Yesterday when I heard they again used measures against abortion coverage to get some of the “democrats” to vote for the health bill, a thought crossed my mind:  If all of us women unite and declare a sex strike, how long it will take them men chauvinists to stop meddling with OUR basic rights?!?

It may be the effect of the salty Mediterranean air on my head – yes I am in Israel again, dealing with real estate transactions, fighting with bankers to get the smallest fees I can and other such charming tasks,,, but the food is great and the scenery too – Tel Aviv is lovely in the spring! I am sorry I don’t have my camera here with me to share it with you in photos too.

It looks like every time I am here there are more food institutions like restaurants, bistros, bars, coffee shops and so on in this lovely, lively city and I am here every few months. All of them seem full and busy every time you pass them and it makes me wonder. I think Tel Aviv has the most restaurant seats per capita in the whole wide world! And without even counting the plethora of very original fast food places they have in this city.

I am knitting a baby surprise jacket in Rowan Purelife – Organic Cotton 4 ply natural dye. After I knitted almost a whole skein I took out the other 3 skeins I have to show my sister and in the Israeli light (much better and brighter than the Torontonian these days) we saw that the color is not uniform, there are patches of lighter color in weird places on the skeins…. I thought something happened to my yarn and emailed the shop where I bought it but the owner assured me it’s the result of using natural dyes and if I don’t like it I can get credit or exchange it,,, I decided to keep knitting and take a decision after I will see the effect of it on the knitted jacket, but I am not pleased at all! Without any doubt I liked the yarn in a solid color much better.

The first thing I saw when I got into my sister’s car upon arrival to Israel last week was the maplewing I knitted for her birthday last September, I took it in my hands and exclaimed: what did you do to it? you felted it!!! My sister got all pissed at me and replied: I did nothing to it, I hardly wore it and it never saw any water while with me, anything done to it was done by you! hmmmm,,,, I certainly sent her something quite different but how do I find out what she did to it, was my first thought, I tried exploring it some more but I noticed she is vehement in her denial so I left it at that until I will have internet access.

When I showed her the shawl on my Ravelry page and especially the photo of it drying on the wires she said: I never saw it like this it came out of the envelope as it is now but the envelope seemed dry and there were no stains on it…

The only explanation we came up with is that it stayed in some very hot place on its way from Toronto to Tel Aviv and somehow got felted – does this make sense to anyone, did you hear about dry or almost dry high heat felting?

In any case I am quite pissed. It is the last time I am sending any valuable knitted thingie by mail to Israel!

To end this in a positive note: it is good my sister didn’t see the shawl in its unfelted original state so she still think it is very beautiful, am I lucky or what? :)