Saturday, November 23, 2013

Rediscovering Another Favourite Pastime

Knitting. When I was six my mum taught me to knit. She taught both of my sisters,
and even my brother! My husband still tells the story, much to both of my daughters' mirth, of picking me up for one of our first dates and meeting my brother, who was then a month short of 12, for the first time. While Joe stood in the front porch waiting for me to put the finishing touches on my appearance, he tried to make conversation with Todd. "So Todd, what do you do for excitement?" Joe, a real guy with his love of all things sports, cars and macho, was hoping to find some common ground. "Well," said Todd, "I KNIT!"

My good friend Marianne's discovery of knitting a few years ago sparked my interest again.  Coupled with that, my daughter Dayna wanted me to knit her an infinity scarf.  Once I did that for her, she wanted me to teach her to knit again.  I, in homage to my British roots, and following in the steps of my mother, had in turn taught both my daughters to knit, but neither had found it something they wanted to do as they got older.  However, Dayna wanted to knit herself a scarf or two. And she did, making two, thankful that I was visiting her in Windsor that summer, and could undo and fix any of her mistakes.  Once I went back to Alberta (we hadn't made our big move to Kingsville at that time) and she made her next mistake, she was stymied and left scarf #2 unfinished.

Since that infinity scarf, I made myself one, and I also made an afghan throw for our new house here in Kingsville.  It is 4 tassels short of being finished, and is super cuddly and warm.  I regularly have to make Rocco and/or Bella get off the one end of it!  Here it is without the tassels:

Here is the scarf I am currently knitting; I am about 2/3 of the way finished.  It's probably going to be a take-a-long project for our roadtrip down to Florida next weekend.  This is a great pattern given to me by Marianne, who has made 3.  I'm using a 100% pure wool Patons yarn, called Classic Wool DK Superwash in pumpkin.  She also put me on to the website Ravelry, a great site of knitting and crocheting patterns, many for free, some for purchase.

After I finished The Jugglers' Children (excellent in every way) yesterday in the ophthalmologist's office, I wrote most of this post on my iPhone (love technology!) and just had to tweak it and add the pictures, which I've just done.  I could sure use this cuddly scarf today, as the North Wind is just a-howling and it's a "bone-chilling" 23F aka -5C!  I am quoting our weather guy on CTV with that adjective.  Detroit Channel 4 guy says "frigid"!  Even though Joe and I grin and think these people would die with some of the temperatures we have seen on a regular basis out in Alberta over the years, to be fair, it was 47F, aka 8C here yesterday.  So this IS a huge drop, and the coldest we have seen so far.  Stay warm!

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