Le Tissier Designs

Of Larks and Linnets and Flying Fingers

Category: family

  • Summer Things

    Summer Things

    July 6th was our 25th wedding anniversary and the Covid restrictions loosened just enough so we could have our celebration in the back yard. My husband had been working on this event for almost 2 years, continuing to plan and hope all the way through Covid! Many of the original attendees plus family and friends all came for dinner under a couple of tents. It was a wonderful time. We were all so glad to be visiting and sharing the ours stories from the last 16 months. For many, especially our senior relatives it was their first time out in months!

    Then we went on a short trip to Kelowna in the Okanagan. We stayed at the Eldorado Hotel on the Lake and had an absolutely wonderful time. Swimming in the morning, reading or visiting in the afternoon and eating most of our meals on the Lakeside Boardwalk of the Hotel! The service was wonderful – there was a beautiful little cake waiting for us in our room! The room was comfortable and air conditioned – very important in the heat!

    Our second evening we went out to Mission Hills Winery for a special dinner on the Terrace Restaurant – wine and good food – what a fabulous pairing! I really love the Mission Hill grounds. Every view is beautiful and there is Fine Art everywhere. It was what artists call The Golden Hour as we were leaving – so beautiful.

    Their store is fabulous, full of unique items and of course wonderful wine. I purchased a new cookbook – Wine Lover’s Cookbook by Fiona Beckett It has great pictures (it has to have great pictures) and appears to have quite a few promising recipes. We also purchased some Rose for the wine rack.

    On Friday afternoon I did a Show and Tell at the Kelowna Yarn and Needle Craft Shop! The ladies and I had a wonderful time! I showed off some of my knits and told the stories behind the items. The ladies got to play with the samples and try things on. It was a win/win for us all. I hope to go back in a year or so and maybe teach a workshop.

    The only thing that we didn’t get to do was take a trip on the Kettle Valley Train. It was cancelled a few days before due to the high fire risk in the Valley, well all over B.C. right now. Sparks from the wheels and rails could ignite a fire! That will be a definite for next time!

    I am about a week away (maybe a little more) from finishing the Sundail Shawl. The extreme heat we had delayed its progress and did the trip to the Okanagan, but it is looking great! I am organizing the prizes and can hardly wait to get the High Summer KAL started. I have been collecting pictures of my favourite flowers and have ordered another colour of beads for the shawl. Well if my idea works there will be some more beads added to the shawl. As you know, beads are always optional!

    Be well and knit Happy

    Lynette

    PS The test knitter for Crystalline is working on the edging now! It won’t be long before it is released!

  • Mother’s Day Memories

    Mother’s Day Memories

    Mother’s Day is one of those holidays that brings up mixed emotions for most women. We remember and honour (or curse) our Mother if she is gone and celebrate her is she is here; we examine our own successes and failures as a mother and we look ahead to being a Grandmother, able to help (or hinder) the efforts of the mother of said grandchild, be she daughter or daughter in law!

    This is not just a female holiday – it is said that Son’s revere their Mother, or blame them for every wrong in life. I hope that my relationship with my son will have a balance of both!

    It is truly amazing how much influence a Mother, whether good or bad, has in our lives.

    Four generations of my family. I don’t have many pictures of my mother with me and this is the only one of us all together. My Grandmother passed a year later and my mother 2 years after her.

    My mother had issues. I still loved her – but never, ever, understood her. Even as she was dying, over thirty years ago, we still couldn’t communicate. Our points of reference had almost no convergence. There was one love that we shared, the love of working with our hands to create and this was important and grew more important as time passed. It allowed some avenue of communication. We loved hand work and beautiful fibres. Something that my daughter and I share as well.

    I parented by being the opposite of my mother. By asking what she would and then doing the opposite. I made different mistakes – is there ever a life without mistakes? But I did OK, so I guess we communicated better than I thought. We never had the storybook mother/daughter relationship, best friends and confidants, but I have strived to create something close to that with my daughter.

    Beth and i two years ago.

    And I have, I think. Beth and I have a solid loving relationship with boundaries and understanding and support and everything I wanted from my mother. Thank-you Mom for showing me how not to be, I am so sorry that we couldn’t have what we should have had! Perhaps next time around when the wheels of our lives converge again, things will be different.

    Have a wonderful Mothers Day!

    Lynette

  • Happy Valentines Day!

    Happy Valentines Day!

    How do you celebrate Valentines Day? Do you mourn lost loves and hold those memories close to your heart? Do you gather your family close to you and hold them dear? Where does your heart lie?

    I do them all. My family keeps my heart. Husband, children and grandchild, all are loved equally well in different ways.

    My Father is still with me and loved as well.

    But my Mother and Grandmothers and Grandfathers are all gone. They are always loved and always with me in Memory.

    Granny Baptie would approve of the Scottish themed Greetings for the Day.

    I have always found Valentines Day awkward. It usually speaks of only one kind of love when we know there are so many other kinds of love out there – family, friends, activities, yes activities! How much time and effort do we pour into all those things that we love and enjoy!? I know my heart and it lies with many.

    Do we love those things for only the one day? No, but we do make that special effort to love them all harder I think. We take the time to contemplate life without them and we mourn those whose love is lost to us.

    Mother on the right and Grannie Baptie to the left, Myself and Beth, 34 years ago. Three years later both my Grandmother and my mother were gone. So many memories.

    It is snowing here. A serious snow, coming down hard, not the kind we usually get, big lazy flakes that melt as soon as they hit. This snow is lying and accumulating at an amazing rate. It is a wonderful day to stay home and contemplate the energy of the skies as they send snow down upon us.

    Snowy days are perfect for hats. We don’t get that many of them here. And yesterday I was lucky enough to get pictures of hats in snow on Elise for some new patterns. A couple of those patterns were released today and the others will be released over the next few weeks.

    Todays releases are Valentino and Dahlia! Two fabulous (well I think that they are fabulous!) fair-isle hats with beautiful crowns. Fair-isle hats are very satisfying hats to design.  While they can start very plainly, they almost always finish up with a bang, a pop, a fabulous farewell in the design of the crown.  Usually, the name of the hat comes from the design that ends up on the crown.

    They are part of what I am calling a Hearts and Flowers Special. Purchase Valentino on Ravelry and use the code Sweetheart to receive Dahlia for free. Happy Valentines day.

    It will be blackberry pie today – the berries are thawing right now.

    The rest of today will be for my family and my other love, knitting. Working on some fingerless mittens to go with the FlatIron hat.

    FlatIron in the Snow.

    Be well and spend the day doing what makes you happy and loved. Love your friends and family as you will and task yourself with only the things you love to do. If that is PJ’s and coffee – so be it! Do it with all your heart!

    Love to all! Lynette