bellydance conference love.

The International Bellydance Conference of Canada was sooooo amazing! I had soooo much fun! It has renewed my love for the dance and I feel very inspired. Yesterday, at the closing party at Myth, I felt effervescent!

Here we are practicing before our performance on Thursday:

Amy Sigil of Unmata showing off her beautiful tattoo (she is super nice!):

The dance floor at Myth at the closing party:

Tito dancing on a dumbek:

And here is Tito, Yasmina Ramzy (artistic director of the conference), and Aida Nour:
The highlight of the weekend was watching Tito and Aida dance together!

I am only just starting to calm down from all the excitement. Everyone at the conference was friendly and the big name dancers were so gracious and gladly posed for photos. (most of my pics are on Facebook)

Now it's back to real life - laundry, cleaning and grocery shopping! Oh yes, and work tomorrow.

bellydance costumes.

I have been busy getting ready for my troupe's performance at the International Bellydance Conference of Canada. We have been rehearsing like mad (4 times in 5 days! do I have any sort of life outside of dance?!) and it's coming together nicely, but I'm still super nervous. This is only our second performance as a troupe, and it's a tough audience! These people know their bellydance! Eeeeek!!! We will be great. We will have fun. And we'll be wearing my handiwork....



I made some fringe tops and belts by crocheting a base of black worsted weight yarn and tying on various novelty yarns. My favourite colour combo is above. Here's the whole set:

The belts are the same colour combos, but the fringe pieces are all different lengths. I still have to make the orange & blue belts - that's my project for tonight. And it was requested that I make some sort of arm bands too.

It's so amazing that the troupe is going to be wearing my work!!! Although it is a little stressful to have to make the stuff on short notice, that is far outweighed by the awesomeness that we will be wearing costumes that I made, on stage, at the bellydance conference! Holy crap.

I'm not freaking out. No sirree.

OK maybe a little bit.

5 things that make me happy.

1. sunshine
2. a good yoga class
3. fringe
4. little blue flowers
5. watching sailboats on the lake
   

Inspired by My knitting has gone to the dogs.

condos through glass.


I took this photo through the window at Steam Whistle Brewing while I was waiting for T-man.

bat your eyelashes.

I have big news, important news, but not especially interesting news: I have been laid off by the Mothership. Not surprising, since I had applied for the voluntary layoff program, but the Mothership is cutting my whole department. The internet department. When they keep talking about how important the website is to the business. Anyway, I'm happy to be getting out of there with my severance package and moving on to bigger and better and more creative endeavours.

Enough of the work stuff.

Here's a new project I started and finished last weekend...

Sorry about the blurry photo and messy background. It is a crochet shrug out of eyelash yarn from the stash. I don't love it, but I think it will do for Funkabelly this Saturday - it has a bird theme and this seems sort of feathery. I've received some compliments on it from fellow Ravelers, which is very flattering. Thanks!

Pattern: I made it up as I went along
Yarn: Patons Cha Cha in black
Needle: 10 mm crochet hook

knit pics!

I promised to post on the weekend, and now it's Monday, but that's OK right? Better late than never.

I am on the gusset decreases. On Friday, after I added the post below, I picked up the gusset stitches fairly successfully, but on one sock the heel and gusset stitches were all together and on the other sock, half the gusset stitches were on the heel needle and the other half on the instep needle. Not a crisis - there were no lost stitches, the socks were not ruined, I didn't have to frog - but I decided to skip yoga class on Sunday morning and transfer the stitches so all gusset stitches were on the heel needle. Knitting trumps yoga. (and it was a pain in the arse to transfer the stitches! slip stitches to other needle, then move to spare needle, then back to first needle, oops I need to knit some of those stitches so move them back. yeesh)

Anyway, the socks are all sorted, they look good, I'm happy. Only the foot to go!

p.s. I have another gifty project on the go that I would love to post about, but I can't in case the recipient sees the blog. So go to Ravelry to check it out.

the gusset can be a real heel.

I have knit the heel flap and turned the heels on the Two Socks on Two Circulars. Turning the heels required some patience - first, I didn't realize that I had to do one sock at a time; second, I forgot that I had cast on fewer stitches and didn't adjust the pattern accordingly. There was a bit of tinking back and trying again before I got it.

Now I'm stuck at picking up the gusset stitches... last night I had no idea which needle to use to do this. Well, actually, the pattern does say to pick up the gusset stitches with needle 1 then transfer half the heel stitches to needle 2, but does that include the gusset? What about the other side of this sock? and the other sock? Wha? The pattern doesn't have a lot of instructions on two circ technique, so I turned to the Internet to find my answers: again, I should have been doing one sock at a time and now I might have to juggle the stitches on the two needles (or rather, 4 needles and 2 cables); I can keep the gusset stitches on the same needle as the heels; plus I saw some examples which makes it easier to visualize what it is I'm supposed to do.

Now to get knitting! Pics will be posted this weekend.