Life's a Stitch

Despite having the flu shot in October, the flu bug bit me, hence my blogging absence. As my doctor said "You can imagine how bad it would have been if you hadn't have had the shot." I can't imagine.

Thankfully it didn't hit until the 30th making our Christmas in the desert one with some positive memories. Two condos and two hotel rooms brought together our family including the kids, partners, and grandbaby, my sister's family, my SIL and husband, cousin from Denmark, and a high school friend of my daughter's along with her family. For a few nights the table was set for 17.

Far away from our traditional nativity and ceramic Christmas tree, we were surprised by friends, who had a tree waiting and decorated. By the time we arrived, there had been a craft session to add traditional Danish paper ornaments. On the non-traditional side, daughter Mari found the "Rock Star" for the treetop. The stocking was on the unconventional side as well. Make that the creepy side.

Christmas day, the baton was passed. Mari took charge of the turkeys and I didn't lift a finger.

We had our Danish frokost (a table full of cold fish, meat and cheese plus shots of akvavit), Polish Oplatek and a kazoo orchestra.

Not without  mishaps, besides my flu, Bryant tripped and ended up with 12 stitches. And, as I'm not one to throw away good food, but packs my bag to the weight limit, I had to make a choice. The five pound of brown rice or the liter of Canadian maple syrup? I went for the syrup. We taped every obvious area twice and sealed it in a zippered plastic bag. I'm still washing maple syrup out of the brand new luggage.

After nine years, this is another installment of interesting google searches that have ultimately reached Life's a Stitch. Nine years, has it really been nine years? I've tried to give this up as have many of the finest, but my daughter won't let me.  I'm OK with that so here we go:

The five recent interesting searches:

5. Eulogy for a mom. A lot of people, especially from Australia, according to the search records are apparently at a similar stage of life. 

4.  A unique, albeit potentially sad search that landed a person on Life's a Stitch: "Eulogy for me." I'm hoping that was for a school assignment.

3. Rigid Heddle loom reviews. It fits as it comes up frequently around the holidays and requires fiber.

2. Slow cooker curry. Interesting search for what is purported to be a knitting blog.

1. At 1:49a.m.: Does London Drugs sell yarn? They sell everything else, why not yarn? Maybe it was someone who needed a last minute gift.

I hope they don't attempt my current project, the oxymoronically named High Speed Knitting. I'm on the last rows that take over a half hour each. High Speed Knitting, are you kidding? 275 yards of 2×2 ribbing is taking forever.  I do like the way it's turning out, though, and it will be done for Christmas.

No matter how you arrived at Life's a Stitch, here you are. Wishing you all the best for a Merry Christmastime.

This year our lovingly mismatched nativity acquired the tiny elephant, a gift from Nepal, and the appropriate-for-British Columbia black bear came off the end of a pencil. 

Jingle Off! is anther name for my organization's new annual Christmas fundraiser. Fundraising can be the bain of an Executive Director's worklife, but a necessary evil it is, many involving a tangle of committees, caterers, entertainment and charitable receipts. This one was relatively painless, enjoyable even.

The Jingle Off Christmas Caroling Competition has been a dream of mine for many years, but work got in the way. This year we were fortunate to have the sponsorship of the mall where our offices are located. Hoping for 12-15 teams, we ended up with 16.

Such spirit! Although we had the judges, these weren't Idol wannabes, they were kids and adults who wanted to have fun while supporting a good cause:

The "Christmas Belles":

The judges:

 In addition to overall performance,  there were prizes for best costume, most gleeful and best holiday spirit. Here are the first place winners in the Business/Community category, and they, of course won best costumes:

The first annual Jingle Off was a success. A great time was had by all, even the Executive Director. Bring on year two!

As Blogless Marsha says, "the best camera is the one you have with you." I understand this as I was having difficulty toting my digital SLR despite its light weight, and ended up selling it as it was not much good to me. I still have my Canon bridge camera and my favourite small Sony. But what's the camera you always have with you? Your phone. 

On my daily lunchtime walk I noticed a mid-fence discrepancy:

Zooming in, I discovered this adorable Westie face peering through his custom window:

My bet is that it was a creative solution to a barking issue.

Yesterday's lunchtime phone photo:

 Granted, the quality is not the best, but without the phone camera there wouldn't be pictures.

Hardly a lover of knitting or crochet would deny that their work is a labor of love…especially when it's one of those one step forward, two steps back type of project:

This is normally a two evening project, but I somehow lost my rhythm, considering I've previously made two of these without incident. And this was an abbreviated scarf-like version, only working through row 11.

Free Pattern: Crochet Lacy Wrap (Coats and Clark).

Yarn: Luxury Collection Baby Alpaca Sport 1.5 skeins, right up there on the softness scale with angora or cashmere.

Hook: 10mm, US size N

Thoughts: There will be more, I've found them to be much appreciated gifts.

The labors of friendship: not my work, I agreed to block this for a friend:

And at last knit night, having lost my way on my project above, I offered to weave in the ends on two of her projects. That way I could catch up with the others without doing the two steps backwards dance.

The problem with blocking someone else's project? I now need to make one for myself. It's another free pattern: Cassiope and it requires only one skein of sock yarn.
 

Hawaii is expensive. A single scoop ice cream cone at the famous Lapperts was priced at over $6 in Princeville! Veggies in the grocery store average $3.50/lb. Here are some tips:

1. We rented condos listed directly through owners and usually find deals on a car rentals through Hotwire or Priceline. Both condos came with beach chairs, ice chests and boogie boards, one had snorkel equipment for all.

2. Look for free activities – we booked a free escorted historical tour of Waimea town, staffed by volunteers, however it was cancelled due to illness. The Saturday we were in Poipu was coincidentally National Smithsonian Day, so we had free admission to the Grove Farm Sugar Pantation Museum. It was a preserved living history museum, donated by the family to be enjoyed by the public in perpetuity. A special treat was being able to see two original paintings by one of my favourite artists, Charles Bartlett. 

4. Want a good look at exotic vegetation? The 10 acre garden is free at the Visitor Center for the McBryde and Allerton Gardens, located near the Spouting Horn on the South Shore. Tours of the formal gardens are avaiable for  a charge, but they were closed due to flash flood warnings the day we were there. You could always stop in at one of the larger nurseries. It's also a good place to buy practical gifts to take home.

5. Make sure your vacation rental has a well equipped kitchen. You can't cook for a group of four or more with only two saucepans, one frypan and one lid. We lucked out on the first one we rented – stocked with everything, complete with meat thermometer.

6. Limit meals out. We had wonderful dinners on our decks listening to the ocean and sandwich picnics for lunch. Check the local grocery store ads before you go. For the basics, stop at Costco located outside the airport at Kauai and Maui. We also found coconuts and limes offered for free in people's front yards. Mahalo to them. Bring small amounts of spices from home. 

7. Our splurge was zip lining, but it was priced lower than the those at home and there was a discount for booking in advance.

8. Check for coupons near the front desk at hotels and resort. One of the places we stayed stocked a supply of grocery store membership cards so we could take advantage of sale prices without the paperwork.

9. Costco in Paradise, this one is worth mentioning again. Costco is known for stocking products that appeal to the locals. In Palm Springs there is Carne Asada. In Kauai, if you're in the market, so to speak, there's whole pig ready for the pit:

There are also concert quality ukuleles for $99, fresh poke (marinated raw fish), boogie boards, surf boards, and stacks and stacks of macadamia products. Also the best place to buy gas.

Don't know if we'll have the opportunity to go back to Kauai, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. 

I agreed to go the land vacation route if C would be my room steward, making my bed daily and that if I cooked, it would be cleaned up afterwards. My travelmates came though for me, so I cooked my heart out. Who wouldn't want to in a kitchen like this one:

The out of the ordinary included marlin, opah and mahi mahi and a starter of bought lomi lomi and poke (versions of Hawaiian ceviche, raw fish marinated in dressing). C carried cedar planks from Vancouver for grilling the fish:

Chuck was our bartender, who went coconut crazy after finding  105 oz can of coconut milk for $1.99:

We only went out to dinner once, to a luau at the Mediterranean Gourmet in Hanelei, a drive that involved eight one lane bridges. It's a good thing it was a less commercial luau, with only one free drink. Can't say enough about it, who'd have expected an outstanding luau at a mediterranean restaurant, owned by a middle easterner? He contracts with a Hawaiian family for the entertainment complete with the fire dancing. A mom and dad, their four kids and friends were amazing. I recommend skipping the all you can drink kind of commercial luau and go for the quality of the Mediterranean Gourmet.

I found a treat for lunch at a farmer's market. I was surprised to see a food tent featuring the Puerto Rican food of my childhood.  It was the best of Puerto Rico without the long flight. Turns out that there are over 30,000 Puerto Ricans in Hawaii, brought over as early as the 19th century for their expertise in growing sugar.