SO MUCH FOR MY PLANS....

... to participate in Knit and Crochet Blog Week! What a flake ...  :)

It's been a busy time .... I'm 'settling in' to this Welcome Wagon thing, and it's definitely keeping me out of trouble! It could be pretty much full time if I wanted it to be ... which I don't, but I'm enjoying building it up from what it was even when I started.

And other than the standard pair of socks on the needles, I *have* been monogamous, working only on the Lighthouse Shawl. I've modified the pattern a bit because I have tons of yarn and I want it to be quite large ... it's at least a 40" diameter now, so what you can see in this photo will probably translate to about two feet, blocked:

I've done 3 repeats of the 'waves' pattern with my gorgeous sparkly variegated merino, and now gone back to the pale blue baby alpaca lace for a bit -- not sure what I'll add to it next, I'm just winging it for a bit, and then I'll go back to 3 more repeats of the waves before I decide what to do for edging. I'm at 600 stitches now so it's a LOT of knitting!

Off to Ganges to run several errands, and then knitting at Barb's Buns this afternoon! 

KNIT AND CROCHET BLOG WEEK - DAY TWO

Photography Challenge Day!
Today challenges you to be creative with your photography, and get yourself in with the chance to win the photography prize. Taking interesting photographs in this instance isn't about flashy cameras or a great deal of technical know-how, it's about setting up a story or scene in a photograph and capturing something imaginative. Your photograph(s) should feature something related to your craft, so that might be either a knitted or crocheted item, yarn, or one of your craft tools. 

HA! It's a miserable dreary day outside and I forgot to get this done in advance, so there won't be any photos from me today. Besides, I did three WW visits this morning, and I'm still exhausted from the last several days! I can't even take a photo of the Lighthouse shawl WIP because it's all bunched up on the circular needle now, so you can't see anything.

I guess I'll just leave you with a 'Photo of the Day', which is the sunset from here a few nights ago!

Oh, and I've met and I'm getting to know Salt Spring Island feltmaker Judith Dios, whose work is AMAZING, and today she sent me this link about working with color: ColorLovers.com -- I think I'll be spending quite a bit of time there this evening!
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KNIT AND CROCHET BLOG WEEK

Today is Day One and I almost forgot! Here's the topic for today:

Colour Lovers
Colour is one of our greatest expressions of ourselves when we choose to knit or crochet, so how do you choose what colours you buy and crochet or knit with. Have a look through your stash and see if there is a predominance of one colour. Do the same with your finished projects - do they match? Do you love a rainbow of bright hues, or more subdued tones. How much attention do you pay to the original colour that a garment is knit in when you see a pattern? Tell readers about your love or confusion over colour.

Well, anyone who knows me or has been reading my blog for any length of time knows that I love lots of colors -- as long as they're BLUE. :) Actually, I love all the 'jewel-tone' colors (blues, purples, teals, fuschias and greens) but I do end up knitting with a lot of blues! The only time I knit with any other colors (pastels, autumn tones, etc.) is if I know the item I'm knitting is for someone else specifically.

 I've had a busy several days, and I'm exhausted! I went to a Welcome Wagon conference in Nanaimo ... here was the view from my hotel room (which I WON in a WW contest!) ...

 The conference was great -- meeting other WW folks, and picking up lots of 'tips and tricks.'

 Then yesterday I turned up at the Ganges Earth Day festivities because I heard there was a Knit-In included. I had called the woman who was organizing it and offered to bring my 'pedestal.'

 So I sat there alone, knitting, for almost two hours. Then I walked around to see all the other displays and ran into my friend Carol, who came and sat and knitted for an hour or so. No one else showed up! But given that I'd only heard about it myself a few days before, it clearly wasn't publicized very well -- d'ya think I should offer my PR services next year? 

And I finished the purple sweater in plenty of time to wear, both days! Here's Janet and I modelling our FO's at last Thursday's Rock Salt knitting circle:

(Janet's vest is an Amy Swensen design that she had wanted to finish to take to an Amy Swensen retreat in Tofino)!

Now I'm working pretty much exclusively on the lighthouse shawl until it's done. (I know, famous last words and all that....) 
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A NEW WEEK :)

But first, let's review the old one...

The ferry is such a huge part of Island life -- and because we live 500 yards away from the main ferry to Victoria/Vancouver Island, it's a huge part of our lives for more than one reason. Every two hours, it comes in to its berth in front of us, stays long enough to unload and reload (about 15 minutes, usually) and leaves again. At the end of the day, the one that arrives in at 9:35 pm stays all night until its 6:15 am departure.

So last week was a 'first' for us: the Skeena Queen, which is the regular ferry, had to go for a 5-day 'refit.' In its place was the Bowen Queen, a much smaller and differently shaped ferry. Islanders hate it because its vehicle capacity is so much smaller, and it's slower. I liked it simply because it was a change (and I didn't have to wait in line for it, I could just watch it)! Here's the Skeena Queen ...
And here's the Bowen Queen as it was leaving last week when 'our' ferry came back!

We had a great group at the Rock Salt for knitting on Thursday:
... and the marina got its first 'transient' boat of the season in the other day ... a commercial diving boat here to do some underwater survey work (looking for geoducs and abalones) for the local First Nations. (The link is to a fun column I wrote over 10 years ago about geoducs).
We're still officially managing until the end of the month, so we got to meet and chat with these folks, from Comox -- one of my favorite parts of the job!

Today I have one Welcome Wagon visit this morning, and then knitting in Ganges this afternoon. In the interim, it's a dreary rainy day so I think I might start a stew simmering before I go.

The purple sweater top-down remake is coming along, but I'm not sure if it's coming along fast enough -- I'm hoping to wear it when I attend my first Welcome Wagon conference this coming Saturday in Nanaimo, but I still have 4" of stockinette and then the 3" lace-and-cable border to do around the bottom. Think I can do it? :)
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GOOD THING I GOT A REAL JOB

For the last three months, the owners of this property (who've lived full-time on Vancouver Island and just visited here occasionally) have been preparing to move over to the Middle East for a few years -- he's an engineer and has been traveling to and from work there for years.

But he got a bit of a health scare just after Christmas and it made him realize he didn't really want to go. So ... they've moved back into their house here on the property, indefinitely, and we are, once again, out of a job. (The weird thing is that it's almost a year ago to the day that we lost our job in Victoria, through no fault of our own!) We're welcome to stay, of course, and just start paying regular-rate moorage -- which we haven't had to do for eight years. :(

We're still absorbing and processing this new information ... it would have been SO nice to have the security for the 3 or 4 years they intended to be away. But I guess 'the only constant is change,' as they say ... so we are working on accepting things the way they ARE, not the way we'd LIKE them to be. I said, 'working on' but I'm not very good at it... IT SUCKS, to put it bluntly.

We're pretty sure we will stay -- it's not like there's a lot of other options, and we do love it here. And we'll be okay. But it's a good thing I got the Welcome Wagon gig ...

And then this Easter weekend was only the second time in over 20 years (since our kids started leaving home) that we haven't had a big family get-together/dinner. Mischa had four days off so she really wanted to take the kids camping for the first time this year, so then Hailey mentioned that she had the opportunity to work right through the weekend and not come home ... so that was that. So my weekend wasn't much fun.

... and thank God for knitting! I've got lots of it on the go -- I finished the Alcea Shawl:
The color is 'truer' in the top photo -- it's actually a gorgeous deep plum color. And, as always, I love it -- Susanna IC is an amazing designer!

Then there's the Lighthouse Shawl I started - I wanted to start with a darker color than the one shown in the pattern, so I added beads in a swirl to signify the light:
Once again, the color is off -- it's really a very rich navy blue. It's my first-ever Pi shawl, so it's a huge project that I may be working on right through the summer.

Then there's the purple sweater I took apart and re-started as a 'top-down':
That color IS almost exact -- and I'll be doing a cables-n-lace border on the cuffs and around the bottom.

Knitting today at the Rock Salt! One day at a time.... one day at a time....
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Guess who came to visit on the weekend?
We've really missed these two, so it was lots of fun to have them here! River is 2" taller than me now ... and it's hard to believe, but Gibson will be 6 in less than two months.

We had to go to Salt Spring's skateboard park, of course ... but the only 'action' shots I took were little videos, all too 'big' to upload to my blog. Thank goodness they took rests...
Then we had to go to Ganges' famous downtown park -- it's in full spring bloom, now, of course:
... and the boys had fun, while I mostly knitted (as long as I was fully present every time I heard "Grandma, watch THIS!") ...
This is my absolute favorite picture of River EVER:
He's becoming a really nice young man! :)

Just before we left, they decided to entertain me with a little dance ... I tried, unsuccessfully, to edit the end, and I kept cutting out Riv's head, but it's still pretty entertaining!



(Hope this loads okay.... it took forever to upload!)

I have managed to knit a bit. The Alcea shawl is finished, but not blocked, so I can't show it to you yet -- it's lovely, but smaller than I hoped it would be. I'm now attempting a top-down sweater for myself, a remake of one I made a few years ago and have never worn because it fit badly, and I'm lousy at seaming. I'm pretty excited about the whole top-down concept, though...

Today the Area Manager for Welcome Wagon is here, so I'll be 'out and about' with her all day - I'm looking forward to it!
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