Le Tissier Designs

Of Larks and Linnets and Flying Fingers

Tag: family time

  • 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

  • Working on Serenity

    Working on Serenity

    The title this week is perfect on a number of levels:

    a.) I am finally able to work on the edging of The Serenity Wave Shawl. I have had a back issue for the last few weeks that required pain killers and muscle relaxants. Apparently drugs, knitting lace edging and adding beads to said edging do not work well together! Who knew!? So the shawl edging had been on hold for a couple of weeks. I got back to it this week and I am at about 40% of the edging done. I can hardly wait to finish the knitting and block the shawl.

    b.) I have been working on my own Serenity. Peace of mind in this crazy time has not been easy for any of us. And I had been having a rough time of it lately.

    So I took this last week off. I napped. I rested. I knit. I visited one of my favourite relatives, my Aunty Evie, and really tried to work on looking after myself. It has been a good week.

    My auntie and I share a love of sewing and fabrics. So I had to show her my new purchases from Gala Fabrics – the best fabric store and another reason to visit Victoria. They have this vintage woolens section…. $10 a metre. It was so much fun!

    My back is starting to feel better, my shawl edging is finally under way and my ebook, 7 Hats More is slowing growing.

    I added a new pattern on Tuesday, Diagonal Spin and will be adding another one tomorrow.

    Usually my knitting keeps me sane, but some weeks are more challenging than others. I have been feeling challenged lately.

    Do you have tasks or activities that you indulge in that helps you look after your sanity?

    For me – I knit – first in line. I bake and/or cook – second in line. And I love to walk on the beach or in the woods – third in line. And lately harder to do, harder to make time for, simply harder.

    Perhaps because it means leaving the house – leaving this very safe place and entering a not so safe environment. I use up all my courage heading out the door every weekday morning to go to work! Don’t get me wrong – I love my job, but in these Covid times everytime we step out our doors we are adding a little risk to our lives. I am newly risk adverse. Well not newly – I am not much of a risk taker in any way, but I have never before considered walking out my door risky business.

    Perhaps I am channeling my inner Bilbo.

    “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

    Lord of the Rings

    So I am determined to add a walk to every weekend. We will see how I do. The payback is worth the risk.

    Earlier this week, between the rains we went for a short walk at Departure Bay Beach, just down the hill. It was the morning after the big windstorm and there was debris, shells and leaves on the beach. The skies and views were still very grey, so that the colours of the leaves and shells popped!

    I also practiced a little yarn therapy. Never heard of it? I thought not. It is also called retail therapy. I bought some new yarn. Technically I ordered new yarn and it arrived this week.

    Kate Davies is one of my favourite knitting writers and she also creates wonderful yarns. Schiehallion is her new yarn and it is a bouncy, wooly, dk weight yarn that comes in all of my favourite colours (I added a little extra purple as well)! How could I resist?!

    I hope that you manage to find some serenity in your life.

    Be well and knit happy!

    Lynette

  • Every Cloud…

    Every Cloud…

    … Has a Silver Lining!

    Right now, as we are looking for the light at the end of this Covid tunnel and only finding deeper gloom, we need to hold on to the good things that we know are there! We need to hold on to our own Silver Lining!

    I think that the silver lining for most of us might be time. The extra time we have at home while we are not doing the busy things that we usually do.

    Time to reconnect to our families from work and home. Our extended families as well. Many of us are getting in touch with those that we have lost contact with.

    Time to rediscover our hobbies – those that we maintain or those that we have revisited (my bread baking skills are much improved!) now that home is our remaining haven. And the things that we do in our homes.

    My haven is knitting! Always has been! It got me through a bad marriage and a worse divorce, it was my sanity as a single mom going back to university, it helped me deal with the death of my mum and myriad other life experiences. So I knit!

    Knitting is helping me deal with Covid – in the most positive way I can. Making things helps occupy my mind so I do not dwell on the things that I cannot change!

    Covid Be Damned was my first response. The happiest colours, a rainbow of course, and 10,000 of the most sparkly beads.

    And right now the Serenity Wave KAL. Calming colours and a few less beads, and wavy repeating patterns.

    And in progress as well are many hats and accessories in 7 Hats More. Lots of quick gift knits, Lots of finishing, lots of satisfaction – again keeping mind and hands busy.

    So, on Thursday, I released,

    Every Cloud… the third hat in the 7 Hats More collection. It is knit with Milano, a light as air Merino/Cashmere blend fingering weight yarn.

    Every Cloud… is a lace patterned hat embellished with silver lined beads and topped with a little bead pom-pom. It is lined with a bright white to make the patterning pop!

    Right now I am knitting a pair of gloves for 7 Hats More. I haven’t knit gloves in a couple of years – it is time.

    These are the Mendenhall Gloves, very much still under construction. Lace, beads, a slouchy long cuff, they are going to be so elegant. They will have a hat and small shawl to co-ordinate with them, and even though this is a hat book – I feel that these glove are the feature item of the Mendenhall collection, not the hat! Sometimes the accessories are the most fun to knit. They are already my personal favourite item from the collection to date – and I haven’t even finished them!

    I love gloves. Yes – they are a little fiddly to knit – but they fit! I have broad hands and short fingers and no commercial glove has ever fit me. I make all gloves to fit my hand. They simply make me feel well dressed.

    There is something so elegant about gloves, even the most basic. They look great, keep your fingers warm and in me evoke thoughts of the classic fashion photography of years gone by… When no elegant dresser was seen without a pair of gloves – women or men!

    Be Well and Knit Happy!

    Lynette