Skip to main content

Happy Thanksgiving America

There will be a photo of the Wall Flower in a moment.  I don't want to oversell it, the progress is moving, but slowly.  For now I want to pause and create a list of my top 20 things I'm thankful for:

  1. A great partner - Paul tolerates all my idiosyncrasies and obsessions and loves me anyway.
  2. Great kids - all four of them.  Life gave me two sons and they gave me two wonderful daughters.
  3. My parents - at my ripe old age to have both parents still living in my home of original, what a gift.
  4. My siblings - both brothers with whom I have solid relationships even though as adults we've always lived apart. 
  5. My friends - some I've known for more than 45 years, across Canada and the U.S.
  6. Having an opportunity to go to college - and a good one for my undergrad degree, the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
  7. Growing up on a farm - it grounded me, taught me some hard realities about life and death and gave me an appreciation for a good work ethic.
  8. My cat - Mike has been a good pet for nearly 14 years.  He's a great buddy to have around when Paul is out or at home.
  9. Being in good health - despite my best attempts to avoid taking care of myself.
  10. Having fulfilling work - not everyone is so lucky to have both a good job and a satisfying one at that.
  11. Living in many places -  has given me perspectives about how to do life in ways different from my upbringing.
  12. Living on a mountain - the view from my family room is breath-taking.
  13. Happy memories - the advantage of a good long life.  The good improves memories and the long helps to reinforce the good and allows more forgetting of the not so good.
  14. The sound of rain on the roof - it is so relaxing and I get the opportunity to hear it often.
  15. A good local yarn shop (LYS) - a place to get help with knitting questions and where to meet up with friends.
  16. Rainbows - we get our fair share of them right over the inlet and each time I smile.  
  17. Challenges in my life - they've made me stronger, wiser and more resilient.
  18. GPS navigation systems - I'd be lost without mine, literally.
  19. Rainy days - they offer great opportunities to knit and I certainly live in a place where I get many.
  20. Libraries - free access to any type of book, including knitting books, all available to meet my heart desires for creating.
Enjoy your turkey, mash potatoes and pumpkin pie my U.S. friends and family; and as you do I'll celebrate these 20 and so many more that make me a very lucky and thankful person. 

And here's as promised the photo of the Wall Flower so far.

Wall Flower duplicate stitches continue
I'll also be thankful when this project is complete.

Comments

  1. Anonymous18 December 2012 at 20:48

    Great list!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JFlag19 December 2012 at 08:36

    Thank you Anonymous. This list reflects some of my most favorite things.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ode to the Cat

It has been six months since Mike, the cat's, passing.  I think of him every day and miss him especially when Paul is away.  Mike was a being in the house with me and we were close.  Grieving his death has been muddled with my Dad's passing and sometimes I feel guilty about that happening.  As time passes the ache becomes less hurtful for both and I am starting to get mostly good memories in its place. Recently I helped celebrate Pablo Neruda's birthday with Jami, my poet and overall very creative friend.  Guests were asked to select one poem written by Neruda to read to the small group who gathered for the celebration.  I picked this one: Ode To The Cat -- Pablo Neruda There was something wrong with the animals: their tails were too long, and they had unfortunate heads. Then they started coming together, little by little fitting together to make a landscape, developing birthmarks, grace, flight. But the cat, only the cat turned out finished, and
1 comment
Read more

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms.  (BTW
1 comment
Read more

Yarn Barf

It's back to quirkiness and time to step away again from the cuteness for a while.  But as you see I'm someone who slips from one to the other without much effort so anticipate this back and forth to be my new normal. A dramatization of me in the midst of my startitist frenzy Yarn barf .  I'm willing to bet you hadn't thought of putting those two words together, had you?  It just so happens yarn barf can be a reoccurring pain for those of us who use yarns that come in a skein instead of a hank.  (No pun intended regarding the current Noro virus, well maybe a little pun.) Skeins of yarn wound by the manufacturer These are hanks which need to be wound into balls  If you look closely at the picture on the right you'll see the start on the millet yellow skein at the centre right of the photo.  Its start can easily be seen coming from the centre of the skein onto the violet skein to the left.  Easy to find, right!  Sure but what about the remaining 4
5 comments
Read more