KNITTING

It feels like spring here on Salt Spring right now .... we've had blue skies almost every day, and warm temperatures. Gardeners are gardening, folks are bicycling, and the pink-blossomed trees are everywhere. I love it! Not that we've had a bad winter, because we definitely haven't. As live-aboards, our biggest fear going into winter is always the southeaster windstorms, and there are usually several through the winter months. One of them completely knocked out the marina next to ours a few years ago, and they've never bothered re-building it. There's been only ONE this year, and it wasn't even that bad.

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post that you can check out this paper I'm working with now... it's called the Islands Marketplace, and if you click on 'current issue' every other Friday, you can read it - you'll find my boating adventures, community photos, and other stories I've written, and get a real sense of life on Salt Spring if it interests you.

Today was our weekly knitting circle here, in Ganges and most of the usual suspects showed up. :) I have cast on for a top-down sweater for myself that looks like it's going to be a fast knit because it's easy, so that's a change (from the ongoing lace shawls...)

I finished a baby blanket test knit last week, too...

That was fun! I also have a commission on the needles ... it's the Aeolian shawl, a very popular free pattern from Knitty. The one I'm doing is black, so it's hard to see (especially during my favorite knitting time, o-dark-thirty in the a.m.), and it has NUPPS ... so it has been a slowwwwwwwwww project.

It's Monday night ... so that means The Voice is on shortly! I don't watch much TV, but that show and American Idol both have me suckered .... um, I mean, interested. :-)

Here I go again....

I'm so sorry you faithful visitors have had to keep looking at that Christmas countdown thingie all this time. Thanks for hanging in there with me!
 
Well, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same....' is my theme now. Not long after I posted about working for Welcome Wagon.... I left that job. I've said it before and I'll say it again .... I'm too entrepreneurial to fit into a corporate 'slot' that dictates my daily routine. I thought that the job would give me a lot of freedom, and it did, initially ... but then things changed. So ... in spite of the fact that I tripled the income to Vancouver Island Welcome Wagon in a mere eight months, and had a blast doing it, I was being pressured to do things in a way that didn't sit well with me - and I'm too old to 'do what I'm told', or else.

So ... still living aboard, still hanging out with the love of my life (who turned 65 a few days ago), still on Salt Spring Island, and still knitting. Life is good! Since we moved here (can you believe it's been nearly 4 years??) I have done some writing for a little local print-edition news-advertiser that comes out every two weeks, so I contacted the woman who owns it just before Christmas. We are currently working out some sort of partnership; not even sure what that looks like yet, but I'm writing, doing some ad sales, doing promo and editing and ... well, 'one day at a time.' 

It's definitely spring on Salt Spring Island already...

I've been spending a lot of time in Victoria lately and the Japanese plum trees are in full bloom already, too. The reason I've been spending time in Victoria is because, on Dec. 30th, while hiking, my son Jason took what he thought was a small jump off a ledge that turned out to be a too-big jump off the ledge ... and broke his right leg/ankle in four places! After emergency surgery on New Year's Day (which made him a 'bionic man' with steel plates and pins and screws and such), he has been pretty much immobilized for the last two months, and has needed the kind of help a mama can provide .... cooking, cleaning, laundry and other assorted errands! It's been fun to help out and to spend time with him. He's a little more mobile now, so he won't need me around quite as much.

I have, foolishly, signed up (again) to NaBloMoPo's March daily writing challenge, so we'll see what happens. The theme is 'News' and I always seem to have some of that, don't I? ;-)