Life's a Stitch

In my younger years I was one of those sun reflector, baby oil and iodine sun worshipers. Now I’m paying for it. Recently I had nine moles removed with more in my future. All were OK, but I feel like Swiss Cheese.

The subject matter for the mini-columns I write in our local paper often come from personal experience. So here’s the latest, right in time for unprecedented sunshine and heat in British Columbia:

The scoop on skin cancer:

The Canadian Dermatological Association reports that teens are being diagnosed with a skin cancer typically seen in people over 50,

• There is no such thing as a healthy tan.
• Sun exposure is responsible for 90% of all skin cancers.
• Any sunburn can cause irreversible damage.
• Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.
• Peeling is the body’s method of getting rid of damaged skin.
• Sunscreen should be applied thirty minutes prior to sun exposure,
• There are no safe ultraviolet rays, a form of radiation that penetrates the skin.
• When treated early, most skin cancers are curable. Melanoma is responsible for 75% of skin cancer deaths and its incidence has increased 1800%  since 1930.
• Avoid sun exposure especially between 10:00am and 4:00 pm.
• SPF 30 sunscreen still allows exposure to 3.3% of harmful UV-B rays,

This shawl won’t keep the sun out, but it will keep Cousin Lena warm at her daughter’s late September wedding in Denmark:

OK, I was going to write about how spectacular it is to live in British Columbia when the sun shines, but my children have hijacked this post. So, how do you sing the song? Is it an Eeensy Weensy Spider or is it an Itsy Bitsy One? I won’t even include the option of that curiously named knitting pattern called the Inky Dinky Spider. I’m an Eeensie Weensie person my children are Itsy-Bitsy people.

Next question: when you get to the line about "Out came the sun and dried up all the rain" do you sing it to the same tune as the first line of the song or do you start out with a higher note? My chidren and I differ on this point as well, but we’ve found web sites to support each version lyrics and tune-wise. 

This leads me to a test, I’ve heard about, to determine if you are from the metropolitan New York City area or from anywhere else in the world. I have a feeling you have to be older than the internet to have an accurate outcome to this test. Are you ready? Here’s the question: You are waiting to buy movie tickets. Fill in the blank: You are standing  __ line. New Yorkers over the age of 50 are more likely to be standing on line not in line.

Back to sunshine in British Columbia, this is why I live here:

Last night we met a couple who erroneously identified Ms. Grace as a Westie, not a Scottie, an identity error, in my husband’s family, akin to confusing a Dane for a Swede. No biggie, as far as I’m concerned. However, their Westie story beat any Scottie dog tales I could ever tell you. So, here we go…

Once upon a time there was a little Westie dog. This sweet little pupcake escaped from the house at a most inopportune time. Weeks later she developed a ravenous appetite and her belly appeared enlarged. Fearing the worst, her owners took her to the vet, explaining their theory of a clandestine canine tryst. An x-ray was ordered. A sense of relief filled the room when the vet explained that their poor pup was suffering from false pregnancy. He told them what to expect – the dog would continue to grow bellywise until one day she would return to her pre-pregnant appearance. Well that Westie grew and grew. She appeared as big as a doghouse. People asked when she was due and the owners explained her plight.

In the middle of one night the owners heard a yelp. They entered the room afraid to find their puppy had popped. Instead there was their White West Highland Terrier bedded with a wet black rat. Unable to make sense of the scene, the explanation followed in the form of a second black rat.

Five hours and an equivalent number of false puppies later, they piled the family into the car to pay a visit to their favourite vet. Puppy number six arrived in the car. While under examination in the vet clinic, number seven made its appearance. As they were leaving, the desk clerk mentioned an outstanding bill for an x-ray. "Right," they said, while struggling with their unpredicted pack, "you have a snowball’s chance in hell of collecting on that bill."  On the way home puppy number eight entered the world.

The owners have assured me that every detail is true, can you imagine? Coincidentally, today my sister sent me this photo of my niece and a friend’s Westie, Boogie:

I know there’s some knitting content here somewhere. Oh yes, this is my haul from Marilyn’s closing out sale in Bellingham, two skeins of Cherry tree hill sock yarn and two skeins of Zephyr. That store, in the best of times, caused me to go into sensory overload with their huge selection, and I always had difficulty making any purchasing decisions. News for those in the area – a new yarn shop will be opening soon in Barkley Village.

Once upon a time, new neighbours moved into the house next door. They were two men and their older mom, relatively new to Canada, buying their first house. Twice, Chuck observed them struggling to cut their grass with a weedeater. Being the nice neighbour that he is, every time Chuck mowed our lawn, he took the time to ow theirs as well. The neighbours were very appreciative. They ordered pizza to our house, mother brought us deliciously juicy chickens from Chinatown, and we’d receive beautiful tins of moon cakes for the Autumn Moon Festival. One son worked in a hat factory and the other in a candy warehouse. We had access to all the baseball caps and candy bars that we’d ever need. Good thing that son #3 didn’t live at home – he owned a pet store.

The week prior to our move, Chuck went  to help them with something in their garage. There stood a shiny lawnmower. "Oh," says Chuck, "you’ve bought yourselves a lawn mower." Their response? "Oh, we’ve always had a lawn mower, we could never get it started." Reminds me of the the adage – give a man a fish and he has a meal, teach a man to fish and he has food for life. That was one of those good long laughs I’ll never forget.

Knitting update: cousin Lena’s mother-of-the-bride shawl, with a mistake four rows from the top. It’s amazing what will show up in a picture.There’ll be some froggin’ happenin’ tonight.

OK, boomers, do you remember those sewing cards – cardboard pictures that came with a shoe lace type string that you wove in and out of little holes that outline the shape on the card?. I just saw them advertised as "old-fashioned" sewing cards. Yikes, how did I get to be this old?

How about Coco Marsh, the chocolate syrup, with the toy surprise under the cap? I saw an"antique" Coco Marsh ad in a store. Or Shake-a-Pudding? Or Ayds – the diet aid caramels that would supposedly curb your appetite? Those was a long time ago, but come on, they are no where near antique. Are we they?

When I was little and my mother talked about her childhood I couldn’t believe that she could remember that for back. What was I thinking?

We created some memories this weekend. Cousin Lena, here from Denmark, is preparing for her daughter’s Fall wedding. We visited Vancouver’s "Little India" yesterday and found this two-tone blue silk, for $10 a yard, destined to be her mother-of-the-bride dress. A trip to Birkeland Brothers yielded the Estelle Watercolour yarn so I can knit her a shawl for the special day. And one of Chuck’s dyed shawl pins is a perfect match for the yarn.

"Bushtits are seldom parasitized by Brown-headed Cowbirds." That sentence from the bird book sent us into peals of laughter this evening. I love when summer visitors start arriving and we eat on the deck and our silliness can be heard for miles. Takes my mind off the ten stitches in my shoulder where the "it’s probably nothing to worry about" bump was. I’m not worried about it at all, but it’s still on the sore side.

Here’s the landscape scarf finished and blocking. It does remind me of a landscape scene as viewed from a plane at 35,000 feet. This was fun and quick once you get into the rhythm. But don’t you just hate it when the project requires 1 and 1/10th skein?

Have you ever seen something that is so foreign to you, so incomprehensible you look twice to check its existance? And then you look again just in case it was the MSG or maybe the wrong kind of mushrooms in dinner’s chop suey. Consider these. Excuse me, butt pads? In my family we are afflicted with what we call "Hernandez ass," from my maternal side. It is undoubtedly genetic. Just ask look at my mother, sister, cousins and daughters. Never, I repeat never, would the concept of butt pads ever enter into our realm of reality.

Purse knitting, continued:

I believe in God. And I’m certain that "He" has very little control over a world that we mortals have influenced to the point of tragedy, illness and misfortune. I’m not going to get into the details of my kind of faith, but I know this to be true. Why? Because, as we have heard in some form or another, no God would have had scheduled kids’ teen years to coincide with mom’s menopause. I’m not talking about the classic clash of teen rebel without a cause vs raging hormonally challenged mothers. I’m talking about the series of events that happen between the ages of 13 and 19 that bring moms to tears in an instant.

Generally, I am not a cryer, but I am a bowlful of mush when watching my kid in the school play, three out of four performances, eyes welling with tears even before he comes on stage, when some other menopausal mom’s kid sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow. My child is so used to my situational emotional upheaval that he text messages me from back stage, "R U crying yet?"

I might appear strong and tearless on the outside, but I am a soggy mess inside while holding down my drunken child’s leg while he receives 30 stitches in three layers.

Smiling, the tears would have a shorter distance to travel before I taste them. I’m watching through the glass gym door and see my six feet tall little boy in his high school ballroom dance class effortlessly salsa-ing with a redhead he’s known since Kindergarten. Call me sentimental, as echoes and images of them Ring-Around-the-Roseying turn me into menopausal meatloaf.

No wonder he wouldn’t permit me to take pre-prom photos last weekend. I feel like a walking breathing Kodak commercial. You know the one if you’re old enough. The one with the "Turn Around" song.

1. A clump of Iris I bought on clearance at the grocery store a few years back. This year there were at least five dozen blossoms.

2. My favourite Gingher embroidery scissors in the Leah colourway.

3. My current purse knitting project, a Fibertrends Landscape scarf in Koigu KPPM P527.

4. No photo, but enroute is a skein of the limited run of Cherry Tree Hill Possum Lace in the Peacock colourway from the Yarn and Fiber Company. Check them out – reasonable prices and free shipping to the US and Canada with no minimum purchase, and so far, good customer service.

After much anguish and paper signing (I don’t do debt very easily), I now own a Kia Rondo, affectionately dubbed "the Runto" by Chuck. The good news is that it’s not technically a minivan but still holds seven if necessary, just right for all our visitors. It’s fun living in a tourist attraction; when we lived in Omaha, hardly anyone visited.

In celebration, my 17-year-old offered to buy me a license plate holder embellished with chrome flames. I politely declined, using the offer as a teachable moment – the difference between a gift for me and one that’s really for himself. The women in his life will thank me.

I’ve had to put the knitting aside to file my overdue taxes in order to get the refund needed for the down payment, which will appear on my next Mastercard bill. Follow that?