One of the best parts of living in our new neighbourhood is being close the Jean-Talon Market, my favourite market in Montreal. I've been taking full advantage of it and going about once a week or so to pick up fruits and veggies, much of it for freezing and canning for the winter.
This past week has been a tough one: teething baby, husband with a week-long migraine, preparing to move house in 3 weeks... The thing that's kept me going through the stressful week has been my knitting. I'm working on a new sock pattern using Pizzicato in the Palestra colourway to be released next month.
With two young kids at home, it often feels like I run around all week and never get anything done. So, this is my effort to reflect on the week and celebrate successes both large and small, knitting-related or not.
Last winter I happened to be in an art supply store, and spotted a shelf of colourful little bottles labeled "Sock Stop". It's a German liquid latex product designed to be applied to the bottoms of socks or slippers to give them extra grip. I didn't have an immediate use for it, but thought it might come in useful someday and bought a bottle on impulse. It now seems to be fairly widely available, and I've seen it since then at several local yarn shops.
A few years ago Elizabeth proposed that we make the month of February each year "Finish it February": a time to pull all of our unfinished objects (UFOs in knitter slang) out of the closet or from under the bed and dust them off.
This is the third year we've done this, and I still have quite a number of projects to pull out and deal with each year, but I've noticed that although I still have many very old ones (which I keep swearing I'll finish one day), I've been much better about not accumulating new ones since we started this.
Sweet Paprika Designs offers high-quality materials for knitters and crocheters, with a focus on locally-sourced and sustainable products. Co-owners (and sisters) Debbie and Elizabeth create their own hand-dyed yarns, knitting kits and patterns in their Montreal dye studio and organize knitting and dyeing events in the community.