Warning: may contain very mild cursing.

How can you tell that I have a deadline? I'm cruising the web and pinning to Pinterest. Pincrastination. (Did I just invent that word?? I call shotgun on the awesome word, unless someone already invented it. Which they must have.)

Don't forget, notebooks are on sale until Sunday!

After years of pondering, I finally decided to upgrade my camera. I was reluctant, because I was so happy with my old Canon Digital Rebel, and my EFS 17-85mm lens. Such a loyal, reliable combination. 

But being an early adopter means that I've been stuck at 6.3 megapixels. And I often want to crop details out of shots to show yarn and stitches. Time for more pixels. And settled on the Canon 50D. Lots of pixels, lots of used models available on ebay. Not as fancypants as the 60D, but not as pricey. 

Wow. I mean, wow. That was one crazy road trip. Flew from Vancouver Island to Ottawa on a Wednesday. Rested and repacked Thursday. (Jet lag going east is the worst). Drove to Red Hook (one town over from Rhinebeck) Friday. Went to New York State Wool & Sheep Festival Saturday. Drove to Niagara Falls Sunday. Drove to Toronto on... actually not sure. The computer tells me it's Thursday today, so I could reverse engineer the whole thing and figure out what happened.... Then back to home-away-from-home in Ottawa yesterday, which might have been a Wednesday.

I think I'll fill in blanks over the next while as I find pictures and get through the weird brain cloud of travelling, but here are some miscellaneous highlights.

I love how enthusiastic knitters are about a bargain. You know how it is when you get together, everyone knows how many yards and grams they've got and how good of a deal they wrangled. And phew, I've been shipping a lot of books this week for the notebook sale! The shipping department (ie, the air hockey table) is covered in empty boxes and used up sheets of labels. My shipping assistant (ie, my 9-year old son) is demanding employee benefits and more coffee breaks. 

But seriously, thank you for your enthusiasm! I hope you enjoy the notebooks! I'm pretty fond of the little hot air balloon guys, and they're even sweeter in print than they are on the computer screen.

The promotion is on until the end of today if you're thinking of ordering. 

It might be all the tryptophan in the air these days, but I've got this warm fuzzy feeling about knitting, and knitters, and ravelry, and yarn. It's all so great, and it's letting me do something pretty darned fun. After school yesterday, we went to the Comox waterfront, and middle C took some great pictures of the two new sweaters that will be coming soon. Little C sat in the sun with his book and cheered us on occasionally. After, we went for artisan gelato at Benino's. (In answer to your question: passionfruit, limoncello, mint chocolate chip.) Later, in the grocery store, the music track was set on DiscoRetroFlashback, and it turns out that middle C has got a pretty mean ironic disco groove while pushing a grocery cart. It was all so idyllic, him in his fancy sneakers and skinny jeans, the Bee Gees singing just for us; the woman behind the seafood counter called out to him, "Hey, no groovin' while you're shopping!" But he just kept on dancing. 

So I was working away on a new post about slip-stitch knitting, and I noticed how comely these two were looking, draped over the sofa arm in the fall sunshine. Don't grey and green go together so well? More substantial posts coming this week, I promise.

Hint: that's Knit Picks Capra in Caviar on the left, so gorgeous to wear. And Brooklyn Tweed Loft in Tent on the right. And yes, that is the Arimono border, well spotted.

Have you checked out the new Tricksy Knitter notebooks? We're having a little too much fun with these little guys. I wanted to share the original artwork with you, and share the process a little.

Who are these cute little guys? More on that very soon. 

Remember the Ed Emberley Drawing books? If you were born in the (ehem) 70s, you probably do... Four years of university, two years of art school, and I still use Emberley when I need to draw an animal. 

If you're a freelancer or self-employed, you probably wear a lot of hats. Sometimes I envy people with firmly defined occupations: nurse, carpenter, doctor, teacher. These easily understood labels help you breeze through the awkward small talk of "What do you do for a living?" My answer to that question always starts with a deep breath and a "Well..." Your self-definition can get a little hazy, but I can say that it never gets boring.