Kids Speak Truth to Power

Here's my latest opinion piece for the CBC Manitoba website:

Bravery of children speaking out against gun violence needs to be supported, celebrated

Art and Science about Wool

I also played with photos of Woolly-a kid's design that is available on both Ravelry and Loveknitting.com.  I am still learning how one adjusts photos and designs to make line drawings...it was fun experimentation.

My husband, the professor, wanted to pass along a new study about sheep and curly hair research here:
Merino Sheep provide Clue to Curly Hair

And now I am back to spring break with little boys and getting ready for Passover!

Is knitting design art?

I would be the first to say that I like to make useful things.  Things that become well-used, well loved, and worn until they wear out.  this has been true about many (but not all!) of the sweaters I make for my twins.  This year, for the first time, I wrote patterns for something I was doing anyway.  The patterns themselves were untidy and needed work before I published them (a lot of editing!), but the sweaters have been workhorses.  The sweater pictured here, Stripe Freestyle, has been worn perhaps every other day since I finished it.  The professor washed both Woolly and Stripe Freestyle the night before last, and I set them both out to dry (doing a little stretching and reblocking) on the basement playroom floor.  Then, last night, I used the Gleener on them --AGAIN--to get rid of as many pills as I could.

This AM, the sweaters were back in rotation and two little boys headed out the door to grade 1 in the same sweaters. It's hard to argue with that level of enthusiasm.

There are a lot of technical writing details to writing or knitting a pattern, and these were no different than any other.  However, I am terrible at doing sketches of my designs.  This deficit often keeps me from pitching to magazines or yarn companies' call for submissions--it just takes me forever to do the sketch, and since these pitches are all a gamble, I don't often do it.  I don't know if someone will choose my rudimentary sketches, and I'd rather just get to knitting the sweater and writing the pattern.  My architect father-in-law showed me an app long ago that turns a photo into a sketch, and C4LA sitting around on my iPad ever since.

I decided to play around with the photos of Stripe Freestyle to see what it looked like.  The funny thing is that Woolly sells more patterns (so far) than Stripe Freestyle...but Stripe Freestyle is more useful on a daily basis.  It is getting more wear.  So, what makes a sweater more usable, more beautiful, more serviceable than its sibling?  They both use the same yarns and were made at the same time, in roughly the same size...

I think that it has a lot to do with the personality of the person choosing the sweaters...Woolly's owner feels that many more of the handknit sweaters fit him and are acceptable to him.  Stripe Freestyle's owner, twin A, basically would live in his sweater, day and night, if he had the opportunity.  Nothing else compares.

I am enthralled by the ease of clicking a button, doing a little editing, and getting these sketches instead of the photos.  Does it make anything art?  I don't know--but as long as we end up warm in the winter time as a result of the sweaters?  I keep knitting and designing.

Fierce

I think you'd have to be fierce like a lion to be a fundraiser in the Jewish community.  (Note homemade lion Purim costume for emphasis...he wore an orange -handknit-sweater and a pair of pants with a big handmade tail, too...!)

I read this article about harassment of women who work as fundraisers in the Jewish community, published by the JTA, and it really bothered me.  I followed it up by writing this opinion piece, which was published by the Jewish Independent this week:
A need for ethical guidelines
(My working title was something along the lines of: Ritual Sacrifice?  Or sacrificing fundraisers?)

On the broader topic, I've written little so far that specifically addresses the #MeToo movement.  That isn't because I have nothing to say.  I have so much to say that I don't know where to start.  The problem is so pervasive.  The worst part is that I haven't encountered a single woman who doesn't have something to say about this, based on her lived experience.

For me, it seemed so clear when I had a brief conversation at the dining room table with my mom and she said something like "Oh, what's coming out now is only the tip of the iceberg."  We talked about how we'd handled it previously, often with laughter. For a long time, all you could do is talk about the harassment or awful unwanted attention/physical assaults with your female friends and family and---laugh.  It was embarrassing and awful and...there was little one could do to fix things. Bringing up these issues in public only resulted in shame. It potentially also drew more abuse--as if we, as victims, caused this unwanted male attention, touch or assault. (If I'd only worn something else, sat in a public area, taken a different train...the list goes on.) This movement is a first step in a long process.

As a writer, I feel obligated to amplify unjust things as I can.  I am not fierce or as brave as some of these professionals who spoke out in a way that threatened their livelihood...but I owe it to them to step up and help.

Famous? For all the wrong, buggy reasons...

Long story short, a colleague of my husband's is a science writer.  She wrote a good article about ticks in Canada and Lyme disease, and it came out today.  Here's the link:
Ticks creep into Canada...

Famous?  Infamous? The article leads with my name.

The other part of this post is an apology.  Canadians, I am sorry if you tried to follow my Amazon.ca links and they all failed for you.  I know why now.

A while back, I was told by Amazon, hey!  We see you are an 'affiliate' in the USA!  You can do this in Canada, too.  What's that?  Well, it means that when I link to my books on Amazon, it gives me a few cents each time a person clicks through and purchases one.  This was something I was signed up for by my publisher, no kidding, in 2009, when my first book came out.  It earns very little, maybe enough for me to purchase a single paperback book every year or two.  (We're talking less than $10US!)

Some people use these to place ads on their sites and generate income.  I never did that, I have never been into monetizing things, although I did figure that if I was recommending a sale on Amazon?  I might use the link so I could afford to purchase something myself as well. 

When I saw the option to include Canada, I jumped at it.  However, according to the affiliate folks, I had to 'qualify' with a certain number of sales in a certain time frame. I asked my kind professor if he would use the link to purchase stuff, thus making sure it worked.  He did, and I put up the affiliate links online for you, too, on occasion.

I was told that no, those purchases had not counted!  I could not refer relatives or friends through the link, that didn't qualify.  (And yes, all the while, the elementary school was asking us to peddle cheese, coupon books, and other fundraisers TO family and friends...HUH.  Go figure.)

So, Canadians, although I am now a citizen and live here, I apparently do not qualify!  A few days ago, I got a note that said this, in part:

We are writing to notify you that your Associates Program application has been rejected and you will no longer have access to Associates Central.

This action was taken because we have not yet received qualified sales activities from your account.  As a reminder, Accounts that have not referred three qualified sales within in 180-days of sign-up are automatically rejected.

You are free to reapply to the Associates Program at any time, but we recommend only doing so if your website receives consistent traffic.

So you know, I consider blog readers my friends, and I know some of you are my family, so even if I re-applied, they wouldn't count those clicks.  If I link to anything in the future, and it goes dead for you, Oh Canadian compatriots, I am sorry.  I tried--oh, I tried! -But I was rejected.

This seems a little bit like being famous for contracting Lyme disease. :)  I wasn't clever enough to remember my tick bite (I've had a lot of them) or to get a bulls-eye rash, nor was I good enough at soliciting sales from strangers.  (Dear readers, I'm glad you aren't strangers!)

Famous?  So definitely NOT.

Sloppy Snow

I know some folks are welcoming spring--but this time of year in Manitoba, it warms up "enough" for a good snow storm or two.  I made some felted wool mitts (from felted sweaters, leftover from wool soaker days...) as back ups and they came in very handy!

Starting Sunday night, we had a very big, sloppy wet snow.  It reminded me of storms on the US east coast.  We did fine at our house, but we shoveled a lot and there were power outages elsewhere and all sorts of messes.  The school busses didn't run--and even though school was not closed, we chose to keep our kids home and have a "snow day."  It seemed like the right choice. The roads were a mess.

In the meanwhile, the Jewish Independent ran one of my articles, which is about "rebranding" and friendship:
Stressing action over just being

Also...I seem to be experiencing a sort of extraordinary switch in the knit design area.  On Ravelry, I have not sold a single pattern this month.  On Loveknitting.com, I've sold lots, including 5 copies since January of the Cozy Zip-Up Cardigan alone!  Why?  I don't know.  It's a mystery to me!  Do you have any ideas?  (Maybe LK knitters think this model is really attractive?  Do tell!)

River Trail

Last Sunday, we took advantage of some fabulous warmer weather (we've had highs in the 20 to 30F range, or for folks in Celsius, highs around -5 to 0C) lately.  I'm still really lacking stamina from the pneumonia, and one of my kids got knocked out by a big hives episode last Saturday, so we're doing things slowly.  We have been very sorry to miss the skating season--but we took the River Trail's walking trail and went out on the river.

For those who don't know what this is, every year, our two rivers freeze solid in Winnipeg.  There is an amazing effort to create kilometers of skating and walking trails on the river.  We have an international competition to build architecturally interesting warming huts.  Folks commute, walk their dogs, (or skate their dogs), drag their kids in sleds, and spend time outside every winter.  This year has been a special event:  10 kilometers of groomed river trail AND, as of yesterday, 69 days open to skaters and walkers--a new record.
The trail is weather dependent. Some years,it opens late, the ice is too bumpy, or it just cannot be made longer.  This year, we hit the jackpot and I was just yearning to see it...although even this one extended outdoor outing was still pretty hard for me.

The weather was perfect and everyone we saw seemed to be grinning with enjoyment. One joke that ran on the river trails "conditions" twitter feed was something like: Our Canadian Olympic speed skating champion, Ted-Jan Bloemen can do 10 k in 12 minutes.  How fast can you do the winter trail?

We did only a fraction of the trail, bumped into some friends, saw a few warming huts, petted some amazing dogs, (one husky weighed 170 pounds!) and nearly got run over by three cross-country skiers.

After we climbed off the trail, we headed back towards the Forks on the river bank trail--pictured here.  You can see a clear warming hut up ahead, where people are putting on their skates, and a maybe the big blocks of snow--(We have snow sculptures all over at this time of year)

You'll also see the weird circle in these pictures, the professor's camera got humidity inside the lens from transitions between warmer and colder places.  We also were very bundled up--me, because I am still sick--and the boys were wearing snow pants so they could stay dry and climb on things. It wasn't cold though--at least, not for us.  (Yes, we were out walking on the ice, so context matters!)

On the way towards home, we stopped to see the Nepinaks. These  elders offer their time every year to invite people into a warm teepee at the Forks to cook bannock and talk.  We cooked bannock together on whittled sticks and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  This was a highlight of the day for me - a beautiful way to make connection and break bread and acknowledge that we are on Treaty 1 land.

We topped it off with some ice cream on the way out and headed home.
I paid for all this by being absolutely worn out from the physical effort--definitely still not 100% yet, but it was well-worth it.  I hope you enjoyed reading about our adventure!