Category Archives: Knitting, Spinning, & Weaving

Holiday Roundup, With Bonus Today Stuff

All right; my work for the day is done. I have read and written a two-paragraph endorsement of a book coming out this fall, and it’s just as well I didn’t bring it with me; it was mostly correspondences and such, so I needed to do it all in one go to get a feel for the overall book. (And I’ve just been informed that as a thank you, I’m getting a copy of the bound book when it comes out this fall; how nice of them!) Things got off to an early start, what with me getting up at 3:45 AM (hello, insomnia, I have not missed you, and just because I slept an average of four hours each of the past four nights does not mean it’s a pattern that ought to be perpetuated), so I didn’t have to drag myself awake for a couple of hours when the boys left. Also, I ate lunch at 10:30, so I kept being surprised that it was only noon or whatever when I checked later.

Today I got a secondhand book in the post, then a postal truck arrived and gave me my order of Vienna Teng CDs, and just now a second postal truck came by with a different driver, to give me yet another secondhand book. I suspect this is what inefficiency looks like.

Right, so, here it is, the highlight reel of our week away:

SUNDAY we drove to Toronto. The six-hour stretch between these cities is without doubt the most boring stretch of highway in the country. It is flat. It is straight. It is dull. But the drive went relatively well, except for getting off the 401 at Whitby to get to the 407 instead of Ajax. Yeah, we won’t be doing that again. See, despite the little 407 toll route! signs at the exit we took, the 407 doesn’t actually start in Whitby. Lying little signs. You have to take the tiny you-call-this-a-highway 7 to get to it, after driving north on Brock for about half an hour. Which kind of undercuts the whole idea of saving time idea. Anyway, the 407 is a beautiful highway, and traffic-free. Traffic free = stress free. Sure, we pay about $20 to drive almost its entire length, but as we do it only two or three times a year, it’s totally worth it. It saves about 45 minutes, and avoids lots of sitting in traffic, construction, and crankiness.

MONDAY we puttered around. Can’t remember doing anything spectacular, really. We went to the used kids’ clothing store in the morning and found new shorts for the boy, which he sorely needed, and a couple of new books, one of which was a Transformers reader. Wandered aimlessly at the bookstore; there’s nothing out that I want, really, or perhaps more correctly nothing I will spend $10 on when I know I’ll read it in ninety minutes. The boy splashed around in his wading pool for about two hours. And by ‘splashed’ I really mean ‘ran at it and took flying dives into it.’ Those are HRH’s genes, thank you very much.

TUESDAY was the family gathering. There were eleven of us: HRH and myself, my parents, the boy, my cousin and his wife, their three-year-old daughter, their ten-day old new baby girl, my aunt (aka my cousin’s mom and my mother’s sister) and my cousin’s mother-in-law over from Japan. I think that was everyone. Oh, we ate. We always eat when family get together. There was cheese and fruit before dinner, and grilled flank with potatoes and cold orzo-grilled veggie salad, and green beans. Dessert was two huge crystal bowls of torn up angel food cake, piled with fresh local strawberries, and further piled with freshly whipped cream. I had both kids on the floor of the kitchen helping me make these, spooning berries over the piles of cake, then trying to spoon the cream on top, but it kept sticking to the spoons so they got it all over their hands. Everyone had two servings, so it’s a good thing we made tonnes of it. It was so light, though; it felt like you were eating air.

WEDNESDAY morning Mum and I went out to Spun Fibre Arts in Burlington to check it out. They have a lovely selection. I went to see what spinning wheels they had in stock, but the owner wasn’t there to demonstrate them. They had the Schacht Ladybug and a Louet Victoria there, and while I’ve heard the Ladybug is more versatile, I was really impressed by the Victoria’s smoothness. After the boy’s nap we went to visit Granddad at the Canadian Warcraft Heritage Museum so the boy could run around among the priceless and irreplaceable airplanes. It was nice and quiet, so my father offered to let HRH crawl around inside one of the only two operational Lancasters in the world. Yeah. HRH was totally blown away. The boy got his kicks sitting in the Fleet and the CF-100, showing me how the sticks still moved the flaps. On the way out we hit the gift shop and the boy chose a really well-done metal toy of the Lanc, and HRH bought a CAF shirt for himself and one for the boy.

THURSDAY we went downtown to the ROM, to see the dinosaurs. I adore the ROM, and this was my first opportunity to see the new pavilion. The natural history exhibits have been installed in this new section, and it all suits very well. You can’t do the entire ROM in one day (well, maybe some can) and I really missed not being able to go through the textiles and the many cultural galleries. We promised the boy he could pick something out at the gift shop of this museum too, and he chose a dinosaur egg, one of those things you put in water and it dissolves/cracks while the dinosaur inside ‘grows.’ It was put in a jar of water pretty much as soon as we got home. We had planned to split up at lunchtime, the boys to have sausages from the cart on the corner, and Mum and I to Remenyi to check for an orchestral tuner. And we did, except the major deviation from the plan was the spectacular thunder and lightning storm we walked out into, totally unexpected after the bright, clear, hot day we’d started with. Mum and I got drenched going across the street, and the boys dashed to the cart and back to shelter to eat their lunches. In the end, Remenyi didn’t have an orchestral tuner, I wasn’t going to buy the very excellently designed and priced cello case I saw without testing it for fit, and we missed the GO train heading back to Oakville. Because yes, we took the GO train to town, and then the subway to the museum, which thrilled the boy to no end because it meant four train rides. We ended up sitting at Union Station for forty-five minutes waiting for the next train, but it wasn’t so bad; Mum and I shared a ham/cheese/tomato bagel sandwich, then we wandered over to the Second Cup where she got tea and I had a delicious caramel steamed milk, which I shared with the boy when it cooled enough. Mum and I entertained ourselves by rating the shoes and clothes we saw go by. People wear the oddest things. That night after the boy was in bed HRH took me out for a caramel latte at William’s Coffee Pub in Burlington, one of our favourite places for a date. (Yeah, we don’t get out much.) To my delight they do decaf lattes. Next time I may go wild and have a mocha, although I love the flavour of the caramel lattes and the balance between the milk, the coffee, and the syrup drizzled on top. I also nipped into The Shoe Company ten minutes before they closed and scored the perfect pair of black leather mules by Liz Claiborne for $60. I have been looking for these ideal shoes for about ten years. I win.

FRIDAY morning HRH and Dad went over to install a fan in a friend’s house, while Mum, the boy and I went out to look at netbooks and do some grocery shopping. We hit HMV because Mum was looking for a Great Big Sea album (which wasn’t in stock, of course, because it isn’t new but not old enough to qualify for the 2 for whatever price promotion), but I picked up the first season of the original Transformers TV show for the boy, who is thoroughly delighted with it. That afternoon his grandparents took him out to visit the local trainyard, where he happily watched engines shunting things all over. An engineer came down out of a diesel locomotive and gave him a CN ballcap, which sent to boy right over the moon. Then they went out for gelato, as did HRH and I, although we went to two different places. Forget ice cream; gelato is where it’s at. (Two dates in two days!) There was perfectly grilled salmon for dinner, brushed with maple syrup and a touch of soya sauce.

SATURDAY we came home. The boy woke me up by gently waving something wet and squishy in my face and saying tenderly, “Look, Mama, I helped it be borned!” The little dinosaur egg had finally crumbled enough and the dinosaur’s foam tail and feet were far enough out that he just couldn’t wait any more. Under HRH’s supervision the jar was opened, the water decanted, and the remaining bits of ‘eggshell’ pulled off. It took him a while going through his dinosaur books in the car on the way home, but we identified it as a chubby little dimetrodon. It was a good trip home, too. I like this travelling on non-holiday weekends thing.

While away, I read In Ashes Lie by Marie Brennan, A Matter of Justice by Charles Todd, Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi, and then I finished Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro and The City & The City by China Mieville the night we got home.

There. Caught up. As usual, it’s nowhere what I wanted it to be, because I’ve already forgotten the little things that made each day special.

I’m going to go read now. I can’t decide if I want to drink a beer or a latte from a packet. To heck with it: red wine it is.

In Which She Waves From The Parental Home

So far, our visit has been lovely. I forgot the document I’m supposed to read and a laptop upon which to read it, but other than that, the trip down was excellent, we have eaten excellent food, and had excellent company. Mum and I are about to visit Spun Fibre Arts, a local yarn shop that retails not only Louet, but Ashford and Schacht spinning wheels.

Back soon. And happy belated Solstice, everyone.

… And Birthday Prep

Today is kind of a mess. There needs to be a cake and two batches of cookies baked, as well as our regular bread. HRH is doing most of the grocery shopping after dropping the boy off with the caregiver, while I finish up the latest assignment and hand it in. We need to head out to the craft store in the east end to pick up supplies for the crafty part of tomorrow’s party; party decorations need to be picked up as well, at a different store. We need to hit a particular grocery store for a couple of items not available at our regular grocery store, and another speciality store to pick up gel colouring for dyeing roving tinting the cake icing. I have a cello lesson tonight and it would sure be nice to get a lick of practise in today before I go. Dinner needs to be made and eaten in there somewhere, too. At least HRH has offered to ice the cake while I’m at my lesson. (ETA: Ack, need to pick up reserved books at the library, too.)

I think the tension is coming from the fact that I’m thinking of today as a work day with a bunch of other stuff that needs doing.

I suspect I will pass out once everyone’s left tomorrow after the party. I intend to hit Ariadne for the subversive Spin (Not Knit) In Public day when the boy naps, but evaluating how achy I am today after yesterday’s outing, and knowing what today and tomorrow morning entail, I suspect it’s not going to happen, no matter how much I want to try the wheel.

Ooh, news flash as of a phone call two minutes ago: Sparky has a new baby cousin! Well, of a sort; my cousin has a new daughter as of this morning, and we call our children cousins. (His daughters are my cousins once removed, but I don’t know what the term is for the relationship between our children themselves.) Hurrah! Can’t wait for pictures. We’ll get to meet her when we go down to Toronto in ten days.

Weekend Roundup

Okay, who allowed this June thing? And why is it still going down to something like five degrees at night? Hello, late spring: We would just like to remind you that summer is twenty-one days away, and if you want to get any love you’d better start warming up to us.

As previously noted, on Friday afternoon after his nap we took the boy to see his first movie in a theatre. We really managed to arrange the best combination of circumstances: the perfect time of day, the perfect film, the perfect age. Go us! We sat in the very back row in case we needed to make a quick exit; he sat on a booster seat and we shared a little kid’s combo of popcorn and the tiny bag of Twizzlers that came with it. He didn’t talk a lot, only made the occasional comment, but he laughed and gasped and said, “That’s silly!” and such things at the appropriate moments. He got slightly upset at something at one point and started to whimper a bit, so I told him that it was all right, that it was just a movie and part of the story, and held his hand. Afterwords he whispered, “Thank you for holding my hand, Mama.” The majority of comments were heartfelt bursts of, “I love you, Mama!” which is shorthand for “I’m having an awesome time!”Up will never be my favourite Pixar film (I honestly can’t say what is at the moment) but they stayed true to their story and their characters, and the execution was as beautiful as it always is. Also, I cried about five or six times; it was very well-told.

Friday night I had my first post-recital cello lesson, where my teacher told me how impressed she’d been with my bow control and intonation. We looked at the current Suzuki 2 piece I’m reviewing, and I get the feeling she thinks I’m going to be done my book 2 review by the end of the month, which just so happens to be the end of her teaching year. We talked about setting up a review plan for the summer and basic prep work for book 3 in the fall. She also reminded me that I take good notes, and to review them regularly to remind myself about pronating hands and dropping shoulders and elbow angles. I feel a bit less panicked about two months without structure now. We finished by looking at some of the tricky passages in the orchestra music, and I’d done very acceptable fingerings for most of it, only really changing one. Was rather proud of that. I must be learning or something.

On Saturday Ceri took me to a spinning workshop as an early birthday present. We sat in the sun on comfy couches and chairs at Ariadne, and learnt about fibre and how to draft and how to use a drop spindle. The instructor looked at us all and said, “Hmm, well, I guess I’ll demonstrate how to use a wheel once we’ve covered plying, because you’ve all caught onto this really quickly and we’ll have the time.” My major problems are connecting a new draft to the draft that’s being spun (my joins come out lumpy); drafting evenly enough so that my resulting yarn is even; and keeping the spindle going with just a single twist of the fingers. I know there’s a technique where one taps the whorl that keeps it going, but we were parking it while we fed the twist up the draft. It was exciting in a relaxing sort of way, if that makes any sense. I demonstrated when we got home, and the boys were duly impressed. Wrapping the single for plying was just as annoying as it had been in the workshop, though. HRH: “Could you… knit with that?” Me: “I could go get needles and do it RIGHT NOW.”

But I didn’t.

Ultimately I’d like to spin enough to string my loom (note to self: using the loom will work better if you have a shuttle and a heddle hook) and make something. As I was falling asleep that night I thought it would be really nice if I could make something for my mother using yarn I’d spun myself and woven on the loom. Evidently there’s still an eager first-grader inside me, sticking macaroni to a tin can and spray-painting it gold to give to her on Mother’s Day. Why do I have such expensive hobbies? I think I’m a relatively simple creature, but I end up playing the cello and spinning. I need to sell another book just to supply myself with accessories and raw material.

Sunday was the multi-family outing to the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. The Zouak family had to bow out, as poor ADZO is still recovering from an appendectomy, but everyone else was still on board. Google lied through its virtual teeth when it said it would take just under three hours to get there. It took us two hours, and we ended up knocking about the museum lobby and lunchroom for forty-five minutes waiting for the others. The drive there was wonderful, one of those early summer mornings where all the colours are extra-vivid. The boy was very patient (as patient as someone on the threshold of four years old can be) and was overjoyed when the rest of the party arrived. The museum is half closed, as they’re undergoing extensive renovation, but the holdings that were on display were terrific. Lots of dinosaur bones from Canada, and great life-sized models. The other floors were mammals and birds, all very interesting. There’s some great interactive stuff presented on touch screens, which thrilled the boy because buttons and dials and such are always Very Cool. He’s still at the “what’s around the next corner” stage, which is hard to control when the rest of your party is taking the time to really look at the exhibits, but once we got to the higher floors he started focusing better. It’s a quite remarkable museum, and it was all brilliant enough that we decided we’d be going back next spring once the renovation was complete. We enjoyed our packed lunches in the lunchroom, and we left just after one o’clock for the trip home, knowing the boy, although apparently fine, would very soon reach saturation level. The drive home was not as nice, with dramatic pressure changes back and forth, storm fronts all around, and really dreadful wind.

Overall it was a wonderful weekend. Now, back to work. The anthology galleys are due back tomorrow, and I want to finish a second pass on them. I have a new freelance assignment that’s due on Friday, too (blessedly short). And I came up with two story ideas on the trip to the museum yesterday that I want to noodle about with. One is courtesy of something Liam said while reading a book in the back seat, so I think I will write it for him. It’s going to end up being a short chapter book, possibly for the eight to ten age range. We shall see. It’s quite nebulous at this point.

Ongoing

Doing the evaluation of the final third of Orchestrated today. Why is it not finished, when I have had all week to work on it? I… keep falling asleep. No, really. Not because it’s bad or boring, just because my body has been wresting the steering wheel out of my hands and saying “NOW WE WILL NAP” around two every day, and bang, my eyes are closing and I have to put the ms. or whatever book I’m reading down and pass out for an hour or so. Then it’s cello and making dinner and the boys are home, and yeah.

What I’m discovering about the ms. is that it flows decently well. I haven’t yet found a gap or a hole that really absolutely needs to be filled; there’s nothing obvious missing. Things need to be tightened up here and there or expanded a tiny bit, but overall it’s surprisingly solid. I also have really good places that can be used as chapter break points. I may need to go back and insert one or two more clues to the eventual crisis of a main character, but that’s actually minor. I found a place where some of my intro-stuff-written-for-me-but-unnecessary-for-readers can go, and in the new place set in dialogue will actually serve the purpose of character interaction/deepening.

I read pretty much the entirety of Perri Knize’s Grand Obsession in one day. It was fabulous. I was worried at one or two points that it was going to veer a bit too far into the mystical (and coming from me that’s saying something) but it righted itself in time. After all, how do you define how music affects us? It’s a twofold story about a woman deciding to study piano in middle age and buying one, then trying to understand what the personal connection to a specific instrument is (not violin or cello or piano, but one specific example of the chosen instrument), and an exploration of how pianos are built and maintained.

We had out second rehearsal with our third guest conductor and I enjoyed it even more than the first. He’s good. There is a problem with his voice carrying to the back, but he’s terrific in his bilingualism, and his musicality and his interaction are fabulous. He knows exactly what to work to smooth out problems, and how to phrase what he’s looking for. We’ve added Grieg’s Norwegian Dances to the programme, and (hurrah!) Vaughn Williams’ English Folk Song suite. Of course, the Vaughn Williams starts in A-flat major (F minor? no, pretty sure it’s Ab) which is four flats, augh! I have enough trouble remembering to flatten my As, and he wants me to flatten my Ds as well? But it is Vaughn Williams and I am over the moon.

Also in cello news, while I was working on some ensemble stuff earlier this week and trying to isolate why my intonation was unstable, my left elbow kind of said, “Oh, I’ve got it,” and moved a millimetre or two forward on the horizontal axis, all on its own. And it solved the problem. I was amazed and very grateful to it. Perhaps the next time I have a problem of some kind I shall consult it.

My friendly neighbourhood postperson brought me my two Harmony circular needles I ordered from KnitPicks today, along with the sample skein of green Pima cotton yarn I ordered. The colour’s a bit bright for the sweater I ultimately wanted it for; it was a bit less yellow on my monitor. Not a problem; I ordered it to test it out in a washcloth kind of swatch anyhow.

Did the groceries and some birthday shopping this morning and also acquired a new blouse for myself. It never ceases to amaze me how much I hate shopping for clothes, and yet have managed to acquire two new pairs of shoes, two blouses, and three sweaters in the past month. They all kind of ambushed me, though; it’s not like I decided I needed new stuff and went looking. Well, okay, I needed new black shoes, but I found them by accident just browsing in Winners. And I went into a store because I remembered seeing a blouse and ended up not buying it but two other sweaters. Still. And while I bought the blouse today I wondered, Where do I wear all this stuff other than to orchestra and my cello lessons? I work at home. I mean, I occasionally go out, but not often. I wear jeans and t-shirts most of the time. Maybe I’ll institute a one-day-a-week workday in the library just so I can wear slightly nicer stuff. Good grief.

Right-o; back to work. Also need to collect wrapping paper and addresses for a trip to the post office later.

Brief Weekend Roundup

I am effectively dead. I am calling in Not Living today, because that’s about as useful as I can manage to be. Work will happen tomorrow.

Friday: Excellent day running around with the boy. Dinner with Tal and Kris, which consisted of much laughter, wine, delicious food, and OMG Battenberg cake, which I have not in forever, or at least since Marks and Sparks abandoned the colonials closed their Canadian shops. Awful night of not-exactly-sleep where I am very, very ill for some reason.

Saturday: Resting in bed with tea until I decide I am able to get up and drive safely. Excellent cello lesson. Visit to the mall to pet the Easter farm animals. Scored a secondhand copy of Lego Star Wars for the Xbox, and a secondhand controller which is red so I will play better. Lunch out consisting of hot dogs and fries, as I had promised the boy. After nap, we all head out to the south shore so I can drop by the luthier and renew the rental of the 7/8 cello for two more months. Then all three of us play our new video game, and the boy is quite good at figuring out what’s what. We end the day by watching the Deserts episode of Planet Earth.

Sunday: Summer tires put on the car. I make my first homemade tourtière. After nap we head out to have a home-hosted sugaring off meal with excellent friends and many children. Everyone eats too much breakfast-style food drenched in maple syrup. I think the tourtière is too dry and kind of wishy-washy on the seasoning, but everyone else claims it’s awesome. (Next time I’m doubling the sage and cloves, not boiling off as much of the broth, and using a different pastry recipe.) After the boy’s in bed HRH and I head out for our once-monthly steampunkian-horror game, which was most excellent. I got nine more rows of the lap blanket done. (It’s the only knitting I’m getting done at all, and only during this game.)

Which brings us to today, where I feel lethargic and achy. The damp weather doesn’t help.

My mother has informed me that the FedEx shipment I missed is not in fact my cello goody bag, but a box of photo/scrapbook albums she and my dad shipped to me from my grandmother’s apartment in Vancouver when they went out to visit her last week. I’m looking forward to seeing them.

Weekend Roundup

Busy, busy, busy.

Friday morning was sunny but cold for our outing to the Biodome with Curtana and Arthur. The fun began before we got there, because we took the Metro. The boy has no memory of being on the subway, which isn’t surprising because he was very tiny and in a stroller the last time we rode it with him. He was very excited, because hey, it’s a train! Naturally there was a unexplained slowdown, turning a half-hour trip into a forty-five minute trip. He entertained himself by identifying the letters in the graffiti on the windows. The Biodome was a very exciting destination because there is a rainforest pavilion, and the boy’s Nana has recently come back from Costa Rica where she visited the rainforest herself. Also, the boy was hoping there would be jaguars, even though I told him there were none. Hope springs eternal when you are a very earnest almost-four.

We met Curtana and Arthur at the station at the other end and there was a joyful shout from the boy and a running forward from Arthur, and it looked all the world like a slow-motion reunion on a film screen, missing only a swelling of music to cap it all off. And the running didn’t really stop: they were so excited about the Biodome that they ran through it once, then ran through it again. We saw crocodiles (caimans, actually), lots of tropical birds, very big fish, tiny monkeys, bats, otters, beavers, ducks and waterfowl of all kinds, puffins, and penguins. I don’t know what they enjoyed most, but the kid slide next to the otter slide was certainly up there, as was the big screen before the penguin exhibit upon which was projected Arctic footage. They were particularly tickled by the fact that the penguins on the screen were as tall as they were, and cavorted around with them.

We had a snack, and visited the boutique (where we bought some tiny toy turtles, to go with the larger turtles the boy plays with in his bath, and a lovely bone china mug with barn owls on it for me), and spent some time in the hands-on educational room before we all took the Metro back to our respective stops. And we made a date for Arthur to come play on Sunday morning. Lunch and nap were very late after so much excitement but he did finally take an hour and a bit of sleep.

Saturday was our all-day spiritual workshop retreat day, missing some people but still fabulous! It was a really great day with wonderful food, interesting workshops and discussions, fun activities and insightful ritual. I’m so glad we’ve decided to do this twice a year. It gets us together and talking about great topics, doing more ritual, and having fun. Carving out time here and there for these things is difficult; setting one whole day to focus on this kind of thing is easier and very rewarding. (Not that we don’t do it at other times, too! The two workshop days don’t replace the regular ongoing work, but supplement it.)

Sunday morning Arthur and his dad Forthright came over for a couple of hours of train and Lego play. I made some quite nice scones (adding extra brown sugar and underbaking them just a tad to produce a very sweet and moist result, nom nom nom) which both boys wolfed down (Liam was actually keeping track of how many he ate and proudly held up five fingers when I asked him what number he was on near the end of the playdate). There were tears at the end when the boys had to part, but reassurances that lunch was coming for one and that they’d see one another again for the other seemed to soothe them. After a lunch of pancakes and a nap, we were off to Ceri and Scott’s house for a movie and dinner, a treat rescheduled from last week when the boy had been very, very ill in the car. I got another three rows knitted on the damn ribbing of the mitts I’m working on thanks to Ceri’s presence, and the boys played downstairs. And I got a belated Yuletide gift from Ceri, a lovely set of fingerless gloves crocheted in the Phoenix Gloves pattern by Julia Vaconsin in a beautiful Lorna’s Laces colourway with soft greens and reds and pinks (Gold Hill, perhaps?). They’re exquisite and I adore them. I wanted to wear them for the rest of the day but I couldn’t handle the DPNs I was knitting with properly, as they kept catching in the gloves, and I didn’t want them to get spattered with tomato sauce from dinner, so off they came when they finally had to.

And to my surprise there was decent sleep each night as well. Wonders will never cease.

Now it’s headfirst into the anthology. Today and the rest of this week will see me tidying up last-minute loose ends or edits from the final contributors, scanning the original material for final comments and errors, and then playing with the order of the essays. It all takes a lot of brain power, more than it seems that it ought to.