A sale! An article! A finished object

Let's celebrate summer!  Every year for maybe five years now, I've participated in the Canada KAL (Knit Along) by offering a discount on all my Ravelry patterns!  This year, I'm also offering four free patterns to folks who participate in knit along.  To find out more, check out the Designed in Canada Ravelry group here.

To cut right to the chase, my patterns are all on sale until midnight (ends CT, Canada and the US, on Canada Day, July 1st.  To get 25% off, just use the coupon code:
Cankal2019

Hint: You can use this discount even if you don't want to knit along with anyone else!
In other news...This past week or two has been a bit rocky.  I described some of it in this column I wrote for the Jewish Independent.  It's called Being positive can be hard.

Cause, yes, it has been a bit difficult to be positive.  My car still has two broken windows. We have had more than two weeks of sidewalk and street construction right beside our house.  Last, but not least, before we knew that the construction was happening, we scheduled a renovation job....and had insulation shot into the walls of our house.

On the good side, getting insulation into our 100 year old, empty walls, will be amazing in the winter time now.  Hopefully, when you stand by an outer wall inside our house this winter, it will not feel like the dementors from Harry Potter are sucking out your soul!  On the bad side, there was a lot of drilling, blowing, and other construction sounds to add to the jack hammering on the street.  It was a long few days.  (And we still have more renos happening in July.)  We've been hoping to do this work for a long time, so now I just have to grin and bear it!

I've also been doing a big editing job so haven't had a chance to write up a knitting pattern for a while...or frankly, think much beyond what we would have for dinner.  As a little palette cleanser, I took a ball of Japanese cellulose yarn that my brother-in-law and sister-in-law brought me back from Japan and I turned into this little crocheted pouch.  That wasn't enough though, I had to make a lining and a zipper, too.  It turned out ok, too!  Here it is, blocking, with a plastic bin inside to make it stand upright. Sometimes making something, from start to finish, and ending up with a useful item helps combat the feeling of chaos all around me...

Right as the insulation job was starting, we found out that they would not be able to drill all the holes on the outside of the house.  So, the professor and one of my twins worked all last weekend to move anything fragile or delicate out of the way.  This is what my office looks like right now.  There's just a bit of room on the edge of the futon, between the wheels and the loom bench, for me to sit while working, and if Sadie the dog is careful, she can sleep near me on the futon, or on my foot.  It's cramped.  (And it will all be moved again, after the walls are spackled and repainted.  It might be a while...)  Happy summer projects!