The Blue Brick | Photography and Handcrafts by Shireen Nadir

First of all I want to congratulate my amazing and talented friend Yvette on the launch of her new book ‘Toronto Graffiti‘. It documents a rich and colourful part of Toronto’s street culture heritage, and includes interviews from some of our most long-standing, history-making talented and renowned street artists. It took 10 years of her life, determination, perseverance and faith and I am extremely proud of her! You can check it out here!

While at the book launch I got her to try on her new hat – to see if it was slouchy enough for her and ready for decreasing. Afterwards I stuffed it into my knitting bag, which went into my bigger bag, which went under a table that had metal filigree sides, and where I felt it would be well protected.

WELL. At the end of the night when things were starting to calm down I decided to get out the hat and work on it for a while, only to discover that someone had managed to spill a drink, not only under the table, not only through the metal filigree, not only into my bag, but into my knitting bag.

I poured about half a bottle worth of what I suspect was Smirnoff Ice out of my knitting bag. My Macbook Pro, iPad and iPhone were all in that purse and …. miraculously completely dry. How? Because the knitting absorbed every drop, thus protecting my apple valuables. The MacBook in particular pretty much contains all of my life (ie my photography) and would have been tragic to lose.  The moral of the story is that knitting is not only fun, productive and satisfying, but it could save your life one day.

Now, onto the horror that was the hat:

This is it (oh, the horror!) draped over our booth at the Friendly Greek where we went for post-book-launch-late-night-eats and where I alternated between lamenting my ruined hat and being grateful for the lucky chance that it saved my computer. The yarn is by Viola Viola and it’s called ‘Nosferatu’ (how cool is that?). Now, Emily from Viola not only has mad skills when it comes to dying yarn, but her yarn is also resilient, and I’ve discovered, absorbent. It also bounces back from tragedy like nobodies business.

This is Yvette enjoying her comfy new hat! When I got home I untangled the mess, decreased and closed the hat right away, and left it for an hour in a warm bath of soak. I blocked it over night – and it was good as new =o)

Tragedy averted and a win-win situation for all.

Last night, after I finally presented her with the hat, we went for dinner at a lovely Japanese restaurant on King Street West called Oniwa. The decor was gorgeous, with a little garden walkway and koi pond in the restaurant. The food was incredible, and best of all the staff were super sweet and friendly. Two ladies from the restaurant kept coming over to our table to admire my knitting. They also mentioned the fact that they have never been able to learn how to knit. I did the only thing that made sense:

As soon as I got home I packed up some spare needles and yarn and I’m going to drop it off at the restaurant. This seems like the right thing to do, though I am aware that it also seems fanatical. Given my recent life saving experiences with the stuff though, you can hardly blame me for wanting to spread the knitting goodness =o) On a serious note – it’s a great feeling to share something you love – I hope they both enjoy knitting as much as I do!