A Grim Reminder

It is bucketing down rain outside and I was grumbling to myself about having to don waterproof gear to go out this morning.  Then I thought to myself - I have a warm house, my family is healthy and safe, our roads are driveable, buildings intact.  Meanwhile, Haiti is devastated.  In a twist of fate it could have been us.  So I told myself to shut up and be grateful.  And I donated to Doctors Without Borders.  If you click the button Knitters Without Borders it will take you to the Yarn Harlot's blog.  Let her know how much you have donated and she'll enter it into the Knitters' tally.  As she says, "if you can afford to knit, you can afford to donate".

Laugh and the World Laughs With You. Cry and Gramma Turns off the Camera

OK, Back to Knitting

Oh, yes there has been quite a lot of knitting going on....

Some socks: (In Season & Fraggle Squiggle)

Some kid knits: (Ryleigh's Summer Garden tee, Johnny's Sundog, Ryleigh's Watermelon cardie)

Some hats: (Ryleigh's sun hat, Lapita hats for the boys)

And last, but not least, a cardie for me (Something Red for Jules), finished off with a vintage button from Vintage Necessities:

 

***Check out my ravelry project page for more info on these patterns. I be sewknitful over there too.***

The Day of the Triffids

This strange creature emerged from behind the day lilies in my front garden. It is about eight feet tall and has a very thick stem that looks like a bunch of stems fused together in a rectangle shape. We have had to stake it up as it was becoming top-heavy.










Here is a photo taken about a month ago showing the stem.





















The flowers are just beginning to come out and it looks more like the star-gazer lilies from another part of the garden than the day lilies.








More prettiness --

Future Knitters Club founder

I keep a little basket of yarn ends for Ryleigh to play with. Today she really got into it.




















She was draping bits around her neck, concentrating very hard.























Sometimes you just have to use your teeth!

Old Macdonald....

I picked up this Italian linen blend fabric at the sewing show in Victoria this spring. It was a remnant on Gala's 2 for 1 rack. The pattern is Butterick 4989. I was looking for a nice pin to finish it off when I remembered a silver kilt pin I had in my curio cabinet. It belonged to my mum (given to her by my dad) and was missing it's pinstem, as well as being quite tarnished. I sent it down to my brother, the jeweler, and he put on a new pinstem and polished it up for me. I asked my dad what the pin represented. It is the Macdonald crest (my paternal grandmother's clan), dating back to around 1850. Just the right finishing touch, I thought.

Living on the Edge

See that? On the edge of the middle bar? A bird's nest on the IKEA sign in Coquitlam, BC. If you look really closely you'll see tiny Swedish furniture inside the nest.








Here is another nest of baby robins which is in the crook of a drainpipe right beside our front door. Mama gets really upset whenever we use the front entry. She flies off into a nearby bush and shrieks at us until we go away. Who pays the bills here anyway????