My day working in a sweat shop

I haven't worked for paid employment for most of the last year. I haven't wanted to seek paid employment because I was (hopefully) not going to be around for much longer, my immigration could come through at any moment. I don't want to lie or mislead a potential employer, so I have just avoided the whole thing by not working. Well, money is tight. We're in full-on spring now so I thought I would apply for work at some local greenhouses as temporary work.

In my last post, I was bemoaning the fact that neither of them had called me. Then, about an hour after my last post went live, I got the call from one of them. I went in to work at a greenhouse in View Royal as the "trying it out". There was no interview, just a phone conversation explaining that it's basically a plant factory, it's 8:00-4:30, Monday to Friday. It all sounded pretty straightforward. I went in the next morning. View Royal is about 40km from here, it took me 45 minutes to get there.

I went into the staff lunch room to put my lunch in the fridge. It was dark and dingy, very cave like, and there were some zombies sitting on the couches waiting to start work. Already this did not look very promising. No one said hello or good morning. The room was filthy, as if no one cares if it is kept clean.

At 8:00, everyone assembles on the main floor after they punch in. The supervisor checks to see who showed up for work, then assigns people for certain tasks. It's all very easy and monotonous, as it is a factory, but everyone does something different every day. At first I was put on the assembly line. There were some root-bound marigolds planted in half-inch cubes that needed to be transplanted into two-inch cubes. There was  a guy at the beginning of the line, his task was to put the plastic trays on the conveyor belt. The trays go through a machine that dumps potting material. When it comes out of the machine, two people on each side of the belt do the transplanting. I was only doing this for a minute or two when someone else showed up and I was moved on to the next task.

The next task was putting tags in the plants. The tags that you see in each plant at the box stores - like "geranium, full sun" etc. I was partnered with a woman who had been there only a month, and she was not at all talkative. It was so weird, already I was feeling like there is a culture of disposable employees here, where we are not encouraged to engage with each other for fear the Boss would come and whip us or something. Thousands of tags. The plants were at a good height for me, being tall, but the tables were so wide that I really did have to reach far to get the ones in the back - an ergonomic nightmare - and I wondered if WCB cared about that. Its seemed hypocritical that we were required to wear steel-toed boots but that no other health and safety precaution was taken. The machine I mentioned above kicked up a lot of peat dust, so it would make sense to me that the people working near that machine should be wearing dust masks or ventilators.

We finished putting the tags in the 4" flowers, then we were told to put tags in the tomatoes. The tomatoes were in trays on the floor of another greenhouse, and they were jam-packed in to a space about 12 feet deep - meaning that in order to get them all, the trays had to be pulled out so we could get to them as there were no walking spaces. That is a lot of leaning, squatting, and bending. There were two types of tomatoes that needed these tags, and I suggested to the gal I was working with that we coordinate as a team to make it go faster - as in one of us tag while the other of us moves the trays. Her response was strange: "They don't like that" - as in the Bosses don't like people to work together to make a process more efficient? It started feeling very creepy.

At some point in the morning, I think it was when we were tagging the flowers, the bell rang at 10:00 letting us all know that it was time for coffee break. It rang again at 10:15, time's up. The lunch bell rang at 12:00 and I was really starting to feel like herded sheep in elementary school. Nobody really talked to each other in the lunch room. There was a fridge, a microwave and a kettle but no dishes. I brought lunch but forgot to bring a fork, so I ate my tortellini with my fingers.

The staff bathroom was disgusting too. It takes a lot to gross me out, I have used public toilets and squatted over holes in southeast Asia after all. But the fish plant bathrooms in Uculelet were cleaner than this one. Did no one take pride in this place? The owners lived on the property where the greenhouse is. It was as if to say "you little peons don't deserve to have a clean staff area".  It was really disheartening, especially since I am so unused to being treated poorly as an employee.

Already by mid-day I wasn't sure if I was going to stick around. On the one hand, it's physical work that would build my muscle and help me lose weight, would make time go fast even though I wouldn't make very much money (the low wage coupled with the cost of my commute would mean that I would earn less than $6/hour), and it was only temporary. I like plants. And sometimes when a job doesn't pay very much there are perks (like when I worked at Tim Horton's, I got free coffee and donuts and half price off food). After just a few hours there I got the sense that I would not at all be allowed to take home a tray of lettuce starts. That's profit, after all.

There were three supervisors and about 12-15 workers. There were two owners that I noticed, one of them had his to beautiful but sad dogs following him around (chocolate labs? But they were pale brown. I don't know my dog breeds). Not a smile, no interest in meeting new staff, only interacted with the supervisors in a you're-not-good-enough condescending tone. Another owner was barking at some of the workers for not doing their task fast enough. The workplace culture was absolutely stifling and only one person, the person who called me in, seemed to enjoy her job, as she was the only person who smiled. I felt suffocated.

In the afternoon I was put to a task of cleaning of a recently-emptied table and then restocking it with geraniums. That seemed a bit more interesting. Then I was asked to help one of the supervisors with filling orders. That involves moving these heavy plant carts to different greenhouses, sometimes up hills, sometimes on poor-quality concrete which makes wheely carts difficult to maneuver, and put the trays on them there. We picked through the trays and baskets that looked the best, dead-headed the flowers and pulled off the yellow leaves. I am not a stranger to pushing/pulling heavy carts, sometimes the library trucks would have hundreds of pounds of books on them, but they at least had a good flat surface with no hills to roll on.

When the bell rang at 4:30, I was not able to leave just then because we hadn't finished filling the order we were working on. The truck driver that was waiting for this last order was barking at the supervisor saying that the cilantro is unacceptable and that we don't have time to wait for the baskets, these plants here were supposed to be the 4-packs not the 6-packs. What gave him the right to treat another person so awfully?

Eventually I was let to go at 4:45 and I had, for some reason said "yes" when they asked if I would come back the next day. I took off my boots when I got in my truck, I was already exhausted, and I wondered just what the hell I had gotten myself into. I might have even been in shock. It's a good thing I knew the drive home so well, because I am pretty sure I was on autopilot. My leg muscles had already started screaming from all the reaching, leaning and squatting.

I struggled all evening with whether to continue with this job. Finally I decided no, it was not worth my time to go into that toxic work place. After all, I have spent the past several months healing, I wouldn't want all that effort to go to waste for a throwaway job. I emailed the woman who hired me and simply explained that it was not for me. She emailed back the next day, understanding but disappointed, noting my good work ethic. I thought - okay - I'll be honest. I said it's not the work itself that bothers me but the workplace culture and the negative attitude of the owners to the staff. She replied, was appreciative for this kind of feedback, as it was one of her tasks as manager to make improvements on this level. 

Over the past few months, I had been asking my oracle, my pendulum, several times if I should be seeking paid employment. Pendulum consistently said "NO". I was pushed to desperation, sought work after all, and it was as if the Universe said "fine! You want a job? Here is a job." It only took me that one memorable day to comprehend this message.

It took me two days to recover from this job. I wasn't all that sore physically the next day or day after, but it was recovering from being in a toxic work environment. I am very sensitive, you see, I seem to absorb the nervous and negative energies of a place without wishing it or realizing it. It made me think a lot about work - and I even started making a list of things I would like to have in my dream job. My goal is 200 things, I'm up to 40-something just now (I got busy doing other things). 

So now I know. I will be sure to never buy plant starts from big box stores, knowing the human cost of those plants, and how there is absolutely no love given to them in a factory-like setting. It also convinced me that I will make every effort to buy my seeds from local producers who take pride in their work, and not from commercial outfits. It was a big day of learning indeed.

what can you offer?

Being a regular prowler of social media, this morning I saw on Twitter that someone posted a story of communities in Greece who have started trading goods and services in lieu of money, since their cash economy has pretty much hit bottom.

I haven't really been keeping up on what's going on in Europe, but I do know it is quite unstable with Greece being the biggest wildcard, that their economy has failed in part because of government corruption and mafia intervention. Well, Greece is the birthplace of democracy, so who better to set the example of how to reset a failing economy by good old fashioned trade?

The idea is so simple it is beautiful. The story focused on a woman who baked a bunch of stuff in her kitchen, came to a market to trade her wares, then at the end of the day had a jar of olive oil and a bunch of other necessities.

I found this story to be rather poignant. In one sense, I am not participating in a cash economy right now, at least not very much. I have no income, and while I do have expenses (vehicle insurance, cell phone bill, food, gas, credit debt payments) I am managing as best I can with support from Dan. Things will be much easier when I get to North Carolina and I start working, but I have been doing a lot around here at Backyard Feast and hopefully earning my keep, as it were.

One of the things I have been doing is chicken-sitting. I think I'll save that for a separate blog post because I want to include photos of what a broody hen looks like, or what a chicken saddle looks like. Things are changing in the flock as spring draws near (even though today is "the first day of spring", it was snowing and pouring rain here all day) and there is much movement in the chicken world, but I digress.

In the past few years, since near the end of my Master's degree, I haven't worked (as in paid employment) very much. There was waiting for a move for a job in the fall of 2009, then moving to Ucluelet in early 2010, not expecting to need to work and getting a weird fish job just for fun, then when our reason for moving there didn't work out and we both needed incomes, jobs that paid a decent wage were hard to come by, and by the time I did find a job that I liked, it wasn't long before I left it (when Dan left I couldn't afford to pay living expenses on the income from my job, so I figured there was no sense in working at all and began couch-surfing). Then there was the waiting-for-immigration-not-looking-for-a-job. I would feel dishonest if I went into a potential employer and said "I"m waiting for immigration so I could end up leaving in a month or two."

So what ends up happening is you learn what you can do without money. What can I offer up in trade? I mentioned the chicken sitting. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen here, developing my bread baking skills, trying to keep at least one dessert around (which may or may not be a good thing). As the hours of daylight increase, Toni and the Skipper are spending more time outside after they get home from work so I'm helping with dinner preparations. If March wasn't so darn stormy, we'd be out there in the garden more but that is on my list of tasks I can do for my friends. The week before last my truck was used in the procurement of fire wood.



 Sometime in the next few days I'll be hauling hay in my truck. So I help in any way I can around here. But this article also got me thinking about what else could I offer in a trade economy? And this led to thinking about what do I actually want to do for work?

Big questions. I can offer knitting, that's for sure. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that peak oil was now and it was almost impossible to have cheap highly processed sock yarn shipped to Vancouver Island. Local farmers who raise fiber animals would be sought for the securing of a stable supply of fiber for spinning into yarn which is then knit or crocheted into garments. A raw fleece is worth a certain amount. Then that fleece has to be washed and carded and spun into yarn of varying thicknesses. Then, depending on that yarn's intended purpose, it will also need to be plied (more than one strand wound up together to give it strength). Then dyed, and this is all before a sock is even knit! I don't know how long this process would take let's call it 20 hours, and then knitting a basic pair of socks by hand would take another 40-60 hours. I daresay hand knits would start to be valued way more than the commercial machine-knit cheapy cheapies from China are!

What else. I can do lots of things, and yet trying to compile a list has been utterly challenging. I can offer transcription services, I can babysit, pet-sit, I can write/tutor/proofread/edit. I can bake. I can make soap. I have a big truck with a long box that is good for hauling stuff. I can do yard work and some farm chores. I can make butter!

It is very sobering to come up with a list like this. What can I do for you in exchange for something you have? In this sense, I think I have a lot to offer, especially since I have the luxury of time right now. This particular exchange is known among anthropologists as reciprocity. Toni has been reading this book called Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein, that talks about a gift economy. The idea that if I give you a gift, I do not expect you to give me one back but know that you will pay it forward and eventually I will receive a gift from someone else in the future. It's about the flow of energy, and a recognition that giving and receiving are the same thing.

I'm still processing a lot of this in my head but you get the idea. It's a good exercise and something I will be pondering in the coming days. What do you have to offer?

Knitting considerations

This post may seem a little incongruous, given that it's just before Christmas and I have all my Christmas knitting done and wrapped. I have been thinking about a post like this for more than a week now, have even made notes! So here we go:

I listen to a lot of knitting podcasts and communicate with hundreds of knitters on the Internet. Lots of people have large yarn stashes to knit from and still seem to acquire more yarn. When the hot new pattern comes out, many people will simply go to their stash and find the right yarn for the sweater.

Knitting isn't really a cheap hobby. It can be if you choose to use acrylic yarn or yarn found at garage sales or thrift store yarns. Just over a year ago I came into a huge amount of yarn, which was mostly natural fibers but much of it was so old or had an acrylic content that I was not happy knitting with any of it, so I gave it all away. While working at Knits by the Sea in Tofino, I came to really appreciate knitting with good yarn and good fiber. So, here is my list of things to consider when knitting something:

1. How much money to spend on yarn?

While working at the yarn shop, I was given a generous discount on my purchases, which is mighty dangerous. I wasn't making a lot of money overall so I had to be mindful of how much I could actually spend. Depending on the pattern and the yarn, a sweater's worth of yarn can run anywhere from $50 for cheap yarn and averaging about $120 for anything I would want to knit. So that wasn't going to happen. They say it takes the same amount of time to knit a pair of socks as it does a sweater, and since one skein of sock yarn is much cheaper (ranging $18-30, most landing in the $22 range), that seemed a more economical way to go. Lace weight yarn makes your yarn dollar go even further, as lace is slower to knit and you get way more yardage per dollar.

Many new knitters opt for big yarns and big needles, but what they don't realize is that is the fastest way to burn through your yarn budget. If you give me a skein of bulky weight yarn, I can knit that into a hat in about three hours. (I know this for certain because it happened last Christmas). If you give me a skein of sock yarn, it will take me 40-60 hours to knit that up, which leads me to my next consideration:

2. How long will this take to knit?

I was at the Moss Street Market Christmas Fair recently and saw a number of hand knit garments. I don't think there is ever a way to make money selling hand knits, unless you think you are worth 10 cents an hour. As I looked at the garments and the prices, I thought - those handknit socks that have a $45 tag on them would take me 40 hours to knit, but a faster knitter could get them done in 30. Subtract the probable cost of the yarn and that knitter probably earns $1.25 an hour. While $45 seems expensive for a pair of socks, it's cheap compared to the labour that went into it. At another stall I saw a knitter selling hats made with bulky Lopi yarn. The yarn cost $6.00/skein (I know because Lopi is a favourite of mine), the hats probably took 5-8 hours, she was selling them for $20 per hat.

I was commissioned to knit a hat for a woman's baby while working at the yarn shop in Tofino, but when she heard the price of the hat, she decided not to pay for it after all. (I still have the hat). That made me realize that I will never make money from knitting so there is no point in even trying. The only way I would accept a commission is if it were for an art piece and I would be paid for my artistry.

As mentioned in a previous post, I have had rather a lot of time to knit in the past few years. I love knitting, so this is no real hardship for me. When I was planning my knitting before the Cookie A retreat last April, I figured I could bang out one sock per week, even working almost full time (I knit during every coffee and lunch break). That turned out to be optimistic, and instead of the planned eight socks, I got through four and a half. So now I am getting a sense of how long things take to knit and planning accordingly. How much time do I need to knit X amount of things before Christmas, for example?

Also, as mentioned in a previous post, I hadn't planned on knitting gifts. And then I ended up knitting ten gifts. Some of them were small, completed in just a few hours, some of them took a few days. I'm getting the hang of estimating how long it will take and I planned well; I finished everything yesterday. (What will I do with myself on Christmas eve if I'm not finishing last-minute projects?)

3. Knitting from Stash

As a part of my Great Migration and in an attempt to pare down my possessions to only what will fit in my truck, I have been knitting from my stash. In a #knitchat earlier this year, we had a conversation about knitting from stash as a way of coping with these rough economic times - that having a sizable stash insulates us from the brunt of less money to spend on our hobby. If I look at my stash as it is right now, I have enough yarn to get me through about six months, assuming I'll be working full time from February onward. That's pretty good. My informal goal was to not have more yarn than I could knit up in a year - partly for ease of transport but also because it felt insensible to me just have yarn laying around, yarn that I would have to keep track of, move, keep from getting dusty, organize, and think about. (Other people are way better at keeping track of their yarn, so I am not suggesting *you* are insensible, I just know my own habits). I am trying to be methodical about my knitting plans and goals, so I would rather buy yarn with a project in mind rather than just buy yarn because it's pretty. There will always be more yarn. I repeat: there will always be more yarn. I don't need to buy this bag of yarn because it's a screaming good deal - I've done that and then that bag sits and collects dust. No thanks.

4. Knitting for others: will the person actually wear and care for the thing?

This can be tricky, especially if you have never given a person your hand knits before. I lucked out with the family I married - everyone loves and appreciates my knits, which always encourages me to knit more for them. (I'm planning to do a post about some of the more creative knit projects I have done as gifts over the years, as a sort of recap). My own family needed a bit of training about my knitting - washing instructions, the mending of things, and how long it will take things to knit. My niece (my sister's daughter) asked me for yellow mittens, so I knit some and sent them off. She *loves* them, then asked for a scarf, some slippers and a pair of socks. All in good time, kiddo, but it is a tall order. I have fifteen other people to knit for too.

5. Searching for patterns versus being captivated by patterns

Okay now here I get a bit stuck. We all have our own pattern-searching methods. Ravelry makes it so easy to find just the pattern for the yarn, skill level, technique, and yardage that you want to knit from. It is the best database I have ever encountered.  For example, when Zola asked me to knit her a turban, I went to Ravelry and typed in "turban". A bunch of stuff came up. Some of the patterns were patterns that you pay for, so I rule them out. I clicked on the "free" search criteria and the list of turban patterns was significantly diminished. So if you are in a position to pay for a pattern, especially a popular one, then go for it. But I'm limited to free just now, so sometimes I just have to make something up. (I really do need to start writing down my one-off designs. I will have some time after Christmas, I think). When you find the pattern you want on Ravelry, you can either "cast on" right away or put it in your queue. Then you can organize your queue into categories (hats, neck, mitts, sweaters, etc.). If there are enough things in your queue, and you feel like you need to knit a hat, you can go to your hat folder in your queue and maybe find the yarn in your stash to knit it with. This all sounds very organized, right? These kinds of plans get derailed when the new knitting magazine comes out. It happened to me last week. I had to knit Escargot, it was haunting me. So is the Bandana Cowl, but I don't think I have the right yarn in my stash (and I can't buy yarn until I have a job) so it will have to wait.

Sigh. At the moment, given my dwindling stash, I'll be knitting mostly socks for the next few months, but that's good. I like knitting socks. In fact, through the knitting of the Christmas gifts, my hands were missing sock knitting. So, sock patterns? The only knitting book I have with me in Cowichan Bay is Sock Innovation. I do also have the Internet at my disposal, so we'll see how many socks I can knit between now and when I leave.

having a good week

I love being able to put that as the title.

I haven't worked since June, and haven't had an income or means by which to support myself for several months. Living without money is stressful, and living too close to the bone is rather uncomfortable. It can be paralyzing, really, and for me that can be emotionally debilitating.

In the last few months at my job at the Tofino hospital, I paid into a pension plan. Since I'm not likely to remember the meager contributions I made when I am of retirement age in 2039, I opted to withdraw those funds now. But I had to wait three months past my end-of-employment date. I thought this would mean they would just send me a cheque but no! They sent forms to fill out. And they sent them to Alberta.

So my dutiful sister sent it off to me in Victoria and I received it Monday. Fill this out, send us proof of identity, and we will send you a cheque. You can do it by email YAY. I scanned and emailed the documents. Fingers crossed that this little cheque will arrive in the next week or two. It would really help.

I also started working on a project for Jeff, my former boss, former professor, dear friend and great cheerleader, who is the Director of Clinical Informatics at the BC Cancer Agency in Victoria. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it but it is something that I am very interested in and it is just what I need. Another relief.

I haven't needed any medicine for a few days. I'm still coughing a bit here and there, but it's nothing like it was.

Dan has been having some good days off in North Carolina too. He even cooked for himself two days in a row. This is a big deal, as when you're alone & working long hours, it's often just easier to let someone else do the cooking.

I've been enjoying having meals with my housemates, which is at present Dan's sister and brother. When Zola and I got home from Cowichan Bay on Sunday night, Thor made us omelettes. I have cooked the last two nights. The great thing about cooking here? I don't have to clean up!

I haven't been knitting as much as I'd like, for some reason I'm very busy (doing what?). But I have a list now, a list of things that need to be knit before Christmas. Not everyone will get knitted gifts this year, and that's okay. But my almost-seven-year-old niece requested yellow mittens so I have started those. I'm making them on the big side, will line them with fleece.

So for some reason, I am feeling cheerful and optimistic about the future. Dan will see an immigration lawyer on Friday to see what our options are. He has been informed that because of what we have been through already, and that we have been apart for five months, that they will look on our case with compassion. Also after having signed that document at the border (the one that said I will not attempt entry until I have the right papers, that I will cooperate with Customs & Immigration) will also work in my favour. Fingers crossed. I'm a good person, dear America, really, I will do right by you. Just let me in, okay? I really miss my husband.

Ok I think with that I'm going to attempt my first post-cough/cold run, then bake cookies.

Flattr me

Hi friends,

Have you heard of Flattr? It's this way of making small contributions to people who produce content you like. I listen to a lot of podcasts and read a few blogs, and even though we all do this because we love producing the content, it would be nice to have a bit of income from it. Podcasts sometimes help defray their production costs by sponsors or Donate buttons on their websites, blogs have the option of having advertising on their pages. I'm tossing around the idea of doing this also as I'm about to ramp up my blogging schedule (I'm not working, see, so why not bust my ass to create content?). I first heard about Flattr a few months ago and have been thinking about it for a while. Check it out. If you like my content and have a few cents to spare, why not join Flattr and help me out a bit?

Thanks! 

what a week it has been

It's hard to believe that a week ago I was on the way back to the Island with Dan. That two weeks ago, I figured by now I will be settling into my new life in North Carolina.

Well, if there is one virtue that Dan and I share, it is our adaptability. We seem to be able to cope well in a crisis and to support each other in times of need. Yes getting rejected at the border sucks. So did having the cat try to wriggle her way out of her harness at a roadside stop, forcing me to clamp down on her hard lest she run away and climb up a tree in the forest. This left me with deep gashes, bleeding, with a torn (favourite) shirt, and a wicked bruise on my knee. But I was not going to risk losing my cat. I'm mostly recovered from my lacerations, and the bruise is getting smaller.

As I'm getting used to the idea of being here at least until Christmas, I am actually excited about the things I can do while I'm here. On the top of my list is visit all my friends. That alone could take until Christmas! (I am so lucky). I'll spend all of next week looking for jobs and I expect to have at least one offer by the end of the week - there are tons of jobs in Victoria right now. While it would be great to get a job in health informatics research or at least something to do with writing, I can do just about anything I set my mind do. Mountain Equipment Co-op (Canada's REI) is hiring.

Dan and I were walking around in downtown Victoria today. Oddly enough, that's something we haven't spent much time doing. When we lived in Victoria and East Sooke, our downtown Victoria experience was largely just parking somewhere and going to a restaurant. We love food, after all. Today we decided to go down to Munro's Books, a long-standing institution of Victoria. Again! We made off not having spent any money but I have decided on the slow cooker book I want - the one by America's Test Kitchen. When half of the house's current inhabitants clear out in the next few days, I will set to my cooking experiments.

I don't know what it is, but I can't stop thinking about food. As in cooking, technique, and gourmet flavours. Dan has been experimenting with food and watching all those cooking programs for years and I was the happy guinea pig for all his experiments. This last week since we've been together in a food lover's paradise, I too am taking a ravenous interest in honing my skills. I'm already thinking about what the family might have for Christmas dinner (our Pizza Christmas was a hit in 2009). I guess Dan and I have been able to distill what is really important to us in our life, which is each other, and food. Would the family be okay with okonomiyaki for Christmas dinner? What about a line-up of slow cooker dishes? Thinking, thinking...

Oh, Munro's. It's such a great book store. I love Bolen, for it's massive selection and proximity to bathrooms (it's in a mall), but Munro's has a more focused selection, not chosen for mass appeal but for the discerning reader. There were easily five books in the cooking section I could have walked away with. I also had a chance to see Melissa Morgan-Oakes' newest book about knitting socks toe-up 2-at-a-time. I learned how to knit socks with her first book, so I'm a big MMO fan.

But I can't buy stuff right now. Can't. Need an income first. Victoria has so much to offer to people who have money. I'm not even allowing any yarn shop indulgences until I can confidently pay my bills. But when I do have a bit of extra cash for my knitting habit, I will need things like a shawl pin, some buttons, some Trekking and Wollmeise yarn. It would be nice to someday be able to afford enough nice yarn for a sweater - I've never knit a sweater for myself before.

Which brings me to Christmas again. It's terrible. I usually start thinking about Christmas in July - as in what I will knit for everyone. I don't need to knit for everyone (and in truth, this year, if I do have money, I have some fabulous gift ideas for everyone. It's very helpful to live under the same roof as someone to know what they would appreciate as gifts). I just like knitting. For everyone. And that might mean the projects for myself get set aside until Selfish Knitting Season (in January).

While we were in Mountain Equipment Co-op, Dan encouraged me to look at winter coats. I don't have one. Not any more. Got rid of all my cold weather stuff in anticipation of moving to a hot climate. I found one I like, and as it happens, it is only $145.

I fit into a size Medium! I didn't want a black one, but I wasn't fond of the plum colour, so black will have to do. I will have to wait until November to buy it (money) because today we bought me new running shoes.

We went to Frontrunners and I must have tried on 14 pairs. I have had bunion surgery on both feet, one of which is coming back, and my feet are wide. They are also pronating slightly so I need a bit of arch support. I tried on every suitable women's runner that came in a wide size, and they were all too tight. Tried a few men's and voila! A perfect fit of asics. Turns out they were the cheapest pair.  Not only that, but with the Victoria Marathon happening this weekend, I got an extra 20% off. I will keep a log of how many miles I put on these shoes, because marathon runners advise that after 300-500 miles, shoes need replacing. I have never suffered any real running injury, and would like to keep it that way, so I follow all the advice of the marathon runners that have come before. I am determined to run a marathon before I turn 39 in 2013. Join me?