So last night a bunch of us went to Tequila Bookworm for a nice dinner and a good time. Accordion Guy was entertaining Richard “Just a Gwai Lo” Eriksson, who was visiting from Vancouver. Liz and Rannie and Paul and Eldon were there too. We were really entertained with stories of the place where one of us (I’m not saying who) works. There were lots of laughs when Liz and I misunderstood what each other was talking about and for a minute there she thought I had “done it” with a certain girl-friend of mine. It was pretty funny and for the record, no, it’s not likely to happen. We laughed a lot anyway.

Before that I stopped at the Knit Cafe to check it out. It was their Stitch ‘n Bitch night and I met some nice women, but I left early since I was going to dinner. The Knit Cafe is quite a small store but has enough tables to fit a good amount of people. It also serves coffee, tea, some cakes, juice and organic soda. It was a nice experience and I might go again soon to knit there.

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I went to Village Yarns this afternoon. It is really far away, a ten minute walk from Islington Station. Not really worth the trip for a downtown gal like me, but I wanted to go anyway to check out the store.
I was glad to see that they carry several lines of Filatura di Crosa, those yarns are beautiful. They also have a lot of Colinette, but they didn’t want the Giotto in the colour that I wanted. Their book selection is really good but laid out in a bit of an unfriendly way, more like a library. They have a couple of medium-sized tables for their classes.
It was a little weird to have to ring the bell to get into the store, I have heard or read about it somewhere so I wasn’t surprised, but I didn’t like it that much. Even to get out someone had to unlock the door for me. Not very welcoming.
I didn’t like that the prices for the yarn are on totally unseeable places, I couldn’t find the price for most of the yarns that I was looking at and had to actually ask twice. That’s not very good. They said they were expecting “price cards” to get soon because they had moved all their yarn around, but can’t they just print them? it’s not as if they’re anything special. The Naked Sheep and Lettuce Knit are more beautiful places to go and get inspired.
In general the women were friendly and asked me right away if I needed help, I said I was just browsing. It was a bit disappointing to go all the way there and not find anything “special”, though I liked that they have a couple of “kits” prepared with patterns and yarns for some projects. They also have some patterns written down for certain items they are showing on the display.
I signed up for the newsletter in case they have a sale and I also got a chance to say that I don’t like the layout of their website that much, especially how if you click on anything it will show up in the frame.
I ended up just getting a pair of 9mm Brittanys. I can’t for the love of god find a pair or 9 mm bamboo needles, I’ve been to 4 places in town already. So I just got the birch needles.
I might not go back all the way to Village Yarns unless there is a sale or if I am looking for something specific and I have called before and I am sure they have it and they don’t have it in any of the places downtown (or more central) like The Naked Sheep, Romni or Lettuce Knit, of course (check out the website for Lettuce Knit and you’ll see that Megan wrote my name and everyone else’s because of the baby blanket we knitted for her).

Tomorrow I may drop by at The Knit Cafe on Queen and Ossington before going out with some friends at 7.

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It was really nice that I felt like I was having a long weekend, and not a weekend that is long. What’s the difference?, my dear readers might ask. On a long weekend you get to hang out with friends, have a good time while on a weekend that is just long it can get tedious and you may have not many things to do.
On Thursday Glenn invited me over for martinis and we watched some Duran Duran videos (they are coming to town, I might go to the ACC and see them after all these years! I just realized it’s at the same time as my book club meeting so I guess I’ll save the 60 bucks) and ate steak and a delicious pasta that he cooked.
Friday I cooked Mexican style eggs (recipe a pictures to be posted soon) and Mark came over for brunch. Later I did some laundry and cleaned up the apartment and had time for knitting and just relaxing. I made a mushroom garlic chicken and took pictures that I will post on Garlicster soon.
Saturday I volunteered at the hospital and then I went shopping. I bought Hollywood Knits because it has a great pattern for a sleeveless turtleneck using GGH (Muench) Trikolore yarn. I decided I am going to rip what I had made of “my own design” and just use a pattern for that yarn. I might just get the Colinette Shimmer 5 later and make the top that I was planning to adapt from the pattern book that I have. Banana Republic was on sale and I got some stuff. Later I came home and ran to the gym where Mark was waiting, we had a nice workout. After cooking a macarroni and cheese for dinner (real macarroni and cheese, not your usual Kraft Dinner) I was invited to watch Roger Dodger at Mark’s. It’s a good and entertaining movie, I recommend that people watch it. Then we played some pool and it was just a nice time that we had.
This morning I went for brunch with my new friend from Chateau Mont Choisi. First we wanted to make it to Cora’s Breakfast and Lunch, but there was SUCH A LINE UP that I really didn’t want to wait. So we walked up to Milestones and had BELLINIS, yay! We then just hung out at Chapters and went to Caban and HMV.
It has just been a fun and relaxing weekend spent with friends and having a good time.

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The first step is to go to Kensington Market, to the produce store on the corner of Nassau and Augusta and get nice mangoes.

This is the special mango fork. I brought it from Mexico because I couldn’t find it anywhere. I even went to the St. Lawrence Market to this place that has every fork you can think of… every fork except a mango fork.

Stick the longer part of the fork into the core of the mango.

Slice the two “meaty” parts of the mango and scoop them with a spoon to eat them. The core part of the mango shall be eaten like a “mango on a stick” (after removing the skin, of course).

I was not feeling well yesterday and took a sick day from work. I started feeling better at about 3:00 but I thought it was too late to make it to work. So last night I went to the Stitch and Bitch session at The Naked Sheep. I had a really good time and enjoyed meeting new people that like knitting. I met Brenda and Tanya and Donna and Noelle and Lisa and Sandra and some other women and shared a few laughs. I may drop by some other time soon, but maybe after the Queen Streetcar is running again, it is stopping on Kingston Road and then you have to take a bus because they’re working on the rails on Queen St. just before The Beaches. Actually it was fine on my way back because I took the bus and the streetcar was waiting for us, as soon as we got off the bus the streetcar picked us up and we continued on Queen St. But on my way there I had to wait for hours for the bus to come after the streetcar dropped us on Kingston and Queen.

My projects are going very well, I started a baby hat from a kit that I bought from Needles & Pins in London Ontario, it is the Baby Beret from Debby Ware. My colleague from my new job is expecting a baby in May and I wanted to give her a little present (OK, mainly what I wanted is to knit something for a baby, isn’t it cute?). I also started a sleeveless top with Rowan Cotton Tape and I have done some good advance on it. Lastly, I started another sleeveless top (again, I’m the queen of the sleeveless top!) to be knitted with the GGH Trikolore that I got on sale from Lettuce Knit, I designed the pattern, adapted from a pattern for Colinette Point 5 (I had to adapt it because it has a totally different gauge and different needle size so I made up my own pattern). Pictures to come soon.

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