Sleepy Holiday

Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now. ― Ann Patchett, What Now?

We were fortunate enough to go for a week-long trip back home to Winnipeg last week. It was a trip we decided to book after the chaos of trying to get home for the Christmas holidays... after that fiasco, we longed for another chance to try it again without all of the anxiety of flight cancellations, lost baggage, and worry about virus variants. Was it even possible to travel again without all of that?

Turns out, it is actually possible. Our journey was so unremarkable that, when we stood at Winnipeg airport with all of our things and all of our senses, we could scarcely believe it. Surely we had several more hours of trudging and waiting to go? But no, we got onto airplanes, they took off, they landed, and we got off. Imagine that.

I didn't realize how tired I was until I realized how much I was sleeping. I slept solidly each night, got up to go out for a small adventure, then came back to take an afternoon nap. I haven't felt so refreshed in such a long time, and I am grateful. I was also glad to see my hometown in the spring, which is a rare and splendid opportunity. We spent most of our time visiting parks and taking walks, enjoying the warm sun and fresh air:

After a long, cold, extra snowy winter, much of the population was doing the same:

The rivers are full to the brim, unsurprisingly. This is a big chance from the drought of last year when there were fears of lack of water to turn electricity turbines. This is not a problem this year:

I even managed to visit friends in person, and I finally got to meet this little nugget. Meet Fran. She's sweet and cute and I so wish Seymour could have met her. It would have been cuteness on overload:

Of course, I thought carefully about what I would work on while I was away. I decided to bring along a crochet project since the ongoing question about whether or not knitting needles are allowed on planes has yet to be answered. The trouble was that I had no crochet projects queued in my brain, so after a quick search I found Natalia Kononova's Heads or Tails Zebra Bag. "Pefect," I said. "That should be a fun and interesting pattern that shouldn't be too difficult.

Except I didn't think about how complex the charts would be. Heh.

Thank goodness for highlighter tape:

Once I got going on it, it actually wasn't too bad. The front takes more concentration than the back, but once I understood what was going on I started to get a good rhythm with it. After doing a few complex crochet projects, I've learned how to fudge stitches that I might have missed from previous rounds without having to rip tons of metres of yarn out. It's been quite gratifying:

But I did have an unfinished project that I didn't bring along because it was a bit too big to travel with. In truth, I was kind of tired of it since it was an experiment with making a cardigan with a circular shawl pattern which wasn't really working out how I wanted. I was annoyed with it in general: annoyed with how it fit, annoyed with how many ends I had to weave in, and annoyed with how the dye in this yarn was coming out on my hands. It is made from the Scheepjes Skies Light Mini Hanks Assortment Pack, which I was determined to get a full wearable garment from. I ended up not using all of the yarn because I was getting so tired of working on it that I wanted to just get it finished...

... but then I washed and blocked it, and oh my goodness, I am so in love with it:

If you look at the back, you can kind of see how the neck and shoulders is actually the top of a circular shawl pattern. It mostly worked out, but honestly, the fit would have been better if I'd just done a top-down cardigan. I don't mind it, but I won't be trying that again:

And I was really not sure about how the green would look along the edges, but I am truly mesmerized by it:

I'm back to reality tomorrow, and while I wish I could spend all of my time wandering and making, I'm grateful for my restful time off. I hope you are all week. Have a great week!