So, I've been thinking that my story of the two conversations might be taken as overly self-pitying, oh, why doesn't anyone like me, because I have actually met plenty of nice people. Or, too anti-Toronto, which I don't really mean to be, though I do have my moments of frustration with it. And so, I thought I'd share a few things that are nice.
First, pizza. There are two pizza places virtually across the street from me. This is what A SLICE of pizza from one of them looks like. It's the "Roberto Benigni," which features fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, and eggplant.
Apparently, there's a lot of loyalty to one of the two places on the part of students and former students. My new insurance agent here, upon hearing where I lived, asked if I'd been to one of them in particular. And it happens to be the one I tend to go to. (One of his "hey, new client" gifts was a pizza cutter, incidentally. OH. After I left his office, having just gotten Ontario car insurance, and was on the way to the DMV (which is called something different here, but I can't remember what at the moment) to get Ontario license plates, I got pulled over by a cop!!! He was apparently suspicious of my Illinois plates, and wanted to know if I owned the car. Nothing happened, but it was a strange moment.)
Next, the musicians. Last night I had my first band concert here. It went pretty well, and it featured an AMAZING guest musician, an accordion virtuoso named Joseph Macerollo. Seriously, virtuoso almost sells him short... he was jaw-droppingly good, and in multiple ways. He played a very modern piece composed for accordion, and also played a fantastic round of the Beer Barrel Polka. And Edelweiss! And all sorts of other goodies. Really, really cool. We sounded fine, too. But we had a lot to live up to!
I also have to say, that there are a lot of cool people among musicians, and I had some nice chats with people during many of the waiting bits of the evening.
Third, there are also cool people among knitters. I usually feel like I'm only barely on the fringes of the whole on-line knitting world, but even being just on its fringes has its perks. A nice local knitter sent me a message through a knitting forum to tell me about one of the Wednesday knitting groups, and we chatted at the one I could go to before the band thing made it impossible to go to the knitting group. And she invited me to her birthday party this weekend.
Except. I thought it was today, and walked up to the yarn store/cafe at which it's being held. And found out it's tomorrow. D'oh!!!
Except. There were a bunch of knitters sitting there, and they invited me to sit and join them. And so I did, and it was good.
My knitting, on the other hand, has been kind of boring recently. I'm nearing done with the socks, but they don't look any different. I also didn't work too much on them (or on the lace scarf) for a while because I cut my finger last weekend and the band-aid was interfering with my knitting on small needles. Bigger ones were fine, but the smaller ones were bugging me.
So last weekend I revisited something I'd made last year. Or was it even the year before?
This is the pinwheel sweater (which is still the thing that brings the second most google searches to this blog [the Orenburg shawl is number one], though I suspect many people are looking for a different pinwheel sweater).
I never posted a picture of it all finished and one, because... well, it was only OK looking. I was too lazy to add in part of the last skein of the yarn to make the collar longer, which it really needed to be. And I crocheted around the bottom edge to even it out, but in the process made it too tight, so that it did a weird cutting in thing at the top of my thigh. Not ideal.
Last weekend I pulled it out, and pulled out the last skein of yarn. I added more to the collar, so that it's a proper roll-neck now. And I undid the crocheted edge, leaving it a little uneven, but looser.
Here's the end result. It's still not great, but it's better, and I actually wore the sweater out that day. (To run to the grocery store, and to return empty bottles to The Beer Store. Where I realized that late Saturday afternoon is not the time to do this, because there was a line of people waiting to return empties. Sadly, I think a fair number of them had gathered them from recycling bins and were in need of the money. I'd have just given mine to someone, but I didn't want to cause a dispute between people over possession of my bottles.)
I also frogged the red boucle sweater I worked on last fall. It just wasn't what I wanted it to be. I pictured a floaty thing to wear over a black dress, or something. I got something that made me look like a muppet. Instead, I now plan to combine that yarn with something else (which still needs to be purchased) to make the Lady of the Lake jacket here. How about this for cool? I emailed Fleece Artist to see if that pattern was available separately, because I could only find it as part of a kit. And they just emailed it to me! That's very cool of them, I have to say. So, if I find the right yarn to go with it, I'll start working on that in the near future.