Life's a Stitch

You know how it is. Sometimes the days feel repetitive. I have a basic routine that includes my daily walk with the addition of a geocache now and then. Cooking or planning take away meals. Fitting in something creative: painting, knitting, debriefing with C about his woodworking frustrations and successes. Texting with the kids. Reading, paying the bills. Not too exciting, not much in the way of travel planning. Way too much time spent on online news. Grocery shopping every two weeks with occasional quick visits to the produce or local food stores. 

Next week, however, is the covid version of our art society's annual Christmas show. In the before times it was a huge weekend event, located in a rec centre with many people milling about. This year it will be in a storefront for the first three weeks of December. It'll be a bit smaller with a limit of five masked and socially distanced customers at a time.

I’ll have three framed paintings, a basket of smaller originals and a basket of cards made from prints. I finally finished my elephants, just in time:

this misty fall Pacific Northwest scene:

and another cardinal:

Definitely something to look forward to. It'll be interesting to see how the new format works out. 

I have a small cutco knife that fits perfectly in my tiny sized hand, as it did in my mother’s. When I cook it links me to her in a special way.

Four weeks ago we lost a dear friend suddenly. They moved to their retirement house last year, but while it was being built, spent the winter in a small vacation cottage with a big view. I painted that view for his wife, hopefully connecting her to happy memories.

When we were new to BC, (35 years ago!) I answered a classified ad in the local newspaper and joined a group of PC Jr computer owners. We used our amber or green monitors and noisy keyboards to input basic DOS commands and add memory and storage space to our boxy CPUs.

It was there I met my friend, Hugh, a Scottish dad figure for me for many years. After he passed away, and years later, when his wife moved from their house, we helped pack up his workshop and were allowed to help ourselves to items we might use. We had a lot in common: Silver smithing, wood working and stained glass… there’s not a day that goes by that C doesn’t use one of Hugh’s tools. He’s built a memory wall in his workshop, sort of a shrine to Shubie (H’s childhood nickname).

The knife, the tools, not just household stuff, but items that bring us comfort and bind us to important people from our past.

Covid has extended my daily walks. Add in my passion for Geocaching and there have been some interesting discoveries.

The backstory:

Fourteen years (!) ago guests arrived for my daughter’s wedding. On the flight in, in the airline magazine, my BIL read about geocaching, where you use a GPS to find hidden caches, and trade items or leave a signature, proof of your discovery. I don’t know why, but he told me he thought I’d enjoy it. We went to Walmart and bought a GPS and the rest, 676 geocaches later, is history. Note: you no longer need a GPS, there’s now an app for that.

Back to the present:

I’ve recently combined geocaching with my walks, which have resulted in some interesting discoveries. Walking through one neighbourhood I saw a “help yourself” sign on a table with the runts of their garlic crop free for the offing. Delicious.

Another house had a free box of Japanese Iris bulbs, the same as I regretted leaving behind in the yard at the house in the rain forest. They’re now planted here.

Walking by the park on the US border, heading for a geocache, I heard someone playing songs from the Little Mermaid, on the trumpet. Another free gift.

And while geocaching I stumbled upon the discarded evidence of a crime scene, much appreciated by the police. It may be a potentially boring life during the times of pandemic, but as my mother always said, never a dull moment.

On another note, the custom in this rainy climate, is to remove your shoes when entering a house. When leaving we usually sit on the stairs to tie said footwear. In the “before times” a guest commented that we needed an additional place to sit to accomplish the task. So, C, in his Covid coping woodworking workshop (say that three times fast), made this:

Our local radio station declared this week a National Hug an American Day. If the shoe fits, consider yourself hugged. I can't imagine what you are going through. Another morning radio host quoted his daughter who said the US election coverage is feeling like TV's Christmas log – always on and in an endless loop. At least you know when the Christmas log is going to end. 

I was in the grocery store this morning and noticed specials on poinsettas, eggnog and peppermint ice cream. The retail Christmas season will soon be as long as a US election. Christmas shopping year round?

Did you know that under the Canadian Elections Act, the minimum length of a federal election campaign is 36 days and the maximum length 50? And we don't vote directly for our national leader. Canada is made of of 338 ridings (electoral districts). The representative with the most votes wins a riding, and the party to win the most ridings will form a government. The prime minister is not elected directly; instead, the winning party’s leader will take up the top post. So all you see on the ballot are the names of local representative wannabes from each political party. There are five main parties. This is an over simplified explanation, for more details on our parliamentary system go here.

Thank goodness for the continuing distractions provided by the sky.

Sunrise:

Sunset:

 

Lifesastitch has recently passed its sixteenth anniversary and my last post was the 1300th. There have been 8551 comments, but that isn't an accurate number, as many followers have been contacting me by email. Apparently my comments feature has been glitchy and not available to all. I cannot figure it out having checked all my settings to no avail.

More upsetting is that several people have told me they have been blocked from the blog, citing security warnings. There is a workaround using "https:" the secure transfer protocol rather than the generic www. Those of you reading this obviously have access, but if you know someone who doesn't…

I’m one of the last original knitting bloggers, and truthfully, this blog has morphed into a life story although knitting is posted now and then. It's more likely to be about a watercolour painting, a successful kitchen experiment or travelogue. I'm not a Facebook supporter, a conscientious objector of sorts, so this is my social media outlet. 

We reached a yearly milestone early this year. The ritual of changing over the duvets, from the summer silk one to the down comforters. It happens when the temperature drops to 0C (32F). When I was a little kid, pre plastic and oil based polyester, we slept on rough cotton muslin sheets with itchy wool blankets. At age 14, I travelled with the nuns to Europe to study art. A bunk in a dorm in the village of Jouy-En-Josas, Switzerland, changed my nightlife forever. I slept in a cloud, a thick down comforter, it felt like heaven. About ten years later they became a thing in North America, the rage of the January department store "white sale," an old fashioned term for a linen sale, still used today. I bought my first down duvet and never looked back and now I sleep in a cloud every night.

With the cooler weather comes brighter evening skies as the sun sets farther south.

Having a virus hanging around isn’t enough. When you hurt yourself in attempt to avoid said illness, it adds insult to injury. Or more accurately, injury to insult. It’s a thing. My daughter’s friend twisted her ankle pivoting away from an oncoming unmasked person.

My sorry story was a similar scenario. A group of six were headed toward me, only two masked, taking up the width of the walkway. After diverting to the street, I tripped on the curb and went not-so-gracefully down. A nice man, older than me, ran over to help me up. Categorizing me as a woman of a certain age, he asked three times how my hip was. If he were younger I might have chastised him for his senior stereotyping. The irony of the situation is that I believe he was one of the unmasked group of six.

Our in-house injuries have increased in proportion to the amount of time spent at home. Particularly the woodworking husband, who sported three consecutive bandages of varying degrees of seriousness in one week, two from his workshop and a cringeworthy one from a hatchet while camping. On the kitchen counter there was Dettol, steri strips, gauze, bandaids super glue and glue accelerator. Don’t ask.

His injuries resulted in a secondary one. To my glasses, which I had removed for a lens cleaning. Naturally, glasses off, can’t see very well. I “saw” a little spray bottle on the counter with a white cap and spritzed the lenses. The smell about bowled me over. Then I realized my error – it wasn’t my lens cleaner, but his super glue accelerator.

Enough of that misery. This made me smile. The grand boys all spiffed up:

When I talk about Thanksgiving with those south of the border they are surprised we celebrate it in October. I like it this way, allowing more time before Christmas.

So here we are in a crazy world, in less than optimal and often unhappy times, being thankful. Many faiths have their version of the saying that gives me comfort: “In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” ~Brother David Steindl-Rast.

I'm grateful that our covid bubble is so small that we could expand it this week to have a visit from our daughter and son-in-law from Calgary. Happy times ahead. One thing for sure, there will be lots of good cooking as KC and I enjoy sharing time in the kitchen together. Tonight there are two Instant Pots, a wok and the BBQ in use.

On another note, I just mailed out this little cutie, my latest watercolour painting. It was a memorial commission and I hope I captured her spunk and energy. 

Next one up is a ginger coloured cat with freckles on his nose. After that who knows. There's time, though, for a couple more Christmas commissions to come in.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's a thing, not a virus, but given the increasing amount of North American RV and trailer sales, almost an epidemic.

Let's back up at bit. The year prior to turning 60 I hiked the Juan de Fuca trail with dear friends. It rained so hard our site flooded and the rain came up through the bottom of the tent and up around our camping mattresses, and soaked us from the back up. Shortly thereafter we were invited to camp in Alberta and were generously offered the night in a cute little Boler trailer, while the owners stayed in a tent. That was it for me. I announced to C that tent camping was a thing of my past. 

Advance a couple of years and the opportunity to once again, be a guest in another camper. On the way home I saw a a small trailer being towed by an SUV and told C that's what it would take to get me back into nature. Long story short, we found what we wanted: a short two axel (for safety) trailer that had a real bathroom (not a wet bath like in a boat head where you can sh*t, shower and shave from the same seat), a separate fridge and freezer, a double sink, a microwave, a true queen size bed, a three burner stove, no slide outs, and weighed under 3000lbs so it could be towed without a truck. That's a lot to ask for, but do-able. I wanted a more than comfortable step up from sleeping in a tent. We eventually found our mouse house, a Winnebago Micro Mini.

When we went to sign the contract, the salesperson told us in a year's time we'd regret buying it. Why? Because people suffer from two foot-itis, wishing they had bought a trailer that was two feet longer in order to get additional features. I told him this had all I wanted and if I suffered from that affliction, it was because I wanted something two feet smaller. So, as they say here in the True North Strong and Free, Bob's your uncle. Two years ago we became the proud owners of our little house on wheels. 

It feels good to escape and feels particularly safe in the time of Covid sans airports, flights, hotels and all the usual trappings of travel. Just us in our mouse house heading to off-season (read sparsely populated) campsites. We just completed our last outing of the year (pictures to follow) and returned to reality along with a second bout of California smoke. It actually started on the second day of our trip:

And speaking of reality, returning home, given current events I wondered if I really like the fact that we have access to addictive US live news as part of our Canadian internet plan. A stark contrast to camping without internet access.

That's 169 days since we finished our quarantine, having arrived back in Canada from Bali. The current Canadian case count is inching up to where it was back then. There's only one reason why that's so – careless people. I'm finding it depressing that we've lived this way for six months and there's really no improvement, nor end in sight.

That aside, there's still progress in our lives.

Another row of squares has been completed on the pandemic blankie:

The number of kilometres walked in our immediate area – 800K (500 miles). My own Covid Camino. That is the same distance as our first pilgrimage in 2015, except then we completed it in about 42 days of walking.  I don’t keep track of how far I walk each day, but I know the amount of time I spend, so today I did the math and it surprised me. I read that many people have taken up regular walking or running as part of their isolation routine. Add up those k’s, you’ll be surprised at the distance you’ve covered.

A year ago we were in Porto preparing to start our third Camino de Santiago:

The pandemic walking has been accompanied by 11 audiobooks.

The commission count for pet portraits: seven dogs and three cats.

Don't know why I didn't start sooner, but my list of successful geocaches has grown by 26.

The smoke from my last post has cleared and we can see the sky and the sea again. Things are looking up.

The plague of smoke. The fires of California, Oregon and Washington have issued an alert for our area – air quality. Today we officially had the worst air quality in the world. My last post shows the normal view from our top deck. This is it today:

On September 4th we experienced a smokey harbinger. I was listening to the afternoon news, which predicted possible haze and colourful sunsets due to a combination of those southern fires and wind conditions. At 5:00pm I caught a glimpse of something unusual.

It was confirmed by CBC's meteorologist as a smoke induced phenomena. Smoke from hundreds of miles away.