Life's a Stitch

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of participating on a yarn crawl of Bellingham with Dorothy, and the blogless: Marsha (Seattle), Daisy, and Linda (both from Ottawa). The Ottawans, arriving by bus, experienced a two hour delay at the border. Really, I can’t imagine terrorists crossing the border by Greyhound, but I suppose stranger things have happened. Dorothy and I commenced with a pre-crawl, sending Chuck to the bus station to wait for the delayed.

The day was a success, but having been recently gifted with lovely yarn from Wendy and the Ottawa knitters, all I bought were three more skeins of Tatamy tweed in order to add more circumference to my Hemlock blanket. Alas, I have no photo of this event, as I have a new cell phone and have discovered that it is not a good idea to learn its features, like sending photos, with cross border roaming charges. My brand new "free" touch phone came with a steep and expensive learning curve. For example, I accidentally called myself while roaming, left a message, and then paid roaming charges to pick up the clueless message which recorded my words "I don’t know what I’m doing." 

Daisy needs to reconsider her blogless state. In a thank you e-mail she cleverly observed the following, a prime example of do as I say not as I do:

And as my camera accompanied me to B’Ham sans memory card, I have no other photos to offer other than these two rascals, also left in Vancouver, with a high level of trust to have a safe and happy New Year:

OK guys, you’re scaring your mom. Give me that sweet angelic look I know you’re capable of:

The same goes to all of you – a safe and Happy New Year!

North American emegency room staff saw almost 7000 admissions last year for injuries resulting from wrestling with wrap. You know the kind I mean, the armour that encases anything electronic. The stuff that requires the assistance or  kitchen knives or razor blades or cover your ears you dental types, teeth. Injuries include deep cuts, some involving tendons and surgery, sore shoulders, inadvertent self inflicted punches and plastic wedged painfully between teeth.

The number of admissions increases when you include other types of packaging – CD shrinkwrap or plastic zip straps, for example. They have a name for this affliction, they call it wrap rage. I’ve been there and so has Mari:

There was also wrap happiness here. Santa delivered a surprise all the way from Alabama, thanks to Wendy of Catknits. No rage here, the US postal service boxes are easily opened with a simple pulltab. Inside was Shibui merino yarn, a tool case and this sweet knitting S’More:

Wishing you the grace and magic of Christmas all year long.

Those of you who know me are familiar with the fact that my office is located in a shopping mall. A dangerous place, indeed, for the paycheque. Not as bad as when, as a teen, I worked at a department store and was paid in cash. The good side of working in a mall is that you get to be a friend of Santa.

Our Santa, the real one, of course, visits our office regularly. He’ll sit and chat in our reception area and pretty soon, the magnet that he is, attracts all sorts of kids noses pressed flat against our reception area’s window. We invite them in for a private audience and you can tell they’re thrilled. Santa asks them "What’s one special thing I can bring you for Christmas? His favourite stories came from:

• a little boy requesting a personal robot. As he leaves, he turns around, and demands, "Make sure he’s the one that can clean my room." Santa remarks he wants that one, too.
• another boy who asks, "Santa, may I have a word with you?" "Certainly," replies Santa. "When you come to my house you and the reindeers will park on my roof, right?" "That’s the plan," says Santa. "Well, while you’re up there can you throw down my frisbee?"
• a girl with debilitating cerebral palsy, she has visited him for several years in a row now. She’s getting older and wiser. He asks for her one special thing. "A new brain," she says. He tells us Santa is not supposed to cry.

True stories, all of them.  I know that Santa is not what Christmas is about, but how can you not love this man who inspires such a sense of excitement and hope? Do you remember your special store Santa?

My sister and I would make the rounds of all the stores, voting on which Santa was the real one, all the rest being his helpers. It was always the Lord and Taylor Santa, who had his own specially built little house located behind the store. That enchanting little cabin is no longer there, at the store anyway, but it will always be in my memory as one of the magical aspects of my childhood Christmas celebrations.

It seems the knitting content on this knitting blog is lacking, but knitting is happening. It is difficult to photograph, but I’m on the last skein of Tatamy Tweed for the Hemlock Blanket. Without a knitting photo and believeing that all posts must have a picture, here is one taken from the top of Mount Constitution on Orcas Island last weekend. See that bird on the right? That’s an eagle with a wingspan of over seven feet. What a sight! That’s Mount Baker hovering over Bellingham and Birch Bay, Washington. What majesty.

Came home from work last week to see the following google search recorded on my toolbar: chili left out over night. Uh-oh, husband in trouble.

The night before I cooked a huge pot of chili, painstakingly made from shredded beef, with a jar of Trader Joe’s mole sauce mixed in for good measure. It was late, I was tired. My last words for the day were called down to Chuck, "Can you put the chili away?" My ears registered fridge door sounds in the kitchen. I slipped into peaceful sleep and dreams of future meals – chili with shredded cheese served over quinoa. Mmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm.

Went to work early the next morning, all day fantasizing about the meal to come. I know you`re thinking. Get a grip, right. It`s just that our working schedules, and the lack of children at home, don`t encourage slow cooked meals, and too often we `punt`for dinner, our expression for grabbing whatever is available. Remember that old commercial when the guy pranced around singing `We`re having chicken tonight, chicken tonight, chicken tonight. Once, when we punted too many days in a row, while I was cooking dinner, Chuck bounded into the kitchen singing We`re having dinner tonight….

Back to the disaster at hand. Here`s the dilemma. The evidence being a pot of chili left on the stove for nine hours, still luke warn. Pursuing the search stated above, Chick found a split jury. The professionals all say to chuck the chili. Regular people say to boil the heck out of it and enjoy. Don`t you love the internet. There were an astonishing number of people out there who share this experience.

What would you do? Don`t worry I won`t invite you to dinner for chili in the near future. I’ll share our decision at the end of this post.

Lack of knitting content. Really, this isn’t just the same old scarf in a new pose. It’s grown at least six inches:

The outcome of our dietary dilemma; obviously we lived to tell the tale. We decided to live dangerously by boiling the fetid feast for an hour prior to indulging. A calculated risk, two days in advance of our anniversary getaway. All’s well that ends well.

Thanks to you for all the anniversary wishes. The weekend, on Orcas Island WA, was perfect. We stayed at a resort that was originally the Rosario estate built in 1909 by Robert Moran. Mr. Moran left school at age 14 in NY to help in the family business of making belts for Singer Sewing Machines. He followed Horace Greeley’s advice to "Go west, young man."  Literally penniless, he landed in Seattle in 1875 when the population was 1500. He had to borrow to pay for his first meal. Working this concept of credit he founded a very successful ship building company.

I wonder if he knew how beautiful the Pacific Northwest was:

At age 47 he was diagnosed with organic heart disease and given two years to live. Leaving the business in the care of his brothers, he moved to Orcas Island to build a retreat to live out his dying days. The mansion was completed in 1910. In the end Robert Moran survived his eight siblings and his wife, dying at the age of 86! He chalked up his symptoms to stress of doing business.

During his life he planned on rewarding two of his brothers for taking care of the business, by building them houses on his estate. The brother’s wives made great plans, attempting to outdo each other, house and view-wise. They became quite competitive but Robert showed them.  He scrapped their plans and built them twin houses side by side, one neither better than the other.That’ll learn ’em.

I’ll continue in a later post. Meanwhile it’s back to reality for me. While we got used to the routine of hotel life, it stayed the same back home with a 17 year old sans housekeeping staff. I’ll leave you with the sunrise view from my weekend knitting spot, not unlike the view of the of the Moran DIL’s. I wonder if they were knitters. I managed only three rows of Jared’s Hemlock Blanket. It doesn’t sound like much, but you have to consider that each row, at this point, has more than 500 stitches.

Due to strong senses of adventure, commitment, and humour, and an occasional bottle of good red wine, Chuck and Li are married for 25 years.

Before:

After:

We’re off to celebrate this weekend. See you next week.

Why is it, you won’t see someone in years and then you see them three times in short succession? I experienced a version of this the other day. Stuck on a crossword puzzle word, Chuck asked me if I’d ever heard of the word ululate. Not having heard of it before he assumed it was incorrect. In fact it wasn’t. Ululate means a howling or baying sound.

Yesterday we discovered a new website: freerice.com. It’s an opportunity to improve your vocabulary while donating 20 grains of rice for each correct answer to a country in need of food security. Corporations, like Google and Apple, pay for the rice. Yesterday 369,000,000 grains of rice were won and donated. Can you imagine the pile of rice we could amass if all of us knitters/bloggers/lurkers took a shot at it?  Sure enough when I tried, a couple of words into it, what came up? Ululate. 

Then I was listening to CBC radio when the mayor of Ottawa was introduced. The cheering audience was acknowledged by the show’s host, "Thank you for that welcome, I believe I heard some ululating in there." She had either solved the same crossword or had logged on to freerice.com. I don’t for one minute believe that ululate was part of her vocabulary until the day before.

They say third’s a charm. What are the chances that you’d hear such an unusual word used three times in 24 hours? Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket. I should probably pass, judging by my contest luck this morning, I had finally gotten through to the radio station to answer the question, "What was the name of Bach’s first wife." I had her first and middle name but couldn’t come up with her surname. I almost answered "Bach," but didn’t want to sound like a smartass. So, no win, but guess what her maiden surname was? Bach. She was his first cousin, Trick question. I’m overdue for a win.

Knitting update – Halfway through my faux Montego Bay scarf in Lorna’s Laces Shepard sock yarn in the Aslan colourway.

So we’ve talked vocabulary and Bach. How about some cuteness? A freshly groomed Gracee posing perfectly in front of a mirror – double your Scottie pleasure:

Wonder what Google searches I’ll get with that title? In a break from knitting, I give you the following true story:

I am not shoe addicted as some, as I am extremely tenderfooted, hence the need for comfy shoes as pictured on the left. I don’t know how I was blessed with such namby pamby sensitive footsies. I live in Canada, but for years, my only footwear purchases were done in the good ole US of A. Chuck didn’t understand, saying, " There are 30 million people in Canada, certainly they must have shoes for sale up here." Well, you know what, dear husband of 25 years as of next week?  They might have them here in the True North, but why then, do so many people cross the border to buy them?

It’s all about selection and price, Not just women, mind you, I just came back from Black Friday weekend at a U.S. outlet mall, and there were an awful lot of shoe boxes and old shoes discarded in the parking lot. Vans, Adidas, Nine West, you name it. Shoe boxes in the parking lot – a telltale sign of Canadians in the midst. Supposedly the favourite smuggle-able item of cross border shoppers, next to gas. We have a reputation of keeping our shoes in spotless, as good as new, ah hem, condition. Of course that’s a north bound reputation. Those US border guards think we have the stinkiest, well worn footwear on earth.

So, I’m at the Bass outlet with my favourite cross border shopper, Lynn. We do a yearly Christmas shopping trip together. Forgetting it was US Thanksgiving weekend until the last minute (bad American citizen points for me – is it my imagination or did they time Turkey Day early this year?), we proceeded anyway, strategically timing our crossings. Did you know that some Canadian shoppers wanted needed shoes so badly that they waited 3.5 hours on a border lineup to return to our shoeless country?

Lynn had met her patriotic south of the border shopping obligations by buying two pairs plus slippers by the time she had reached the Bass store. I was making my mortgage payment at Jones New York before meeting her. Arriving at Bass, I could see Lynn, through the window, fondling the leather. She was in good company, judging by the number of British Columbia license plates in the parking lot. I snuck in, sinking into the sock racks so as not to be noticed by the shoppers. I took a deep breath, and in my best authoritative voice, projecting as I was trained to, in the old fashioned days when theatre was done without those microphones attached to one’s face, I proclaimed "STEP AWAY FROM THE SHOES."

There was a store-wide collective gasp, followed by a meek voice, a complete stranger, "I wasn’t going to buy any, I’ve already bought four pairs…eh?"

A guilty conscience needs no accuser.

A little something for you dog lovers: What breed are you? Go on, you always wanted to know. Come back and share your results.

The before shot doesn’t look as bad as it really was and the after doesn’t look as good as it really does.  Isn’t it funny how a pretty driveway makes an ugly garage door look uglier?

Bryant discovers the curling iron. Before and after:

On our October vacation, Blogless Marsha told me if I was going to
carry my knitting around after 5:00 on a cruise ship, I needed to
consider an evening knitting bag. Before:

After:

The best part? 35% off the last marked price: