Against All Odds

There were white flakes swirling outside my window yesterday. Not enough to gather on the ground. Just enough to have me putting away the porch furniture and pulling out my winter coat. In spring, the African violet on my kitchen window sill was flower-less. Now, against all odds, when the air is cold and other plants are fading away, it blooms.




It feels a bit like my knitting. I know what I'm doing and I don't know what I'm doing. There always seems to be some part of each project in which I'm winging it. Yesterday, I started a capelet using the three balls of Stampata yarn I had left over in stash. Comparing the stats on the yarn the pattern was written for with the ones for the left over yarn, it should have worked.

The gauge for the pattern is 14 stitches and 12 rows to 4 inches. Using the recommended 6mm needles, the gauge I achieved was 14 stitches and 24 rows to 4 inches. It could be my inexperience but I don't see any way to shrink the rows without affecting the stitches plus the fabric is already soft and drapey. It would be lacey at that gauge.

The pattern is written in rows. Luckily, all I have to do is double the required amount only now I'm not sure I'll have enough yarn. Luckily, I have some left over, once knitted, yarn from the previous, previous project I made and then ripped out. I originally bought the Stampata yarn to make a cardigan only, once knitted, it made me look like a house so I ripped it out and used it to make a child's coat which didn't take nearly as much yarn so I have three skeins of un-knitted yarn and three and a half balls of once knitted yarn. Hopefully, that's enough.

And then, there's our mortgage. We're renewing it this month. If you know our history, you know we don't renew mortgages. We move. I think there's only been two other times in our entire married life that we've renewed a mortgage. It's against the odds - wonderfully against the odds. Perhaps we've grown up.

While this isn't the perfect house, we've learned that such a thing doesn't exist and realize that this is a perfectly wonderful house to stay put in. There are things I'd change and maybe some day. It's not all that important to me any more. Today, I'm going to change the dust and dirt to clean and shiny.

Our house gets dirty in the normal way but it's never filthy. It's not that I like to clean. It's that I like a clean house and it takes one to get the other. I also believe that having a home, whether I own it or rent it, is a gift just as is living in a safe country like Canada. That's not something I want to take for granted.

It bothers me when I see homes that are messy, unkempt, and smelly not just because I think that's not a great way to live but because I think it's both disrespectful of yourself and of the gift of a home - a gift that I believe God has given to me. If I don't care for the things He has blessed me with, why should He bless me with more?

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - the gift of having and caring for a home of our own