Tricoquine in the land of the stinky cheese

Knitta what?

On my way to work last week, I noticed this sight in the heart of bo-bo land, on the corner of the rue Oberkampf and the avenue Parmentier. What was it? A funky sock atop a cross-walk signal? A random act of knitting?  I shrugged it off in that blasé Parisian way that all foreigners must adopt to fit-in and continued on my way.

Over my morning coffee, I scanned my bloglines feeds and came across this picture on JuJu's blog. It looked like it had a similar street ethos as the creation on my corner - could it have been the work of the same masterminds? JuJu identified hers as the work of the Knitta Please gang who came to Paris on the occasion of Bergère de France's 60th anniversary.* Read more about it in Les echos (sorry French only). Sounds kind of commercial for a soi-disant gang of knitters but is very cool and creative in its ésprit none-the-less. This is not your grandma's knitting...

When I showed Ribbit the knitted graffiti on the way home from dinner the other night - he just looked at me and said "you crazy Americans".

Lexicon:

soi-disant (adj): so-called (although apparently this adjective is not recommended by grammar purists who instead insist that one uses prétendu)

*Bergère de France, for those who don't know, is one of the main purveyors of cheap acrylic yarn in France. 

Getting creative

It has been great fun to take in all of the feverish Christmas crafting in the blogosphere - knitting, quilting, sofies every piece more gorgeous than the next.

There is no Christmas crafting at our house, no Christmas at all for that matter, but that doesn't mean that the frigid temperatures don't awake our desire for knitted lovelies. My work schedule has slackened somewhat over the last few weeks and now that we are officially moved into our apartment, albeit still sans drawer pulls, I can devote more time to the gentle arts.

Last weekend I cast-off the Charlotte's Web shawl I sailed through at the beginning of Fall.

I am very pleased with the marriage of the different colors as I made a real effort to avoid the same color families but if you look closely, you'll see that from one skein to the next the second skein picks up on colors from the first and segways into the colors for the next.

I opted out of the cowboy fringe border and decided to play it simple. One of these days I'll get around to blocking it. Now that we no longer have carpeting, blocking something this big is quite a challenge since I'm not allowed to put pins in the mattress.  I have also been itching to get my hands on these blocking wires but in these dire times of mortgages and holiday presents, I can hardly justify their hefty price (and she doesn't seem to offer international shipping).

Renovating Part V: Ta-dah!

The counters are in! We still have no drawer pulls but at least we have a shiny work top!

Don't you think the counters look like a starry night sky?

Cool features:

• built in soap dispenser - key for an open kitchen. No messy bottles hanging around
• grooves in the granite for draining dishes (mostly pots too big to fit in the dishwasher)

Renovating Part IV: From the corners of my house

Boxes have been emptied and deposited into the recycle bin, floors have been swept, walls washed, mirrors polished...which can mean nothing other than -- we're home!

BEFORE

AFTER

The counter tops have not yet been installed, which means we are also missing our sinks and we must wash the dishes in the bathtub (very practical, indeed) and Vogica still has not come through with the drawer pulls or the baseboards but we used the oven for the first time last night and it is like driving a Ferrari compared to our former oven.

We left our old rented apartment without remorse, except perhaps for the lovely, spacious balcony which looked out onto a tree and flower-filled courtyard and the well-stocked Monoprix grocery store down the street. Nevertheless, I was happy to leave behind my piano-playing upstairs neighbor, the homeless guy who had colonized the sidewalk next to the Franprix (he had amassed so much stuff that a visitor to the apartment asked us "what's up with the brocante at the beginning of the street?"), the neighbor who stole my bike from the interior courtyard of our building, and the endless piles of merde and other trash on the sidewalk.

Our new home is just so great (*sighs*). We live on a tree-lined, albeit noisy boulevard, the metro station is sparkling clean, and the shops, restaurants and bars of the rue Oberkampf are in walking distance, including a fantastic bookstore and a heavenly flower shop.

Moving into a new place is not only having a new space of your own, but it means a different trajet to work in the morning, new smells (I could do without the smell of my neighbor's wet dog in the hallway, however), and new sounds - the avenue, the pitter patter of my upstairs neighbor on the hardwood floors, and even the rain sounds different here - it makes little bingy-plingy sounds as it bounces off our 150-year old window panes.

Lexicon:

brocante (f): a second-hand store for furniture and knick-knacks

merde (f): literally, shit

trajet (m): route, as in my route to work