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Weekend Roundup, Imbolc Edition

Yes, I missed last weekend’s roundup. I’ll do it eventually and backdate it [It’s done, here.] The most important bit was the spinning 102 class, and I have that in note form written to people who asked about it via e-mail.

This was a fun weekend, but draining. Friday I went out to lunch with MLG, where I had truly delicious braised lamb shanks and a pint of cider, and then as the weather was lovely, I walked him to class. It was a tutorial, actually, but wow did that feel odd; I’ve been out of school for a decade (my shiny new MA is no longer so very shiny or new) and the university neighbourhood has been polished and reworked, and two new metal and glass buildings have sprung up where there were once boarded-up lots.

(Many joke intros ran through my head on the way home. “So a cellist and a drummer walk into a pub…” was one of them. So was “So an EngLit MA and an MBA guy walk into a pub…”)

On the way home I stopped to deposit Emily’s second cheque (so close to the end of this project!) and pick up immediately necessary groceries, and I swung into Winners to do a quick look round because I could, and I so rarely do. While there I saw a pair of burgundy shoes on for half-price and wavered for a moment, but then told myself sternly that I shouldn’t even try them on and left.

Saturday morning we all went out on errands. While out we finally found an Anakin figure as well as an Ahsoka figure, and the boy was thrilled to finally have people to fly his starfighter. We also picked up a new Scrabble game, as ours has gone AWOL (most likely to people who love it and use it frequently), as the boy saw me playing an online Scrabble-clone game on the iTouch with Emily and various other people, and was frustrated because he couldn’t play. I promised that a real board would be easier to use, and it was. He loves it, and calls it Scramble, and we got about five rounds in before he decided he’d had enough.

Saturday afternoon Ceri called and asked if I wanted to go over and play, so I packed the spinning wheel, my Phat Fiber box to show her, and my cotton, and off I went when the boy went down for his nap. We had lots of fun, although spinning the cotton continues to elude me. I tried shredding it and spinning from a cloud and it sort of worked, but it keeps drifting apart. I’m trying to find the sweet spot between overspinning it and getting it to hold together, and it’s just not happening. I saw another video where a woman was long-draw drafting right from the unsplit roving; I think I’ll try working on that again, since the cloud doesn’t work, and the splitting roving to narrower pieces doesn’t quite work either.

I soothed my annoyed spirit by making my first foray into the Phat Fiber samples and spinning a quarter-ounce of lovely dyed Merino wool from Ambrosia and Bliss. It was my first experience with Merino, and I suddenly see why people like or hate it it so much. It’s very spongy, with lots of tiny crimp; quite unlike the smooth BFL and Corriedale I’ve been working with. It made a lovely chain-plied 20 wpi yarn:


Why, yes, 20 wpi is heavy laceweight/really light fingering weight, thank you for noticing. And for noticing that it’s chain-plied, too, which means there’s three strands in that plied yarn. You’re very kind. I draw ever closer to confidently spinning the gorgeous Lorna’s Laces fibre Ceri bought for me my spinning wheel when I got it. And while taking pictures of the yarn on the bobbin I accidentally discovered a setting on my camera that I dubbed Awesome Yarn Shot, which does excellent close-ups. It’s so much better than the so-called macro setting, which just gives big blurs. Both those pictures are taken with the Awesome Yarn Shot setting. Go on, click View Image to embiggen the picture of the skein and see how lovely the yarn is. That’s a standard-size business card with it. (Yes, there’s a bit of variation in the grist of the yarn but hey, it’s my first Merino.)

Sunday morning we headed over to the Preston-LeBlanc household for an Imbolc brunch. Things were a bit rocky because the boy woke up at 4:30 and decided to come snuggle with us, and I didn’t have the energy to march him back to his own bed. I should have, because he squirmed and kicked and played with cats and talked and made everyone tremendously grouchy, so when he said at 5:30 that he was hungry and wanted breakfast both HRH and I had had quite enough. HRH fed him a piece of bread with some juice, and told him to go back to bed. The deal was he could sleep with us if he slept on HRH’s side of the bed and not the middle, and lay very still so that he’d actually fall asleep. This happened, thank goodness, and we all got another hour of dozing in. Once up, I made a fabulous pesto-cheddar quiche with a homemade pie shell, and off we went. I also packed up the wrap I’ve been working on for my eldest goddaughter since, what, October?, having sewn the buttons on the night before. We were greeted with mimosas and happy people, and the morning was subsequently wonderful. Our plates were full of raspberries, blueberry scones with crumb topping, and bacon, and quiche, and it was all fabulous. We made Brigid’s crosses with pipe cleaners afterward, and then we gave my goddaughter her wrap. She loved it, and I wish I’d been less tired by that point so I could have made more of a fuss over her. The new batteries I’d put in the camera that morning turned out to be dead, so I took photos with their camera and will post them when they get to me.

When we got home we fed the boy and then we all napped. After the boy’s nap we went out to pick up the groceries we needed for the rest of the week, and thanks to the encouragement of fellow Twitterers I went back and tried those shoes on. They’re so incredibly comfortable, and both HRH and the boy approved, so I bought them. And finally, we went to the library, where I collected the new Tracy Chevalier book Remarkable Creatures and the latest 44 Scotland Street book by Alexander McCall Smith, The Unbearable Lightness of Scones. And I snagged the Clone Wars Visual Dictionary for the boy, which interests both HRH and I so much that we may have to own a copy of it.

The boy clamoured for Scrabble game before dinner, so all three of us installed ourselves at the kitchen table at his direction and we played a really solid game. The boy did lose interest again after five rounds, but he brought toys into the kitchen and played while HRH and I kept going, and we played his turn for him too.

It was, overall, a lovely weekend, although I was wiped by Sunday noon.

Web-Wide Poetry Reading In Honour Of Brigid

The week of Imbolc continues with today’s Web-wide poetry reading in honour of Brigid, the Pan-Celtic goddess of inspiration and poets, among other things. Here is my offering.

    Winter Heavens
    Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
    Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.
    It is a night to make the heavens our home
    More than the nest whereto apace we strive.
    Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,
    In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.
    They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:
    The living throb in me, the dead revive.
    Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,
    Life glistens on the river of the death.
    It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt,
    Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
    Of radiance, the radiance enrings:
    And this is the soul’s haven to have felt.
    ~ George Meredith

Help weave the web by posting your own poem (original or otherwise) on your blog, journal, Facebook page, line by line on Twitter, or somewhere online (who says you can’t write one out and pin it to a bulletin board at work, or tape it to your office door?) today, February 2. Leave links to it in the comments area of other posted poems; follow the other links you find online to read a vast woven web of poetry today.

Oak’s original invitation:

5th annual Cyberspace Poetry Slam for Brigid
Feel free to copy the following to your blog/facebook/website and spread
the word. Let poetry bless the blogosphere once again!

WHAT: A Bloggers (Silent) Poetry Reading

WHEN: Anytime February 2, 2010

WHERE: Your blog

WHY: To celebrate the Feast of Brigid, aka Groundhog Day

HOW: Select a poem you like – by a favorite poet or one of your own – to
post February 2nd.

RSVP: If you plan to publish, feel free to leave a comment and link on
this post. Last year when the call went out there was more poetry in
cyberspace than I could keep track of. So, link to whoever you hear
about this from and a mighty web of poetry will be spun.

Please pass this invitation on…

Hail, Poetry! Let the web be woven!

Weekend Roundup, Spinning Workshop Edition

Saturday morning I had a really good cello lesson. We worked on the Boccherini a bit, a Mooney etude, and spent the last half of the class looking at fingerings for orchestra at my request. I was rather chuffed to see that about half my fingerings were right. My teacher, bless her, has said that we’re going to have an easy recital slate because we have so much to do for orchestra. I was in a great mood when I got up, I was in a great mood there, and in a great mood when I left, which is really encouraging. The incredible sun helped a lot, I am thinking. I stopped by the Courtnell-St.Martin abode to pick up what Tal called a medieval yarn torture device, which, as I suspected, turned out to be an antique skein winder. It needs some TLC in the way of repair and cleaning, but it will be very nice once it’s back in working order. They piled me with books as I left, so I now have the first three volumes of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series to read. I then went to Ceri’s, as I had my Phat Fiber box to show her, but I was met at the door by Scott, who told me that Ceri was in bed with a bad migraine (are there such things as good migraines?), so our planned knitting meeting and tea-time would have to be postponed.

Sunday morning the boy and I headed out to the monthly pagan playgroup. After a week at home I was taking him come what may, even though he still had the occasional chesty cough. Their craft was a north/Earth collage to match the other cardinal direction/element collages they’d done: we cut out a conifer-shaped piece of green construction paper and a picture of a stag, which the boy coloured brown very carefully then glued on the tree, finishing it with a roundish dab of gold glitter above the stag. His crafting abilities have really progressed in the year we’ve been attending the playgroup. I very proudly taped it to his door to complete the elemental set when we got home.

Sunday afternoon was my Spinning 102 class with Leslie, and as Bonnie theorised would happen, I discovered that I am much more advanced than I thought I was. Although it was worth the time and money just to sit with other people and spin, and talk about the different ways we each had of doing things. I got to try fibres I’d never tried before (pure alpaca, Rambouillet, carbonized bamboo, mohair locks) and preparations I’d never tried before (real rolags, batts, the locks in a cloud), and it was so useful to have someone more experienced look at what I was doing and say that it was fine (the hand motions, not the yarn, although that was fine too!). The only really new technique I learned was spinning from the fold, and the only real ‘aha’ kind of tip I picked up was to spin it off the knuckle of the bent index finger, not to keep the finger pointed. I also reinforced that while spun bamboo looks very lovely indeed, I do not spin it very well; it is very slippery. It was, all in all, a really terrific three hours, and I’d love to do it again. I’ve never seen Ariadne Knits that full of people; there were the three of us spinning, and about a half-dozen people knitting on the other side of the store, and various people coming in to shop throughout the afternoon. Then again, I usually have the boy with me, and I deliberately choose a quiet time like as soon as they open so as to minimize potential disaster.

The other woman taking the class had a Majacraft Pioneer, and she let me try it at the end of the day. Oh, it was just lovely. It’s certainly on my list of wheels to consider if at some point I feel the need to upgrade from my basic Louet. I picked up the half-pound of Corriedale I asked them to put aside for me to take the bad taste of Coopworth out of my mouth, and the high-speed bobbin I ordered in November finally arrived, too. I’ll get to try some of the cotton, at last!

I was wandering through a Ravelry forum on Friday and discovered a link to a set of DIY hackle comb instructions (screw plastic hair picks or wide-tooth combs to a piece of 2×4, clamp to table, use!) and it finally sank in that I don’t need a drum carder in order to blend fibres. So now I’m thinking I can blend bamboo and other slippery or short fibres in with other things and make use of its properties while making it easier to spin. I’m also intrigued with the colour-blending possibilities: rather than trying to dye a specific colour, I could blend two or more other colours of fibre together on the hackle to achieve the colour I’m aiming for. A $20 DIY hackle is much less expensive than investing in a drum carder.

All in all, another good weekend. I was very thankful for it after a week home with the boy.

Weekend Roundup

I’ve been trying to work up the energy to do this post, but it’s hard. Saturday pretty much killed me, and various small irritations on Sunday piled up and got bigger, and by this morning I was ready to classify the whole weekend a loss. Which isn’t accurate at all, and intellectually I can look back and see all the good things that happened; I’m just in a bad headspace, and the fibro is winning today.

Saturday morning the boy and I took HRH to the airport, where he rented a car to drive to the Ottawa anti-prorogation rally. The boy and I came home, made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, then headed out to attend the double-barrelled Aubin-Murphy progeny birthday party at Fundomondo. The boy had been looking forward to this for weeks, so it was a crushing obstacle for both of us when he encountered the giant indoor play structure and realized that it overwhelmed him. He desperately wanted to play on it, but it scared him at the same time. There were about twenty minutes of very stormy tears before I could coax him into the party room for some snacks and juice. Part of the problem was that the last time he’d been, he was young enough to play in the little kids’ section, and this time he was definitely not. But he’s old enough to get halfway up the big kids’ structure, look down, and be terrified. In the end we spent our time curled up on one of the couches together, playing with the games on the iPod Touch (and Debra showed us a rollercoaster game on hers, which thrilled him to no end). He was awkwardly caught between the ages of the older children and the youngest, who has been his playmate at the caregiver’s, but who was sticking to her older sister like glue, racing around the play structure with no fear. I think he might have been okay if he’d had someone of his age up there with him to distract him and encourage him along. He was very upset that I couldn’t play up there with him.

For my part, it was lovely to see and speak with adults I don’t see very often. And I got a cup of coffee and a piece of cake out of it, too.

(Small irritating thing of the weekend Number One: When we were divesting ourselves of our winterwear, the staff member who greeted us asked the boy if he’d like a grilled cheese or a hot dog for lunch at the party, and the boy said, “Chicken nuggets.” The man said, rather snottily, “We only serve healthy food here.” To which I wanted to say, “You’re offering my son hot dogs and you saying you’re serving healthy food? We make homemade breaded chicken nuggets, thank you very much, which I guarantee are one hundred percent healthier than your hot dogs.” I need to rethink my “keep mouth shut and don’t engage” policy, because I’m really tired of being the one to bite my tongue to avoid confrontation when people deserve to have their rudeness pointed out.)

After the party the boy indulged me and let me go to the yarn store in the same mall, where I picked up two braids of Fleece Artist roving (why I didn’t pick up all three there I do not know; perhaps I will stop by this weekend and see if the last one is still available). We got home and assembled the Knex kit that had been in his loot bag, then played with Lego and coloured until HRH called to be picked up from the airport again. After dinner the boy asked if he could play Rock Band, so we set it up and he absolutely smashed his way gleefully through Blitzkrieg Bop on the drums. Twice. Allowing him to do something so exciting just before getting ready for bed may not have been the best of plans, but we had a heck of a lot of fun.

Astute readers will see that there is no nap in this daily summary, and that is correct. I suspect that had something to do with the tears at the party as well; it all coincided with what should have been his naptime. Anyway, all this to say that when the boy’s teeth had been brushed and his pyjamas put on, he came into my office to tell he was ready for our storytime, and he looked at the computer monitor, where he saw dear little Zoe, Neil Gaiman’s cat who was dying from a esophageal tumour (and whose exquisite portrait graced my desktop for a good three months last year). And without a pause, the boy said, “Is that cat dead?” and started crying. Yes; before I’d had a chance to tell him who it was, and why I was reading a post about her. We soothed him for a good ten minutes, because he was extremely distraught about this cat whom he’d intuited was dying, and that propelled him into wanting Maggie, and asking if Zoe was going to go to the Summerlands, and was she going to be well again there, and what happens to their bodies?, and it was hard for everyone. We talked about writing “your friend Neil” a note to make him feel better about Zoe, telling him that she would meet Maggie in the Summerlands, and it really touched me that this child wanted to reach out to a man he’d never met to make him feel better about his loss. He is, at times, so intensely empathetic.

He passed out within four minutes after his story, before my cuddle was even over. I wasn’t surprised. It had been a very emotional day for him.

HRH and I were then initiated into the joys of Settlers of Catan, a board game that we’d heard about for a good sixish years but had never played. The upstairs neighbours bought a set, and we all settled down with Bailey’s and cookies and had a really good time. HRH and I are planning to buy an expansion set for it so we can do this semi-regularly.

Sunday we decided to do absolutely nothing. Friday I’d broken into the light brown Coopworth I had bought over Christmas week, and I was horrified at the quality of it; it’s full of neps and vegetable matter. It’s frustrating because under all the crap I can tell there’s a fluffy, soft, silky long-stapled wool. So Sunday I decided to wrestle with it and try to determine the best way to spin it, because I wasn’t going to waste it. I got some Aran/bulk two-ply done, but I decided to experiment with a laceweight single, theorizing that it might be easier to pick out the neps and dried grass that way. The Coopworth has grudgingly agreed to be spun laceweight, but only with plenty of cross-lacing, and by supported long draw. Neps were mostly minimised this way, but it’s still annoying. And I discovered that I have *another* bag of Coopworth stashed, in dark brown; it’s what was included in my wheel when I bought it. A quick peek into the bag shows vegetable matter and a few neps there, as well; I wont know the extent of it till I haul some off to predraft it and try to get it spun. Research on Ravelry forums this morning has turned up the general opinion among wheel sellers and buyers that the fibre included in the Louet wheel kits is of seconds quality; apparently some LYSs open the boxes and switch out the crappy fibre for good fibre instead, which is really nice for the beginning spinners. Reading this, though, I wondered if the LYS I bought this bag of fibre from did something similar, but put the lousy-grade fibre taken out of the box on the shelf to sell to an unsuspecting spinner, like me. Either way, I’m not impressed. People have assured the spinners of low-quality fibre that the Louet stuff in general is good, which has otherwise been my experience.

While I spun and muttered nasty things at my fibre, HRH and the boy played video games. The boy’s getting to an age where he’s got more fine motor control and a better understanding of how to manipulate controls to obtain a desired outcome, and to understand instructions. He has also reached the age where he finds the Raving Rabbids hilarious. HRH still has to talk him through things, and often has to direct a lot of the action, but it was great to hear them giggling together in the next room. We also got him going on the Wii Fit balance games, and the Shaun White snowboarding game that Scott worked on, and much fun was had.

For dinner I made a fabulous turkey pot pie with half the breast we’d frozen from Christmas dinner, and slurry stock from the 2008 Christmas bird. I usually use phyllo pastry to top my pot pies but I forgot to defrost it in time, so I made a basic shortening dough which worked brilliantly. Lacking anything else I added diced potatoes and parsnips along with the onions, and it was delicious. While I cooked, HRH whisked the boy downstairs to look at the upcoming weather, and while they were down there they logged on to WOW and the boy made a character of his very own. When I went down to get them I discovered that the boy had made a gnome rogue, and had already mastered how to move around, how to initiate an attack, and the key combos to follow through. He very proudly showed me how he took down wolves to sell the meat in order to gain a pair of leather gloves.

When he was in bed, HRH and I headed out to our sort-of-monthly-but-not-really steampunquian game, which was fun for most of us but oddly paced. When I got home I slept badly, being woken up once by a cat and once by the boy, and in between having stressful dreams about the steampunquian party being caught in a dangerous underground situation, and then about having a huge emotional confrontation with one of the player characters (one that I suspect is coming eventually, but it was very upsetting in the dream nonetheless), and finally about stage managing a play where no one was ready for anything and the second lead actress didn’t show up after intermission so I had to go on with a script in my hand while still stage managing. And something that frustrated me on the way out of the game the previous night started gnawing at me, so today has been unpleasant as a result of it all. And it’s grey and rainy and I’m just generally out of sorts.

But so far I have done work associated with the cello manual, and solved a wifi Mac mystery with the help of my research skills and my local Mac allies (which took up way too much of my time today, but at least now I know that it’s nothing I’m doing wrong — in fact, I am doing everything extra-right — it’s someone else who hasn’t secured their computer properly and my Mac is picking up their file-sharing signal), and have handled correspondence, among which was contact made by a previous client who will have more work for me soon, and who put a friend in contact with me for a small contract with them. So!

I missed the window I had for cello practice when no one was in the building, and because it’s so grey outside I can’t tell what time of day it is, which messes with my sense of how the day unwinds and things are paced. No, looking at a clock doesn’t help; I can’t internalise it. And so the day feels like it has gotten away from me.

I need to repeatedly remind myself that when the fibro rears its ugly head, I am not a failure, and that it’s okay to be quiet and not get things done.

Christmas 2009 Roundup

This what I’ve got. I’m really tired, and it’s kind of superficial, but it’s all you get.

We had a good drive down; thanks to the mild farewell snowstorm that hit the evening before and was still happening when we left, there were messy roads till Kingston, but after that it was fine. There was less and less snow as we went southwest; as close as Cornwall we were noticing significantly lower snow-to-square footage on the side of the road. The only other thing of note regarding the drive down was that thanks to multiple rest stops being closed for renovation (read: levelled to the ground) and one stop’s fuel pumps being cordoned off for some reason, there was only ONE fuel stop open between the QC/ON border and Toronto. Crazy. Of course, we are brilliant, and do not rely on the rest stops; we pull off the highway and fuel up/eat in non-rest-stop type places. Usually Kingston, actually.

The boy did cookie baking with Nana the morning of the 24th while HRH and I went out shopping. The stores were remarkably quiet, the streets sane, and we were mystified. I picked up Dragon Age for the Xbox for HRH and told him to forget I’d done so; we found a copy of TMBG album in Toys R Us, of all places, after months of being foiled at finding it in local record and bookstores. We looked for Star Wars action figures there, too, but couldn’t find any decent ones. We hit a dollar store, where we could not find any Xmas socks, alas (the boy adores Xmas socks with a passion, and getting him a new pair every year is a Thing) but they did have a snowman cup that matched the Santa cup the boy had in his stocking last year, and found some stickers and a remarkably decent pair of binoculars there, too. As the action figures were a bust, we picked up a copy of the Clone Wars movie for him, too.

We got home and I wrapped our gifts for everyone with the boy, which was kind of an exercise in patience. After putting him down for a nap, we went out to local yarn store to look at the wheels I was going to rent, only to discover that they were closed. I’d asked via email if they were open on the 24th and they’d said yes; not there or on their website did they say anything about closing early. They closed at 2; we got there at 2:15. I was a tad annoyed. It was a good thing HRH had managed to fit my wheel in the car, so I wasn’t left without one all week.

On Xmas morning, the boy got up to find his stocking and a basket in front of his bedroom door. He came into our bed to open it all, ate both snowmen chocolates, thought the binoculars and cup very cool indeed, and was thrilled with his books and the Transformer.

We dressed and had breakfast, then opened our gifts. I was so tired that I just kind of sat there with gifts on my lap and watched everyone else open things. The boy kept passing gifts out before we’d finished opening the last round. He got lots of books and clothes. I received lots of kitchen stuff that I’d put on my wish list a while back (an adjustable sink strainer, not one but two offset spatulas, a digital oven thermometer) and things I hadn’t asked for like a new Silpat rolling pin, and linen dishcloths, potholders, herbs, and sea salt from Provence. HRH and the boy got me the padded iTouch skin I’d asked for (sorry, Meallanmouse; it is no longer the Little Pirate Computer, as the boy used to call it; it is now the Little Flowered Computer).

My cousin and his family came over after the boy’s nap for the last round of gifting and a truly wonderful roast beef Christmas dinner. They almost didn’t because most of them had colds, but we all shrugged and figured that unless someone was deathly ill, there was no point in cancelling our plans. And it turned out they weren’t really very ill at all, so I’m glad they came. On the other hand, HRH and my father were on the edge of nasty colds themselves, which got worse at various rates over the week.

On Saturday the 26th we ventured out to the local bookstore to spend happy gift certificates, and I got three books from my wish list, one I found, a new calendar, adorable owl holiday cards for next year (because yes, our holiday cards were also thrown out along with the tags and bows and ribbons), and renewed my discount card. (No, the gift card did not cover all this; only half. And the store did not have three of the books that had been higher on my wish list, nor were they anywhere within commutable distance.) We were again really rather surprised at the lack of insanity on the roads and in the shops. Very civilized.

On the morning of Sunday the 27th HRH and I left the boy making Rice Krispie squares with Nana and icing the rest of the batch of cookies they’d made on the 24th, and hit the local Michaels for yarn and sketchbooks on sale. The boy insisted that he wanted his handknit scarf in black, so I got two skeins of black Wool-Ease Thick & Chunky and cast on to knit a double-thickness scarf in the round, nice easy straightforward knitting that I could do in the car without having to count. I also got a basket to keep my yarn and wheel accessories in. Then we headed out to the LYS that had been closed on the 24th, and I ended up buying some light brown Coopworth and my very first Malabrigo ever, the worsted weight merino in the Stonechat colourway. It’s so wonderfully soft and squooshy that I may never knit it; I might just cuddle it for the rest of my life.

Sunday afternoon we headed out to my cousin’s home for dinner with them, and we had some lovely beer: Hockley’s Dark. He had it in a litre bottle with a swing cap. (I’m noting it here for future reference. There’s not much else to say other than it’s delicious and we will be haunting the closer LCBOs for it.) He also gave me a g&t made with Hendrick’s gin, which was the most flavourful gins I’ve ever tried. I find a lot of gin sharp, but this was mellow and smooth.

Monday we saw The Princess and the Frog, which was fun because I can’t remember the last time my mother and I saw a new Disney film in the theatre together. It was fine, but it will never be among my favourite Disney films because it just didn’t grab me, despite loving the palette, the designs, and the message. I think a lot of it was the music. While I appreciate a lot of Randy Newman’s stuff, he’s not among the composers whose music I really enjoy. Part of it was also my inability to feel close to any of the characters, and the vague sense that the story was rushing, somehow. At the end, when the couple was transformed back into humans, the boy sighed and said, “Oh, I wanted them to stay frogs,” which may have been my favourite moment of the entire experience. (Hey, if you were a four year old boy, don’t you think staying a frog would be more magical?) I may enjoy it more after watching it when it comes out on DVD.

My mother’s silk scarf (not previously mentioned here because it was a gift, but this was the yarn… I’ll post a picture when it’s done) was not ready in time for Christmas. I wrapped it unfinished and let her open it so I could knit for the rest of the trip in front of her, but even then, although I increased its length four- or fivefold, I didn’t finish. I admitted to myself on the Monday that even if I did heroically polish off the knitting part, I couldn’t block it, so I gave myself permission to slow down because I’d need to do the after-knitting finishing at home anyhow. The silk just doesn’t move the way the Koigu did. And I lost a lot of time moving lifelines, because the silk was splitty and my lifeline yarn slowly shredded. I ended up switching to unwaxed dental floss for the lifeline.

We left the morning of Wednesday the 30st and made very good time to Maxville, where we spent the afternoon and night with t! and Jan and Rowan Tree Farm. This was absolutely wonderful, as when we visit we usually need to leave a couple of hours after we get there in order to be home for the boy’s bedtime, which also means (ahem) that both of us cannot indulge in alcohol. No such restrictions this time! We also got a surprise visit from Fearsclave and Mousme late the day we got there, which was delightful as we don’t see either of them often enough. We slept over, and it worked beautifully. Upon rising the next morning the boy and I visited the chicken house with Jan (the boy just can’t seem to remember to call it a hen house or a chicken coop, and really, ‘chicken house’ is so cute I’m not pushing it very hard) and the boy got to help find the eggs and tried to pet any chicken that got too close to him. We were rewarded with two crows from the rooster as we walked back to the house for breakfast (t!’s justly famed French toast). HRH and t! had a most excellent time playing bass together on the Wednesday night and the Thursday morning, and the boy had a marvelous time romping with Carter (spending a lot of the non-playing time walking around with his arm slung over the dog’s shoulders), and I got to chat and knit with Jan. It was all sorts of good crammed into about twenty hours, and we left with much regret at noon on Thursday the 31st.

We got home around one o’clock and did a quick stop at the grocery store so that we could gather supplies for the scallop dish I was to take to the New Year’s Eve dinner at Ceri and Scott’s house, as well as supplies for the New Year’s Day chili I was making for a couple of other friends. Dinner was lovely, although we were very tired and left not long after midnight. The boy woke us up on the first of January by wishing each of us (and all three cats on the bed, individually) a happy new year’s day. The huge pot of chili turned out very well, despite my ongoing anxiety about it not tasting chili-like enough and its refusal to thicken until I tossed some cornstarch into it. I made the accompanying cornmeal muffins with gluten-free potato flour, so my gluten-intolerant guest could eat them, and while they didn’t rise as much as the cornmeal muffins I make with regular flour (as expected) they tasted delicious. And not being able to decide what jelly to put atop the brie as it baked resulted in taking all three little jelly jars out to the table, where people got to put a dab of Jan’s jalapeno jelly, Ceri’s red pepper-garlic jelly, or my mum’s port wine jelly on crackers of baguette spread with just brie. A brilliant solution, if I do say so myself, and one that proved yet again how damn good baked brie is. Things were so relaxed that I completely forgot to bring out a platter of cookies and baked treats afterwards.

It’s been a lovely holiday, but we really need to get back on schedule; we’ve all been sleeping later in the mornings and staying up later at night, and staying in our jammies later than we ought to. The long car trips have thrown the boy’s nap schedule into disarray, as have the various different locations he’s been staying in. A return to schedule will be good for us all.

Nowell!

A lovely, lovely carol singalong tonight with the Preston-LeBlancs, marred only by the boy’s meltdown when it got to be an hour past his bed time (first because he wanted to go home, then because he wanted to stay). We did get there later than I wanted to, because the boys got home later than I expected, but we had a wonderful time when we settled down at last. We had a lovely buffet of hot hors d’oeuvres and cheese and nummy little things, and drinks, and opened presents before turning to the music. Both sets of children were enchanted with their respective gifts, and other than the same CD we exchange every year (no, it’s not like regifting fruitcake; every year we buy one another a specific CD so we both have a copy), they gave me a print of one of my favourite Waterhouse paintings, St. Cecelia, which positively glowed in its heavy gilt frame when we saw it in person last month at the MMFA exhibition. The reproduction is surprisingly good, much better than most of those done of Waterhouse’s other works.

We were a guitar, a recorder, and a cello, each sightreading; always interesting! The adults gamely improvised Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman for the kids, and we had lovely versions of Away in a Manger and Silent Night, and courageous attempts at other carols. The boy squeezed in between my oldest goddaughter and myself and we sang Silent Night together (this version was all open strings on the cello, so I didn’t need to actually read the music), the boy looking up at me with a smile and copying the shapes of my mouth to sing the sounds. With his quickness at absorbing music and words, it ought to be easy to familiarise him with the traditional carols like the Gloucestershire Carol, Coventry Carol, and the Holly and the Ivy. I foresee a proper Solstice mix CD next winter.

I love this tradition our godfamilies share. Most of us could have kept on playing for a good long time, but small persons have their limits. Next year, we’ll definitely do this on a weekend afternoon in order to have more time to actually play and sing, although there’s something special about doing it at night, with the midwinter darkness outside the snow-framed windows that reflect the twinkling lights on the tree.

We’ve been back for a couple of hours, but I’m still wide awake. I should make warm vanilla milk and curl up in bed with my current book, Pamela Dean’s The Secret Country. It’s a reread, as I am completely out of new books and have not had the opportunity to get to the library for a month. We are hitting the local Indigo a day or so after Christmas for their annual thirty percent off all hardcovers sale, and the new Charles de Lint will be mine. I’d buy the new Elizabeth Bear hardcover too, but none of the shops in that area have it in stock, for some reason. (Our local Chapters claims to have two in stock, but I looked for it when we were there last Saturday, and it wasn’t on the shelf in either the fantasy or SF sections. You fail yet again at matching stock and inventory, Chapters store 00794. I give up on you.)

Backdated Posts Up

The boy’s 54 mos post is finally complete with photos, here. I think I’m just going to do last weekend’s stuff is basic point form. I’ll update this post with the links when it’s done.

ETA: Yeah, okay, I just can’t bring myself to do point form posts. Fortunately (or not so fortunately, as my sleep has sucked lately thanks to the dry cough) I’m wide awake, so voila!

Weekend Roundup: Saturday With A Side Of Friday (backdated)
and
Weekend Roundup: Sunday, Holiday Recital Edition (backdated)

Just in time for this weekend to happen. *headdesk*