Hanukah, 2017

 On Tuesday night, Hanukah started around here.  We have been very busy--every afternoon after the twins get off the school bus, there is a mad rush.  We have to choose the candles, Mommy!  We have to help make latkes, Mommy! (that was a huge mess, but sort of fun, too)  We have to read books about the holiday, Mommy!  We have to play dreidl and discuss what our friends have gotten as presents, Mommy!  (and onward.)

This is a pretty exhausting whirlwind, since we have to fit in all the celebrations and parties around school and work.... which is still happening every day. The reactions have been funny, too.  Each night, the kids get gifts.  Most nights, the gifts are small.  Last night, we got one story book, some colored pencils, coloring books, and wool socks.  This is, in the scheme of things, not a big ticket present, and cost is totally irrelevant to enjoyment, we find.  I had two boys busy coloring non-stop, and they were thrilled by new warm socks.  The book went into a pile; they would "read it later, Mommy!" 

My guys are at an age where counting the candles and putting them into the menorah is a fun math project.  Singing the songs they learned at school is fun.  Eating one piece of chocolate gelt per night is great, too.

One of my guys has scarcely unwrapped his gift before he wonders what he will be receiving the next night.  The other twin is very worried--what if there are too many great presents?  It might make his first night gift, a parrot stuffed animal that he really wanted, seem not as great? " Mommy," he says, "hold off on all the presents.  That is not what this is about."

All these photos are from old Hanukah posts on this blog!  Click here to read a fun (random) collection of stories from Hanukahs in years past.  (When I did not have twins yet, and when we threw big parties for 14 students from the Professor's lab, for instance...)

I hope you're having lots of fun celebrating, whatever you celebrate! 

Making as a way of giving Thanks

As a dual citizen (US/Canada), I'm often feeling betwixt and between this time of year.  We celebrated Thanksgiving in October in Winnipeg, but right now, everyone --my family and friends--in the US is running around, getting ready for Thanksgiving.  We will be having school and work as usual tomorrow... but I can be thankful anyhow...

1)So, I'm throwing my own party here on the blog.  First, if you've been wanting to buy any of my Rav Patterns , including my brand new pattern, Woolly, you can save 25% off any of these patterns on Ravelry from now until November 27th at midnight (Central Time, US & Canada) with the coupon code:
Thanks

2) Second, if you are the kind of person who wants to say thank you by knitting for others, well, that is awesome.  Yarncanada.ca wants to help you by giving yarn for you to knit for your good cause.
They are offering free yarn (with a contest) to knitters in both the US and Canada who like to knit for good causes.  So, if you knit for charity, hop on over there and enter their competition; the deadline is December 15th.

3) I cannot really cope with this time of year without cooking stuff.  So, I'm making a roast and some potatoes and sweet potatoes and some squash and kale---and....my Professor bought me this cool set of things I had to tell you about.  Here in Winnipeg, we have lots of root crops.  We have an extended season vegetable share this year, so we're getting a lot of cabbage, carrots, etc and there's only so much slaw a person can eat, let me tell you.

As my friends know, my attention span for cooking is about 24 hours.  After that, I seem to forget things like sourdough starters or sauerkraut and, at least when I lived in the Southern US, they would grow strange pink or green colors and the Professor would come along and throw it out to protect us from keeling over.  (He took those university health and safety classes while I did Arts& Social Sciences. :)

But I still was curious about fermentation.  Small batch fermentation in a cooler climate seemed like more of a sure thing, so he bought me Pickle Pipes and glass Pickle Pebble glass weights to try this out with canning jars and rings.  (We already had loads of those) I'm making my first small batches of sauerkraut and pickled carrots now.  They sure look good sitting on the counter...and these silicon pickle pipes have a little valve at the top so the fermentation gets air without introducing anything else into the concoction.  I look forward to seeing how it comes out.

--Canadians, here are links to Amazon.ca for these things, I used the US links above first--
 Pickle Pipes and Pickle Pebbles

(I'm using a handmade book by my friend Janet as a way of keeping notes on my kitchen experiments.)

Have a wonderful holiday, or a great Thursday--wherever you live!

setting a nice table?

This is a quick note as I've got twins home from preschool celebrating Purim!  Luckily, we have to take naps in between running around in our costumes, delivering treats to friends, and going out for ice cream before lunch. :)  We've got to go to a big party later on....

In order to celebrate a new Ravelry download:
...The Hemp Placemats are now available as a single pattern download!

I'm running a sale through the end of March.

Use the coupon:

• Holidaytable

 on Ravelry and put both the Hemp Placemats and the knitted napkins patterns in your cart...and you'll save 30% off the purchase of both patterns.

Cause, you know, spring is a great time to celebrate holidays of all sorts, and to plan on a dressy new table setting or two.

I'm old-fashioned that way....I love a pretty table setting.

I hope you do, too!

The UNsale -reasons to be grateful

The last of the big fall holidays is finally over.  We had a blast, actually--I brought a couple of friends with us to services to help out (it is hard to keep up with two four year olds by myself!) and both of my boys loved the dancing and singing.  We nearly had a tidal wave in the clawfoot bathtub later that night as twins re-enacted their favorite songs of the day.

However, we are now finally back to a mostly "regular" schedule (thank goodness), which means back to preschool and work as usual.  My challahs are now no longer round --back to a regular braided one.  

We have one more holiday though, Thanksgiving.  (Canadian Thanksgiving is this weekend, in October.)  So, I have time during these holidays to think how lucky we were.  How even though the Canadian dollar has plummeted and food prices are rising here--we can still afford to eat well.  How even though it is getting cold here and winter is coming?  We can stay warm in our house, with our clothes, heat, electricity and hot water for those baths.

I am also in the midst of making new mitts for my guys, who grow pretty quickly, and again, I feel glad I can sit down and produce something to keep us warm...that I have the tools, the skills, and the chance to do this.  If I were on the run, my home destroyed, and our belongings on our back, I could not do these things.  (I am not posting any awful pictures of the world's war destruction and death--it's all in the news...)

So, I wanted to make a donation to help refugees.  The Canadian government is doing a matching donation, too.  If I donate to certain specific causes (the Red Cross, for instance), the government will match the donation.

At the same time, my pattern sales have decreased--perhaps because I haven't been so good at promoting them.  It seems when I run a sale (20% off, for instance...) more people purchase patterns, but that won't help me raise any money!

So, I am running the UNsale through the end of October...a chance to do what the UN suggests and help refugees.  If you buy any of my patterns or my e-book in October, I will donate 20% of what I make to charity.  There's no special discount or coupon for the patterns on the buyer's end--except that a portion of the purchase goes to help refugees when they need it most.  At the end of the month, I'll make that donation. Join me in knitting mitts for winter or choose a hat...whatever suits you.

Meanwhile, I hope to run a few giveaways, a review, and more.  Please join me--and if you don't need to download any patterns, that is fine...perhaps consider donating a different way, on your own.

With that?  I'll say--Thanks.

The underappreciated

While most of those around us are concentrating on a seriously big holiday, for us, this is generally a quiet time since it isn't our holiday. The professor took me out to lunch today and we watched everyone else rushing around. It's actually a relief not to have to engage in the hoopla of Christmas...so many people appear very stressed by it. (We do, after all, have our own hoopla several times a year--for instance, getting ready for Passover each spring or the High Holy Days in the Fall)

Early this evening, we may go out to a movie with some friends. Tomorrow we might go to services at synagogue since it's a Saturday. Anyhow, this time when things slow down for us makes me think about how people perceive "value."

The professor and I value quality time--with friends, with family, and with each other. A really stellar evening is one where we have a good meal with friends. Another kind of fantastic time is just a week night, where we sit on the couch, each busy near one another with his/her own task. The professor is often working on research or answering student email. I am often knitting. We take time to pet dogs.

All this means that we don't necessarily value big expensive things. Rather, we tend to value ideas, handmade things, and special experiences like travel. As a result, I save money elsewhere. I often buy things as a 'good deal'- for instance, yarn that others consider discards or leftovers.
Last summer, when I was teaching a lot and we had our resident student living with us, (she's a knitter, btw), we saw that there was an amazing deal online. A yarn company had some yarn they considered a mistake. They called it "overspun yarn." They sold this wool sport weight yarn online in big bags of 10 skeins for a dollar a skein and said it knit up at 6 stitches to an inch.. I could barely contain my excitement.

This first photo is only a small portion of the yarn I bought. (It got a bit out of hand...) I've since used some of this yarn for weaving a scarf. Lately I've been knitting a skein of it into a sock. It turns out that I LOVE to knit with this yarn. The yarn's hand is firm and the resulting fabric (at 7 stitches to an inch) is a delight. I cannot wait to see how it will wear over time...but so far, I see no fear of biasing or other problems that were predicted. Sometimes, a handspinner's knowledge of yarn construction is a valuable thing! If the socks wear well, I can imagine knitting whole sweaters out of this yarn sometime in the future, either at this fingering weight or doubling it for a firm textured thicker yarn.

This is what it looks like up close in the skein.

When I encounter yarns like this, I can only use them for my own personal projects. Since these "deal" yarns are a one time offer, discontinued, unavailable, or otherwise hard to find, I can't really sell a knitting pattern using this yarn since other knitters will want to knit the pattern in the same yarn as I used. Instead, I find I brainstorm ideas. Sometimes I reknit a whole project for a design in a more widely available yarn later, but the first project usually gets worn at home instead.

I'm also including Sally the dog in my post about the "underappreciated." Sally sometimes scares people who come to visit us because she immediately does an alarm bark and tries to protect me. She is a nervous, high strung kind of girl. Some of that is the Pointer in her. She's definitely a mixed breed dog, but if you look at her body and her behaviors, she might also have some coonhound in her...which wouldn't be a surprise since we got her from the pound in Kentucky, where there are a lot of hunting dogs.

She is a fast runner and an amazing hunter...even though we really don't hunt. (need a rabbit, squirrel or snake? Just ask Sally!) Sally is also very intelligent and practically trains herself to do all sorts of things. She taught herself to retrieve by watching Harry do it--and it took a while to teach Harry this skill! She is a wonderful nursemaid and will spend hours with me in bed if I am not feeling well. She brings me lots of squeaky dog toys and makes a nest for us!

Sally can sense if a new person is nervous around her. She doesn't like loud voices or quick movements. That said, once Sally makes a friend, you're really part of her pack for life. Certain friends and relatives who are either very calm or dog people have been rewarded with Sally's love. It is truly delicious, but not everyone has the patience or the right kind of calm nature to see it.

The professor is finishing up grading his final exam. He sits on the couch and either Harry or Sally "helps" him. Here is Sally, dropping by for a visit. She will paw at one of us gently until we pet her the way she likes. She knows that if she paws me twice, she gets 2 "pets!" Three times? Three pets...she is clever.
I think we all have a tendency to fall for the dog who is immediately affectionate (Harry comes to mind, if you've met him!), the super soft knitting yarn, or the things that are easy and/or expensive. Sometimes, it is a discarded yarn, an abandoned and skittish dog, or a conversation with a friend that can be really valuable in the longterm. I am counting up the things I value--and sometimes, it can be more work to see how truly incredible that overspun yarn, that anxious dog, or a complicated friendship can be. For me, this effort is truly worthwhile. Sally, and the lessons she teaches, are really blessings.

If you celebrate a holiday around now, I hope it is a joyous and meaningful one! If you don't, please come by (via the comments?) and visit with us over here on the couch...

August Long Weekend

We had an amazing August Long Weekend here. That's a special Civic Holiday that gave us Monday off. Canadians have such a civilized number of holidays. I'm really enjoying that part of living here!

We did a lot..shopping, sightseeing, and lots of work on the home front. Here are some photos of some of the excitement. I got my warp ends retied and the loom is up and running again. I'm working on this zigzag pattern but as I only have a spare moment here and there, it isn't going too quickly.

We went out to Folklorama pavilions on both Sunday and Monday nights. Since our Resident Student is visiting from the USA, we thought it would be a good "family" excursion and so far, we've "travelled" to Serbia and French Canadian pavilions. The latter was not all that far from home, but since I've only exposed her to a small amount of Franco-Manitobaine culture, it seemed important.

On Sunday morning, the Resident Student (RS) and I got up early to do some canning. RS is fond of pickles and wanted to know how I made ours. She was a good helper and we managed to put up 12 pints of dill cucumber pickles and 2 pints of dilly beans in about 3 hours. I was incredibly happy to know that this 20 year old actually wanted to know where her food came from and how to make it again! (Score one for the Slow Food Movement at our house!)

Meanwhile, the Professor was busy, too. The weekend was both sunny and rainy. The Professor managed to dodge thunder and rain showers outdoors and did some yardwork. He also created this marvelous tranformation. See our old porch steps (dirty grayish white peeling paint and no paint) and check out our new front porch look! The dark red matches the contrasting paint on our house and it also shows a lot less dirt. I love how it looks, I love that he did all the hard work and best yet, I love how it won't show as much dirt. It's not fun mopping the front porch.

In other news...

I've started teaching my second session of "Writing for Graduate Students." This course is 4 days a week throughout August, so it's all grad student writing, all the time around here...I'm a busy bee.

I did stop to enjoy a postcard from our small friend. She is now entering grade 2 and is working on her writing skills. She asks:

"How are Harry and Sally doing?"

Harry the dog is doing just fine. He's a mere shadow of his former self! He has been dieting this summer as he gained a bit of weight last winter. He also has been "blowing coat" (losing his heavy fur coat) and I've been grooming him nearly every day. Soon I'll have enough Harry fur to spin up some yarn for warm mitts for winter--my very own fiber-producing pet! Here he is, featured in a stunning pose on the living room rug underneath the coffee table.
Sally dog is also doing well. She does not enjoy the summer thunderstorms. She finds it comforting to hide during the scary lightning parts. Here she is, with her sheep toy on her dog bed, in the Professor's study.

Last, but not least, I got a very nice email from the International Blogging Recognition Council saying that my blog was honored with a "Recognized Blog." Apparently someone who enjoys my blog referred me to them. Whoever you are, thanks very much for this honor!