Astra's party on Saturday was a big success. I got pretty drunk and enjoyed myself thoroughly. I took a few pictures before I got too drunk to operate my camera, and I'll be posting those soon. At one point during the evening some of us decided to play I Never and discovered that at our age, we couldn't really come up with a whole lot that we'd never done. Ahem. I won't get into detail, but we're NASTY!

I made Astra a pair of mittens for her birthday. I thought it was a logical gift because while the party was in July, her actual birthday is in the winter. Pictures of the mittens to come as well.

Today I'm going shopping for clothes. This is one of my least favourite things to do. I'm meeting my sister at her place this afternoon and I'll be looking for something to wear to her engagement party next weekend. I was hoping to finish my Non-Soleil in time, but it's not looking good. I'm just past the underarm bind-off now on the first piece. I'm going to bring it with me and look for a skirt to match on the off chance I can get it finished. I'm also looking for a new pair of jeans and Natalie will be shopping for something to wear to her friend's wedding.

Since we all know how bad I am about getting pictures on the blog, in the meantime you can look at this: Stuff + my friend's cat = AWESOME!

So far so good. I'm surprised that I'm really enjoying knitting with the Cotton Fleece. I have a bias against cotton, but I like this stuff. I'm hoping that the 20% wool content will be enough to prevent the lace from curling after blocking.

Here is one of the photos from the butterfly sanctuary. I have more to upload, but they'll have to wait for another day. We didn't end up going back this weekend like we'd planned. Instead, we hung around the house and Jeremy's dad FIXED OUR DOOR. Yes! It's square and it swings in the jamb and all that's left to do is paint it and add the trim. What a relief.

Yesterday I went to Sandra's shower and had the most wonderful chicken. It was a variation of chicken parmasan but with lots of basil, fresh sliced tomatoes and mozarella cheese. Delicious. It was a lot of fun. I fought with my shoes and my pantyhose, though.

This coming weekend we're going to Astra's belated birthday party. Her milestone 30th birthday was during the winter, but she was pregnant and couldn't drink. So her husband is throwing a belated birthday bash barbecue thing, there will be lots of boozing and bashing and barbecuing. I'm always up for all three.

Tonight we had the thunderstorm of my life. I've never seen anything like it before. I'm guessing storms like this aren't so rare in our area because of the lake, but in the year we've been here I haven't experienced anything like what I saw tonight. Usually I love thunder and lightning...I was in our carport enjoying the show when suddenly the storm became so severe that the back gate of my carport flew open and banged around, shaking the whole house. The rain blew in at me and I got soaked in one gust. The rain appeared to be running uphill on the street because the wind was so strong and lightning occured more often than not. It might as well have been the middle of the afternoon. The thunder was angry. I ended up getting scared and going inside. Jeremy was late coming home from work because he was on the flat, open highway when it hit. Windy.

Yesterday afternoon I cast on for Soleil from Knitty. I'm not actually following the pattern at all, hence my name for it. I'm knitting it flat rather in the round, because in my experience I do much better with the structure of seamed garments. Also, I'm not shaping the tank the same way. I've got the giant boobs, you see, and I don't want the tank to fit tightly in the stomach area. I'm going to make it in an A-line shape...snug in the bust and flaring out slightly to my hips, which have a bigger circumference than my chest does. I find that this kind of shaping ends up looking like it's shaped at the waist, whereas if I actually shape it at the waist, it will look too snug and small. I'm also making it longer than the pattern calls for.

My gauge is also different. I'm using Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece and knitting at 5st/inch. So basically I'm designing the entire tank from the ground up, the only similarity is that I'm keeping the horeshoe lace trim at the bottom. So far I've got the lace part finished for the back, and now I'm about to start the miles of stockinette.

This weekend Jeremy's dad and his girlfriend are coming to visit for the first time. They're arriving late afternoon and staying until early Sunday morning. Tonight we're just going to hang out on the deck with beers and barbecue some hamburgers. Tomorrow we thought we'd take them to the butterfly sanctuary we visited when our American friends were here. It's cheap and fun, then afterward I'm going to be making this lemon and basil pasta for dinner.

On Sunday I'm going to Sandra's wedding shower with my mom and sister. Do you know what this means, Sandra? It means that your wedding is exactly two months away. Can you believe it?

I had a full memory card of photos to deal with, and while I managed to get them on the computer today, I just couldn't be arsed to organize and upload them. So in the meantime, here's what I've knit over the past three days: Sophie.

I knit Sophie a couple of years ago but I recently threw it out. It wasn't great. When Freakgirl was here last weekend, I loved hers and had the urge to knit it again. The yellow bag on the right is my full-sized Sophie, knit from one skein of Patons Classic Wool. I felted it in my front-loader, the first time I've used it for felting; it took a little bit longer than my mom's top-loader but it felted just fine. I ran it through a short hot wash twice with three pairs of jeans.

The little red bag is for a special little friend of mine. I know her favourite colour is red, and I'm hoping the burgundy of the bag will be good enough because I didn't have enough bright red. Anyway, I pretty much made the bag at about 75% of the original size, and it used up just over half of a skein of the Classic Wool.

The modifications I made were pretty straightforward. I cast on 29 stitches instead of 39, and I knit for 25 rows to create the garter stitch bottom. I picked up 12 stitches on the sides and 29 on the long end. I made my decreases every 8th row instead of every 10th, and I only decreased 4 times instead of 5. Then I knit 5 rounds even before casting off. With the smaller bag, you'll end up with only 4 stitches at each side where the straps are to be knit, so I increased 2 stitches at each end during the bind-off row. I knit the straps to about 18 inches in length, then grafted them to the other side as in the pattern.

The finished mini-Sophie is 6" wide at the base, 5" wide at the opening, 4.5" from top to bottom, 2.5" deep at the base, and the handle is 6.5" from the opening of the bag upward.

Now, look at my cats. Jeremy took this the other day.

Freakgirl and Geekboy left for their foreign homeland yesterday morning. Visits with them are always too short. We missed them as soon as they left.

We had a pretty fun weekend, though. Even though it rained on Saturday and we ended up packed like sardines in the carport, it was still a pretty fun party. At least, I had fun. I managed to have everything done and organized in advance so that I had minimal work to do and could just sit back and relax and drink myself stupid. Which I did. The rain stopped long enough for us to set off a few fireworks, though! Unfortunately, after owning my camera for over a year I still don't know how to use it properly so my night shots didn't turn out as well as I'd like. But all is not lost! Destructogirl to the rescue!

When we ran out of good wine we tried a bottle that was given to me at my housewarming a couple of weeks ago. It was decidedly Not Good. Freakgirl ended up with a migraine because of it, but on the other hand, her back relaxed quite a bit! Her migraine, my hangover and general exhaustion made for a lazy Sunday. I felt like shit until about 4 pm.

That night we went to the drive-in to see Superman Returns, where we witnessed a couple of people fighting over a spot by trying to push each other out of it WITH THEIR CARS. Sadly, this event proved slightly better than the film itself. It was fun to watch, but they really could have done so much better. I never thought I'd ever say this, but I missed Margot Kidder.

Hopefully I'll have some pictures of the butterfly conservatory sometime tomorrow. I may even have a few knitting pictures! Tonight I'm going to stitch with ma bitches.

Oh, I almost forgot...Happy 4th, Americanos!

I can't stop having parties.

Today is Canada Day and I've got Americans in my house. They arrived Thursday afternoon. That night I made salmon for dinner and we polished off a few bottles of wine. Yesterday we visited a butterfly conservatory, which was just amazing. Butterflies landed on us and I think I got a bunch of really great photos. Today we're having a party with these lovely people and getting SHITFACED. I had planned to sit on the deck and then have a campfire in the evening, but it's probably going to rain and we'll all end up huddled in the carport. Tomorrow night the plans are to see Superman Returns at the drive-in. So far the forecast is clear for that. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Have a great weekend!