the past year or so.

First off, a giant list of the best tutorials of the year from The Long Thread.

Secondly, little mini tool boxes from Altoid tins!




Giant blob knit footstool from Pickles. I love these things and have probably posted about them before. Soon I will actually make one. Soon.



A couple men's shirts to other things. Someday I will have a sewing table again and I will sew some of these things. Maybe.

Shirt to skirt from label-free.



Shirtdress from clevergirl.org




Fabric envolopes. Be the sender of the classiest mail in the west. And some mini mail while you're at it.



Always have a toothpick handy. Toothpick pocket how-tos. I really like the one that includes a tiny mini toothpick protective cap.

Lemon & Paeroa.

The thing about New Zealand is you can be just about anywhere doing just about anything, driving, hiking, strolling along, and you end up looking down into these valleys of rolling green hills. The fields are generally designed by sheep, so they aren't really square patchwork pieces on the landscape, they are tiers of ancient footpaths carefully balanced along ridges between dark green forests and golden yellow broome and gore (it's called something like that, at least). The clouds are bright white and thick and they sit at the tops of the hills. The sheep are absolutely everywhere like little cotton fluffs. You can see so far away that the sheep are very very small sometimes. The rivers are either so clear you can barely tell they're there, or opaque and turquoise, you'd never find the bottom. The family here laughed when one of the other girls asked why the water was so blue. But, I knew exactly what she meant. I've never seen anything like it either. And, if you're luckly, wheverer you are you'll be able to see the top of Mt. Cook, always with snow, or the ocean in the distance, grey, blue, doesn't matter, still so beautiful. It can be a perfect spring day, a rainy, foggy morning, or the water can be coming down in buckets, it doesn't even matter.

O, and I know I mentioned that I purchased three hanks of wool from the lovely farm I've been staying at. We all know I sort of don't tell the entire story, sometimes, maybe, when it comes to wool shopping. And at that time I had already planned on buying 2 more hanks, so really I had 5 from this place. And then I bought 5 more (I couldn't have done it without your encouragement, Chris....just kidding, nothing really has an effect on my consistent, constant, yarn-buying habits).

Tomorrow I fly back to windy Wellington and the North Island for a bit.

See you soon! Cass

p.s. L&P is my favourite Kiwi pop. It's delicious and Kiwi As. And "world famous in New Zealand since ages ago!"

Fox Glacier.

So, as you all know, I went hiking on Fox Glacier yesterday. The whole experience was incredible. Another one on the ever-growing list of coolest things I've ever done. I took enough physical geography courses at school and had a basic idea of how glacial processes work, but I realized yesterday that I didn't really understand at all. First off, the main part of Fox Glacier is the size of Christchurch City. I couldn't see it, but you can take a helicopter ride up there and see it then hike on the top. I will have to come back some day and do that when I'm very rich. The part we hiked on was basically a little drip of ice that comes down out of the mountains where the melting occurs. Also, the glacier is not smooth at all (I thought it would be...). It's all giant chopped up pieces. The surface of these huge chunks of ice melts in a speckled pattern, like a giant golfball. It's really quite difficult to walk around on. We had to wear crampons and the guide was constantly chopping steps into the ice for us.

We all met at the guiding building at 9:00 am. There are only about 4 places to stay in town so several of the people were at the same hostel as I was. Everyone in the group was really nice. We all had to listen to the introduction and put boots and gear on. The company supplied wool socks and mitts and rain gear, if you needed it. The bus left Fox at 9:30 am. It was only about a 10 minute drive to the base of the glacier where the river came out. We then had to hike into the glacier through the spillway, up 800 (ugh) steps and over a narrow trail along the bluff wall beside the glacier. This area is a rainforest and it was SO hot and humid in there (and we were all dressed quite warmly). I found a lot of cool orchids, but wasn't allowed to take pictures because your hands had to be empty to hold onto the chain so you wouldn't fall off the cliff. You can't go near the face of the glacier because ice is constantly melting off and it's very dangerous. That is why we had to climb up and around and onto the ice. At the edge of the ice the guide gave us all alpinestocks (walking sticks with points on the end to dig into the ice) and crampons for our boots. There were 11 people in my group including 4 other Canadians and one that had graduated from Guelph the year after me. They were all really cool. Also, one of them was celebrating her 25th birthday, so that was fun too.

The rainforest we walked through. This area gets 10 m of rain a year. That's 3 more metres
than the Daintree Rainforest gets! It rains 200 days out of the year. It sprinkled on us, but just a little. There was a strange warm breeze coming off the glacier and the guide said it was probably an indication of a strange weather event about to occur. Then, all of a sudden, the clouds were so thick. We heard the the heli-hike people might be stuck at the top of the glacier because the helicopters couldn't get in to pick them up. They were rescued though when the sun broke through for a few minutes.

On ice. A fitting way to spend December 1.

Our group walking up the glacier. Sort of like Gordon Street in February.

While we were up there, Malisa told us that we had actually crossed over a major fault line where two tectonic plates meet. There is generally a huge earthquake there every 200 years. Right now they are 260 years overdue for a 'big one'. When it happens, the westcoast will most likely be seperated from the rest of NZ for 7 months. No one will be able to get through on land. They have had a lot of meetings regarding this and there are some big hospital ships that will come from Australia to rescue the survivors. I'm sort of glad I'm not over there anymore. Though if the big one happened, all of NZ would shake.

Grade A glacial mud. They collect this for expensive spas. It is very smooth, but I don't really see the appeal.

Climbing up out of the moulon we took turns exploring.

Trying out the ice axe. I don't know how the girls do this all day long.

The ice looks very blue because over time the oxygen moves to the top layer and goes into the atmostphere. The dense ice reflects the blue light and that's what we see.

The rock fall at the side of the glacier. The ice is carving away the mountains and whenever it rains a lot the mud holding the rocks in will let go and the rocks will slide down the side.

The ice features are constantly changing as the glacier flows. The rocks that get mixed into the ice cause all sorts of crevasses and moulans (holes) to form.

Our guide, Malisa, a local girl who grew up on a farm in Fox, and the view out over the front of the glacier down the valley.

We returned to town at 6:00 pm and we were all so exhausted. I went out for dinner with the Canadians and had green mussels and chips and Monteith's Apply Cider. yum. We then went over to the cornerstore and picked up a case of beer and ice cream cake then went back to the hostel to hang out in the room and fall asleep talking about how cool Canada is and how many weird things the Aussies and Kiwis do. I think I convinced them all to come down to Guelph for Hillside Inside and I'll definitely be attending a Toronto Football Club game next summer.

o

Grey Hoki.

I stopped in a little seaside town on the west coast for one night just to break up the 10 hour busride from Nelson to the glaciers. It was called Hokitika and it was grey. I actually really liked the beach and I had it mostly to myself. Around 6:00 pm the sun was out so I ate dinner down there and just sat and knit and listened to my ipod until I was too cold. Then I went back to my hostel, which was practically empty and more like a hotel. I had my own room with sink and huge window and everything.

Empty beach. Grey. Sand, not stone, nice change from the east. Much easier to walk on.

Me on the empty beach. A little more sun. Pretty blue skies.

Once back at the hostel, I sat in the lounge and watched TV for a bit. Meet the Robinsons was on, a computer animated film about an inventor kid. Cute, but nowhere near as good as Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Mara and Chris and I had went to see that on Friday night and I Really Loved It. I laughed throughout the entire thing. So good. Go see it. You'll love it too (probably).

And, while I was there I remembered to take a few pictures of my new wool purchases for you. This is a bubblegum pink merino with which I will be making myself mittens. Bright pink mittens to go with my dark blue winter jacket.

This is a bright blue merino with pink and peach silk slubs. Will be a headband (Calorimetry, for those in the know). I'm into the bright colours right now.

That being said, I also picked up awhole bunch of little naturals in all sorts of different shades and sheep species to make myself yet another pair of mittens and a stripey scarf. Should be cool. And mindless. I'll have it done in the next few weeks, I think.

I know, I know, this is a lot. AND there's even more, but it's all surprises so you can't see it yet ;)

Lady O'felia Smudge.

I had to upload a couple pictures of Mara's cat. I was incredibly allergic to her (the cat, not Mara), but she was a sweet little thing and she really just loves people. The cat is deaf, so she has a funny little meow and, obviously, has no idea what's going on around her unless it's in front of her. One night she managed to open and climb in my window by herself. I wasn't letting her in my room (due to the allergies) and I guess she wanted to hang out.


She liked my knitting a lot and I really like the way our colours matched.