Work in progress

 In my last blog post I wrote about my current knitting project, which I named "Food Chain". The name is probably going to change when I create the final pattern, which I really hope will be rather sooner than later. But life tends to happen and plans get change.

Last week we lost power for 6 days. I tend to refer to those days as camping in our house, as it does remind me of the times when we would go on camping adventures with no running water, no electricity, no fridge and no cooked meals. I have to say I enjoyed camping as a child, but as an adult I got used to the idea of having a flushing toilet and ability to wash my hands or even have a hot shower at home. 

In the days without electricity I had more time to knit and I have made quite a progress on the final "fish" in my "Food Chain". I started with an idea and a sketch, and an older knitting pattern of mine for Shirley, the shark. 

Before we lost electricity I have made the inside of the mouth and teeth. I started to work on the body, not knowing how big it will be. 

The picture above is from the day of the storm, before we lost electricity.

As the days without electricity continued I made quite a progress.

Then at some point I realized that I have actually created a megalodon shark, in comparison with the other fish in the food chain. I am almost finished with the knitting, even though I had to frog and reknit the tail and dorsal fin as I didn't like the size and shaping of the first attempts. Since we have electricity I switched on my computer and started to write the pattern. The first part is much easier as the fish were previously published in two of my patterns (see the links bellow), but the megalodon shark has to be retyped from my hand written notebook, and edited. That part will take a bit longer. 

Odie, the sea otter (the smallest fish)

One fish, two fish, three fish (the other three fish)

This food chain is going to be our KAL for the next few weeks/months. I opened the thread in my group on Ravelry if you are there please join us. Otherwise you can always share pictures on Instagram  by adding the hashtag #stanascritters or #stanascrittersetc  

Just so you can see how big the megalodon shark is turning out to be, here is a picture of our 75 pounds (34 kilograms) T-Bone with the shark. The tail is still missing in this picture.

Thank you for visiting, 

Life....

After storm

Life can bring unexpected twists and turns at a whim. On Tuesday May 15th I went for our regular afternoon hike with the puppy into the woods. I was with a friend and her dogs. Suddenly the weather changed and fast approaching storm caught us in the middle of the woods. We made it back to our cars just in time to avoid the large hail. Then we tried to get back home. Our usual 10 minutes journey turned into a chaotic search for a way out from being trapped on a road between fallen trees. We were not the only one trying to find our way home. There were many other people trapped who were searching for their way home. In the end we parked our cars and walked home. We had to walk around fallen trees, downed wires and sometimes walk around an impassable sections of the roads. It took me about two hours, while my friend had to walk an extra hour to reach her home. I guess our dogs got quite an exercise that evening.  
The storm lasted about seven minutes or something like that, according to the weather channels and news reports, but the destruction it left behind will take months to recover.
For us personally, we were without electricity for a week, without Internet for two weeks, and we are still to this day without phone. We were lucky that our home didn't get damaged, while so many other homes in the area were damaged by fallen trees.
In the time after the storm I have experienced compassion and kindness. People were helping each other, neighbors pitched in and helped those who couldn't do much due to their age or health. It was wonderful to see this kind of collaboration and help among the view of destruction the storm left behind.
Life is slowly returning to normalcy, though there is still a lot of work to be done.
In the quiet moments in the past few weeks I have tried to find a sense of tranquility and peace by taking up the knitting needles and knit. I cannot share the pictures of the knitting projects that kept me calm during those weeks yet. I will do that when the patterns are released by the yarn companies.
In this collage picture I have a sneak peak at one of the projects I was working on, and few of the heart shaped images I saw during those days when I went on the walks with the puppy.
 

May 2018

Thank you for visiting.