Life's a Stitch

That’s a catchy title. I usually enjoy my two glasses of wine in the evening, but I haven’t been able to recently. No wine for me. My neck has been in spasm and alcohol makes it worse. I took half a muscle relaxer for the first time. I told my daughter that it felt like having a glass of wine without the headache. She told me it was more acceptable to drink wine than do drugs. Darn.

The air was cool last night and it smelled of fall. Walking past my knitting basket, Marina called out to me, letting me know that if I didn’t start making some progress pretty soon the air would be warmer and smelling like spring; too late for Marina. It was far less painful than I imagined, getting into the swing of Marina. It helped that my magnetic board hadn’t budged and was still marking the right row.

I once saw a button that said "Be kind to me, I have teenagers." I only have one teen now, the two girls having graduated into their 20’s. I still deserve kindness. This isn’t a bad story, just an example of teenage logic.

So, Chuck is in MN, the girls are back to Edmonton and Victoria, the student is at the pub and I asked Bryant if I could take him out to dinner. He hemmed and hawed, calculating how he might fit me in with his social life. After a while he replied:

"Actually, it’s not real high on my priority list."

Where might he have heard that response before?

"You mean," I asked, "that going out to eat with me is not on your priority list?"

"No, I just can’t see spending the money, why don’t you take the money we would have spent and send it to the hurricane victims."

Good answer. Except of course, he will take my money tonight to go to the movies.

Thanks to all for your comments about the Regia tin. I would have brought more back for RAOK’s, blog contest prizes and gifts, but there was only one.

Here is a project I started in Germany; I needed something totable. It sort of looks like a sock, but it’s sleeve of a baby sweater knit in sock yarn.

UPDATE: Bryant and I have decided to make a contribution directly to someone affected by the hurricane and will send our donation to the aunt of Christine, of Blue Ewe fame. This elderly aunt lost all in New Orleans and Christine is providing her with temporary shelter.

Just as I was feeling really sorry for myself, unable to attend my M-I-L’s memorial service, I receive a thoughtful RAOK card from Christina of Between the Stitches. Perfect timing, funny how that happens. Thank you, Christina.

I’ve booked a couple of things to look forward to. First is a watercolour flower painting workshop in November with my daughter, two exchange students, a co-worker and a friend. These flowers, taken in the garden of artist Otto Niemeyer, in Germany, will be the subject of my painting. Then a group of us bought tickets to see the play Beauty and the Beast, one of my favourite musicals, in December. An old friend from Northern Ireland had a saying, something like – to be happy you need someone to love, something to work for and something to look forward to. I think it makes sense.

Successfully made it through the first day of school with all the expected protests. On the way to school, with the 15 yr old held captive in my car, I decided to brig up the M word; that being Math. He age-appropriately let me know of his mathematical feelings in a silent way by firmly plugging his ears with his fingers. Could have been worse; noisier and more profane. I guess I’m a lucky mother.

On to the lighter side. Why Germany is a knitter’s paradise:

1. In Northern Germany I found many yarn shops with a good variety of yarns, mostly imported from Italy. Does that mean that Italy is even a better yarn heaven? I know that isn’t the case in Denmark, as items made and sold in DK can be more expensive than those exported to other countries due to exorbitant sales taxes.

2. Most shops sold Inox needles, but a few carried Addi’s for between 4.60 and 7.50 Euro. In Canada the same needles range from $17-$25 Cdn dollars. Even with the additional 50% exchange difference, this is a bargain. Addi crochet hooks were 3 Euro, compared to $9 Cdn.

3. I couldn’t find any sock yarn other than Trek and Regia where I was, but the selection of those were amazing. I bought some to make a Bee’s Knee’s baby sweater as, after this trip, I’m not sure I’ll ever make socks again since I found a shop that sold knitted socks from most Regia yarns for 10 Euro. They were beautiful but I didn’t get back to buy any.

4. Germany has a good system of mail order knit shops. Here’s my favourite. Martina’s customer service is wonderful. I don’t speak German, but I could navigate around the site, and Martina graciously e-mailed answers to my questions in English.

5. My best knitting souvenir, the one thing for which my family members cannot understand my enthusiasm, was this tin, which made it dent free across the continents:

A finished Kiri! Here are my thoughts:

1. The provisional cast on is unnecessary. I simplified it with a similar cast on to the one in the Charlotte pattern.

2. My last skein was a different colour lot – way different. I’m glad I discovered it towards the end as it looks appropriately like a border.

3. I think I’ll add a bead to each point of the scallop.

4. A self striping yarn would be nice with this pattern. The one I used was a bit too subtle.

5. I skipped the last row as I was running low on yarn and it doesn’t seem to have made a significant impact on the design. Here’ s what I had left after fixing the three mistakes I found during blocking:

Elina, who just found out that she passed her RN exam, as if there would be a different outcome, left to join the real world in Edmonton. Mari, who deliberated all day about returning to her academic semester of her co-op program, or to skip it and complete another work term, is leaving to UVic tomorrow.  Chuck leaves in the morning to go to Minnesota to attend his mother’s memorial service, which will take place on what would have been her 92nd birthday.  And Bryant starts grade 10. All these necessary life transitions…

A good long weekend to you all, Labour Day here in Canada, and Labor Day south of the border. And wishes and prayers that life improves soon for those in the South.

Time to get back into serious knitting, maybe even time to pick up Marina again in hopes of wearing it this fall. I took some time away from the needles to read. I’ve just finished Angels and Demons – reminds me of an Indiana Jones movie with all its twists and turns. It would make a great Disney ride!

Another vacation photo, I found this in a rack outside of a ladies’ room at a Turkish restaurant in  Gottingen, Germany:

First it was the washer and dryer, then the garbage disposal, now it’s the fridge that needs to be replaced. I usually buy the best I can afford, adhering to my father’s advice of quality before quantity. But I’m beginning to realize, that like cars, at the end of ten to fifteen years or so, even the more expensive model is nearly worthless.

I would like to justify a stainless steel cabinet looking fancy schmancy fridge, but thought it’s just not worth an additional $80 per year of refrigerator life expectancy for good looks. I opted for practicality and hit the Sears outlet store to find a helluva deal on a Jennair fridge with a tiny dent on the side. I got a taste of what I wanted – the handles are stainless steel. A high quality fridge at a low price, my kind of bargain. OK, so we have to raise the cupboard an inch so it can fit, but what price glory?

Problem solved, right? Not that easy. Upon examination of the specs we discovered that although it fit widthwise, the door won’t open a full 90 degrees, not to mention enough to remove the drawers for cleaning. Back to the drawing board.

It’s a trivial problem in the scheme of things. I’ve been following a knitting blog for a while and discovered that Max, a fellow knitter, is now blogging about his transition from life into death. He has been diagnosed with untreatable cancer at age 40. Puts things into perspective. Max’s candid posts are important lessons that remind me that dying is a part of living.

Here is a photo taken in Germany. Butterflies are often used as symbols of the transition from life to death to rebirth:

Forget what I said about getting over the jet lag in one fell swoop, it’s taken me far longer than I expected to get over it. A luxurious complaint indeed.

The best part of our dream vacation was when our friends took us to the island of Usedom, in the northeast corner of Germany, on the border of Poland. At the turn of the century it was vacation spot for the rich and famous and summer "houses" a.k.a. mansions were built in a row for miles facing the Baltic Sea. Being in East Germany, these homes deteriorated during times of socialist rule. Now they have been renovated into vacation condos and this is where we stayed:

Our view:

Thank you Ingrid and Ulrich!

It is also the place where Kiri, now happily blocking, was finished:

It’s back to work this week, my next post will be later this week. I love my job, but don’t you hate the first week back after vacation?

This is a story of an errant water bottle. Somebody on our flight from Amsterdam to Seattle did a poor job of packing a one litre water bottle. As her luggage was being loaded onto the plane, said bottle escaped her bag and fell into an open panel into an irretrievable position causing a significant delay. You see, it required unloading all the baggage, disassembling part of the plane, retrieving the bottle, fixing the plane and reloading the luggage. I forgot, a chunk of time was spent on paper work to record the water bottle incident. Three hundred passengers and the crew were not happy with a woman named Nicky. I was especially miserable as I was forced into an unplanned knitting detox that stretched from ten hours to eleven and a half. I thought I had planned well with my plastic Denise needles, however, I attached the incorrect size to the project in progress.

On our arrival in Seattle I enthusiastically dug through my luggage for the correct size in anticipation of our long layover. I didn’t notice the sign above my head which read that is was illegal to open any luggage prior to customs inspection under penalty of fine! I sweated through the line up convinced I was caught on camera or by some knitting needle sniffing pooch. After waiting for the rest of the luggage, lines for immigration, customs, rechecking of luggage…I never did get to knit even one stitch.

Another happy trip photo, after a couple of nights of sleep it seems like a dream. This is in the bell tower of a cathedral in Stralsund, up a narrow passageway and a couple of ladders – 366 steps in all. I think I left dents in the guard rail and I most definitely did not look down:

Look what was waiting for me at home. I won a contest on Michele’s blog – Beknitted. Thanks, Michele! You know it will be put to good use.

We’re back in North America after a wonderful three weeks in Europe. I’ve been up for a record 25 hours in an attempt to whip jet lag in one fell swoop.  It’s easier in this direction since we gained nine hours. I’m hoping to stay up late enough to get a full night’s sleep.

The best parts of the trip? Spending time with our friends, Ingrid and Ulrich, who were our guides and ultimate hosts throughout northern Germany and into Poland; precious time with family in Denmark; meeting up with former language students who have lived with us in Canada; and Bryant’s enthusiasm about his adventure travelling with a church group from Spain back to Germany for World Youth Day. As for the knitting content – the wool shops in every German village and town, no matter how small; Addi needles for $4-7 euros; and yarn for half of Cdn prices.

Here’s a photo of Ingrid, Helga (a former student of ours), me, Chuck, Bryant, Ulrich and in front, Lotta, Ingrid and Ulrich’s daughter who participated in the same Cdn/German exchange pgm as my daughter six years ago.

And my first stop on the day of our arrival: