We had our inaugural “home” bout on Saturday. A few months of intense planning, stress, sleeplessness – but it was all worth it. We had a rookie scrimmage take place first, then our bout was the “main event”. We hosted the fabulous Saskatoon Roller Derby Killa’ Bees. It’s fun to play people we ‘know’ and I feel we have a closer relationship with Saskatoon’s league because we go to their bouts, they are always so helpful with anything our league needs (knowledge, skills, refs, etc.)
In addition to a couple of tv story/interviews, we also made the cover of our local newspaper here. And a follow up story after the bout was here. The final “official” score was 337 to 281 for the Killa’ Bees. That’s actually a fairly close game in derby. We felt we gave our spectators a great game to watch and it was exciting to play.
There’s a set of photos on Shaun Savage Photography’s Facebook page here. I’m not sure if everyone can see them, you might need a Facebook account. Here are a couple, photo credit to Shaun Savage.
I assume no responsibility for Yellow 101 falling down. (I’m #00)
It can get confusing:
What’s going on here?!
One more:
going backwards
Thanks to our great sponsors, we had new jerseys and nice shiny purple helmets. I think we looked great. It was very hectic, very draining, but I feel that it went off very well. A small glitch here and there, but overall, I am so proud of our league for doing this.
Now to try and get caught up with other things that have been neglected while we were busy bout planning!
This weekend we watched a lot of derby on an internet live feed. The stress of it gave me a headache! Awesome games, but there was a nailbiter or two.
We are hard at work planning our home bout on April 27th. There’s a LOT of work that goes into it. Our previous bouts were away bouts, so we basically just showed up and played. We are learning a lot.
Some of the local media came out to a couple of our practices:
- and -
In addition to simply practicing thrice weekly (as usual) to work on strategy and fitness, we are also all putting in many hours with lining up sponsors, working on the program, getting merchandise to sell, lining up all the refs, official and volunteers that are needed to make the bout run smoothly. I’m keeping good notes and hopefully the next one will be a little smoother.
The big news for the weekend was finally … FINALLY our new couch arrived:
okay, you can recall the GH social services complaint
We had ordered this couch about five weeks ago. In anticipation of it arriving, and not wanting to have to store the couch/love seat if it was slow to sell, I had listed the couch/love seat on kijiji on a Thursday night after I got home from derby. By Saturday mid afternoon, it had been bought and trucked away. We moved two lazy boy recliners from the family room into the living room but the hounds couldn’t sit on them. They had a wee bit of a rock to them, so too unstable for their long legs.
There was much moaning and groaning and heaving of sighs in the intermittent weeks. We got a message Thursday night that the couch/sectional had arrived at the warehouse but they couldn’t deliver it until Saturday. Great – Saturday afternoon they were supposed to deliver it. We waited. Watched more derby, waited … and WAITED!! We called, got transferred to the delivery guy who had no knowledge of anything. Another phone call or two and finally they found whatever they needed to find and delivered it. It was set up by 6 pm.
So all is well in the world of the greyhounds. It is a very comfy and beautiful piece of furniture and room for everyone!
p.s. the two lazy boy recliners were listed on kijiji and sold and out of the house in three hours.
p.p.s. The Amazing Race Canada declined to engage us for their stupid race. They don’t know what they’re missing.
On Friday I packed up seven files that I had been working on for months and months. Six of them had to be submitted as a unit and some of them I had brought back from Beijing … in June last year. Wow. They had been all-consuming. If I wasn’t working on them, I was worrying and stressing about them. I am -so- glad they are out of my office now.
I haven’t had a lot of time for knitting these past months. But I did finish a few small things:
socks, finally
These are the socks that I started using the “sock inside a sock” double knitting technique. I did the dk technique for the cuff and about an inch into the leg(s). Then I put them back on double points because it was taking too much brain power to keep the two layers separate. Then I put them on two circulars and that method is quite quick and hassle free. The yarn is Sweet Georgia Tough Love in “snapdragon”. The Ravelry page is here.
I had seen a cute kid’s hat pattern on Ravelry and I had some lovely worsted weight yarn that I got on my quick weekend in Vancouver, so I upsized it and knit this:
Aviator-style hat
The Ravelry project page is here. I had finished the hat, then later added i-cord to the ear flaps. It’s a really cute hat! I can wear the flaps up or down. The yarn is Indigo Moon worsted merino and I love the tonal dye effect.
I was digging around in my office and found some lovely Malabrigo that I had bought on a trip to Tofino ?? some years ago. I cast on for a watch cap:
wide cuff watch cap
This is one of my …. I hesitate to call it “my pattern”, because it’s just variations on other hat patterns. I knit the ribbed cuff quite long so then the hat can be worn with the brim unfolded and it becomes a slouch hat, or you can fold it and it’s a “proper” watch cap. I love knitting these and I don’t know how many I’ve made!
While in Vancouver I picked up some more sock yarn. This is Sweet Georgia and the colourway is “maple”. The photo was a smart phone/camera photo with no flash, so it is showing more yellow than in real life. Still a great colourway and I like how the bands of colour are knitting up.
So other than work stressing me out and consuming my life, roller derby has been very busy, too. We had December “off” from structured practices, but the big fella and I (and assorted others) kept going three times a week to skate. January we started back with “attendance required” practices. Our big news is that we are hosting our first “home bout” (up to now we have always played away) on April 27.
The Facebook event page is here. There is so much planning and so many details that we need to work out and be on top of. My task for today is to take all the little scraps of paper and sticky notes that I have accumulated over the past couple of weeks and get organized and get our “master planning list” updated and ready for practice tomorrow.
Rufie and Ava are surviving. Barely. I bought a new sectional couch that will seat 7 people (or two people and two greyhounds in a tight squeeze). It won’t be here until about April 10th, but because I didn’t want to have to put our current couch/love seat/chair set out on the deck if it didn’t sell by the time the new couch arrived, I put it up for sale on kijiji. I thought it might take a while to sell. I listed it on a Thursday night after derby practice, and it was sold and carted away by 3 pm Saturday afternoon. We had an extra lazy boy recliner in the basement, so we moved that up into the living room, but it’s too unsteady for a scardey-hound to jump on. ::sad faces:: So the hounds come into the living room, look at the two chairs, whine about no couch and then retreat back to the king size bed.
fruitlessly looking for the furniture delivery truck
Rufie’s ears speak a language all their own.
I just sometimes don’t know the translation!
Back in better times:
so happy together … on the COUCH
Although we did manage a snuggle while we watched a movie the other night:
she grudgingly settled in
I should also add that I have decided to change my derby name. We were getting down to the deadline to order “proper” jerseys for the team and it was crunch time – keep Terri O’Scary or switch to my second choice (which was fast becoming my favourite): Cranky Busterchops. So I switched it!
And I’m amazed we’re into February already. Time needs to slow down. We were gone all day yesterday for a roller derby rules clinic in Saskatoon and today we have to go out this afternoon for derby tasks.
Work and derby continue to keep me insanely busy. I had thought after the new year things might slow down/settle a bit, but it hasn’t happened yet.
A lot of our derby work is off the track – i.e. fundraising and community events. Here is one from a weekend ago:
R U Tuff Enough – Derby Girls (and Guys) do security
We worked an amateur boxing night event to raise funds for our team. We have also been selling raffle tickets (the big fella and I need to go for 3.5 hours this afternoon to put in our time) and are in the process of planning our first HOME BOUT. So that in addition to 6 hours of practice time a week doesn’t leave me a ton of free time.
A couple of weeks ago, I made a quick weekend trip (i.e. 48 hours) to Vancouver to visit Ande and for us to work on a project together. We are auditioning to go on The Amazing Race: Canada!! We love that show and always said we’d apply for it, if they ever allowed Canadians. Well, they now are, and we are! The race will take place in May, I believe, and will take place in Canada (so not world-wide like the American version of the race). I think our country is amazing and there will be lots of interesting places and challenges.
The deadline for applications is February 28 and as I understand, it’s “don’t call us, we’ll call you” if we are interesting enough to them.
I filmed some parts of the “tape” here before I went to Vancouver, then we filmed a bunch together there. Still had time to hit up the Fluevog store and yarn store, Rollergirl.ca as well as have some nice tasty meals out. (Girls gotta eat!) No Memphis Blues BBQ this time, though.
Even if nothing comes of it, we had a hilarious time with our filming and interview ideas. Here is one of the outtakes:
Ande has a lot of editing to do. Our “interview” part alone was over 13 minutes. The total length of the video to be submitted is 3.
I had the pleasure of meeting young Master Bing. He’s pretty adorable! He went to his puppy class and graduated! (We are so proud!)
The Graduate
I understand he’ll be continuing his schooling.
He’s a real snuggler and slept with me Saturday night. Under the covers. With a lammy toy.
Der Bingle
And I was so happy to see lovely Ella doing well. She’s such a beautiful old lady. 14, soon to be 15!
Ella Fanella
As I said, we hit up a yarn store or two and I bought more yarn. I need to have more TIME to knit all my lovely yarn. I got a lot more sock yarn, and a couple of skeins of chunky and worsted. I made a hat:
Sweet Georgia Superwash Chunky in “knit social 2012″ colourway
~
this is pretty true colour reproduction
This is the “TriPeaks Hat” by Wooly Wormhead. Free pattern! I just kept knitting until I ran out of yarn. You don’t cast off at the top, you just use a crochet bind off to create the three peaks.
Super cute! I really love Sweet Georgia yarn – I have tons of the sock yarn. This ^^ is the superwash chunky. (I also have a sweater’s worth of the superwash chunky in “blackberry” ˅ that I will use soon.)
lovely
I have a pattern in mind for that and have it printed off and ready: the Oatmeal Pullover. Just need time! Actually, I’ve bought and/or downloaded a ton of really interesting patterns lately. I need to set aside knitting time, I guess, just like any other thing I want to get done.
I also have started another hat with some yarn I got in Vancouver; actually I started one hat pattern, then ripped it out in favour of another. I am still working on my socks – however, I did separate the two layers. I think it’s an awesome idea to knit them both, one inside the other, but BOY, do you have to pay attention!!
The poopers are doing fine. The winter has seemed particularly cold, so walks have been limited severely. Ava has no interest in going out if it’s much past -10
sunny, but cold walk in the park
Rufie will go out in the back yard and run amok from time to time. He’s only three, so has lots of energy to burn. We had been letting him take his soccer ball out until it conked him pretty hard in the head. It was frozen solid. Poor boy!
This is the usual state of affairs around here:
Rufie encroaches … and cockroaches!
Ava celebrated her birthday yesterday – 9 years old! She has taken to snuggling up next to me all night long, and I have to make sure her fleece blanket is tucked around her. She’s very comfortable in her leisurely life.
ha!
I’ve been taking more photos, but they usually end up on Facebook because it’s easier/quicker. Hit me up if you’re not already on my friends list.
Amazing Race Team Pose!
So what else … work still super busy. BUT I have a new assistant starting in the next week, so hopefully some of that stress and craziness will lessen. Hope so. I’m confident it will.
I haven’t had time to do any cooking or baking lately. After this next week, I hope to have time to sit down and do some planning. I am learning I must ruthlessly plan my “down” time or the time gets away from me. I hope that next weekend I will have no commitments or plans and can just stay home and relax.
I finished the Pull Me Over sweater. I did the cap sleeves and I think it turned out really nice.
I can’t believe it’s done!
“turn to the left”
side garter panel with waist shaping
~
and the back
~
pretty happy how it turned out
I started on December 5 and finished December 29. Wow, that’s a record for me these past couple of years. It was a quick knit, interesting construction. The Pull Me Over (Ravelry pattern link).
I had 80 grams of yarn left over, so the other night I decided to knit a hat with it. I’d had this pattern for a while, but never got around to trying it. The Windschief hat:
white balance is off; the yarn is really like the sweater photos.
Weird how the lighting and yarn makes my eyes look green in that photo.
crown shaping
I found a tip on one of the Rav project pages for doing the decreases: instead of a bulky k3tog, I did: k2tog, slip that stitch back to left needle, slip the stitch to the left of k2tog over the k2tog st, then move slipped stitch to right needle.
front view
~
side view
Cute pattern as well. The set up for the decrease rounds is a bit fussy. I found this on a Ravelry project page:
Knit x stitches, where x is 25% of the total stitches minus 1. Place marker. Knit y stitches, where y is 25% of the total stitches. Place marker. Continue in pattern to end of round, and move end-of-round marker one stitch to the right when complete. You should now have an equal number of stitches between each marker.
That worked well. Here’s the Ravelry pattern page for Windschief.
While it is a cool technique and eliminates second sock syndrome, you really have to pay attention because if you mix up your yarn, you’ll end up knitting the two sock sides together. After I worked about an inch of the leg after the ribbing, I decided to put them on separate needles. Knitting is my stress reliever (as well as derby!), and doing this technique was not relaxing!
Today my new skates came in the mail:
Riedell 495s with Revenge plates
They are a narrower boot than my first skates. I’ll break them in (wear my old ones for half the practice) and they’ll feel like old friends in no time. I still need to tape up the toes to protect them.
We had our friends from further north stop by last night. We had a fabulous steak supper then they stayed over with us.
Unfortunately, they lost their lovely girl, Elsa, a couple of weeks ago to heart disease. She was almost 12. So Ruby is back to being a single child:
beautiful Ruby!
This was her first meeting with Rufus. After a couple of curled lips when he was too rambunctious, they settled in nicely.
of course the Princess observes from her throne on high
Greyhounds are just happier when they’re with other greys.
Ruby discovered the two electric blankets turned to “high” underneath the comfy quilt.
Oh, Rufie:
Rufie and his two ‘cougars’
~
I’m pretty sure this was after supper, when the steak leftovers were hand delivered
Ha – our friends:
they understand; they’re greyhound peeps
Ruby was unusually tolerant of Rufie.
OCD Rufie prefers the left side of the dog beds and managed to wiggle his way onto it.
~
reasonably content
Some stuffy shenanigans this morning:
Rufie’s giving me the “momma?! why are you allowing this” look
(I was sitting off to his right and not taking this photo)
9 stuffies on a greyhound
Our friends had another 2.5 hour drive ahead of them, so they left about 11 this morning.
are they gone?
Family time the other night:
a little squished on the couch. They were more comfy when the big fella moved.
And some artsy fartsy:
pensive Ava, perhaps contemplating the year of 2012?
Even though it’s New Year’s Eve, we are not going out. We usually don’t, it’s not a big deal for us. I am going to spend some time trying to figure out how to get more sleep, plan our meals and eating better and still meet my work and derby commitments. And perhaps have some knitting time each day. Oh, I finished knitting the Pull Me Over and have to weave in the ends. Maybe a photo tomorrow!
We had December off from structured derby practices, but we still had our skating times at the rink. We managed to get out there a few times a week, working around our other derby obligations (fundraising and events). This was taken Thursday night:
O’Scary takes out Overkill Bill – ha!
It’s really dark in there, so not the greatest pic – my phone usually takes great pics. Those capris are DerbySkinz and the colour is “flat plum”; however, it’s pretty shiny and glittery. Our helmet covers are from the same company and we have a certain shade of purple (flat purple). When I ordered, they were out of the purple and suggested the plum. It’s still way shiny-ier than I am comfortable with! :-$
We spent a quiet Christmas, very low key. We established our own tradition of going out for Chinese food Christmas Eve, then having a quiet night in. Lovely. The big fella and the hounds got me a fab new Roots bag for my gift. I got him a PS3 game system that he’s been wanting for a long time, but would never buy. Bonus is the Netflix capability, so we can stream movies and tv shows. I graciously allowed him to put it in the living room upstairs instead of down in the cold family room. :-)
Earlier in the week, the big fella brought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers:
something in this bouquet is making me sneeze!
Work has been particularly challenging the past six weeks or so, and last week was exceptionally crappy. What a nice treat.
I have been working on my “Pull Me Over” sweater and am working on the sleeves right now.
taken a few days ago; the body is now complete
That’s a nice shot of the colour of the yarn. I have one skein left for the sleeves and I know I won’t be able to make long sleeves. I was thinking of a 3/4 or bracelet length sleeve, but I have been looking on the pattern page on Ravelry and the cap sleeve version is really cute, too.
This is a really easy knit, but the pattern does have some gaps for assumptions. In particular, the instructions for the short rows for the sleeves are lacking. It mentions that the designer used German short rows, but doesn’t give complete instructions for them. If I’m paying for a pattern, I don’t think I should have to look all over the internet to find a specific instruction that should be contained in the pattern. There were other little things in the pattern that also bug me and might mess up a less experienced knitter.
I have some updated photos of the battle of the couch for Rufus, but they are on Facebook and I haven’t had time to upload to flickr. You can see the album here. That’s supposed to be a public link. Oh wait – that will only work if you have a Facebook account.
well, he “seems” comfortable
I will be glad to wrap the year, start my new planner notebook for 2013 and get back to regular, hard hitting and grueling derby practices. I need to find more time to eat better and get more sleep. Gah. It’s always the same.
(I’m #00)
