Mar 30/07

The folks at the Rotarian, the monthly Rotary magazine must have seen that I would be thinking alot about world issues because this month's issue focuses on environmental projects around the world. I read the issue from cover to cover this evening before I went out to clean out the garbage in a ditch in my sub-division. Now that the snow has melted away and the greenery is still dormant, the garbage is in plain sight. I felt like a dork down in the ditch with my grocery bags, picking out the garbage while my neighbours drove by, but then I decided that I may look like a dork, but I am making our neighbourhood a better place if it means that the leachate from the degrading plastic does not make its way into the water system.

Earlier this week, I read Herizons, a feminist magazine published in Winnipeg. I had been wavering on whether I would continue my subscription, but my personal campaign over the UN Millenium goals convinced to continue on because the magazine has opened my eyes to women's issues that do not get covered in the mainstream media. Plus, it is a women's initiative that promotes women's issues. I do not always agree with the opinions and politics and shake my head at least once per issue, but it gets me thinking!

Yesterday, I e-mailed my Member of Parliament to ask him what specifically the federal government is doing to achieve the UN Millenium goals. I figure that if I do not ask, then who else will? We have to hold our government accountable if we are going to sign onto these agreements.

My cross stitching is barely creeping along because I have been gripped by an exhaustion that I can not explain. I am hoping that the iron supplements I bought today will do the trick because everything is a HUGE effort these days.

Mar 25/07

So, this is what I am thinking about today as I digest the birthday lunch that my brother and I had for my mom. Last night, I stumbled across this site about the UN Millenium goals.
What a wonderful world it would be if the UN could meet these goals:
1. eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. achieve universal primary education
3. promote gender equality and empower women
4. reduce child mortality
5. improve maternal health
6. combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. ensure environmental sustainability
8. develop a global partnership for development

After reading the goals that the UN has set to be achieved by 2015, I started to think about what I am doing as an individual to help the world achieve those goals. One change I made today was to start hanging out my laundry earlier in the year so that I did not have to run the dryer today. Yesterday, I did a thorough walk through of the 10 acre property I purchased a few years to see what was there before the undergrowth springs to life and makes it impassable. The woodland supports quite a healthy group of deer and squirrels and is a rather mature stand of hardwoods which was a pleasure to walk through. For now, I am going to leave it alone until I decide to build either a summer or permanent home there. Next up will be to see what I can do about some of the other issues.

After reading through the UN site, I clicked on a blog that I have been reading written by Janet Scott and her husband. They are working with NGOs in Ghana and I was nicely surprised to see that Mark mentions the UN Millenium goals in his post that I have tagged. It is interesting to see what these goals mean at ground level.

Mar 18/07

Tonight, I talked with the board of directors of one of the local service groups and they have committed $1 000 towards my El Salvador project! To say that I am a little excited is an understatement because I was initially quite worried about how I was going to fundraise $5 000 so that I would not take away from any of the worthy commitments that my Rotary club already has on the books. My fundraising campaign so far has consisted of talking to anyone that will listen and so far it is paying off as I have an invitation to speak to one of the local Lions clubs as well. This club often partners with my Rotary club on projects so the house in ES may be the next one in our partnership.

You know, working away at this and spreading the word about El Salvador has kept me motivated in moments when I can feel quite defeated. For example, right now I am staring at 2 property tax bills, a car insurance bill, a VISA bill, my line of credit and a ticket for an expired inspection sticker. There is definitely more month at the end of the money as I balance the payments going out and the pay cheques coming in. Just when I think that a lottery winning may be in order, I remind myself that these things will sort themselves out in good time and that I have the good fortune to own 2 properties and a car. Even though my family was poor, I could still get a university education. Being born in Canada has sure made me a winner in the geographic department and thinking about the shanty town in Panchimalco and all of the people who touched my life there has made me appreciate the life I have.

Mar 10/07

So, here I sit waiting for a snowstorm or whatever is supposed to heading our way. A fitting way to end a week that found me speaking at a Rotary club about my El Salvador trip, getting a ticket because my car inspection sticker expired in MAY 2006, my curling teams won on Thursday and Friday night (if you have ever seen me curl, you would understand why that is noteworthy) and my brother is coming home for a break during his course at CFB Kingston. There is a special talent to living my life and by golly, I would love to master it!

The Christmas stocking project is slowly making progress. The needle that came with this kit wore 2 holes in the end of my middle finger on my right hand so I had to switch to the larger needle that I usually use to cross stitch because using a thimble was slowing me down too much. Here is an update:

March 1/07

Ok. So it has been a while since I have posted some new pics. The digital camera was at my Mom's house so I could not post anything that I have been working on. These towels were completed about 3 weeks ago. The pattern comes from a Leisure Arts leaflet called "More Christmas Fingertips" and they are stitched on towels from a shop in Norway called Christiana GlasMagasinet. The towels are regular kitchen towels, but there is a bit that is a lovely evenweave of something like 32 count. I bought a bagful of them because they were only 24.50KR (about $4-5 Canadian).

Once the towels were completed, I moved onto this pattern that I found on the Christmas ornie SAL. I decided to play around with different whites and sparkly threads to see what effects I could come up with. They are stitched on light blue 14 ct. Fiddlers Cloth. This first one photographs the best. I stitched it with DMC white:

The second one was stitched with one thread each of B5200 and E5200. The contrast between the fabric and the threads is not all that great so it it difficult to see in the photo:

The third one is done with one thread each of DMC white and a DMC silver metallic that was flaoting around in my thread box. Unfortunately, I ran out of the silver and had to finish with a DMC antique silver. The results are probably not so visible in this photo, but I am not excited about how this one finished up.

Here is my WIP of the moment. I have started a very ambitious project of cross stitching a Christmas stocking for every member of my immediate family (6 people!). It has been fun hunting down patterns and kits that suit each person, but now the real work begins.....for the next few years!

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Projects 33-37.

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.