Feb 25/07

Just a little update on the El Salvador Habitat trip. I will be flying to Toronto in May to do the Habitat for Humanity leadership training so that I will have a clue as to what I am supposed to do. Rotary-wise, a committee is going to be struck at the next Rotary club executive meeting and I am going to speak to a neighbouring Rotary club on Mar. 5/07 to tell them my story and to encourage them to become involved. My boss approached me the other day and told me that he wants to make a contribution to this project. My article in the NB Pharmacists Association newsletter has been read by my colleagues around the province as evidenced by the comments I have received when chitchatting with them. My approach is to create awareness and hope that the money and materiel will follow.

Buenas dias!

Feb 8/07

These cute little snowmen are from "The Cross Stitcher" December 2004. Four of them are stitched on 14 count cornflower blue Aida and 2 are stitched on 14 count Delft blue Aida. I did not have enough fabric to stitch them all on one and the intention is to give them away as Christmas gifts so I was okay with them not all being on the same colour. The only things I changed are the colour of the berries on the wreath which were supposed to be lemon yellow (DMC 307), but that did not appeal to me so I switched them to DMC E321 and I added snowflakes to all of them. The original pattern only called for the snowflake to be stitched in DMC 932 on the snowman in the middle of the top row, but it snowed here last weekend while I was backstitching these cuties and I decided to stitch snowflakes on all of them with DMC E3747 to give the snowflakes some shine.

There is a funny back story to this set of ornaments. Two weeks ago, I was almost done all of the cross stitching when I ran out of one of the colours and could not figure out a way to substitute anything on hand without ruining the final snowman. Being sick with a sinusitis infection and bronchitis at the same time and having to work overtime because all 3 of us pharmacists at the shop were sick, I could not find the time or the energy to drive even a half hour away to pick up the floss. My youngest (6 foot 2, 280 lbs) brother lives a few blocks away from my LNS so I asked him to go pick up the floss and bring it out to Mom's for Sunday dinner. He called me from the store saying that the colour did not exist (he had written down 392 instead of 932) and I could hear the 2 shopowners twittering in the background so I figure that it is a rare occasion to see a hockey bruiser in the shop! :-) Then, he proceeded to forget two weeks in a row to bring it out to Mom's so I went to work on the previously posted project until I picked up the floss from his apartment last night when I was in the city for my Spanish class. The upside is that I got the floss for free because he felt like such a dork for forgetting it twice when he is usually quite conscientious when it comes to his older sister!

Projects #27-32/50

Oh yeah. I forgot that I must admit a mea culpa about the challenge. In my defence, I did hold out until I was at least half way through the challenge and I have gone a whole 4 months without buying ANY patterns. Well, my friend and moneysucker eBay had Teresa Wentzler's Four Seasons Fairies and I am a sucker for TW designs so somehow the bid button was clicked and the pattern just fell into my mailbox. Please let me be strong enough to regroup and not falter again!

Feb 5/07

As I was going through my boxes and baskets of patterns this past weekend, I came across this one that I purchased in a shop in Robinvale, VIC, Australia. The company is called Red Brolly and the pattern is "Christmas" designed by Bronwyn Hayes. It is stitched on a piece of muslin that I found in my fabric stash. The whole thing took about 7 hours to trace and stitch, mostly because my concentration on cross-stitching has made my embroidery stitching skills a bit rusty!

Project #26/50.

Jan 24/07

The colour is very off in these bear photos! They are stitched on a Charles Craft (very white!) afghan for the newborn baby of a co-worker. I found the bears on http://www.dmc-usa.com/. The bows are pink and blue because I did not know the sex of the baby when I started stitching this! I actually finished this project about 4-5 days ago, but it has taken me a few days to find the time to post the photos.

This is the completed afghan about 20 minutes before the mom and baby showed up to my house for the work baby shower. The bear in the middle is actually on a bib that I stitched ages ago!

The afghan makes project # 25/50.

Jan 19/07

These ornaments were inspired by a photo I saw in the 2003 BHG special publication called "Cross Stitch Christmas". I say inspired because they were in the shopping section so I had to design them myself. I used 14 count red Aida, a silvery DMC floss (I lost the tag ages ago), a red, white and silver ribbon from Michaels and some plain white buttons. The words: faith, hope, glory, love, peace and joy were designed using a lettering section in another BHG publication.

So, that makes projects #19-24 out of 50.

Jan 8/07

My day could not have been any better. One of my colleagues is out sick for 2 weeks as the doctors struggle to figure out what is going on with her. Fortunately, we had a storm today so a normally hectic day was a decent pace instead since we were short staffed. A bullet dodged, for today anyway!

My mail box revealed a parcel from an eBayer that contained DMC holiday light effects and the DMC 100th anniversary floss pack! Yay! I can not wait to try out the holiday light effects on some of the Christmas ornaments that I am planning to make. I can not say enough about the deals I get through eBay on my cross stitch supplies. So far, they are the only things I feel confident about buying on eBay because they are about the only things I know what price I will and will not pay for them!

At the monthly Rotary club executive meeting this evening, I made my pitch for having the club sponsor a house in El Salvador, partnering with Habitat for Humanity. The executive gave me the go-ahead to propose it to the club at the general meeting which immediately followed the executive meeting. The club is informally good to go on the project and is waiting for my formal motion once I get all of the ducks in order in terms of the exact dollar amount, when we will do the build and who will be traveling to ES to do the build. I have 2 other Rotarians on board for the build for sure and another one asked alot of money questions so I know that he is thinking about budgeting and how long he can afford to be away from his business. As a stroke of good luck, there is a meeting on Wednesday night of the club presidents for the 4 clubs in this region. The host of that meeting, the regional assistant deputy governor, just happened to stop into our club meeting tonight so I am on the agenda to pitch it to the other clubs!

The funny thing for me is that I can not believe that I convinced them to do this! I know that they keep telling me that my enthusiasm and passion is infectious, but "l'il ole me" is firing up the club to do this. It's kind of freaky. When did I become this person who is grown up, qualified and knowledgeable about something like this? Where did I get the ability to touch people's lives and convince them to follow me on such a project? I had the answers regarding the sustainability of this type of project (employment spin offs, dignity through adequate shelter), one of the other club members actually quoted some of the numbers from my Dec 18th presentation to the club, I covered all of the bases from fundraising to logistics and they said yes! One member has already written out and given the club treasurer a cheque for $200 US to start the fundraising. **happy dance**

Jan 5/07

Here are a couple of recent finishes since the New Year. Sorry for the lateness, but I have to borrow a digital camera to get the images and then post them!

My apologies. I can not find the pattern for this one at the moment to cite its source, but I can tell you that it is stitched on 28 count Monaco and that I used buttons that have collected in my notions box!

"Maple Leaves", a kit from Foxberry Cottage crafts.

(Edited to add that this makes projects # 17 and 18 out of 50.)

Dec 26/06

Happy Holidays to everyone as they digest the food extravaganza of the past few days and groan at the thought of how much weight they have gained!

We had a nice, quiet holiday at my Mom's. Well, as quiet as it can be with a 3.5 year old who was wired for sound. My brother employed all kinds of techniques to keep the screaming mimi under control and less over-stimulated. My favourite gift was the blender which will be used to crush ice for strawberry daiquiris! My old blender was used by my mother to puree baby food for me so it was less than impressive at its ice crushing!

I made a surprise find in my cross stitch stash last night. I knew that I had a bag of 14 count Aida that I dislike because the fabric is very stiff and difficult to work with even after it has been washed. While moving things around in an attempt to find something else, I found about a metre of 14 count white Aida that is not stiff and awful. The fabric would not be my first choice because I almost never use 14 count or Aida anymore, but the possibilities are endless! Actually, my goal is to make Christmas ornaments as gifts for 2007 since I will be a poor student (!!) and the talk in other blogs about starting ornies now instead of waiting until close to Christmas has inspired me to think about digging out my Christmas patterns so I can really make a dent in my stash since I do not have to buy stitching fabric now. Plus, the 50 project challenge looms over me to complete before I get mired down in my Masters program in a year or so!

This photo amuses me so I thought that I would post it while my cat is not looking!

Dec 20/06

Whoo! I took a deep breath and told my boss about my school plans. I really dreaded telling him because I did not want him to feel disappointed in me for leaving the pharmacy in the relatively near future. What a relief to hear him say that he was really happy for me that I was excited about this undertaking and he thought that I would be excellent at International Development type stuff. He is open to my changing and scaling back my work schedule as needed to accommodate my school schedule, if necessary. I had wanted to wait until after Christmas to talk with him about it because he did not need that headache, but I had a list of things to run by him this afternoon so I added that onto the list. He appreciated me telling him now so that he would have time to digest the news!

Tomorrow night is the El Salvador work crew Christmas party! It will be great to hang out with the old bucket mates again! I am meeting with the executive of my Rotary club on Jan 8/07 to chit chat about sponsorship of more houses in ES and how to finance the project. Sometimes, I feel like I am caught in a vortex of activity when I look at all of the projects I am into and other times, I realize that I would not be happy if I was not volunteering for several things at the same time!

Tonight, I am finishing off 6 Christmas cards so I may be back later to post the pictures of my stitching!

Updated to add:

Projects 11-16/50.

Dec 13/06

This week has been a whirlwind. I spoke to my Rotary Club on Monday about my trip to El Salvador and now there are some plans underway for my next trip to El Salvador in 2007 as 4 Rotarians stepped forward after the meeting to ask that I take them with me on my next trip. My mom came to hear my talk which was great because she is always a great supporter of my travels even though sometimes I really have to convince her that is a great idea for me to backpack around New Zealand on my own or to go to El Salvador to build houses. Mom has had quite a week, too, as my sister graduated from her course last week and one of my brothers is now sporting his iron engineering ring. Go team!

In between emailing everyone that I can think of to set in motion a team of Rotarians for El Salvador and sponsorships for some houses there, I am also stitching like mad because I have realized that I am 2 Christmas cards short for gift giving. My eyes are about to fall out of my head since I am splitting my spare time between stitching and writing up Christmas cards which will be arriving a little late this year or early in 2007! Somehow I doubt that Canada Post will be able to get a Christmas card from here to North Queensland in 7 business days, but if it does occur, I will be buying a lotto ticket!

Well, words are starting to fail me at this late hour so off to bed I go.

Dec 8/06

I was reading through another stitcher's blog and I realized that I should declare my one exemption for the 50 Project Challenge. I have decided to stitch Christmas stockings for my immediate family to replace the ratty ones we are still using. My exemption is any Christmas stocking pattern that I think will be loved and cherished by my family members. (Just thought that I would declare that before I paid for the 2 I have won on eBay!).

Dec. 3/06

This one is a bit of a cheat because it has been stitched for ages, but I just had it framed so that my Curl for Cancer team (Feb 3/07) can sell tickets on it to raise money. Not the greatest photo, but in my defence, this is the first time that I have tried to take a digital photo of my cross stitch pieces! The piece is a Paula Vaughn. It was stitched so long ago that I have forgotten the name of it and I am too cold and lazy to go dig out my patterns!

That takes my count to 10/50.

Dec.2 /06

Images like this one remind me that I have made the right decision. I have been in contact with UNBSJ and SMU about doing a Masters program in International Development Studies, specializing in Central America. Can you picture a Dal and a SMU diploma side-by-side?! The head of the IDS program in Saint John specializes in El Salvador and one of the most popular Spanish teachers at UNBSJ is from.....wait for it.....El Salvador. Does anyone else see a trend?

Anyhow, 2 years ago, I would not have imagined that I would ever be in El Salvador in the first place so who knows where I will be in 2 years from now, but it will not be behind a pharmacy counter unless I need some change to pay the rent. Life has led me in some unexpected directions and I suspect that there will be many more twists in the path.

My mom had a good laugh at supper tonight as she tried to picture her granola, oldest daughter and gun-toting army dude son out to change the world in their own ways. If she did not see us come out of her body at birth, she would find it hard to believe that we truly are blood siblings!

Nov. 14/06

So, now the question "What does it all mean?" is rolling around in my head. It is not the most profound question in the world, but I almost feel like an TV evangelist when I am telling people about my experiences in El Salvador.

For the moment, it means that I have stopped my mass consumption tendencies in their tracks. My house is about 1700 square feet and the place is rather full of things. It is nothing for me to pick up this knickknack or that cute, but useless little thing when I am at work or out and about. I found 3 wax potpourri burners the other day when I was moving stuff in my kitchen (and some of you have seen how small that room is!)! I also discovered that I have 10 kitchen towels crammed into a drawer which is about 9 too many for the amount of dishes that I actually wash! My rough figures tell me that I might have a fighting chance at saving up tuition for a masters program next September if I sell off the extra junk (or donate it to the Salvation Army) and do not buy any more.

There is a great deal on socks at work at the moment and before, I would have scooped up all kinds of pairs because it is a deal. Tonight, I very politely admired everyone else's finds and walked away. I also put away a cross stitch magazine that I had been coveting and hoping to get for Christmas, but I do not need more patterns.

The other thing that has struck me as well is my renewed faith in humanity. I am a lapsed church goer, but I definitely felt moved in a small "c" christian way when I encountered the generousity, love and friendship shown to me by everyone involved in this trip. We can accomplish so much by dropping egos, accepting people for who they are and reaching out with friendship. Too often we let prejudice, stereotype, gender, language, culture and money form a barrier that we do not allow ourselves to see past. The reality is that a mother in China wants the best for her child, just like a mother in Canada, or El Salvador or Papua New Guinea. My hope is that I continue to carry with me the joys of reaching across those barriers with a smile and a handshake to make a new friend and to have my life touch that of another.

Freddy, Guillermo and Guillermo Jr., masons extraordinaire!


Me with the ninos!


The goodbye party.


Joanna with the ninos!

Our first day on site in Panchimalco with Frankie and Guillermo.

Thanks to John for allowing me to download these photos from his public album.

Nov. 12/06

Well, it really is hard to know where to begin because there were so many experiences crammed into those 2 weeks. I was really fortunate that I was travelling with some really fantastic people because we all supported each other and cared for each other as we went through all of this.

The first thing that we had to get used to, besides the heat and humidity, was the barbed and razor wire that was everywhere, including all around the convent where we staying. Then, it was the men with guns who also seemed to be everywhere. I was a little unsettled at one of the Mayan ruins when one of the security guards kept catching my eye and saying "Buenas" to me. There is something off putting about a man carrying a rifle or semi-automatic even if he is gorgeous! The traffic was something else as well, but I quickly learned to look out the side window if I thought that our driver was about to pass someone!

We went to see the tomb of Oscar Romero on our first day there. I had heard a few things about him and his role in the civil war in El Salvador and I felt very moved as I watched people pray to him. I had a similar feeling when we went to the Mayan ruins in Cihuatan. Standing out in the middle of the ball court, I felt dizzy at the thought that there was a magnificent civilization there a few thousand years ago.

The building of the houses was an experience that I have great difficulty in describing and I am so glad that there were others there with me because they know without me having to say how moving it was for me. We tried to leave our Canadian sensibilities behind as we walked into the barrio/shantytown, but it was hard to see people living in corrugated huts and outdoor latrines. Everything was walled in and behind barbed wire. As the week went on and we learned more about our masons who were supervising the build, we were amazed that these guys only make $6 a day for working from sun-up to sundown. Habitat for Humanity generally uses the same masons time after time unless the men move onto other jobs. The masons come from all around the country and HfH houses them wherever the building is being done. My chief mason had one of his sons working as his assistant and another son was chief mason at a neighbouring home. Guillermo, our mason, was awesome. It was not long before we were all laughing and having a great time despite our HUGE language barrier. HfH did provide us a translator so the question periods had to wait until Kendall made her way to our site.

One by one, the children slowly joined in. In my pidgin Spanish with my phrase book, I introduced myself to them all and learned alot of Spanish from them. It is not usual for women to do outside work at the home so the teenage girls were the last to join in after a few days of quietly and shyly watching us. The kids made alot of the work easier. When we had to move bricks, we all formed a line and passed the bricks along instead of having to carry them through the (hazardous and cramped) work site. It seemed like the smaller the kid, the more eager they were. The kids ranged in aged from 2-16 and they all chipped in. I know that alot of it was related to the novelty of having the 3 gringos around at their house.

For me, my relationship with the children is what truly makes the whole experience so special. I am a great believer in the importance of children and their role in the future so I worked hard to include the children by getting to know their names as soon as possible and using my phrase book to communicate with them. I had extra work gloves so the kids were always wearing the extras as they worked alongside us. One boy named Frankie was exceptional. He worked the hardest out of all of them and we were most amazed watching this 11 year old boy shovel concrete like a man. My hope for him is that he can afford to go onto university and that he escapes the drunkeness and joblessness that we saw amongst so many young men in that town because he is such a bright and compassionate boy.

OK, I will stop here for now so that I do not start crying (again) before I have to leave for work this morning. Yup! No rest for the weary. My co-workers have been working straight out while I was away so they are enjoying some days off now that I am back in town.

Nov. 11/06

I returned home from El Salvador on one of the most important days of the year in my life. I hope that all the Canadians reading this took a moment to remember those who have served in the name of our country.

In the past 2 weeks, I have added 3 more countries to my list: El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. And what an amazing 2 weeks! The team of Beth, Russ, Jay, Bobbi-Jean, Al, Ed, Joanna and me flew out of Moncton on Oct. 28/06 and met up with John and Elaine in Houston to fly onto San Salvador. We met up with a team of Rotarians (Bruce, Ann, Caroline, Craig and Suzie) from Yakima WA USA who were also in El Salvador to build 2 homes sponsored by their Rotary club.

There is nothing like bonding over a pile of chispa (concrete) being mixed by hand while the hot Salvadoran sun is beating down on you causing you to sweat more than possible. My Spanish was non-existent before arriving at the work site in Panchimalco, but through a combination of gestures, some phrases from my handy pocket phrase book plus some French that slipped out on occasion, we developed some hybrid pidgin language that allowed us to communicate with the masons and the families. The neighbourhood we were working in could be described as a shanty town with many of the buildings being made out of corrugated tin and having outdoor toilets. Stray dogs and chickens were everywhere!

We worked hard all week. I am sure that I lost at least 10 pounds that week between sweating like a firehose in the heat, sun and humidity (Whine! Whine! I am a Canuck after all and we think it is hot if the temp goes above 20C)and carrying more buckets of chispa and moving more bricks than I care to think about! The children were amazing as they worked as hard, if not harder than we did. One little boy named Frankie jumped right in a few minutes after we arrived and he worked alongside us all week. Not too many 11 year-old kids here in Canada are keen to shovel dirt all day or carry bricks and soil around and to do it with great pride in their work. The house was being built for his aunt and soon we had all kinds of kids ranging from 2-16 years old working alongside us. I quickly learned the Spanish words for brother, sister, cousin, aunt, uncle and neighbour! Our mason, Guillermo, and his son Guillermo Jr. had the patience of Job and a great sense of humour! Their work probably would have progressed much faster if they did not have to trip over and supervise the 3 gringos!

There were a lot of fantastic and touching moments. Every morning I waved hello to a family who lived up the hill from where we building. They would sit out and watch us all day, every day. The mother always called out "Buenas Dias!" to us and gave a big wave. I was so surprised to see her at the goodbye party and she came running up to me to give me a hug. One of my workmates got quite ill one day and it was so touching to watch Frankie take her by the hand to lead her inside so that she could lay down. Watching the kids pose for photographs and then to go running to see the digital images of themselves. Seeing the community mark the Dias de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and taking in the atmosphere of the street festival. Being blindfolded to hit the pinata (my years of tennis and softball came in handy there!) and breaking eggshells full of confetti over people's heads at the goodbye party (it took days to get that stuff out of my hair and clothes!).

Despite their troubled history and economic woes, the Salvadorans that we met are a wonderful people. I learned from them that life is not about the stuff that one owns, but how one uses and shares that stuff with friends and family. The love and affection that I saw and felt amongst them is more valuable than all of my assets combined. Suzie said it best at the goodbye party when she said to the Salvadorans, "You may think that we came here to help you, but you have helped us more."

Oct 22/06

Part of one Christmas present is complete! My brother is a soldier in the Canadian army and I have his name for our family Christmas present exchange. I found this pattern on this site and stitched it on some plastic canvas that I had in my heap. He loves to read so I think that it will make an awesome book mark.


So, that makes finish #9. Only 41 more to go!

Oct 19/06

Some more Christmas card finishes:


As you can see, I have been practising some of my hardanger skills (or lack thereof) that I learned recently! There are actually two of the heart shaped, Emie Bishop designed cards that I have completed, but I could not fit all three cards into the scanner so you will just have to believe that I have truly completed projects #6, #7 and #8! The nordic design is a combination of part of a sampler pattern I found in a magazine that I bought at the Rotary book sale and me playing around with some hardanger stitches.

I think that I am going to concentrate on Christmas cards and small projects until the New Year. There are several large patterns that I have collected over the past few years, but I have not decided when I will do them and in what order. Doing the small projects is giving me some time to play around with different things and perhaps this playing around will point me in some sort of direction. Seeing the stash lists that other people have posted makes me feel less quilty about the stuff I have amassed over the years because there are others out there with much more stuff!

Oct 15/06

A little bit of mea culpa here. While I am diligently stitching away at my 50 project challenge as I attempt to reduce the madness also known as my cross-stitching stash while not buying anymore patterns, I kind of succumbed a little bit. My Rotary club held its annual booksale this past weekend and someone had donated a stack of cross-stitch magazines. Yup! You see where this going. At 25 cents a piece, it was hard to pass up so I came home with 7 new-to-me magazines. It was a moment of cheap weakness as I just could not pass up such a great deal! In my defence, there were several really cool patterns that I had noticed at Michaels when I was there last and after standing in front of them long enough that the staff was giving me the "potential shoplifter" eyeball, I walked away emptyhanded.

Also yesterday, I met with most of the team that is going to El Salvador on the HfH program. Everyone seems very interesting and well travelled. This being New Brunswick, it turns out that one of the other women is someone I graduated from high school with! One of the other women had a huge back of soccer balls donated to her so I have to figure out how to deflate three of them and tuck them into my backpack along with all of the other stuff I have to pack before I even think about clothing!

As I type this, the news is on and they have just reported the names of the two soldiers killed yesterday in Afghanistan. My brother is graduating from ROTC this December and is that much closer to being posted overseas so this kind of news makes me so sad. I believe in the work that our soldiers are doing in Afghanistan, but the thought of my brother possibly paying the ultimate price is too difficult to even begin trying to digest. To do what I can, I have a yellow ribbon decal on my car and I wear red on Fridays to show my support for our soldiers.

Well, I should get out into the beautiful day we are having to tackle some of my autumn yard work that needs to be done before it is too late and things get buried under snow.