Downy Woodpecker and Friends

To help our woodland friends celebrate the New Year, we filled the peanut feeder for the first time this winter on New Year's Day. We keep mixed seed and thistle (niger seed) feeders filled all year round but the peanuts only come out when the bears are well ensconced in their hibernation dens. It only took an hour or so for the chickadees to discover the peanuts. The downy woodpeckers arrived the following day and yesterday, for the first time this winter, a nuthatch was dining. Word will spread quickly now.

Thrift

Since wool = warmth, color, and texture, I find it difficult to throw away even the smallest bits leftover from knitting projects.

Scarf Pattern: K1P1 ribbing in two row stripes, slipping the first and last stitch on every second row. One of the two colors in a section was always carried into the next section.
Yarn: Leftover bits of Cascade 220 Wool
Needles: 4.5 mm Harmony wood circular

Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
- Robert Frost
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

French Christmas

Since today is the day the French branch of the family is celebrating Christmas this year, we decided to leave one gift box unopened until this morning and we would feel we were catching some of the spirit of their holiday. The weather here is cooperating in making it seem like Christmas all over again. This photo was taken around 8 a.m. this morning and there is another 25 cm. of snow in the forecast for today.

The gift box was from Ronce les Bains and filled with memories of a great visit there a few summers ago. Sophie and Jean Paul are so thoughtful.


There are shells from Spanish Point to add to our glass jar. This is just a sampling of them. Sophie and Jean Paul live across from the sea in an area famous for its oyster beds. We had walked to Spanish Point several times. It is a great area for morning treks along miles of sandy shoreline. We met only the occasional walker in the early morning and could watch the oyster fisherman in the distance manoeuvring their boats in to long lines of oyster racks.



When we were there, I discovered a small shop on one of the main streets just up from the sea with a wonderful collection of buttons - something I don't see anymore in stores in this area. Here, there are only the same nondescript buttons on cards that are sent out to chain stores all across the country. This is the second time now that Sophie has sent buttons from France and, as usual, they are exquisite little things with a pearlescent finsh. They will go in a glass button jar on a hallway table until I knit just the right little sweater for them.


And if that was not enough, there is Charente-Maritime tote bag that we can take on Saturday mornings to our own Farmers Market, a tin of buttery French biscuits, and a lovely apron for making biscuits in our own Canadian kitchen.

I Predict That 2010

Will be a good year.
Some of us will travel. Some of us, with happiness, will nest. Some of us will do both.
The worldwide economy will make modest gains.
We will not die from swine flu.
There will be trials and tribulations but we will survive.
We will hurt one another without intent, talk at cross purposes, and things will be lost in translation.
We will have rare moments of sheer bliss.
There will be weather events. And dogs and cats. Though not necessarily the same ones.
There will be two little girls in a family where most of us are still head over heels in love and in awe of the first one.
We will welcome either new friends or friends of friends.
We will all be a little bit older and and a little bit wiser by next New Year's Eve.
Happy New Year to all.

New Year's Treat

Ta Da! as Lucy Darling would say. My first pair of stranded mittens successfully completed. It's all in the way you hold your mouth. I am motivated now to knit a different pattern for every day of the week that I go power walking.


Today was a day of New Year's treats.
A trip to the mailbox was rewarded with Charlene Schurch's Mostly Mittens: Ethnic Knitting Designs from Russia. I had pre-ordered it eons ago from Amazon and was not expecting its release until later in January. I've had an older edition home from the library and it is great to now have it on my own bookshelf.

This afternoon, we loaded Lucy 1.0 in the car and headed to the Tangled Skeins in Dartmouth. It is a lovely yarn store. I wanted to get a couple more colors of Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport so I could cast on another pair of mittens. When I got there, the owner told me that their annual sale was ending at early closing time today - 3 p.m. Twenty minutes, she pointed out, remained on the clock!! The entire inventory of the store was discounted by 40%! Well! I was in knitter's heaven. I have never been in a yarn store where the entire stock was discounted by such a large amount. Being fit and spry and used to moving quickly, I lost no time in the business of gathering yarn. I took an armful of yarn to the counter with visions of Russian, Shetland, and Seluvotter mittens and gloves dancing in my head. The cash register total seemed like a song. There are balls of black, teal green, marine blue, white, heather brown, pale gold, brilliant gold, vivid orange, and brick red. Oh, the possible combinations and permutations are endless.

Holiday Knitting

I am reluctant to do much in the way of holiday knitting. It is tricky to not only get the size right for someone else but it can be difficult to predict what will really appeal to another person.


I couldn't resist knitting a scarf for Sophie though. The French wear scarves with such style. The pattern is very simple but the yarn is luxurious - a blend of merino wool, alpaca, and silk. We found it one day on a day trip to Gaspereau Valley Fibers - a small sheep farm with a wood-heated, toasty, spacious barn/shop. They sell a wide array of lovely yarns from all over but this particular one was spun at the farm and using it was like knitting with butter. I made it as long as Sophie is tall so she can loop it around her neck when visiting Lille, where winters can somehow seem damper and colder than Nova Scotia!


Three pair of Merion mittens all went to folks in Lunenburg County and a fourth grey pair (not pictured) was sent to France.