Fall 2006

What ever happens to us that we sometimes loose track of what it happening around us? This has been a long year for us here at Playing With Yarn. It seems that age is catching up with us. As most folks know, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia sixteen or so years ago now. I have learned to pace my life to deal with the ups and downs of living with a autoimmune, chronic disease. But that means that I try to keep my life on an even keel. But sometimes things happen that are beyond our control.
Things like our dear Pippi being killed by an aggressive dog a year ago last June. Then driving down to pick up our then new puppy Lilian, I blew a tire, crossed two lanes of traffic and ended up almost sideways in the medium, sliding between two trucks in the process. Of course the good news was that no one was hurt. And with a new tire, I was able to continue the trip. But it has taken a year for me to be able to drive without my knuckles turning white.
Or when my husband, Bo, who many of you know from helping out here in the shop, had a heart attack at the beginning of August. We have been blessed with not having a lot of medical incidents over the years so we didn’t have a lot of experience with dealing with hospitals, rehab etc. Suddenly we had to learn new words and look at the world in a different way. Bo is not used to having restrictions put on his activity. Suddenly he had to cancel a long planned trip to Alaska to hunt with our son. This is his last year of phased retirement from the University where he teaches physics. He has to look at this year in a different way. They put stints in during the August episode but we were told that he would need By-pass surgery in 6 months. Just yesterday he had another test at the hospital because the doctors weren’t happy with some of his symptoms. Just before he was to go home, he started to bleed internally. He spent the night in CCU and will come home today. But the test results have caused his surgery to be moved up as soon as possible. So instead of our carefully planned time line for his surgery we are having to work the rest of life around this most important event.
With everything happening around here other things have gone without getting done. The summer class list never got on the website. The Yorkies and I didn’t get to the Yorkie Specialty Show in PA. Yard work and household chores were limited to what had to get done. Priorities changed and some new things became more important then others. My Fibromyalgia kicked in big time and my shortened memory became even shorter, places that I forgot that I had begin to hurt.
A dear friend Karen Sather who had fought cancer and I thought was doing good was told that her cancer had come back. Karen died late last week and I didn’t even know that she was ill again. Karen was a weaver and an early childhood teacher. She would work her love of fibers into things that she did with the kids in her classes. She was one of those rare people who was kind to all and could bring people together from all aspects of her life. She not only wove fabric together to make cloth, she wove people together to create a bigger ‘shawl’ of friends to surround her. I will greatly miss her. I have lost one of my friends that I would pass on fun things to with kids using fibers.
Changes! I am not very good about changes. I like ruts and when there is a change, I want to call the shots and prepare for them. I may be adventurous with fiber but not with the rest of my life. I don’t move furniture around, I don’t change wall colors and I wear what I like no matter what the newest styles. But change comes and there are times that I wonder if I am becoming my Grandmother talking about the good old days. But then I adored my Grandmother and for much of my life she was my best friend. Being my Grandmother is not a bad thing.
I have gone on and on about the not so good things that have happened in the last year or so but many wonderful things have happened. The granddaughters are growing and will soon be joined by a grandson to be named after my husband. Each daughter will have two children. All three girls have shown an interest in knitting even if all aren’t knitting away at a great rate. Bo and the daughters their families went to visit his family in Sweden early on this summer. I am not a great traveler and was happy to stay home. Annika has been attending Swedish Camp at Concordia the last few years and this gave her a real chance to work on her Swedish. My disappointment each year is that she chooses the Dala Painting class instead of the weaving class at camp.
And we had a wedding. When our son married Penny he got an instant family and we got not only three more grandchildren but even great-grandchildren. That was some years ago. And now Lacy, the oldest girl, was married in September in Superior, WI. Son, Artur, gave her away. He was pretty pleased about it all and together with the bride made a nice picture coming down the isle. Penny had knit beaded purses for the Bride and younger daughter, Becky as well as beaded necklaces for the bridesmaids to wear and carry using vintage beaded bag patterns. What a nice custom to have in the family.
The Yorkie girls are growing. Emma is turning out to be just the big girl that I wanted. She has the nicest personality and such a nice even disposition. She has been to four agility trials and has done very nicely for such a young dog. We have done mostly Teacup Dog Agility Assoc (TDAA) trials but has also been at one AKC trial. In her first two trials she earned her Games Level 1 title for TDAA and she earned 2 Jumpers With Weave legs, three are needed for a title, and 1 Standard leg for AKC. Then she and I went to the TDAA Petite Prix in Springfield, IL and earned two legs in Games Level 2 and one Standard leg. This was the longest non-fiber related trip that I have taken since opening the shop in May of 99. And I drove down and back with no panic attacks! We attended a two day Small Dog Handlers Seminar before the trial. By the last day of trial, Emma was just looking for tunnels to hide in. She was tired. But it was so much fun being in a group of all small dogs. There were 14 Yorkies, Emma had never seen so many other Yorkies at one place before. Next year it will be in Springfield again at the same site and I plan to take both Emma and Lilian, - if the creek doesn’t rise and I am still ambling around.
Lilian is growing up to be such a sweet little girl Yorkie. She is a bit timid and wants to be sure that things are safe before she gets too close to them. She has done very good in agility classes this year and likes obedience, except for those sits and downs if there are strange dogs around. We are going to have to work on her trust levels. She is so pretty and has such a cute face.
Winnie is such a twit! She is very like Emma, they have the same mother, but she has a very short attention span. She will sit a short time ( two seconds, maybe) but then wants to go visit her friends. She also thinks that she should be the shop manager. I have tried to explain that she has to grow into the job but I am not sure that she listens. So when you come you will probably find Winnie in the shop. Lilian thinks that since Winnie wants to be here she should be too so there may be two Yorkies wagging tails at the door. Emma eats garbage, plastic garbage. So her attendance in the shop is limited.
We took all the girls to Earthdog practice this summer. Emma loved it. She really wanted to get those rats. Lilian was worried about the cage the rats were in and Winnie was much to busy trying to play with other dogs to think about the rats. But as the summer has gone, both Emma and Lilian have become obsessed with the local chipmunks. Next year we expect to have two Earthdog Yorkies. We are part of a group of Yorkie owners working at getting AKC to allow Yorkies in their Earthdog Tests.
…..My knitting projects are piling up. One of the down sides of owning a shop is that you have to knit for the shop and not necessarily what you want to knit. There are just too many pretty yarns out there and good patterns. There is a return to basics in the knitting world. There are nice cables and Faire Isle patterns are back.
I have also added the most glorious Crewel kits. My mostly French Grandmother taught me to embroider even before I learned to knit. A young girl needed to be good with her needle in her world. I always thing of Crewel as my painting medium. I can’t mix paints at all but I can take threads and create a picture using color and texture. For the last few years I have stood at the booth of the British Crewel Work Company’s at market and sighed. This year, I ordered some kits. I also ordered a very nice teaching video and DVD from the company that you can borrow if you have never done crewel or you need to brush up on your skills. And in addition to crewel, I have brought in some Swedish Weaving (Huck Embroidery) kits. These join our Scandinavian needlework kits and the Hardanger kits that we have always carried. I decided that there is more then one way to play with yarn.
I have never understood the business of blogs but as I write this it seems to take on the feel of a blog. It is also a catch up letter to you because my world has gotten so topsy turvy that I haven’t let you all know what is going on in our lives. At Karen’s funeral someone said that they missed the paper newsletters and they wondered what all we were doing. I miss them too but they are just too expensive to send out anymore. Maybe I need to ask Eric, who is our web guy, if he can add a ‘sort of bog page’ where I can let you know what is happening here at Playing With Yarn in Knife River. Just don’t tell Emma. She thinks that it is her job to keep up Pippi’s page and let you all know what the girls are doing. She even has taught Lilian to push the shift key to get capital letters. If she find out that I am writing often, she may want her own blog.