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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