Rae Roy

The drive to North Bay was pretty smooth until I was 30 minutes away and ran out of windshield washer fluid. That was the first time that ever happened to me. Luckily, about 10-15 minutes later, there was one last gas station where I could fix that. Since it's my busy season, I worked the mornings and took the afternoons and evenings to spend with family and friends. My brother stopped by with a special gift, a new ornament for the tree. My mom loved ceramic Christmas trees, so it's a perfect way to keep her with us at Christmas. His friend, Fawn, helped him get it made. She has a YouTube channel you can check out here: https://youtube.com/@thethriftyfawn After that, I visited friends in the slightly rural part of Callander, Ontario. We were having a lovely time catching up and then the evening had a surprise in store. Someone in the area had hit a small deer with their vehicle. My friend's dad skinned and gutted it in around -20C (due to the windchill) weather.

I finally learned to crochet and I have mixed feelings about it. My first two crochet projects: A basic square and a Woobles mini briefcase. Durability It's interesting because it allows for a thicker product made faster than double knitting. And thicker means sturdier, which is excellent for things like toys or objects. The difference in thickness seems to be because of working with each stitch more than once or at least that is how it feels in comparison to knitting. Counting I rarely have to count beyond cast on with knitting unless I need to do a decrease or increase somewhere. I don't mean the basic counting like knit one, purl one. I mean, counting the whole row out to be sure I still have the number of stitches I started with. I've literally never needed a stitch counter in the 15 or so years I've been knitting.  Crochet, though? I regularly feel like I'm going to lose my shit due to the constant need to count. Even with all the counting, somehow,

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay There are many days I think I haven't achieved nearly enough with my writing or that I feel behind in life. What I've realized is that sometimes I'm too hard on myself. When I look at the past decade, and shortly before it, I've been through a lot. There was a miscarriage in 2011.  In 2012, my workplace was divested, my marriage ended, and I somehow managed to get my blue belt in karate.  2013 came and I moved 4 times. The first move was out of the marital home. The second was to Ottawa. The third to a temporary place while I waited for my condo keys. I did all of that while playing roller derby and studying iaido. Then 2014 brought with it my roller derby team winning the championships, but I got injured and had to do a lot of rehab on herniated discs in my neck.  In 2015, I woke up with crippling pain in my ankles and was diagnosed with Sjogren's Syndrome. In 2016, I won a couple of bronze medals in iaido, the sword-based martial