Life's A Stitch

The collective wisdom

The collective wisdom of middle aged experience:

Last week at work, we hosted two 14-year-olds for Take Your Kid To Work Day. Part of their experience included attending a staff meeting where I asked the staff to consider, given their life experience, what advice they would have given their 14-year-old self. This is some of what we came up with:

• Embrace change – nothing stays the same.
• Stay in school for as long as possible.
• Be positive.
• Start saving for retirement early – even if it seems impossibly far away.
• Try new things.
• Keep an open mind.
• Improve your vocabulary and reading skills.
• Have a good time.
• You become your friends - be careful with whom you choose to hang out.
• Balance your work life with an activity you love to do to.
• Think before you speak - quick, sharp words have the power to do serious damage.

  What would you tell your 14-year-old self?

Winners

Yes, we have winners, not just one, but two. I decided to go ahead and pick two winners, one by the original rules and one by the rules that ruled out spam. #6000 was officially Toni in Florida, who prefers sock or mid weight yarn and the random draw, limiting entries to one per day was chunky yarn knitter - my sister Jane, in New Hampshire. 

Thanks to all who entered. I wish I could send everyone yarn and if I win the big lottery - I will.

Want to see what I'm knitting now? I'm loving this one, the yarn, the pattern, everything about it. It's Interweave's Lacy Kerchief Scarf in Shibui yarn, which I received as a surprise a while back from Wendy of Catknits. Thanks again, Wendy.

Not quite sure how to handle this - Contest

So this is what I'll do: of my very nearly 6000 comments, 162 are five years worth of spam, and I didn't think it fair to count that in the total. So what I'll do, is when I get to #6000 I'll put all of the contest comments into a hat and draw it randomly. If you've entered by commenting on several posts, hoping to hit #6000, you will be entered more than once. If you haven't, feel free to comment again and increase your chances. I want to have this done for next weekend so I can mail it when I'm in the US.

It'll be over soon. It's getting close. Really close.

Realized this weekend that I've spent the past three Halloweens on a ship. Two cruise ships and a BC ferry. Not quite the same, especially for Gracee who was relegated to the ship's doggie brig:

 

It's not so bad, just two cars away was this view:

Ahhh, Beautiful BC. It was this view, on this ferry route, about 30 years ago that Chuck looked into the distance and said, I'm going to live there someday. And here we are. 

Celebrating good times - a contest!

Lots going on, much to celebrate. In weeks past I've had my tenth anniversary at work, my fifth as a blogger, and very soon someone will leave my 6,000th comment. Perfect timing for a blog contest. Tell me if you prefer lace, sock, midweight or chunky knitting, or even if you're not a knitter at all, that's OK, too. If you leave comment #6000 I'll send you an appropriate treat. Like more than one kind of yarn or have gone from a non- knitter to one of us? Feel free to enter more than once.

I received a treat the other night at our AGM at work. A little blue Canadian Birk's box holding a traditional employee anniversary gift. Last year Chuck was presented with a Birk's watch for his 10th. I like mine better, but all you get to see is the box, They've sent the silver bracelet off to the engraver's. It's a perfect gift, something that I'd never buy for myself, but appreciate and will wear a lot:

Pinecones or rosebuds?

Pattern: Hattie's Rose Garden, but I call it my Pinecone Scarf as it reminds me of the tiny pinecones in my garden. If you would like a copy of this free pattern, request it by sending an e-mail to: chris at briarrosefibers dot net.

Yarn: Valley Yarns Franklin in the Pinecone colourway. Shades of spruce, cedar and fir, very Pacific Northwesty. This skein was won in Erika's blog contest. It's a sproingy yarn intended for socks, but worked out well for a scarf.

Notes: I reduced the number of repeats by two (8 columns of rosebuds rather than 10) and used all but .9 of a gram of the Franklin sock yarn (450 yds). The length is 62" and the width 8.5".

Thoughts: this one took a year to complete, a four row pattern that became a bit tedious. You end with dropping stitches a la Clapotis, Why is it that an unintended dropped stitch runs as fast as it can, while those meant to be dropped stick like crazy?

Sad dog, happy cat

Skunked!The picture of misery:

 

Gracee Mae bit the butt of a skunk and this is what she got in return. A direct hit to the face. If anything positive can come from this experience, it's the opportunity to share our recipe for the definitive skunk smell neutralizer:

Forget the tomato juice and expensive enzyme solutions. Use this, it works every time: about 1/4 cup of baking soda, a good squirt of dish detergent, and 1/2 cup of peroxide. Mix it and work it well into the coat. Rinse well. We don’t even measure anymore, just pour on the ingredients and go to it. (NOTE: this must be mixed fresh each time, it will lose its effectiveness if stored.)

The antithesis of Grace's misery photo, is one of daughter #1's cat, Chompers, held by daughter #2:

I am not a cat person and was not a fan of Chompers after he bit me in his kitty youth. Now that he's mellowed, even we are friends.

Gone North

When we moved to Canada people asked why we wanted to live in a place so cold. We left Omaha for a more temperate climate. The warm Pacific currents give Vancouver its mild weather with an average January high temperature of 43F. Hardly anything to shovel in an typical winter and no need for summer air conditioning. And very few mosquitoes. When we moved here the lack of window screens baffled us.

We've not had the opportunity to have Christmas dinner on the deck, something friends who already lived here used for relocation bait. But we have had a Christmas rose blooming in the garden. Amazing, as our house is locasted fairly far up the mountain.

My daughters, however, both live in Alberta, where it's already snowed. And that's where I am for this Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. It has confirmed for me what I already knew. I am a weather wimp.

We could have moved to Iceland, where, believe it of not, the midwinter temperature parallels New York City's. I read once that Iceland was named to keep people away and that Greenland was named to attract people to its more Arctic climate.

That's an Emerald (to be) in the snowflakes of Iceland yarn. Perhaps it should have been called Greenland yarn, which would have gone better with Emerald.

Saturday Sky

Sandy is the inventor of the Saturday Sky post. OK, Sandy, how's this one? 

I think it's pretty spectacular, but truthfully, I missed it. I was in Washington having a good time.

Full credit goes to the boy, now 19, who has gotten the hang of the manual setting on the SLR. 

Cue the locusts

I work for a social service agency located in a shopping mall. It's good for the clients, accessibility-wise and bad for the employees spending-wise. A mall is like a little city and all that comes with it. Monday there was a fire, necessitating a two hour evacuation. Tuesday there was a flood. We were betting on Wednesday. Cue the locusts.

Managing a social service agency involves looking after funding equating to 28 employee's jobs and  contributing to a workplace that encourages good mental health practices. Other than knitting, my personal coping skill involves food and the mall has a food court. Need I say more? I allow myself the indulgence of stress induced eating, several times per year.

So this week, with a fire and a flood, we're managing over $100,000 in funding cuts. And I ate poutine. The epitome of Canadian junk food, fries with melted stringy cheese and brown gravy. Yumm. And I sought comfort in another Little Girl's Shrug:

I can make your dreams come true, baby.

Chuck woke up and told me his dream:

``I was travelling on public transit. Worried about getting off at the correct stop.

Got off at the next stop, not sure which direction to go. First downhill then uphill.

(Hold on knitters, this is where it gets exciting.)

As I was going uphill I was retrieving yarn, two strands at a time, intended to be knit together, but I had to keep the yarn separated.

I had the opportunity to buy more yarn, but in order to carry it, it had to be knit first and I realized....

I don`t know how to cast on.``

Oooh, I can turn that nightmare into a good dream. I can make your dreams come true, baby.

First you start with needles. Now it turns into my real life knitting dream come true. Thanks to a contact in Germany I have all the reasonably priced Addi needles one could ever want, at least if you are a North American knitter.

Then there are those European sizes that have no US equivalent. Take the 7mm, what would be a US size 10.75. I find that one especially useful. I find too big a jump between 10.5's and 11's, and have difficulty getting gauge with chunky yarn. Lacking a 7mm 24" Addi, and no trip to Germany planned in the near future, I turned to e-bay.

This is a Hong Kong vendor advertising in Australian dollars, and the shipping comes to more than the needles (I find it a deceitful practice that some e-bay vendors have, making up for low prices in shipping fees), but in this case it was still a bargain.

And if you have no Addis, are tired of the flaws of interchangables, and are ready to to invest in the needles of your dreams, look at this vendor.

Sweet dreams.