Knitting graph paper - a totally cool idea for designing your own.

Did you know that you can print out graph paper for knitting, and mark it up for planning your knitting?

In this way, I planned how a new method (Fair Isle) for knitting would work for a gift I am knitting for my nephew.  The graph shapes are really rectangles, as knitted stitches take up more of a rectangular area than square.

See?

For this toque (hat) I marked out two different variations, then was better able to choose which one I wanted to take the time to knit.  

Fair Isle is so cool and easy - this one is multiples of three all around, but then you have one extra stitch.  Then the whole pattern gets shifted over one (1 out of the 3) each time.  You can also move it over by 2.  Much experimentation by me in the future to come. 

I am already feeling the urge though for these straight lines to curl off into spirals.  Totally hard to do at the crown, with knitting - but can repeat a few round the band after a bit.  Using the knitting graph paper, I can follow my own designed pattern.

Here is the paper I found online, which can be saved-printed here:

The House

Jones Family Jam

We just had a great visit with my brother Allan and his family.  His wife is really "into" music (and possesses fierce discipline).  I loved our experience - we were blown away.  We marvelled at the music which suddenly came forth and was present.  It made me want to play music!

Lucan has always shown a love of music - and used to pluck at our guitar (which we didn't know how to use) and sing, as a baby. I brought a ukelele, and one of the musical daughters, Elizabeth, is going to get us past the intimidating part to use it!  This is one of the great things about travelling.  You learn so much from people. 

Don't laugh about the uke. Anything new is daunting.  I played the piano for years, had piano lessons.  But we never touched a stringed instrument!

When I saw the musical expression pouring out of those kids, especially the oldest boy, and oldest girl, who seemed to really love it - it made me wonder at how humans have fashioned musical instruments to better voice the music inside us.

A wise way to live

When I visit my parents (see photo of super sharp knives - all with holes drilled into them to hang on the wall - with some small chopping boards) I get the sense of, this is how to live. It's a wise, way to live.

They have good tools, very good quality, even expensive good tools. With which they save heaps of money by doing everything themselves.

Supermarkets are selling fruit and vegetables that are often mass produced, with less and less nutrients - but they use a loophole and were growing their own veggies.

They made their own bread (with the help of a food processor with a dough hook), they did store away bulk foods that were dehydrated or processed so that they could be, to use as a backup (like "doomsday preppers" do). They were just being clever with the resources they had all the time. Very clever!

Now their money is put into things they really care about - like their beautiful restored heritage home, and travelling to do what they want to do. Probably also helping everybody.  Being out of debt.  Being as free and as happy as possible.

My Dad's garage

Entering my Dad's garage is like stepping back in time.

Despite all the change around his home, new monster houses and duplexes rising up here and there, even more so time stays still just inside these walls.

Every tool, even from decades ago, some even older, are cared for so well. In this house, even more care can be seen - with wooden tools and objects made for every purpose and ease. Everything is fixed, painted, well kept up. The energy put into it is beautiful.

This place has so much spirit I can even feel it in the photo.

Old world, New world

I have visited home before - but not during winter.  I think any person who has permanently left their homeland and relocated can understand the depth of feelings it is to leave one world and have it absent completely for a long time - then suddenly return to it.  Just the chill in the air - that's something I haven't felt in ten years - when you come out of a warm space like a car or a house and come out to a colder chilliness - brings back my entire life of memories and experiences until 27 years of age when I left here.

Here is Calgary (said CAL-gry).

Snow crunching, air chilly - memories of air frigid and the cold despite dressing really really warm.  All sorts of memories have been flooding that sometimes play through my mind at random times in semi-tropical home.  The satisfying crunch thin ice over a puddle of water in the park - just the freshness of home.  To be honest, not usually freezing but fresh and sunny.  Snow melting, bright, fresh days.

My family's home was overwhelming - as I thought it would be.  But having grown up in a heritage home and having thought it was normal at the time - since then I have lived in newer houses, and I can feel the history of the wooden steps, everything far more handbuilt than now. Switches that push in with a loud click, they don't flip, beautiful wood and wallpaper.  Like a farm cottage, really beautiful.  The shape of closets and spaces all over the home - original 1913 bathroom with old taps and a bathtub with claw feet.  But as different as it was at the time - my family bought a run-down "haunted house" at the time and completely restored it - but it took 20 years and alot of effort.  The kids grew up helping our parents.  Now it's a gorgeous historical home - even more bizarrely in the middle of sweeping change of this neighbourhood around it, like a beautiful stone in a river.  I hope they never change it.  Many little box homes remain on the streets around it, but about one in 10 has been transformed into a monster multiple living plex - rising up like the future around it.  But enough remains of what I knew, the old, which is also new again to me.

My favourite was when the garage door raised up, returning home for the first time - and even more from the old world was exposed.  A completely wooden garage inside, hung completely with tools - many old but kept in perfect condition.  The floor, wooden - the window - the same from when this garage was built to keep the cold out.  The garage is not that old I don't think, as the house, which is from 1913, but it's still such an old way of living inside it.  There is even a cellar under floorboards of the garage - the "greasepit" for working under the car.  But my family stored potatoes in it for a family of 10 to live off of all winter long.  Which we grew here on this city property.  So not a normal City of Calgary residence at all.  A special, special place.

I will take photos tomorrow in the light - it got dark here at 5pm!  But I will disturb people now.  I did photograph one very small thing.  My dad has built many things around this place - every wooden chair shines, every bookshelf made into a better one - and now he has a masters woodworking shop in his garage.  In fact I am besmoggled by their management and care and just the strength of their "good husbandry" - I think it's a term that means they look after things well.   Everything is clean, fresh, painted, simplified, organized.  I feel extremely intimidated, or besmallered - my way is very small in contrast to the strength of their organization.  People who used to run a ship of 2 adults and 8 kids - who now just manage themselves.  Anyways of the many other well-maintained tools about this place, shelves, quilts, etc, this is the little wooden structure my Dad has made just for drying small plastic bags he has washed.  I will take lots of more photos.  Just for us all to learn from, including myself!  I want to remember.

I really really want to paint our home, and not be lazy - there are so many tiny unfinished projects I have not even bothered to finish.  A kids dresser half painted, a fairy dress unsewn with pattern and material ready, a unicorn stuffed animal cut but not sewn.  Kids room unpainted.  Whole house unpainted.  Hideous curtains.
 

See why it's overwhelming to visit home?  For now - besides documenting it all - I will enjoy that long missed experience of the crunch of snow.  And helping my NZ family to not slip and break any legs on that slippery ice!

Rescuing Hoihoi (a baby blackbird)

This is Hoihoi - a rescued baby blackbird, fallen out of the nest and missing some feathers.  Always pays to keep your eyes peeled - which is something I am not particularly good at. Good thing my husband Shane and daughter Troy are.

Hoihoi suits his name (Maori for noisy), he likes to chirp away and make vocal communication.  He (or she) gobbles up a cereal mixture from a homemade eye dropper, just like you see baby birds in the nest doing when their mothers bring back worms. He sits on your finger when you bump a horizontal finger against his chest, and runs around on long road runner legs.

We didn't have an eyedropper to feed this baby song thrush so I fashioned one by cutting a length of plastic tubing, and trimming down a wine cork.  The eyedropper places food in the bird's "crop" just like the mother would with her beak.  I researched what to mix up - cereal (weetbix in milk), with a teaspoon of jelly meat (cat food), and an egg yolk.  They said to add calcium, but as our funds were low we bought high calcium milk and only used milk to dilute, no water.  When it was runny enough, it either ran out of tube - or we pinched it to help it go.

He is getting very fat and healthy now, we also built a bird enclosure with materials we had - mostly to contain the mess!  We also make a perch set into a stump, with a few different sticks he can perch on.  The cage is bottomless - just sits upon a board - so that later we can just set it on garden dirt outside so he can practice digging for worms.  We have already started to bring in trays of dirt with a few worms in it which he pecks at, and finds to eat.  The lid with bamboo poles (he is sitting on here) just lifts off, we also use it as a place for him to perch while we feed him, or he can hang out on it.

Now that he is stronger he shows a more mischievous, cheeky personality - he likes to run away from you behind his cage, or runs up to us / flies up to us asking to be fed.

Some people might wonder why we would bother with a small creature.  How could you not?  He's a little person, even the little snails I pull from my garden are small, inquisitive, seeking little guys.  Our eyes are just not closed to it.

He's a cool little guy.  We were having a very challenging period.  Hoihoi was a blessing as he was a humorous distraction.  He can fly around the room too.  Our kids and their friends have all had fun feeding the baby bird.

Video of us feeding Hoihoi:




Update 10 November.   Hoihoi's return.

After bringing worms in to Hoihoi, Shane started taking him outside on walks in the backyard regularly to dig for worms and explore.  He was no longer scruffy and weak, now he was vibrant and had grown larger.  But sometimes he didn't want to look for his own worms, and preferred to be fed - and we knew we had to release him soon or he would become dependent on us forever.  Then he started to enjoy the freedom of being outside, pecking for food, and flying where he wished.  He flew onto the roof, and listened to the birds in the neighbourhood.  Shane collected him down, but knew he was nearly ready to go.

One wet morning, when many worms had been washed out of their holes, and although the air was damp and the skies overcast the neighbourhood was full of birds singing and chattering.  Shane took Hoihoi back to the park where he had first found him.  He set him down, where he started to run about and forage in the ground, pecking for insects and worms like a little bird should.  Then a blackbird made a sudden landing nearby.  He (male as he had dark colouring) hid right away from us behind the nearest shrub, but kept following Hoihoi protectively.  Up to this point we didn't know he was a blackbird as they look lighter, and don't yet have such an orange beak when they are babies.  Both male and female parents care for fledglings (we looked this all up in our official bird book).

Since then when we visit the park, we know it's Hoihoi as he doesn't take off when we come by - as all the other wild birds do.  He doesn't vocalize back any longer, but stops his busy job of pecking the ground for food, and looks at us.  Then his parent blackbird flies down to protect this grown-up baby who still needs to learn many skills.  He is so quick and fleet now, you wouldn't know he had ever been looked after by humans - except for his lesser fear of them.

Hoihoi is free now, living just as a wild bird should.