Life's a Stitch

It's official, I've lived over half my life in Canada – 50.4% of my life has been based north of the 49th parallel. Oh the differences! Spelling, pronunciation, math, taxes, medical systems, all in all it's worked out well for us. Taxes and social security benefits might be higher in the US, education and medical costs are lower in Canada. It probably evens out in the long run and I'm quite happy to be here.

The only exception is when the bottom drops out of this darn Canadian dollar. Now I know why they call our dollar the loonie. There was a time while living in Canada that we had mortgage payments in the US and $600 meant $1014 out of our Canadian paycheque (paycheck). The pendulum has never swung the other way to that extent. The best I remember is when that $600US turned into $540CDN. Today's dollar puts a bottle of Trader Joe's two buck Chuck, which is really $2.99, at 3.88 loonies.

How to tie this in to knitting and painting? It makes the cost of yarn and art supplies prohibitive.  Luckily I stocked up on both under better currency circumstances, in that preretirement period of binge spending. The "I'm buying it now because I won't be able to afford it in retirement" phase. But the flip side of that is the ability to spend more time turning that spending into income. Here's painting I finished on Monday and sold today:

I've been offered a spot in a gallery in Bellingham, WA. Now that will be a good deal – Canadian landscape, US dollars. At least this year.