Separation

For this or any other dog

I believe in heaven, yes, I believe in heaven

Which I shall not enter, but where he will be waiting for me

Wagging his tail like a fan

To greet me with affection when I come.

Pablo Neruda, "The Separate Rose"

Good dog Daisy

First of all, fair warning...this post is about the last hours of my beloved dog Daisy.  If that kind of subject matter upsets you, stop reading now.  

The events that initially inspired starting this blog last August(Daisy's first trip to the pet hospital) resolved last evening when Daisy's life came to an end.  Little Daisy, velvet of ear, fleet of foot, scourge of squirrels, bouncy and bright and sweet-natured is gone into whatever it is that awaits us all.  She spent the intervening five months since her first big health challenge in relatively good shape, running after the ball, chasing squirrels, greeting her many admirers passing by the front gate.  She had occasional tummy issues  kept under control by strict enforcement of the "no treats, no people food" policy and careful watching of her diet. She ate better than we did with only the tastiest low fat concoctions to tempt her fragile appetite and home-prepared dried chicken breast for treats.

Then a little over a week ago, she started to go seriously downhill, refusing to eat, vomiting, accidents on the carpet at night, getting thinner every day.  Two days ago she went for an overnight stay at Kindred Spirits, our local veterinarians, to have intravenous fluids administered for dehydration.  That seemed to turn her around very quickly, her appetite returning in spades and her mood back to normal. But the real problem, it seems, was her lungs. During the second night she developed a pneumothorax which collapsed one of her lungs.  The vets were able to reduce it yesterday morning but by late afternoon when I expected to be picking her up and taking her home, it had re-formed.  It was decision time...the thing I had been dreading for months.  I was put into a room with Daisy and I held her on my lap while I waited for Harry to arrive from work.  Her breathing was very rough and she held her nose up high trying for a better position to draw in more air.  Her body felt odd, sort of loose, like a bag of bones. If you don't know the fox terrier breed, "loose" is the antithesis of the "solid and muscular" norm. For me, that was the telling moment - she wasn't going to come out of it this time.  

Once Harry arrived, we agreed that it was time to make the decision to have her put down.  I struggled with this as my perfect scenario would have had her dying quietly, lying on the lawn in the sun or failing that, in her own bed at home, not in this cold tiled impersonal room.  When I suggested taking her home to die naturally, the vet told me kindly that it would be horrible for Daisy and horrible for us, given her respiratory distress and the anxiety that goes with it. That scotched any romantic notions I had about the perfect death.  Once we decided on euthanasia, we sat cuddling and stroking her and talking about all the funny things she had done during her life: the time when she was small when she walked right through the bars on the deck railing, fell into a bush, slid to the ground, got up and trotted away unfazed, or the way she cocked her head to one side when someone said the magic words "squirrel" or "treat" or "whacka whacka" (our term for a nightly ball chasing session using a racket and tennis ball), the daily ritual of biting the mail as it came through the mail slot, her ecstatic greetings at the door after our briefest absences, her enthusiasm for life, and her courage and buoyancy in trying or painful circumstances.  Many are the lessons in right living that we have learned from our intrepid little dog. 

Eventually, the vet came in to check if we were ready, went away and returned with a full syringe. She told us what exactly to expect and as the drugs went in, Daisy seemed to know somehow. She turned her head toward each of us to look deep into our eyes as we stroked her and said "Good dog, good dog".  Finally, her head drooped then went down and it was as if she went to sleep - no more laboured breathing and moments later the vet confirmed that her heart had stopped.  It was very quick, very peaceful and somehow right.

The wonderful staff at Kindred Spirits wrapped her body up in a blanket and carefully placed it in a box for us to take home.  I can't say enough good things about the docs and staff at Kindred Spirits.  Not only competent but respectful, empathetic, understanding and diplomatic...they couldn't have been better.  I'm sure they've done this hundreds of times before but you'd never know it from their concern and sensitivity.

It was dark by the time we got home so we rewrapped Daisy in her own blanket and this morning we buried her without ceremony in the garden in her favourite sunny spot, taking turns to cover her over.  Nothing left now but to grieve and remember all the good things about her.  I like to picture her greeting our old cat Aphra in some kind of afterlife, the two of them restored to youth and grace and ambushing each other from behind the Elysian shrubbery as they used to do in our back garden.  It doesn't seem to matter a bit that I don't really believe in an afterlife - it still comforts me. 

Lost in the (Oak) Woods

And here it is, the green monster aka  Cobblestone Pullover completed just after my last post. It required very little finishing...just a few ends to darn in and the underarm stitches to graft. And seemingly, I'm not destined for the dreaded "boyfriend sweater" experience - he's worn it nearly every evening since it was finished and says he loves it.  It fits beautifully and the fabric is supple, drapes nicely and I hear it is comfortable to wear.  Yay!

Yep, once again, it's been awhile since posting.  No excuse really although I had a week long trip to the Okanagan visiting family and since returning, I continue to pursue my New Year's resolution of cleaning and sorting one drawer/cupboard/trunk/bin/shelf  a week all year. Can't recall if I mentioned this in my last post but because I felt so defeated and overwhelmed by the nasty build-up(s) that lurk behind closed doors and the lack of space to stash new acquisitions, I decided to try doing it in teeny chunks.  I made up an Excel spreadsheet and it appears that based on somewhat reasonable/realistic divisions, I'll still be doing this well into 2010.  The bonuses are already apparent six weeks in...forgotten and misplaced treasures have emerged from the nether regions of every cupboard so far and I'm not even out of the kitchen yet. Imagine the gems that await in my full-to-the-rafters workroom, not to mention  the joy of having access to the surface of my work table once again.

Spring appears to be on its way out here on the Pacific coast.  The snowdrops have been in bloom for a couple of weeks, the rhodos are showing some pink and the robins have arrived in force. Yesterday I gardened (second session of the year) and hung the clothes out on the line where they actually got dry...okay, almost dry. Sadly, today is windy and cold and I'm happy to stay in and work on my alpaca lace shawl and pity my fellow North Americans to the east who are still blanketed in snow.  I'm using the laceweight two-ply spun from the dark brown alpaca fibre I acquired from Blue Stone Alpacas on my fibre safari last fall.  It took forever to spin and I had to pay a lot of attention to consistency but it seems to be paying off. The deep brown suggested a leafy/woodsy motif so I chose the Gnarled Oakwoods wrap by Anne Hanson from the last Twist Collective newsletter.  It's really lovely although now that I'm into the third iteration of the 40-row repeat, I wish I had added one more section across (the pattern calls for three) to get more width.  No, I'm not about to tear out 90 plus rows of lace and start again. My hope is that it will magically expand with blocking but I suspect it may not end up wide enough for my liking.  I had envisioned this as a lightweight travel piece that would cover me from neck to ankles and just the width of my body - I'm a smallish person - on long plane and train journeys. I hate those icky blankets the airlines provide (do you really believe they wash them between usings?...not likely!)  The shawl (scarf?) is knitting up so light and airy that an extra panel would not have added much bulk.  Too late now...the thought of doing a second one is too overwhelming to consider just now. 

This is my first major commitment to lace and I'm finding it quite a challenge.  I keep forgetting to do the yarnovers at the end of the repeats and since the wrong side is a purl row, by the time I notice, I have to tink back two whole rows and part of another.  Also, I think perhaps the yarn is a bit underplied in some parts as it separates easily and I end up with surprise extras.  

Part of my Okanagan visit involved a couple of days with my latter-day hippie daughter and her partner in beautiful wintry Cherryville.  They are avid chain maille makers and they have taken to incorporating coloured rubber rings to add stretch and of course, colour to their work.  It seemed to me that these rings would make great stitch markers so I cadged a dozen each in white and yellow.  They work brilliantly for the lace as the colour shows up well against the dark brown yarn and they are flexible and soft and a little clingy so they don't slip too easily through the stitches.  I know these can be ordered in the bazillions online but I'm not sure what I would do with all the extras.  Unfortunately, they only seem to come in black at the hardware store - fine for pale yarns but pretty much invisible otherwise.  If anyone out there knows of a source that supplies a range of sizes in a range of colours in stitch-marker quantities, please share.

Elephants and Phone Booths

Another "holiday season" behind us - sometimes it seems like the social (and every other) aspect of Christmas is like trying to stuff an elephant into a phone booth.  Eventually, something's got to give.  Thanks to the weather, we had a respite this year, many events being cancelled due to the slippery roads and unusual amounts of snow for our usually green-year-round city.  What I didn't miss due to weather, I missed due to a bout of the flu which is still in the denouement stage as I write.  There was a lot of knitting done over the past few days as I lay beached upon the living room couch, listening happily to the audio version of Connie Willis's unabridged novel, "To Say Nothing of The Dog"...20 plus hours of entertainment with an excellent narrator.  It's supposed to be science fiction but reads more like another of my favourites, Oscar Wilde, given that the time travellers spend most of their time at a country house in late Victorian England.  

The green monster (aka The Cobblestone Pullover from Interweave) is almost knitted and is looking very good.  I was lucky to have such a simple garter and stockinette stitch project on the go since my fever-addled brain could probably not have coped with anything more complicated. The many pairs of Felted Clogs were well received and I managed to knit myself a pair as well - there is a reason these are so popular despite being quite a pain to knit - they are sooo comfortable and they look wonderful once they are fulled.  What was a loose floppy thing becomes a thick firm fabric and the colour intensifies.

During the holidays, I knitted another pair of Sea Anemone Wristwarmers in yet another colourway of Noro Blossom and was very happy with the outcome.  Herewith, the pattern, as promised.

Sea Anemone Wristwarmers

Yarn:  Noro Blossom, 1 40 gram skein

Needles:  4.5 mm DPNs or one long circular for magic loop

Divide skein into two equal balls (by length) and loosely  cast on 28 stitches (I went up to a 5.5 mm circular for the cast on). Join and work in the round in 2 x 2 rib (2 knit, 2 purl) for 3.5 inches.  Work another inch to an inch and a half in stockinette (4.5 - 5 inches from the cast on). Work one increase round by knitting into the front and the back of each stitch. (56 stitches).   Knit one round even.  Work a second increase round by knitting into the front and the back of each stitch (112 stitches).  Knit another round even.  Cast off knitwise and sew in ends. If you want the cuffs longer, you will need another skein of yarn, knitting in rib for however many more inches you desire before changing to stockinette. 

As you can see from the photo, I made no attempt to match them, preferring to believe that the chaotic colour scheme is part of their charm.  Pretty much impossible to match them with just one skein anyhow.  I divided the skein by winding a centre pull ball, hand winding a ball with the yarn held double to find the middle, cutting the yarn then rewinding each strand by turns to make two separate balls...kinda painful.  If anyone knows a more elegant solution, by all means, let me know.

Below are a few photos from our guild Christmas party - so much fun and many thanks to the organizers for their hard work putting it together and to all the fine chefs for their contributions.  The adorable lamb cake that begins this post was one of the offerings.  

Lamb cake

Seasonal headgear

More seasonal headgear

Raven snags the lambikins in the gift exchange/showdown

Table of revelers with my prize-winning

 felted tea cosy in the foreground

A week later:

I'm no further along with the the green monster...I have yet to cast on.  I keep losing my pattern copy bought online from Interweave Knits (hope that's not a bad omen).  Fortunately I have it saved and can just reprint.  I've also been doing quite a bit of Christmas knitting - more of those Anemone Wristlets I invented and some felting.

On the felting front, there was a gathering at a lovely little sheep farm in East Sooke featuring Guljan and Janyl, two women from the village of Bokonbaevo in Kyrgistan, visiting Canada to talk about their felting techniques.  A group of west coasters facilitate the importation of their production and hold sales across the country to benefit the village which has fallen on very hard times indeed since the fall of the Soviet Union.  

The farmhouse - divine, isn't it?

Young Icelandic sheep

Show and tell:  east meets west

Some of the beautiful felted articles from Bokonbaevo

Several weeks later:

The green monster is coming along wonderfully, despite a long hiatus to knit four (count 'em, FOUR!) pairs of felted clogs for my walking buddies for Christmas.  Our Christmas luncheon is tomorrow and I plan to give them unfelted/unfulled so they can custom fit them and have the fun of seeing them transformed.  Getting back to the sweater, I'm very pleased with how it's going - I have reached the yoke on the body and have one sleeve knitted up to the yoke.  One more sleeve to go and then I can attach them and knit the garter stitch yoke.  I found several photos of the sweater on Jared Flood's blog that show different views of the sweater than on Interweave...even one of the sweater before it was blocked, spread out on the bed in his hotel room in Ireland.  The sweater is named after a pub where he hung out in Dublin.  This sweater is great mindless knitting - I knitted my way through the entire first season of Deadwood and plan the same for season two.  

  

About six months ago, I had the bright idea of spinning up enough yarn to make a sweater for my sweetie.  The knitting has finally begun after an epic process that began with that free fleece, vegetation included, that came my way earlier this year.  I spent many nights in front of the television or plugged in to my iPod teasing out the dirt and bits of straw in a large portion of the raw fleece, carded up several batts on a newly acquired drum carder and proceeded to spin it on my Ashford Traditional.  I used to have a drum carder many years ago but it was one of the casualties of a hippies-in-the-bush house fire.  The lanolin made for quite easy spinning - after all, I hadn't spun a thing since the 70's - and it was only after gumming up the wheel to the point where it would hardly draw in the yarn anymore that I switched to prewashing the raw fleece.  It turned out to be quite nice fibre - soft, good staple and not so filthy that it couldn't be rehabilitated - nice to know as I still have a ton of it!  I wanted a worsted weight two-ply and I was aiming for 32 ounces of finished fibre, just to be on the safe side.  Turns out, I'm pretty much on the money with the yarn weight.  

Then came Adventures in Dyeing.  Back in the day, I did a whole lot of natural dyeing but didn't have the heart to revisit it with this quantity of fibre.  British racing green was requested - it's that black-green of vintage British sports cars.  Maiwa Handprints in Vancouver were out of premixed green but I was assured that yellow and blue with a touch of magenta would give the desired shade.  You probably know where this is going.  I set up my little dyeing station under the carport with a hot plate and my venerable white enamel dyepot purchased in Chinatown in Vancouver in the late 60's.  Thereafter, over the course of a week I did battle with the dye pot and after four shots at it, I finally have a lovely heathery moss green, NOT British racing green. This was preceded by gold, followed by pale brown, then insipid green and finally something I can live with - the nice heathery moss green seen above.  

The hopeful recipient-to-be assures me he is quite happy with the colour - he probably knows that if he still wants that dark green, he'll be making a trip to the yarn store and dropping serious coin. That free fleece just doesn't seem to want to take the dye very easily despite repeated dunkings. I tested this hypothesis by dyeing some Cheviot roving in the same pot and coming out with great strong colours.  Not sure what kind of fleece would behave in such a belligerent fashion but it behooves one to value process over product - dyeing is not an exact science.   

This morning I made a centre-pull ball out of one skein and swatched for the Cobblestone Pullover from Interweave and scored a home run...got guage on the first try.  

Harvest Time

Today a good friend informed me that I hadn't posted since September and I could hardly believe it.  I was determined not to be that kind of a blogger when I started out.  In fact I put off blogging for a long time because I figured that if I wasn't going to keep it up, why bother?  So here I am again with lots of good intentions of doing better from now on. Thanks to Shirley for prodding me. 

Part of my preoccupation this fall has been keeping up with all the falling leaves before they get rained on and turn into immovable sludge.  Raking is great exercise and I like being outdoors when the weather is nice.  It has been a glorious autumn here on the Pacific coast and I hear the same thing from other parts of the globe...a long and beautiful fall season with spectacular colours.  Apparently it's something to do with the kind of weather we had in the summer and early fall that influenced the chemistry that makes for good colour.

The garden is pretty much put to bed for the winter, aside from a bit of clipping here and there. I like to leave the browning plants in place as long as possible for a bit of colour and structure. For the first time in quite awhile, I actually planted vegetables this year.  Usually the vegie garden is a jungle of volunteer leeks and parsley with the odd space hacked out for a bit of lettuce.  This year I mixed all the leftover lettuce seed from other years, added a bit of sand and succession planted 4 inch wide rows on the theory that at least some of the seed would still be viable.  It came up fairly thickly and I used scissors to clip off what I needed when the little leaves were about 4 inches high, leaving the roots in the ground to grow again.  I got about 3 cuttings from each row and didn't have to buy lettuce all summer long.  Of course the lousy summer (cold and rainy) was just perfect for lettuce.

Last spring, my friend Lesley suggested that planting a few potatoes might be a good idea and for added encouragement, she gave me her leftover Yukon Gold seed potatoes.  I bought some red seed potatoes called Caribe to add to the mix and also allowed some volunteers to grow from the fingerling potatoes of a couple of years ago.  And what a crop!...about a bushel of spuds from four little rows and the taste is a different category altogether from the store-bought kind. I'll definitely be doing that again. 

Not a lot of fibre news in this post but be assured, there has been a lot going on...another reason I'm so late with this post.  I finally caved and joined the Victoria Hand Weavers and Spinners Guild so the scope of my obsession now knows no bounds.  Fibre retreats, festivals, distaff days, spinning groups:  I just might be in trouble here.  

Felting and fulling has really hit the mainstream of late.  Last week Susan Forsythe was in town to give a workshop on constructing a vest from felted (accidently or otherwise) sweaters and that same week I saw Martha's latest publication with a big article on making all sorts of gift items from fulled sweaters...hot water bottle covers, oven mitts, pot holders, etc.  My vest was only about 25% finished by the end of a very intense day although I'm making good progress with the finishing since then.  I will have photos from the workshop and of the finished articles in a future post.  

My knitting has been going full tilt and I finished my cabled hoodie in time to wear it on our annual getaway to Tofino.  We go to Middle Beach Lodge every year in November and this year there was lots of time to knit in front of the big fireplace in the main lodge. I managed to finish two pairs of  wristlet/cuff thingies in Noro Blossom.  More about those along with photos and maybe even a pattern for you in future posts. For the first time, I was able to bring my spinning with me on holidays, thanks to my lovely new Louet Victoria folding spinning wheel and to my sweetie who bought it for me.  It travels very well as it is light, compact and tidy in its dedicated bag,  not to mention fun to spin with. It was the perfect activity while the rain poured down in buckets outside and the surf came booming in.  Luckily, after a spectacular storm on the first day, we had beautiful sunny weather and were able to do some nice long beach walks. Next year we're going with the extended family...daughter, son-in-law and the two grandchildren so knitting may not be an option.