Life's a Stitch

What's in a name?

Research demonstrates that given names can cause lifelong personal issues. Some kids get by with easy names and others, such as myself, have spent our entire lives spelling our names. I grew up with the name Lilice (sounds like Denise) Lesinski (doesn't rhyme with anything, but my dad with his Polish sense of humour, in trying to explain the spelling, used to say "think of sin, think of me").

But what about the nicknames we acquired on the playground or those that stuck with us when an older sibling couldn't pronounce our given moniker? Jayne, another Vancouver blogger recently posted about her playground nickname, Fishy Wishy in a Dishy, a second generation nickname derived from her family members dubbing her "Minnow." My cousin Elena grew up as Nana and my daughter, Elina, is Nonnie. For me it happened in eighth grade, Revlon came out with a lipstick called LeLips. It didn't take long for the boys, conscious of my chatty ways, to change Lilice to LeLips. Anybody want to top that?

Signs that spring may turn into summer:

Seven or eight things...

Sometimes a meme is just what you need for an easy post. Did I say easy? When Blogland was busy with 100 Things a About Me lists, I could only manage 59. Now I need to come up with 7 or 8 things, depending on where the tag originated, that aren't on that list? OK, I'll give it a shot. Thanks to Liberty, Suzanne, Sonya and "Criquette". Anyone else who wants to give it a go - consider yourself tagged.

1. At work I'd rather write in pencil than ink.

2. In high school and college I took Latin, French, Spanish and German. Can't speak any one well enough and get Spanish and French hopelessly mixed up.

3. I live in a big ugly white dog of a house, but it's interesting on the inside.

4. I appear to have figured out the cause of the 22 headaches/migraines I've had in six weeks. I've had migraines for over 15 years, but I was starting to consider them life ruining. More on the drugless cure later, but it's not without side effects.

5. I have recently developed a positive relationship with a treadmill and I'm hoping it's for keeps.

6. My nails are manicure resistant. Paying for one is a waste of money for me as they chip within 24 hours.

7. We are trying to live with one car and are finding it very difficult.

8. My latest knitting project combines a Barbara Walker book and some more of that beautifully coloured, but easily wrinkling cotton:

They Lie

We've all survived, hopefully all a little wiser. Three things I've learned this week:

1. You can't beat the support you get in blogland. Thank you to all for your reassurance and good advice. My favourite explanation for teen boys' behaviour is that testosterone is a neurotoxin and that their brains are swimming in it.

2. I use extreme stress as an opportunity to eat things that normally never pass my lips - popcorn, chocolate, tuxedo cake, and the best? Cobbs lemon tarts. You Aussies and Vancouverites know what I'm talking about.

3. You know what they say about having a child later in life will keep you young? They lie.

I'm looking forward to a promising Saturday with Blogless Marsha in Edgemont Village. What's on the agenda? A half spa day and visits to Urban Yarns and Cobbs. I'm not done with those lemon tarts.

Here's the FO photo I didn't get to post, the narrow version of Midwest Moonlight. I need advice - how do you get cotton to stay flat post bocking? I've even ironed it. Starch, maybe? I'm wondering if it's because I tried to block it with straight edges when it's supposed to have points along the way.

Recipe for a Mother's Day Disaster

My Mother's Day started at 1:30 a.m. Take two boys, ages 16 and 17, uncharacteristically exceeding their curfew; add a twelve pack of beer. While you're at it throw in some poor judgment, a little mischief, and a romp through the woods in rugged terrain after dark, and what do you get? An ambulance ride and 30 plus internal and external leg stitches. Yes I'm talking about the same cowardly lion from a couple of posts back. His smile is not quite so big.

When you get a call like that in the middle of the night, the last thing you think about taking along is your knitting. We are thankful parents, it could have been way worse.

It hurts so good

Just like a deep tissue massage, sometimes frogging just hurts so good. It seems I'm not alone. Donna has some lovely yarn that is destined to stay a center pull skein, Beth is turning pools of colours into a frog pond, and Blogless Marsha pulled out her hair swing sweater because some unreliable nasty knitter I dissuaded her from swatching. Meet my Sirdar Denim Ultra cardigan. Notice that all but one skein are re-wound:

At least my Midwest Moonlight scarf made it through unscathed and is happily blocking on an old Barney towel. Wet cotton does nothing for its beautiful colours.

Tunisian Crochet

While at the Seattle Knitting Expo Blogless Marsha and I took a class on Tunisian Crochet. It's done on what looks like a crochet hook on steroids - the length of a long knitting needle and the thickness of a size 10 needle (6mm) for sport weight yarn. For worsted weight, the hook must be much thicker unless you want to produce a board. You never turn your work and there are three basic stitches - the simple stitch, the knit stitch, which looks like stockinette, and the purl. It's supposedly faster and adaptable to most knitting patterns. I'm still pretty slow, but will give it an honest go.

Here is a simple stitch scarf in progress, done in a Fleece Artist smooth mohair, in the Wild Flowers colourway.

A sample with the same needle in Lorna's Laces Lion and Lamb, in the Vera colourway, front and back:

One more, in a Fleece Artist fine loopy mohair in the Pinata colourway:

We're off to see the wizard

Here's our lion!

This is the boy, who at age six, accompanied us to our high school's production of Oliver. That night he confidently told us that he was going to be on that stage someday, and here he is. I am so thankful for this school-related positive experience for him, as academics haven't been his strong suit recently.

There is nothing like a high school musical with an audience as vocal as fans at a basketball game. Can you pack any more smiles into one room? Knitting is going to have to wait, I can only handle so much excitement. So if you're looking for me this weekend, I'll be at the Capilano College theatre, every performance except for one.

The countdown

Not really. We're eight years from retirement, one of us pensionless, the other with a teensy-weensy one due to the recent sale of the company for which he works. We moved to Canada 24 years ago, young and oblivious to important life implications, simply because it was pretty. It's been a good life, but we gave up a lot, the worst being proximity to family. It's hard to raise kids without grandparents, cousins, and aunties.

What we didn't count on giving up was Social Security. I had heard of other ex-pat's discovering that they left the US without enough credits to collect SS, and not enough work experience in Canada to collect the full amount of Social Insurance. Being the type that wants to know what I'm in for, I insisted Chuck and I make trek to our "local" SS office, 80 miles away. He could not understand why I wanted to know so far in advance, but I bet you can. Give up? Because I want to know how much yarn I need to buy.

So, the good news is that we both have enough credits to qualify for a partial benefit. The bad news - it won't start until age 66, well past our planned date. And the US will reduce the amount because we'll be eligible for a partial Canadian benefit, and neither side can tell us by how much. I'm just going to rely on that blind faith we had 24 years ago and assume that both together will equal a normal benefit. And I don't have to feel badly about not spending one penny at the two Washington yarn shops we visited that had 20% off everything.

Having camera difficulties, I reached back into my computer's brain and found this picture of Mari and Ms.Grace. Does this look like a girl who had difficulty with the concept of having an animal living in the house with us?