Saturday morning we went out to the la Co-op la Maison Verte store in NDG to pick up gifts for a baby shower. It was snowing, and the boy put on his sunglasses and “snowboarded” down the sidewalks. He looked great, had a tonne of fun, and it really amused me. After lunch the boy and I packed up, picked up a new friend (yay!) and her adorable baby boy, and headed out to the West Island for Miranda’s baby shower. It was terrific to see Debra again (and she hosted a lovely party indeed), and to see Tamu and Phil, neither of whom I had expected to see. (No, I didn’t think about what other guests might logically be there; you may laugh at me.) The boy was very shy and clingy, and spent a lot of time hiding behind me or cuddling me. We gave Tamu a lift back to the metro so she could stay a bit longer, so it was a full car on the way home what with three grown women, a boy, and a six-month-old baby, which was a lot of fun.

Sunday morning I made big pancake breakfast, then realised I didn’t have the energy to go out and do the groceries. So HRH went alone, bless him, and I dozed in a chair while the boy played. When HRH got home I dragged myself to bed and had a two-hour nap.

Once awake again I made lunch, then made peanut butter-chocolate brownies from the Martha Stewart’s Cookies book, and hmm; her recipes are usually great, but this one wasn’t quite right. I substituted cocoa for the chocolate (I usuallly do this, because it’s less expensive) and cut a bit of the sugar comme d’habitude, but next time I’ll use less cocoa, a tad more sugar, and make twice as much peanut butter filling! Then I made hasty chocolate pudding, because I had promised the boy a few days earlier that we’d make pudding for the first time. The boy made it with me, stirring ingredients together and pressing the buttons on the microwave to cook it. (Recipe review: Pretty good for six-minute pudding. I halved the recipe, used brown sugar, added a tablespoonful of butter with the vanilla, and it was great. Next time, I’m cutting a bit of the cocoa, though, and I can’t believe I said that. And it really needs whipped cream to balance the chocolate. Although it occurs to me that a peanut butter swirl through it would be amazing. Hmm.) Then I puttered while the boy napped and HRH briefly went over to his parents’ house.

My monthly group cello lesson later that afternoon was great; we had a new student there, and did some good work on the Corelli. I’m having a stupid time counting, for some reason; I got lost in the middle of everything that I wasn’t playing the first cello line for (I’m fine with first and whatever the bottom line is, but I’m wobbly on the middle voices because I’m not sure how the harmonies are supposed to move or sound like yet). Despite this, our first read-through of Joplin’s “The Entertainer” went pretty well. We sight-read a new piece, “Soldier’s Joy,” that will be paired with “The Ashokan Farewell,” as well as getting the official new music for our quartets and trios. I really enjoy my group lessons, and I wish we could do them more often, although I know they’re a tonne of work for my teacher and the scheduling is enough of a nightmare.

Here’s some pictures of the plied Coopworth I spun up on Friday. The colour on the top photo is more accurate.

That’s 191 yards of nice, springy, lofty, woollen-spun yarn made from 4 oz of chocolate Coopworth roving (real roving, not misnamed combed top), two-ply, 11 wpi.