Going Home!

Now that it's official, I can finally share my fantastic news. I've landed a job! Not just any job, but a great full-time job in Newfoundland! I'm almost finished my third university degree, and have been living and studying in Ontario for almost 11 years. Finally, it has all paid off, and we get to go home.

Nick and I are both from the same town, just outside St. John's. Our family members all live there still. We have always thought that we would like to go back there one day, but it seemed unlikely that I would find a good job there in my field. For those who are unfamiliar, Newfoundland is not the most prosperous part of Canada, and has been better known in recent years for the high numbers of people leaving the province in search of work. Very few of my high school friends are left. So we had kind of resigned ourselves to having to settle on the "Mainland" and make the best of it, for the sake of rewarding careers. I've worked too long and hard at school to settle for a job that I could have done with a bachelor's degree.

And then this opportunity fell out of the sky. I stumbled across a job ad, decided to give it a shot, and it turns out to be the perfect job for me. The official offer came in yesterday.

I'm a little overwhelmed by what I have to get accomplished before I start (at the end of July). I still have to finish my thesis (it's getting there, really!), submit and defend, besides organizing a cross-country move, and buying our first car. It's going to be quite the adventure!

So how does this relate to knitting? Well, a couple of weeks ago when it really started to look like this was going to happen, we started to look at moving companies, and evaluate the amount of "stuff" we have to move. We started drawing up a list of stuff to sell or give away, and suddenly, I felt an urge to blow through a bunch of stash yarn that I really didn't feel it was worth hanging onto. I started digging into the partial skeins, and at around the same time, I discovered the Warm Woolies website, through a link from the Stash and Burn podcast site. This is a charity that sends warm children's clothing to orphanages in Russia, as well as to others in need. What caught my eye was the cute vest patterns, and the fact that they want REALLY warm stuff, in bulky wool, or worsted weight held double. Well, that sounded like a great way to use up my big bag of wool remnants, and help a good cause. My plan is to fill a box, which is currently sitting in a closet holding excess stash, with as much warm wooly goodness as I can finish before we move, and send it to the volunteers in Denver who are collecting it. In the past, I had thought about knitting for Dulaan, or other charities, but the cost of postage was a bit of a turn-off, so I chose to knit for local charities. But now that the moving company will be charging by the pound, it doesn't seem so bad.... and the stories I have heard from friends who have adopted in Russia recently, well let's just say that I think there are a lot of children there who could really use a warm pair of socks.

Here's the progress so far:

Vests, in both the 6-8 yrs and 3-4 yrs Warm Woolies patterns, 3 pairs of Magic 28 socks (thanks for the link, Marianne!)...

3 hats, in patterns made up on the fly (there's a fourth one awaiting felting)...


And one baby blanket from Animal Knits by Zoe Mellor. Actually, the blanket was knit last year some time, from acrylic bits and pieces (baby blankets are the only items accepted in acrylic). So I'm going to throw it in too.

These double-strand projects in little kid sizes just knit up so quickly, and most of them are simple, which is good at the end of a long day of thesis revisions. I'm having fun playing with colour combinations, and feel like I'm accomplishing something on a couple of fronts - warm children and stash reduction. I'm just going to keep knitting until the box is full or the yarn runs out.

Enjoy the long weekend, for those who get Monday off. I'll be at the office for most of the weekend, but I always make time for a little knitting at the end of the day.