Friday 6 October 2017

Giving Thanks.

Even as I knit lace, there are other things actively being knit.  Normally it is socks, but not so right now.

Right now, my on the road knitting is tea cozies just to use up the grey yarn, which really is great for cozies, but not so much for anything else.  It's just a little coarse.  I am on tea cozy number three from this bag of grey yarn. A couple things to know about this particular tea cozy.

I added 6 more stitches just like cozy number two.  It really is quite the right size. 

I already knit half this cozy once.  Unfortunately, I started it with needles that were 3 needle sizes smaller than the ones I used on the first tea cozies and it was a bugger to knit.  I just grabbed the wrong needles.  Because I only want to use 3 balls of yarn on each tea cozy, and because it looked like knitting it on too small needles would turn it into a 4 ball cozy,  I am working on tea cozy three, version 2.  

If redoing the entire thing wasn't enough,, I knit too many rows between cable rows, while playing with Carter and Isaac.  I knit one row too far before the cable switch.


I could have pulled back the errant round and redone it.  Many would have done that, but I just didn't want to.  Once the boys were settled in bed and all the reading was done, I started dropping the plain knit stitches to the row below to cable and then knit across the newly corrected stitches.  It wasn't hard, but it probably would have been quicker to pull the row back to redo.  Still, I like a challenge.



And here we are, all fixed.  

The other thing to note about this cozy is that I think I should have knit another round, maybe two,  before I did the first cable round.  It really won't make a difference to the coziness of it, but it will mean I have to knit a couple rows longer before I start decreases.  Note to self, don't just count cables.  Measure!

I have to go out to get a few groceries for our families traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  Historically, we are a farm family on both sides.  October is almost always harvest.  Nobody takes a day in good harvest weather to do a big sit down dinner with a bunch of people unless it is raining or you had a really early harvest.  For my children, Thanksgiving meant dad was hunting, because it is right in the high peak of hunting season.  It never made sense to do a big a big meal when you were going to spend half of Thansgiving day dressing game. Even the years where the hunting produced no results, there was always a pile of smelly laundry from a long weekend in the bush to do.  Yeah, big fancy dinner? Not so much.  Thanksgiving dinner at our house almost always meant hamburgers on the barbecue.  Some years were really lazy with your basic preformed puck burger.  

The last several years Brian did do turkey on the barbeque to give our daughter in law from Kiev another big traditional Canadian meal but this year, we are going to go with our family traditional.  We have all kind of missed it.  We are going to go with hamburgers, homemade of course, fresh baked buns,  apple salad and moms best broccoli salad, twice baked potatoes with cheese on top and pumpkin and lemon meringue pie.  Broccoli and grapes, some cream and some shortening for pie crust and that is it for groceries. Oh, and hamburger.   The rest of the whole works will be done from the pantry with what we have on hand.  

To me, that it is made from what we have on hand is a very important part of this Thanksgiving.  A chapter closed this year in an awful lot of ways but it feels right to mark, to celebrate and to embrace all that we do have.  We live pretty darn good lives.  We have all the basics and much, much more.  We have warm homes, and plenty to eat and decent clothes to wear.  Our kiddies go to school and are doing just fine.  We live in a nation that is stable and safe and that values our diversity and works to right wrongs from the past.  I have yarn to knit with and when that runs out, I can spin and make some more.  If that isn't enough, I can sew, weave, crochet or embroider to my hearts content.  We have so much more than we need.  We, none of us, are rich.  We are not even close to well to do, but we are good and that is plenty to be thankful for.  Being thankful for what we have, with what we have, is the whole point of the day.  

The only thing I will miss at all from a big turkey dinner is turnips.  They said turnips don't go with hamburgers. Oh well.   

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