crossing to the dark side

Generally, I have an aversion to all things (well, yarns) even vaguely acrylic - too much of this scary fibre, and your project will be pilling before it even comes off the needles. So imagine my surprise upon realizing that Lion Brand's decision to re-introduce their 50% acrylic Cotton-Ease yarn is actually a good thing - especially at a mere $6 per 188m! It feels like 100% cotton, looks like 100% cotton, but can also be machine washed and dried... which makes it perfect for a baby blanket for a little boy!
This is a log cabin blanket, inspired by those of Mason-Dixon Knitting fame, but knit in a much more random fashion, à la january one's Chance v.1 blanket. For this one, I'm using 5 colours of Cotton-Ease - Maize, White, Charcoal (much more navy than the swatch on their website), Lake, and Lime. I started out using a random number generator to tell me how many garter ridges to knit, but I wasn't overly impressed with how it was going... so now I'm kind of making it up as I go along - I'm also not always just turning the work clockwise before adding another colour (see january one's instructions), since this made it too square and boring. I want to end up with a rectangle about 3 x 3.5ft in size... I have about 1800m of yarn, so we'll see this turns out!

(I think I have a case of start-itis... I've been knitting constantly on this thing and ignoring the 1/2 a sock and 1 inch of 2x2 ribbing that are standing between me and TWO finished objects!!)

as for non-knitting things, being back in Canada is so fun! My lifestyle here is so different than in Newcastle... I don't have to be in the office everyday, which makes things more relaxed, but at the same time, things are busier because I have more things to distract my attention... this weekend we replaced the storm windows with screens (a sure sign that its summer!), turned part of the front lawn into a flower garden, went hiking, had a fun brunch, went to the pub to watch the Sens win their way into the Stanley Cup semi-finals, baked a cake, went to the Nordic spa and celebrated Mike's belated birthday with his family... and for once the weekend didn't even feel rushed!

oh, Mike also managed to fix my computer, which is why I'm able to put up photos today. Yay Mikey! :) this is what my poor little beastie looked like mid-surgery
sans keyboard, sans touchpad mouse, sans broken DC jack which has been the cause of all these repairs! but now he's all back together again and good as new. Guess that means its time I paid another visit to Galen...