Last Day of School, First Day of SUMMER!

Today is the last day of school! I can't believe we're done with grade two! Eli will be going to a new school in the fall and we're both looking forward to a new opportunity. Eli has been struggling with French Immersion (struggling is perhaps not the right word, but French was definitely not a good fit for him). Because he is gifted, but only speaking French at grade level, he was finding it difficult and frustrating to "learn" at his level with a lower level of the language of the school. This spring I applied to have him enrolled at a Math and Science school and he was accepted for fall. I think the M&S school will be a much better fit for him and I look forward to finding out if I'm right! Chey will still go to French Immersion, I love the school and I would love her to learn a second language. I think it is a valuable gift.

We have a super busy summer planned. We are going to visit family in Salmon Arm and Kelowna next week (I have decided against Fibre Week, sigh....), then the kids have a week of summer camps, then we have a week to prepare for a trip to Vancouver Island where, after the family part of the trip, Eli will be spending two weeks with his grandparents on their boat near Bella Bella, BC. August is less scheduled, so far, but I am hoping for a LOT of time at the lake...... and a visit from a beloved friend in mid-August.

Let the summer fun begin!

Knitting is going OK. I am working on the "Apres Surf Hoodie" from Interweave Knits, Summer 2008 issue, but have concerns about fit (I think it's going to be WAY too big and WAY too long and the silk I used is going to grow and make it bigger and longer) even though I went down two or three needle sizes...... Oh well, it will look great on Christina if it doesn't work for me......

Pure Bliss

I went horseback riding today, with my friend Lynzy (to whom I am incredibly grateful for the use of her horsies). It was amazing, although you'll have to trust me 'cause I didn't bring a camera (people that know me well will be shocked..... Me without a camera??? Crazy!).

We rode through open fields surrounded by leafy, green trees. The green was that lovely intense green that you can only see in the fresh green of spring. The fields were sprinkled with a liberal dose of dandelions (a flower, I love; as long as it stays in the wild open spaces of the world... and out of my backyard) and hidden beneath the dandelions was a carpet of purple, wild violas. It was spectacular..... The sun was shining, there were hardly any bugs, I had great company and I was at peace...... almost anyway; I brought Jade (my standard poodle, the toy poodle stayed home) along for the ride. Jade is a city dog, she's never been around horses and she was quite concerned about me being up on that weird creature and voiced her concern occasionally throughout the ride. Overall, she did really well and loved running around... Her belly-flop into a creek was pretty funny to..... 

Decisions

Fibre Week at Olds College is coming up and I need to make a decision. Should I take the Level 1 (or maybe beginner) spinning course? Can I justify taking up to five days to take this course??

Here are the positives and negatives to my decision.

Positives:

1) I really want to. I think it would be an enormous help to my spinning learning curve. Yes, I can continue to read and watch videos and teach myself, but that also means that I'll be picking up bad habits and not learning to my full potential. I want to start off on the right foot. I've been knitting for nearly nine years and only feel like I've gained true competency in the last year and a half (basically since I came out of the knitting closet and started hanging out in knitting stores and on Ravelry). I don't want my spinning to be like my knitting. I want to "get there" faster......

2) It would be fun and five whole days of being an adult, doing adult things with other adults. I love being a stay-at-home Mom, but there are days when I want to crawl into my bed and wait for groundhog day to be over..... 

3) Fibre week falls on my hubby's days off, which rarely, if ever,  line up with things I want to do.

Negatives: 

1) My hubby works out of town and is only home for six days out of the month. I feel guilty using up those days for myself (don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem taking a day or two, but this would be FIVE whole days). We should be doing family stuff. Camping, hanging out and enjoying the summer as a family. He's only home for two and a half of the eight weeks that Eli's home for summer break and having time together as a family is important (top of the list kind of important). Especially, to help balance out all of the time that he's gone..... We could all camp around Olds, but the fact remains that I would be gone most of the time and Olds isn't the kind of place that we normally camp and vacation.... We like mountains and lakes and usually try to get some extended family visiting in while we can during the summer (we'll probably go visit my MIL in Salmon Arm if I decide not to go), I don't like driving to BC (where all of our family resides) in the winter unless necessary.... 

2) It's a long commute. According to Google Maps, it's about one hour and 15 minutes from my house. That's with no traffic, so you can probably add another half hour each way. I know people commute more than that to work every day, but that extra three hours or so of travel time is also making the five days longer (I'd probably be gone from 7:oo am - 5:30pm) and increasing the guilt factor associated with going.

3) If I decide to take either course, I have to find alternative care for the kids for one of the days because that's the day that Dale travels to/from work. This adds to the cost of the course and/or inconveniences one of my friends, which I don't like to do... Also the beginner spinning course is on a Friday which happens to be the last day of school (a half day) and Eli has piano lessons on Fridays, so whoever watched the kids would have to pick Eli up from school and take him to piano... too much to ask in my opinion.....

4) And then there's the cost. It's not a lot and would totally be worth it, but it is a negative. Especially when considering the gas and extras (possible childcare, food and stash enhancement).

Kinda sounds like my decision is already made... doesn't it... :*{

What the H*LL???

Is it June??? I wasn't sure when I woke up this morning because this is what I saw......

I'm sure the snow will be good for the lawn, but I am FED up with the weather and this time of year that is allegedly called "spring".... and yes, I do realized that I live in Calgary where the weather is unpredictable at best. I probably wouldn't whine nearly so much if we hadn't had such cold weather from February-April. I might even find it funny, but this morning my sense of humour seems to have been buried under the snow.....

The pianist.

Eli's first piano recital was on Sunday. He was so nervous! He was quiet. VERY quiet. If you know Eli at all, you know that "quiet" is rarely used to describe him. At one point he even said he felt sick and, to be quite honest, he was definitely looking a little green around the gills, but he did it and he was great! I was very proud of him....

Here is a picture before we left for the concert, looking quite handsome in his shirt and tie.



Here he is, just prior to going on, looking less than impressed.




And the video of his performance



Chey couldn't be left out. After he was all done and the applause died down, Chey said "Wow! That was GREAT!"..... and she wasn't quiet about it either.....the entire audience burst out laughing (there were over 100 people there) it was the only noise she made through the whole concert......

My best spinning yet!

I had about 50g of the purple merino left from my 6ply never-ending-spinning-project that I decided I would use to attempt to spin bigger. I've discovered (remember, I'm new and apparently not that bright) that spinning bigger also means spinning faster (by which I mean, completing the actual "yarn," and not the speed of the wheel) which does make sense...... IF I had actually thought about it (I hadn't). Much in the way that knitting Aran or Bulky knits much faster than knitting lace, spinning a 2ply DK spins WAY faster than spinning a 6ply fingering/sport (about 3hrs vs. probably 30hrs)...... and I'm pretty happy with the result. It's very squishy and soft and about 11-12 WPI (I measured before I set the twist, so It might be a true 11 WPI now). It's also pretty consistent with only a few thinner/thicker spots..... and I got about 132m and 48g. I also switched my wheel from a double drive to scotch tension, I'm not sure if that made a difference or not.......



Oh... and here is a cute pictures of Chey helping me plant the garden...... Summertime is here at last!

A day of sadness...

Today is the anniversary of my step-brother's death on Mount McKinley in Alaska (also known as Denali). He was 25 yrs (turning 26 in July) old when he died during a climbing accident on his descent from the top of Mount McKinley. Dan and I were never really close. I think it was mostly because we were both old enough to be really aware and unhappy about the circumstances of our blended family. I was 8 or 9 and he was a year older when our parents married and we resented each other almost from the start. We spent our "formative years" together, but when our parent's divorced when we were teenagers we never really spoke again (I am still close to his sister, however, and speak to her often). Even though our relationship was not close, I still think of him around this time of year and I still consider him to be my brother. No matter what, the shared experiences of our youth bound us together as family, blood or not.

Rest in peace my brother......