In late November Tito and I decided to adopt a dog. We had the house, and the space, and I was lonely working from home all day. Our adoption adventure led us to the wonderful people at the Niagara Dog Rescue, and thence to a dog in Kentucky named Anika. We don’t know much about her, except that she was on ‘doggie death row’ at a kill shelter, but was pulled by the Niagara Dog Rescue, who focus their efforts on animals that are slatted for euthanasia. We decided, in the spirt of the best of friendships, to rename her ‘Samwise Gamgee’, ’Sammy’ for short.

From there she spent about a month in foster care, while being prepared to go to Canada. She was spayed and vaccinated. Prior to her time at the shelter it’s uncertain what her situation was, but it’s likely she was a stray. They guessed her to be about a year old, and a Border Collie/Australian Shepherd mix.

The day before she came to us we got a phone call from our wonderful adoption counsellor warning us that Anika was suffering severe stress and anxiety, and actually had to be medicated just to endure transport to Canada, that she was a flight risk and extremely frightened. The focus that they place on the animal’s wellbeing is truly touching; these are people who have a hard job, but love what they do.

We went to the pick up point at a quiet motel in Niagara Falls. Amusingly, there were other people milling around, holding leashes and looking lost, all of us waiting on doggies. We practically rushed the transport vans when they pulled in. We eagerly asked the drivers which one was Anika, and were led to a terrified dog, curled up in the tiniest ball possible, hiding her face in one of the vans. It broke our hearts to see her.

Sammy was so frightened she couldn’t move, so we pulled our jeep up beside the transport and carried her from one vehicle to the other. In the car she tucked down between the front and back seats and hid her face. On day two she ate and drank, but still hid otherwise. For the first 5 days she had to be carried everywhere.

Once home she sped to a corner and hid, behind our spinning wheel. We decided to give her space, and called it a night. In the morning she was still in the same spot. We could not get her to go outside, or to move at all. For three days she didn’t make a sound, and didn’t go potty until on the fourth night we heard a painful whimper come from the living room and shot out of bed. Sammy had finally gone, to our great relief (all over the house!), and we started training her to go in the backyard. I think she was already housebroken and just plain scared, because she took to it easily after that day.

We’ve had slow progress since, but it still feels like an astonishing change.  It’s only been 12 days, and she’s gotten used to our backyard, and gone on short walks. She’s finally accepting treats, though she still doesn’t like to be touched. She hides from us, which makes potty time a regularly difficult time, because we have to gently block her path to get the leash on. She’s stopped hiding her face, but still divides her time between her crate and the corner. Once we got a good look at her she turns out to be an absolutely stunning dog, with beautiful hazel eyes, pretty colouring and a puppyish build. She looks like there may be a bit of pointer in there, too. We’ve shared her progress in our social media circles, and I cannot tell you how encouraging it is to read the kindness of others; people rooting for her, sharing their own stories and cheering on Sammy’s progress. It has meant the world to us, truly.

We were also overwhelmed with advice in those first few days. Some of it is highly subjective, and contradictory depending on the situation. For example, to look into your dogs eyes can build love and trust, if you’ve already got a great relationship. If you don’t, to look directly into your dogs eyes can be seen as confrontational, an act of aggression.

Another example; it’s considered healthy to establish a routine for the dog right off the bat, but that involves regular feeding and potty times, and that’s difficult with an animal that hides from the leash; do you respect her space? Or maintain the routine? In every situation you’ve got to rely on instinct, common sense and patience (and maybe hot dogs). Every day will be different.

You remind yourself how often she’s had to build trust only to be moved on, or been with people who were undeserving of trust to begin with. You engage in guesswork to find out how best to reach her. She hates the leash? She hates the yard? Could it be possible that she was, at one point, tied up and left in a yard? When you are willing to be open to the things she can’t tell you, then you can start to build the right language that will work for your particular doggy. There are no hard rules except one; be patient and loving and let your doggy set the pace.

This next bit is for anyone who has considered adoption. I won’t lie to you, it’s not a steady upward trend, and it’s not one miraculous bit of progress after another. There are days when it’s three steps forward and two steps back. You need a lot of love, and a lot of patience. You have to be willing to clean up, and not be angry. You have to be willing to shape your life around the needs of a new family member.

But I can also tell you that my love for Sammy and my desire to protect her from further harm has grown exponentially since we first laid eyes on her in the back of that van. When she gives us a little progress, you want to dance all over the neighbourhood and trumpet it to strangers. There is no better feeling than when you win a bit of trust, or see her come out of her shell even the tiniest bit. You’ll find yourself celebrating poops, and trying silly things (I spent an afternoon playing guitar for Sammy and singing softly to her through the crate) in an effort to bring your baby closer to you.  My conviction that she will never_EVER be shipped off to another home again to begin this process anew drives my every interaction with her, even on difficult days. I already miss her when I have to leave the house, and nothing makes me feel better than when she accepts love from us.

I hope that sharing this experience will encourage others to adopt. Sammy is young and healthy and would have had her little candle snuffed out for no reason other than that she was homeless. All shelter animals suffer, but dogs in particular break my heart. Dogs are bred to love, need and serve humans, and to let such a creature as that languish without love and a family is cruel. The role Sammy will play in our lives is only just beginning, and we’ve no doubt that she will come to love us as much as we love her, and to realize that she will never be alone, or hungry, or unprotected again. It’s truly saving a life <3

To be fair, many big things happened, good and bad. The defining factor of the year would be my moms illness, the brain aneurysm and strokes that plagued about a quarter of the year for us and almost took her from me. We are grateful every day that she is still with us, still 100% herself and now, moving to Burlington to be closer to us.

The year got off on a bad note t00, last Christmas I put my beloved little cat Shodan to sleep, following her bout with diabetes, and to do the right thing before her kidneys began to fail. I miss her every day.

Then, in February, we got the idea for ombre yarn. Our own method, no yarn blanks, no injecting cakes, and no separating into mini skeins. It took a while to perfect, but once we had it, ombre took off for us, to the point where it totally defined our company.

Yarn began to rule our lives, and we couldn’t deal with running the company out of a 600 sq. ft. apartment anymore, and dyeing out of our kitchen. So we left the stomping grounds of downtown Toronto, moved to the burbs, and bought a house. My day job moved to the cloud, and we all started working from home, which brought its own perks and challenges.

Of course, with a house, comes a doggie, right? World, meet Anika, our Border Collie/Australian Shepherd rescue; she arrives in Canada on January 11th and we are just dying to meet and cuddle and love her!

The company went through growing pains as well. We discovered what our limits are, how long ombre can really take, and that small companies are subject to things like yarn shortages, postal strikes and power loss. We discovered that ombre is not like any other kind of dyeing – if a speck of rogue dye gets onto tonal or variagated, it’s no big deal. If it gets onto ombre, the skein can be ruined, which can be tragic for everyone. We powered through these learning curves, owing in no small way to the incredibly wonderful, supportive, patient, honest and loyal customers that we are blessed to have. You are why we do what we do, and we thank you from the bottom of our fiber’y little hearts.

And now we’re trying to improve things further. If you go to our site right now, you’ll see that all yarn colours are marked as ‘sold out’. That’s because, starting in the new year, The Blue Brick is moving from a Dye-to-Order system to an inventory-based system. If you’re able to order it, that means it’s in stock, and it will ship within 1-2 business days. No more three week deadline, no more hold ups due to yarn shortages or personal emergencies. We are confident that it makes sense to stock inventory now, and this is definitely the way to go. Items not in stock will be marked as ‘sold out’ and we will work every day to replenish inventory so our most popular colours/bases are always available.

You’ll also notice some colours are missing; Parrot, Hyacinth, & Rose. Coming to replace them are Opal, Waterfall, Wheatfield and Grand Turk (each one gets its own blog post, coming soon!) We hope you’ll love the new additions as much as you did the old crew :)

A lot of folks have said 2016 was a bad year. In lots of ways, especially in greater occurrences around the world, it’s true. On a personal level, it certainly started off tough.

But it was also a year of great growth and many fun, positive things. I was a bridesmatron for one of my dearest friends. We went to Mexico with my entire family to celebrate the marriage of my beloved cousin and his partner. My niece, nephew and step children are growing more wonderful by the day. My journey as a karate instructor progressed, both through my self defence program, and the opportunity to teach several classes at my home dojo. We were able to rescue a dog, buy our first home and bring my parents closer to us. I took advantage of having a food-safe kitchen again to expand my kitchen skills (to the hubby’s delight). We did our first fibre festivals, our first trunk shows, and started selling in our first stores. We’ve shipped yarn to Tasmania, Italy, Germany, Japan, Singapore, France, Iceland and New Zealand. I’m probably forgetting all kinds of great things as I write this.

In short, if you focus on the positive, its been a wonderful year. We are happy and healthy and together as a family, for which I am grateful beyond measure. I’m grateful for our friends, for our customers, and for those precious people who are both. Bring on 2017, we’re ready.

 

 

The move is officially done, we closed on the condo, and I can finally start to feel settled in the house. I decided to celebrate with a little lunchtime walk, and found this most excellent little antique shop not 10 minutes from my home: Greystone Fine Furniture. Here are my treasures!

Here is the strangest (certainly largest and heaviest) thing: it said ‘sleeve stretcher’ on the tag, but may also be an old ironing board. Weighing in at 30 lbs, the sweet staff didn’t want to let me carry it home, but I’m silly like that. No idea what we’re going to do with it… but it’s so cool! Maybe a shelf?

And just look at these antique sock forms! These are going on the wall in my crafting room, but not with the Kim’s Barn socks because they got stretched to heck just for this photo and I love wearing them too much to relegate them to the ornamental ;)

Ok, here is a sweet find; an antique jewellery cabinet. Do those slots look PERFECT for circular knitting needles? Yes, yes they do.

My last treasure is not really antique, but I’m delighted nonetheless. I’ve got this IKEA dresser in my crafting room that got damaged in the move:

The top got gouged pretty badly… and lets face it. It’s boring. So I bought these goodies:

More photos coming soon to show off how it all turns out! Did I mention I bought it all for a song? I’ll definitely be heading back to the store, it’s perfect for treasure hunting :)

With all this playtime in variegated yarns lately, I knew I needed to do a proper autumn ombre. I went through tons of autumn photography, and finally settled on this lovely shot from Merrickville, Ontario, where it was just getting ready to storm hard, but the sun was breaking through right at the horizon.

I didn’t want to do the traditional reds and oranges, though I love those colours too. I was looking for something a little more natural and rustic. Here are the results!

The teal blue sky lightens to a sky blue, before transitions through a quick green tone into a rich brown. The brown lightens up into gold, before deepening into the reddish tone of the corn fields with the sunset light hitting them, just breaking though that last opening in the clouds before the rain started. Prairie Storm is already up in our shop if you’d like to check it out!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, I think the @slowfashionoctober instagram blurb says it best: A celebration of the small-batch, handmade, second-hand, well-loved, long-worn, known-origins wardrobe.

It’s a dialogue that we can all participate in, to any degree, in whatever way inspires us, and there are a set of themes to help you along. The themes are loose, as you can see from my totally random, not-exactly-fashion-related thoughts below ;)

Week one: Introductions

 

We are in an interesting spot for Slow Fashion October. We have just left our yuppie condo in the heart of downtown Toronto, for a quieter existence in Burlington. We have also left the heart of a greatly consumerist culture, where broken things are replaced, and shiney new things are beckoning from every corner. We were ready for more trees and less traffic.

We both come from cultures where things are repaired, reinforced, up cycled, made to last. We buy our eggs, preserves and meat directly from Ontario farmers. We left day jobs in media and construction to run a cottage industry out of our basement. We endeavour to keep the carbon footprint of our company small.  We love homey things, and believe in making things ourselves rather than hitting up Pottery Barn (though I confess to a deep love of IKEA, no one’s perfect!).

Because of this transition out of the Big Smoke, hectic working arrangements and being in the middle of consumerist culture, I feel like Slotober is a concept close to my heart right now :) We are not perfect; we love IKEA and junk food (though again, our goal is local farmers instead of the cruel and unsustainable process of massive cattle ranches!) and we do enjoy buying things that we try to make last.

I will try to be more mindful during our first month here in the new house, though it might be more about furniture than it is about fashion. Let’s see how it goes!

And now the most important part – dialogue! Let’s share our thoughts on the joy of handmade, the need for sustainability, a local market, whatever is on your mind!