It's Election Time

We hope you'll get out and vote on Monday. But if you aren't thrilled with your choices, maybe for the next election, we can put together our own party - The Knitting Party.

We'll teach everyone to knit, with no age, gender, race or religious discrimination ...because we are, of course, very liberal-minded.

Our choice of knitting patterns will be quite traditional. No knitted bikinis for us because we're just too conservative for that!

We'll promote the knitting of afghans as group projects so that we can work bloc by bloc.

Our stance on the environment will be green, of course: knit a sweater, hat and scarf and turn the heat down low!

We'll be big into charity knitting so that we can share with those less fortunate than ourselves. We might even put all of our New yarns into one giant stash to be shared Democratically amongst everyone. Oh wait ...that might lead to a proroguing of parliament.

With everybody focussed on working and knitting together, our country could be a warmer, "nicer" place. Hey, I really think that this giant coalition could work. Anybody want to throw their (knitted) hat into the ring?

Sentimental

A young gentleman of 93 years walked into our shop this week ...and we were all enchanted.

His wife, Helen, had passed away 6 years ago and he was in need of some new gloves. She had designed and knit them specially for him to protect his hands from the sun because he has been battling skin cancer since 1978. The gloves cover the backs of his hands but leave the palms and fingers bare. What a great design - they feel wonderful while working with your hands.

Andy (remember that he is 93) rides a bike at the velodrome in London every week. An avid golfer, he also cleans up used top quality golf balls to sell for $5.00 a bag - all proceeds go to the clinic where he is treated. If you'd like to support this cause ...or need some golf balls, we'd love to put you in touch with Andy.

The more I talk to Andy, the more connections I discover: both he and my Dad were career Air Force (RCAF) and were stationed in many of the same places, but always at different times. Andy worked in maintenance and my Dad was a sheet metal worker. 5 years apart in age, they were both sent to this area from Toronto. Both were of Scottish heritage: my Dad from Edinburgh and Andy's family from just north in Dunedin. And this morning, I realized why his last name was so familiar to me - it is the same as my great-grandmother's. Hey! Maybe we are related!
Andy will definitely have his new gloves next week.

An Interview ...with me :)

In case you missed it, I did an interview with Torontonian, Robin Hunter, on her blog, "How to Become a Professional Knitter". Although usually she interviews designers (always quite interesting), this one is about how Little Red Mitten came to be.

How to spend a Saturday

In 5 short hours, these three happy ladies learned how to knit a top-down sock. We didn't have to worry about tiny needles and fine yarn - we just cast on with our 3.5 dpns and created these adorable, though slightly unwearable, mini-socks.

Normally, we offer a 6-hour sock class over 3 weeks, but today it was great fun to go from top to toe with no worries about completing the sock to a certain point for the next class. All questions were asked, answered and solved on the spot ...and no terrifying feats of heel turning had to be completed unsupervised.

With "Sock Science" in hand, they are well-prepared to complete their first pair of wonderful hand-knit socks. Welcome to the world of sock knitting, ladies!

Weeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

It's vacation time. Houston - here we come!!!

It goes without saying that when you go on holiday to visit your son, he and his gal will be the highlight of the trip. But when I remembered that I had 2 straight hours of knitting time just to get to the airport, I was positively gleeful!

Packing clothes from two seasons ago was not that good a feeling, if you know what I mean ...but packing my entertainment was a whole nuther story. I would not be sitting idle ...like my husband, who forgot to pack so much as a book for his own free time.

The packing was worth the effort. On the plane, I did whatever I felt like doing. I bounced between two knitting projects, planned a third, read some of Brave New Knits, listened to a knitting podcast and watched a downloaded Lucy Neatby DVD. Phew! My day couldn't have been better.

And the good times continued. We visited two of my son's favourite spots: The Chocolate Bar,"Where every hour is happy hour," and The Maple Leaf Pub, with 3 or 4 hockey games playing simultaneously (okay ...we could have skipped the hockey, for once). And the part that will really make me smile, when I go out this morning, my coat will be staying in the closet.