I'm near the finish line (for my "Sonnet" sweater)......get to within 2" of the end and I notice "hmmm something is not quite right". Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak I forgot to do the 12 st. centre pattern panel! F**k.....I ripped it out last night and have started once again.

My Treat of the Week....for last week - the knitting bag. Mine is black. And for this week, well I bought myself a Superhero necklace. I have always wanted one and could never decide on the colour and voila "Mother's Day 2006". Love it.

I have been watching the Eagles. So amazing. What a thrill to be able to observe them this close. The chicks should hatch soon.

Spring bulbs have popped up everywhere. Forsythias are in bloom. The grasses are emerald green. Outside improvement work this weekend. Bryan is working Saturday. Adam will relay the front flagstones for me. I would prefer a day in the city but????

I am close to finishing the sweater. I have a self-imposed deadline of April 30th. Anxious to start the new project and finish some socks.

Feeling creatively deficit right now.....creative deficit syndrome.....CDS.

Saw "Friends With Money" .... I think I really liked it. Very raw. Real. I saw us in that film. Scary. Fabulous cast of women.

This will be my next knitting project. I think I have ordered the same colour yarn as well. Knitting has turned into such an expensive endeavour, especially since I like to use natural fibres. But, I found this yarn on Ram Wools site (Canadian), the colour is on sale $2.50 off per skein (I need 10 skeins which gives me an extra 10% off) and that sale price is $4.05 cheaper than the local yarn shop! Yahoooo I say. I had to search around eBay to find what this "discontinued" colour, called "Aqua" looked like...didn't want some bright colour; the sweater style needs a soft colour. The yarn is 80% cotton and 20% angora so it will be as soft as soft can be. I might make the sleeves wrist length if I have enough yarn. The woman pictured is the designer. Imagine, designing your own knitting patterns, but then she is a fashion design student. You can visit her blog at www.autoscopia.com/amelia.

This weekend I watched 2 films and finished a sleeve to the pink sweater, Sonnet, I'm still working on. I have a self-imposed deadline of April 30th to finish this sweater....pictures to come. Then I have a sock to complete and I can start on this project. I am trying to self-descipline the projects - 1 (or 2) small projects such as socks or a scarf or a hat (my boys want hats for summer & winter) and 1 only large project, such as a sweater. There are so many beautiful yarns out there and they are very expensive. However, if I check the 3 local yarn stores to actually see and touch the yarns, then head to eBay, I am sure I will have luck finding bargains.

It is spring today. It is dark, grey, damp and the weather pefectly matches my mood. But, if I look across the street I am beautifully assulted with yellow ---- my neighbour's forsythia bush is in full bloom as well as a long border of bright daffodils. Perhaps spring flowers are so garrishly bright because the weather in April is usually so dull and grey and damp. 

BLOGS I like to check frequently, to get a different view of this great world.

http://afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com/
http://www.riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.rosie.com/
http://www.sabrinawardharrison.com/
http://rickmercer.blogspot.com/

Obelisk....I got an obelisk for my birthday. Yesterday I spent an hour....that is the maximum I can garden at any one stretch and still be able to painfully bend my knees afterwards.....in the garden. I did a square patch - clawed the soil, pulled some weeds, carefully checked all the new growth coming up, cut back the dead seed pods now the birds are finished with them, and I then placed the obelisk over a very mature clematis. Lovely.

I'm off anti-inflammatories for a few days (or however long I can take it...the longer the better) to see if my stomach will de-acid itself. Without the pills I can't hardly move...with them, and I've been on them 3 years now, I fear I am burning a big ol' hole somewhere inside.

I feel a desire to write but I would like to write like George Elliot or Jane Austen. They used words like a painter uses a brush and paint. We have lost the art of using words. Too many "words" like yup, ya, wuzup, dunno, have crept into our language.

"Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years as a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common." (from Middlemarch, 1871-72)

Oh Oh I know............I got the DVD version of the new "Pride & Prejudice" for my birthday. Perhaps I will study the language and try to write like Jane...by taking one ordinary passage that I will re-write and using my trusty Thesaurus, I turn it around.

I'm going nowhere with this blog today. I better get off and get some work done.

I don't even know how to finish that last post... perhaps.....with a "?"......or a "!"....or just ".".....or "it is so".
So I thought I would post these pictures "just because"

just because.................

In a few more hours I will be 55

Spring. Good Weekend coming up. Long weekend. Friday is a holiday. Sunday is my birthday and we'll go to my parent's for dinner. Today it is mild a bit cloudy and a good day to dig in the front garden. I have to fix up the mess left bythe driveway builders! I used to prepare for a day of gardening by doing a few stretches. Now I have to protect my knees with my magnet braces, take an anti-inflammatory and a heavy-duty pain medication and then I can dig it.

My "boss" just called...man live that guy can bring me down so fast. Bitch bitch bitch, telling me over and over again what he's going to tell his worker....but he never does really...he tells me and then gives his worker an "idea" of what he's trying to get at. Never direct. It drives me NUTS.

OM

Om Mani Padme Hum

A truly spring day outside....the sun is shining, the sky is blue and the temperatures are mild, probably about 15C.

This morning was nasty at work. Today is the bid deadline for the school boards. Man alive what a lot of information they want. They want to be spoon-fed everything and want it for nothing. But it is done now. The bids are ready to be sealed in their proper envelopes with the proper label, and all the proper information and explanations inside.

I wonder how many trees a typical school board would kill in a day? A lot I bet. They love paper work but you can't confuse them either...too much information and they are lost.

Anyway...this was a lot of work, form-filling, and extra information gathering and presenting it just so but it is done. Our hunch on who gets the job? Probably not us. I'm going for lunch now and taking the rest of the afternoon off ............I hope...............unless 'my boss' decides we should just move on to income tax papers now.

In true form we will be running into the accountant at the last minute. It shouldn't matter, our books are in fine shape.

From last weekend - my parent's 60th Anniversary celebration (and 80th birthday celebration). Imagine 60 years together? I can't! My parents were great parents...and they are wonderful people so perfectly matched.

Some pictures - Leslie & Leslie....my best budd since we were 10 and that was a long time ago.

My Family

My "3" kids with Peter, my oldest brother in the background with his fiance Anne-Marie. Peter is 57, Anne-Marie a bit younger. Neither have been married before nor lived in a committed relationship - Wedding is June 10th. Cheers to them.

My family extended.