Lovechild

Back in the early days of Coronation Street, it would appear that based on his bio, Ken Barlow was a bit of a dog. It mentions flings with journalists and exotic dancers, but it appears to have forgotten some trans-Atlantic daliance because how else do we explain the fact that Ken Barlow is Mike Cutter's father?!
No? Not buying it? The reality, that Linus Roache (Mike) is the son of William Roache (Ken) isn't quite so juicy, but considering how much I love both Coronation Street and Law and Order, I do find it interesting.
As an aside, seeing Mr. Roache the younger, I now understand why Ken Barlow would have been considered "a catch". Quite dishy, isn't he?

Spring Fling Weekly Topic #3

No - you're not mistaken. That reads #3... I missed last week. Life, work and everything seemed to get in the way. So we'll just skate over week #2 and get on with week #3, okay?
And the topic is:
Tell us how you started drinking coffee. Were you in high school or college and making it through all nighters? Did you get it from a family member? What drives your love of the bean?
Truth be told, this is a very similar question to the one that was answered here, but let's see if I can add something to it...
In high school I drank plain old coffee. It was the days before flavoured fancy coffees. The same applied to my first year at university and my two years at community college. When I started working in downtown Toronto, I would always pick up a cup on my way through Union Station from the GO Train to the subway on my way to work.
Later, when I went back to university, my first stop on campus was usually the SUB to pick up a coffee on my way to class. At that point I tended to drink flavoured coffees. They were new. They were different. My favourites were Raspberry Chocolate and Orange Brandy. Both rated big YUMS! Sadly, neither seems to be available anymore.

Look What I Won!

Way back in December, when she was still Cynical Knitting Gal, (Not-so) Cynical Knitting Gal held a contest - and I won! I've had my prize for a while, and Not-so CKG knows that I received it, but I thought that I should share some photos. Look what I won: A skein of Trekking XXL sock yarn in very yummy browns that make me think of chocolate and coffee and some adorable Mary Engelbreit sticky notes.

I thought that the yarn deserved a close up to show off those colours. But here's a question: have I mentioned how much I like Mary Engelbreit before? Or was the inclusion of those sweet sticky notes just one of those things... Thanks (Not-so) CKG for a fun contest and a great prize!

Event One Finished

Thanks to The Knitting Wildflower, I became aware of and joined the Sock Knitters Pentathalon. Don't you just love it when friends enable? (It makes me happy!) The first socks are the Jacobean Socks.Looking at these photos, it makes me remember how hard it is to take pictures of one's own feet! I don't think that my feet are as lopsided as the first picture makes them look, but maybe I'm wrong...? I knit them out of the silly Sisu pictured here.
Things I learned while making these socks:
1. I can't do the Magic Cast-on to save my life! However, by going down a couple of needle sizes and paying close attention to the direction of my loops, my cast-on is invisible.
2. I learned how to do a sewn cast-off! Very exciting, I must say. I was having trouble with it until I came across some instructions that suggested splitting up the stitches and "grafting" the cast-off edge. Very clever...
(Just as an aside, when I was adding in the link for the Sock Knitters Pentathalon there was a warning about how the group was in an age restricted area of Yahoo Groups. I knew that socks were fun, but I'm not having that much fun - am I??? Maybe I need to get out more?)

Scavenger Hunt: The Photos

If you go here, you can read all of the descriptions for the wonderful things that Penny included in my Scavenger Hunt Swap package. Since the camera had gone travelling at the time, the photos had to wait, so without further delay, here you go! I've put everything in the same order as the original post so I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Thanks again to Penny for a great package!

Sucked Into the Vortex

My LYS now has a blog! How cool is that? Definitely worth a visit if you're in the Fredericton area.

Spring Fling Topic #1

Browse around some of the other blogs of participants, and find one person who enjoys a similar roast coffee to you - share something interesting about them that you find on THEIR blog, and tell us what you've been working on knitting or crochet-wise this week!

Okay - I can handle this. Let's head over to the Spring Fling Coffee Swap blog and have a look at the participants list. C'mon....

Since there's usually a message to my madness, I often start with the people with similar names. Unfortunately the link to Katie L.'s blog isn't working! So let's head over to Kate E.'s blog. Much like me, Kate enjoys a dark rich blend, but unlike me, she is prepared to drink the unleaded stuff. Kate is a fellow Canadian, although she's on the left coast of the country, and owns an unruly cat... Hey Kate - I'll trade you if he purrs! (Tiger only purrs when he is asserting his dominance over the stuffed animals. Yes - EEEEWWW!)

As that was almost too easy, I went with my next logical step which is alphabetical order. In the A's I found Angie H. Now I'll admit that I've read Angie sort of off and on over the last little while since we've been in a couple of swaps together. Like myself, Angie is in the "bold leaded coffee, please" group. Other things that Angie and I have in common include: we're both Mom (or Mum since she's English) to two boys (check out their New Year's visit to Cornwall - made me envious), we've both had Scappyhappy as a downstream pal ("Hi, Iva!") and we both have projects named Aquila in our "to knit" lists (although it's not the same project - her's is a sweater dress and mine is a shawl which will require I learn rudimentary Finnish).

What's on the needles? Well, I've dug Alice out from the bottom of the basket and have been working away on the second half of the front. That will only leave the sleeves... And I've started, frogged and restarted the Mystic Light Shawl. I've only knit about 20 rows, so I'm not even close to finishing clue 1, never mind starting clue 2! And then there is the rest of the "stuff" in various bags that I can't think of right now...

(On a completely separate note, I have taken but not uploaded photos of my Scavenger Hunt Package and my prize from (Not So) Cynical Knitting Gal. Soon hopefully - Younger Son has become obsessed with ensuring that he gets his fair share of computer time, which means that Mom usually gets told she's been on it long enough. I can't wait for true Spring!)