Portrait of author's psyche circa 6:30 a.m. (CST)

Sonofabirchingmuffinsuckinghoarsesheet. Unquote. That’s the PG Rated assessment of how I’m actually feeling au moment. My chi and I haven’t been on speaking terms since Wednesday; it’s abandoned me for someone more centered and at peace, like bunny-boiler Kim Jong Il. My inner child was taken from me and put into foster care for protracted neglect. It’s not that I’m depressed or anything, but how farking frustrating is it when you don’t have time for the things that keep your mental-health dial hovering somewhere between Euphoric and Tower Sniper, and redlining into Future Unabomber?! Alle hunderttausend heulenden und jaulenden Hoellenhunde!

Onwards.

The Friday Funny of the week is brought to you by Shreddies. Seriously. Knitted by Nanas was a very successful ad campaign in the UK and this longer two-part advert Chronicles of Nana: Dawn of the Robots and Chronicles of Nana Part II: Camp Shreddies is absurd and sublime.

RAVS doctors at work in the north

PSA

Take out your cheque book, find a pen and write a cheque to the Remote Area Veterinary Services Team. Please, I beg you to do this. The RAVS team is a mobile vet hospital offering free spay/neuter/vaccination clinics in the north. They do this to keep the dog population down. They do it when all three vets and five volunteer techs can scrounge up $5,000 or so, ’cause that’s what a trip costs.  Host communities pay nothing for the service, but do have to cough up for shelter and food for the team. Here’s why you want to support RAVS:
Fact: 10-year-old Keith Iron of Canoe Lake First Nation was killed last weekend by dogs running at-large. In September, a 6-year-old Ile a La Cross boy needed 60 stitches to sew his face back on and a Wollaston Lake toddler was seriously injured in July 2009 injured after he was attacked by two dogs. In July 2007, Dawson Carriere, age 5, was killed by dogs on the Cumberland House First Nation. I could go on and on but I won’t; you get the picture.
Fact: Dogs running at large are one of the top environmental threats to health and safety in the north. RAVS isn’t about pet care; ultimately, it’s about people care. Children on reserve are 180 times more likely to be killed by a dog than children living off reserve. (Read the full study here)
Fact: There are no vets or vet services north of Meadow Lake and, access aside, few can spare the expense; groceries trump pet care every time.

Don’t blame the parents, the people, or the leadership. Blame the fact that there’s no access and rampant poverty. Now isn’t a time for blame anyway. Now is a time to help, heal, and find a way to prevent this from happening.

RAVS is scrambling to set up a foundation, get some fundraising underway and then get the clinic on the road but they need your help. Now. RAVS makes a difference, but it needs to do even more. Please, please help. Write to me at morganbeaudry (at-thingie) gmail (dot) com for how to give.

Good lord, another week in the bag. As of Wednesday, we could use our car again no thanks to all the asshats who’ve been clearing their driveways by dumping their snow in the streets. My offer to the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee still stands; hell, I’ll even through in a Tims if you take all of our snow by the end of next week. Time’s a wastin’ and it ain’t fixin’ to snow in Cypress Provincial Park anytime soon.

Ann Shayne and Kay Gardiner, authors of the Best Knitting Books ever, Mason Dixon Knitting Vols  1 and 2, won’t be headlining at the Opry any time soon, but this little nugget is my knitting humour find of the week. Share and enjoy.

This morning finds me at the Suzuki dealership getting an oil change, and that’s where I’ve writing this post from. They just set up a little Internet cafe in the customer service area and it’s just dandy. And better  yet, it’s free. So is the somewhat watered down coffee; that it’s free is its only redeeming characteristic. It takes like it was filtered through a jock-strap. Oh, and Suzuki? I coughed up 20-large for my toaster-oven sized car; you can spring for some of those little milk thingies. That powdered whatever you put out is completely ghetto.

Ed and his bodacious snow pile.

Well la dee da…it just wouldn’t be a true-blue Saskatchewan winter without at least one ‘weather event’, which is what the fancy-pants wet-coast Weather Network hosts call ‘Blizzards’.

It started out, as disasters often do, most pleasantly; I rather enjoyed seeing big, impossibly white flakes alighting most picturesquely on branch and bough outside my window as I wrote my Friday post. I enjoyed it less 8 hours later. By 2 a.m. Saturday it was coming down in earnest and by Sunday it was a flurry of biblical proportion.

My lovely Ed shoveled four times this weekend, and raked the roof too* but it was all for naught by this morning however. Environment Canada can kiss my sweet, frost-bitten ass for the overnight forecast of ‘+/- 1 cm of snow overnight’. Snow-blow me, fellas – I know what 8 inches looks like and, Billy-Bob-be-damned, there it was in the driveway at 6 a.m. today, 3/4 of the way up my sexy black Sorels.

By the grace of God and my brother-in-law’s bad-ass old-timey jacked-up Jeep alone, Ed and I reported to work today. We’re the only people on our street that even tried. Actually five people tried and failed: two are stuck at the north exit of our crescent, two at the south, and one prize asshat reversed straight out of his drive into the street, got stuck like a T-Rex in a tarpit then got out and scampered back into his house, leaving the car there – presumably – until thaw. What. A. Douchebag.

But does not the good book** say that ‘All Suffering is Redemptive’? The Vancouver Orgainzing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, I hear, has got more troubles than a knocked-up nun. They’ve got rampant debt, bogus Chinese-made Cowichan sweaters, a ho-hum line-up of althetes (and the second-coming of Josee Chouinard [who falls twice during the Freeskate. See her wipe out at the 40 sec, and then 4 min, 9 sec mark] Joanie Rochette, oh goody) and now, the venue at Whistler/Blackcomb is in foreclosure and as if that didn’t suck enough, they’re a teeny bit short on snow.

VANOC! Have I got a deal for you! For sale: Fresh, white snow. Light consistency, ideal for downhill/crosscountry/freestyle skiing. Large lot (16 million tons) goes as-is, buyer must pick up. Limited time offer.

*No, I’m not f-ing with you; we do rake our roofs here but for snow, not leaves (as if!). Wind can cause snow to build up on the roof and when a 6 x 8 ft drift forms over your front door an avalanche is not a matter of if but a matter of when.  We usually leave these drifts with the hopes they’ll cascade onto those plucky evangelicals who keep coming to the door, but since we were expecting friends, and since nothing gets an evening off on an awkward note more than having to hire rescue dogs to dig out your dinner party, we raked the worst of it down.

** The Steve Guttenberg Bible.

I gotta say folks that I’m totally sorry for the lack of posts lately. I’m just now emerging from a happy narcotic fog brought on in no small part by another round of “Doctor? I can’t feel my legs; is that normal after a chiropractic adjustment?” back pain fun.

I’m adding this walk-in clinic doc to my Christmas card list; I asked her for the good stuff — wink-wink, nudge-nudge say n’ more! — and she prescribed something I’m certain is for veterinary use only; it would fell a Clydesdale and its effect on my decided less horsey self is profound and not inconsiderably groovy I might add.

As of yesterday, I’m fine, back in the office (although medded considerably past caring, thanks very much), and better yet, back to spinning and knitting. This weekend, as God is my witness, I’ll be filming a silk spinning tutorial for your viewing pleasure. Apologies to all: Patterns I’ve been meaning to write down, vids I wanted to get done, all these things had to take a back-seat for a couple of weeks.

Friday fun stuff
Friday’s are fun days here at the blog. This nugget was too fun not to share. I give you Creepy Weatherman Stalker Guy. Bonus: He’s from Saskatoon.

Because five wasn’t enough
My long-suffering husband Ed, informed me that he was expecting a UPS package this week. Contents? A new remote control. Because we really need six apparently. Ed won’t be happy until the he can run the entire house remotely from an iPhone in Equador. We now officially have more electronics – and the means to control them — than Mission Control in Houston. It could be worse; he could develop a fetish for collecting, say, refrigerators. Oh wait, we have two of those…never mind. This from the person with more yarn than Michaels. (actually, Ev is set to get some of my stash. Thanks for taking it, Ev. Love to your girl from me!)

Secret surprise
A chum dropped something in my mail box this week, a throughful gift from abroad. To my kind benefactor, a thousand blessings of love and thanks are on their way, not to mention a long-promised much overdue batch of something fresh off the spindle.

Hey all!

My goal: Knit 'em all -- each and every pattern -- before 2011.

Welcome to 2010 and all the knitting goodness that the next 361 days will bring. For my part, I’m embarking on a year-long knitting project.  My goal is to knit every pattern in my new fav book, Knitting New Scarves. Think of this blog henceforce as Julie and Julia without the tantrums, disrespect to one’s betters, infidelity, deceit and self-agrandisation of Ms. Powells ravings, pre or post movie fame.

Also, I’ve made a few New Year’s Resolutions. Hell, I may even keep a few of them.

1. I will knit in public without shame where ever and whenever circumstances permit.
2. I will reduce my stash. Honest.
3. I will knit one project per month for charity, and I will additionally knit 12 hats for IDF soldiers using this pattern.
4. I will. Finish. Every. Project. And no starting new projects until previous ones are done. And all the ends weaved in. And blocked, shaped etc.
5. I resolve to have at least three energy-drink fuelled all-nighters spent spinning, knitting and obsessively watching any given season of The West Wing for the 37th time (at least!) during one long marathon knit-in.
6. I resolve to lose 40 pounds. Of yarn. By March.
7. I will stop being afraid of the Kitchener stitch.
8. I will learn to knit on three or more needles.
9. I will knit Ed a sweater.
10. I will make sure all my original patterns go through test knits before, and not after, they are posted to the site.

If you’ve made any New Year’s Resolutions I’d love to hear them. Especially if they’re fibre related.