What do you do when your father brings home a woman younger than you are to be your stepmother?
She's 31.
31.
I'm 36. My sister is 32.
I'm still a bit stunned.
Mr. Noodle
Mr. Noodle
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
another off the list
Lakewood, New York.
They had a solid offer for Dan but it wasn't nearly enough money to entice us to move, and no offer of moving allowance.
They had a solid offer for Dan but it wasn't nearly enough money to entice us to move, and no offer of moving allowance.
feeling grounded and a life-threatening experience
This post will be dense and newsy, since lots has happened.
I haven't been on my computer all weekend because I was busy working at fish job.
The green fish is a Ling cod. Why is it green and the others are not? Um... food source?
Two plant guys holding up a rather large halibut.
One of the buyers wanted photos of certain fish. Jewel is holding the gills open so I can take a picture of the Pacific Cod and the Petrale Sole (Brill).
Also, a longnose skate. This is the one I think I'm going to knit this winter. They are beautiful.
Righty ho, on to the news.
I worked a lot this past weekend. Friday was a 12-hour day. The power went out the night before, apparently one of the main power poles had a transformer explode or catch fire or something and the entire west coast was without power for something like 12 hours. Without power, no offloading can happen. No ice can be made. Everything stops.
I was scheduled to be at a 7:00am offload but, not knowing what happens here when the power goes out, I showed up. No one there but me and the truck driver. And he was desperate for coffee. So I brought him back to the house and
made coffee on our camp stove. After this post from a friend, I should have been more prepared for a power outage, but we weren't really expecting one until the winter. You know, with winter storms. Well who knows why this happened but I was very glad when we had our camping stove ready. I was also extremely glad that we didn't get rid of this hand-cranking coffee grinder. Because I was out of ground coffee and I was happy to offer some up to the truck driver.We sat and waited for an hour. Someone sent a text message and said BC Hydro says the power will be back by 9am, but it was actually just after 8am. When it came on, the truck driver and I went back to the plant and waited. The offloading began at 9am and we had two boats to do. I was there until 7:00pm it was a l o o o n g day.
It wasn't a bad day, though, because we were all there, all in it together. Something I have found that people really pull together in situations like this. I'm thinking back to the Blizzard of '96 - all of Victoria was shut down for three whole days because Victoria seldom gets winter. Yet all the neighbours were out on the street, shoveling snow, clearing snow off their roofs (which aren't really built for snow) and clearing a path to a storm drain. Everyone was in a cheerful we're-in-this-together kind of mood.
Meanwhile, back at the plant, at some point, the sister of one of the guys brought about 30 McDonald's cheeseburgers from Port Alberni. This is a big deal because Port Alberni is an hour away and most of these guys seldom get a chance to go into 'town'. So these cheeseburgers were like gold and O BOY did the morale increase after that.
The next day was a long day too, with boats sort of showing up unannounced. My two hour shift ended up being six hours, and I knew that Sunday would be long too.
I work around a lot of smokers and, since it's an outside job, I don't usually worry about it, especially since I'm only there for a few hours at a time. But I think the cigarette smoke was getting to me after these two long-ish days, and by Saturday night, I knew I had a migraine coming on.
I used to get migraines a lot, like three times a week, but then I got a handle on them between my medications (at the time), the food I was eating, my lifestyle, etc. Now I only get them once or twice a month and I don't need the expensive $20-a-pill migraine meds. Usually ibuprofen will do. But this time, I wasn't going to take any chances because I really wanted to be at that offload. I took 800mg of ibuprofen and then 2 Tylenol 3s on top of that before going to bed.
Holy shit.
That was dumb.
A couple hours later I woke up with ripping pain in my stomach. Got up to take some Tums, tripped on my way back to bed, and then, apparently, I passed out. Dan was awake by this time, after I had tripped noisily, and wondered what was going on. He found me not breathing and gave me the Heimlich maneuver to get me breathing. My pulse was difficult to find, then super slow on finding it. I faded in at one point, remembered being in the recovery position, dripping with sweat and feeling hot even though Dan told me I was ice cold and clammy. I remember him telling me he was glad I was still with him. Maybe I passed out a second time? In my incoherent state, my biggest worry was being able to show up for work the next day.
I did get up for work, feeling woozy and nauseous. Dan asked me if my ribs hurt, if I was bruised. I had no idea what he was talking about, until he told me what he had done. I drank some juice and kept it down. Then some cereal. I thought I'd be okay for work. Showed up at 7:45 and the offload began. I let the girls at the plant know I wasn't feeling great, that I might at some point need someone come to cover for me.
Every five minutes I thought to myself "I should go home. Can I make it? How much is left?" and after about four hours, my legs were wobbly and I thought I was going to pass out again. I was green. I got on the phone with my boss and called for reinforcement. A minute later the plant girls were whisking me away from the work area and into the office. Dan came to pick me up and drive me home. I spent the rest of the day in bed.
Apparently T3 takes about 40 hours to work its way through your system. I'm at hour 34 right now. Still feeling like my head is a block of cheese. So yeah, my husband saved my life and I am so thankful that he knew what to do in that moment.
Feeling Grounded
Before all this happened, I was starting to feel like yes, we would like to stay here. A week or two ago, Dan and I were both on the fence about whether we'd like to move or stay here. I'm developing some good friendships and work relationships here, I'm really starting to feel invested here. I have tremendous job satisfaction (and I can't say I've felt that in years) so there is a lot to keep us here. We even have a couple of investors for the business we want to start. So things are looking up.
In contrast to how I felt much of June, I'm feeling happy again. I am happy to be here, happy with the way our life is going. I would be even happier if a bucket of money landed on our doorstep, but for now, we are okay.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
off the list
Yuba City is off the list, at least for now. They won't be ready for 4-6 months.
Santa Fe is off the list too. The job isn't interesting enough and doesn't pay enough.
(me crying)
(not really. Sante Fe is well above 5,000 feet which makes it off the list for that criteria alone).
That's okay. I've just applied for a job as a local newspaper reporter. I don't have any journalism experience - (not as a reporter, but I have submitted pieces that were published so long ago I wouldn't know where to look) but I figure I can write and I can learn stuff. Hey, if you don't buy a ticket, you can't win the lottery, right? If we end up staying in Ucluelet (and a job like this is a big motivator), it could be the beginning of a good writing career for me.
On that note, I just went through my blog posts for the last month, trying to imagine it through the lens of an editor/potential new boss. My content is personal, obviously, but also in some cases unconventional. I don't know if a writer's reputation is subject to the same kinds of scrutiny that politicians are, but if so, then I am the first to declare I am unabashedly opinionated. I'm telling you this, dear reader, because if you are the newspaper editor who is doing the hiring, then you will see I have laid myself bare here.
What you won't see here is too much detail about my fish job, my marriage, the people we have befriended here. I do have a high degree of respect for the privacy of others; I am mindful of personal boundaries. I am required to keep confidential about a significant portion of my job with the commercial fishing industry.
If I don't get the job as a reporter and we do end up staying here, however, I am seriously considering producing a podcast about the Ucluelet/Tofino area. This area has so much to offer that I think it would be a fun thing. I've even drawn up a plan/agenda for topics I would cover. I'm such a big fan of podcasts that I'm actually quite surprised that none exists for this area. If I do get that project going and you are a podcast junkie, what kinds of things would you like to know about?
Santa Fe is off the list too. The job isn't interesting enough and doesn't pay enough.
(me crying)
(not really. Sante Fe is well above 5,000 feet which makes it off the list for that criteria alone).
That's okay. I've just applied for a job as a local newspaper reporter. I don't have any journalism experience - (not as a reporter, but I have submitted pieces that were published so long ago I wouldn't know where to look) but I figure I can write and I can learn stuff. Hey, if you don't buy a ticket, you can't win the lottery, right? If we end up staying in Ucluelet (and a job like this is a big motivator), it could be the beginning of a good writing career for me.
On that note, I just went through my blog posts for the last month, trying to imagine it through the lens of an editor/potential new boss. My content is personal, obviously, but also in some cases unconventional. I don't know if a writer's reputation is subject to the same kinds of scrutiny that politicians are, but if so, then I am the first to declare I am unabashedly opinionated. I'm telling you this, dear reader, because if you are the newspaper editor who is doing the hiring, then you will see I have laid myself bare here.
What you won't see here is too much detail about my fish job, my marriage, the people we have befriended here. I do have a high degree of respect for the privacy of others; I am mindful of personal boundaries. I am required to keep confidential about a significant portion of my job with the commercial fishing industry.
If I don't get the job as a reporter and we do end up staying here, however, I am seriously considering producing a podcast about the Ucluelet/Tofino area. This area has so much to offer that I think it would be a fun thing. I've even drawn up a plan/agenda for topics I would cover. I'm such a big fan of podcasts that I'm actually quite surprised that none exists for this area. If I do get that project going and you are a podcast junkie, what kinds of things would you like to know about?
learning to chat
My dad is in the Crimea!
He created a gmail account soon after landing in Europe when he was having difficulty opening his regular email. This means he is very new to the world of web-based email applications. He had had previous experience with Hotmail, and is awe-struck by the functionality of Google mail.
When I was checking my email yesterday, I saw that he was on-line, so I initiated a chat with him. You know how that works, right? If your friends with gmail are online there is a green dot next to their name...
He was surprised that a chat box would come up. Wondered how I knew he was online. (I had to explain this to him a few times). We chatted for about an hour, I'd say, and it was actually a pretty good conversation.
See, when we talk on the phone, it is usually hours and hours of him doing most of the talking. About 80% of the content is stuff I've heard before, sometimes hundreds of times (not exaggerating, believe me). So usually, because I'm on Skype, I have my headset on so my hands are free to knit while he is talking away...
But with typing, I am way faster than he is, so this whole chatting thing was more my game. We talked about sending text messages (he just got his first cell phone ever last month; I have been a cell phone user since 2003). I told him it's especially fast for me now because I have a QWERTY keyboard on my iPhone.
"What's a QWERTY keyboard?"
(Thus followed the history of typewriters, how the hammers with the letters on them needed to be arranged so that the ones that were used most frequently were far enough apart so as not to get stuck.) (Now that we have computer keyboards, this arrangement is no longer necessary but we are so used to how it is that it makes no sense to change.)(I would hate to learn a new keyboard. It would mean rearranging my entire brain.)
This kind of surprised me, actually. This is a man who assembles and repairs computers for a living, claims to be up to date with state-of-the-art technology.
And yet.
He only heard about Skype a few months ago, just discovered gmail, and only learned how to chat for the first time yesterday.
You know how on gmail chat if you want to send a :-) to someone you type colon/hyphen/end parentheses? I did that and he asked me how I got that 'cute little thing' on there. I guess it is a generational thing. He's a hunt-and-peck keyboarder. I fly along at 80wpm.
So yeah, that was an interesting cultural experience. ("Interesting Cultural Experience", btw, shall now be referred to as I.C.E. I use this expression a lot when I'm trying to understand a new concept or understand why people do the things the way they do.)
As for the whole being in Europe thing, he is currently in Kerch. On the Black Sea. I guess he went for a swim in the Black Sea (ew. Isn't that one of the most polluted bodies of water on the planet?) and hurt his back. He was laid up for a week, it took several days before he was able to sit up at his laptop. I hope he has people helping him, but he's not so good with these kinds of details.
I asked him if he has posted his pictures anywhere. He said 'why?'.
Um...
(This is obvious, isn't it? I mean, why would someone ask if your photos were posted? Because they want to see them, right?)
Because I'd like to see them, I said.
(He's in eastern Europe for crying out loud! The place of thousands of years of interesting history and architecture! And I've never been there.
I said "how is the food? What is it like?"
"The coffee here is really strong."
(By this time I'm getting exasperated. My dad is obviously not a good storyteller nor reporter. If I was in Europe, I'd be going on about the music, the architecture, the art, the food, the colourful people. He just complains that they don't have debit machines in shops, that you have to carry cash).
*sigh*
I guess he is a man on a mission: to find a wife. Galina from Kiev and Olga from St. Petersburg didn't work out, so now it's Tamara from Kerch. The saga continues. This is nothing if not interesting.
He created a gmail account soon after landing in Europe when he was having difficulty opening his regular email. This means he is very new to the world of web-based email applications. He had had previous experience with Hotmail, and is awe-struck by the functionality of Google mail.
When I was checking my email yesterday, I saw that he was on-line, so I initiated a chat with him. You know how that works, right? If your friends with gmail are online there is a green dot next to their name...
He was surprised that a chat box would come up. Wondered how I knew he was online. (I had to explain this to him a few times). We chatted for about an hour, I'd say, and it was actually a pretty good conversation.
See, when we talk on the phone, it is usually hours and hours of him doing most of the talking. About 80% of the content is stuff I've heard before, sometimes hundreds of times (not exaggerating, believe me). So usually, because I'm on Skype, I have my headset on so my hands are free to knit while he is talking away...
But with typing, I am way faster than he is, so this whole chatting thing was more my game. We talked about sending text messages (he just got his first cell phone ever last month; I have been a cell phone user since 2003). I told him it's especially fast for me now because I have a QWERTY keyboard on my iPhone.
"What's a QWERTY keyboard?"
(Thus followed the history of typewriters, how the hammers with the letters on them needed to be arranged so that the ones that were used most frequently were far enough apart so as not to get stuck.) (Now that we have computer keyboards, this arrangement is no longer necessary but we are so used to how it is that it makes no sense to change.)(I would hate to learn a new keyboard. It would mean rearranging my entire brain.)
This kind of surprised me, actually. This is a man who assembles and repairs computers for a living, claims to be up to date with state-of-the-art technology.
And yet.
He only heard about Skype a few months ago, just discovered gmail, and only learned how to chat for the first time yesterday.
You know how on gmail chat if you want to send a :-) to someone you type colon/hyphen/end parentheses? I did that and he asked me how I got that 'cute little thing' on there. I guess it is a generational thing. He's a hunt-and-peck keyboarder. I fly along at 80wpm.
So yeah, that was an interesting cultural experience. ("Interesting Cultural Experience", btw, shall now be referred to as I.C.E. I use this expression a lot when I'm trying to understand a new concept or understand why people do the things the way they do.)
As for the whole being in Europe thing, he is currently in Kerch. On the Black Sea. I guess he went for a swim in the Black Sea (ew. Isn't that one of the most polluted bodies of water on the planet?) and hurt his back. He was laid up for a week, it took several days before he was able to sit up at his laptop. I hope he has people helping him, but he's not so good with these kinds of details.
I asked him if he has posted his pictures anywhere. He said 'why?'.
Um...
(This is obvious, isn't it? I mean, why would someone ask if your photos were posted? Because they want to see them, right?)
Because I'd like to see them, I said.
(He's in eastern Europe for crying out loud! The place of thousands of years of interesting history and architecture! And I've never been there.
I said "how is the food? What is it like?"
"The coffee here is really strong."
(By this time I'm getting exasperated. My dad is obviously not a good storyteller nor reporter. If I was in Europe, I'd be going on about the music, the architecture, the art, the food, the colourful people. He just complains that they don't have debit machines in shops, that you have to carry cash).
*sigh*
I guess he is a man on a mission: to find a wife. Galina from Kiev and Olga from St. Petersburg didn't work out, so now it's Tamara from Kerch. The saga continues. This is nothing if not interesting.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
keep on swimming
Something Dr. Gemma talks about a few times on her CogKnitive podcast is to 'keep on swimming' as one of her strategies.
I really like this podcast. She is thoughtful and articulate. It's mostly not about knitting, but then, with a hundred or so knitting or other fibre-related podcasts out there, there is only so much one can say.
When I first started college at the fresh age of 21, my plan was to be a prison psychologist. Then I spent a summer volunteering at a youth correctional facility. Then I switched to an English literature major. Now, thanks to Dr. Gemma, I can live vicariously through her and hear stories about the work I'll never do.
I'm fascinated by the stories she comes up with. She has a number of segments in her podcast, including 'strategies' and 'something I like' and 'blather'. It's great because she has a set agenda of what will be included in every podcast and, because she is talking to the microphone as she is driving to/from work, she just talks. She is articulate and never has any non-words ('um', 'uh', 'like', 'you know', or other filler words when the speaker can't think of what to say next). So when she gets on to her strategies segment, I perk up especially because they are strategies that can apply to everyone.
The 'keep on swimming' strategy has come up a couple of times. She refers to the character voiced by Ellen deGeneres in the film Finding Nemo - that when you run into difficulty, just keep swimming to get you through. It's a good idea.
I live in a place where lots of people cope through their difficulties with alcohol, nicotine, or drugs. I have a hard time relating to this, of course, because I cope with knitting. Lots of the people I work with are smart as a whip but either dumb themselves down to fit in or dull themselves with substance.
That got me thinking about the choices we make in our lives. Would you rather be in a rut or on a roller coaster? Being in a rut you have a predictable and possibly stable life. You have that comfort in knowing that this time next year, you will be doing the same job with the same people in the same place. But if you are on a roller coaster, you never know what will happen next. Sure that uncertainty can be scary, but sometimes adversity can throw you into some amazing situations that you wouldn't have otherwise encountered.
Case in point: have I told you the story about when we crashed our van on the first day of our honeymoon?
We had crossed the border into Washington state at around 11:00pm. We pulled into a Wal-Mart and camped the night there, then the next morning were going to make our way to the Olympic Peninsula for the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend. We were both of us looking down at the map while driving, and looked up too late to realize that the BMW in front of us had stopped to make a left turn off the highway. Dan braked hard but still rear-ended the guy.
CRASH!
I knew right away that Dan would be worried about me, so the first thing I said was "I'm not hurt!" The next thing that happened was that both vehicles pulled off the side of the road. Dan was freaking out. This van has been in his family since 1986 when they bought it new. Dan learned to drive in this van. Dan had spent the previous three months, evenings and weekends, renovating this van to make it ready for our month-long journey on the road in the 10 western states and Canada. Now Dan was absolutely freaking out, worried that he had ruined our vacation, that we'd have to go home, that he'd wrecked the van.
BMW guy, nice fellow, was okay. His vehicle was hardly damaged. But our van took a pretty hard hit. The front passenger side was crushed in, all the lights were rendered useless.
After we exchanged insurance information with the guy and the state trooper, we went off and parked in a Lion's Club park (or something like that) while Dan got out the monster tool kit he had brought. He just happened to bring a drill and a file to adjust the hinge on the door so that it hung right. Just happened to have an extra set of lights and the van's electrical wiring manual so that we still have lights and signals so we' re road safe. Just happened to have a piece of sheet metal to cover the hole. Just happened to have a huge roll of duct tape and a pool noodle to patch it up and make it all secure. That's my Sweety.
Later that day we went to the local library for the Internet connection. Dan got on the Toyota Van Forum and asked if anyone between Seattle and New Mexico had an old van they were willing to offer up for pieces. A day later, a fellow in Mammoth Lakes California replied.
So Mammoth Lakes became part of our itinerary. We took lots of pictures of this time, so I really should post them. Another time, perhaps.
We needed to be there for two days while the deconstruction of the other van happened. Sam, the fellow we were getting the pieces from told us about this place where the locals all go to camp. If you drive south on the highway for about twelve miles then turn left at the green church then drive west for about six miles, there is a road you turn left on. Keep going until you see the old tire hanging on the chicken wire fence... then you know you've found the outdoor hot tub with the natural spring.
So there are hot springs (at 7,000 feet) and a spot where this hot creek emerges, someone had diverted some of the hot water into a big hole they had dug in the ground and then filled with concrete - a hot tub. It was amazing! The Sierra Nevada mountains are all around and it is otherwise high desert. Nothing there, just hills, desert, and sky. It was so nice to have that experience. We never would have heard of it if we hadn't met Sam, if we hadn't gone to Mammoth Lakes, if we hadn't had that accident. So see? Something good came of our adversity.
We are expecting that our move to Ucluelet and our current hardships will result in something amazing down the line. It could be that we end up moving to a great situation somewhere else - something that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been looking for work somewhere. If there is one thing I do believe in, it is that (for me, at least) everything happens for a reason. So when the going gets tough, I just keep swimming.
I really like this podcast. She is thoughtful and articulate. It's mostly not about knitting, but then, with a hundred or so knitting or other fibre-related podcasts out there, there is only so much one can say.
When I first started college at the fresh age of 21, my plan was to be a prison psychologist. Then I spent a summer volunteering at a youth correctional facility. Then I switched to an English literature major. Now, thanks to Dr. Gemma, I can live vicariously through her and hear stories about the work I'll never do.
I'm fascinated by the stories she comes up with. She has a number of segments in her podcast, including 'strategies' and 'something I like' and 'blather'. It's great because she has a set agenda of what will be included in every podcast and, because she is talking to the microphone as she is driving to/from work, she just talks. She is articulate and never has any non-words ('um', 'uh', 'like', 'you know', or other filler words when the speaker can't think of what to say next). So when she gets on to her strategies segment, I perk up especially because they are strategies that can apply to everyone.
The 'keep on swimming' strategy has come up a couple of times. She refers to the character voiced by Ellen deGeneres in the film Finding Nemo - that when you run into difficulty, just keep swimming to get you through. It's a good idea.
I live in a place where lots of people cope through their difficulties with alcohol, nicotine, or drugs. I have a hard time relating to this, of course, because I cope with knitting. Lots of the people I work with are smart as a whip but either dumb themselves down to fit in or dull themselves with substance.
That got me thinking about the choices we make in our lives. Would you rather be in a rut or on a roller coaster? Being in a rut you have a predictable and possibly stable life. You have that comfort in knowing that this time next year, you will be doing the same job with the same people in the same place. But if you are on a roller coaster, you never know what will happen next. Sure that uncertainty can be scary, but sometimes adversity can throw you into some amazing situations that you wouldn't have otherwise encountered.
Case in point: have I told you the story about when we crashed our van on the first day of our honeymoon?
We had crossed the border into Washington state at around 11:00pm. We pulled into a Wal-Mart and camped the night there, then the next morning were going to make our way to the Olympic Peninsula for the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend. We were both of us looking down at the map while driving, and looked up too late to realize that the BMW in front of us had stopped to make a left turn off the highway. Dan braked hard but still rear-ended the guy.
CRASH!
I knew right away that Dan would be worried about me, so the first thing I said was "I'm not hurt!" The next thing that happened was that both vehicles pulled off the side of the road. Dan was freaking out. This van has been in his family since 1986 when they bought it new. Dan learned to drive in this van. Dan had spent the previous three months, evenings and weekends, renovating this van to make it ready for our month-long journey on the road in the 10 western states and Canada. Now Dan was absolutely freaking out, worried that he had ruined our vacation, that we'd have to go home, that he'd wrecked the van.
BMW guy, nice fellow, was okay. His vehicle was hardly damaged. But our van took a pretty hard hit. The front passenger side was crushed in, all the lights were rendered useless.
After we exchanged insurance information with the guy and the state trooper, we went off and parked in a Lion's Club park (or something like that) while Dan got out the monster tool kit he had brought. He just happened to bring a drill and a file to adjust the hinge on the door so that it hung right. Just happened to have an extra set of lights and the van's electrical wiring manual so that we still have lights and signals so we' re road safe. Just happened to have a piece of sheet metal to cover the hole. Just happened to have a huge roll of duct tape and a pool noodle to patch it up and make it all secure. That's my Sweety.
Later that day we went to the local library for the Internet connection. Dan got on the Toyota Van Forum and asked if anyone between Seattle and New Mexico had an old van they were willing to offer up for pieces. A day later, a fellow in Mammoth Lakes California replied.
So Mammoth Lakes became part of our itinerary. We took lots of pictures of this time, so I really should post them. Another time, perhaps.
We needed to be there for two days while the deconstruction of the other van happened. Sam, the fellow we were getting the pieces from told us about this place where the locals all go to camp. If you drive south on the highway for about twelve miles then turn left at the green church then drive west for about six miles, there is a road you turn left on. Keep going until you see the old tire hanging on the chicken wire fence... then you know you've found the outdoor hot tub with the natural spring.
So there are hot springs (at 7,000 feet) and a spot where this hot creek emerges, someone had diverted some of the hot water into a big hole they had dug in the ground and then filled with concrete - a hot tub. It was amazing! The Sierra Nevada mountains are all around and it is otherwise high desert. Nothing there, just hills, desert, and sky. It was so nice to have that experience. We never would have heard of it if we hadn't met Sam, if we hadn't gone to Mammoth Lakes, if we hadn't had that accident. So see? Something good came of our adversity.
We are expecting that our move to Ucluelet and our current hardships will result in something amazing down the line. It could be that we end up moving to a great situation somewhere else - something that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been looking for work somewhere. If there is one thing I do believe in, it is that (for me, at least) everything happens for a reason. So when the going gets tough, I just keep swimming.
St. Patrick's Day socks
I joined my first KAL (knit-a-long) through my Twitter friend @knittyornice. There is a sister blog where all the participants (I think we're up to 13 now?) contribute and post about their socks. I think it's a fun idea, I really like the idea of communal blogging.
I have posted about this particular set of socks there so I'll only mention this briefly: these are the Belle Epoque socks from the 2-at-a-Time Socks pattern book by Melissa Morgan-Oakes. It's a great book and through it I taught myself how to knit socks.
Now here is a funny thing. In a couple of weeks, I'll be teaching a sock knitting class at Knits by the Sea in Tofino. So, while I taught myself how to knit socks the 2-at-a-time method on circular needles, Ellie would like me to teach with dpns, one at a time. Hm. I have never knit socks on dpns. Well, how hard can it be? The pattern and the techniques will be just the same, it's just going to have lots more pointy ends. I'll do my practice sock this week.
In case you are wondering why this post is entitled "St. Patrick's Day socks", it's because, last March 17th, I realized to my horror that Dan and I didn't have hand-knit green socks to wear! My birthday was the week that followed so I marched myself over to the Gaia's Colours workshop and got myself two skeins of sock yarn: by the time March 17 rolls around next year, we'll have socks.
For those of you who are new to following me, I used to blog on LiveJournal and posted about why March 17th is special to us here.
I have posted about this particular set of socks there so I'll only mention this briefly: these are the Belle Epoque socks from the 2-at-a-Time Socks pattern book by Melissa Morgan-Oakes. It's a great book and through it I taught myself how to knit socks.
Now here is a funny thing. In a couple of weeks, I'll be teaching a sock knitting class at Knits by the Sea in Tofino. So, while I taught myself how to knit socks the 2-at-a-time method on circular needles, Ellie would like me to teach with dpns, one at a time. Hm. I have never knit socks on dpns. Well, how hard can it be? The pattern and the techniques will be just the same, it's just going to have lots more pointy ends. I'll do my practice sock this week.
In case you are wondering why this post is entitled "St. Patrick's Day socks", it's because, last March 17th, I realized to my horror that Dan and I didn't have hand-knit green socks to wear! My birthday was the week that followed so I marched myself over to the Gaia's Colours workshop and got myself two skeins of sock yarn: by the time March 17 rolls around next year, we'll have socks.
For those of you who are new to following me, I used to blog on LiveJournal and posted about why March 17th is special to us here.
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