I moved!

The new blog is ready now!

 

http://www.kaitlinmacinnis.com/blog

Trying times, news!

I haven’t posted in a while, things have been kind of up in the air and crazy over here lately with our horrible flu, work and some big time family troubles. Everything is on its way to being better now, joy of joys!

I will be retiring this blog and transferring all relevant entries over to my new website. Yes, that’s right, I have my own domain name and I’ll have a blog together over there very soon, along with some articles and artsy goodness!

 

I’m buzzing!

I’m in spring cleaning mode a little late this year. I want to organize everything, get rid of junk, file things, buy a desk and decorate! I’m tired of clutter and hoarding useless things. I want to purge all the junk I’ve been carrying around, moving, misplacing and ignoring and make room. We live in a very conservative space, just enough for two people who really like each other, and it’s getting crowded. I’m thinking I’m going to follow cutie-butt Jenna‘s lead and de-stash my life in any way I can. I know I’d craft more if I had more space and less things to pick up or push out of my way. I think I’ll make a list of things I know I’d like to keep around, and cull back the rest. Wish me luck!

Alex and I each have sore throats and coughs and we’re just all around feeling crappy today. We went to our friends’ house and had a feast of amazing thanksgivingy food the other night and have since decided to have banquet nights, the four of us, and just enjoy good food. We’re thinking of doing traditional ethnic dishes from around the world, like Indian (yuuuummm), French and Japanese. I think getting together often with awesome people is going to make our winter more tolerable.

While on our trip to Saskatoon to determine if we’d like to move there next year we went to the yarn shops. They were both great, and Alex insisted that we buy the Queensland Collection #9, a book of patterns for men. I’ve never been so impressed with a pattern book and we ordered some yarn right away for a sweater he just loved. I’m to start it right away, and I don’t mind at all ^_^

“Reece”, the sweater on the cover. Doesn’t it look cozy?

Off to make some tea and try to track down a light bulb to replace the dead one in my yarn closet. Love!

Baby Kimono, Designing

I have so much I want to be saying and the words aren’t coming out in any way that seems pleasing to me. I’ve been sketching and designing all day, organizing my ideas into computer files, collecting photos with elements that inspire me, and browsing Colour Lovers for awesome colour combinations. I have so many ideas floating around in my head, and I’m not quite sure where to go from here.

I’m working on a some sketches for jacket with toggle buttons, a mandarin inspired collar and a diamond stitch pattern, as well as plans for my Fair Isle sweater I’m making from my Blue-faced Leicester and white alpaca fleeces.  I’ve been taking full advantage of my tablet to doodle with, I’m really excited. I plan on drawing out images and repeating patterns and overlaying knitter’s graph paper to give me an instant chart to work from, it’s going to be awesome.

This is the first drawing.

The light and dark grays are the natural colours of the beeeeeautiful second prize winning BFL fleece, and the pink/red will be nature dyed alpaca from my second fleece, probably dyed from Madder and a tiny bit of Brazilwood. I haven’t yet decided what kind of motif will be the stitch pattern, I’m not overly familiar with traditional designs, but I’ll figure it out in the coming weeks.

I (started and) finished a baby sweater for a friend’s month old sweetie pie. It was one of the fastest things I’ve ever knit. Such a fun pattern, and so easy!

Hoorray!! It’s been too long since I finished something! ^_^

And for those interested, I recently made my Twitter feed public and open to all again, so follow me and I’ll follow you back!

The things we take for granted.

For nearly the last year, I’ve not had any glasses, and have more or less been squinting my way around work and home. Eventually I got used to it, and I went to the optometrist yesterday for the first time in almost 5 years. The small preview I got, the way things look when they’re actually clear, it made me desperate to really be able to see again. I was given my prescription, and away I went.

It’s all I can think about, now.

I bought a pair of glasses off Zenni Optical for around $25 with shipping. You choose your frames, and plug in the information on your prescription. In two or three weeks, I should be getting my first pair of glasses in ten months.

I chose these frames in black, I’m really excited for them to arrive 🙂

Lately I’ve been feeling down on myself for not currently being in post secondary. I know that I want to learn and become an educated person, and I think I’m going to have to do this on my own terms. I’m not going to teach myself everything. I’ve got so many resources available to me, I just need to search them out and avail myself of them.

My thirst for knowledge and ravenous hunger for stimulating discussion is so strong that I can’t bear to let my brain stagnate. I want to make full use of my mind and memory, because in gaining and recalling knowledge, I believe that one can truly experience life to the fullest.

The most important thing to me is my ability to create and to wonder. Learning grants me to opportunity to tint the world with a different perception, and the new “way of looking” is what distinguishes art from the mundane.

I work tonight, and then I have tomorrow off. I think I’m going to spend the day playing with my tablet, drawing schematics for some new designs, collecting photos, watching Buffy, knitting and thinking up a domain name.

Have a wonderful day, everyone ❤

Mundane Fancies

I’ve been playing with my new iPhone and got some fancy effect apps for the photos I’ve taken.

Alex and I spent the weekend in Saskatchewan at his parent’s property. It was wonderful! We went quadding around the 160 acres and spent the evening just relaxing. The next morning, all four of us went goose hunting (which pretty much consists of sitting in a little fake bush near some fake ducks chatting while waiting for the birds to come about).

Here’s a field on the way. The photo is a poor representation, but the golden hay bales against the blue-green grass struck me. I love it.

My plants are growing still, slowly, and I don’t even know which is which anymore 😦

There’s a possibility Alex and I will be moving to Edmonton in the spring, and I’m really excited. Cold Lake is well-liked by some people, but I am not one of them. It’s too small for me, and doesn’t have certain amenities that I really miss having. I also know a fair few people who live there, so it’ll be nice to reconnect with many of them 😀

Other than that, there’s not a whole lot new with me. I’m finishing up a test knit tam for an LSG lady and it’s coming out really nicely, pics soon!

I’ve recently made a to-do list of every sample I’m required to spin for Level 2 and I’ll be getting on that shortly as well! Expect many more posts from me, Alex is going on a hunting trip in a few days for a couple weeks, and I’ll need to occupy myself when I’m not working ^_^

Happy Anniversary <3

two years.

Meaningless cake, dreads

Hello out there in Internet land!

I told myself I wouldn’t blog when I had nothing to say, and I guess I’ve found even myself to be terminally boring for the last month or so, because I haven’t posted. Well, here I am! I’ve been starting to knit again, and I have a photo update of my 2 month old dreadlocks. Perhaps you wonder why I post dreadlock updates. Dreads undergo tightening and shrinking, looping and straightening, all the time, but especially through the first year, and I thought it would be neat to track it in a sort of timeline.

They’ve been so much fun for me 😀

I accidentally bought cake mix instead of brownie mix the last time we went and bought groceries and I was kind of upset, because Alex has always claimed to hate cake and I was stuck with a whole box of the stuff. I pressed onward! and baked a two-tier devil’s food cake without having anyone in mind to eat it, the poor thing. I offered some to my wary husband and he tentatively tried a small piece and liked it, thank goodness. We’re both of the opinion that typical store-bought cake is wholly unpleasant but this denser, home baked stuff (even out of a box) is quite pleasant. In short, we OM NOM NOMMED it.

I’ve felt like I’ve been in kind of a creative rut lately that I’m trying to bust out of, and this helps, some. 🙂

This weekend is our 2nd wedding anniversary and this fact makes me happy. I’ll post a wedding picture on the 23rd to commemorate it. We’re planning on driving out of town to find ourselves iPhones and have a nice dinner and just get away for a little while. It should be great. ❤

Ideas and guns!

It’s been almost two weeks since I posted, and I’ve been cooking up some ideas.

I’ve recently been in touch with a couple sweet ladies on the internet about starting a new collaborative blog-project-resource for fibre artists and the like. I’m really ridiculously excited about getting involved in something new and I hope this takes off as well as I think it will.

Keep an eye out!

I learned how to shoot a rifle the other day! We went to a gun range off in the woods and I did some target practice.

I had so much fun, and I think I did well 🙂

Dreadlocks

I’ve had them for a month now, and they definitely feel like an extension of my fibre-artist-self. I love the way they look and feel and whip around. I can’t wait to see how they change and grow.