Iceland (photos)

Warning: photo heavy.

I think it's a Glaucus Gull? They're beautiful! And they also seemed a bit larger than the seagulls hereabouts.

We just got back not long ago from Reykjavik, and I'm already missing (strangely enough, of all things) the sulphurous smell that accompanies the hot water. I was a bit skeptical at first when my coworker was telling me that one of the things she remembers most about Iceland was that the hot water smelled of sulphur ("... you mean like rotten eggs?" "Yeah, exactly that."), but I actually found there was something soothing about it once I experienced it myself. And I was also surprisingly fond of all the licorice flavoured stuff they have there - this coming from someone who used to absolutely shiver with disgust whenever she so much as heard the word licorice crawl out of someone's mouth! (The hotdogs were also amazing.)

Can't help but think buttcrack when I look at the photo, to be honest.

We were very lucky in terms of weather; every day trip we took (one to the South and another to Snæfellsnes) was more or less sunny, with a bit of cloud and rain for Snæfellsnes, which made for a couple of rainbows - a couple of double rainbows, actually! - at the waterfalls in the South and a fun time all around. Our guide for the Southern tour told us that this was the first time in about a month that he was able to actually talk about the volcanoes we were passing, because they had been hidden from sight all the other times he had led the trip by fog or cloud! My film never caught after I reloaded it during the South tour, and that was for the camera I was using the most that day, unfortunately, so there isn't too much to show for it (including double rainbows at both waterfalls), but apart from that tidbit, everything went pretty smoothly and we even got to go into a cave!

We went with Gateway to Iceland for both trips - they keep the tour sizes small, and the tour guides were knowledgeable and obviously passionate about their work, which is always great to see!

Double rainbow...! Jokes! Film didn't catch till I gave up on trying to capture that. Photos or it didn't happen though?

It was actually even more of a saturated blue than this.

Directly across from where we were living.

Elliðaàrdalur

The rest of the time we stayed in and around downtown Reykjavik, though we did go visit the trail in the Elliðaàrdalur valley (I still can't pronounce it) after visiting Àrbærjarsafn (Àrbær Open Air Museum), where I finally got to see some sheep up close! We got a bit confused along the way to Elliðaàrdalur, trying to match up a map with reality and not realizing that we were looking at the wrong bit of map (the road we were looking at continued with the same name even though it looked as though it was just an intersection), and ended up having to ask for directions. Once we reached the river, my brother and I both saw - but failed to capture! - a fish jumping right up the small waterfall (if you could call it that). Not sure what fish it was, but it had great timing! Although there isn't too much in terms of wildlife that I saw, the bird population we encountered was huge. Birds everywhere, from gulls and Arctic terns (I will never forget the sound of their warning calls or the feeling of the love tap they gave me on the back of my head - beautiful birds otherwise) to ducks and geese to your regular pigeon. We had just gone during nesting season, too, so after that tern attack, I couldn't really fully enjoy Viðey island the same way as maybe I would've been able to before that encounter, especially not after seeing a "protected nesting grounds" labeled on the map. The island was... I don't want to say it's boring, but there wasn't too much to see. It's great for a leisurely hike, and I'm sure we missed out on a lot of the more scenic routes because we tried to avoid getting attacked by birds and stuck to the main road, but I kind of expected more colour all around.

Did I mention the lichen and the moss?

I have no idea what's going on there, but this was in between houses.

The colours that you can find sort of just everywhere in Reykjavik are so incredibly vivid and varied that I was tempted to take photos of basically everything I came across at times - imagine a Hockney-esque panorama of some view or other, even within the city with all the buildings. The roofs of the buildings offer pops of colour left and right, and even the building walls themselves are coloured! I'm not sure why exactly, and from the photos my brother took last time he went (a couple years ago, I think?) from up in the church, it does seem to have dulled a bit in comparison, but it's still very cheerful at ground level to see the variety of colour. Something else that was everywhere: wall paintings and graffiti.

Graffiti

The entire construction wall was graffitied through, ranging in style.

See below.

I thought I saw you somewhere before! (There's also a restaurant called Ugly, though not sure if associated?)

I know we have moss & lichen here too, but there's something about it!

There's also a profuse amount of moss and lichen, the likes of which I want to say I've never seen before, but I'm sure I have and it simply didn't make as great an impression on me. What really got me, though, was the moss. And not even the incredibly bright green moss that carpeted the entire ground on either side as we were driving along the road for the South tour (because it had just rained the day before). It's the thick, light green-grey stuff that's probably inches thick growing on the lava fields. Those are absolutely mind-boggling! How thick and lush they are; how plush! Just imagine lying down on that! (Though you'd get a pretty hefty fine from what I understand if a ranger found you on top of the moss.)

This. Is. The. Dream.

See that streamlined shape in the foreground, that the guy at the side is keeping an eye on? That's an arctic tern (see below).

Aggressive when nesting.

We didn't explore too much around the city itself, going to the same broad areas throughout the week:

• Along the harbour. We ate ice cream at Valdís a couple of times, where I tried a salted licorice ice cream despite my initial misgivings (I mean, it is licorice after all, and you know those boxes of black and brightly coloured licorice candies? That was my first experience of the stuff, so I think it's an understandable reaction). We also went to the omnom factory, where we got most of the chocolate souvenirs.

Along the way to Whales of Iceland

The car roof looks like water!

• The Whales of Iceland exhibit. I think they set this up quite well: the audio guides were small and unobtrusive, the size of an iPod mini, I think, and they provide you the headphones as well. I usually never listen to audio guides, so the fact that I did is a good sign. There were also tablets set up beside each dolphin or whale so you could read a little blurb about it if you chose not to listen to the guide or if you wanted a reminder which is which (with language options between English, Icelandic, and German). There were also interactive displays that gave a bit more information about specific things, such as killer whales, the evolutionary backdrop to whales (and how hippopotamuses are their closest living relative), and another one on mink whales. Then there are the models and the way they were displayed, such that you literally walked among the whales! Pretty cool.
• The only concern I had after watching the documentary they were showing was that the documentary, which talks about Keiko the killer whale, who was set free after a campaign following the Free Willy movie. The documentary shown (that I saw - perhaps there is more than one being shown?) only goes up until the part where Keiko is still in the pen in the ocean, being slowly trained to eat fish in the water instead of having fish being thrown into his mouth. It doesn't tell you that Keiko never integrated into the pod that was closeby, or that Keiko died alone off the Norwegian shore, completely dependent on humans for subsistence for the rest of his "free" life. I spoke to one of the workers there and he told me that they had only just started showing the documentary, so perhaps they will be adding the other one, which follows Keiko till the end of his life - they actually have this documentary in the store, so I really hope they do! - depending on how things go, later on. It would definitely change the views of the visitors who come into the exhibit, I think, and be a bit more thought-provoking, though I suppose that isn't really the point of this particular exhibit.

Outside the bedroom window

Nifty back corridor we took to get to the harbour & thereabouts.

• We walked along Laugavegur a couple times also, taking the bus to Hlemmur and walking back to Ranargata, where we lived.
• City Hall area, which was actually very close to where we were staying, so I'm somewhat surprised we didn't go more often considering how beautiful it is there. That being said, if we had made regular strolls around the city in addition to all the touring we did, I'd probably not have made it back in one piece, so I'm glad we decided that sleep is important and we should probably indulge in that.
• Surprisingly, the 24-hr daylight didn't bother my sleep schedule one bit. I probably slept better there than I have continuously in a while. It might have something to do with how much walking we were doing every day and how many activities we would fit into each and every day, such that I'd be exhausted by the end of it all, but all the same. I loved the constant sunlight.
• Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur. They are the best. I'm not even a hot dog person. I stay away from street meat when in Toronto to the point where I can't even remember the last time I ate one. But these I'm pretty sure I can eat every day. No joke.
• We did get to go visit one of the swimming pools, which was beyond amazing! We went to Laugardalslaug and stuck to the outdoor pool and the hot tubs - I didn't even realize the beach volleyball was accessible from the floor of the pool area - and the lack of chlorine was a nice change from the swimming pools here. There was also the fact that even though the lanes weren't strictly regimented into slow/medium/fast lanes and didn't tell you which direction you had to swim, everybody looked out where they were going and it self-regulated well. But that's not even the best part. The entire system is the best part.
• You get a little wristband after paying that allows you past the turnstile and opens/locks the lockers inside the changerooms. The pool provides towels if you didn't bring your own (already amazing) as well as soap (which pools provide here as well, but the soap was actually soap-like, not the poor excuse for soap they provide at public pools here). There's an open shoe rack outside the changerooms, and shoe lockers right beside those if you want to use them, so shoes are not allowed at all into the changerooms. The floor of the changeroom is also completely dry. Whoa. I'm always tiptoeing left and right around the disgusting muck that is the floor here! Someone monitors who goes into the pool and comes back in, as well as hands out the towels, so if they see you're heading into the pool dry, you'll get stopped and reminded to shower. The pool gets to stay cleaner and you don't step on all manner of dirt and hair on your way back into the changeroom - incredible. There was also a dryer so your swimsuit wouldn't drip all over the place afterwards, although I hear that's been implemented here also in some pools. On your way out, there's a bag for you to dump your towel and the turnstile lets you out only after you return your wristband. I have no words to describe how much I love this system. No words.

Cool.

I was never afraid I'd get lost to the point of no return, and navigating the streets came pretty naturally after the first day, which is weird. I can get lost in Toronto, and it's a pretty rigid grid system in Toronto. It might have something to do with how colourful everything is and how close to the ground everything is. I definitely want to go back - maybe in the winter next time?

Which We is the Destination?

I was reading this article on Public Libraries Online, The Destination is "We" (because I'm clearly not great at separating work from leisure, if you couldn't tell from my ever expanding list of monthly reads since I moved up into my not-quite-librarian post), when I was reminded of The Secret Life of Pronouns. More specifically, chapter 7, The Language of Status, Power, and Leadership, part of which discusses I-you-we word usage and what they signify. The PLO article related an incident where an attempt at leadership went horribly awry, and the article author's supervisor let him know where he had failed:

1. Room setup placed him at the leader spot, conveying a deafness to other ideas
2. Not letting other people speak, by spilling over with all the ideas before they could even think about solutions to existing issues
3. And then finally, "you probably used 'I' a dozen times. A good leader recognizes that the destination is 'we'"

#3 is where my interest piqued. Not because I disagreed with it, so much as I remembered that in The Secret Life of Pronouns, Pennebaker highlighted the different facets lying hidden in "we".

On the surface, we-words sound warm and fuzzy and should, in theory, be related to feelings of group solidarity. The problem is that, in conversations with others, the word we is really at least five different words (p.175)

Sneaky pronoun, that "we". The 5 faces of "we" as identified by Pennebaker are (and I'll paraphrase below):

1. The you-and-I we, where everyone is included in the group, which sounds pretty ideal, but can lead to issues when those involved don't identify each other (or themselves) as belonging to the group.
2. The my-friends-and-not-you we is pretty self-explanatory.
3. The we-as-you we: I say "we"; I mean "you"
4. The we-as-I we, aka the royal we, has the advantage of gathering support from people who may or may not exist, or fall back upon the untouchable institution, with this "we" umbrella.
5. The every-like-minded-person-on-earth we, which is (arguably) the worst - who is this "we", even? This also, like #4, has the sneaky advantage of gathering support from people, who less likely than not, might exist. (I say less likely only because it's a type of person that this draws support from, and it's less likely that there will be many of such prototypes that exist to agree with whoever's saying whatever they're saying.)

 Furthermore, "those higher in status use first-person plural pronouns (we, us our) at much higher rates than those lower in status" (p.174, emphasis in original), which makes sense even if you just think about those five "we"s listed above, but I wonder whether the listeners realize that speakers who use "we" more often are positing themselves as being higher in status than themselves? All this to say that I think some qualifying is in order here when the author says "the destination is "we"": which "we" are we talking about as the destination, and which "we" do we use to get there?*

*I should say that it's pretty obvious the destination is #1 we. It's just that #1 we doesn't necessarily have to be the vehicle that transports those involved to the destination.

2016 Roundup

The last book of 2016 (for real this time): Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum

• You know exactly where this is going, but you finish it regardless. Some of the back and forth between times, between the people Anna was with, seemed a bit forced, as though it was for the sake of keeping form, but the constant switching between parts of Anna's world, and her evident inability to change, worked together very well to illustrate her downward spiral. Although she finally does take action, throwing away any chance at contact with her world - instead of simply pushing them out of her life - there is still a passiveness inherent in her accepting the inevitable conclusion, as though it were foregone and she were powerless to fight it even as she finally came to terms with herself. Forced to come to the realization of what she had been doing to herself, to others (though she cares considerably less about others, reflecting on them only insofar as they affect her and what she has done to them, less for their own sake), she finally does what her psychoanalyst tells her to do: she actively takes a step forward and interacts fully with the world around her for the first time.

A quick roundup in numbers:

• 84 books (includes picture books)
• Some of these I look back and get the feeling it's been at least a year or two since I've read them, surely! which can't bode well: I must have forgotten so much of them already that I cannot think of them as having been read in 2016.
• Unfortunately, there are a plethora of books I have been bringing home with me and not cracking open at all, which will hopefully change next year. (I doubt it, but one can dream.)
• 12 projects finished (1 weaving)
• I knitted my very first hat and finally started & finished weaving the first scarf of my recipes weaving project, which has since come to a standstill.
• A bunch of stashbusting projects took place, which is always cause for celebration: my hot pink chevron bomber (still terrified it'll come off on my other clothing, so it's not being worn as much as I'd like...), Free Spirit shawl, Hitofude (love it! The yarn, the pattern, everything!), first stab at socks for myself in a while, underwear (top), more underwear (bottoms), mokoshi (I never thought I'd be one for a peplum, but it's flattering and I like it), Silvertweed test, and the aforementioned hat.
• Lots of projects I started & didn't finish:
• Scarlet Billows
• To be fair, I actually *knit, frogged* a number of times before doing a final ripping out and putting it away for now.
• Burgundy Cardigan
• Actually got past the armholes before frogging completely, and before getting to the body, I had probably knit the raglans 4 or 5 times, unsatisfactorily.
• Llama Llama
• I'm probably going to rip this out. It's tried to be a shawl and it's now trying to be a top, but I really have no clue what it wants to be.
• Vintage Lace Top
• I got as far as swatching and doing the ribbing for the back. I'm ready to throw in the towel: it's not a style I'd really actually wear, and now that I have the lace picture, I don't know if I even want to knit the entire thing...
• Existentialist Turtleneck
• I spun up all the Norwegian wool and it's all ready for knitting! That's the good part. I even swatched and everything. The only thing I haven't done is actually get to knitting it up.
• Burnt Brioche Dress
• This one's in the best shape out of all of them! I've had to rip it out (bottom-up) and re-start (a couple times because the cast-on looked too loose, then I didn't have enough stitches, then it was too tight - you get the idea), before having to knit the raglan "sleeves" twice because it just wasn't right the first time around (my calculations were off, so it was my own fault). Now all the shaping is done, I think, and I just have to decide where exactly I want the slit to start! Hurrah!
• As I mentioned above, lots of books I started (or purchased, or borrowed) but didn't finish. I don't even know exactly when I brought which books back, but for sure a couple of math books, along with some books about God (I'm assuming history of Christianity), and Boris Vian's L'Écume des Jours in French that I tried to read but gave up on because my vocabulary is simply not at that level.

In sum, I think I did alright with my reading, which could expand a bit in terms of reading material, could have done better with my knitting (there was a duration of time where I was simply not knitting much at all), definitely need to be doing better with my weaving, and it looks as though I have a lot of issues with finishing things in general. Something to work on this year.

1/Edition

Haul of business cards

This year was the first edition of 1/Edition (see what I did there? eh?) at the Metro Convention Center, and, having to do with prints and books as it does, and prints and books being the stuff of my dreams, I had to go take a look. There were a ton of artists, collectives, galleries, bookstores, and more, and it was very exciting to see what everyone was doing!

I ended up getting a couple of - I want to say artist books, but would these be considered "books by authors" or "artist books"? I'm going to go with artist books.

Mini haul of books - there were so many more I wanted to bring home!

There were a bunch more books - part of the first run of a reprint of the Moomin novels, for example, except I really don't need to start reading Moomin from the first print - that I wanted to bring home with me, but I held back because of reasons stated before to do with my bookshelf & my growing collection of books.

Animals with Sharpies by Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber is incredibly engaging, in a tongue-in-cheek way that acknowledges some of the different characteristics of the animals portrayed in the book through the messages they are made to write down. Some of the animals are almost, if not, unrecognizable, which adds another layer of complexity to the images: it becomes a matching game and a test of your knowledge of the animal realm. Admittedly, my own knowledge is rather pitiful, and so some of the animals that are shown in smaller parts remain unknown to me, but the messages remain, baffling the viewer (or at least myself, because I am unaware of the speaker/writer and its relation to what is written) while at the same time providing a window to accessing the contents of the book regardless of the reader's depth of understanding of the animal kingdom. Go get yourself a copy. Immediately.

One Sky Star World Team Alliance by Stefan Marx, on the other hand, consists entirely of illustrations of airplanes that the artist either has been on or saw throughout his travels, or so the person at the Dashwood Books booth told me. The illustrations charmed my socks off, and started my string of purchases at the convention; some of the planes are portrayed in full, some are cut off, while some still feature in a 2-page spread, and that is part of what makes them so lovely: it's not just a collection of illustrations of planes, so much as a collection of the memories and places in the form of planes, the portrayal of which differs depending on the artist at the time.

There was one more book I wanted to purchase very much, although I couldn't justify it to myself then since it's a commercially produced book that I should in theory be able to purchase at a much later date: The Little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Anderson & Yayoi Kusama. I had seen parts of it on Brain Pickings and desperately wanted to read it in full through, say, my local library, but as expected, we don't own a copy. Nor am I saying we should carry it necessarily, considering the sort of book this is and the size of its readership and us being a public library. This retelling of the Little Mermaid takes you to another world with its illustrations, and it's going to be something for me to save up for. I'm going to make room for it on my shelf!

Type Books - because I didn't get The Little Mermaid

And then there were these adorable pins at the Type Books booth (along with the Little Mermaid), so because I didn't get The Little Mermaid, I got myself these two instead. There were a bunch of different designs - one for Magritte and a Bowie one, among others - but these two broke out of that conventional yellow smiley face shape and stole my heart. Dali's going to a friend, and the ice cream (I've been told it looks like poop though) stays with me.

So much for my 1/Edition haul! I completely forgot about Canzine in my excitement for 1/Edition, unfortunately, but I'm hoping I'll be able to make it to the Book Arts Fair at OCAD on December 10! There's also the Antiquarian Book Fair happening at the AGO this weekend (Nov 4 - 6) apparently, so I might drop by there as well to take a look. There are so many book and print events happening about town these days!

Knitting Block (Still Weaving Though!)

Weaving a pie crust recipe

So I haven't actually knit anything for what seems to be a very long time. I've been working on the burgundy cardigan (top-down, raglan, v-neck, pockets) for a while and just passed the armholes, but I'm really just not feeling it, so it's going to be frogged. I just ripped out my red dress (third time is decidedly not the charm) that had been on the needles for a very long time indeed. I haven't been working on that black brioche dress either, for which I'm in the process of deciding whether to rip out and start over as a regular ribbed turtleneck tank dress or to simply continue onward as is.

Difficult colours to capture on a cloudy, cloudy day

At the very least, though, I've still been crafting away! In reality, this was something I was supposed to be working on all summer, but which in fact I've only started some couple of weeks ago and finished the first part of a couple of days ago (it's a series). So I'm counting that as a little victory.

Is it a scarf? Is it a table runner? The possibilities are endless!

I was supposed to have had this done months ago, and by this point to have had the entire series just about complete. Sadly, I didn't realize how tuckered out I was going to be after complete liberation from the educational system that is university, so I wasn't able to follow the proposed (admittedly probably a little herculean) schedule I had submitted for my grant. I got right on purchasing the right colours of yarn from colourmart more or less immediately after I got the grant, so that I could start weaving anytime, but then lost all momentum once I settled into my new job/position. It didn't help that the yellow I had ordered for the butter colour turned out to be more like a turmeric yellow (I ended up using it in my mokoshi).

I think I finally sat myself down and figured out ingredient weight ratios for some recipes (all pies, since those were what had started the series) on excel sometime around halfway through summer? And then my original plan was thwarted because Sandy, my floor loom, was too large to be set up in my room - or anywhere else in the house for that matter, apart from the basement, and there were a couple of logistics as to why not the basement. So I had all my materials, but couldn't do the twill that I had originally planned on doing, because twill! And thus completely fell out of it again.

One pick of the subtlest of all clasped wefts probably ever woven

In the end, I set up the table in my room again (since I had put it away for a good chunk of the summer months to free up some walking space) and set up Coraline, the AKL. I completely scrapped the twill idea after very briefly considering, then immediately discarding, the idea of doing a 3-shaft twill on the AKL. I figured I'd get pretty much the perfect sett if I simply used two 12.5dpi heddles to double the epi and didn't want to risk having a sparsely populated warp just so I could end up with a weft-faced twill. I'm very happy to say that I'm incredibly pleased with the way this wrap turned out! The yarn is incredibly soft, which helps a bunch, but the subtle hues and surprising amount of water content that goes into a pie crust, even if the majority of it evaporates, came out to be a pleasant surprise. I somehow expected much starker delineations between the ingredients (probably because I had originally intended them to be completely separate, one colour chunk after the other), but I quite like how randomly dispersing the ingredients turned out, both visually and as a parallel to the process of making the crust.

Well-proportioned scarf.

I'm thinking of putting the entire series into my etsy store once I complete it. For the time being though, work on that grant update in the hopes of being able to receive financial backing to complete it.

INTRO TO BOOKBINDING @ MCGREGOR PARK LIBRARY (SAT OCT 1, 2-4PM)

Waxed Linen Thread & Mini Bone Folder

I've been getting ready these past couple of weeks or so for my Introduction to Bookbinding workshop on Saturday October 1, from 2-4pm at the McGregor Park branch of Toronto Public Libraries! The event is 100% free, so all you need to bring with you is yourself and preferably enthusiasm for bookbinding in some form! The workshop is going to take place as a part of Culture Days. There are a bunch of other (free) activities happening everywhere, so take a look and see what interests you!

I drew up the instructions for a bunch of different bookbinding methods, with and without needle/thread, so I'll upload those to either here or my art happenings blog after the workshop. The first time I planned and ran a bookbinding/zine workshop, we ended up using Shannon Gerard's illustrations and handouts (with permission) from when she did a bookbinding workshop in our class, so participants this time get to have the first sneak peak at the booklet I've put together!

Paper, needles, thread, rulers, etc. + decorative cover paper + instruction booklets

The only thing I'm really worried about at this point is how many people are going to show up, since I realized somewhat belatedly that it would have made planning a lot easier had I made the event registration-required instead of drop-in. I have enough materials to be fully prepared for 15 participants, including pre-cut covers in rag paper. If any more participants show up, we'll just share the needles and see if we can cut some more paper on the spot. I'll be bringing my cutting mat and some scissors/x-acto knife for that purpose also.

Regardless! The McGregor Park library is almost like the sister branch to the library I currently work at, across systems: they're both small community centre libraries (though McGregor Park is definitely smaller) and they're both closed on Mondays! So it was definitely meant to be! I'm really excited about this, so if you're free that day, feel free to drop by and learn how to bind your own books!

Crossposted at lukprints.

FOs of July (and before)

I have some more photos of finished projects from July and also a couple from way before!

mokoshi in linen & wool

Wow. Linen and wool act really weirdly when together. After blocking, mokoshi seemed to shrink down a bit down to my size, despite the fact that it looked about half a size to a full size too large while I was knitting it! It's probably because the linen just hangs so well - fixing the problem of the super flouncy flounces, too - that the extra fabric ends up hanging down instead of poofing out. Also, I'm not sure which yarn it is since both of them are yellow (and thank goodness for that, too!), but the yellow turned a murky yellow just minutes after putting the entire thing into a basin with water. I did this three times thinking it might just be excess dye before deciding to try adding some citric acid to the (hot) water before adding the garment and letting it soak for about half an hour or so, and all came out well! Not a trace of colour came out of the yarn after that. I wore it out for an entire day, and I noticed when I came home that the armhole had sagged a bit - probably because of the linen content - but not enough that it looked weird. Next time I work with linen, though, I'll keep that in mind. All in all, lovely pattern - well written, well thought-out - and I enjoyed working with both yarns! The Colourmart soft wool had this oddly sweet smell to it that I especially liked while knitting the body, although I'm pretty certain it's the oil that's used to make the yarn keep to itself on the cone. (The smell more or less went away after blocking. After another wash, it'll probably be completely gone.)

Summer Bralette - a free pattern!

 Here's the Summer Bralette, not modeled! You'll just have to take my word for it that it fits well, although I had to make a mod to the garter stitch band length, as I mentioned before. It's also super warm, which makes me wonder whether it's actually supposed to be a summer bralette at all. I realize my yarn is different, but I'm pretty sure the original is a llama & silk blend, so it can't be much cooler. Although I suppose the silk content could really make a difference depending on the percentages.

Mods: provisional CO, 4 rows garter stitch instead of 16cm on both sides

Here's the provisional CO from the back, as well as the shortened back bands. If I were to make it again, which I actually might since it's super comfy, I would probably alter the rate of increases so that I actually get a back band and the bralette cups don't stretch all the way around. It's a great stashbuster though, so if you have about 175 yards of fingering/sport weight yarn left over, I would give this a try!

Easy to knit, repetitive lace pattern

 I've finally got some photos of the Hitofude Cardigan I finished a while ago! Next time, I'd make an extra repeat of the sleeves part, since I feel as though I would get an even better fit if the ribbing section were a bit lower down (it curls up almost like a raglan at the front, as you can see in the below photo). That being said, the current size is a pretty perfect fit, so it's more of an aesthetic thing.

Feathery lace fans out

I might have mentioned this before, but Hitofude only has 2 ends to weave in after you're done, as long as you didn't have to attach a new ball of yarn. 2 ends! If that doesn't convince you to go get yourself a copy of the pattern and knit it up immediately, it only took me 10 days to finish knitting it (and I'm pretty sure I was working on other projects as well during that time, so if you're a monogamous knitter, it might take you a week or less!), and the pattern itself, well written and easy to follow, is only... about $2.62 CAD, and if you're in the U.S., it will cost you less, surely! Anyway, I'd love to knit another of these beauties up. Another thing I'd like to do is to work with this yarn again - Julie Asselin's Merletto is extremely soft and silky, and although I had some trouble with splitting the yarn a number of times, once I got the hang of it, it was easy to work with and gave me very little trouble. It's also a bit of a plus that it's a Canadian yarn.

The below are just some re-shoots of a couple of things, namely my linen cardigan from my exhibition last year. I finally have finished photos of myself modeling it. The other one is also from the exhibition: the scarf everyone that participated helped to weave!

Twills upon twills upon twills!

So first we have a clearer picture of the scarf and all the colours and different patterns of twill that went into it! I treasure this scarf very much and, after a bit of thinking about what to do with it since the warp was pretty much done after the exhibition, decided to weave it into my everyday life and wear it as a scarf. That way I get to remind myself of how well everything went then, and to motivate myself to create more opportunities for others to learn to weave! Along the same lines, I'm also going to be hosting an Introduction to Bookbinding workshop at TPL during the Culture Days weekend on Saturday October 1 between 2-4pm at the McGregor Park branch of TPL. I know it's a ways away, but I'm super excited about it, so I'm giving out some advance notice!

A better shot of the line'n'cardigan (over the line)

The line'n'cardi (over the line) was knit all in one piece from the back over the shoulder line to the front, then the sides seamed, before picking up and knitting the sleeves. The neckline/edging was picked up and knit afterwards. I made it A-line in shape, which might have been unnecessary given how much extra fabric the body already has, but that just makes for more twirling opportunities!

Obligatory twirl shot

Souvenirs, Etc.

Souvenirs.

These are the souvenirs I got my friends while I was in Hong Kong: 3 wooden bug magnets & a gudetama chopstick holder. While I'm sure you can only find these eggs and bugs in HK, it's not as though I would really get bug magnets (from PMQ) and a gudetama chopstick holder for my friends on the regular even if I saw them here. (Gudetama has grown on me. I didn't get the attraction or the reason for his popularity until I saw him every day in the Circle K promotion displays and started desperately wanting to shop at Circle K and collect their stickers just so I could redeem them for gudetama merchandise. That being said, I've been told the reason he's so popular is because he's really existential & consequently lazy, which baffles me... or is it because his reason for laziness reflects the mindset of the people?) One of them - a stone paper notebook - I already sent forth, but these little guys are patiently awaiting their turn since they're rather fragile (ironically, the egg is the sturdiest of them all).

Attention to detail! The little butt delights me. Really, it does.

I did a bit of shopping for myself while I was there as well, the bulk of which came in the form of clothing (subsequently the bulk of which came from Uniqlo, although I hear we're getting one soon in the Eaton Centre space?). In my defence though, half of the clothing I brought back was given to me as hand-me-downs by my aunt after she discovered I would take them.

I got a watch strap replaced at Ap Liu Gai, and it has since been worn continuously after coming back, which is great considering my usual watch has withstood probably over 10 years of use, leading to the many scratches on its face (I wear the face on the inside of my wrist for that one) and signs of wear on the leather strap. I'm sure it'll appreciate some down time.

New watch for rotation, wood mosaic from Hakone, ring from PMQ (with bugs)

There were mosaic woodwork stores everywhere we went in Hakone! Maybe excepting up on the mountain (we walked up to the amazake chaya by the stone paths alternating with the side of the winding roads), but quite literally everywhere else. We even got some wooden postcards, though we were too afraid they'd crack in the mail to send them out.

Books, letter-writing set from Le Petit Prince Museum (Hakone), notebooks, and stationary

I sent out a variety of postcards while I was in both Japan and HK (none of which are pictured since they've since been delivered and hopefully received), and was pleasantly surprised to see some responses once I got home! It's been a really long time since I've actually had letter mail that didn't come from work, the government, or school. So I went on browsing a lot in the stationary areas pretty much whenever I saw them, which also meant I came home with a number of notebooks and memo pads, in addition to a letter-writing set from Le Petit Prince Museum in Hakone (why there's a Le Petit Prince museum in Hakone of all places is beyond me, but I'm not complaining! It was really quite lovely.) and a grand total of one whole book purchased on my entire trip: Fashion & Sustainability: Design for Change. The notebooks I'm going to try at least to justify myself: I'm almost done my moleskine! There's a couple pages left that I'm not sure will ever be filled since I'm obviously ready to move on to a new one at this point. And not because I don't like moleskine; I was originally considering getting the exact same one to replace my current one, but I saw the plethora of choices available to me in HK and decided to try something new. The small red pocket notebook (Muji) came in very handy throughout my vacation as a travel log: it's the perfect pocket size, with a soft cover that gave enough protection against water that I could minimize damage when it threatened to happen. The paper itself I also quite like, since there isn't much tooth to it at all, which made an easy transition from my moleskine.

Presents!

Soon after coming home, I got a bit of a surprise in the mail in the form of books & movies! They're completely outside of my usual fare, and they come on recommendation, so I'm looking forward to making my way through them once I get some free time.* I've been going non-stop from work to going out with friends since coming back, so I didn't hesitate too much when I went out with my mom to get myself a gift:

Gift to self. Nothing to do with my vacation, really.

*I've actually finished reading Childhood's End, and enjoyed it immensely. That being said, I don't know if the style of writing just didn't sit well with me or what, but I found it rather stiff at times on top of being very self-conscious - it was as though Clarke was trying to maintain a certain detached voice but missed the mark just a bit. It might just be that I have grown much too used to different genres and their accompanying styles of writing. Or perhaps it's because the subject matter at hand is not natural as we know it, so why should I expect its mode of delivery to be? (Although I would make the argument that it is natural, in a sense.)

Tai O (HK)

Tai O is one of the many islands in HK that you have to take a ferry to get to. It doesn't take very long - about an hour or so - and there are several stops along the way. It really saddens me to see all the garbage that gets thrown into the water along the harbour, including styrofoam boxes (used for keeping fish, I believe) and lots of plastic bottles:

Styrofoam box on the rocks

Inside of the ferry waiting area

Outside, along the harbour

The main street is packed with food vendors, especially dried seafood stores, and as you continue on along the street, you encounter more and more houses that look as though they're about to crumble, squished between two newer houses or stores with no space in between them, as well as empty lots that were overgrown with plants. While the description sounds really bleak, I think these were absolutely beautiful.

Looking out from a dessert shop (doufu hua & black sesame)

End of the main street, looking back at housing

Breaking down, but beautiful in its own right.

And of course, stilt houses all along the shore. We walked into the streets, but I'm still not sure whether those areas are actually open to the public: they are houses after all.

Stilt houses

And even further along the path (we were the only tourists around), there was some incredibly beautiful scenery to be experienced:

I believe the copper-coloured building was for burning articles (as part of worshipping ancestors)

I wonder who lives in that complex?

Suffice it to say I was enchanted by Tai O. While part of me hopes it never changes, half the island already has higher rise buildings than the areas we walked around, and I'm not sure any amount of wishing will make those buildings stay where they are and leave the rest alone.