Ariadne Knits!

I was so happy to visit the new yarn shop in Montreal last week. For a major city, we were lacking in yarn shops for a little while. Now we have three! The owners of Ariadne are really friendly women. I went over with Bridget and took some photos. It's a very cozy place with couches and a fireplace (a great Canadian must this time of year), lots of colorful yarn, good music in the background and easy conversations. I can't wait to start going to their knit nights. I had to miss their first one this week because of longer than expected work hours. But it's every other thursday (starting Dec.13). Check out their site for more info. I heard that they even had a male knitter this week! How exotic! They're also having a christmas drive this weekend so take look at their blog for more info.

I will try to have the time to stop by the Hot Cakes Craft Bazaar (5039 St.Dominique ) this weekend to fill up on some crafty stocking stuffers. For any montrealers that are interested, it's from Dec.14(12-8 pm), 15th (11-6 pm), 16th (11-5 pm). I'm really hoping to make it.

Can't blog and knit all at once... but driving...

I feel bad that I haven't had any time to blog. I've had a very busy week. I'm trying to get all my Christmas knitting done and I just started working six days a week. I'm designing a showroom for a home decorating company and this is the period that they are in their major rush to prepare for a big open house they have in January. On top of it, I have to drive down to Ontario next thursday for 6 days to visit Andreas' family for Christmas and then rush back for the 27th to prepare a christmas dinner that night with my family. I'm supposed to go to work the next day, but who knows if I'll be able to make it. I'll probably be reading all my knitting books! That's right, I've been keeping an Amazon Wishlist for the past year and I sent it out to my sister and my boyfriend last week. All I know is that they've been asking me about knitting books recently and I feel like I can expect at least a couple of them in my lap under a pile of wrapping paper. So maybe I might be a bit too busy to go into work the next day. Those are the advantages and disadvantages of being my own boss.

I've got a few things that I'm rushing to finish before we leave. I was trying to get all of Andreas' sister's gifts done in a rush to send to Scotland in time, but she's decided to come home for Christmas instead so it does buy me a bit of time. I'm actually thinking about paying much more to take the train, instead of driving, so that I can complete all my gifts. It is a 10 hour drive and everyone knows that you can't knit and drive... Actually, I found out this week that you kinda can. I was stuck in traffic after work and I guess that when I sit around not doing anything with my hands, I automatically dig my hands into my purse and pull out my needles and yarn. Well, I started doing it while I was driving, and it worked! But I stopped once the traffic started moving faster. Is that legal? Honestly, it was more dangerous to drive and take this photograph at the same time.

Anyway, here are some updates on my Christmas knitting. Since I had knit 5 "Fuzzy Feet"slippers (that's only two pairs and 1 extra that was the wrong size), I was pretty tired of doing so.
So when I found these slippers in CRAFT magazine, I thought that it would be easier to just knit garter stitch squares, sew them together and felt them. But this is proving to take longer than lots of other complicated things that I've knit. How is this possible? The only conclusion that I could come to is that I only knit 19 stitches and the time that it takes me to turn it around is really adding up! I don't know what else it could be, but they're taking way too long to knit up. I guess that my knitting time is very limited these days. I've knit 6 out of 8 squares from the second slipper. Almost done!


I finished one handle from the " Everlasting Bagstopper". I found the pattern for the handle on the Purl Bee website. That is a beautiful site. Anyway, I knit mine a bit too long based on Andreas' advice, but when I filled it up with stuff, they really stretched out. So be careful if you knit these up, follow the pattern advice.

I still have a pair of mits to cast on and knit, a sock and a half for my grandma, the second handle on the bag and a giant felting spree of slippers! Good thing that my family is only celebrating on the 27th. It bought me some time. I'm already dreaming about what I'm gonna knit for myself after Christmas. Please feel free to leave me comments about how all your christmas knitting is going too!

The shoot's done...until May!

I'm quite happy with the shoot this weekend. I did manage to get some knitting done on them. The rooms we shot in were so small that I had no choice but to sit in the next room while the camera was rolling, so the sound guy couldn't pick up the sound of my needles. I got a few Christmas presents done. I'll post those up very soon. For now, here are a few pictures of the actual film.


Friday started off as a cold snowy night and regrettably the DOP and I had decided that we would love to shoot the whole diner scene from the outside. It looked nice but it was freezing! In this scene, the couple is really not getting along. They're having a very passive aggressive conversation over pogs and hamburgers. We thought that it would be nice to have the seperation of the glass between the audience and characters. The snow was falling and we caught some beautiful light reflections from cars on the windows.
Last year, my grandmother was throwing out a paint-by-number painting that my grandfather had made in the '70s. It's a boat caught in a storm, pretty ugly. I grabbed it (just in case) I've managed to put it on a few sets that are too bland. This set specifically was lacking a bit of colour, so I threw it in. Try to catch it in the photos.






The next location was a very small bathroom that could barely fit the actor and the camera. But I really loved the tiling in the washroom.










I did manage to get some knitting done on this one!

The last day was in the male charcter's kitchen. The time of day is supposed to be late at night, but the DOP placed these very white diffused lights in the windows. I'm not sure what that will look like on screen.

The hardest part about shooting in a kitchen/living room is the fact that people sit on the couch and move all the pillows around or eat the fruit that I bought as props to sit on the counter in his kitchen. People are too comfortable in these settings.

It's all over for now. We'll see what happens with the rest of the shoot in May. It might not show, but it's a hard job. There's so much preperation before the shoot. Then the actual day of, you're there before anyone because they can't work until you're done setting up. You're always last to leave because you can't start taking your set down until after the lights come down (making my days add up between 10 -16 hour days). Also, I end up cleaning the mess left behind by the crew. When we're shooting in people's homes, sometimes the rest of the crew goes to hang out in different rooms, they move things, read their books, sleep on their beds and leave their garbage everywhere. I'm always the one who has to meet with the homeowners and negotiate the use of their places. So when I leave, I need to clean everything and try to remember if things were moved by us or them, and make beds (really not something in my job description). I always have people phonening me weeks later asking me where their remote control went or who broke a vase. It's really not very respectful of people, but I'm too busy to be the one to manage that while I'm on set.

I wish that I could just get paid to knit and watch films all day. There has to be a job that falls under that description.