Please fellow knitters, meet Fern!

This is my bear, Fern. Since I enjoyed being with Charlotte and I love the story of Charlotte's Web, I named her after the girl in the story. Seems appropriate too, since Fern's first sweater is a lovely green! The little cables went up the sleeve and then made a saddle shoulder. There was a bit of seed stitch in the pattern and I remember that I like seed stitch. The top row of the hearts was the 'pig' row - you know how there is always a row that you are happy to have behind you in your knitting, well this is the row! I enjoyed the cables as well. Now I must look in my stash for two compatible yarns that are 100% wool and try the Norweigan sweater for Fern. Also, there is a little pattern for a top with straps - the use of a funky yarn for the top and bottom of the tube and the straps give it that added bit of bling! Then you knit a wee lacy shawl. It is getting that time of year when Fern may wish to go out in style. How can a grown adult have such fun with a teddy bear - I guess that is why they are timeless!


Friends and blog readers, please meet my new friend, Charlotte and her bear. This little sweater was knit from the top down and it is such a nice pattern for a relatively new knitter. This little bear is actually one that Charlotte brought from home, so it may already have a name. She did get a bear just like Fern, but I think her bear is a lovely cream colour. The best part is that when I opened my emails this morning I had a note from Charlotte. Oh, but my heart did a little leap! She is such a charming, gracious, funny, polite and lovely little girl, but I am sure she gets that from her parents and that her younger sister would be just as nice. Anyway, I am so happy to call Charlotte a new friend and hope we can write back and forth a bit and when I go up to Campbell River to their market or I make a trip over to see Shelley at Fun Knits that perhaps Charlotte and I can spend some time together again. I read about women and girls having friends of very different ages, and I am beginning to see that this is a very good thing! Charlotte, my friend, cherish this little bear always and keep the sweater forever. After all, it is your first sweater that YOU knit - albeit with a little bit of help!

Diane, Charlotte's Mom, is knitting a very simple pullover that is completely seed stitch. The beauty of seed stitch, I think is that it makes for a sweater that keeps its shape! I knit a little 'Chanel' type sweater for my older granddaughter when she was little. It came from a Debbie Bliss pattern book and was all seed stitch, had pocket flaps and I knit it in red!


Now knitters and bloggers, I want you to meet another new friend, Helen. Helen is 82, but just look at that beautiful face, she is so young, vibrant, funny and cheery and I liked her from the first minute we met. She told me the story of her coming to Crow's Nest Pass (in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia) as a war bride in 1945. Her husband was still in Germany, and through a mix up of the railway's, she ended up in Calgary with no one to meet her. Her mother-in-law was in Lethbridge, Alberta, where the train was originally supposed to stop. Anyway, the kind folk looked after Helen - she would be an easy person to help, as she is so lovely - and she spent the better part of a day in Calgary - as she said she got to have a bath and do a bit of shopping. That night, she was on the train again and on her way to Crow's Nest Pass, where she was met by her FIL and his sister.

The next evening she was out at the train station awaiting her MIL, who came back from Lethbridge. For a gal who was born and brought up in Glasgow, Scotland to sail first to Halifax, NS, then get on a train and travel across Canada to BC, she must have thought that perhaps she was going to fall off the face of the earth. Helen is one of those people who 'fall on their feet' after any sort of adversity! Helen does a lot of knitting via a knitting machine and I have asked her to call me when she is going to use the machine, as I would like to see how it works - I don't want one, but want to see how it works! I hope to see Helen again next year! Oh yes, something so great as this retreat must be repeated.





I Just wanted to share some of my new friends. We need people of all ages in our lives and the enthusiasm and joy of youth and the gentleness and wisdom of age are those qualities of life I want in my heart and soul.

Guess what? Today Blogger let me use exclamation marks. What is that all about! How is a person like me to write if I cannot use all the punctuation marks - not always properly, but - it is like not being able to use your hands when you speak!!