My jouranl is friends only for the moment, simply because I am a mom. I may post about my son here, and I don't really need to whole world to see it. Unless I choose, of course.

I'm always open to meeting new people, so don't be afraid to say hi!

If any of my interests get your attention, feel free to add me (just don't forget to comment, so I know you are there!)and I will add you back. Simple, eh?

I think I may have finally beaten my old enemy....the french knitting instruction!!

Ok, maybe not beaten it totally yet, but I think I understand most of it and will now try to complete at least one thing following a french pattern.

English terms I get, and the ones that are new are easy to look up.  But when I came across 'tric.1 m. end. et 1 m. env. sur ch. m. ' I almost cried.  Took me about an hour of internet hunting to figure out they were talking about the moss stitch.

Stupid abreveations.

And I had thought that ' rgs end. m. end., rgs env. m. env' was bad.  (btw...that is simply stockinette stitch, for those of you in the know  ;)  )

I don't know why I still even bother with buses in Geneva!!  It would just be easier, sure longer and I would be more tired, but it would be easier to just walk every where.

As I saw the bus coming, I had to swear out loud.  It was a bus with stairs.  I already knew that no one would even bother thinking to try and help me get on the bus with the stroller (the buses here, strollers can only get on in the middle, not like Ottawa.  No ramps either.  Just stairs with a nice big bar in the middle.).  And I was right.  Not one butt moved to help.

But, I am sort of a pro now, so I already had Léo out and ready to go up himself.  Then I try and squeeze up the narrow stairs with the stroller.  Ok, didn't fall today.  Not bad so far.  Then I look around for a seat for Léo and myself.  Léo is now a 'big boy' and doesn't want to sit on my lap, he needs to sit in his own seat.  Normally not too big a deal.  But today, the city was being anti-social.  Léo had his seat, and my choice was to sit behind him or stand beside him.  Silly of me to think people might understand that my son would want to sit near me (or at least me beside him).

I should be used to this by now, I know that.  I mean, there I was at 8 months pregnant and I would end up sitting on the floor because no one would want to offer me their spot.  And I'm not just talking about the teenagers, but even the 30-40 year olds.  There is just such an 'everyone for themselves' attitude here that it is almost sickening.

I've actually heard people laugh as I fall, trying to get the stroller (with my sleeping baby) up the stairs!!

Thanks loved , I can't beleive I never put these up before!!

Well, not really all of it, as I have to wait till I clean up a bit before I start taking pictures of the inside, but these are a few shots of what you can see from where I am.

( Peek A Boo )

My next foray into the world of knitting is about to go public!  (Not as big a deal as I just made that sound, but hey, someone has to exaggerate, right?)

After my success and joy in creating my son's scarf, I had to keep going.  Spent about an hour online trying to find a decent pattern for childrens slippers.  Not as easy as I thought it would be.  All the patterns looked hard (either to understand or simply to do) but in the end I found one!  I was actually quite happy the one I did find, too, as it seems to be the same one that my grand mother used, so it kind of brought back the memories, and I thought making 'grandmas' slippers would make her proud.

Another adventure to get some wool.  I needed two colors, but had no clue.  After a thirty minute bus ride, I just couldn't be bothered, so I told Léo to just pick the two that he liked best.  Not my best idea ever, but they seemed to work out alright (I'm not telling you what he picked, you will have to click the cut and see for yourself!) 

They were super easy and super fast to do!!  If anyone ever wants a good foot warmer pattern , this is one to try!!  I was able to do one slipper in a single afternoon...and for it being only my second knitting project, I was impressed.

So, got one done, and all sown up and ready to try on...and, no surprise, it was too small!  My son had big feet to begin with, and I have a thing where I always seen to knit very tightly.  Very.  So, my knitted child's slipper was too small for my 2 1/2 year old!  Oh well, put it aside for another child and started on a larger size.

( Fuzzy feet all full fo color! )My second attempt at the slippers worked out perfectly!!  They fit him, they are soft, warm and even he loves them.  Thinking this summer I will have to make some for myself (different colors, of course!).  But, I will just have to wait and see about that one.  Still have so many urges for sweaters and blankets and wash cloths, and bunnies and just about anything out there to try and make.

 One day, in the craft area of a store, far far away...oh wait.  It's only like a 20 minute bus ride from here.  Ok.  So in a store not so far away, I feel in love.  

It was really love at first sight.  I knew from the first moment that I just had to.

But as I was sitting there on the floor, staring, my son running loose and tearing things off the shelves, I could not think of what to do with it.  And then it hit me.  A scarf.  By the way, I'm talking about wool.  Red, orange and brown fluffy wool.  It was the softest, cutest wool ever!  

I didn't have a clue how to knit yet, so I grabbed my new wool, and picked out some knitting needles to go with them.  Which ones did I need?  No idea.  I went with the pair sitting the middle.

After fumbling around the internet for a bit, I happened to bump into the most amazing poster on YouTube. She has videos of just about everything you could come across in knitting.  *sigh*  My new best friend.  

It took me about a week to figure it all out and actually do it, but I did.  It really was a lot easier that I thought it would be at first.  Well, at least once I understood what I was doing.  And it didn't take very long, because Léo only let me use two balls of wool, when I wanted to use three and make it longer.  He just had to have it 'now'.  I'm happy he likes it that much...but I guess as long as it's under his coat and no one sees it's too short, it will be alright.

And then i was hooked.  Scarves, slippers, hats, sweaters....it's just all so much fun and easy and full-filling and wonderful!  

( The thing that started it all! )

And now that summer is here, I can't wait to sit outside, enjoy the sun, while getting some wonderful sweaters ready for us for next winter!!  Yay for old lady activities!!!  :D

Bored...so grabbed this from kawanee

 The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Just to let people know, that Fabiano and I have started a new LJ!

f_n_dm

Go ahead, and sheck it out!  It's a journal all about the baby.  I'm still working on it, and filling it in, but it should be interesting!  Make it a new friend if you want to!  :)

I found a few more pics...and thought I'd stick them up here before I head out.  No more pretty places...just me.  Sort of....