Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Weekend Roundup, Halloween Edition

Saturday morning we headed out to Karine and Adam’s place for a birthday party. We were the first ones there, so we blew up balloons and put up streamers while Adam got the birthday boy into his costume and Karine whipped up a fabulous brunch (first round for the kids, second round for the adults!). I was fighting a headache and realised halfway there that I’d forgotten to put on my glasses, which didn’t help at all. (I swear, I have to think of something to get around the dark-glasses-on-a-dark-dresser problem.) Almost half the invitees had to cancel due to illness, which was sad, but those in attendance had a wonderful time. There were a moments where my heart nearly broke, though; the boy came to get me at one point and said, “Mama, they’ve locked the door and won’t let me in.” The birthday boy and his school friends had closed the bedroom door against him, and he couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let him play. So I sat with him in the playroom with an arm around his shoulders and tried to think of a way to explain it but couldn’t put it into words for him, so I just hugged him and offered to help him build with the toys at our feet. But then there was a stack of birthday cupcakes and presents, so everything was all right.

We headed home and it took the boy a while to settle for nap, of course. When he woke up HRH had hollowed out the pumpkins in preparation for carving them, and we got the boy to draw the faces for them. The results were great!

We packed up the pumpkins and headed out to the local grandparents’ house, where the boy does his trick or treating. Except it wasn’t that easy. The transport ministry had closed down half the Mercier bridge, so there was a single lane going each way. We figured it would just take a bit longer to get across, but when we encountered a staggering lineup at our alternate entrance (our regular one was closed) we tried a second, then a third, and discovered that most of the entrances to the bridge were closed, and all the traffic was being funneled through LaSalle onto one on-ramp and taking this way would eat up an insane amount of time. So after forty-five minutes of being five minutes away from our house in various directions, HRH decided to take the Champlain bridge and drive all the way around the south shore of the river to get to Chateauguay. We got to my inlaws’ house an hour and a half after we left. Normally, it’s a fifteen minute trip.

Anyway, tempers were tight and gas was getting dangerously low when we go to the Champlain, but right then the sun came out. It had been an extremely windy, rainy day up till then, but the sun suddenly broke through at just the right angle for magic to happen. As we crossed the Champlain we saw the fattest rainbow I’ve ever seen grow from the opposite shore and reach up to the clouds. I rolled down the window and took a photo:

Then we looked in the rearview mirror, and the sky behind us was on fire. Copper and gold and blazing apricot-bronze; absolutely incredible. When we got across the river I rolled down the window again (rather dangerous in the high winds, whoa) and took photos looking back at Montreal:

We had to stop for gas in La Prairie, but after that it was relatively smooth sailing, and we got to the boy’s grandparents’ door just before six-thirty. After a quick gulp of alcohol to soothe the stress we’d incurred on the way and much admiring of the decor there we got the boy out the door. He loves dressing up, he loves the decorations, he loves the candy… he is not such a big fan of older kids in scary costumes. In fact, after the first house he started digging his heels in because there were two teenagers right behind us wearing horrific rubber masks whom he saw every time he left a door, and on the corner he stopped and started crying, asking to go back home to Grandma and Papa because he was scared of costumes. The woman in the next house heard him and came out to talk to him, and she jollied him up nicely, getting him to come to her front door to see her decorations, and talking to him about the scary costumes. It turned out she worked at the local elementary school and knew exactly how to handle it. (Another example of how what one’s parents tell you doesn’t count, but hearing the same stuff from a different adult is OK.) The boy left in a much more cheerful mood, and I suspect the woman talked to the teenagers behind us because at the next house they stopped to talk to the boy and lifted their masks so he could see they were just people underneath. He was better then, and got to a whole two more houses before saying he was tired and wanted to go home. So this year he hit a total of five houses, three or four fewer than last year.

At home was more fun for everyone, actually, because my mother-in-law had finger food for us as well as more alcohol, and the boy had a delightful time answering the door in his costume and handing out candy. My father-in-law kept slipping more candy into our bags as well! It was a perfect Halloween night: windy, not too cold, piles of wet leaves all over the ground, with wisps of clouds racing across an almost perfectly full moon.

I slept horribly that night, despite being in a wonderful mood going to bed. I got two hours of sleep before midnight, then woke up so very completely at midnight that I had to get up. I knitted Gran’s scarf till two, spun some of the dye sample I’d done a while ago, spun some Aran-weight singles and plied them, then took some herbal sleeping pills and went back to bed around four. I got one hour of sleep before the boy woke us up at five, because of of course the clocks had gone back the night before and his body knew it was six. He tried to snuggle with us but wouldn’t stop squirming or talking so HRH put him back to his own bed, and I slept on and off till nine.

We went out to vote in the municipal election at ten, and wow, worst voting experience ever. The gym in which they were supposed to set up this polling station had been damaged by the wind and rain the previous day so it was squeezed into a cafeteria area instead, and the insensitivity of those waiting was just boggling. It took about forty-five minutes before our station was clear, and a good half of us waiting were polite, but the other half were just asses and made things miserable for everyone else… and this was within the first half-hour of the polls being open. The abuse the volunteers were receiving was dreadful. Now, okay, smaller area, perhaps not as many booth open per polling station number, but at the same time every single person had to unfold five ballots, mark them, and fill them in again. With only one person per booth allowed in the room at a time, yeah, that’s going to slow things down. Anyway, no one I voted for was elected, a result that I fully expected.

As the voting process took twice as long as we’d expected it to take, HRH pretty much had to leave as soon as we walked home because it was open house day at school. He took the bus in while the boy and I stayed home for lunch and a rest. We drove in after the boy’s nap to pick HRH up, and discovered that the open house had been insanely busy and successful.

Dinner was remarkably delicious homemade spaghetti sauce made from the garden tomatoes I’d canned two months ago, and then I headed off for a cello lesson. These are getting better, although I’m still having moments where I freeze up or can’t work through a small problem. My teacher had to remind me about things we’d worked on months ago — caterpillars, the little bounce in the shift that provides shock absorption so the shift doesn’t sound harsh — but for once my right hand was behaving. So now my focus is on smooth shifts, elegant ones, done at the same speed my bow hand is moving at instead of rushing the shift.

In Which She Rubs Her Eyes And Wonders Where The Time Went

Halloween tomorrow. I’m fine with that. It’s the fact that the next day is November that’s currently skewing my worldview.

I tend to journal about what excites or interests me, and I know I blog to primarily record things for myself rather than to entertain readers, but lately I feel that all I do is type out what we did on the weekend and post yarn stuff. I’d rather spin than write it all out. Although I should write it out; I should write it out differently than I’m doing, too, with more info about how/what I did so it’s there for me later. I’m taking notes in a notebook, but the online journal is where I go when I need to look back and see how I felt about it all. Ceri helped me figure out that if I journal about what interests and excites me that translates to my writing and entertains my readership regardless of what the subject is, which helped a lot. So now I don’t feel bad about rambling on and on about yarns and swatches and ratios.

(Also, if I journal more often instead of wibbling about boring people by nattering about fibre and posting pictures of yarn, then my posts won’t be unending screeds that sum up three or more days. There’s incentive. The longer the post, the longer it takes to write it up.)

On Tuesday Jan came by mid-afternoon, and we hit the yarn store then came home and knitted together for a little bit. Jan said something quite perceptive that I hadn’t considered before: decision-making takes up energy and effort, and if you work at home you’re self-directed, which means your entire day is composed of making decisions that you can’t hand off to a colleague or boss or underling. Add housework and meal prep and such to that, and no wonder I’m fried at the end of the day. She’s really good at laying things out in a sensible fashion so that I gain insight into my situation. She also brought us a chicken from her flock, butchered and skinned and frozen by her and t!, as a thank you for helping raise the coop this past spring. I’m looking forward to making a stew or something with it.

On Wednesday M. came over for our first rehearsal together of the Mozart duet we’re playing for the recital in December. Nothing like a practice session with your duet partner to emphasize that you’re really not as bad as you think you are. I sounded much better and steadier than I thought I did, with pretty good string crossings. This piece is all about waves and flow and steadiness, so I’m further along than I thought. There are still places that go ‘crunch’ so there is lots of room for improvement, but I felt a lot better about it than I did going in to the rehearsal. Orchestra that night wasn’t a compete disaster either: I got some of the harder bits but flaked out on the easier patches at the end of the Beethoven. I hate doing that. Just under one month till the fall concert, too.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a secondhand lazy kate extender and two bobbins for my spinning wheel listed for sale on an e-list. The price was unbeatable (everything plus shipping for the price of two new bobbins!) so I jumped on it, as I’ve been wanting more bobbins and a way to start making yarn with more than two plies. I sent the seller a money order and as of yesterday my new-to-me toys are officially on their way, and the seller wrapped them in a highly recyclable packing material… roving! Wow! I was looking forward to it before, but now I’m even more excited to see what kind of fibre is inside, and how it will spin up. The seller raises goats, so there may be some of that to be packing material, but no matter what I get I’ll be thrilled. Sometimes people are just wonderful, and I need to remember things like this to offset the overwhelming and ongoing evidence that humanity sucks. The parcel should arrive via UPS around the 11th of November.

I got the swatch pics of the two handspun knit samples up on Ravelry yesterday. It amuses me that the colours are inverted. (Also, go self-striping dye job!) This is why we swatch: The handspun n-ply for Gran looks smashing in the lace pattern on the left, and just kind of pained in the handspun scarf swatch on the right. Pics:

I tried swatching the handspun scarf pattern again on size 10s, but no, the yarn is just all wrong for the pattern. The swatch is stiff and a bit scratchy. I love the pattern, but it needs a fluffier, thicker yarn, possibly in earth tones. (What, me planning more spinning? Why would I do that?) So the lace pattern it is. I ran the yarn back through the ballwinder and it loosened up a bit as well as growing a bit softer; this is a trick I will remember for the future. (Surveying my Ravelry project list, I wonder when I became a lace knitter? Stupidly easy lace, but it’s lace all the same.)

The kerfuffle about needle size for this handspun scarf project (I don’t have size 8s; or I do, but it’s an Addi Turbo circular and I hate working with the Addis, I should sell them; I have size 8 Harmony tips but both cables are being used; what happens if I use my size 6 needles, oh, ick; what’s the next size I have close to 8s, the circular 10s? those don’t work either, argh) made me realise that while I can theoretically just go out and buy the confirmed size of needles I need for projects as they arise, it’s rather stressful for swatching to determine the correct size required when one does not yet have the needles, and now holds up the entire yarn production process until I can swatch to figure out how to finish plying the yarn. This led me to remembering that once Halloween is over there will be family members asking me what I want for Yule, which then led to exploring what equipment for knitting/spinning I don’t have and want. First up were needles, because if the project doesn’t call for 10s, 8s, or 4s I’m pretty sunk. So I checked KnitPicks and lo and behold, the sets of Harmony needles I love to work with are on sale till 4th January 2010! And as I need both a set of 10″ straights and a set of interchangeable circular tips and cables, I’m putting both on my list. If I don’t get them for Yule I’m buying them myself because that price is astonishing. (The straight set works out to less than $7 per pair, and they’re incredibly good needles.)

And this got me to thinking about what kind of yarn I want to work on. More plies theoretically mean thinner singles, and to make a thinner single one needs to use the highest speed whorl on one’s bobbin, slow take-up, and treadle faster to get as much twist into the thinly drafted fibre as possible. The highest speed ratio on my wheel is 10.5 revolutions of the bobbin to one revolution of the drive wheel. Now, that’s not bad, but it can be done faster, and Louet makes a high-speed bobbin with a highest speed of 15.1:1. So I pinged my eternally helpful local yarn store Ariadne Knits to ask about the high-speed flyer/bobbin set, and it looks like it’s almost $300. So I have quashed that plan. The high-speed flyer looks identical to the basic flyer with a 3/8″ orifice instead of the 1/2″ one my wheel has, and the set looks like it comes with the high-speed fatcore bobbins, which are twenty dollars more expensive than the regular high-speed bobbins (which sell for same price as the basic bobbins). Twenty dollars for a clear plastic tube that goes around the bobbin shaft to enlarge the core? I don’t think so. I’ll get a plain high-speed bobbin to test out, and use the trick I found online: I’ll slip some foam pipe insulation over the regular highspeed core to make it an instant fatcore. (In case you’re wondering, the fatter core reduces strain on the fine yarn being wrapped around it and reduces the chance of it snapping. We’re talking some pretty fine thread-like yarn, here.)

So yes, I am looking at making finer yarns, because I seem to have somehow become a lace knitter (or so the current lineup of works in progress on my Ravelry page would suggest), and an increasing number of my friends are getting into knitting socks. So what did I do last night instead of putting myself to bed where I could read until I fell asleep? I pulled out a half-ounce of fibre to see how thinly I could spin it. I removed the brake band entirely, set the drive band on the smallest whorl, and treadled relatively quickly while drafting out about five fibres from the narrow strip I tore off the combed top. The idea is to let the yarn sit and gather as much twist as possible before allowing it to wind onto the bobbin so the yarn doesn’t just drift apart when you pull on it, but not for so long that it overtwists and starts kinking back on itself. It took about an hour to do an sixteenth of an ounce, but I did it. (No wonder people use higher-ratio bobbins to increase production speed; at this rate it would take forever to spin enough for something like a shawl.)

I may continue it today, just for kicks, in between drafting the programme notes for the upcoming fall concert.

And remember: The clocks go back between Saturday night and Sunday morning! So when you come home from trick or treating, or your Samhain ritual, or whatever party you’ve attended (or, you know, when you just turn out your light at the end of a perfectly unusual evening) don’t forget to reset your clocks.

Halloween 2009

School party tomorrow. Here’s who will be in attendance.

He’s already planning to save the attending princesses from dragons and supervillains. Never hurts to be prepared.

The sheer glee as he put it all on and ran to a mirror was very gratifying. He kept backing away and running heroically at the mirror to watch himself rush to save someone. Then we had to place one of his stuffed rabbits in distress ( “Help! Help! I’m trapped in a building on fire!”) so Superman could run into the room, dive onto the table, scoop up the bunny, and roll off the other side in a dramatic rescue. Very impressive.

Gnarr

This morning I am on a homicidal rampage against HP.

When I got the Mac my printer worked, yay (unlike my previous Windows PCs where I had to install sixty trillion things to get my peripherals to work); no need to install all the HP software that takes up huge amounts of space and that I don’t use. And then I said to someone I’d scan and e-mail them a printed photo. For some reason, that didn’t work at all. The printer says it isn’t connected to the computer when I try to initiate the scan from it; the printer says there’s no scanner hooked up when I try to go at it the other way around. This is hunh?-worthy, because my printer is an all-in-one unit, so if the printer is connected and works, then the scanner is also connected and should work. So last week I finally downloaded the Mac software from HP and installed it. The scan worked. And then the computer froze upon reboot the next morning. But since then there hasn’t been a problem, not that I’ve tried another scan.

Till this morning, when HRH asked me to scan and send an image to him at work.

Nothing works. Nothing. I tried going at it from sixteen different directions. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling four times; now the software and drivers won’t even install without crashing. I downloaded non-HP software that claims it works with my scanner; it doesn’t recognize it.

My research online tells me that an awful lot of people using Macs have the same problem with HP printers of all models and types, despite HP claiming to be fully Mac-compatible. Apparently HP is dreadful in general with their drivers, but even more so with Macs.

Gods-damned HP. Why do I keep buying their products? Why? (Because they’re cheap. And I’m paying for it in other ways.)

This means I may need to need to buy or acquire a third printer within four years. I am not pleased. Although HP was so ashamed of the bashlash they experienced upon the release of Snow Leopard because they’d utterly failed to match the upgrade (they actually told people to buy new printers instead!) that they decided that it would be a good move to develop Snow Leopard-compatible drivers after all, and finally made sure the scanner part of the all-in-one units like the one I have would actually be supported, after ages of ignoring them in the driver updates. So if I upgrade to Snow Leopard, the printer and scanner should work. This is worth thinking about, as Snow Leopard is only $35 and by all reports is very shiny and exciting. Still; I shouldn’t have to upgrade my OS from a perfectly functional release to get my scanner to work. HP should be releasing fully functional updated drivers concurrent with every previous OS upgrade instead of crippled ones that only address one of the functions in an all-in-one.

I can’t even spin to relax because I don’t have spare bobbins, and I can’t go ahead and ply the stuff I’ve got because I still don’t know if I’m using the n-ply or the two-ply for Devon’s wrap.

I had Girl Guide cookies for breakfast. I suspect I’m going to make chocolate chip shortbread cookies very soon, and probably focaccia for lunch. Also, if it’s going to go up to 14 today, would the sun please come out?

rawr rawr rawr. and grump.

Maybe I’ll retake all those awful swatch photos while listening to decent music. I’m not calm enough to open my new freelance assignment and work on it just yet.

Weekend Roundup

My fibre arts stuff is detailed elsewhere, so this will be brief:

Saturday:
AM: Awful cello lesson. It’s been a while since I almost broke into tears. I’m at the I-can’t-do-anything-and-I-don’t-understand-why point.

PM: Shopping: Errand-running after the boy’s nap, mostly for Hallowe’en related itemry. We get a turtleneck and tights for the boy’s Superman costume (pattern plus fabric = more expensive). No rainboots, but we do buy him a new pair of winter boots he needs (size 11, yikes).

Night: I finish my green lace scarf after much hair-tearing, rending of clothes, and gnashing of teeth.

Sunday:
AM: Another shopping run. I become very annoyed when the kitchen scale on half-price at Zellers is nowhere to be found in the store. We do the groceries, then head out to the farm stand on the south shore to pick up our pumpkins and a whack of veggies. The farmer slips the boy some Hallowe’en candy, and a pair of the best apples ever to HRH and I. On the way home we periodically exclaim anew at how awesome these apples were. Seriously; best apples ever.

PM: I knit up the first swatch for my goddaughter’s wrap. Then I have to flee for my monthly group cello class, where I have fun but yet again can’t play to save my life It’s not even the playing that goes wrong; it’s intonation, timing, trying to figure out where I am note-wise and how to fix it so I can blend, and I can’t. I know this must mean my brain is working stuff out, but while it’s happening I can’t stand a single sound I make, and so I’m not terribly inclined to make sound at all.

In Which She Natters About Everything For A Bit

Oh, Mr. Mailman, you do love me. I was beginning to think you didn’t care. I know I don’t order stuff any more — I’m not writing a contracted book and so I’m not ordering used books I can’t get through the library, and I don’t have the money to buy fun stuff. But today you brought me a little freelance cheque. This was a pleasant thing to offset no mail at all this week so far. That was sad. Although no mail means no bills, so there is an up side to it all.

My current freelance assignment is going swimmingly. It all flows and mostly lacks spelling and grammar errors. It’s refreshing to be able to read a story that hangs together with well-written characters and dialogue. The last little sixty-page one that was supposed to be easy after the four-hundred page disaster ended up being just as much of a disaster, as it wasn’t even an outline. It’s really, really hard to supportively review something that essentially isn’t there.

Because work was going so well yesterday I had the opportunity to knit the boy a hat. This was supposed to be a Yule gift, but we discovered yesterday morning that he has no hats that fit him beyond his ball caps, so it got a bit more critical. I knitted the whole thing before he got home, tried it on him to size and place (somewhat, er, freeform) earflaps, and he fell in love with it. He kept thanking me and running to look at himself in the mirror. What I haven’t told him is that I found an excellent web site that turns pictures into knitting charts, and I had planned to double-stitch the Autobot symbol on the front for him before I gave it to him. As he has absconded with the thing, I shall stitch it Friday night after he’s in bed, and leave it for him to find Saturday morning.

Orchestra was good last night. At least, it sucked less that it had for the past three weeks, so things must be better. I still need to work on some of the Beethoven trouble spots. Some I have down, others I don’t (which is an incredibly helpful statement, I know). We got to play the Schubert, which was nice because I could play it with no trouble even without practice, and we sight-read the first movement of the second Weber clarinet concerto (well, it shouldn’t have been sight-reading, because I’ve had it for two weeks) and that wasn’t as much of a disaster as it could have been once I remembered that we were in E flat major. It always sounds so wrong until you hear everyone else playing.

Today is laundry and bread-baking (both already on; the freelance work-at-home life is such a glamorous one), and then when I’ve polished my report on this latest ms. I’m going to finish spinning the singles for the wrap. I have about a half-ounce of fibre left, and I’m so close to being done. Of course then I get to ply it, which is another kettle of fish entirely. I discovered last week that I need a second swift, because having a skeinwinder is all well and good, but once you’ve washed a skein you need to unwind it and wind it on again to measure the length properly. The good news is I can build one with jumbo TinkerToys, so I don’t need to buy one. (Now we just need to find the TinkerToys and convince the boy it’s Not To Play With once it’s built; he can have the bits I don’t use. Or, you know, I could ask the husband to knock one together in his copious spare time at work. Along with those extra bobbins.)

Actually, I’ve been wondering if I can’t use the old textile mill quill-style pirn bobbins for storage of singles and plying, assuming I can get a bunch of the inexpensively at flea markets or some such place. I know the holes don’t go very deep, but HRH could drill them a bit deeper. The trick would be winding the singles onto the quill bobbins, but if one located an old manual bobbin-winder, one could do it. Theoretically. (Oh, look, they make new ones, but good grief they’re expensive, even the manual ones. Wow. And new storage bobbins, too, but those are much less fun. )

Which brings me to the discovery that the great wheel my mum owned for years and recently placed in Ceri’s sunroom was retrofitted to be a bobbin-winder. The spindle doesn’t extend out to spin off the tip; it’s been hacked so that it lifts out of the brackets to enable a bobbin to be slipped on, and the drive band runs the spindle/bobbin combo to wind yarn on. Apparently it isn’t uncommon for great/walking wheels to be kitbashed in this way. Gods, I love the Internet. People can share so much information.

Right. On to that work thing. After another load of laundry and punching down the bread.

Weekend Roundup, Thanksgiving Edition

Friday night I had a good cello lesson. We cleared up some fingerings in the Beethoven symphony, then I said I wanted to work on recital stuff instead of my lesson stuff. I’d been playing on Thursday night with the practice mute (a good hour and a quarter of practice, hurrah, although it meant I didn’t sleep well) and was struggling with making an Air by Bach sound properly smooth, and I’d worked on the Mozart duet and Ashokan Farewell too. I also finally said I needed to walk away from the Berceuse, because I was fighting it so much that it was causing more problems that it was solving. My teacher said that leaving it wasn’t a problem; we’d revisit it later. Although, she added, I’d been making progress on it, even though I couldn’t tell. The Mozart duet had good parts in it, and I have notes to help me focus on string crossings and smoother shifts. We worked out better fingerings for the Bach that made it so much easier, so I’m feeling better about that too. I don’t feel as overwhelmed by it all any more.

Saturday morning I took the boy out to run errands with me. We dropped some books off at the Melange and bought two candles, one for Thanksgiving (the boy chose ice blue) and one for Halloween (the boy chose orange, naturally). Then we went to our local yarn shop, and I’d mistimed travel slightly; we arrived just on the stroke of eleven, and it hadn’t opened yet. The boy stood there and burst into tears, and wouldn’t listen to me when I said the we’d just sit and wait; he thought we were going home. (Yes, my son gets upset when the yarn store is closed. Of course, there is a toy fire truck there, and he loves the spinning wheel and the containers of yarn, but still.) I’d managed to get him to sit on the step with me and look at the new drawing app on my iPod when MA arrived with her keys and let us right in, bless her. “Are we going to be here for a long time, Mama?” he asked hopefully at one point. I told him that I hadn’t brought knitting or spinning to work on, and that we’d have to go home eventually for lunch anyhow, but I love that he was hoping we’d be there for a while. (It may have been directly connected to the fun he was having pushing one of the wheeled storage containers of yarn around like a train, of course.) We got all the fibre I needed to spin for various projects, plus a skein of yarn for another Yule gift and one to knit a hat with earflaps for the boy. Somehow my list of things to make for Yule has tripled in the last two weeks. I officially have what Ceri calls a Knitlist. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Saturday morning was overcast and gloomy, but the clouds were swept away for a bright though windy afternoon, beautiful weather for the wedding we were to attend on the south shore. Weddings of friends are always wonderful, because you get to see people you love in formal dress, something we don’t do enough of. I had the pleasure of handling the cufflinks for both the groom and best man, and assisted Jan with boutonnieres for the wedding party. (We were both on site early because t! was celebrating the wedding with assistance from HRH.) Lovely ceremony written by t!, sat with excellent people, touching speeches made by the best man and the maid of honour, and generally an all-round pleasant time. I want copies of the pictures others were taking because my own camera sat in my bag under the table. I think I was photographed more than I’ve ever been photographed at a wedding that wasn’t my own. Or maybe I was just standing with members of the wedding party a lot. We left around nine once the lights had gone down and the loud music had begun. There had been somewhat loud music throughout the meal as well, and I found myself kind of shouting to people across the table. Something irritated my throat in the middle of the meal and I had a coughing fit, which ruined my voice for the next day. All in all, though, we were with excellent friends celebrating a wonderful day, and it was a good time.

Sunday morning went out to Chapters to pick up the new TMBG kids’ album. I had deliberately waited a month and checked stock online to make sure it would be there. Well, it wasn’t. They looked on shelves, they looked in back, they finally concluded that it was somewhere in one of the ten pallets in back that had technically been received (i.e., someone had entered ISBNs, titles, and quantities from an invoice) but not unpacked. And the senior clerk I spoke with admitted that they were behind, and that it would take some time before those pallets were opened and shelved properly. I was thoroughly unimpressed. This isn’t the first time I’ve run into the “in stock but not on the shelf” issue at this shop, but it’s the first time they admitted to being so far behind that they couldn’t find it in the warehouse.

So the boy was disappointed (as were HRH and I, because we love TMBG’s kid stuff, too). Another book I wanted was also not on the shelves, despite there being twelve available according to stock check. I did pick up the copy of Amy King’s Spin Control I’d intended to come home with, though. From now on, I will call in advance, as much as I hate phones.

We did the grocery shopping, then I chatted with my mum and spun up another ounce of the yarn for my goddaughter’s Yule gift. We made cookies late in the afternoon, then I put the tiny cross-rib roast we’d bought in the oven for a somewhat unplanned Thanksgiving meal at home. It turned out perfectly, meltingly smooth, served with roast potatoes and carrots from the garden, drizzled with a separately-made onion gravy. Before we began to eat we lit the ice blue candle the boy had chosen for Thanksgiving and I asked if he wanted to say anything special. “No,” he said, “just Happy Thanksgiving.” I said I was thankful for food on the table, family and friends, and the roof over our heads, and the ability to enjoy our many hobbies and activities. And then we swooned with yum at the incredibly delicious food on our plates. The boy patted my hand during dinner and said, “I love you, Mama. Thank you for making this dinner for us.” He had seconds of potatoes and carrots, and ate every single piece of roast beef on his plate, impressing both of us. Oddly enough, he refused gravy. Once upon a time he wouldn’t eat anything unless it had gravy, so lo, we have come so very far. We’ve also come far in the successful roast beef department. Pretty much every roast I’ve done in the past few years hasn’t turned out the way I wanted it to for some reason. In fact, this one nearly didn’t; after roasting it for twice as long as I was supposed to it still wasn’t cooked through, so I hacked it into three pieces, laid the less cooked sides up, and roasted it at a higher temperature for ten minutes. The result was sheer perfection, so hurrah for my experience and instincts working together to actually get dinner on the table.

Once he was in bed I checked e-mail and discovered that I’d won… a copy of Amy King’s Spin Control in an online draw. (Insert whacking of forehead here. I am very pleased, of course, but also abashed.) So I will be returning the copy I bought and using the refund against the purchase of The Intentional Spinner, which they’ll need to order in for me. Not only that, I got a message from Aurora saying that she’d been in Vermont for Thanksgiving and had found a case of Vanilla Coke, and was bringing it home for me. An embarrassment of riches!

Monday we lazed about in the morning. HRH and the boy built a fort with a quilt and some chesterfield cushions, and the boy set up a Thanksgiving dinner inside it for all his stuffed animals with great enthusiasm. While he napped I spun up another ounce of yarn for the wrap. After his rest we went to HRH’s parents’ house for the official family Thanksgiving dinner, where I got another six inches of lace scarf knitted before dinner. Dinner itself was spectacular. The boy ate a staggering amount of turkey, half of it from the carving board before dinner itself, and the other half from drumsticks that he brandished like a pirate. He tried the stuffing and the purple cauliflower and passed on both of them, but ate several carrot sticks.

All in all, a lovely holiday weekend. Now we turn to winterizing, putting plastic over the windows and making things as efficient as possible. HRH put in the second outside window in our bedroom, and took out the screens in the boy’s room. We’d turned the central kitchen heater on last week and used the ceiling fan to circulate the warmer air when it went on, but yesterday we set all the room thermostats at 15 degrees, just to make sure things didn’t get too chilled. The outside gardens need to be fully cut back, and the compost spread over the beds, too. Snow has been spotted in the air not too far north.