Why did no one wake me up when November ended?

So, someone asked me for the date and I realized that it was December 5th and I had managed to go a month without looking at my blog.  Woah, I just don't know where that month went.  However, it was a good month, lots of knitting and cooking. First off, I managed to get through all my KAL chaos projects, but not much else.

I finished my Winter Bloom shawl, in Tanis Fiber Arts's Orange Label (worsted weight merino/cashmere/silk) in Frost.  Not only did I get a totally awesome, amazing shawl, but I also won 3 skeins of Sweet Fiber Yarn's Haven yarn (a new merino/silk aran-weight single) in Spanish Coin a gorgeous gold color.

Also I finished my Mooncrest Shawl in Tanis Red Label, another great base and awesome pattern. I wore it today and got lots of compliments.

Oh and I finished a third item for the Tanis KAL, but it is a gift and the recepient is just too web savvy for me to share the pictures up here.  I will, after they are gifted for Christmas.

Also, I cooked up a storm from the new Smitten Kitchen cookbook a few weeks ago making the Apple Cider Salted Caramels.

I need to make a few mods when I make them again for Christmas.

Also, I made a batch of what I'm calling Slow Cooker Apple Sauce, or, Christina hates chopping apples Sauce. Where I stew apples in my slow cooker and then blend them with an immersion blender to make them into sauce. It means you get to keep all the nutrients of the skins and all you have to do is core and quarter the apples.

Of course November wasn't all rainbows, apple sauce and pretty shawls, I also changed my first tire.

I woke up on a Monday morning, with an hour's drive to work and I found this...

Turns out I ran over a nail but I managed to get the tire changed all by myself, and end up only 2.5 hrs behind schedule.

So that was November, well plus all the work, and assorted chaos that make up my life.  I'm back into my knitting, although I did take last weekend off from knitting to try out a few different things I have let fall by the wayside, like Tunisian crochet, shuttle tatting, weaving and spinning. But if December even goes half as fast as November did, then I expect to resurface in January unsure of where December went.

I think my eyes might be bigger than my stomach ...

So, right now on the go I have five projects in various stages of completion (one just got off the needles since Wednesday), and pretty soon I am going to have 4 more on the go.

Why, yes I am insane!

I'm participating in a second Tanis Fiber Arts KAL over in the Ravelry group. This time we are using TFA Accessories patterns or using TFA yarn for a gift project.

I'm able to enter one project in both categories, Tanis's Business Casual socks, that I will be making out of the Year in Color club color Truffle. This one is a gift for someone who is tech savy enough to be a reader so I will show them off and hopefully they don't deduce that they are the one getting them.

Also, I'm going to try to finish the Suncrest Shawl by Tanis in some spectacular TFA Red Label in Dove that I picked up at the Kitchener Waterloo Knitter's Fair (which I never blogged about, but short version, it was fun and I met the Yarn Harlot). The pattern is part of the Stella Collection which Tanis and Julie (Crawford of Knitted Bliss) released last summer. You may recall that I tested for Julie last spring and she and Tanis thanked me for my help with the full pattern collection.

So, after making this plan I discovered two more KALs that I wanted to jump on board with, first off Melissa Thompson of Sweet Fiber Yarns & Design released a new pattern Autumn Bloom, and announced an accompanying KAL and I had to get in on it.

Melissa had an injury earlier this month, so she hasn't been able to keep up with her dyeing (understandably!) and so I think I'm going to use the TFA Orange Label I picked up at Knitter's Frolic back in April, which is going to make for a totally luxe winter shawl. Depending

Due to my selfish nature, and that you will have to pry this shawl from my cold, dead hands, it won't be part of the TFA KAL, because if you are using the yarn but not the pattern it has to be a gift and I'm not gifting this baby.

The last KAL I want to get in on is the Cabernet Sauvignon KAL. Monika Sirna of What Dreams Are Made Of is a new designer to me, but I fell hard for her latest design. I may have missed her up till now becuase she has mostly been designing clothes for little girls, adorable girl clothes, but something I just don't currently knit. I'm going to make it out of some other yarn I picked up at KW, an MCS fingering weight yarn, Homage by Shalimar Yarns who made the trek to the show all the way from Maryland.

My yarn is a little short of the requirements, but I will just remove keep weighing my skeins and remove a repeat in the center, yay for knitting math.

So the TFA KAL deadline is November 30th and the other two have a deadline of December 15th, and I still have 5 projects on the go, I can totally get them all done by the end of the year, right? Right?

CanCon: Yarn Edition

For anyone who has lived in Canada, you are familiar with the concept of CanCon.  For those of you who haven't spent much time in the True North, might not know that all our radio and television stations must play a designated amout of work by a Canadian each day (the percentages are dependent on location and type of stuff the broadcast).

Based on very cursory internet research (and by that I mean Wikipedia) it seems this number can range from 25% up to 40% of content on radio and 60% on television (although news shows count so most primetime is American shows).  On the radio the CanCon is hardly noticeable we have so much great Canadian music, and we send all the annoying ones to the US (you can thank us later for Celine Dion, Nickelback, Avril Lavigne, and Justin Bieber), on TV it can be a bit more painful although recently CBC really has been bringing up the average with Little Mosque on the Prairie, Being Erica and Republic of Doyle (which just got a 4th season pickup, which is awesome).

What does this have to do with yarn?

We have so many amazing Canadian yarn dyers, both indie and artisnal, that going forward (and this has been in place for most of 2012 already) I want my stash to be CanCon-ed.  I want to make sure that I am supporting the amazingly diverse range of dyers and fiber producers here in Canada. Between Handmaiden/Fleece Artist in Nova Scotia to Sweet Georgia in Vancouver and in between Tanis in Montreal, Kim in Haliburton, Emily in Toronto, Lisa in Barrie, Hasmi in Banff, Kirsten and Melissa in Vancouver  and so many more I haven't discovered yet.

However, I couldn't go 100% Canadian, there are too many cool indie dyers in the States that I would miss like bohoknitterchic, Gale's Art, Winemakerssister and Wandering Wool (who I haven't actually ordered from yet, but her stuff is so tempting) and the rest of the Phat Fiber crew who are working in their corners of the earth on amazing yarns and fibers.

And sometime KnitPicks has exactly the yarn you need for a project, and Felici, I do love my Felici.

So I am going to try to buy mostly Canadian yarn, I will tag projects that are either made with Canadian dyed yarn (or a pattern by a Canadian designer) with the tag CanCon. Let's see if I can do better than the local stations and bring my CanCon up above 60%.

Either way I will have help with this,  I am currently signed up for three different yarn clubs, the Tanis Fiber Arts Year in Colour Club (which is still accepting signups and you will get all the previous months in your next shipment), indigodragonfly's Smart Ass Knitters/World Domination 1 Skein Club (there may be 6-mo slots in the fall, if not the next round of signups are in Feb 2013) and the latest one is Sweet Fiber's Super Sweet Summer of Sock, Vancouver Edition (which there are still spots in for the the 3 month club, which ships May, June, July).

Also, I am headed to the Downtown (Toronto) Knit Collective big show, Knitter's Frolic next Saturday (the 28th) so I will get to check out and sample all sorts of new yarns, bases and dyers at the show, and meet some of my other dealers (ie. Kim and Tanis face to face).

Just like the latest CBC shows, CanCon yarn is a great thing and I am excited to keep it a major part of my fiber diet.