Happy Birthday, Canada...

Our country is 138 today. Yay Canada!! Furball is sporting her Canadian Spiral Scarf and her favourite flag:





I’ve been creating a few scarves using the smallest amounts in my yarn stash.


I don’t have a pattern for this scarf but rather a template that I use as a jumping off point. I combine several strands of light weight yarns to provide the worsted weight I want but with a loftier feel to the finished scarf. Using larger needles than usual for gauge will also produce a softer finish with more drape.

I cast on 195 to 215 sts. with size 8mm (US11) circs in seed stitch and change colours when I run out of a skein. You can choose to match the colours in any design you wish. For me it's more enjoyable to let them evolve as the stitches came off the needles and as I run out of yarn.

Furball loves her scarf:

City of Flowers…

Here’s a corner of a garden K passes by on his bike rides through Steveston:


Up close with poppies:


Backyardigans…

This little fellow is one of the frequent visitors to our local watering hole. He’s one of this year’s bumper crop of baby squirrels. I can tell because the newest arrivals are shy and jumpy around us. The parents, on the other hand, have no fear. We’ve had them scratching on the patio door glass when the peanut supply has run out.


Here he’s hiding his peanut cache in my flower pot.


Look MA, It’s not a scarf or a hat, it’s a sweater…

I realize that almost every photo you see of my knitted projects is of either a hat or a scarf. I just want you to know that in my younger knitting days I created oodles of sweaters, vests and socks. I haven’t the concentration for them now but at one time I was able to polish off a sweater in a week or so. I knit most of them in the early 80s and some are still going strong.

I was especially proud of this sweater because it’s when I learned to knit cables and it was also my first attempt at knitting a full size sweater. The button placement was off but K still wears this all the time, although it now sports lots of fuzzy lint and looks a little ratty around the edges:


This vest is another of K’s favourites. I struggled with adding pockets to the design and I also learned to pick up about 4,000 stitches for the shawl collar and how to knit short rows:


There are several other sweaters and vests still kicking around, mostly in shades of dark blue or black so they don’t show up well in photos, but each one sports cables, pockets and buttonholes. I also knit a few sweaters for myself during that time but I don’t have any of them in my closet, mostly because the colours had lost their appeal.

Now you know I have some hidden knitting talents. I just don’t have the energy or concentration to exploit them anymore, so I stick with the most basic of hats and scarves and make a lot of noise and hoo-haw about them…

That’s it for this week, folks. I think I’ve rambled on long enough. I hope your week is a good one. See you next Friday.

Sarah and The Canadian Bunnies say goodbye for this week.


“Men who are attractive to most women are rarities, in this country at any rate. I think that it is because a man, to be attractive, must be free to give his whole time to it, and the Canadian male is so hounded by taxes and the rigors of our climate that he is lucky to be alive, without being irresistible as well.”
~ Robertson Davies, Canadian author