I had this bonkers idea that I could get everything from before Christmas off the needles by the end of January so that I could start a big new project as a midwinter treat. (I use the word treat here to mean “a reason to keep going on as the snow keeps falling as though it could bury our tattered hearts in the lassitude of our second covid winter. Loosely speaking.)
This is a very motivating thought – starting a big new…. something. I don’t even know what the something might be, but I do like the idea of it and its shiny newness.
Unfortunately, I have a sweater and two pairs of socks to finish if I am going to put a bow on this month. I’m not sure why they aren’t all done anyway, because I have been so diligent all month.
That is a lie.
I have been knitting rather a lot of mittens. While I do not regret this choice for a moment because mitten knitting is one of the true joys left to us in this world, I do kinda wish I had applied myself to the other projects sometime before this afternoon because I am cutting it a little close, ya feel me?
Technically, I came very close to finishing Elliot’s sweater, but that tricky wee beast must have grown while I was making it because even though his mum and I both measured him multiple times, because when I popped it on him it was too small. I ripped out the bottom ribbing and added a bunch, and the same with the finished sleeve. The audacity of some children, I tell you that.
7. I have no excuse (except mittens) for why Alex’s socks aren’t done (except his feet as as big as Joe’s which scarcely seems fair) but I feel like there is hope.
8. Joe’s sock’s….
9. Perhaps we must assume I have other charms that bind him yet.
If the blog was a person, today they would be an adult. Someone who can vote. Someone trusted to make big, important decisions and be responsible for their own selves. Upon reflection, that’s probably good since The Blog has been on its own more than I intended this year – so it’s good that you’ve all got some practice being a grown up.
Every year I write a big sappy thing about what the blog means to me, and this year is no exception – but let’s start here. When the blog began, I wrote to you from a spot in the dining room. We had one family computer, and I had this parenting philosophy (still do, though now I am outvoted I think) that the best way to manage kids and the internet was to let them at it- but in a family space. The kids could use the thing, but they had to understand that the rest of the family would be…around. They would be on the net and all around them the family swirled. They weren’t the only ones either. The first day that I wrote to you, I walked the kids to school, then came home and made myself a cup of coffee, and sat down with my laminated html cheat sheet, and had at it. This is a link to the very first post.
In those days Sam was 9, Meg 12 and Amanda almost 15. I used a digital camera, I went to spinning class at Parks and Recreation on Tuesdays, I’d written no books, I worked as a doula, Lactation Consultant and Childbirth Educator, and Hank was 4 – the age that Elliot is now, and I wrote every post to you from that dining room, amongst the noise and commotion of a young, busy, wild family.
I don’t have to tell you how much things have changed. Today, I write to you from here.
I almost always write to you from that space, the crazy little office I built for myself sixteen years ago- which reminds me, I should paint. That room is a little different now, in the beginning I had what felt like an expensive Ikea desk (we were so broke) and now I have my mum’s tiny desk.
Still, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, and after all these years, an adult human number of years here we are, me and you. Today I struggle to explain that almost everything I have (outside of the family I had when I started) is because of the blog, and Ken’s decision that I should have one. Everything changed the day he sat me in front of a computer – showed me this URL (it’s still the same) and told me that my people were… there. He wasn’t wrong, and today I’m so grateful to him for knowing me and my talents well enough to know that this was something that would resonate in my life like nothing else.
I just tried to write a paragraph about what these years have meant to me, and it ended in tears, and I deleted it. Here is what you need to know. Everyone I love and everyone who loves me, has been touched by The Blog. This last lonely, empty, wild year has been less lonely because I could walk through that little door to my tiny desk and know that you were there, whether I was able to do it, or not. I know that I haven’t always been there as much as would have been comforting to you, but these are strange times, and I want you to know that even though I haven’t always been the magic you wanted, you have always been the magic I needed.
I don’t know what I would have done without you, my sweet blog.
Don’t forget to vote.
Love,
Stephanie
PS. As is traditional, today is the day that I kick off fundraising for the Bike Rally. Hopefully that’s actually happening this year, though honestly I worry about sparking a new variant just thinking about it. In years past we have amused them mightily by donating a dollar for each year of blogging, a load of donations all the same amount (or a multiple) has always weirded the staff out over there, and I like that. I know that for many of us things are tight but honestly If you’re feeling it, we can keep the weird going with an $18 donation.
Today I’m wicked tired. Just… all in. It’s sort of a nice change from the aimless drifty feeling of the last while, that’s for sure. Last week we managed a ski-holiday of a sort, despite Joe’s broken arm, and I am here to tell you that I miss hotels and restaurants. We had a good time and it was very nice to be somewhere else, but when the covid-times finally end I am going to go somewhere that is unequivocally not self-serve. A person, a person that I am going to tip very well, let me tell you, is going to bring me a meal and clean up afterwards and I am going to be crazy about it because now that I’ve done a ski trip where you get up and cook and then get a kid to ski-school (outdoor and distanced for the win!) then come home for lunch and cook and then ski and then make dinner and clean that up is completely amazing and so much fun and I am awash with gratitude that we got the hell out of this house – but it’s a lot of work for someone who’s partner in crime is one-armed. (Tip of the hat to Meg and Alex who busted themselves helping out with everything.)
Still, Elliot did learn to ski (he’s an animal out there. Zooms past you with this little voice going “whoo hoo!”) and Alex and Meg learned too, and Joe had as good a time as he could, poor broken chum.
We drove home just before the big blizzard that’s buried Toronto over the last two days, and today I spent hours trying to shovel out our everything. In the end it was impossible to do by myself and when I realized that I was on the brink of tears with how huge the task was, I remembered that I’m in a family and called for help. Carlos turned up almost immediately and he and I shovelled while Luis and Frank did their best to knock down our snow mountains.
I don’t know if you live in a place where it snows a lot, but if you don’t, let me tell you this: Shovelling is some serious work, and I am feeling it in my back and shoulders, and just as soon as I’m finished this post and a bit of work, I’m going to have a bit of a rest and spin.
Like so many of us, my sweet little Ashford has been languishing these many pandemic months, but last week I had an idea and I’m going to need it up and running to make it work. I am still wildly in love with thrummed mittens (still going to do a thrum-along on the Patreon) and I was ploughing through a ginormous one when I had an idea.
How much fun would it be to find myself enough fibre that I could spin yarn for mittens, and then thrum with the same fibre. Don’t answer that, I know you’re aquiver with the excitement, as am I. I’m almost embarrassed by how exciting an idea this is. Exciting enough that I hauled the wheel out, dusted it off (I mean that literally) and did a full workup on it. Cleaned, polished, oiled, a new driveband and new tension, and it’s spinning like a dream- I am wild with passion for this concept, let’s just cross our fingers that it’s captivating long enough to finish the project.
So – off I go. It’s almost dark here, and I’m going to light some candles, make a nice dinner, and then have a date with a friend I’ve missed.
PS: This Sunday, despite having discovered that teaching live online is not my jam, I’m going to do a Fiberside Chat. It’s an hour long Zoom thing, and while teaching by seems funny to me, a chat seems lovely, doesn’t it? You can click on this link to register, and scroll through the yarn shops listed on the right to see if there’s a shop local to you that you would like to support- if you’ve got a preference. It’s a collaborative thing and there are 30 shops taking part (including one Canadian one, River City Yarns). See? Right up my alley.
See how chipper that was? Fake it ’till you make it, that’s our motto around here. We’re starting the new year – not quite the way we’d hoped. First, on Sunday we decided to go skating. We went round and round a few times on the skate-path, and Elliot (in his own words) fell down “a thousandy hundred of times” always bouncing up cheerfully.
After a while the cold got to him (it really was pretty fierce) and I took him off the ice to start changing into boots and such, and Joe said he thought he’d take one more lap and off he went. Well, he was back about 5 minutes later, hat askew and looking pretty wild, and pointing desperately at his arm behind Elliie’s back and mouthing the word “broken”. He was right. He’d dodged a kid whipping past at a thousand kilometres an hour and something went wrong and unlike Elliot, he didn’t bounce. I drove him to the hospital straight from the park and he spent about 30 of the next 36 hours in hospital having first a procedure to try and straighten it out, and then finally a surgery when that didn’t work as well as it could have. Covid rules in place here mean that he was alone the whole time he was in hospital and that added a layer of anxiety for both of us, but on the upside he’s got a partly bionic arm now, with lots of fancy plates and screws and the surgeon assured him that it’s now one part of his body that can never break again.
Second, the province is back in a modified lockdown. It makes sense (though I sincerely think that if they’d acted a little sooner things wouldn’t be so bad) and now our gathering limit is five people indoors and ten outside, and restaurants, gyms and other businesses like that are closed again, and all others have capacity limits back in place, again. Worst of all, schools are closed again, and health care is too overwhelmed to treat anyone for anything but covid (I refuse to use a capital letter for that word any longer) pushing off other kinds of non-emergency treatments. It is craptastic in the extreme, and a demoralized fog has settled over the city as we all hunker down to try and relieve the stress on the system.
Personally, I am fighting back with mittens. It seems like a completely reasonable response to the state of things, and if I can only see my people outside, we’re all going to need them.
I am adding thrums because it’s freezing cold, and also I think that puffy mittens are uplifting and cheerful.* I know maybe other people are making better use of their lockdown by cleaning something, taking care of their taxes or learning another language, but while I’m knitting these mittens I find it very hard to believe there’s a more worthy endeavor.
*I have a feeling that I might not be the only one, so in the next few weeks I’m going to do a thrum-a-long over on the Patreon. If you can’t resist the urge to thrum, find more there. Also this is not my first obsession with thrumming, so the archives here can be your friend.
