Life's a Stitch

Can someone please tell me what Gracee is doing? Our pup can’t eat without extending her leg as in this picture. It takes her a fair bit of effort, circling the bowl, to get into this strange but apparently comfortable position. Chuck’s theory is that she suffers from some sort of cramp, necessitating her acrobatics. One of the daughters thought it was due to neck strain and raised her bowl to no avail. The vet thinks it’s some sort of neurotic behaviour.

Background: Ms Grace is our Scottie with special needs. She suffered a head injury at three weeks old, squeaking by after three days without nursing. She was rejected by her first owner who claimed she couldn’t be house trained and was vicious, especially when being tucked into bed at night. If you know Scotties you know that an expectation of bed tucking could compromise their Scottie dignity and you might be met with some growly resistance.

We adopted Gracee girl when she was six months old (photo on the left), scared to death of everything, and grossly underweight. Without any disgusting details about her symptoms,  she was ultimately diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease with severe intestinal scarring. She appeared to be a failure to thrive puppy.

Once again she narrowly escaped her final fate as the vet reluctantly tried a treatment, a cocktail of medications, that has included a daily dose of prednisone. We’ve been told that her odd behaviours might be linked to this medication. Besides eating with her leg sticking out, Gracee has a problem with chronic carpet licking. She’s an odd old girl, but we love her just the same.

Knitting update: Marina continues to languish on my dining room table. Without power, the mall in which my office is located, was closed for two and a half days, and I still have no sewing machine needles. This storm threw Vancouver into a state of havoc. No electricity and no heat for many.

With the mall closed for business, our annual gift wrap fund raiser has been a bust. We are a community based non profit agency without the benefit of a fund raising staff like the big guys. We depend upon our two small projects per year to help support our services, so this is pretty discouraging.

I can’t imagine how it will affect mall retailers at this, the busiest time of year. They are not just large obnoxious Mart kind of stores, but family businesses, needing the holiday season to keep them going.Yeesh. And I haven’t started my own shopping. Oh, I think I need to dive into my stash for some woolly comfort. I’m sorry, Marina, for shoving you aside for a fleece artist Celtic Vest. I’ve been told it can be done in a weekend and uses as much yarn as two scarves. Now I’m smiling.

Note to Suzanne, who has requested my pattern, please comment with an e-mail address and I’ll gladly send you one.

I’m pulling out the old quote from 9th grade math teacher, Miss Lahrman,  the one she used when we gave excuses for not studying or doing homework. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.This one’s for you, Marina, it’s about your namesake. I made a vow not to start any major projects until I started again on Marina. I found four parts of the project in four different rooms – the pattern, the chart, the yarn and of course, Marina, herself.

Being at the steek cutting stage I hauled out my 30 year old sewing machine. They made them out of metal back then and they’re heavy. I wrangled the tangled mess of cords and plugged ‘er in. Positioned Marina into place and guess what? The needle was broken and no replacement on hand. Of course nobody in my house would fess up to breaking the needle, not after hearing my rant.

It gets worse, the next day I had all good intentions of buying some sewing machine needles, only to be foiled by a seven hour power outage. Now I’m into a three day spiral of evening activities – the school Christmas concert, a board meeting, and my Chicks With Sticks monthly meeting.

I hadn’t knit in four days, waiting to attack Marina. I swear I was going through physical withdrawal; all foggy feeling and irritable. Guess it’s time to start a scarf. Come on, it doesn’t count as major:

You learn something new everyday. My sister, a recent knitting recruit, attended a knit-in to make pink scarves for breast cancer. Here’s her story:

"I almost forgot to tell you about these two ladies who came to that knitting pink scarfs for cancer night my friend put on.  They were knitting with their hands and no needles!  Have you ever seen this?  I will have to take a picture of Ana doing it because it is really interesting but really rather strange!  I said to the other people after the two ladies left that I think they were from another planet and they actually knit with their toes and to fit into earth mode they switched it to their hands!  Must see it to believe it!"

I presume they were finger knitting. Before researching it I had this image of two pointer fingers acting as knitting needles. I think I could get desperate enough to do that if I found myself in needleless circumstances.

Herringbone rib scarf update: Since Sandy’s post of November 26th, I have sent out over 50 patterns. Someone so  kindly noted that she’s seen the scarf all over blogland. I proudly told this to my son and sighed, "That’s where I want to live someday – Blogland." He reminded me that I’m already there.

North Shore knitters, here’s an update on Urban Yarn’s Edgemont location. It’s on Highland Blvd. in the former equestrian shop and will open on December 13th.

1. Elann.com gives good customer service. Shop there. The story is: I bought six skeins of Bombolo, a polar weight yarn, for two scarves. The product description didn’t indicate that it was a yarn with graduated colours. It wouldn’t have mattered, I would have bought it anyway. However, when I knit it, this is how it turned out. The first skein was graduated, the rest monotone. What’s my definition of good service? When they give you a refund and pay for the return postage.

2. Do you know of someone who lives in the Vancouver area and wants to do Christmas volunteer work? The non-profit agency, that pays my salary, is desperate for volunteers to work three hour shifts in our charity gift wrap booth at Capilano Mall, where our office is located. Shop there. Part of the problem is caused by the fact that the kids don’t get off of school for Christmas break until the 22nd and traditionally we get quite a few older high school students who need community service hours. Isabelle’s Bridal shop is sending their entire staff to work two shifts on Dec. 17th, so shop there, too. Anybody else interested?

3.Thank you for your kind words on my previous post, they were appreciated.

It doesn’t happen to me often, but I’m having one of those life is out of control days. On the workfront, on the homefront, on the knitting front. Too many things happening at once. Can you imagine defective yarn from Elann, noticed halfway through the project, and finding out about some bad lab results I had six months ago, apparently lost and now found, something else to worry about?  Having a tendency toward positive thinking, I’m going to stop right there. Instead I’ll show you my blocking project, another one of my Herringbone Rib patterns, done in Malabrigo Velvet Grapes, with three pattern repeats instead of four. If you want it, the pattern is yours, free for the asking,  just leave a comment. It’s been a fun way to meet other knitters. I understand some will be going to the Red Scarf project.

Here are my thoughts on Malabrigo vs Manos del Uruguay – Malabrigo wins on the softness factor, Manos on the fabulous colours. Malabrigo feels soft as cottonballs, Manos feels more woolly. Malabrigo is more consistent in thickness, Manos has more thick and thin texture and knits up with more loft.The verdict on my Manos Malabrigo review? I prefer Manos, but they each have a place in my stash. I could use a Manos fix right about now.

Hey, I just realized it’s Chuck’s and my 24th anniversary today. Now there’s something to make me smile. For those of you who think it strange that it’s something that just occurred to me out of the blue –  being so close to Christmas and with so many other celebrations in life – our anniversary is something we choose to celebrate only on the big ones. Once my SIL called and talked to us for 45 minutes before wishing us a happy anniversary. There was silence on both extensions of our phone line as neither one of us had remembered. We still laugh about that. Like everyone else, we haven’t always had it easy, but it’s worked and we’re happy.

I have a policy of never saying never because, in some way or another, it happens. But I know for a fact that I’ve never said I’m never going to Bratislava and now it’s happening. Are you following this? It was a long week and I’ve had a glass or two of wine.

Many years ago I met a new immigrant to Canada from Soviet Georgia. She and her family had a tough slog of it, but with amazingly hard work, things have worked out. She is the one responsible for this trip, having told me about a favourite traditional Eastern European health spa in Slovakia. Long story short – my knitting SIL, Ellen, and I are going there in February.

It’s called Spa Thermia in Piestny near Bratislava, Slovakia (I like that word, Bratislava, the way it rolls off the tongue; I wonder if it will sound the same without the wine?). Seriously, off season, for as little as 49E per night you get full room and board, medical consultation and spa treatments. You can stay in the palace for 90E. This is the perfect way to mark 30 years of work in social services. They specialize "in treatment of diseases of ambulatory apparatus," and, if you follow my blog, you know I have problems with my ambulatory apparatus.

Can you feel my happy dance? Of course my ambulatory apparatus is appropriately braced in order to do that dance. It’s such a dream, I’m still pinching myself. To the powers that be who are making this possible – thank you, thank you, thank you. We’re already scoping out yarn shopping possibilities. How do you say knitting in Slovak?

Back to reality, I indulged in some Elann bargains, darn that Elann newsletter with its irresistible bargains. My package arrived two days after ordering. Baby Heads and Toes will yield that adorable hat on the cover and the felted puppy slippers within. The Bombolo is for Christmas gift scarf knitting and the Esprit, elasticized cotton, is to try some of the patterns from Elann’s recent chemo cap design contest.

Now that’s something you don’t see very often – Vancouver’s North Shore covered in snow.This is sunrise from my deck – it’s a photo of a large neighbourhood, built up against the mountain, but you can hardly tell for the snow. I’ve lived in Vancouver for 22 years and I can count on one hand the number of snowstorms of this caliber. Thank goodness.

Cute story sent by my daughter, who was in Comox, BC this weekend visiting her roomie’s family: "I decided it would be fun to make a snowman at midnight, so I dragged Sarah along. We made a decent snowman and went to bed. I woke up in the morning only to be told that our snowman was knocked over; the dog next door had come over and peed on it. So, Willy, Sarah’s dog, (seeing as it’s HIS backyard) had to pee on it too. Then the other dog came running over, peed on it again, and stole the carrot (which is actually Willy’s all time favourite treat – he comes running when he hears a vegetable peeler). Uh-oh dogfight! While all this was happening, Sarah was banging on the window yelling, "Boys! NO! Stop peeing on the snowman!!!" That’s a picture of Willy, the culprit, all tuckered out from his adventure.

It’s perfect knitting weather. Here’s my current "movie watching" project, a narrower version of my own Herringbone Rib Scarf, in Malabrigo. Thanks to famous Sandy, who featured it on her blog, traffic on my blog has doubled and I’ve had 18 requests for the pattern. If I’ve sent you a pattern, let me know when you’ve started it and I’ll list you on my right column with the other Ribsters. If you are a blogless knitter, send me a photo when you’re finished and I’ll list you then and add you to the gallery.

How do you lose underwear?This isn’t a thong I’m talking about, really, can you see me in a thong? Nor is it my usual all cotton granny panties. This is the body shaper I bought for my daughter’s wedding this summer. One of those satiny stretchy torture devices that goes from underneath the girls to halfway down the thighs. It’s the steamroller of body bulge, major cosmetic surgery in a foundation (that’s what they called the lingerie department in my younger days – foundations).

Since the wedding I’ve had two opportunities to benefit from this miracle worker but I can’t find it anywhere. "No doubt" say those familiar with my house, the place famous for task oriented clutter. It ‘s been swallowed up by the gremlins.You know when I’ll find it? A few years down the road, when it no longer fits, while I’m searching for something totally unrelated. Isn’t that how it goes?

My knitting clutter is slowly dissipating as I present to you another FO. This isn’t the best picture of Knitty’s Branching Out, lace-wise, but I thought the colours looked great against our wild huckleberry bush. It’s made from Handmaiden Silk Maiden. There is a slight mistake in the first third, discovered as I was finishing, where one set of leaves is smaller than the others, the result of missing a line in the chart. But I’m taking a lesson from my water colour teacher. If a student is concerned about a funny looking leaf in a painting, he’ll remind us that nature is not perfect; there’s a certain amount of beauty in imperfection. Works for me.

Voila! Lady Eleanor in natural light, the colours looking more accurate than past photos. We had a fair chunk of the weekend sans rain but ten minutes after the picture was taken it started dripping again. Now we’re in full blown storm mode again and still boiling our water.

The specs:

1. Noro Silk Garden alternating rows between colours 211 and 225 on US size 9 needles.

2. Embarrassed to admit it – I used 17 skeins, most from E-Bay and a 40% off sale.

3. Never one to follow a pattern as written, I made this one 25% larger than specified – in the width.

4. Instead of woven fringe on the short ends, I crocheted the long edge and added fringe a la Charlotte’s Web.

5. Not wanting to crush the three dimensional woven look, I decided not to block it. Besides I wouldn’t want to subject it to our murky water right now.

6. Start to finish time, about eight weeks, a leisurely pace.

7. I’ve promised myself no more major projects until I work on Marina again. Stay tuned for progress.

As a person without TV, I don’t know how far news travels. For those outside of Vancouver, you might have heard Friday, that the entire area is on a "boil water advisory." Our recent storms have caused slides to falll in to our reservoirs. There is a measure of water turbidity (cloudiness) that is reported to the public when levels reach a 5. On friday we topped out at 90!

In the beginning there was much confusion regarding safety and even Starbucks ceased services. There were many unhappy people around the office on Friday, sleepy, headachy and going through caffeine withdrawal. Although we still have to boil our water, the health department gave the OK to coffeeshops to resume brewing.

We have pink sheepy twins at our house. Last night the 16 yr old and I went to see Godspell. Serta was the corporate sponsor of the theatre group. In honour of the company’s 75th anniversary they were giving away their pink sheep for a donation to breast cancer research. One will soon be flying off to the East Coast, on a mission of cheer.