Sleeves and bottom ribbing of a handknit yoked colorwork sweater, made with gray, aqua, and white yarn.

Finding Color in a Bleak Week: A Love Letter to a Local Yarn Shop

December 22, 2025December 24, 20251 Comment

As previously mentioned, our family has spent the last few weeks dealing with the passing of Michael’s stepfather, Carl. This required two separate trips back and forth to eastern Montana amidst both rainstorms and flooding in Washington and snowstorms and ice-covered roads in Montana.

As one would expect, I looked at these upcoming fourteen-hour long drives and immediately began planning a creative project or two to work on. I find knitting to be my best “in a moving vehicle” project, so on the first trip out I packed both my Wee Woolly Sheep Ornament in-progress, and the materials to start making some Fair Isle Christmas ball ornaments. It turned out that I was too keyed up and stressed to be able to work on those projects, so no real progress was made.

Wee Woolly Sheep knitted Ornament in-progress, made with gray and white yarn.

Wee Woolly Sheep is a fiddly pattern, the Fair Isle Christmas balls are too chart-heavy…neither is good for truck knitting.

Arne & Carlos knit Christmas Ball in-progress, made with blue and white yarn.

We had to make another trip back for the actual funeral, so I decided to pack something easy to work on: The Better Days Sweater, which I started at some point during the COVID shutdowns. It’s at the point where I just have to work the body of the sweater in plain stockinette stitch, so I figured I could handle that in the truck.

Well, I could have if I had had the correct size of needles. #strikeone

And if I hadn’t cast on only enough stitches to fit a child’s torso. #striketwo

Derailed further by the fact that the sleeves are long enough for an adult, but with a number of stitches cast on for a kindergartener. #strikethree

“No worries,” I told myself, “I’ll just find a local yarn shop in Billings and buy some new needles and then take care of business.”

The closest yarn shop to our hotel in Billings was Yarn Bar, so we set out for it amongst the ice and snow. Rachel accompanied me into the shop and we both stopped in our tracks upon entering because it was so beautiful. Shelf upon shelf of rainbow hues and tweedy goodness, all brightly lit and displayed with obvious care. A rack of knitted baby sweater samples to stroke, cute hats on mannequins. Fun and happy colors everywhere you looked.

After all the stress of travelling, all the care and worry about the funeral preparations, all the anxiety over the weather…I walked into a yarny wonderland and felt all my troubles lift for just a little bit. It was a sorely needed balm of color and joy that warmed my heart and stoked the embers of inspiration that have been lying too ashen and neglected for too long. I could have sat in that shop all day.

I was responsible and only bought the needles I had planned to buy, but I really wanted to take a lot of their tweedy yarns home, and I spied another Christmas colorway of the West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4-ply that I made my Stripey Christmas Socks with earlier this year. I might have to go and order that after the holidays in preparation for next Christmas.

It was such a warm and inviting space to visit, I absolutely loved it and wish I lived closer so I could frequent it often. It had a lot of the same feel as the now-closed Churchmouse Yarns Bainbridge Island location and the old Black Sheep Wool Company in Salt Lake City before it was transferred to new ownership. I love that homey, traditional ambiance of those types of yarn stores. It’s the traditional wools, tweeds, and good old-fashioned colorwork patterns that really do it for me, knitting-wise. There’s just not a lot of stores that go in that direction anymore.

I was so glad to have had the experience of stopping by Yarn Bar and feeding my soul with all that color and those yummy yarn vibes. I wish I’d taken pictures of the shop, but Michael was circling the block while I completed my quick errand, so I had to hurry away. Oh, it made me so sad to leave that beautiful place, but I kept that feeling of happiness-in-color in my heart as we traversed the blue and icy Montana landscape for the rest of the weekend and on the long journey home. I have new ideas in my head for some really pretty projects that I can hopefully get going on after the holidays.

How good it is to be creative souls that, in the midst of bleak weeks and stressful moments, can just pop into a shop for a moment to be soothed by the materials and tools that we work with to create our art. Such a blessing.

Which is more than I can say for my attempts to resurrect my Better Days Sweater. Truck-ice-skating down the freeway hampered my desire to knit, so I gave up on the idea for the trip home. Now that I’m firmly situated on a stable surface, I’ll be picking it back up soon.

Snowy winter view of the Rockvale Cemetery in Montana

“I Don’t Like Playing this Game!”

December 19, 2025December 24, 20253 Comments

We received news that my husband’s stepfather, Carl, passed away in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. He’d been put on hospice care in the late summer, so it wasn’t surprising news per se, but still sad. I was battling COVID at the time, and the decision was made that Michael and I would drive out to Montana to keep his mother company until other siblings could arrive. We pushed our departure date back over and over in order to give me more time to recover from the dreaded virus, and when I was finally feeling well enough to travel, we headed out.

Once in Montana, Michael jumped into working remotely, which left me to hang out with his mother. She asked if I would help write the obituary for her husband, to which I said yes, and once that task was completed we turned our attentions to planning out the actual funeral. It was rather enjoyable, weirdly enough. I did a quick search for an LDS funeral program outline, chose this one to work with, and then we just filled in the blanks. I got to listen to my mother-in-law recount stories of her beloved, and explain the relationships and funny back stories of the people that she was asking to participate in Carl’s funeral. We wrangled Michael away from work to go out for lunch and run errands in the ice, and it was a really comforting experience to do all that together.

We had left the kids at home because Renaissance is a fully-functioning adult with a job and we figured that Rachel and Nathaniel could be trusted to get dressed and get on the bus to school all by themselves. So, of course, many things that could go wrong tried to go wrong. Renaissance’s car alternator died on her first drive into work, but she phoned a friend to come pick her up from the side of the road where she waited for the tow truck to arrive. Two days later, after she drove my car to work, she came out at lunch to find it had a flat tire. Co-workers helped her change it and she took care of getting everything repaired that night after work. Nathaniel fell asleep on the bus on his way home from school the next afternoon and missed his stop, so he ended up at one of the elementary schools. As luck would have it, I have a friend who works there and a few texts later he had a ride home once the elementary school got out for the day. Rachel did pretty well; but you could tell in her voice that it was a stressful experience for her. When Michael and I returned home a week later, we were met by tired kids who took a couple of days to look like they were comfortable in their own skins again. It was an interesting experience.

The funeral was scheduled to take place the next weekend, so we loaded everyone up in the truck and headed back out to Montana again amongst all the chaos that was the start of that crazy Pineapple Express that flooded Washington State. We had to detour off the main highway at one point due to a mudslide, and we later found out that the road workers we saw putting pilons on another highway we drove were closing the highway right behind us. We barely got through. Upon getting closer to Billings, we encountered a pretty good snowstorm that had us slipping and sliding a few times. We arrived at the hotel frazzled and exhausted. It’s a fourteen-hour drive in good weather and we still made good time, but it felt incredibly perilous throughout the journey.

The Brooke Family in their truck on the drive to Montana for a funeral in winter

All of Michael’s siblings came to Montana for the funeral, so it was nice to connect with them again for the first time in over a decade. They’re scattered around the country with families of their own, so it’s hard to meet up. I think Michael has seen them a few times over the years, but with my back being so bad I don’t do a lot of travelling, so I think it’d been fifteen years since I’d seen most of them last. It’s weird how life has moved on for all of us; we’re all parents of teenagers and adults now. Last time we were together all those kids were mostly toddlers. Life marches on.

Western Cowboy Funeral Flower spray with cowboy hat and rope/lariat at a Montana funeral

The funeral itself went really well; we had beautiful flowers and a lovely program arranged. The urn was really lovely, too. It would feel weird to post a picture of it, but if you’re in the market for a custom engraved wooden urn, I recommend Wooden Box Company.

As sad as funerals are, I really do enjoy them for the stories of how the departed tried their best and what memories the survivors are going to cherish as they move into the future. I always walk away from a funeral inspired to be a better version of myself. I also walked away from this funeral with painfully cold toes because I totally spaced the reality of what a graveyard in Montana would be like in December. Michael’s uncle from Alaska walked ahead of me and packed down the snow so it wouldn’t spill into my dress shoes. (It’s the little things.)

Rachel Brooke at a winter funeral in Montana

We hit the road the next morning, skating our way across I-90 through Montana. At one point we were sliding at a good speed down the freeway, diagonally, and Nathaniel yelled out, “I don’t like playing this game!” That is now our family’s new thing to yell out when things aren’t going our way.

We left the snow and ice in Montana to return to the rain and floods in Washington. Goodness gracious, what a wild handful of weeks. As luck would have it, the two days of school that the kids missed to travel to the funeral were cancelled on account of the flooding, so they had no homework to make up upon their return. And then school was cancelled another day this week due to a huge tree coming down across the main road to the high school, and it’s been a smattering of two-hour late starts on other days. Absolute chaos.

We’re lucky though; we’re not down in the valleys so our home is at no risk for flooding. Michael’s commute has been two to three times longer than usual this week due to flooding and closed roads, so he’s absolutely exhausted. I’m really looking forward to the quiet of Christmas Break so that all of us can relax at home and recover from all of this. It’s been four weeks of non-stop upheaval and stress. Whew!

And now I’m fitting all of our Christmas activities and festivities into one week. Wish me luck!

the big, long plane ride

August 5, 2014February 1, 20151 Comment

Hello there. You’ll have to excuse my punctuation and other errors, because this post coming to you strictly from the voice recognition software of my phone. The pictures my Instagram account, and it looks this may be the only way that I can update the blog while we are Australia.it turns out that the internet connection we have here isn’t very good, in fact, it’s rather ancient.I’m not sure there’s much we will be able to do about it, so I’ll try my best to post updates, but…yeah.

so, yes, we are here! We left Utah on July 26 and flew to Los Angeles. We stayed a few days in Los Angeles, as witnessed by my blog post there, and on July 29th we flew out of Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. That flight was aboard an enormous plane, eating something like 800 people, and the flight lasted 14 hours. Almost all the flights had television screens built into the backs of the seats, so the kids had no trouble at all with the long flights.

our flight to Sydney left Los Angeles at 10 p.m. And they served dinner at midnight, which three of the kids were still awake for, and then they turn down the cabin lights and everyone on board went to sleep. I got 6 hours of horrible sleep, and everyone else seemed to do fairly well with their sleep. I woke up while we were flying over Christmas Island, but because it was the middle of the night, I didn’t see anything. I slept a bit while we flew over summer and Fiji, and then most of all of us were up and just watching movies on our little screens. The flying was easy. Like, the easiest part of it all.

while I had been excited about all the knitting I was going to accomplish on our big, long plane flight, I ended up knitting and sewing nothing at all. I was simply too exhausted. I guess with the swimming, the full day at Disneyland, I’m a general all-around poor sleep, I just didn’t have anything left over to concentrate. It felt like work to pay attention enough to understand a movie.

once we landed in Sydney, it was a mad rush to get to our connecting flight to Brisbane. We had two hours to make the switch, which included picking up our ten suitcases, taking it all through customs, checking the 10 suitcases into domestic flights, and then taking a bus to our departure gate on the other side of the airport. You know, while towing four crazy children. We made it to the gate about a minute before they started boarding the plane.

we then flew from Sydney to Brisbane, and then later took another flight from Brisbane to Bundaberg. the Bundaberg Airport is tiny. It’s just one conveyor belt for all the luggage, housed in the same room as the ticket counters. Michaels company’s office is at the airport, so our car was ready for us and a couple of people from his work walked across the street to greet us when we arrived. After the enormity of everywhere else we had been, it was so odd to be in such a small place. We loaded up our baggage, some in our people mover, which is what Australians call minivans, and the majority of it on a workmates flatbed pickup truck, and then we set off for our temporary home, driving on the left side of the road, which makes me think we’re going to die at any given moment.

and so we’re here. We will live at our current house for one more week, and then we will move into the house we will be staying in until our departure in December. The ocean is one block away, and we tried to walk down there at least once a day to enjoy the waves and the sand. The kids are loving it all! It is quite beautiful, the birds make very different cause here, the wind blows through the palm fronds, and the sunshine is warm and delightful.we’ve had only a few days here but already I love it quite a bit. Hopefully I can figure out a better way to update the blog, as this way has taken me far longer than I would like to admit. Until then, I am updating and posting to my Instagram account usually a couple times a day. Unless I can find another way to make this work better, that may be the route I choose to go with Laur while we are here. I hope your summers stateside are going well, and hopefully I can resolve this ancient internet issue quickly.

Disneyland

July 29, 2014February 1, 2015Leave a comment

Oh, what a fun day! There were lots of lines, but the Brookelets handled it all fabulously–no meltdowns at all. We took a break around lunch to head back to the hotel to cool down and re-charge, and then we went back to the park until we could hardly walk anymore and just did not care if we missed the rest of the rides. Good times.

Dumbo Ride. Now that’s joy.

Monkeyboy was SPEECHLESS when we took him to see Captain America.

Heading back to the shuttle.

What a fun day for us all. Hopefully we’ll be able to return again in the future…preferably in the off season though. It was a lot of sun, a lot of people, and a lot of lines. Perhaps an autumn or spring-time trip next time.

It’s so funny to me how satisfying it is to me to say that I’ve now taken my kids to Disneyland. I remember, during my childhood in Canada, talking with my school chums about Disneyland and how American kids must have so much fun all the time because they were able to go to Disneyland every summer because it was so close to all of them. Now that I have children, and they are very much American, I feel like I carry a subconscious “to-do” list for their childhoods, which included taking them to Disneyland. Complete! (Other random items on that list include Mt. Rushmore, Gettysburg, and Washington DC. My understanding of American childhood “necessities” has been completely informed by 1950’s era advertising.)

While I Lounge, Exhausted

July 28, 2014February 1, 20151 Comment

We flew out of Salt Lake yesterday, and the kids loved the airplane ride! There’s a video of Bluebird and Penguin during take-off that I’ll have to post later because they were so stinking cute. Everything went really smooth in regards to our travels.

Highlights include:

1. Monkeyboy flirting with his Japanese female seat neighbor for the duration of the flight.

2. Junebug asking her Latino seat neighbor why he wasn’t speaking English…when he actually was.

3. Junebug watching “Toy Story” with the aforementioned middle-aged Latino man, and the two of them laughing at the same places together.

4. Bluebird watching “Frozen” with headphones on, and belting out “Let It Go” for a few bars before Michael and I could catch her attention and remind her that she was sitting in a crowded airplane.

5. Penguin’s smile throughout the entire trip. Goodness, she enjoyed everything.

Waiting for our shuttle at LAX.

We spent today exploring the area around our hotel. We’re taking a few days to enjoy the Los Angeles area before our departure from the northern hemisphere.

The kids’ one big wish: swim in the hotel swimming pool. I’m happy to report that Michael and I fulfilled their great wish this afternoon.

Highlights include:

1. Monkeyboy flinging himself into the deep end of the pool, trying to get Michael’s attention. Me yelling Michael’s name across the pool so that he’d turn around and see his drowning son.

2. Penguin has the beginnings of some diving skills–she can do flips and spins off the side of the pool. I have no idea when/where she learned to do any of it.

3. Michael can throw Monkeyboy halfway across the pool. I insist upon being in the vicinity of the boy’s landing spot so I can pluck him off the bottom of the pool. Michael says it’s not needed, as he gets to Monkeyboy before he runs out of air.

4. Bluebird jumped into the pool towards me, but then decided she didn’t want to be by me, so she kicked me in the gut as she swam away. Nice to see you too, daughter.

5. After yelling, “Don’t run!” numerous times to the kids, I pulled off a spectacular slip-and-fall while simply STANDING next to the pool. Some days I find it questionable that I ever possessed athletic ability.

6. The kids are SO TIRED that Monkeyboy asked if he could sit in my lap during dinner at the restaurant, and after he situated himself he laid his head against my shoulder and fell asleep. We had to carry him back to the hotel, and he didn’t wake up when we changed him into his pajamas.

7. Michael is so sunburned, but only where he wasn’t under water, so he’s got this hilarious sunburn “capelet” going on. He’s currently responding to work emails without his shirt on, and had informed me that, in Australia, minivans are called “people movers.”

And, even though it never occurred to our children to ask for it, tomorrow we’re going to Disneyland. The kids have never been, and Michael and I have only been once each. The kids are SO EXCITED that they put themselves to bed at seven.

Which leads us up to now, with me lounging on my super comfy hotel bed, just being tired and content. The power of the family vacation, especially after packing up six people to move halfway around the world. I’m very grateful for this little “hiccup” in our journey that’s allowing us some “just us” time. It’s been a busy couple of months leading up to this.

Disneyland tomorrow, and THE BIG FLIGHT the next day. We party hard and travel harder, yo.