The Kerplunks Rock!

A shout out to the Kerplunks and congratulations for winning a Western Canada Music Award and (as of this weekend) a Canadian Folk Music Award! Fellow Gabriolans, friends (and one is a former roommate), Tina and Dinah are fantastic and well deserve all of the recognition they are getting.

For any of you who have kids, know kids, or have any other reason to be looking for great kids music, check them out. You can listen to snippets of all of their songs on the website, and they are awesome. I like them all, and I don't know what is my favourite. "Beebs" is pretty great because the dog Beebs is real and is the best dog in the world.

Mystery Project Revealed

It's been shrouded in secrecy and I know you have been on the edge of your seats to find out what I have been knitting... Well I'm sorry to let you down but it really just an ordinary pair of socks in a beautiful, yet manly, colour scheme.

The socks are for Jake, my English friend who I met in Guatemala and became instant friends with when it was discovered that we both knew of the same purple house in Ucluelet. It's true. Jake moved to Victoria, and we were going to be roommates last summer, but then I got this job on Gabriola, backed out on him, and agreed to knit a pair of socks in return for him being okay with it all.

I was off work yesterday and at home all day working on this blasted project. In the morning I took the socks for a walk and photo session at the beach to get the blood pumping and visit the ocean.

Enroute to the beach we encountered a couple varieties of Gabriolan fauna: these ducks that seriously freak me out (they come at you honking like this and I think they will bite me one day)...

...and the peacocks, that I can get along with much better.

Feeling like I imagine it feels to be a new parent with a digital camera, I positioned the socks against various backgrounds and experimented. Now, the seasoned blogger or photographer would just choose the best and post only one, but I kind of like all of these. So here you go:

Socks on fucus

Socks on sandstone

Socks on assorted seaweed and stones

It wasn't all socks. I also took pictures of rocks (and if there had been a fox I'm sure I would have snapped a photo as well). Here are a couple of shots of the beautiful Gabriola sandstone.

First Solo Canning

A box of pears for $3 finally gave me the final push to try canning. I bought two. There's still one left, and I have 8 beautiful jars of canned pears. All have sealed, the dishes are done, and it took just under two hours start to finish. What fun!


Now I'm the type of person who is happy to do things like this for the pure joy of it, and for the satisfaction of learning a new skill (and perhaps a little for the knowledge that if the world as we know it collapses, I have one more skill under my belt to feed myself). I'm the type of person who will knit a pair of socks that, if I were to take into account the hours of work and the cost of the yarn, would be worth $100. And I won't mind. I will enjoy it, and I will do it again.

However, I am curious about the economics of these pears. Lets do some calculations:

Jars: $0.75 at GIRO
Lids: $3.50
Pears: $3.00
Labour: $20.00 (2 hours at $10/hour)

Total: $27.25
Divide by 8 = $3.40 per jar

Not bad! Aside from the joy of it, I think it's economically worth it too. Perhaps not a savings, but definitely less ridiculous than the socks.