There are no Cockroaches in Utah

So, we're moving to Utah next month.

I can't really go into details at this point but we're doing it for family.

I have lived in a lot of places and moved around a lot (I know some of my readers can relate) and I cling to the dream of one day staying in one place long enough to settle in and unpack, but unfortunately North Carolina is not that place. It's too far away from family who need us.

I have been here nearly ten months now, if you can believe that. In that time I have worked four jobs (furniture store, live music night club, health food store and art gallery), met hundreds of people, swam in the Atlantic Ocean, seen all three of North Carolina's aquariums (and one in South Carolina), visited our nation's capital three times, found every Asian grocery store in a 150-mile radius, saw sorghum, tobacco and cotton growing for the first time, experienced fire ants, killed dozens of cockroaches in my house, and have learned to love the south and all its charms. I will miss being here.

As a result of my jobs (especially managing the bar) and my relationship to the brewery (i.e. my husband's job), I have managed to build a lot of social capital in a way that was never possible in any of the other places I have lived. There are some really amazing people in this community and I have come to develop some great friendships. I am also pretty sure that I speak differently now - I bet if I go visit my people in Canada now they will notice how differently I pronounce vowels...

I have about four weeks to pack up the house, we will be traveling over Christmas. We have family near Salt Lake City, where we are moving to. I haven't been to SLC since our honeymoon in 2009, but certainly the few times I have been through Utah I have enjoyed it there. It is a beautiful state.

It turns out that Salt Lake City is a hotbed of health informatics research, the field I have not been in since I graduated with my Master of Science in 2009 and to which I hope to return. I have already put out some feelers and with any luck will be gainfully employed with the University of Utah in some capacity by my 40th birthday in March. Dan... well, you know, he can do any number of things well so he is extremely employable.

What about the Mormons, you say? I'm sure they won't hurt us. Just now we are in the land of the Free Will Baptists, and I think the Mormons speak a different language entirely, so we are not concerned. Even if we were at risk of converting I'm sure we wouldn't be eligible because we can't have kids and one wife is all Dan can handle. (Though having a second wife in the house to keep up with the housework would be useful, haha!)

So once again we will be divesting ourselves of the stuff we have accumulated and buy ourselves a trailer for the essentials. Dan has some wood and metal tools that will be coming with us, and hopefully one day soon he will have a shop where he can build stuff for us. But it will be, unfortunately, starting over again. We have very little furniture so will have to buy a dining set and living room furniture when we get there - we will have time for thrift store shopping when I get there I hope.

It's a bittersweet move. Just when I feel settled, we need to uproot, but I am happy to be nearer to family (my sister and mother are ecstatic - cheaper flights for them to come visit). I am also happy to be living in a city again that has things like coffee shops that are open evenings and weekends, bookstores, yarn shops, public transit, orchestra concerts, and access to nature. Also: IKEA! (Our nearest one here is clear across the state and is an entire day trip to get there and back).

I'll be sending out holiday greeting cards in the next week - if I don't have your mailing address, please let me know and I will be sure to send you one!

hours in the day

We need more of them. Or fewer things to do. I don't know, but I can tell you that I have been very busy as I have now flung myself into working.

I received a letter from my friend in Metchosin, British Columbia, the other day, and it reminded me that I have not written since I had the choice of jobs in front of me. I have since chosen, and I am now running the night club, called The Red Room. It's really a lot of fun when it's open and I am learning the names of many locals. I also feel a lot more secure with a bit of footing now, so I really feel like I can put down roots, figuratively and literally.

Sam, happily rolling around on the back porch as I'm working outside in the yard. 

 Here I have planted a line of sunflowers, arugula, and flax. The following day I planted another line next to it, of more sunflowers interspersed with radishes. This isn't the actual garden, but we haven't had time to build my raised beds and I needed to plant something.

This is along the west side of the house, so it is a bit sheltered from the wind but only gets sun in the second half of the day.

Every day I can I go out for an hour or two in the morning and do some work. Sometimes it is digging and planting - I don't know anything about the fertility of this soil, but it's mostly sand and floods when it rains heavily, so I know I have work to do on the soil building front. Luckily, that is underway!

Last week a lot of good things came into our life. On Monday we drove out to Beaufort, which is about an hour and twenty minutes away on North Carolina's coast and bought a planer/jointer, a router table and a wet/dry grinder/sharpener from someone on Craigslist. These are tools that Dan has always wanted and finally has them now, so he can start building furniture for our house, we can build our fence, we can build anything we want!

The next day I think it was, this lovely package stuffed full of yarn arrived from Ursa, who sent this to me as a birthday gift. Her generosity with yarn abounds with me and I am so tickled to be able to add to my stash! I haven't made plans for any of it yet, but it includes the likes of Indigo Moon, Madeline Tosh (I have never knit with MadTosh before!), Sanguine Gryphon (which has since split into two companies) and a few I hadn't heard of. I am also thrilled to have two skeins from Ursa's former company, Gaia's Colours, of the Pales sock yarn. I have knit three garments with this yarn and let me tell you - it holds up! Thanks Ursa!

A few days after that, Dan went to an auction at a local woodworking yard where they were selling everything and concentrating their operations in Greenville or Goldsboro. That afternoon we went with the truck and the van to pick up an entire rack of weird pieces of all sorts of lumber, four work tables, a number of step stools, a weird throne/chair made of 2x4s, and a "mulch display". I should have taken a photo of the latter. It looked great - it's two smallish tables that were full of "mulch" - but in my mind mulch is something that is biodegradable and that adds fertility to the soil. In this display were shredded rubber tires, painted three shades of brown. We were absolutely puzzled by this. Do people use painted shredded rubber tires as mulch? Or was this just meant to look like real mulch? We haven't decided what to do with it. Obviously we aren't going to use it in our yard, it simply will not go with permaculture. Should we try to sell it on Craigslist?

 On Sunday with a bunch of pallets that Dan and brought over from the brewery and with our newly acquired scrap lumber, Dan and I put together my long-longed-for three-bin compost system. It's not quite finished but it is at least usable.

 We found a bunch of wire mesh laying around the yard, just the perfect amount!

 My Sweety rests.

 This is the meadowland/backyard of the house next door to us. It is vacant at the moment, but a friend of ours is about to move into it and he has no interest in gardening. If we are allowed to have chickens, that would be a most excellent place for them.

 This is the view from the compost bin. The big tree in the almost middle is a beautiful lodgepole pine. Behind and to the right is a magnolia. Lots of space to figure out what to do with. We are thinking about putting berry bushes around the perimeter of the pine tree, maybe next spring.

 We have a pond! When we moved in, it was a really big pile of debris, old lumber full of nails, and a massive heap of leaves, branches and twigs. We started clearing things away last week to see what was under and how far it goes. I was delighted to discover...

 Actual finished compost. This biomass had been here so long in the perfect condition that it has now turned into black gold! I am so pleased - I can't wait to excavate it and use it to inoculate my new compost piles as well as on top of my raised beds when we get them in.

Sam is enjoying being an outside kitty, although she is really becoming a neighborhood menace with all the feral cats around who are not used to an aggressive female.

 Today Dan brought me over a bin of spent grain from the brewery, which I am excited to finally have for my compost piles!

 I started by laying down piles of cardboard, and put the grain right on top of the two on the left. I had already started a compost pile yesterday with the contents of the pond, so I'm just going to keep building these up.

And this is now as it sits, with a layer of leaves and twigs on top. I'll try to do another layer in each stall tonight (once it cools down, it's now too hot to be working outside during the day, at least for this gal!) and hopefully one more before we leave for Hickory tomorrow. I'll be going with Dan and some of the brewery staff to the Hickory Hops festival this weekend but don't worry, Sam will be in good hands! 

Once I have these piles built to my satisfaction and once there is a lid and slats in the front to hold it all in, I'll ignore the thing for a week and then start turning. With these massive piles and the heat here it should only be a matter of weeks before I have excellent usable compost. Hopefully by then I will have raised beds, a compost sifter (for any large pieces that have not yet decomposed), and several yards of topsoil to put in my raised beds. It is warm enough now that I can have tomatoes and peppers outside and my little babies indoors are ready to be transplanted! 

I am, if you haven't noticed, really excited about composting, gardening, and permaculture. We have some great ideas of how we want to landscape and develop our yard, and even with this little chipping away at it an hour or two a day seems to make a difference. Working out in the yard has been a good way to meet neighbors who have lived here a long time - long enough to have seen fish in the pond more than a decade ago. As I write I am mindful of the bombing of the Boston Marathon, the ricin poisoned letters that were sent to government officials, the fertilizer plant explosion in Waco, Texas, and today I heard that Chicago has flooded and there are sinkholes swallowing people. It's been a hell of a week for America and I don't think it's a bad idea to get my food systems in place (for food security) while building community, just in case disaster strikes our area. If something should happen, I want to be in a position where I can help.

so much has happened

Hi again. Remember me?

In the time since I last wrote, Dan and I walked into a furniture store and I noticed the "Office Help Wanted" sign. I inquired, thinking not much of it, but the lady was very interested and had me fill out a three-line application form and didn't need to see a resume. I came in a few days later for an interview and all of a sudden I am working four days a week processing payments for furniture. It happened so fast! It's not exactly what I was after but it will do for now. Everyone is nice and we did get some furniture.

The store is selling off all their used furniture and only going to sell new from now on, so there was a steep discount on these pieces. Out of the three yellow sofas on display, we took two of them. I was so delighted! The big octagonal coffee table will have its bamboo middle removed and Dan has ideas for something artistic in the future.

So I'm working mostly 10-6 shifts, and on my off days, it seems, I have to stay at home and wait around for tradespeople to come. We don't have internet at home yet (how much will it cost?) so I haven't had a chance to bring my laptop to the brewery to use the WiFi until today, and it means that I have also been out of touch. I've started receiving messages from people "Hey I haven't heard from you what's happening?" so I'm very sorry.

With two new-to-us sofas (for a total of three) and our two camping chairs, we had barely enough seating for the 12 guests we had over for St. Patrick's Day last weekend. Dan made two kinds of corned beef, boiled cabbage, and a vegan chili. I made the Kale and Brussels sprouts salad that my friend introduced me to last year, and a focaccia that, in the last few minutes, got burned.

 Dan bought dried ancho chiles, soaked them, peeled the skins, macerated them, and they became the base for the vegan chili.

Toasted almonds for the salad. 

 Two bunches of kale and a bag of Brussels sprouts all chopped up!

 Mixed together. I didn't have a salad bowl big enough so I used the top of my Tupperware cake taker!

 Rutabega, turnip, beets and carrots roasted for the chili

Roasting vegetables and the corned beef, which eventually became pastrami!

I made the focaccia recipe from the rebar cookbook for the first time. (Seriously - every foodie in Victoria who is or knows vegetarians or vegans has this in their kitchen - it is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it!) and it was going well (I'm still getting used to baking in a gas range) until the last few minutes when, it looked almost done and Dan suggested we put it on broil for 30 seconds, I went upstairs and he forgot about it and...

We reseasoned the top and by the end of the night it was mostly gone, so I know I'll have to make it again!

I had made some decorations for our party but I didn't get them finished - I knitted up a bunch of shamrocks and was going to string them up but just ran out of time. We at least had green napkins and dishes. The invitees were basically brewery staff and a few significant others. It was lovely to have everyone over! I do love to entertain. Sam hid upstairs all night, of course, not being fond of more than say two people at a time. We are still eating the leftovers and I am looking forward to hosting our next event. Maybe next time we will have a dining table and chairs!

This is the built in bookshelf in the sun room in the southeast corner of the house. It is quite a lovely room and it will eventually be full of plants. Each day I have a day off, I do a bit of painting, it looks like each of the four colors will take three coats. Since it looks like I'll be working quite a lot in the next while, this will probably not be complete for another two weeks or so. I sure am happy with it!

I have also been planting seeds left and right. Every container I can find gets filled with potting soil and seeds. I bought a bunch of seeds from a local distributor when I first got here. Then two new friends gave me a bunch of their seeds. Today I found some more (cheap!) seeds at the hardware store.

These seeds are from The Skipper, who gave them to me just before I left Vancouver Island. I have hundreds more to plant and the space to do it! It's been really cold here, like below freezing at least every third night, so I'm glad that I haven't been able to plant anything outside yet. I need rather a lot of infrastructure before I can do anything with this massive yard, but it seems full of flowers that look like snowdrops just now so both Dan and I are reluctant do mess with it. We will definitely need at least a dozen yards of topsoil, spent grain, manure, and any other inputs I can manage. I'll be building a three-bin compost system much like the one I had in East Sooke - made of pallets and chicken wire - but more structurally sound. I even bought myself a hammer today! I lugged a 40-pound bag of potting soil home from the hardware store, six blocks from the house. I figured I had been lifting 55-pound bags of concrete all fall and winter, surely I could manage this.

The truck is still without a clutch. The place that will fix it was busy with an engine rebuild, and poor Dan just hasn't had time to go talk to the guys to book the truck in. Once it is again drivable, I can do things like go grocery shopping or drive to further locales for interviews. I also still need a NC driver's license, but that seems to be a complicated issue (a driver has to have insurance before they can get a DL) and all these things take time that we are having a hard time finding right now.

Oh this is important. We have been so far rather disappointed with the Asian food out here. Last week Dan had to drive to Hickory (four hours away) to drop off some beer for a festival next month, and because it was my day off, I went with him. On the way back we stopped in Raleigh to go to Whole Foods for ingredients for our party. Lo and behold! There was a yarn store next door! Of course we went in to Great Yarns, Dan bought some yarn so each of us could have a new pair of socks - the socks for me will match the burnt orange shirt Dan's mum gave me for Christmas! We admittedly went a little crazy in Whole Foods, it sure was fun. I sure do miss having a good bulk foods section!

While in Raleigh, we went to the Guitar Center so Dan could look at stringed instruments. While we were there we were approached by this creepy guy who was trying really hard to make conversation with us (OH YOU'RE FROM CANADA DON'T THEY HAVE CARIBOU IN CANADA) and eventually Dan said "I'm going to go look at banjos", to which the guy invited us to his church even though we told him we don't live in Raleigh. Dan played his "I'm Jewish" card even before I had a chance to think of a reply and away we went. Nobody around here knows how to respond to Jewish people it seems. I wanted so say "Dude, that's creepy!"

So that put us in a bit of a sour mood, and we needed dinner. Dan said "I don't know, how about Vietnamese?" I looked in my Google Maps on my phone and sure enough, there was Pho Cali across the street! We pulled into the parking lot and it was a Vietnamese food lover's paradise - right next to the restaurant there was a Vietnamese grocery. We were SO happy, we walked in and felt like we were at home! We went a little crazy there too. It was good. We have three kinds of sweet chili sauce now. :-) We put the groceries away and went to Pho Cali. It reeked of old cigarettes and urine, but the service was so quirky and friendly, it looked like it was going to be good. It was. In fact, we declared it better than Pho Vy in Victoria, and it was, for me, the best pho I had ever had. So that made us really happy.

That's my newsy longish post just for you on the eve of my birthday, and I have to work tomorrow. I had a shoutout from Louise on the Caithness Craft Collective podcast recently, thank you for your kind words Louise! I must admit that despite feeling like there are not enough hours in the day and feeling stressed out about all kinds of things, at the end of the day I am happy that I get to be in the same room as My Sweety. That was all I wanted for twenty months, what more could I ask for?

bread, yarn, Twitter, and a job

Latest adventures include 

 I was sitting on the sofa one day minding my own business when HOLY MOTHER OF GOD WHAT IS THAT I saw a spider. A big, thumb-sized fuzzy menacing looking spider. There are poisonous spiders here and I don't know how to identify them yet, but Dan assured me this is a harmless orb weaver. Okay. Glass and cardboard aided this little fella's return to the outdoors.

 Last Saturday, Dan and I went to Goldsboro and Selma to look at antique shops. Strangely, I didn't take many photos but I did take a picture of this "one of a kind" sheep. The sign said "lamb" but we all know better.

 This is all of my yarn stash and a few finished objects that are up for reconsideration (frog, reknit, mend, etc.). It's not as much as I thought it would be but still more than I would have if it wasn't for the generosity of Ursa and Natalie last year!

 This is our bedroom. It's been cold, so the electric blanket is on my side of the bed (Dan, the furnace himself, doesn't need it).

 This is the Pate Fermentee that I started yesterday for the French Bread I will bake this afternoon. Yes, I am resuming with my bread baking adventures. I still need to buy some rye flour to get my new sourdough starter going, but in the mean time I'll work with yeasted breads. On that note, my goodness, I am having a hard time finding unbleached all purpose flour. I'm having a hard time finding all-purpose flour, period. There are fifteen kinds of biscuit flour and lots of self-rising flour (?) and none of them seem to be in quantities bigger than 10 pounds. I may have to order from a wholesaler. On this bread-baking topic, we now have gas connected to our range and I baked brownies yesterday - my first time baking in a gas oven. I forgot about the brownies (Dan and I were discussing paint colors for the sun room) but turns out in a gas oven, they are less likely to burn. So that was nice. We didn't have any baking powder so they didn't rise and the texture was weird, but they still taste like brownies.

Other random things: I have locked my Twitter account, so I apologize to those of you who aren't on Twitter but follow my feed. I have done this because there seems to be a lot of spam, a lot of hacked accounts, and worst, a lot of stalking happening to my Internet friends, so I am just taking precautions. I realize this limits my exposure in many ways but that might be a good thing, I don't know. In other news, any minute now I will hear if I got the job at a local furniture store I applied to. Dan and I randomly walked in on Friday and noticed the "office help wanted" sign. I figured I would inquire, as it's a local job and a good place to start. They are all very nice people, I filled out their brief application and went back for "a chat" with the lady in charge today. I expect I will get it, four days a week. That will get me working, learning some new things as I'm getting my bearings in Kinston, and it's not that far from home. To be honest, even though the really good jobs are in the towns 30 miles or more from us, I am reluctant to take a job that has me commuting - both for the fossil fuel use as well as the safety issue.

That's it for now, I hope everyone is well!

well okay

Forgive me readers for I have not written. It's been four weeks since my last blog post.

I could tell you that it's because I have been busy. And that would be true. But not too busy to write. (Yes I am using sentence fragments. I am taking poetic license. It's my blog after all.)

The truth is things have been happening so fast, both in my brain and in my life that I felt that even if I could settle down to write blog posts, that I wouldn't be able to properly encapsulate what was happening in my adventure-filled life. I will now attempt to fill you in on what has been happening, and this may end up being a rather long post, so please do bear with me.

The biggest and most important thing is that hopefully, any day now, I will have the date for my visa interview with the immigration people. In fact, four weeks ago today they told us "within 30 days" and they have two days left. It's a funny thing, you know, that every time they tell us what the "next" thing that is supposed to happen is, they forget to mention the three little things that need to happen first. Case in point: when the approval letter came, they told us that the next thing that would happen is that the package would come with my visa appointment date. A week later, a letter came informing me that I really should appoint a proxy with a US address to act as my agent and hurry up and sign this form here. So I did that the minute it came, letting them know that yes it is perfectly fine for them to send the stuff to Dan because he needs to know all this anyway. Good grief. Then they said "thank you, we have received this form" etc. The next day we both received an email saying "at some point in the future, probably in three to five days but we're not promising anything because we have a hard time sticking to dates" (I'm paraphrasing), "we'll send you an invoice for the visa processing that you will have to pay before we tell you when the visa appointment is". So that happened yesterday, invoice paid.

Now here is where it gets juicy. Dan did a bunch of phoning to the US Immigration people in Vancouver (where I was certain my interview would be), Montreal (where Dan was certain my interview would be) and New Hampshire (the main visa processing centre in the US). He wanted to find out where my interview would be, etc. Guess what? Turns out, Dan was right. Well no problem, right? We have to drive across the continent anyway, we just drive together to Quebec from here, get my visa, and cross the border there, right? WRONG. O no, says the US government and Department of Homeland Security. I must enter the US from British Columbia, where I currently reside. Wtf? Sooooo, this means that at some point soon (at this point there is no telling when) they will inform me of the date of my appointment, upon which I will do my best to book a flight to Montreal, a popular tourist destination and home to mass student riots in the height of summer. This sounds like an awesome good time, doesn't it? I'm hoping it will be some time in July, at least.

At first when Dan told me all this, I was fuming. I even cursed on the Internet! (I know!) Why do they have to make it so difficult? I'm nice! Why are they trying to prevent me from entering? There has been much consternation and expletive-launching on my behalf about the inefficiency and cruelty of this immigration process, many apologies made to me from my beloved American friends and family for the idiocy of their government processes.

Then I sat with the idea for a little while.

Montreal.

I have always wanted to go to Montreal.

It won't be winter!

I bet they have yarn shops...

FOOD! They will have excellent ethic cuisine!

And then it turned into "I get to take a trip to Montreal!"

So somehow, the Universe will see fit to find a way for me to finance this trip and I will, in fact, make the best of it. I have already asked the Internet if anyone knows anyone who lives in Montreal who would be willing to put up a nice west-coaster for two nights, sometime soon, probably in July. If worse comes to worst, I will hopefully find a hostel but given that it is summer and it is Montreal (student riots notwithstanding), that might be challenging.

They had better let me knit on the plane.


(I am, in fact, going to break this up into different parts, to save my readers. To be continued...)
 

spinning at Providence Farm

On the second Monday of every month, a few spinners gather at St. Ann's Garden house at Providence Farm to spin up the roving from the Farm's sheep. That yarn then gets knitted, crocheted or woven into items that are sold at the Farm's store. All this work is done by volunteers.

I was the first to arrive at my first spinning day, so I had the use of the spinning wheel that lives in St. Ann's. I spun up one bobbin of wool, then passed it on to another lady. There were seven people and only three wheels, so we took turns. There was also a bit of knitting. It made me really wish I had my own wheel. Here are the the wheels that were there:

I learned to spin when I was living in Ucluelet, attending Stitch Night at Knits by the Sea in Tofino. One of the regulars, Carol, decided it was time I learned to spin so she brought in her wheel and taught me. One of the other local gals (I am embarrassed to say I can't remember her name) also brought her wheel into the shop for me to use. I think I was still working at the shop at the time, my memory is a bit hazy. At any rate, I learned to spin and ply and I have wished I had my own wheel ever since.

One day, it will happen. I'm sure I'll be able to come by a spinning wheel in North Carolina. 

knitterly abundance

In the past few months, I have experienced some of the abundance the Universe has to offer. Some lovely things came my way.

Natalie from the Cloudy With a Chance of Fiber podcast (@cloudynatknit) asked us during a #knitchat on Twitter one day if anyone was knitting a sweater. I mentioned I would be but I can't afford a sweater's worth of yarn. She PMd me and said "what colors do you like?" and the next thing I know I get this box in the post.

Enough yarn for a sweater and then whatever else Natalie could fit into the box. Yarn for a hat. Some of her handspun. Plenty to keep me busy!

Not long after that, Ursa, my long time friend of 17 years and host of The Pagan Knitter podcast (@ThePaganKnitter), and formerly the dyer behind Gaia's Colours Fibre Arts, took me out for a birthday lunch. She said she was getting rid of yarn that didn't sell when she was shutting down her dye studio, would I be interested in going through it? UM YES.

So here we have an abundance of sock and lace weight yarn, a few bags of undyed roving that I will find a spinning wheel to work with, and then a few bags of tangled skeins. There will be lots of socks and shawls in my future...

Then one day I was on Twitter musing about knitted underwear or bras or something. My longtime reader and follower/friend @FelicityGS mentioned she had a book on knitted underwear, that she would send it to me.

When Brooke found out it was also my birthday, she delayed in sending the book a bit because she decided to knit me a present! She blogged about it here.

I think I can say with certainty that this is the finest thing anyone has ever made for me. It is lace, thousands of yards of yarn, I can't imagine how many hours it took (100+ I expect), and in three skeins of Malabrigo no less. So to Brooke I offer my infinite gratitude for such a beautiful piece! I wear it a lot (since it still gets cool at night) and will cherish this for as long as I live! I should point out that Brooke is in the category of "friend I haven't met yet", but one day we'll hang out, possibly at some fiber festival in the eastern United States...

In early in March Louse (@CaithnessCraft) of the Caithness Craft Collective podcast declared that we were having a fiber postcard swap, and that if we wanted to be included to send her a message and she would pair us up with buddy to swap with. The idea was that we would make a postcard and it didn't matter how fancy or simple, or even what kind of fiber, just that we make something. Well sure enough Louse paired me up with Judith (@elvetje), another "friend I haven't met yet" (so is Natalie, above, by the way), who is also waiting for immigration to the United States (but she has been waiting for years and she is in the Netherlands). The postcard I made for Judith was a poem I wrote and the state of Texas made from ribbon, stitched to a paper card. It's quite pedestrian compared to what Judith sent me and therefore I don't picture it here.

A stranded colour knitted matryoshka of me and Dan, ribbons and a card! 

On the back this is "To:    " and then Judith's depiction of me, yarnsalad. I love it!

Wait! There's more!

Now my memory is a bit fuzzy on this one, but at some point I asked LouiseJHunt, who lives in northern Scotland, about woad - dyeing with woad or woad-coloured yarn. This happened when I was still living in Ucluelet, I think, which was almost a year ago now. After a bit of information-finding, it turned out that you can't send woad (a plant used for dyeing things blue) to Canada or the United States. Something about botanical content, I bet. At any rate, Louise offered to dye up some yarn for me and send it. I delayed in having her sending it to me because I thought I would be moving soon. That was in September. When she was offering to make leather bookmarks for her lovely listeners, I took her up on it and she sent me this yarn as well.

437 yards of 80%baby suri alpaca and 20% fine merino in lace weight. It's beautiful!

So there you have it. I've been meaning to put this post up for a long time, and it's been more than a month now since I have received all this knitterly abundance. Here I offer up my thanks to all those mentioned here who have contributed to my habit, helped me to feel loved, and have shown me that the Universe is a place of abundance. Thank you, my dear friends!