Author Archives: Autumn

The Yule Week Continues

Things just keep rolling on with fun and joy and love.

Last night the Preston-LeBlancs came over for a evening of seasonal music-making. It was the first time we’d ever tried anything like this, and while we were excited we were all a bit anxious too. It all turned out beautifully, even with the cold-suffering Tallis squirming in her mother’s lap while Paze played the alto recorder. Jeff’s guitar work sounded fabulous. I mostly played pizzicato in order to not drown Jeff out, but when we got people singing the better-known stuff I switched to arco. So much fun! The Bailey’s certainly helped, and HRH did his part by keeping the kids corralled and occupied until it was present-opening or singing time.

The quiche I made was delicious, too, although we never got around to drinking the mulled cranberry juice and I forgot about the Brie and pate. The afternoon started later than expected because HRH and I got stuck in several kinds of traffic in different places, throwing us an hour and a half behind schedule (the music only got bumped a half-hour, but there was a lot of lost time in there that cancelled other things such as hors d’oeuvre prep). When we got home after being in traffic for two hours and fifteen minutes, we found a three-foot snowbank in front of the driveway. The snow-clearing crews had done the first ploughing but the snow-blower hadn’t come by directly afterwards to remove the banks. Scarlet pulled up right behind us and she and HRH dug out a single car-width, then each pulled into the driveway one after the other. Naturally the blower showed up once they were done. But even that couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm for playing the real, traditional Christmas carols.

Today we awoke to another foot of snow, which gave HRH the opportunity to do something he’s always wanted to do. Our back deck has an oddly-placed gate that opens out into nothing. Once upon a time there was an above-ground pool in the backyard, and the gate opened onto a set of stairs that went into it. As there hasn’t been a pool in years, the gate has been fastened shut and is essentially just a part of the railing. Today HRH got the pile of snow in the backyard up to the level of the deck, so he opened the gate, and the boy now has a one and a half-storey snow slide from the back deck to the yard. The boy is shrieking as he throws himself down it on the little saucer sled and mumbling happily to himself as he trudges back up the stairs to the deck to do it all over again.

My parents arrived safe and sound in town last night (ahead of the storm, thank goodness) and will be here in an hour or so. (Which means I should wrap presents.) My mother will arrive laden with Christmas baking and a home-made tourtiere, our standard Christmas Eve dinner. There will, of course, be wine as well, lovely lovely wine that we cannot get in this province, and crab cakes. But best of all there will be my parents, whom we do not see often enough.

Family, music, joy, and love. It’s a good time of year. Not that we don’t experience these things during the other fifty-one weeks of a year, but this is a week we can all count on. I cherish these days, and count ourselves lucky to have them.

Yule Update

I haven’t journaled since Friday, so here’s a quick recap.

Saturday dawned bright and cold. We went to the mall and got the boy out of his snowsuit and boots, and into his shoes. We waited in a very short line for Santa, who was wonderful. Liam found his little Santa hat this morning and tucked it into the tote bag we brought with us, saying that he was going to be Santa’s helper when he got there. He put it on just before he got his turn with the Santa, and told him (rather shyly, for some reason, we aren’t sure what happened to the exuberant kid who’d been waiting in line) that he wanted a train. “A train? Like a Thomas train?” said Santa. And the boy turned huge eyes upon him, as if to say, You *do* know everything!

Then we picked up another gift that I hadn’t been able to get the day before, and we did groceries, and picked up the photographic proof that the boy saw Santa. (Good grief, look at how tall he is, especially when compared to last year.) Then we went to get the tree.

The tree was a bit of a challenge this year. Usually we get our tree at Ikea, because they plant one for every one sold plus give you a twenty dollar credit toward a purchase in the new year. I thought to check the web site before we left to see what time they opened, and found a note informing shoppers that they were out of trees and were not expecting another shipment. Crisis! So we decided we’d get it at Canadian Tire, our pre-Ikea supplier. Except when we drove there after the Santa visit, we discovered that Canadian Tire wasn’t selling them at all this year. What to do? It was past lunch, and we needed a tree or the boy would move into Irreversible Cranky Mode thanks to being out among crowds all morning, an empty tummy, and the increasing need for the regular nap. So we stopped by the independent seller halfway home and discovered that their prices were entirely reasonable. I chose one and HRH and Liam carried it to the car, the boy quite proudly holding the trunk end while HRH tucking the branches under his arm. When we arrived at the car HRH said, “I’m going to put this is the trunk.” “You can’t do that,” I said. “Why not?” he said. “It’s the same size as your cello.” I squinted at the tree and began to laugh, because he was right. It was still wrapped up in netting so it slid in quite readily and all he needed to do was bend the top in around the edge of the opening.

We let it rest for a bit and melt while the boy napped. HRH found the stand, set it up so the branches could relax, and we discovered that I’d picked a very nice little tree indeed. We brought the boxes of decorations up from the garage and put the lights on. When the boy woke up he was very excited and helped hang ornaments (including the Lightning McQueen one, which he was delighted to see and kept petting while he hung other ornaments; he has been warned about playing with it and the other decorations and so far so good) until he decided to watch a movie. This was fine, as we were getting to the more delicate things anyway. In what has now become our Solstice eve tradition, once the boy was in bed HRH and I ate sushi and finished decorating the tree. I also made a pecan pie for the next day’s party, and HRH and I co-made two batches of ginger cookies. Not gingerbread, not exactly gingersnaps, just ginger cookies, made with real fresh ginger (plus some black pepper because I find everything ginger tastes better with pepper).

Solstice morning was lovely. We had the upstairs neighbours down for our traditional Yule gift exchange and brunch. Blade made his incredibly light, fluffy, and delicious cinnamon rolls, stuffed with pecans and raisins (and I ate four of them!). HRH made waffles and we broiled turkey-pork sausages. Between the rolls and the waffles, though, we opened our stockings that hang from the banister in the stairway between our flats and the bigger gifts that were under the tree. My entire stocking, and I do not lie, exaggerate, or engage in hyperbole when I say this, contained chocolate in some form or another. (Oh, wait; there was a vial of red ochre powder. But it’s the exception that proves the rule!) There were truffles, fleur de sel caramels, organic Belgian drinking chocolate (solid chocolate that must be melted before imbibed!), and there was another container of drinking chocolate under the tree. Plus I got HRH’s peppermint bark, because he knows he’s going to eat piles of treats at Christmas so I inherit his chocolate, muah-hah! Saxon Chocolates, the official sponsor of the contents of my Yule stocking, are now one of my favourite chocolatiers; I can’t wait to taste those caramels. The boy was very excited because he got a Hot Wheels dune buggy and Lego vehicle sets as well as a Thomas milk tanker he’d wanted forever (now out of production… I love eBay). Somewhere around the end of brunch it began to snow, and it wasn’t just snow, it was heavy, thick, gorgeously blizzardy snow.

Sunday afternoon we were scheduled to be at a co-coven Yule party, so I made the second dessert (the evil chocolate torte that has rapidly become my signature dessert) and my contribution to the Secret Santa cookie exchange that we do. Since my recipient specifically requested that I make corn bread if I had drawn his name, I made a batch of corn muffins while I mulled cranberry juice to take with us for ritual. Thanks to the blizzard we were late, but everything was cosy when we arrived. We laughed and talked and exchanged presents and snacked. Our hostess had found old-fashioned ribbon candy, which I haven’t seen in years! Everyone was pretty much thrilled with the gifts they got; we’re a pretty good bunch when it comes to checking wishlists and buying things that people really want. I got a copy of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s Yarn Harlot book, and the Philip Glass: Portrait album that Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà released this year, so I was filled with squee. (Thank you, Aurora!) We ate a delicious spaghetti dinner with the best meatballs I’ve ever had, and the pecan pie and chocolate torte were served for dessert. Our ritual was short and focused and also seemed to give everyone what they needed, and was sealed by toasting with the mulled cranberry cider. Then, as much as we wanted to stay, it was back home through the blizzard to relive the local grandparents of Liam duty.

Today the boy was dropped off at school, and HRH tried to do the last of the holiday shopping. We gave up in exasperation. Everyone’s getting gift certificates this year. That way everyone can choose what they want or need. I’m odd; I’m a firm believer in gift certificates being the perfect gift, but I still like to give people things that they can unwrap. Ah, well. It’s the thought that counts, and we really did try, but nothing we needed or wanted was in stock or in the right colour. The parental units will understand. (While being foiled at Chapters I did finally see two copies of Elizabeth Bear‘s latest hardcover, All the Windwracked Stars, for which I’ve been searching since its release. I know where I’m going when the 30% off hardcover sale starts post-Christmas!)

And that brings us to just about now. The sun has started its journey back to us, we have all survived the longest, darkest night, and the season now continues to unfold with light and joy and family and love. My parents spend the day with us on the 24th, and both sets of parents are here for the 25th. Tomorrow we pick up the turkey where it waits for us, and it will defrost in the garage. I’ll brine it as usual. Looks like HRH and I won’t be exchanging gift(s) (it was to have been a co-present) again this year, but it’s a minor issue. Tomorrow we have dear friends over for a session of seasonal music-making and food, and Saturday we see even more friends. Apart from today’s shopping argh, things are wonderful, and the rest of the week looks to be increasing the wonderful quotient.

In An Effort To Focus On The Good Things…

… instead of the things currently driving me up the wall, I hereby present a List of Things for Which I Am Thankful or Excited About.

1. All I need to do is proof the overdue-new-to-me assignment I was given, then I can upload it and it’s gone. (Which is what I should be doing right now, but I have to decompress first.)

2. The roads were fairly clear yesterday. Traffic was not wholly insane.

3. My cello lesson was awesome. I got one new technical exercise assigned, one new Mooney Position Pieces exercise, two new pieces in the Suzuki book (apparently I’m doing that well) (the corollary to this, of course, is serves me right for practising the next few in the book after the piece I just did in recital), and a lovely three-movement cello duet sonata thing by S. Lee (op. 60 if anyone’s keeping score) (and ooh, I just discovered that my teacher gave me the first and second sonatas, not just the first!).

4. The Murphy family (no relation, although we have messed with people’s minds that way, heh) sent HRH, the boy, and I a special gift: two of the extremely awesome cat cupcakes that Elspeth had as part of her birthday cupcake extravaganza! Mmmm, cupcakes. With icing in the middle. And fondant cats on the top.

5. The boy was remarkably good during this morning’s bank/breakfast/seasonal shopping run. (Except when he REALLY wasn’t, but we are focusing on the good things.) We really enjoyed lots of it together. He asked for pancakes for lunch and I figured why not, so he ate three (!?), asked for a glass of milk, and went for his nap mostly without acting up or major incident. (I suspect he finally figured out I was about to completely snap after having to deal with certain of his shenanigans while shopping.)

6. Two complete strangers in the dollar store passed me three loonies to buy him the three wooden train cars he was coveting. I’d told him he could choose one and he couldn’t decide. I was staggered. I mean, sure, I’ve done things like that before for others, both for strangers and friends (and on a much, much larger scale too), but I’ve never expected it back. Complete strangers? Giving me loonies? To buy the boy the trains he was stroking? They were both moms with grown-up kids in other cities who they couldn’t treat like that any more, they said. The boy, who had been behaving very well at this point of the trip, was a perfect gentleman and said thank you and told them very excitedly all about what he would do with them when he got the trains home. I guess this is life demonstrating the ‘pay it forward’ principle. Thank you, universe!

7. I found four of the main things I needed for Yule, three small things, and two unexpected very small things. What I did not get were two of the other main things because the boy was acting up and also none of the stores I went to had one particular thing in stock. I could have checked two more shops but we ran out of patience time. I knew it was time to go home when I couldn’t string a complete sentence together to talk to one of my favourite bookshop clerks, partly due to having to keep grabbing the boy before he wandered off or pulled one. more. thing. off a shelf, partly because I couldn’t think my way through an unexpected obstacle (someone’s postal code? and phone number? off the top of my head? so not going to happen).

8. We cased the mall’s Santa set-up (you think I’m kidding? The boy went all the way around the fences, running his hands along the edges and calculating how far he could reach into the fluffy fake snow, found every single entrance and exit, and I will bet you that he has it memorized) and checked the visiting hours for the Official Santa Visit tomorrow.

9. The boy got a return letter from Santa in the mail today! He probably would have been much more excited if he hadn’t been trying to open those new train cars at the same time.

10. I finished the first colour block and a third of the next block on HRH’s scarf last night while we watched some of the making-of features on the Prince Caspian DVD. One and one-third down! Eighteen and two-thirds to go!

11. We shared a nice chummy breakfast in the mostly empty food court, sharing a breakfast sandwich and some juice from Tim Horton’s while we looked at the Nutcracker decorations (or, as Liam calls them, ‘the Christmas soldiers’). And the boy learned how to make a wish and toss a penny into the fountain.

There, see? I’m in a much better mood now. It doesn’t matter that I only got some of what we went out for, and that the groceries didn’t get done at all. We had lots of fun in between the argh bits (and really, the argh was mostly an aggregate of the usual things one has to tell a three year old over and over and over, which I know perfectly well must happen because of how their brain are rewiring but still gets to me) and encountered unexpected kindnesses.

Now, I will proof that assignment and upload it, and then, Gentle Readers, I will knit some more once I’ve mixed a batch of bread dough and another of pizza dough.

The Raptures of the Season

So somewhere around now Santa will be paying the kids at the boy’s preschool a special visit. I anticipate having to corral a very excited three-year-old when he gets home.

I have a board meeting scheduled tonight, and was supposed to visit a friend off-island afterwards, but with the roads being as awful as they are I suspect the latter isn’t going to happen. Gnarr.

We have the visit to the mall Santa scheduled for first thing Saturday morning, followed by a trip to pick out the Christmas tree. What with all the snow, I think we’re starting to feel a bit more seasonal around here. I’m not sure where December went. We’ve all been forgetting the Advent calendar, so the boy currently thinks you open four doors at once. And somehow it got to be my last cello lesson of the year tomorrow, so I’ll be stopping off on my way to it in order to pick up the present I’d intended to pick up before now. (Can I combine it with a trip to the local yarn shop to buy yarn for Bodhifox’s hat and a larger set of circular needles? Hmm. Probably not, since I need to work tomorrow now thanks to the overdue-assignment-I-just-got, which means they get shunted lower on the list of priorities and to a later date, sigh.) It’s like the middle of December disappeared. And it’s finally sunk into my awareness that if Yule is on Sunday, we can’t do the Yule-connected shopping on Monday when we do the rest. Which means doing it Friday morning as soon as the shops open, because the boy and I have the day together and the car at our disposal, and because there’s no way it’s being done on the last Saturday before Christmas.

Destined For Great Things… Someday

From a recent Ravelry exchange with Ceri:

    A: This is just gorgeous: [links to a pattern for a simply stunning knitted silk top]

    Ceri: Oh, lovely! I saw this at the bottom. Gorgeous: [links to a pattern for yet another stunning knitted lace top]

    A: Stunning! I want that, too! Wah. I have not the skill to do this, and I suspect I won’t for quite some time.

    Ceri: Well, you only get better by trying harder projects, right?

    A: Well, yes, but you’re talking to someone who hasn’t successfully purled yet.

Which means there’s nowhere to go but up, really.

In the ‘overdue assignment I just got yesterday’ news, I’m about a third of the way along. Trudge, trudge, trudge…

Slightly Fuzzy Proof Of Recital Fun

My stand partner just sent me a couple of pictures taken at the recital. See? I’m smiling! I’m having fun! It’s slightly out of focus but a cheerful souvenir anyhow.

Not as much fun: Being told that you’re a week late on an assignment that you never got. No initial contact regarding the assignment, no file in the FTP folder, just an automated “you’re late” notice. My contact has apologized for the glitch but wants to know if I can do it anyway. Sigh.

Day’s Summary

My site was down earlier and I could not blog! So here’s the day so far in one shot.

8h47: I am very achy. Not as achy as yesterday, thank goodness, and my focus is better. I was so achy yesterday I couldn’t even knit. This damn freelance assignment is getting done today, come what may. Because, well, I did nothing on it yesterday. Not for lack of trying, though. And I handled lots of other things that needed to be done, many of which were overdue to be handled. None of it was stuff that would yield a paycheque, however.

9h35: I have now spent an hour and a half trying to figure out what yarn Mousme used for Bodhifox’s Ravenclaw scarf. I think I have it tracked down by comparing the recommended yarns in the pattern and the pictures she posted. The name she gave me wasn’t correct (which she suspected when giving it to me) so I went around it the long way. (No, I am not yet working. Shut up.)

10h25: Ceri has just given me the correct name of the yarn! I was completely wrong. Are those angels singing? And I’ve just found a replacement for the discontinued shade! Now to track it down in person at one of my local yarn shops, many of whom carry yarn from this manufacturer.

11h47: Oops. I overcooked my chicken nuggets and smiley fries. They probably shouldn’t shatter when you bite them.

12h31: Facebook is a good place to divert frustrated blogging energy when attempting to work-avoid.

11h30: The rest of the LCO fall concert has been posted on Youtube:

Vivaldi concerto grosso part 1 (first and second movements)
Vivaldi Concerto Grosso part 2 (third movement)
Brahms Hungarian Dances part 1 (dances 5 and 6)
Brahms Hungarian Dances part 2 (dance 1)

My comments? Nice cello work at the beginning of the fugue in the Vivaldi part 1, with a bonus shot of my face while playing at 2:42! (Actually, this video was taken from the first violin side so there’s a lot of shots of the celli from face-on through part 1 and part 2. Even though I am often blocked by the conductor.) Nice cello work through out this entire piece, really. Oh yay, we all finished the third movement together, and with conviction. Stick the landing!

Around 2:20 of the Brahms 1: Look, we have a percussionist! Just below her and to the right is the music teacher from my old high school doing a guest turn as a trumpet player for us. (I can’t rightly call him my music teacher from high school because I never took music.) One thing I really like about these videos is being able to see everyone in the orchestra t different times. Most people in the audience only see the first couple of rows, and those of us in the orchestra are usually staring at music or the conductor.

Also, I could be wrong about the order of the Brahms dances, but I’m too lazy to track down my scribble in the concert programme. There were three, and we played 1, 5, and 6, but not in that order.

15h15: FINISHED! Yes! Now to query about the slight mess the identification numbers are in and an issue with uploading the completed assignment. Also to ask about the invoice I submitted two weeks ago which hasn’t been responded to, so I have no idea if they got it or not.

Which brings us to now! I should probably think about something for dinner. No, wait; tacos. There. Assuming we have shells or tortillas for soft tacos, that is.