Good to know.
Perhaps the major changes in the market might lead to some of the foundries rethinking their willingness to do smaller runs.
There are so many Canadian small producers that have stopped producing as manufacturing moved south for economies of scale..
What I would like to see here is Canadian sourced yarn.
Canadian spun yarn from Canadian sourced fibres do exist but are harder to find.
There are also many small Canadian dyers but unfortunately many are buying imported merino yarn that is not ethically sourced.
There are lots of great yarn stores across Canada selling lovely imported yarns as this one is. Especially when this stores’ promoted partners, such as Pacific Yarns, are based in the USA.
I’m sincerely not sure what promoting them does for buying Canadian. I don’t see a focus on promoting Canadian yarn on their main page and the brands listed aren’t specifically Canadian.
Spinrite used to be a Canadian yarn maker but it’s more complicated now, and many of their yarns are available at big box stores.
Perhaps because there’s a big dose of misogyny intertwined with the critique of American Exceptionalism.
Think about how the song would play with genders reversed.
I think you’ll find that many store cards are really Visa or Mastercard.
Many Canadian store cards used to be owned by the stores. Some of the department store ones were very profitable.
However, many firms ‘rationalized’ by getting out of what was seen as a financial services business line to focus on their core retail. Weston’s with PC Financial is an exception - but for many consumers there are other reasons not to go with Loblaws/PC branded financial products.
There are, or at least were, Canadian cast iron makers.
Unfortunately, they seem to rely on Facebook.
See: https://castironcanada.com/
Also, it’s not clear which of these businesses are actually still operating. For example, Bristol Iron Works in Huntsville ON has a danger flagged website and a FB page that hasn’t been updated in years.
Also, you don’t want to be looking to log into dodgy wifi when travelling with a burner phone to another country.
Physical guides are more secure and don’t require downloading to a burner device.
I believe one or two of the new senators have joined Mastodon as well but haven’t seen much from them yet.
Mastodon is very techy. It’s getting good traction there.
Just be sure to wash and block before connecting the blocks.
I love making samples, so working up 8 x 8” / 20 x 20 cm samples of a lot of different stitches is fun for me.
There’s an old Bernat pattern that I have for an Afghan made of squares of very many different classic crochet stitches. It’s a great practice and skill building project.
If you choose a good palette of solid colour yarn, it works out nicely. If that kind of throw isn’t the kind of thing you like in your home, they’re always a gift or charity option.
Another excellent European product is Weleda from Germany.
We switched to that for lip balm because Burt’s Bees has soy in it and we had a family member with a sensitivity.
For hand and body cream, we’re just trying Nova Scotia Fisherman now. So far, after just a couple of weeks, it’s great.
For facial skin care, have been using Maritime Naturals for a couple of years. Excellent product.
We picked up some good deals from the promotion this week.
Several Star Trek licensed games are on Steam, now at a significantly discounted price for the annual Star Trek Day celebration.
These include the MMP Star Trek Online, but also single player games Star Trek Bridge Crew and Star Trek Resurgence (a choose your own path role play game).
We’d waited until Resurgence came to Steam, because we did want to buy it from Epic, but decided to be even more patient and wait for a sale so we could get it for our teens as well. I’ve been playing in parallel with one of our teens and debating the impacts of our very different choices.
I have had Bridge Crew since 2022, but we got copies for the teens yesterday. One is into it. It requires running an Ubisoft account synched to Steam which can be annoying, but otherwise G2G.
Having reached my exasperation on the total lack of information from Bell Media on a Canadian release, I asked @GoodAaron@mastodon.social if he or the Hagemans could share any information. Here is his reply on Mastodon.
It’s great to have EPs who will engage with us.
I’m still gearing up my recipes for a Star Trek Prodigy Soirée for the premiere!
In case you haven’t seen this, CBS entertainment sponsored a social media influencer to develop watch party ideas for the Prodigy Season 1 finale Supernova Soirée .
I’ve been experimenting and building on some of these ideas for the premiere of season two. One of Canada’s favourite ice cream brands has this interesting suggestion for A triple-berry yogurt sorbet float punch that seems very Star Trek Prodigy themed.
The production values are sufficiently high that it makes me think it might actually be from an episode to come.