Permanent Residency

Thanks so much to all the readers of my blog who sent me wonderful comments and emails in response to my last post. I appreciate all of your amazing words of encouragement and read them over and over! Thank you. (I write you today from the sunny 3rd floor office...!)

Today, the professor and I are off to have our medical physicals for our Permanent Residency application. When we moved to Canada in July of 2009, we were granted work permits. The professor's permit is tied to his job. These work permits mean we're allowed to live and work here, but if something should happen to the professor's job...we'd need to leave. Of course, we hope that doesn't happen!

This is unsettling, as we've moved all our belongings here, bought a house, and set up our home in Winnipeg! So, we started the process to gain what's called "Permanent Residency." This step is much like a green card in the USA, but we don't have to compete in quite the same way to gain a place. (Immigration rules are different in different countries.)

Another thing is that the step of gaining "permanent residency" is a step along the way to gaining Canadian citizenship, if we want to do that. We could also keep our US citizenship in this case. When the babies are born here(hopefully healthy and full-term...), they will be both Canadian and U.S. citizens.

One thing most Canadians don't realize about this residency process is that it takes a while. It's also not free. We've been saving up so that we can afford to pay the fees associated with this application for Permanent Residency when the time comes.

Although Manitoba really encourages immigration--it's in the news here all the time-- I don't think the average local realizes how expensive this is for newcomers. For instance, it took us about a year to get access to a regular Canadian credit card. (with a very low credit limit...) That's because, even though we'd bought a house and came upon the invitation of the Canadian government... we didn't have any credit history in Canada! Instead, we had to pay a currency exchange fee both every time we used a US credit card, and more fees every time we had to move money from one country to the other to pay a bill. It was an expensive year. We paid for things in cash whenever we could.

Today, we'll need to pay something in the range of $400 cash just for these physicals (Not free as they are part of a residency application and not for our basic health and well being) and I will have to return later to follow up with another expense, an X-ray, since I can't do that today. (X-rays aren't ok for pregnant women who can avoid them...)

Why do I mention all this? Immigration is a fairly complicated (and expensive) experience. Lately, I've been thinking about all the political upheaval in the news. This causes refugees and immigrants to move every day. They do not all have the advantage of speaking the local language or having access to bank accounts...let's face it, they have very few advantages. Some escape with just the clothes on their backs.

Today, the windchill is -40 in Manitoba. I feel very lucky to have warm clothes so when I go out in a few minutes, I won't get frostbite. I think the North American "locals" --be they Manitobans, Canadians, Americans, etc. take their status, their safety and their citizenship for granted. Sometimes we need to be reminded of all the luck and privilege we've been afforded.

The professor and I have had to turn down a lot of wonderful invitations to the theater, fancy dinners out, etc. in the past year and a half when we realized we'd need to save up our money instead for all these expenses--and of course, fixing up our house so we'll have a roof over our heads. In the end though, we don't feel we've suffered...because actually, we feel pretty dang lucky most of the time...

(It's a "count your blessings" kind of thing.)

math for budget conscious spinners

Remember the sheep shearing I went to on May 26th?

I bring it up because today, my lovely fleeces came back from the fiber mill. I sent them to Stonehedge Fiber Mill to be washed and carded. I don't do this with all my fleeces, but gosh, I figured I ought to concentrate on packing and not washing 40 some lbs of fleece. Yes, it was a lot of fleece.

I'm frequently asked if spinning is an expensive hobby. I say no! The other spinners around me at the spinning guild will say "Yes!" Why the discrepancy? Well, let's crunch some numbers.

Let's say I already have basic equipment like a spindle or hand cards, and a spinning wheel. Let's not talk equipment, although you can be spinning in no time with a $5 handmade spindle or a $5000 custom built spinning wheel. Let's just talk spinning fiber. Let's talk wool.

I often go to a sheep shearing or a fleece show or auction to get my wool. What does handspinning wool cost? Anything from free to $33 a pound. Free doesn't always mean "bad wool." It may mean the shepherd or shearer doesn't want to deal with the wool for one reason or another, or that the industrial wool pool pays so little that year as to be useless.

$33 a pound is the exorbitant price paid for a grand champion fleece at New York State Sheep & Wool Festival (Rhinebeck) a couple of years ago. This is way too much dough for wool, in my opinion!

For the complete newbie, a perfectly spinnable fleece can be purchased for $5 to $10 a pound. Many fleeces are less expensive, some are more. The price doesn't correlate to any kind of rating or quality. You need to learn to judge a fleece on its merits on your own. For your first or second fleece, bring a friend along. If you're really on your own, ask the shepherd. If they're honest and they know something, they'll tell you what they think of the fleece, too!

So, the fleece comes home and I decide to send it all off to be processed.
Note: Check out Fiber Gathering for information in how to skirt a fleece...

40 lbs of fleece are packed up and shipped via USPS parcel post to the mill. $33 in postage later, I come home. I wait. When the fleece comes back, I've got approximately 23 lbs of gorgeous washed and carded roving. Some of the wool is even blended with mohair, as per my request. Light, airy, and just popping out of the box to be spun. (use your imagination here, I haven't managed a photo!) Cost? $221.
Note: This would be less if I'd washed and carded it all at home, but water/energy also cost money. Likely no where near $221, but worth remembering at this juncture.

OK, so let's round that to $250 for 23 lbs of fiber. If you got this Romney wool for free, as I did, (the farmer's partial to me and he doesn't sell his wool) that's about $10.87 a pound. I always bring the farmer a present in exchange, but let's not budget that in. Instead, let's pretend the wool cost $5 a pound for the raw wool, which would be: $5 X 40 lbs=200 dollars.
Note: $5 a pound, while not a fortune, would enable that farmer to do far better than if he sold the wool at the industrial wool pool. He might even break even or earn a small amount.

That would bring the cost of the wool up to: $250+200=450 dollars
450 dollars/23 lbs=$19.57 a pound

Your average adult sweater weighs around 2 lbs in finished weight. That is equivalent to just under 40 dollars. Not expensive...because I'm not counting all the processing time (knitting/spinning) as being work. If I counted the hours this took to process, it would be a very pricey sweater. Maybe $1000 or more at minimum wage.
Note: This is why it's not generally cost effective to have someone commission a spinner to make a sweater.

As a hobby with a sweater end product, this isn't expensive when you consider the many hours of enjoyment I'll get spinning and knitting this sweater.

Can spinning be expensive? Oh, absolutely. If one buys only hand-dyed roving, imagine paying roughly $20 to $40 for 4 oz of wool. That's lovely colorful stuff. If you buy enough for the same 2 lb sweater and it costs $30 for 4 oz... multiply up and that is $240 for an equivalent amount of fiber.

$40 versus $240. Wow. That's a big spread.

Budget conscious spinners are now wondering about dyeing, and how much those packets of dye cost. Well, it varies in price, but it certainly doesn't cost anything like $200. Time to buy some dyes, you're thinking?
Note: Check out the dyeing tutorial in Fiber Gathering!

Now, even if you only buy processed fiber, it's still an affordable, if not budget-conscious, hobby with practical results at the end. When compared to, say, yachting, or golf vacations, or a ski chalet in the Alps? Spinning and knitting sound downright affordable. However, if you're worried about saving money in a recession?

Buy Fleece. Buy lots of fleece.
(If you don't get to spin it all, it makes great packing material and even better insulation.)

Was this helpful? Please let me know in the comments and feel free to pass along to any spinning friends who might be interested. I'd love more blog readers! Now, back to packing...moving day is in 2.5 weeks. Winnipeg ho!