Dr Seuss said “How did it get so late so soon?” and that my dear readers, sums up my feelings about this year so far. I cannot name a single thing that is on track so far, I feel behind on everything I’m trying to do – Joe finally arrived home from out west after three weeks away, and I was so looking forward to being back on track when he came down with norovirus. (I refuse to capitalize it to make my lack of respect clear.) I’m barely over the last thing I had so I have washed my hands until they’re sandpaper and mopped down the bathroom 87 times a day and slept in another room while muttering “not today Satan” under my breath and so far, so good. He’s well on the mend now so I feel like I might have dodged it, but honestly it’s enough of a mess over here that I this week I’m going to have to drop a few plans out of my queue and prioritize only the things that really matter. Case in point, I have completely let go of any plan to clean anything and am knitting this baby blanket like it’s a job. (Well, except for my jobs and setting up the Spring Retreat, there’s one or two spots left I think if you want to hang out IRL.)

I have two baby blankets to knit in the next little bit and if I had my way I’d be on the final edging for the second one, rather than starting the second border. (I have half a mind to let all the parents know what I think of babies that arrive back to back and so soon after Christmas, but I like babies too much to complain properly or with any kind of heart. This one’s for friends of ours and the next for my niece – no more grandbabies yet.) I’ve knit the centre and a garter border, then a little border and the first big one – today I start the second big border and garter section, then there’s a little one and another garter section and then bingo, I start the edging.

It never ceases to surprise me how slowly this part goes. It seems like it should be so fast – the part I just completed is only 12cm deep and holding the work in my hands it’s pretty demoralizing that it took days, but really, each round went all the way, well… round, and that means that I added 12cm on each side, for a total of 48cm knit, and that means the blanket is now almost a half metre bigger and that’s a load of knitting and no surprise that it took a few days. Ellie is here for the weekend and although he’s a knitter he doesn’t want to spend hours and hours and hours at it, so we will see how far I get. (Abigail is here this evening and her focus in the area of the textile arts is pulling needles out of knitting, so I can’t imagine I’ll make good time then either.)

When I’m not working on the blanket, I’m working on my Self-Imposed-Sock-Club. The plan is 10 rounds a day on each sock each day- and last year that churned out 12 pairs of socks quite handily. I bagged up 12 patterns I want to knit and 12 skeins of yarn that I want to use and matched them up, stuck them in brown paper bags stapled them shut, mixed them around so I don’t know what’s in what bag, and put them on a shelf in my office. (I then instantaneously forgot what was in the bags, thus making it ridiculous that I’d mixed them up to try and fool myself.) The idea is that I pull down a bag each month but I got a late start in January and the rest of the month was on fire and there’s this big blanket and …

I’m not done yet. I need to knit the toes on these, and then go back and put in the heels. It’s a forethought heel, I put a little waste yarn in where the heel goes, and I’ll pull that out, collect the stitches and bob’s yer uncle. Sounds fast, right? We’ll see how quickly I get there – It’s pretty motivating to think about what might be in the next bag I pull down and I can’t do that until I finish these – I wonder if this is less fun if you have the kind of memory that would let you have any idea whatsoever what is in those bags- my memory being what it is means that the SISC (Self Imposed Sock Club) is a complete mystery and a surprise, just like it was being mailed to me every month.

Off I go. Someone has to knit those toes – and hide my knitting from Abigail. (Let me know if it’s you. I’ll work on the blanket.)

This entry comes to you on the auspicious occasion of my 21st Blogiversary, from the rather inauspicious location of my bed- where I’m tucked up with a wicked cold, a parting gift from Meg and her crew.

She had surgery 10 days ago and has been staying here since then – my little grandchildren all over the house, with me cooking and cleaning and doing some of the school run with Elliot. (He loves school by the way, and the only thing we don’t like about it is that it’s turned him into a walking viral vector, and I’m reasonably sure that he’s the reason I’ve been sick for months, including a nasty run with pneumonia and something terrible that derailed Christmas.)

It’s been a blast to have them here, current virus not withstanding and we do like to stick together as a family so I suppose (she says, blowing her nose again) that it is more than worth it. The whole family headed home this morning leaving me alone in the house, and I promptly retired to the bed with my knitting where I’ve slept most of the day and have no plans any loftier – but I’ve always written on my blogiversary, and I didn’t want to stop now

Over the last while, I’ve been thinking a lot about moments and the way we spend our time. I think of it a lot when I’m with little kids. That while I’m just making dinner or doing the dishes, or chatting with them as I clean, or as they’re annoying me while I try and write an email or do some work… that while all of that is Wednesday morning for me, to them it is a series of moments that are making up their childhoods, and I (like the other grownups in their lives) feel a certain responsibility to try and make things magical. I make fancy pancakes, I dance in the kitchen, I read endless stories and play in the park and anytime I feel like this is a burden or interpret it as pressure, I try and remember two things.

First, while we are responsible for making the magic in children’s lives (and the grownups we love too) children have unbelievably low standards and can show unwavering love and devotion to even the worst of adults with terrible ideas from time to time. Second, you never know what is going to be accidentally magical – when I was a little girl my Grampa (who was a wonderful person and grandparent and together with my Grammy is the model of all I do with Elliot and Abigail) worked so hard on making my childhood amazing. He took me on a plane, I got to go in a hot-tub at the Calgary Hilton. He gave me a hammer and let me smash rocks to find potash in them at the end of a driveway in Saskatoon. He worked incredibly hard and yet some of the most cherished moments of my childhood were watching him in his element when he wasn’t even trying, me sneaking down over the stairs to watch him waltz with my grandmother in the mornings, or raging at the squirrels who were eating the corn he’d planted. (Fair enough, his yield was only going to be four ears. He was all in.) One time while we were out somewhere he said he’d named a lake for me. “Lake Stephanie” he said, as we whizzed by a surely-already-named lake, him gesturing out the car window. Looking back I’m sure we were on our way to something he thought was going to be life-building magic, but it was that one line and a soft wave out a window on a twinkling winter night that did it. It was a transformative moment between us. I am older now than he was when he said that, and I remember it like it was yesterday. You never know what will do it, what the real moments are and it’s not like at the time it was so important, but I see it now.

Funny topic for a blogiversary you’re probably thinking, but hold on, here comes the tie in. This blog was that way for me. Twenty-one years ago my kids were little and I was building their childhoods and our lives and to take a break from all of that and give me a connection to anyone who cared about the things that I did, Ken gave me this blog. I sat down with my little laminated HTML sheet (if you don’t know what that is ask someone in their 50s) and I wrote. I didn’t know it then, but it was one of those moments. It was magical. I mean, it wasn’t then, that’s what I’m trying to say. Right then it was me and a computer the size of a compact car in the dining room, and it didn’t feel magical at all. It didn’t feel like anything other than trying to learn to blog.

Twenty-one years later it’s clear that that moment was a life changer. Probably even bigger than having a lake named after you. That moment created a connection with all of you, and that little stone thrown in has created ripples that are still changing my life every day. I love you all. Thank you for writing back, thank you for your comments, thank you for catching and ordinary moment, and making it magic. You changed my life.

PS: It has become tradition to kick off my fundraising for the Bike Rally every year on this date, and well, why not. To be completely honest- after last year I was a little reluctant to sign up again, and I am starting to feel a little old for it, but I in the end I did sign up, and I’m going to give it my all. Every year we weird out the people in the PWA office by donating an amount that seems random to them and has meaning to us – this year obviously, it’s $21, or a mutiple thereof, if you’re so inclined and you figure the Blog has meant that much to you. The link is here. Some people like to thank Ken today too, after all he’s the guy who set this blog up. If you like, his link is here.

PPS: More later when I’m better, I owe you loads of posts and I have a blanket to explain. (Abigail pulled the needles out. Patrons, thank you so much for your patience while I’ve been so unwell, I’ll be back in that space very soon.)

Joe’s been travelling for work. If you’ve been peeking at things over on instagram you probably knew that – it’s been going on for a while. Every couple of weeks he packs off west for a couple of weeks and I’m on my own. This is not my favourite, and the novelty has long worn off. Sure, there are perks – I do find myself good company and don’t mind being alone (sort of). It makes dinner easier, without Joe here at least I don’t have to figure out the unlikely magical dinner that we both feel like making and eating. (The first few times he was away it was a festival of cilantro around here. I love it, he hates it – I ate it every day. I considered ornamenting my oatmeal with it just because I could.) In the unlikely event I clean something it stays cleaner longer, there’s considerably less laundry, the music I play can lean as far in the Depeche Mode and new wave directions as I like and eyes remain unrollled. I don’t have to watch any movies with explosions in them, and it does free one up to knit as much as one pleases without having to rationalize that to anyone, but this isn’t really a perk since after this many years together I wasn’t doing much explaining about the knitting anyway.

The downsides? It’s a little lonely. It’s pretty quiet (though I liked that about it the first 5 trips, it’s worn off now.) I have to lift all the heavy things and do all the household jobs, even if they are particularly gross (Joe has long been trained up to handle anything like that) and I have to do all the jobs that he does, like going to the grocery store, taking out recycling, and at the end of every day I have to clean the kitchen up, which I really hate. For decades I’ve been making dinner and then just walking out of that room without so much as a glace back. I just cook and leave and at some point in before I go back into that room in the morning, Joe cleans up. I love this, and when we’re separated he always remembers how much he hates cooking, and I remember how much I hate cleaning up after cooking, and we both renew our commitment to living together.

Now, I’ve managed ok for the last several trips, but this one… well for starters I’m sick of it, and second… we’ve begun the ramp-up to the holidays, and I miss what is one of Joe’s most spectacular qualities, his seemingly unlimited ability to do errands. You can imagine how valuable this is for a holiday planning type like me. I dream it, he makes it happen. All I have to say is that I need gold staples, red ribbon, two kinds of tape and a butternut squash and Joe will leave the house and not come back until he has those things. I just keep a running list and Joe keeps going. Elliot wants a specific lego kit for Christmas? Joe will go find it. I tell him I really need black thread? Lo, it will appear. Today I am sitting here with my holiday spreadsheet open and every time I fill in a box I reflect on how much more time it’s going to take to make that happen by myself.

I sort of have it in my mind that I’ll get the bulk of Christmas shopping sorted before Joe comes back. There will be some things he’ll have to do, but he won’t have much time to do it, and I figure the shorter his list is the more likely it is that he’ll look forward to coming home. He can walk in the door, and the tree will be up, the shopping sorted, the decorating done and I’ll be … well I will undoubtedly be knitting, because this is the plan.

This my petals, is what I’m planning to knit in the next 34 days* and as usual, this feels reasonable. It is: my November Self-Imposed-Sock-Club socks. (They’re almost done but I put them on there anyway because they need doing.) A sweater for Elliot, a pair of size large socks, a pair of mittens, a pair of slippers, a size 1 baby sweater, a dress for Abigail, my December Self-Imposed-Sock-Club socks (they’re in the paper bag I don’t know what they are because I’m 56, and I packed everything into bags a year ago, and so even though logically I should know what it is because I’ve seen the other 11? No clue. Zip. Will be a total surprise) and finally, my advent socks from The Cozy Knitter.

Can I do it? Who knows. Like I said, that all seems reasonable- I mean… I’ve already done a swatch for Ellie’s sweater and it’s November still and that makes it feel to me like anything is possible, even if I do have to run all my own errands. As usual, I imagine it may be fun to watch – so I’ll keep posting here. I do owe all of you about 50 blog posts anyway, so no time like the present.

Ready? Set? KNIT.

*Not pictured are the three pairs of men’s socks which I am forced to admit shouldn’t be on the table because they are wildly aspirational and only a complete lunatic would think that they could get them done. (Note, because I am a partial lunatic they are just on another table in case it turns out that I am so amazing I even shock myself. You have to be ready for greatness, lest it find you.)

I’m sitting at my desk, and it’s “Day Zero” for the bike rally, which is what Ken calls Packing Day. That’s the day before departure, the day that we show up with all the worldly goods we’ll need for the next week (including our knitting) and load it all into bins and walk away from it. The support volunteers will drive it to our Day One stop for tomorrow night, and then we’ll cycle 114km to catch up with it. (That sounds bonkers, doesn’t it?) It’s rather late – or at least it’s Bike Rally late, which means that it’s not even gone nine yet and I’m ready for bed. I have to be awake ridiculously early in the morning – I haven’t quite done the math but I’ve got to be up, dressed, fed, caffeinated and across town with a sunny attitude and a ready bike at 7am and that sounds like such a challenge if I am not absolutely lying in my bed by 10pm.

Ken’s here, he’s upstairs puttering with a few things, and Joe’s watching the Olympics and I’m sitting here taking a few minutes to write to you before I go up and lie down and begin the night before process of anxiously making a mental list of all the things I don’t want to forget tomorrow. My bike jersey has three pockets and Ken has a small backpack that I can put things in- he’ll stash it with one of the drivers. I’ve got to remember to pack my toothbrush after I use it, and to bring three chamois butters in my pockets (one for me, one for Jen and one for Fenner) and I need my ID (whoops, I think I put that in my bins) and I kept out a little bit of knitting – just the socks that I started for my Self-Imposed-Sock-of-the-Month Club, and they’re just a bit of toes but I still want to take them and I’ll need something to knit as we make our way there.

I also have to remember my puffer – a new addition to my checklist. A year after having Covid I still have virus-induced asthma. It’s crappy. I’d hoped it would give up and wander off but despite a perfect lifetime of terrific asthma-free lung function -15 months post-covid I can’t cycle more than a few blocks without wheezing like an old accordion. (Thanks Covid, you’re a jerk.) It’s a whole new thing learning to carry the medicine with me when ride, but I’m getting the hang and it works, so that’s kinda motivating.

As we did a few last minute tasks tonight, putting our license plates on our bikes, organizing our jerseys and shoes and bike shorts for tomorrow and I told Ken that I am officially at the “why do I do this to myself” phase of getting ready. I’ve been there all day – It’s so much work and it’s so tiring and tomorrow’s supposed to be about 40 degrees (that’s 104 for our American friends) and the Rally is hard, so so hard, and and while I do all of it and think about the week ahead of me it helps to revisit all the reasons I bother.

I could go on forever about how important the work that PWA does is. I could tell you about the difference that they make in the lives of people with HIV and AIDS. I could tell you about the people I have met that have explained to me that PWA saved their life. That they got back a sense of belonging and community and comfort, or that it’s the place where they don’t feel ashamed, or stigmatized or that it’s the place that helped them get the meds that they need to be healthy and to get them to an undetectable viral load so that not only are they healthy, but they’re not able to pass it on to anyone else, stopping this beast in its tracks. I could tell you that PWA helped them get a haircut. I could tell you that they helped them with vet services for a beloved pet, or provided the skills and confidence to get a job, or gave them access to the Essentials Market (a much more dignified name for a food bank) to get the food that they needed to feed their kids this week, or provided child care or a drive for a medical appointment.

Mostly though, I would tell you that like almost everyone who rides the Rally, I’m doing it because there is a kind of world I want to live in, and I think that we all have a responsibility to try and build it together, and that those of us who are able to show up and fundraise and make some noise have a moral obligation to do just that on behalf of not just the clients who need the service systems we’re building, but for those of us who simply can’t. Maybe that’s you right now. Maybe the most you can do right now to build that kind of world is read this, and think about it. Maybe the most you can do is donate. Maybe donating is impossible for you and the way you can help is to forward the request to someone who can – putting it on your feed or on your socials. Maybe you are someone who needs to use these services yourself. *

Anyway, tomorrow as I start my ride with Team Knit, that’s what I’lll be thinking about. Doing my best to fundraise, and raise awareness and well… it’s going to be really hard. As always, you are the missing piece. Team Knit”s efforts change nothing without your help, and we are so grateful for you and any help you can give, no matter what it looks like.

Team Knit is:

Me. (Stephanie)

Ken (like always)

Cameron (currently away for an important family time)

Jen (welcome back Jen, it’s been 8 years)

Fenner (Jen’s kid, now a whopping 16 years old and old enough!

I think I’ve figured out how to blog from my ipad, so there’s a tiny chance I’ll be able to do that on the ride or in Montreal- and in my last blog post I said that I would write you an entry for every $1000 we raised, which means that right now I owe you more than 40 blog posts, and I better get on it.

Thanks for everything, please keep helping. I think you’re great.

* a little note about that. Did you know that a very great many (more than a third) of the clients who use PWA are women? HIV/AIDs has always exploited the vulnerable, and these days a client at the agency is just as likely to be a mother with children (sometimes HIV+ as well) as a gay man. The face of this pandemic might not quite be what you think. I’m not just allied to the LGBTQ2S+ community, I’m showing up for those mamas.

I have always been, much to my own disappointment and that of my mother, a person who is a rather vulnerable to criticism. My grandfather thought that criticism was valuable and told you a lot about where you should be putting your energy if you’re trying to improve yourself, and maybe because I’m a bit weak or maybe because I took that a little too seriously, I have always taken the things that people say about me right to heart, and tried to do something with it. I think that this has worked on some things – but there’s a whole raft of other stuff about me that just seems intractable no matter now many times I vow to be the sort of person with a really tidy house who also doesn’t talk too much. Usually, when I confess that I’m sort of vulnerable this way all sorts of people try to reassure me that I’m pretty great and I shouldn’t worry about what other people think, and that’s super nice of them. I appreciate it a lot, while also not being able to really think that’s true. Caring what other people think is important to me and the civil society I’d like to live in, and I care what you think of me, and for the most part I think I’m better for it, especially as I get older and work out exactly which opinions matter, and which are differences of opinion that I’m kinda proud of.

Now, I’ve written before how being someone who takes criticism easily to heart makes it really hard to be a writer, especially one who gets to read her reviews right here on the blog, or in my inbox. It can make me nervous about writing in general and well – I think I’m always going to struggle with that. So a while ago I went to write to you about the Bike Rally and Team Knit this year, and to tell you that I’m going to try and blog about everything as frequently as I’m able in exchange for donations, and stopped, and didn’t. See, I received a comment from someone that said that she felt this blog only existed to be a personal go fund me for the Bike Rally (that’s an oxymoron by the way, you can’t have a personal fundraiser that’s for a charity the money is going to the charity for crying out loud I’m not buying shoes) and I realized that if I posted now she could think I was doing just as she said, and I worried that she would have more criticism that hurt my feelings and I didn’t post. This went on for a while even though this reader said she was deleting me and wasn’t going to read anymore, because I’ve always figured that if one person leaves a comment, they’re really speaking on behalf of a bunch of knitters who feel the same way but can’t be arsed to leave a comment. (This is like me believing that all spiders are hiding a secret ability to jump. You can’t tell me otherwise, despite evidence to the contrary- I said it was a secret.) It doesn’t matter if that’s true or not, because I realized something shocking about it yesterday, and here it comes.

I don’t care.

Even if every little bit of that is true, and I am only using the blog as a fundraiser at the moment, do you know what? That’s a great legacy. That’s an amazing thing for this blog to do. If that is the culmination of twenty years of blogging – that I’ve told you the story of my knitting and this family for two decades and created a platform that exists so that knitters can make the world a better place? Sign me up. Send me the tee-shirt. Cool beans, I’m in, I think that I like that about me.

I have also been kinda bummed about the world lately- and somehow it has felt to me like there are so many problems right now that it is impossible to write fairly about anything. If I write about the climate aren’t I ignoring Gaza? If I write about Gaza then I am a boor who must turn my attention to Ukraine, and how could we overlook the Sudan – do you even care about Niger? Do you know the temperature of the Atlantic ocean? Aren’t politics keeping you up at night? Are you worried about eroding human rights? It feels to me many days like the world is completely out of control and these problems are so many and so big that it can feel hard to do anything about any of it. Luckily though, I am a knitter and so are you (probably) and that means that unlike a lot of people, we have an antidote. Team Knit.

Team Knit is a little group of knitters (mostly in my family) who every year, ride their bikes from Toronto to Montreal (that’s 660km – or 410 miles, for my American friends) to raise funds for PWA. (Toronto People with AIDS foundation.) This year Team Knit is:

Me. (Stephanie)

Ken (like always)

Cameron*

Jen (welcome back Jen, it’s been 8 years)

Fenner (Jen’s kid, now a whopping 16 years old and old enough!)

*Quick note about Cam- he has an injury this year that’s preventing him from riding. He’s still dedicated to the ride and the cause, so he’s signed up as crew and will spend the six days making the ride go from another angle.

How is that an antidote? Glad you asked. In fundraising – what I was just writing about is a big, big part of what fundraisers are trying to overcome. The problem that almost nobody has a spare few million dollars, and that means that most donations are going to be rather smaller than that, to say the least. Now, most humans are smart enough to look at a problem and realize that some money would go a long way to helping, but understand that it would be a lot of money. Then they realize that they don’t have a lot of money, they just can spare a little bit, and don’t donate, because there’s no way that $10 can solve the problem, and so they don’t give anything. There’s other people though – people who understand the concept of “cumulative action” – and those people are different. Those people have learned somehow, through experience or education, that a small action isn’t futile, if it’s combined with many other small actions, and those people will indeed take a small action or make a small gift because they know their little piece is an essential part of something big. Fundraisers love these people – this kind of person creates really differences in the world, and guess what.

All knitters understand Cumulative Action. Every, single one of them. Knitting teaches you that one small action does matter. That one small action, like knitting a stitch, isn’t unimportant. It’s vital. One small action repeated many times is a sweater. Or a shawl. Or a pair of socks to hold the feet of someone you love, and that idea? The concept of cumulative action? It makes knitters the most remarkable fundraisers of all. Other groups, they have to rely on the small part of their community that understands that… knitters? Our whole group gets it. Our whole group sees that one small thing – put together with many other things can create something enormous, and wonderful, and magical.

More than this, there is a bonus, and it is that this feels great. Taking a small action that becomes huge in cooperation with your community is a remarkable way for people to know what it must feel like to make huge gifts, to be a philanthropist, to know that they are actually taking an action big enough to create real, tangible change and difference in the world, to be someone who is shaping that world- to lift the feeling that nothing matters, that you can’t do anything, that it’s all out of your control. It’s not. It’s not at all. You’re just not going to do it by yourself.

Please give if you can. As always, I believe there are so many ways to help – the wave of cumulative action roars fastest with lots of us. If you can’t afford to give, please help by spreading the word, telling a friend, asking a business, or reaching out to any billionaires you may know. You’re Team Knit, let’s go.

(I forgot to tell you about the deal. For every $1000 we raise, I’ll write one blog post. It’s a small thing, but it’s something I can do.)

There’s quiet music playing in the kitchen. I’ve got a cup of tea and it’s snowing. My sweater knitting is calling me, but the house is a mess so really I should clean instead of knit, but I think we all know how that’s going to end, don’t we?

Truthfully I’ve got to much to do here at my desk to do either, but I’m bucking the feeling of being “behind” on that sweater and want to make some progress. I made a catastrophic error knitting it the first time (just an extra hundred stitches or so, no big deal. Chest measurement was 87″ instead of 40″. Whatever) and I had to rip the whole thing out, right back to the cast on, and in that moment it lost some of its charm, you know what I mean? It’s a super fun knit and I keep mumbling things to myself like “a knit so nice I’ll do it twice” but the truth is that I sort of think of it as a traitor now. Yesterday I brought different yarn downstairs and came within a hair of winding it to make a different sweater before I pulled myself together and reminded myself just how much fun I had the first time, and that technically if I make the big mistake on a piece of knitting that makes me the problem, not the sweater.

The sweater in question- Pattern is the Field Sweater, and yarn Lexington from The Artful Ewe.

When I put away that other yarn (not very far away, I tell you that) it occurred to me that this was quite Yarn Harlotish, blaming a project for my essential nature and trying to start another one instead of being monogamous, and that this is one of the things that has stayed the same over the last twenty years, because poppets, I have been reflecting a lot on things that have changed and things that have stayed the same over the last twenty years, and that’s because today is my 20th Blogiversary.

Twenty years since the day that Ken gave me this blog and explained that the outlet and knitters I were looking for were on the other side of this keyboard, and he was right. That’s something that’s stayed absolutely the same. The path to the knitters I’m interested in is still the internet – that’s the key that’s unlocked everything – although what shape of internet is another question entirely. These days I feel like most knitters want videos and reels more than pictures and words, so you you can find me making little Harlot mini movies (I’m sure that’s going to be a nightmare in a search engine) over at Patreon, and little snips of my life show up on instagram all the time, of course. (If you ever worry I’ve ceased to be, check there.)

Twenty years ago the pace of my life was different -I had little kids and a job as a doula and a lactation consultant and I worked inside and outside my home and I was just starting a writing and teaching and speaking career and now… my girls are grown and making lives of their own. I’m a grandmother and I work at home most of the time, and somehow I feel busier now than I did then, although I’m not sure how that’s possible. I feel like the younger me had more hours in her day, she got more done… How did I do all those things? (I suspect the answer is that I was twenty years younger. I spend a lot of time squinting at things now, maybe that’s taking more time than I think.)

Over the years there’s been thousands and thousands of times that I’ve sat here – well, if “here” is at the keyboard- I’ve blogged from all over my house, from parks, from airports, from holiday, from hospitals, from at least seven countries, from cities all over North America, from planes, from trains, from automobiles, from tents, from deathbeds, from birthbeds, and from everywhere that I was, every time I did it, I was reaching out for people, people like you who understood me and the things I cared about, even if that was the difficulty of getting through a buttonband, or a family tragedy. (They can both take a toll, as we all know.)

In twenty years, there has never, ever, been one time that when I wrote to you that you didn’t write back. Although who answered that horn when I blew it has sometimes come as a surprise. You’ve been wonderful, funny, strange (sometimes all of that at once) you’ve been supportive, critical, inventive, realistic, creative… there were even one or two of you that were scary. There are those of you – so many of you, that have gone on to be real world friends, knitters I met, knitters I corresponded with… there are so many of you that I can not go to any knitting place and not find someone I know something about, or who’s name rings a bell from the comments, or who’s got a picture of us together from some time in the last two decades. I have been blogging so long, that when I look back at the early posts it’s even a visit to so many people who are gone now – not just family and friends, but knitters and colleagues, gone to the great big yarn store in the sky. Change – whether any of us wanted it or not, has happened.

Isn’t it strange then, that with all that change in who is reading and when and where I’m posting, or how often I am called here to talk to you, I still think of you as The Blog. An amorphous collaboration that is here, in this little box, living your own lives, struggling through your own losses and triumphs and buttonbands, but always… here. I don’t know how many of you (because I do think of you as a collective, like The Borg but with more yarn) have been here the whole twenty years. Probably not many, but it turns out it doesn’t matter, one of you, all of you, you are my darling Blog and I am so incredibly grateful to you for everything.

There are not words for how you have shaped my life. I cannot possibly explain what it is to know that you are there, for years and years and years. To have a place I can call out to, to know I will always be answered and (mostly) understood, has been a tremendous privilege and an honour and you should know that it has always, always made me feel so… lucky. I deserve this no more than anyone else does, and I want to thank you for every single time you read, or commented, or donated to something I cared about, or said that you cared, no matter how you did it.

In my life, like in every life, there have been periods of profound darkness. Know that in those times, you have often been my light and touchstone, my hope and energy, my people, my friends and my community. I don’t know how often I will be in this space. Everything changes all the time, and who knows what turn of the wheel will bring me back, but I know you’re here and can’t imagine not coming. You’ll have to lean into the element of surprise.

Thank you for a wonderful, incredible 20 years.

(PS. Another thing that isn’t changing- it’s become a tradition to kick off my fundraising for the Bike Rally on my Blogiversary, and even though I’m closer to 60 than 50 I’m planning on riding again. In years gone by, kind readers have donated the number of years I’ve been blogging as a way of celebrating. This year would be $20 for twenty years. It won’t freak out PWA as much as getting a bunch of $19 donations did, but you can’t have everything. You can click here if you’re feeling it.)

Well, here we are. Yesterday we packed all of our things into our bins and then put them on the trucks, and then we came home and had a little spa day for our bikes and a family dinner. At least Ken and I did, I’m pretty sure Cam worked. It was nice to work alongside Ken, I’ve missed him so much since he moved to Ottawa, it’s a pleasure just to be in the same house, do things together, have the family all in one spot. It’s something that I’m looking forward to over the next week for sure, as we all ride our bikes together, camp together… Team Knit isn’t just friends, we’re family.

I was reflecting on that last night getting ready for bed- have I ever told you about the idea of Bike Rally Family? This event is special that way, we’re not a very big group of people, only about 200 riders will ride the six days from Toronto to Montreal. We’ll be supported by about 90 crew, and we often say that we’re like a small travelling town. We pack up in the morning, and put everything on the trucks, and then road support gets out there to guide us, the rustlers move our stuff to the next stop, the food crew comes up with three meals a day (in three different locations, even) the wellness crew cares for people who are hurt or need support, and logistics pulls the whole thing together, somehow. Then we land in a new place about 100km from the first one, and take everything out of trucks and set up tents and do it all over again. That whole thing is run by a steering committee of volunteers who work a whole year to make these six days happen – and obviously we’re way too small to be a town, but over the course of the Rally together, something crazy happens, and it’s that you’re having such a wild experience, such a unique and bizarre thing, that you come to feel an intimacy and affection for the other people doing it that makes you feel closer to them than you imagined you would. By the end of it, we call it the “Bike Rally Family” and it’s something that persists all year.

Good thing too, because this tiny group of volunteers, giving up time, energy, vacation time, money… to make this happen? The Bike Rally raises most of the operating budget for an entire ASO. (AIDS Service Organization.) We – The Bike Rally Family – we are the reason that there is a PWA, and that it can support anyone.

This is the Bike Rally’s 25th Anniversary. 25 years ago a couple of friends, Danny Nashman and David Linton- heard about a funding crisis at PWA (People With Aids) and decided to have a fundraiser. They set out to ride to Montreal and supported by a few friends with pickups and BBQs – a handful of riders raised $45 000. David passed away several years ago, but today I packed up my bins next to Danny and loaned him duct tape to cover the holes in the bins so spiders don’t get in. (Also there is some concern about earwigs but I try not to think about it and just use the tape.)

25 years later, here’s Danny, here’s all of us, showing up to try and do the same thing they did that first time – fund the agency out of a crisis. This year donations are down, and as we all know, need is up. PWA has a lot of different services that they provide – some you would expect, some you wouldn’t – and one of them is the Essentials Market. (That’s the food bank, the only one in Ontario exclusively for people with HIV/AIDS and their dependents. I’ve spoken before about how shocked most people are at how many women and children it helps – the face of this virus has changed a lot over the years.) Thanks to the rising cost of living, inflation, the cost of food and ^$#%ing Covid, more people are coming for help. Thanks to those same things, the donations from suppliers used to be six pallets of food a week, and now it’s two.

That’s a big deal – and to try and keep people fed, PWA has been diverting funds from other programs to buy food for the market – and the situation is unsustainable. PWA is so much more than a food bank, what people need is so much more than a food bank – what they deserve is so much more than a food bank – but this year there is the very real risk that the Bike Rally won’t be able to raise what PWA needs. We’re about $400 000 short of the goal, and that’s a lot for a little family of 200 riders to come up with.

I think I’ve been pretty honest that I have a healthy respect for what the rally asks of a person – I won’t say that it usually scares me, but that’s only because I’ve always been worried enough that I over-prepare, over train, over pack…. by the time the Rally rolls around every year I’ve actually used that fear to get me ready. This year it’s different, thanks to ^$#%ing Covid – and its fallout. There is actually no way that I’m properly ready. None. I have a puffer now and maybe that helps? I don’t know. All I know for sure is that I’m properly scared. The guys keep saying that I can rely on my body’s experience doing this, muscle memory and all that, but I feel like I am at the age where my muscles are starting to forget things rather than remember them, if you know what I mean. This morning as I drink my coffee and think about what lies ahead of me for the next six days, I’m reflecting that this isn’t a job, this isn’t a vacation, this isn’t anything really except for a family trying to get something done.

In a family, you show up and do your best, and your family gets your back and helps you, and you make sure that all of you are okay, as best you can, so I’m going to get on my bike and keep bugging you for donations, so that the Bike Rally Family can take care of the clients who need the PWA family, and I’m going to count on my family to take care of me.

If you’d like to help- the Team Knit Family is still out there representing knitters, and working to get to our goals.

Me

Cameron

Ken

See you in a week, and thank you for all your help taking care of people. You’re legends.

(PS: I can’t post to the blog while we’re riding, but you can see what we’re up to on instagram, you don’t have to sign up to follow us on the ride. I’m @yarnharlot, Ken is @five12plus, and Cameron is @thesilverboy)

Today is the day before packing day. Ken arrives tonight, and The Bike Rally leaves on Sunday morning, but tomorrow we take everything we need for the next week and pack it into two bins. The “rustlers” take the two bins and put them on a truck, and that truck goes ahead of us to where we’ll be stopping the first night. When you finish riding for the day (one presumes here you have made it to camp) you find your bins, and set up camp. Tomorrow I’ll give them my tent, sleeping bag, clothes – everything I’ll need to cycle the six days to Montreal.

This always causes me a ton of anxiety. All the riders really- it’s a little more complicated that it sounds – for starters there’s all the regular packing, plus camping packing, but also anything I give them tomorrow morning, I won’t have access to for 36 hours. This raises all sorts of regular person questions (like what does that mean for your toothbrush? Shoes? Wallet? What if you want to wear those shorts on packing day and day five?) but for a knitter, it seems extra complicated, doesn’t it? I can’t work on anything I decide to pack in my bins, but there’s still a whole day and night of knitting before I leave, and anything I work on tomorrow has to be left behind, and then there’s a whole day where I have to ride 100km to get to any knitting at all. (That happens every day, it’s a decent incentive.) I’m not a particularly monogamous knitter (okay not at all) but it still seems funny to leave something behind for a whole week. Won’t it be lonely for me?

Obviously I need yarn to knit on the Rally – while there’s not much time to knit there is evenings after dinner and a few rounds in the morning in my tent, just to centre myself. Once we’re in Montreal there’s more time to knit and then a long train ride home. My inner knitter says that means I need two sweaters worth and at least four balls of sock yarn, but I’ve been carrying around her stuff forever and she’s a terrible packer. I’m going ignore her and just take enough to make two pairs of socks – half of my stash of this years bike rally yarn from Indigodragonfly. (I’ve linked it there, if you want some, Kim, Ron and Victoria donate 25% of the proceeds to knitters riding, also it is gorgeous.) My urge is to take more, but I don’t think a sock a day is a realistic expectation under these circumstances. There’s that little voice that says “but what if?” but I’m going to try and be reasonable.

I’ve not wound the yarn, nor decided what pattern(s) I’ll make and I haven’t found needles yet, but what the hell, I have 14 hours so it’s cool. I’m only going to sleep for 8 of those. It will be fine. I haven’t packed anything else either. I still need to find all my stuff, the clothes on the line need to dry, there’s a toothpaste crisis I need to solve – I’m nervous about all of it and it’s making me procrastinate. I can’t pack incorrectly if I don’t pack, right? Yeah. I know.

In the meantime, let’s do some Karmic Balancing gifts, shall we? It’s a good distraction, at least for me. (If you missed the explanation of how this works, you can check it out at the bottom of this post.) Here we go!

First -something a little bit different, a little less random than our Karmic Balancing magic usually is. Abigail knit this beautiful Short Rose shawl out of the  Indigodragonfly 2020 Pedal Pushers colorway and she’s willing to send it away to it’s forever home. It’s too beautiful to choose a name at random – it should be with someone who really loves it. If that’s you, think up the donation you’d like to make for it, and email me at stephanieATyarnharlotDOTca I’ll look over all the offers and be in touch.

Next! Jennifer has a copy of Sequence Knitting to send out – this is a fascinating book, and it will be going to live with Kristen S. Thanks Jennifer!

Allison went into her stash and came out with this, a beautiful kit from the Unique Sheep for the Guernsey Garden Cowl.

Allison will be sending that off to Jaemi F, and I hope they love it.

Allyson has one for the spinners! 100% merino from Koigu,

she’ll be popping that in the mail to LeAnn S.

Kate has not one but three gifts of sock yarn to send to their new and happy homes:

This skein of Regia Premium Merino Yak is for Paula F.

This beautifully watery skein of Lisa Souza deluxe sock is for Vicky H.

and last but not least, this beautiful skein of Cascade Heritage sock will be socks on the needles of Eva D.

Two pretty skeins from Eliza! One of Red Sock Blue Sock Yarn Co’s sock yarns in “Queenie” for Latifa D,

and this skein of SweetGeorgias Tough Love Sock will be winging their way to Chris I.

Linda is somehow finding a way to part with this skein from Gauge Dye Works – she’ll be sending it to Madelyn.

Meanwhile Sandie has two skeins to be gifts as well. They’re both from Farmer’s Daughter Sock Squad – this pretty one is for Grace T.

and this glorious skein is going to Katie D.

Finally – last but certainly not least, Amy Snell (talented designer and friend of the show) would like to give away TEN patterns. Knitter will choose from her whole independent library and let Amy know which one they would love. You can see all her patterns here on Payhip, or here on Ravelry . Carol G, Karen B, Ruth Ann H, Michelle C, Esther R, Jessica N, Ruth V, Victoria P, Spring D, Susan G, and Ashley A will have a very hard time deciding!

That’s it for today, there’s more in the hopper but I have to bring the laundry in and really make a start on packing. I’ve emailed all the lucky knitters who’s names were drawn, so check your inboxes. As always, thank you for all each of you does to support the Bike Rally. We are so grateful for you.

Team Knit is:

Me

Cameron

Ken

We’re a few hundred kilometres from home, enjoying the same cottage we pack off to every summer. Usually the way it works is that Joe and I move into the place, and then assorted family comes and goes as their schedule allows. This year we’re lucky enough that Meg, Alex and the grandkids can be with us the whole time, and Amanda too. Everyone else has managed a little time here and there, and it’s been lovely.

I packed lots of knitting. Two sweaters, the yarn for a little dress for Abby (for when I finished the two sweaters naturally) and then three pairs of socks with none of them even past the heel turn. I can assure you as I packed all this, that I was pretty sure I wasn’t underyarned. The dress is lace, the sweaters are big – I have lots. Even if I gave up cooking, organizing, training for the rally and playing with my little grandchildren and did nothing but knit, I would be just fine.

So, I plowed through the first sweater – The Vibes Tee. Nice, right?

The yarn is Trio, and it was a fast, fun summer knit that has inexplicable pink/coral stripes that I adore. I have no idea what possessed me when I saw that colour since I’m usually pretty anti-pink, but something about that particular colour reminded me of roses, and my mum’s favourite shade of toenail polish and it was named “Radish” and I love radishes so suddenly I had a sweater with pink stripes on the needles and I couldn’t have been happier. That shade stayed charming the whole way through too. I LOVE it.

Weird thing though – I went to knit the ribbing on the bottom, and I came up to the bedroom where I have the bag of knitting stuff I brought with me on this trip and I shuffled through the surprisingly small pile of needles and couldn’t find the right one for the ribbing. “Odd as fish” I thought to myself, since I have a really, really clear memory of going to my office with a needle gauge and a list of all my projects and pulling down all the needles I would need and making a pile of them all. Turned out Meg had a spare needle in the right size, so I borrowed from her and kept on trucking.

A little while later it was time for the sleeves, and back I went to the bag of needles for the DPNs I needed for the sleeves and sleeve ribbing. I searched through the bag in disbelief when I couldn’t find them, and then painstakingly went through every other bag I’d brought in case I’d taken all leave of my senses and jammed them into some strange and infrequently visited pocket of my purse or mysteriously slid them down a section of my backpack. I had not. Meg to the rescue again – she didn’t have DPNs the size I needed, but she did have a set of interchangables with almost long enough cables for me to do the magic loop, so I just awkwardly powered through. The needle thing was really bugging me though. That night I checked all the bags again.

I washed the Tee in the lake and blocked it on the dock and while it was drying I went and fetched the Paul Klee sweater I’m working on. The needles are in that, so nothing could go wrong for a bit. I motored along, then measured last night and thought well isn’t this a pretty amazing moment, I’m ready for the ribbing. I went back to the bag AND YES YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED DON’T YOU. The needle for the ribbing was not there. This, I thought to myself, this has gone way too far. Meg was using her needle that size, so I pulled myself together and moved along. I’d knit the sleeves! Nope- those needles aren’t in the bag either. Here we shall not speak of the rage that I felt. It’s unbecoming to a knitter and I may have thrown things around a little in a way that doesn’t reflect my usual level of maturity. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that this petals, is why you simply must bring a lot of knitting on holiday. You never know what will come up.

I calmly (ok I slammed it) put aside the sweater, and went to fetch the dress for Abigail.

This is going to be the Holly Dress, and that’s just a little bit of silk to make it out of. I rummaged the bag almost expecting not to find the 3mm needle I needed, and when I didn’t, I had a brainwave. The body of the Paul Klee sweater was on a 3mm and I was at the ribbing! I could use that one. I put the sweater on a barber cord, and pulled out the 3mm, only realizing as I did it that it was way too long. Not so long that I could do magic loop and start the dress anyway, but too long to cast on. I swore, and pivoted again- feeling very proud of my ability to change tack without a tantrum so many times.

Now, in the course of this story you may be wondering what in the name of alpaca was I riffling through in that bag if it was not needles? It was needles. Lots of needles. A trove of needles – all wrong. Here’s what I just figured out. In the days leading up to leaving for this trip, I did two things. I tidied the house and put all recently rejected or discarded needles in a pile on my desk, ready to put away. Then I made a pile (also on my desk do you see this coming) of the needles I needed for this trip. Then I simply picked up the wrong pile and left. I don’t know how I couldn’t have noticed, but I am certain that the moment I arrive home I will find a very nice and tidy pile of exactly what I need sitting on my desk and looking smug. In the meantime, I am reduced to a few days of just socks before I get home, so thanks goodness I brought so much yarn that Joe looked at me funny.

When not trying to knit up here, I’ve been doing my best to train for the Rally – things are still not great but they are better – Exercise makes me wheeze now, which doesn’t seem to hold me back or make me short of breath, but does make my post-covid lungs sound exactly like an accordion you found in someone’s basement. (It’s much better than two weeks ago though.) The fatigue is improved, so is my stamina, but it’s still me on the strugglebus out there. My Dr said that as long as I’m not trying to push through extreme fatigue or shortness of breath, I’m cool. Exercise sucks, but then I recover just fine and am only as wiped out as I should be considering everything.

All this is a green light to keep trying, and try I have. I’ve been running about every other day, and I brought my bike with me so I could try and get some rides in. Running is pretty rough here – it’s hot and the local insect population waits at the end of the lane to attack people on who venture onto their territory with the accuracy and deadliness of a military flight wing. I’m covered in so many bites I look like I was tied to a tree and left there for a week. (Before you suggest it, know that I am covered in DEET. They mock it. ) The riding has been something else too – There is not a single inch of this area that is flat. It’s hills, all hills and I’ve been out there getting my arse handed to me like never before. I’m reminding myself that the rally isn’t that hilly – no part of it is, so failure here could still mean success there. We leave in 9 days.

I’ve got some Karmic Balancing gifts to give away and I’ll do that as soon as we’re home in a day or two (the internet here leaves something to be desired) and I’m all over it as soon as I unpack and bathe somewhere other than a lake. If anyone wanted a part of Karmic Balancing gifts – here’s how it works. If you help Team Knit fundraise for the Rally, then you can send an email to me (stephanieATyarnharlotDOTca) and make the subject line “I helped”. You should include your name, address and if you knit and spin, or just knit, or just spin. There are LOTS of ways to help. You can donate to anyone on Team Knit, we’re all still working towards our goals.

Stephanie

Cameron

Ken

Or you can share the links with friends or family you think might help, spread the word, use your social media to let people know, all of that counts as helping.

If you would like, you can be a Karmic Contributor – if you’ve got a knitter/spinner thing in your stash that you’d like to pass along to someone else as a dose of good vibes for helping this year, you can take a picture of it and send it to me at that same email (stephanieATyarnharlotDOTca). You can describe what it is, and let me know where you’re willing to ship it. (International, Canada, the US, only Portugal, whatever) and then I’ll open the list of helpers, draw a name at random, and send it to you. You’ll ship it to them, and whammo. Karmic Balancing. The helpers never know what they’ll get except it will be yarnish (or patternish) and it will be something nice they didn’t have before, and that’s exactly how Karma works.

I’m off now, so I’ll give you this picture of Abby enjoying the singular pleasure of being in a lake for the first time. She loved it.

Well, that ride didn’t kill me. I so appreciate all the comments that are so kind as to suggest not pushing myself, not taking risks… I hear you, and I feel really touched by how much you want me to be careful and to keep myself well. Rest assured that I am a reasonable adult who has got this far, and I have professional advice (not just internet advice, as much as I love you all) and there’s actually loads of research showing that for reasonably fit people who are more than 10 days post-covid (that’s me!) exercise can be preventive for long covid, and helpful in its healing. I acknowledge that there’s also some research that says that resting may be protective, but it’s a total mixed bag, and the best advice I’ve got right now is that exercise isn’t damaging, ignoring messages from your body is, so I’m not planning on doing that. Not ignoring messages isn’t the same as not trying though, it’s more about knowing when to quit, so Wednesday when I struck out for a 50km bike ride I was prepared to be flexible. My ride wound out fairly far, but then the last 15km were close to home-ish, so that I could bail if I needed to, when I needed to. This differs a great deal from what I’d usually do, which is ride away from home until I’m halfway, then ride back so that the only way to get back to the house is to do the full distance. I didn’t want to play too much with forcing myself to do anything right now, and good job because at the 44km mark got a nice clear message from my body that it was absolutely finished with bike riding, and I quit. This was a very unStephanie thing to do, but if there’s going to be any hope that I ride the Rally then setting myself back isn’t going to help. I rode the 44km and then I came home and knit, and rested and ordered dinner in.

That’s pretty much what I did for the next day, and the day after. It was scorchingly hot and I told myself that resting a few days was smart. That’s what I said Friday too. (I hope you see a theme developing.) I walked with Elliot to camp, I walked him back. I did some squats and lunges and other things I hate that should help me get some of the strength back that I had before this, and then I wound some yarn because I didn’t see how that couldn’t be helpful.

I should be working on this sweater, I love it and I really want it done, but predictably I’m struggling with the long tea-time of the soul that is the plain grey of the body after the excitement of the yoke. I’ve coped so far by not taking anything else with me when I go places, but I am feeling waves of discontent that are getting harder and harder to ignore.

The first idea I had was that I should use the leftovers from the yoke of this sweater to start a tiny one for Abigail, but I realized that in a day or two then I would have two plain sweater bodies to knit, and I must be maturing because I actually realized before I cast it on that I would be compounding rather than resolving a problem. (I know. I can’t believe me either.)

Then I thought about maybe making a pair of socks, because I have this skein of Barstow that Jill Draper sent to the retreat as an appetizer, and I am all about this yarn. Barstow is 100% Dorset, and I’m thinking about making a fabulous pair of socks, because I’m pretty excited about a non-superwash sock yarn. Dorset is a down breed – so it has a fibre that’s pretty fine, but also tightly and irregularly crimped. Each individual little hair goes back and forth in a wave and spirals at the same time, and that makes it very, very hard to felt – right off the sheep.

I got the Barstow out, I wound it, and I looked at patterns for an hour, and then I went to get a set of sock needles, and I reached up to the little ceramic pot on my shelf I keep them in (so they are handy for emergencies) and none were there. Now, this doesn’t mean that I am out of sock needles. It just means that I am out of sock needles in my office. There are still the living room sock needles and the stash room sock needles and the bedroom sock needles, as well as the ones I keep in my notions kit for when I am not home – but if I reach for some sock needles in the office and they’re not there, that does mean that I must have rather a lot of socks on the go. I put down the Barstow, slowed my roll and took a quick stroll through the WIP department where I found, well… let’s not discuss the number but simply note that I have absolutely no business starting another pair of socks until I finish a pair. Or seven.

I had a proper pout then, the sort that a knitter can really pull off when startitis is denied, and then I realized that today is Sunday, and tomorrow is Monday, and I’m doing a knit-a-long that starts Monday. Knitters from the last retreat are all knitting the Vibes tee- so I’m going to knit my swatch for that, and tomorrow I’ll get to start something new even though I clearly do not deserve it, which is pretty much my favourite way to get things.

Also tomorrow morning, I’m getting back on my bike and giving it another go. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll make it farther than I did last week, but don’t worry, I promise to be a total quitter if I need to be.