We are on our way

Hi Megs,

Wow - can't believe it too so long for our birthday gifts to get to San Francisco. Almost one month! I did send it slow freight. Happy you liked them - and so did the Lady. Almost all, as you mentioned, are "recycled". They are the best kind. Samantha finds cashmere sweaters at Frenchies and unwinds them, washes and you have beautiful cashmere for almost nothing.

Loved all the things you are doing. Really can't wait to see it all in person and see the flowers. We heard about the melted highway- wow!

I am writing this from the Airport Hilton in Halifax - so it will be short. With all the things I had to get done before I left - mostly Brazil, lobster calendar, income tax, forms because we are almost turning 65, it was a wild last few days. I finished all 5 shawls, washed, blocked, dried and folder ready to go!

I also did my first dyeing. It is a 6 value swatch for the bee hive of the Rug Bees apron for the Spring Fling. I left them in the jars so they would be a little mottled and it worked well.

But - am working away on my little purses for my host families. They are turning out really nice. I am using Noro in various colours. I have made 4 and finished another and almost another on the drive from Yarmouth to Halifax. I have to make 15. Each one is different - really interesting to see how they are turning out.

That is all the time I have - we can blog together when I get there. Loved to read your last post. Gives me a flavour of San Francisco and for the record, Yarmouth has been beautiful, sunny and warm except for the last few days! I planted some flowers in pots beside the door. They are beautiful but hope the frost doesn't get them while we are away.

I can truly say - see your tomorrow! Hope I can knit on the flight. It is a long flight.

Love ya,

Mom

Goodies Galore

Hi Mom,

While I hadn't planned to post again until you got here, I've been inundated with so much good stuff this past week that I had to share. Both gifts that I've bought for myself (it's good to be nice to yourself sometimes) and one's that I've gotten in the mail - from you!

That's right, your package of Easter and Birthday gifts finally arrived - how nice to get to celebrate these holidays again! I love the 'historic/eco' theme to all my birthday gifts - from the
recycled yarn to the vintage knitting needles and 'knitting pins'. Plus the Yarmouth Lighthouse is historic too - how better to honor that than with a candle? (Well, maybe there are better ways, but I'm going with that reasoning for now). The Easter gifts were much appreciated by all as well- I had to stop myself from consuming my entire chocolate bunny within a short 24-hour period, but it's going down fast. And as you can see, the Wizzo was a hit with the lady too:











She hasn't quite figured out that it's not for chewing on yet and there are already a couple of punctures but other than that it's holding up well!

Also in the mail on Friday was a gift for myself that I couldn't resist: A What-Would-Madame-De-farge-Knit t-shirt. That's right, I can proudly proclaim my knit-geekiness to the world, as well as my dedication to the CraftLit podcast where we are now listening to (you guessed it) A Tale of Two Cities. It should be perfect to run in, and maybe to bring a double take or two to the people who stop me for directions. (That's right, people in cars stop me when I'm running to ask for directions -last Friday it was a group of teenagers wanting to know where "Haight & Asby" was. I knew I emitted 'helpful person' vibes normally since people often ask me questions when I'm walking down the street, but I didn't know they transmitted so far as to infect people even when I'm moving at speed!)

My biggest gift/splurge, though, came on Saturday when Nathan & I checked out the SFMoMA Artist's Warehouse sale, and I came away with this:

It's a photograph, Deer, by local artist Nadim Sabella, who did a photo survey of abandoned houses in the West. This acquisition was funded in large part by birthday money given to me by Glenn & Tina. I had been looking for just the right thing to do with it - saving seemed, well, logical but uninspired, but I also didn't want to use it for an everyday purchase. This was perfect! So thank you Glenn & Tina - I can't wait to get it framed!

Since it's better to give than to receive, I have also been working on a gift for Nathan's cousin Alison who gave birth in March to a beautiful baby boy, David Ramon. With the many t-shirt shoulders left over from cutting the fabric for the rug (which only used the torso sections), I was inspired to modify Martha's sock-dog pattern from the Holiday Handmade Gift magazine to use the soft t-shirt fabric. It took a bit of fiddling and reconstructing to get this all together (even though I had more seperate pieces, I ended up sewing the body together pretty much as one) but I think the end product is pretty cute! Here he is once the pieces were all assembled:


And again now that he is all stuffed and ready to go to his new home. As you can see, he's gotten pretty comfortable here hanging out with Rushka, but I'm sure he'll like it with David too!


On the knitting front, all of my projects are humming along - I'm trying to get a certain amount done on each every day (the one exception being the water bottle cover, which is relegated to public transit knitting mostly right now) and I'm making quite a bit a progress as I go. My Lady E is now on tier 31 which mean only 6 tiers to go! (since I need to end on an odd row to make the ends match up) Once I get to row 36 I think I'll measure out all the yarn I need for the fringe (which is quite a bit - it's complex) and if I have enough left I'll take it on to 43 tiers total. Since I still have another unused skein of the lighter pink wool, I think I'll be safe. 43 = Nathan + Me, so it's my favorite knitting number!

Of course, coming to the end of this stole (and my ripple mystery project, also in the home stretch) I'm already thinking of what to do next. Thursday I met a friend for tea and we took a quick trip to Imagiknit where I picked up all of the leaf green Baby Ull that they had on the shelves for knitted gifts for Sarah. (I'm planning to combine two pattern sets from Dale Book 164.) If airport rules allow, I think that her baby knits will be the bulk of my travel knitting in Asia - the yarn is light for the heat and the blanket should be good 'mindless' knitting while in the air. Plus I need to push through if I'm going to get it all done for mid-June!

Loading this green in my 'upcoming projects' basket at home, I found the yellow Fleece Artists merino sock yarn that has been waiting to be cast on since I bought it at Doris' in December. (It was wound up this spring to show Glenn how the winder & swift worked together - he was intrigued by the mathematical construction of the swift). Then I looked over at the two skeins of hot pink Tess' silky wool sitting in my 'waiting for a project' yarn basket and thought: Project Spectrum colors for April/May! So here is my photo for this color triad. I think the silky wool may become a Hanami stole from Pink Lemon twist, although it will probably be more of a scarf (that's the size I got out of my last two skeins of silky wool, a beautiful smoky grey that became a bird-nest's scarf based on the shawl pattern in Folk Knits). It's the right pink, and the concept behind the pattern is great, so we'll see if that idea holds.

It seems that right now my to-do project pile is quickly exceeding my ability to knit fast, since I also picked up the latest issue of Rowan Magazine and am now trying to decide which sweater to cast-on once I get done with Eveleen. We'll not mention the fact that I'm only into repeat 4 of the 9 lace scallops on the body of Eveleen and have yet to even contemplate the intarsia panel on the chest! I'm already thinking out yarn options and colors for either one of these two as the next project: Joy (which is crochet, and I'm always on the lookout for good crochet patterns) or Ophelia (with or without the sleeves, I'm still not sure)














I don't know if it's the spring flowers in the photos, the ice-cream colors of the yarns, or just the general warm feelings from having so many inspiring ideas and goodies to play with, but I went out to buy some flowers and actually found lilacs (rare here in San Francisco). The sight & smell of them brought me right back to the end of the school year in Ottawa when we all picked lilacs for our teachers in elementary school, wrapping the stems in wet paper towels secured with aluminum foil to keep the fresh on the way. Now every time I walk into the kitchen I am transported back. Too bad we don't have the warm sunny weather here right now to match!


Maybe you can bring some sunny Yarmouth weather with you when you come tomorrow? We could use it - we are supposed to have lots of fog and rain over the next few days. So sad!

One thing I am glad about, though, is that I will be picking you up at SFO and not in Oakland, since I do not want anything to do with the massive traffic nightmare over in the East Bay that is the melted freeway. Today all public transit in the area is free to try to lure people out of their cars, since cars won't really have anywhere to go on the other side of the bridge anyways. What they will do for the next 6 months it will take to get the interchange back together, I don't know.....

Until your arrival, I will leave you with another photo in my flowers of San Francisco series. These are huge flowering masses that rise up out of bushes and eventually topple from their own weight. While the ones in Buena Vista park are mostly purple, these ones that I photographed in the Marina were more blue. All are lovely!

I'll see you tomorrow at the airport,

Megan

Barely one week to go...

...until you & Dad get in to San Francisco! I can't believe it is so soon. Aside from all of Dad's plans, is there anything that you want to do? (Besides visit yarn stores, I mean. I am sure a visit to Imagiknit will be in the cards, along with a stop at Samovar so that Dad can relax over tea)

I had also wondered whether you knew Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, given how small the Maritimes are. Everyone in Yarmouth who was close to her must be in shock. Here the pro-gun advocates are already on the soapbox claiming that looser gun restrictions would have prevented this from happening and that guns should be allowed in schools so that people can defend themselves. (?!) The logic is mind-boggling. It seems we are a long way away on this side of the border from actually confronting the violence in society effectively. Not to mention the family who tried to hide their son and do everything to pretend the problem wasn't there so as to avoid bringing shame to themselves in the Korean-American community, isolating them all in the process and leading to tragedy in the long run.

But I am glad to hear that the sun has finally come to Yarmouth - it must be great to feel the outside waking up again. Nathan and I spent some time this weekend visiting the 'wilds' of downtown San Francisco this weekend, snapping pictures in between the rain bursts. Here are some of my favorites - which seem all the more urban contrasted with your riding mower with the laundry in the background!




Our excuse for heading out was member's day at SFMoMA, where we checked out the photography collection, the SECA Award winners (we came away with our own packet of Victory Garden seeds) and the Brice Marden exhibit, very inspiring for his use of color and texture. We also picked up a very cute and inspiring book, Food Play, a perfect antidote for someone taking his job in the food industry too seriously! (Check out the 'surprise me' pages for some peeks at the fun) But we did wait to see the current big ticket show, Picasso and American Art, until you get here. Somehow that seemed like something that might be right up your alley.

I am also glad to hear that your marathon of shawls (and Doris' marathon of spinning) are coming to a close - it will feel good to have some other knitting in your hands. And I'm sure the little purses are a much needed quick-fix breather in the meantime. They look really cute and I know you'll breeze through them. I'm sure you'll have a great time in Brazil as well, it has always been on my to-visit list. My ideal would be to go for New Year's in Rio for the Festa de lemanja, joining all the revelers dressed in white diving into the ocean at the stroke of midnight under the fireworks. (I know someone who did this for the millennium and I've been jealous ever since). Some day...

For the meatime, though, I guess I'm just going to have to content myself with finally getting to visit Asia. After talking about it off and on since February, tickets are tentatively booked for me to fly out to Tokyo at the end of May to visit Dana, then head over to Hong Kong to spend time with Nathan's sister Racheal and help her set up her new apartment. I can't believe it's really going to happen. I'll get to see Dana (who sent me a fabulous birthday package with the cutest little bag, picture frame and matching cellphone and card holder set - love the cherries!) and finally meet her three babies (plus the two on the way). And then I'll get to spend time with Rachael on her turf and get her to show me all her favorite sites that up to now I've only been able to see in the photos of everyone else who's visited her so far. Hopefully we'll get the chance to do some hiking around the island too, in addition to visiting all the city shops and finding all the things to make her new apartment a cozy home. That is, if the monsoons don't wash us away...

Nathan and I are also heading out to Anne's wedding in June, but I'm going to stay longer with Sarah so that I can go to her shower (planned for the next weekend) and hopefully help her get ready for her baby to be. Plus that will give me some time to visit with Mamer too, which is overdue. All that plus your visit and Meredith, Susan and Ellen visiting in July will make it a busy three months, but it should all be great.

As for my knitting, I am making steady progress on both my Lady E (up to tier 24, only 12 to go!) and on my Eveleen, now almost 3 repeats in to the body. Somehow in the midst of all of this I managed to finish the first long side of the water bottle cover too. I know you don't understand this project but everyone here in SF who I've shown it to understood immediately! Must be the combination of damp foggy weather and a lack of indoor central heating that makes the idea of a hot water bottle warming up the bed all that more appealing. My secret crochet project is rippling along well too - the crochet is a nice break, and the colors are flowing nicely. Here's another peek for you - I just think it's really cute!

And I was thinking today that if your dye sink is a success, I just might have a custom order for you. The yarn that I got from Afghans for Afghans back in November still needs to be overdyed, and I'm worried about making a hash out of so much yardage. It's almost enough to make a sweater of if I can get it all to turn out! So maybe this is a project you'd like to try out for me? You can take a look when you get here...

And speaking of A4A, someday sometime there is the chance the group might get its 15 minutes (or more likely 120 seconds!) of fame. Last week a group of us were interviewed by the local ABC7 news crew for a Friday feature segment highlighting the organization. I have no idea when it will run, but there will be an internet link when it does. There should be photos from that day up on the A4A site soon too - I'll keep you posted!

In the meantime, have a great week - and travel safe! We'll see you here soon,

Megan

Spring has arrived in Yarmouth

Hi Megs,

Spring has finally arrived here! We have little flowers and today we cleaned up the yard. One sure sign of spring is that we can put the clothes on the line (couldn't last week - that awful Nor'easter just about blew us away - wild winds!) and Dad has his tractor out!

We have little daffodils and crocuses up and others almost to burst. Love your flowers - they are so nice.

Can't wait to see you guys - but it almost didn't happen! Had an awful few days last week - Canada Post lost an Express Post (24 hrs) registered (get a signature) letter I sent on the 11th to Clay with all our original "important papers" so he could get his US citizenship - including my US passport! After a lot of crazies including calling the RCMP (really worried about identity theft - so were the RCMP) and with NO help from Canada Post "investigators" (their tracking said, "delivered to recipient" (no signature) on Friday the 13th - YIKES) it arrived 7 days later all beat up. I wouldn't have been able to cross the boarder by plane without it because of new US RULES. Clay then Fedex'ed it back to me (it did come in less than 24 hrs) so all is well and we will be on our way May 1. Canada Post is going to give me my $18.81 back! Nice of them. Nothing like having your identities floating around Toronto for 7 days.

In the middle of all this came the news of the shootings at Virginia Tech. Awful, awful. The French teacher who was killed was from Yarmouth - graduated from Yarmouth High School. She is Muriel Mooney's sister - you may remember Muriel from your work At the Sign of the Whale. She is Joan's friend. Very sad - the whole thing is nuts. I found it really shook me up. And knowing the campus of Indiana University in a small town like VT, there is no way to get word to people. It happened, everyone did their best. Can't predict what people will do. This came just after the deaths of 10 Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and one badly injured young man who was from Yarmouth - his mother goes to Figures with me. Too close to home!

Got some wonderful pictures of your grandmother (my dear old mother) taken at Easter with Meredith . She doesn't look 90 - almost 91! They had a little Easter gathering for her at John Knox. Meredith really looks like a young woman. You will have a grand time when she - and the "aunts" visit you this summer.

I have also been working with the Rotary GSE team getting all our documents, clothes, gifts, airline tickets, yada, yada, yada,.... ready to leave on May 16th for Brazil. Have to get it as organized as possible before we leave to come to see you. We have started our own GSE 7820/4700 Blog. We hope to post as we go along so everyone will know what we are up too. Don't know if this is going to be possible - don't know how busy we will be - but we hope so. We, Gabrielle, Heather-Anne, Amy, Nola and me, are really getting excited. We will have our tickets and visas soon!

When I come back from Brazil I am flying directly to Kansas City to Anne's wedding. Don't know if you will be coming - hope you are. Clay isn't because his friend Austin, from Ottawa, is getting married that same weekend. Your Dad is going to drive down via baseball parks. Then we are going to drive home via Fredericton, New Brunswick, so Stan can go to a retirement party for the Executive Director of the Canadian Literacy Data Base - Stan was on their board for many years. We probably won't be home until the end of June. Kind of a crazy May & June.

I am almost finished the last - 5th - shawl. Doris said she is NEVER going to spin dark brown wool again! Will be so happy when I get these done. Then I thought I really should do something for the Rotarians who are going to host me. First I tried a felted purse - NOT GOOD! Looks muddy. I used two different yarns and I got a flower pot! Live and learn. Sometimes the variegated yarns look nice but when you felt them they go AWFUL. The yarns matched before I felted it. Somehow the green disappeared in the variegated yarn. I think I WILL make it into a flower pot cover.

So I am making the little purse - about 4"X6" from a pattern in "One Skein Wonders", the Lotus Purse, page 49. I am using Noro Kureyon and the colours are turning out really nicely. It is an interesting pattern - I used it before with blue denim yarn - you slip every other one stitch with yarn in front when you knit and yarn in back when your purl. Makes a fabric look. I braided the fringe. I might have to enlist your help with this project - I need to make at least 12 of them. It takes about two hours to make one. I will bring this project with me to San Francisco. I am using pewter buttons from Nova Scotia that I got at At The Sign of the Whale. Don't remember who makes them.

Then on top of that I am hooking a pattern on an apron we are going to give away at the Spring Fling. This is a one-day event where the Yarmouth rug hookers, the Rugg Bees and Carpetbaggers, invite hookers in the area (Digby, Shelburn, Lunenburg, Annapolis Valley) to a hook-in. It is always grand fun. I will probably miss it this year but will make the prize. It won't take very long but I am going to dye a 6 value swatch of a brownish colour for the hive. I am all set up downstairs and this will be my first real project in the "basement lab". I have the wool soaking now.

Just got back from the Mayflower Awards. The town and municipality of Yarmouth award certificates to people in the community who have nice gardens. It is a nice event at the Town Hall. We have won it for several years. I think once you win you just keep getting the certificate unless you die or your property goes to rack and ruin - which it may this year because we are both going to be gone during prime weeding season!

So - kind of crazy here. At least I have my passport back. This and VT did not help with my stress level. But - I do it to myself.

Good for you for the running thing. I am also running - on a treadmill. As you know, running down a country road is sort of boring and also dangerous! Would be much nicer in SF. The pictures are beautiful but not sure what the flower is. It may be a passion flower fully opened. It is a vine but the flowers are usually more purple. I do my running at Figures. I haven't lost much weight either - about 9 lbs so far - but my body has changed for the better - in the butt and middle areas (uppers and lowers). I am up to 1.5 miles/day and then I do the circuit of machines. It takes about an hour. I go at least 3 times a week - sometimes more. I do enjoy it but do I ever sweat! Just like my father.

Your shawl is coming along nicely as is your Eveleen. It is nice to take things slowly. I have just set myself too many deadlines these days. And I do like your mystery project - but don't like to crochet but do like what it makes. It hurts my hands - although I do like the rhythm of it. I am going to bring my Lady Eleanor with me. I haven't done a stitch on it - won't till I finish the shawls but will work it in between little bags! I think I'm nuts.

So - we will be there on May 1. You will have to talk to your father about when because he keeps talking to Air Canada and they keep changing stuff. You know how he loves to fiddle with that kind of thing. He also has plans about what we are doing so I am just along for the ride, to be with him and you both and Rushka. Going to be great.

Here is a cartoon from the New Yorker that hits in on the head with your Father and me! ("All I ever wanted was one of those gizmos that allow time travel without violating the grandfather paradox, but, oh no, you had to have your damn model-train layout with automatic freight-shunting capability")

I can now say - will be seeing you! The peepers on the pond just started peeping last Saturday night when we came home from the Hospital Gala we heard them for the first time. Now they are in full voice - I love the sound.

Love ya,
Mom

Spring Flowers

Hi Mom - Your house looks great! It must feel so good to be rid of the carpet and the wallpaper. Especially nice to curl up in the finished house with all the bad weather pounding hard in the Northeast - from snow to Nor'easters to who knows what is next. Hopefully you are bearing up well through it all.

We are alternating between rain and bright sunshine, with a steady wind off the ocean the only constant. The 'breeze' makes running a bit of an experience - somehow no matter which direction I'm moving in, it's always into a wall of wind - sometimes strong enough to almost knock down! But I'm bearing through and tomorrow I'll enter the last week of my 'training program', up to 3 miles each run, 3x a week. I'm impressed with myself, even if it still doesn't seem that I'm loosing any weight! I'm not sure if I'll try to keep increasing the distance or work on improving my speed since I'm really a bit of a pokey turtle. Especially considering that Hans, the original founder of Nathan's company in San Francisco, finished the Boston Marathon yesterday in less than 4 hours, with an average pace of 8.3 minutes per mile. (Congratulations Hans!) He leaves me in the dust!

The mix of sun and rain is bringing out all the flowers here and it is really beautiful to walk around the city right now. Here are some shots from recent wanderings, a pink flower (do you know what this is?) growing along a school fence in Cow Hollow, one of a cluster of vine-wrapped callas in a side garden down the road from us which I get to pass every time I head down to catch the muni, and the tulips by the windmill in golden gate park:




My knitting projects are steadily growing along too. I am through the body of the first (long) side of the water bottle cover (silly though it may seem) and am now on the neck shaping. I am also back up to the halfway point on my Lady E version 2 thanks to a concerted effort to try to get through a tier a day - so far I am keeping up with it and I am almost back to where I was before I ripped it back:


(and yes, there is a brown/gold streak running through almost every square, along with scattered speckles of white - really pretty)

I am making so much progress on these two, in fact, that to counter the steady repeat by repeat nature of these two, I have taken the leap to cast on two other projects in the past two weeks as well. (This makes a total of 4 projects OTN, which is a big number for me - I like to get things finished!)

First, as a little birthday present to myself, I decided to finally cast on the Rowan Eveleen (which has been waiting so long for me to be done with Lady E so that it can be her turn!) I have been working slowly through the 14-row lace pattern, which is really pretty in the way it makes these scalloped shells:


I am trying not to push through this one too fast, enjoying the laciness of it for now. I am now half way through the second repeat, with 9 total before I get to the flower pattern on the chest. I am working both the front and back panels at the same time, so even though it's slow for now once they're done I'll be able to move straight into the sleeves and finishing. I think this will be really pretty!

My second project is a bit of secret for now, but here's a teaser. It's a crochet pattern that I have wanted to try for a while, inspired again by Yarnstorm and her rippling along (which has inspired a whole ripple along blog, so I'm not alone). Since I don't have the pattern book myself I've had to work at this a bit to get the ripple effect I wanted, but so far it's working out well. You'll get to see the finished object (or at least the work in progress) when you get here in May...


I have also been listening to a new podcast, The Knitting Cook. Lots of great recipes, fiber talk and adventures of a woman living with her husband and (now three) kids in Germany. I can't wait to try my first one of her recipes - will it be the bean and spinach soup or the prosciutto and mushroom pasta sauce? Although the salted caramel ice cream sounds good too...

Right now, though, I'm listening to all of the news on Virginia Tech, thanks to our new XM home kit (a birthday present from Nathan) which allows me to get my CNN fix in every day. All of these stories are just so sad - the number of people lost and injured is just too big and the finger-pointing that has already begun is just so pointless. Hopefully someone will find a way to figure out why these kinds of things keep happening here. Maybe it's time for me to step away from the computer, make some tea, and try to enjoy the sunshine and flowers instead...

Hopefully you are having some sunshine today too - and that ours will last until your visit!

Megan

Back at it!

Hi Megs,

I guessed that Rushka was chewing on Dick Chaney's head - good one Rushka!

Hope you had a nice Easter. We had a snow storm on Easter day. It was colder and we had more snow on Easter than Christmas. Nuts. My garden rabbit got covered! Not so Happy Easter Bunny. My crocuses were up but the also got covered in snow. It is now melting.

The renovations are done! We have cleaned up, put stuff back in the rooms, thrown out about 40 bags of junk, taken a bunch to storage and are we happy to be back to normal. Two weeks of crazy. When we moved here in 1996 it was so rushed, the house in Ottawa sold so fast that we just dumped stuff on the van. While we had done a lot downstairs the upstairs was just as the former owners left it. Now we have made it ours! Feels so good. Here are some pictures.

The Balcony - left and right.

Below left the "elephant bedroom" (New Hope Gray), our bedroom (Davenport Tan), my studio (Seaforth Sage), Dad's study (with Dad in it) (Depot Buff). You can see there is a lot of wood! But it is all so beautiful and warm. Dad's study has cork - with a green tinge. Very soft.












And things are a little less messy in my studio but a lot is going on in there. Love my stuff!

We do love the way it looks. So warm and cozy and once all the wood dust gets out it will really be nice.

Your rug looks "interesting" - a conversation piece for sure. The colours are nice but I guess every T-shirt is not the same.

The Knitting Guild got a total boot out of you knitting a hot water bottle cover! They follow our blog and got a real hoot out of it. Wondered how "old" you were. I mentioned you had a birthday but that is as far as I went. I explained about cold African winters with no central heating. I am sure that San Francisco can be damp and the comfort of a comfortable hot water bottle will be just perfect! You are funny!

And speaking of birthdays - here are your presents - they do exist - I just haven't mailed them yet. I promise I will do it tomorrow. I also included some Easter presents- for next year. There are also some presents for Rushka. I am still looking for the Robe. I have e-mailed Holt Renfrew but have no answer yet.

Now - I cannot believe you fogged your entrelac! Really proud of you. You are your mother's daughter. I have done this so many times (before it was called frogging) when stuff just didn't look right. And well that you did because it will be so much nicer. I find that if I don't do this and finish it with it just not being right that I never wear it, don't even give it away because I don't want to inflict it on someone else, so it goes to the basement and then out in a clothes bag to some poor charity. The kinder thing is to just rip it and get it over with. Like taking a bandage off a cut. Just do it! It looks so much nicer and "right" with the colours making the basket weave. It is just time - and time goes by and you will have either something you hate or something you like. I didn't realize it had a gold line in it. This really comes out in your new version. Really nice yarn.

I just did the same thing with my fourth shawl (of the five I am making for Brazil) I changed yarn and there was just a slight line of change of colour so it frogged over 20 long rows (on the triangle - yikes). The yarn is hand spun so has variations which are nice - but not in a long line. But now it looks so much better. Just hated that line. Then I found a mistake in the garter stitch (can you believe I made a mistake in the GARTER stitch (momentary loss of mind). I didn't "garter" it. So I went down with a rug hook and reworked 8 stitches 13 rows down - one row of stitches at a time. But - not it looks good and I am motivating again!

I have hardly picked up anything else. With the house being so crazy all I had the heart for (and not even that) was the shawls. I did have to drive to Halifax to get a yellow fever needle so I took the entrelac and worked on it while I waited to see if I would die from a reaction to the needle. Nothing happened but I did get a tier done. Had lunch with one of my CP gals, picked out some new light fixtures for the bedrooms & Dad's study (the problem with painting is then other things look seedy) and drove home.

Clay got back home to Toronto from the Barbados and then he DROVE from Toronto to New York with friends. He loved it - has a friend from high school living in Brooklyn - and now is going to renew his efforts to get his US passport. He also may regrow his beard and hair. He needs a change.

We are really looking forward to coming to see you in SF. We have a hotel and noticed that the picture of the lobby has one of those wonderful lamps we "almost" bought in the 70's and have kicked ourselves since then. It keeps coming back to haunt us.

Really feels good to be in my redone studio. My dyeing place is almost done in the basement - electricity is in but no face plates yet. Can't wait until it is done and now that the renovations are done I will have time to get down there.

Take care - see you both soon.

Love ya, Mom, XOP

Happy Easter!

Hi Mom,

Rushka has been at the door, waiting for the Easter bunny to arrive! I don't know what kind of impression she is trying to make, though, since she has decided that the first from our household to greet Peter Rabbit should be her new best friend - can you see who it is?

That's right, it's Dick Cheney! Nathan & I have allowed to keep him around so long as she keeps carrying him around by the head and chewing on his ears every once and a while for good measure...

As you can see the sun is out and the flowers are in bloom so it feels like spring! Well, really, it's sort of felt like spring since February but now we are actually at the point that I have been wearing t-shirts off and on for the past few weeks (when it's not windy, foggy or rainy, that is - this is San Francisco.) My tulips are up and blooming in the window boxes and they look so beautiful:


Sorry to hear that you are being so disrupted by the work on the house, but it will definitely be worth it in the end - if only to give you an opportunity to sort through things like photos of a political rally from 1995! I cannot believe how much Canadian politics have changed - from a new party in Quebec to my old classmate Justin Trudeau running for parliament to Steven Harper actually, illogically, becoming Prime Minister. Right now I am getting most of my news through the podcast Quirky Nomads, hosted by a woman who left California with her family, moving to Canada to get away from Bush. Let's just say she's not impressed with the leader she's ended up with instead!

As for my home projects, I finally finished my t-shirt rug last week after a big push at the end (fueled by the final episodes of Project Runway Season One)


Hmm, it's not quite as neat and pretty, or even the same shape, as the original pictured in the book! All I can say is that she must have 1) had t-shirts that were all EXACTLY the same weave and construction to get all the rows of different colors to be the same width and 2) cut her strips 1" wide and not the 1/2" wide noted in the pattern because 3) her rug is much more square than mine, which has become a runner. My aesthetic crisis with the overall appearance aside, though, the rug is already very popular with Nathan who thinks the garter stitch ridges feel great on his feet. So it is now at home in our kitchen where I can smush it up against the wall and have at least one straight side!

I have also started on my cabled water-bottle cover, dorky though it is. This is coming along nicely even though progress is rather slow. It's not easy knitting this in a splitty cotton blend, particularly with trying to keep the left side of the cables neat and tight. I swatched several times with different methods of wrapping the stitches coming off of the sides of the cable section to try and firm this up but I am somehow inherently loosey goosey. In the end it shows up much less in the actual item than in the swatches, though, so that is some comfort. I think it's pretty at least!


So far I am over half-way done with the first (long) side. I have also managed to avoid loosing my cable needle in the various trains, buses and cafes I have worked on it in so that feels like something! I think I am going to knit the two sides separately, then join them in the round to make the neck (why does Rowan always want you to knit everything in individual tiny pieces? Even socks and mittens!)

Working so much to alternate wrapping styles and tighten up my cable twists, though, did finally offer a flash of insight into the gapping of my entrelac squares on the left edge of my right-side pieces. That, combined with my general displeasure with the color-block effect - by row 26 I found out that I didn't have enough of the original color to finish and would need to add another pink section at the end - led me to make the drastic decision to just take it back and start again.

Yes, that's right, I frogged 25 rows of knitting (Nathan was aghast when he figured out what I was doing), leaving only the cast-on row and some really big balls of yarn:


I have already re-started, alternating the knit-side rows in the original dark color and purl-side rows in the new pink color. With the two colors moving in opposite directions this actually takes much better advantage of the weavin effect that, to my mind, entrelac was designed to emulate:


I am much happier with my Lady E now! And hey, I get to have the joy of knitting it all over again - isn't the knitting supposed to be the fun part?

I hope that you and Dad are able to have a happy Easter, with at least some of the craziness of the renovations in check. We are going to keep it easy here, although I do have an urge to bake a ham after seeing the one that Martha made the other day - it looked too good! It will be just Nathan and I this weekend after a small run of guests. Diane was in the Bay area last week and took Thursday afternoon off from her interrogation duties to explore San Francisco with me. Nathan joined us for a seafood dinner - she even tried the oysters, which I give her major credit for!

Then Glenn was in town from Sunday to Wednesday for business meetings (we had a great steak dinner with his boss from Mitsubishi that I think I am still full from 4 days later) One of the things they were checking out were the inroads of rice crackers on store shelves in the area - yes, that's right, the same kind rice crackers that you buy trayloads at a time! (Theirs by the way are the Mr. Christies ones in a box) Apparently they are really popular in Canada and Australia but they can't get the store presence they want in the US. After reminiscing about your tuna fish salad on seaweed flavored crackers, Glenn & Nathan gathered for me all the necessary ingredients (the sweet pickles were the hardest part to find). So that is what I think I am going to go make myself for lunch!

Hope you & Dad have a great day -

Megan