Burrito West Blog

Sometimes when I'm reading the news online I make the terrible mistake of reading some of the comments on an article. Then I get depressed and despair for humanity. But to counteract bad internet experiences like that there are other, better ones.

For example.

There's this crochet project I've had my eye on for a while. It's actually the reason I learned to crochet. I have been keeping an eye out for the right yarn for this project for a year or two now and I finally found it over the summer! The perfect yarn - 50% bamboo, 50% microfibre - soft and shiny and just right. Except I only have 6 balls of it and I figure I need 12 to do a nice sized blanket. And the store doesn't have any more. It's kind of a discontinued German yarn. Can't find it online anywhere. Tried ordering it from a German shop online but they refunded my money and said they were sold out, so I really literally can't find it anywhere.

My last hope was to find someone with it in their yarn pile who would sell it to me. I contacted one person through Ravelry (a knitting/crochet website) but they wanted to keep theirs (they had 10 balls too!!), which is totally fair, as this yarn is awesome. There was only 1 other person -I contacted her and she didn't need it so she offered to put it in the mail and said I should make a donation to a charity instead of paying her.

It's wonderful online experiences like that that restore my faith in humanity. Random acts of generosity and niceness. I need to do more random acts of generosity and niceness myself.

Also - yay, yarn!

The 5 week salsa course Peter and took ended last week so this week we decided to go out to a salsa club to see if we could hold our own yet. This meant we had to peel ourselves off our couch on a Friday night and go out into the world.

We went to the Polish Hall which has 2 floors of salsa on Friday nights. We arrived as they were finishing the complimentary lesson - it was reassuring to see a ton of people there for the lesson, meant there were lots of relatively new salseros, which made it less intimidating. The night started off okay - but as it got more and more crowded, it just started to be annoying. Not enough space to do much, constantly getting slammed by other dancers. And we're used to dancing 6 different dances - if you go out ballroom dancing, you'll be doing foxtrot, tango, waltz, swing, chacha, rhumba - so I found it kind of boring to be doing 90% salsa with the occasional bachatta and very rare chacha. (Also, I hate bachatta - witness the terribleness.)

We were just about to leave when we saw people going downstairs (we had been told the downstairs wouldn't be open that night). We decided to check it out. It was cool and refreshing and uncrowded and we sat and watched people dancing for a bit. I liked the music better and it was neat to see guys dancing on their own - as though there were there to dance rather than skeeve on ladies. Cuban salsa is different from the salsa we've learned, so we were just watching. This one guy with crazy moves asked me to dance - that was an adventure, but it went well! When he handed me back to Peter he said "your girlfriend dances like a latina" which I believe is a pretty nice compliment for a super white girl like myself.

So, we ended on a high note and perhaps discovered that we like cuban salsa more than latin salsa. We'll have to ask our instructor to show us the difference one day.

Sometimes it pays to leave your couch. Not always, but sometimes. =)

Hello blog!

First I got sick, that lasted for a while, then I got busy catching up on life and stuff. There's crafty stuff to make for the craft fair in November (and for Christmas), there's dancing to be done, friends to meet up with.... so there's not a lot of time at home on the computer. You know how it goes.

In times like these, where I don't have time to post something thoughtful, it's always best to show you the latest thing I've made, or post a photo of my cat. I shall do both.

Firstly - in my new line of products "safety without the ugly" - a set of pins inspired by an old computer game. Probably something you'll recognize. :)

The ghost is made of the super reflective material, and the pacman is made of high-visibility yellow material.

I think they'd look cute on a messenger bag - and they'll add some visibility factor without being ugly. Yay!


And, without further ado:

I've been home sick for the past week.... missing all the beautiful weather that Vancouver has been having. Now that it's grey and rainy again, I should be feeling better soon. :)