Knitting for kids-a new article

It's been a long time since I've posted...but this is a good one, I hope (...whew, it's been a long few months.)  Like most moms with kids in remote school, I had to cut back on -everything else- to manage our lives during the third wave here in Manitoba.  Even so, I wrote at night, and when I thought everyone could manage...and today, one of those long awaited pieces came out!

This article, Why I Value Making Clothes for Kids, is in the new online publication Digits & Threads is about why I knit for (my) kids and why, if we makers value 'me made" wardrobes and slow fashion, we should be offering that, when we can manage, to our kids, too.  It has some fun photos of my favourite knitwear models, at different ages, and some thoughts on why everyone in our household values handknits.

(It seems ridiculous to be writing this as Winnipeg faces a heatwave, again, but...obviously, from October to May, we wear a lot of sweaters around here!)

Digits & Threads features Canadian textiles and fibre arts, and it's the only Canadian publication of its kind--well worth checking it out. 

Now that school's finally out, kids are spending a lot more time playing in the shade while I spin or read or knit, so that's a plus, too!--We adults have gotten vaccinated -hurray!-but nothing's available for kids under 12 yet, so we'll be doing lots of playing in the yard, on our own, a while longer.

May stories

It's been such a long time since I posted here...because I've been swamped with real life stuff.  Homeschooling, job issues, and a death in the family in NYC --not the virus but she died alone in the hospital because of it--awful.  

I decided to  show this last month mostly in pictures...with one article link.  Thanks to the Vancouver Jewish Independent, I still get to write a column every so often!  This one is about how three big world religions find common ideas to discuss and help us get through during these challenging days. 

Uniting in significant times

In our province, our PC (Progressive Conservative) premier, Brian Pallister, has decided that this would be a good time to cut the budgets of Manitoba's universities and also to cut public sector jobs.  

According to every economist and all the business leaders and columnists in the media, this will create an even more depressed provincial economy...think of Herbert Hoover in the US for a reference point. 

 However, our premier keeps pushing this.  It will definitely affect our household--our biology professor--and since my work is uneven or nonexistent these days, it feels very personal.  We made signs and went in our car to a couple social distance "honkathons" at the Legislature Building.  Here are the signs.

We've been doing school at home.  Kids built a 'bonfire' for Lag B'omer...and played outside, of course.  (This would be jousting with pool noodles, on hobby horses, if you have not seen this particular version of the game before.)  We also had hotdogs and I had to bake buns for them.  Cause it would not be a day outside without them...

I've been knitting whenever I can, mostly to maintain my sanity...and I finished the next Woolly sweater for the kid who is growing a lot but still really wants to wear a sweater with sheep on it.

There were some pretty great Mother's Day cards.

The professor took boys on a lot of bike rides, which gave me time to do crazy stuff like work and have an hour by myself.  (Hahah, not kidding.  One hour!!)

I've baked a lot of bread. Our local bakery is closed, we shop about once a week, and these people in my household are like locusts!  You'll note here that now I have to cool the bread on a rack on top of the refrigerator.  When Sadie the dog stole and ate an entire loaf of bread (anyhow, that's what we think happened, although she may have shared some with Sally, hard to say?)---well, I got creative.

It's been a long month...but I hope you'll still come back and check in and I'll find time to write more...
  Stay well!  Wash your hands!  Take care.