Episode 5
Today I actually take you along on my first Alaskan camping trip, which included time in the kayak. You can see my photo journal by clicking below!
The podcast today was such fun to record and I hope you are able to feel the crisp autumn air chilling your cheeks! My mouth got cold enough it was hard to talk a time or two!
Have fun with me & give a listen by heading here:
Things mentioned:
My YouTube Channel CLICK HERE and the video relating to today's episode is HERE https://youtu.be/L8f8Ld6Orjg
The free adorably fun pumpkin pattern is available for just a little while longer and can be downloaded by HEADING HERE https://www.encouragebetter.com I am having so much fun making these in order to share with a few neighbors.
Below you can read the transcript of the podcast if you would like:
0:01 Aloha, and welcome to the Encourage Better Podcast. If knitting is your go to creative refuge, the place you look to craft your best self. But some days stitching solo on the sofa feels a bit empty. Keep this podcast going. Encouraged better takes you to Kodiak, Alaska and venture capital of the world. Okay, that's just my take on it, but it's still 100% totally true. trek up mountain peaks stand by the shore or cozy up under a spruce tree all through your ear buds, tips, tricks, and tails to help with knitting your best self. Encouraged better is the must listen to knitting podcast. To kick start your mojo and broaden your smile. I'm so glad you're here. Well, as the intro said, You are definitely welcome here and in the right place. Aloha from Alaska, my friend. And before I go any further than the welcome, I want to tie in a question I received from a listener named Carrie. She says, Just curious, why aloha when you start? Is there a local way to say hello. But I thought aloha actually means farewell. Great questions. Aloha is definitely an anchor for me, keeping me connected to islands we've lived in. We lived in for many years, where my kids went from babies and toddlers, to tweens and then teams. It is where I actually began video podcasting, after an accident that changed my life in every way possible. And yet managed to teach me the importance of humility, resilience, and encouragement. So Hawaii, acts especially my love of Hawaii, will always be home. Aloha, I learned from locals was a greeting that added source came from sharing your ha, your life essence. Did you know that Hawaiians would actually greet one another, sharing their most authentic gift, one with another, the HA was their life breath. And so upon greeting, they would give the very gift from deep within them, and breathe out a greeting as they embraced a welcome. Aloha comes from Ha. And it can be spoken as a farewell like Carrie alluded to. And also Hello. But it means more than that, so much more than those two simple things. Now, I'm still learning my way around the native and tribal history here in Kodiak, I'm still a fumbling student of sorts, and haven't yet found my way into this space of local tribes here. And my goal is never to just take, as I learned, but to be mentored. For me, that mentoring, kind of the learning under the guidance of a person who knows best and is willing to move you forward, intentionally, systematically, and even with an eye towards the goal of like a holistic learning. Well, that gift of being mentored is a treasure and finding the honest, authentic relationship that develops that mentoring definitely takes time. And it takes incredible patience. Luckily, I have patience for some things in spades. And finding a path for learning is definitely one of those things. So I say aloha to honor kawaii who gave me so, so much of herself, as only she as the island can. And I don't regularly butcher local expressions, like the expression combina which is Hawaiian for people of the land, or translated a little more loosely, locals. Now, the greeting the Aleutics have here is spelled "c a m, a", the little apostrophe as we call it and the letter "i" Which when I had my Hawaiian brain in gear, I thought that was pronounced Kahma'i. But it is not. I was corrected and I will be corrected many more times I am sure as I'm learning, "C-A- M-A-I is pronounced more like CHI-mah, CHI-may there's a, the "CH" sound instead of the "K", and the way the vowels work is different. So I don't have a proper Kodiak greeting. Aloha is it for me. Now I do look forward to sharing more with you as I learn and relearn. But for now, my natural place to dwell is in the Aloha weather in the tropics or in the Arctic. But I do have to confess where I live is not Arctic at all. But you didn't come here for a weather update, you came for something else. So I'd like to get on to the knitting or knitting related. So many of you enjoyed the last episode kayaking, where I took you out and shared. And I have loved your emails and DMs. Since you enjoyed the last kayaking adventure so much, I took you out once more. I don't have to set up much to set this next segment, as I recorded it on the go, but I am going to be back after this kayaking trip to share a little bit more. Well, we are alone out on a river, I can see my husband way off in the distance. But he's quite a bit of ways. It looks like he's about maybe a millimeter tall. And I am sitting in the kayak, partially in the water and partially on the shore. And in front of me. It snowed for the first time last night and the mountains are dusted. Actually, the ones in front of me are completely white, about a third of the way up. And it has been raining here where we are. But the sun is peeking through. And it's that kind of peeking through where it's like a tiny little laser beam coming through and illuminating in that one spot. And it is hitting the mountains. And it's absolutely glorious. And it's so glorious that I'm actually going to stop talking to you for a second and snap a picture. So I can keep it and share it and savor it. And then I'll come back to you. So the picture was taken, and I'm so happy. It's just so beautiful. Here you are sitting in the car, the kayak with me. And hopefully you can hear me without me distorting the background. I'd considered setting up and plugging in a mic and all of that jazz but I feel like that takes away from what this is. And this is a conversation that we're having out and about. Although I would love your feedback, so if if my intentions to share where I am and how it is as stripped away as possible, can be done in a way that as it comes back through your earbuds or however it is that you're listening. There's a way that I can improve that definitely let me know. So I am out camping for the very first time since being here in Kodiak. We just decided kind of spur the moment yesterday, and we are out. The morning started off after an evening that was the coldest of this season. We haven't had this cold weather since winter was wrapping up and spring was starting. So it was a brisk morning we gathered firewood and some supplies to bring out and we set up camp along this beautiful river that comes right out to the ocean and the backdrop is the mountains. covered in sparkling white snow and little lightweight clouds that are almost see through kind of hovering at the edge. The grass is turning that green and yellow and golden color. It's high thick grass. The mountains have gone from being the green that makes Kodiak known as the Emerald Isle to dark green, but such a wide swath of lighter green and a rustic or rusty brown red is being exposed. It's just it's the colors that you know Autumn is is known for it's just brilliant. And to be honest, I love this season not because of the colors of autumn, though I do just absolutely love the colors of autumn--- you're going to hear some scraping I am knitting a pair of gloves, or a pair of wrist or arm warmers that I'm going to tell you about. And if my mouth kind of gets tongue tied, it's because my mouth is cold. I haven't been this cold in a while and my cold mouth makes talking a bit more of a challenge. Anyways, I get excited because I love the winter. And I know that after this season of brilliantly golden hues and greens and grays and glowing amber, it's the most brilliant color of golden, reddish gold you've ever seen here. Once that gives way, Winter is going to be here we are going to tuck into whites and and light blues. And I love it. I get so so excited about winter now, which is so funny because I can remember living in Hawaii and saying we need to get a space heater and was freezing at you know 55 degrees for those three days out of the year that where we lived up in Kapp'a, the temperatures would drop to like 50 and we would be like well and I remember getting polar fleece onesy pajamas set for Christmas one year and just being so excited because we didn't have we didn't have central heat. I don't think anybody has central heat. And just feeling like that was cold. And now I get excited about the cold. So that's what it looks like that's what's going on you and I are pulled up to this rocky spit of a bit of land. So to the left of us is water to the right of us is water and straight ahead if I walked I could walk around up these rocky areas and I'd have to get my shoes I wore my hiking shoes and even though my husband is fly fishing now often the distance and I can see that fly rod going back and forth and it is with the backdrop it just looks like something up for television. Anyways, we'd get our feet wet but we're just going to sit here in the kayak and we are going to watch my husband had waders on that came that come up their hip waders, so he can meander all through this spot where we are. It's funny, it's it's very remote, but way way off in the distance is that tiny little home with a tiny little roof peeking up. And people are building a new house over there. And it's just the most picturesque spot.And as interesting as it is to see, what I'm really surprised by is the sound. You can hear the hammering as if it was right here with us. It is echoing against the backdrop behind them of these huge mountains and it's reverberating and just the sound is dancing and playing all through this space. And it's right here with us. So you'll hear that in the background. Someone is building a home that they are going to love and enjoy here for so many years to come. And that's so exciting. You're going to hear seagulls. Hopefully, we saw several Eagles just hanging out there were two of them right on the banks and they didn't even care that we were kayaking up. They were literally sitting on the banks watching for fish. And we kayaked right by them. And they, they were like, okay, whatever, just hurry up by so you don't scare off the fish. And there were ravens earlier. I saw two are mine brother and I, my son were really surprised a little or mine or mean, or if you want to pronounce them. I just think they're adorable. They have their brown colors right now. And it's so interesting. We'll see them again in, you know, two months, three months, and they will be solid white. And I just love how the animals are so interconnected with the land here. So what am I doing my husband's walking back this way? So he's probably gonna wonder why No, he won't. He actually said he was gonna leave me here to do whatever it is I do with my friends,which is you. So I am right now knitting, I am knitting a birthday present for a sweet friend. And what I am knitting are a pair of wrist warmers. I was inspired by a lady named Kate. She's a yarn Dyer out of the UK. I'm using her yarn for a pair admits that she inspired. And I'd like to just share with you a little bit about what I'm doing. So these wrist warmers, she calls them our tubes. She loves knitting tubes. And I find thatI don't mind it too much either. What I'm doing is instead of doing a pair of fingerless mitts like I usually do, because I'll knit fingerless mitts a lot, I'll knit them as a tube, round around around and then I split and work back and forth and back and forth for a segment so that I can have either a thumb opening, or I'll insert an area where I can do a thumb gusset increase. And then make a thumb and then you know, come back and just continue knitting up and make fingerless mitts.But this set of-- actually it's going to be a trio of-- wrist warmers is for a dear friend, who just celebrated her 30th birthday. And I've been making a few little things for her. And I'm going to give it to her as a treat. But what I wanted to do was make something very convenient that she can slip on. And as she's working, she does some farming. She works with livestock to buy livestock, she's got some little pigs, and some. I think they used to have goats, but I know she also has chickens. But lots and lots of produce are grown at the farm. And they also grow tulips. So as she's outworking, she doesn't really want gloves. And she frequently works with her hands exposed. And that one area between your jacket and your hand that's always exposed is cold. So I'm making these little wrist warmers. And it's quite fun. It's very simple. And so there was a pause here because I was looking. My husband's on the other side of the river bank. And I don't know if he's going to wait over here. So let me just ask so I know what the Okay, I checked in. I cut you off a little sooner, but he's coming back. So I have a couple minutes to talk with you. All right, these fingerless mitts. So the mini skeins that Kate dyed, Kate Selene yarn mini skeins come or they used to come in a monthly subscription that I belong to. And you'd get five assorted colors. This all ties into what I'm doing... So I just another minute to explain. I like the idea of using colors. I see people do colorful things and I think it's interesting and beautiful and like a language that I don't know how to speak or anything. Corporate. So subscribing to her monthly, mini squish club or Yeah, it was she calls her urine squish. And she calls the people that buy yarn from her skirmishers, which I think is adorable. These colors come and they all share similar values or some sort of thread that kind of interconnects them, whether it's one color that you can see throughout them, or perhaps they're all speckled, but they're speckled with maybe a gray speckling on colors that I would never think to put together, but I can see how they relate. And what I did when I first started Chanel's mitts were I picked out a bunch of scraps, not kaylene yarn, not the mini skeins, not bundles that I had, but just honest to goodness scraps. And I started working them together. And I got frustrated, because when I looked at it, the colors weren't doing what I wanted them to do, which was look pretty together. Not a big ask, but still bigger than what I was able to achieve. So the third time I ripped it out, I realized I can just go grab some of Kate's yarns, because I had been holding two of them together or three of them together to create the autumn harvest pumpkins, which if you've listened to the podcast earlier, you've heard me share that that's a free pattern. And take me up on it, just go grab it, it's a lot of fun to make these and they make very simple, easy gifts to give to people. And they're going to make really terrific table settings later. So anyways, what I did was got some of these minis together, turned the minis into tiny little balls. And I'm holding two strands together. And I start with a and b together. I work a and b together, hell together. And then I take C and MC C with B and do it for a segment. And then I take C and I add D and then I do a segment of D where add E and then E and I add F and the colors because they all were kind of combined together in these mini bundles. They are flowing and they're colorful. And I can see that they are a variety of colors that I ordinarily wouldn't use. But holding two of them together and allowing them to kind of play together and then transition to the next one but but alternating A and B then B and C and then C and D and D and E kind of having that transition has made it a little bit easier on my color psyche, if you will. And so I'm almost done with the first one I just cast it on as we left to drive out here to the campsite, which was a lot of fun. My son drove I sat in the car and knit and he drove and we talked about wonderful things. And I realized that he's he's such an interesting young man, and how thankful I am to have him as a son. So I'm almost done, because it was a little bit of a ride to get here. How long did it take to get here, Dennis? Yeah, so it's a 45 minute drive, but it's not that far. How Many Miles is it? Yeah, so it's about 20 miles from town where we live. And we're headed out. This is south and west of town. Yeah, so we are. You look at the map of Kodiak you'll see Kodiak city or Kodiak, the town of Kodiak, it's not a very big city. And if you look at the island, as the island sits in the water, the Kodiak town is on the south side of the island. And the state of Alaska is to the north. And a lot of water, of course surrounds us to the south and east in the West, but to the north and the Northwest. There's a channel what's the channel called between the shell? nutshell a cough straight Is that what it is, so there's a channel of water, which is a big channel, it's a street and it's called the shellac off and it's separating us from the mainland of Alaska. And so that is on the opposite side of our island and over there. You find places like Larsen Bay, which is a place I would love to go. And on our side, we have Kodiak Island, and you leave and as you head out of town, I've taken you guys before in an earlier video podcast to the beach. And that's the sag shack. If you turn left on that road, when the road tees, you're going to head to a SAG shack, if you turn right, no way to it, if you turn right, you're going to turn beside me, I could be turned left, you're going to come this way towards like if you're coming out towards chilliwack. And it's just beautiful. It's it's very sparsely populated. Not populated, nearly at all. And there are cattle here. There also free range horses that are roaming, along with the free range cattle. haven't seen any bear but the campsite where we are staying had a ton of their tracks last time we came. And I'm certain there's plenty of bear this way. Unfortunately for my husband, the one bit of wildlife that he would really be happy to see he has not seen sin nor tail of and that is the fish is late in the season. I think the Silver's have already all run. So it's kind of kind of a bummer if you're a fly fisherman or just a regular fisherman. So anyways, we are going to head back to the campsite. And I am going to share more with you later about the knitting that I did. But it was nice to pull away and get this time together. Hopefully the sounds of the fly ride are coming through if you can hear it, the water is is kind of rushing by towards the north end of this kayak. But where I am all tucked in, it's very still and calm. So it's it's been a nice place to pull in and, and chat with you. I'll tell you more about these beautiful autumn colors that I've picked. For this set this trio of wrist warmers. And when we come back, I will share with you why I'm making three rather than just to welcome back from the on the go kayak adventure, the recording and it. And now we have been whisked from the great beautiful outdoors to the cozy, quiet space in my home for me to record this outro. And I'd like to share with you a couple of things. The myths I was knitting that I said I will share with you why I knit three of them, I give you a chance to see them, as well as a bit more information about the knitting process. And I also explore the idea of knitting personalities, or at least a unpack in a small way my knitting on personality, my knitting personality. That YouTube video is linked in the show notes. And you can head over to see that and hear more. And just have a further conversation on knitting. If you want to subscribe to my YouTube channel, you can do that once you click on that link, and you'll get an alert for each video that I upload. Now, I mentioned the free pumpkin pattern. And that will be available for a few weeks longer. And it's also linked in the show notes. I'll be sharing soon. My two color versions which are turning out so fun and who couldn't use a bit more fun right now. I know I love this just joy that these tiny little tubes are giving me and today I'm hoping that you are experiencing joy that the path that has brought you to where you are today is moving you forward to the joy that lies ahead. You are a treasure. You were created on purpose and you are amazing. I think that's something that you could write down on a sticky note and put it on Front and center so you can be reminded all of today. So, today's podcast is over, but I look forward to connecting again real soon. Bye for now.
