an accomplishment you can wear

Last June in Aarhus, a wonderful city in Denmark, my daughter and I walked into an inspiring knitting store called Tondering Strik, while my sweetheart found parking and figured out downloading parking apps.

I feel as though I never accomplish anything completely alone. I mean, I may knit the whole sweater, grow specialty flowers, write this blog, but somewhere I have arrived at the accomplishment with knowledge I learned from a podcast, a course, a book, having the experience of a supportive family or in this case friends’ patience and determination. I started knitting this project which knits from wrist-to-wrist last summer and as I was getting close to the end…I realized that I had run out of wool. I remarked on my IG recently that my lesson is that when I buy wool for a project in a faraway place – I will buy an extra ball of wool- just in case! On the advice of a lovely knitter working at a local wool shop here, I have been pulling up the stitches from one sleeve and knitting down the other until they are even. Each week at knitting group, I would do this. Not making any time outside of this to work on it. Then last week, I admitted to myself and my knitting friends, that I had lost my way… (just with this knitting, in life I have a small clue as to my path). So they helped me problem solve, they started picking up the stitches and strategizing on how I could proceed ( at this point the sleeves were also different widths). They helped me so that when I left our knitting group, I was leaving with a plan and stitches on needles ready-to-go. What a gift!

Thursday night, we decided to walk along the water to see the sunset. Then we decided to go for dinner to a place we had wanted to go for some time. As usual, it was a Vancouver friend who told me about this place a few years ago…why do I always learn of the best places in my city from friends who don’t live here?!

I was driving, so I dropped my sweetheart off to see if we could get a table. When I circled around the block in case a space had opened up, I could see that he was being led to a table. Awesome! This time I was the one trying to figure out loading yet another parking app.

Spontaneous dinner out. A new restaurant meant trying something new on the menu too. What a delight. We each had a flight of 3 wines to try and we shared the vegan board. It was fantastic! That was all we really needed, but then we had already ordered other yummy things too!

We sat between a big window and the shiny black grand piano. The two musicians were performing behind me…..they were all songs that play in our house either on Spotify or as suggestions for me on IG when I make reels. They started with a song by Ed Sheeran- so I had a feeling I would love the set…I LOVE live music- I feel that there is a magic moment to it….a specialness one doesn’t ever get in music any other way.

It was fun to wear MY NEW -JUST FINISHED, SWEATER – out! Then I realized I have not been out for dinner since August when we were on holiday! I went to the Empress for tea a few weeks ago. No wonder I was so struck by hearing all the sounds of people talking and laughing and the clinking glasses… there was such a familiar and warm feeling of being in a room of strangers again. I realized that I had missed it!

It felt like a real celebration. A walk by the ocean, living in peace, a spontaneous dinner, lovely food, my new sweater and my sweetheart. For me, it just doesn’t get better than that. I feel very fortunate and very grateful for such special, albeit ordinary times…

This is the knitting shop in Aarhus; this is the sweater; this is the restaurant.