'D' is for Disorder: April 2014

Please know that I am in no way trying to make light of global warming. I take it very seriously and try, in my own small ways at home, to do what I can. I also don't want to make light of the possible, wait - PROBABLE threat of zombies.

Lately I've been quietly and also quite loudly making plans for how I will survive the fall of human civilization. Obviously the cause of this fall (whether by global warming, zombie attack, nuclear winter, or basic human ass-holeness) will impact on the path I will have to take for survival. Nuclear winter is a toughie and particularly unpleasant to think about, so I'm leaving it out.

The first step in devising my plan was to figure out the best place to be. Not PEI. If global warming is the cause of the collapse then I can expect my home province to be underwater. We are a sea level place, so a couple of feet of rising water levels would make us goners. Also, should zombies arrive on the scene, it would be incredibly hard to get out of here (being on an island and all). I figure the best place to go would be somewhere like BC where you can be well above sea level and still be temperate enough to grow food. It will be quite a hike from here though and there would of course be the risk of being taken by zombies or cannibals on the way. Should we not be able to get to the west coast and all avenues of escape from PEI are closed, my plan is to pack up Jeff and the cats and make our way to my parents' house - Not to stay though. They live in a nice suburban neighbourhood, which is possibly the worst place to be when society collapses. None of the yuppies will know what to do, and I'm worried that their helplessness would sink us. So we would collect my parents and a couple of hunting rifles, and Buddy of course, and head to Jeff's folks' place. In the case of rising sea levels this would not be a good plan seeing as they're not far from the beach, but they're surrounded by woods with very few neighbours, and that feels beneficial. Should the societal collapse be due simply to economic issues, this is by far the best place to be. We could then set up our commune :) All knitters would be welcome, of course, being the useful people that we are. We can also welcome anyone with medical expertise, food growing or hunting experience. The plan will be much the same in the BC mountains, although we would need to have more rifles there for bear protection (like most Islanders, I have a crippling fear of bear attack).

I wish I had a better plan for zombies. My gut would tell me to sever ties with everyone I know and love, and go hide in a cave until the zombies are gone. I would have my woollen wear to keep me warm, and I could eat local vegetation and trap small game for a time, but winters are harsh in these parts and I don't yet have a good winter survival plan. I know from reading World War Z that I would want to head north - way north, but I'm just not sure yet how to get by once there. Obviously if a community forms we could lean on each other's skills (again - all knitters welcome) and this would solve my problem of trying to survive solo in an eastern Canadian winter. Also, it would be nice to not have to forfeit human relationships. I would miss Jeff an awful lot in that cave.

That's about as far as I've gotten with my plan so far, but I'm hoping that by the time I need it, the details will be a bit more solid. All input and suggestions are appreciated.

Weeks in Review

I've spent most of my time complaining for the last few weeks. Every flake of snow that fell caused a small part of me to die. I'm convinced now that I've been suffering from seasonal affective disorder, but now that spring is threatening to kill the winter blues, there's not much I have to do about it. I'll make plans to get one of those special lights for next fall though.

Buddy the dog is back home with my parents now that they're home from their vacation. I miss him, but fortunately he left quite a lot of his fur behind to remind me of his visit :)

I've been reunited with my sewing machine, which is unexpectedly wonderful. It all started when I took some baby sleepers home from work to put button holes in. As an aside, for those companies that make baby clothes, when making preemie-sizes sleepers, it's best to make them with snaps instead of a zipper. Babies in the 2 to 4 pound range are often, if not usually, on cardiorespiratory monitors and it's best to have snapped outfits so you can feed the wires out between the snaps. If the outfit is zippered, then the wires come out at the neck and this seems uncomfortable, if not dangerous. Anyway, I thought I would try sewing some button holes in the crotch of these sleepers to feed the cords through. So far, so good! I then decided to take one of my free Craftsy classes that's been sitting in my queue and I've been making drawstring bags like nobody's business! Today I'm going to tackle fixing Jeff's favourite but holey shorts. If successful, I'll have a very happy boyfriend :)

Since the whether was kind of getting me down, I decided to start my seeds indoors and I'm having some mixed results with that. I've lost some seedlings to damping off and there were two separate cat attacks that resulted in the complete destruction of my sugar snap peas and my beets. The seeds have been replanted and are now locked in my yarn room. No Cats Allowed.

No studying.

FOs

I've been multicrafting over the past few weeks, so I don't have a whole bunch of knitting FOs, but I do have several completed projects. I finished my Continental Breakfast Socks, which I knit entirely in the continental style, which makes me feel very fancy. I've got to say - the process really grew on me. I was fumbly to begin with, but you can get into quite a groove if you're knitting stockinet the in the round. I do find that my gauge is much tighter in continental, so I'll have to take that into account if I do another project in that style. It's probably not a great idea to switch midway through a project, at least in my case, as I'm sure it would be obvious. The one big downside to continental is purling. I don't care for the contortionism this requires and it definitely slows me down. Of course the solution to this in the future could be to knit continental, but purl English (like for the heel flap, ribbing would be terribly slow this way).

I crocheted a little lamb hat for my friend's new baby boy, which was a lot of fun. The website that the designer uses to sell the pattern was a bit too over-my-head (I couldn't figure out how to pay for the pattern), so I ended up using the photo of the hat to make it up as I went. Seeing as I'm a fairly beginner crocheter, this resulted in many rip-backs, but eventually I got a product I was happy with. I also got a chance to showcase some of my handspun on his little ears, and I made matching booties out of the same handspun. It was a quick project and lots of fun, so I hope it will be well received.

I finished my pink handspun last week as well, and it turned out ok, but it's got a lot of variations between skeins. A couple of them are worsted or aran weight, a couple seem more DK, and some of them are a lot more pink than the others. I'm playing with the idea of overdying them to a more fuchsia or plum, but I have a bunch of friends and acquaintances expecting babies in the next few months, and I'm tempted to wait and see what they have. For all it's faults, this yarn is a perfect baby pink and might make a great matinee jacket/bootie combo for some special and wool-loving family.

Last but not least are the bags! I realize that they're quite simple and the Craftsy instructor pointed out that her young children can make a pretty good job of them, but I'm still really proud! I've made several of them in various sizes now, and one is a gift for my lovely knitting bestie :)

Works in Progress

The only thing on my needles right now is my mum's sweater and I'm slowly making progress with it. I think I've mentioned before that it's not my favourite yarn or colourway, but my mom seems really excited about it and that kind of makes me excited about it too. I'm almost to the hip cuff, which is a really long cuff of 1x1 ribbing, which will be a bit tedious, but I'm looking forward to getting to the sleeves. So that's a bit of incentive. Plus my mom will just be tickled that I knit her a sweater :)

I would like to cast on a pair of sport weight socks for Jeff, but I think I'm going to wait a bit longer and get some more of my mom's sweater done while I still have the mojo for it.

Show and Tell

My first bag! I used the pattern from Craftsy's Bag Making Basics class, which I believe was a free class.

The hat and booties that I made for my friend's new baby.
Notice the adorable blue handspun that I dyed with Kool Aid.

The snowstorm that we had a couple of weeks ago was a biggie.
This is what I came home to after my 24 hour shift at work -
Jeff shoveling me a path to the house and Buddy rolling around in the snow :)