Monthly Archives: November 2010

In Passing

I’m handling several deadlines at the moment. I’ve got a major project deadline next Monday, which really means I need to be finished on Friday and then do a final proofread pass on Monday. This has been a four-month long repurposing project, where I’ve been taking a manuscript and rearranging it to make something different. It’s pure editing, and I’m thankful to have had the four months, because there was packing and moving in there, plus the horrible, horrible fibro aftermath. A lot of this project has been turning pages and scrolling through a document, thinking about where to put what in order to have it make the most sense thematically. And since thinking has been hard, no thanks to the fibro fog, it’s been challenging. I’m almost done, though, and I feel very positive about it. Apart from the OMG-deadline-deadline-deadline! panic that’s setting in right on schedule, of course. I’m also struggling with my “But it could be better!” crisis that hits me before I hand a project in. Sure, it could be better. It could always be better. Or perhaps not better; perhaps different is a better descriptor. Most creative types could poke at things forever. You don’t actually finish things; you just let them go.

I’ve got a concert in ten days, too, and I’ve got deadline panic setting in about that as well. I’m not where I wish I could be for this performance thanks to the fibro backlash I’ve been suffering this fall, and I’m having the crisis about sitting second chair that I regularly have every two concerts or so. I love the music on the programme, though, which makes up for a lot. I’m also handling a deadline for the programme notes, which slipped my to-do list a week ago and now I’m having to shove that into moments between work on the major freelance project to get them done ASAP so that they can go along to the next people in the production process.

I’m having issues with a supposedly relaxing hobby, as well. I don’t know why I try to knit things, sometimes, I really don’t. My project notes on Ravelry for the hooded scarf I’m trying to make look like this:

18 October: Planned:
* Hood: garter stitch with Lion Thick & Quick yarn on size 11 needles (for a denser fabric to better protect ears from the wind)
* Scarf: garter stitch with Lion Thick & Quick yarn on size 15s (for better drape)

First go:
26 Oct 2010: Hood finished and immediately frogged. The fabric was too stiff. I swear to gods I swatched with the 15s and the fabric was too loose, so I went with the 11s, but sometimes swatches lie. No, they lie most of the time, actually. Sometimes a 4-inch swatch doesn’t tell you how a 12 x 20-inch piece of knitted fabric will behave.

Second go:
* 28 October: Hood knitted on size 15s; cast on 30 stitches with Lion Thick & Quick (this worked, hurrah)
* 3 November: Doing the scarf part as a One-Row Lace Scarf in the Thick & Quick on the size 15s. If it’s not long enough by the time the skein ends, I’ll pick up stitches and knit some Bernat Harmony onto each end.

Third go:
OKAY FINE. Look, here’s what’s happening.
* Early November: Knitted a One-Row Scarf with an entire skein of Lion Thick & Quick, as above. It was a better drape for the hood, so it got folded and seamed and the original garter stitch rectangle hood got frogged.
* Nov 7: Cast on for the scarf with the Bernat Harmony held double on size 15s, which drove me crazy in about three minutes. Frogged it. Cast on size 11s with a single strand of Bernat Harmony, knit a couple of inches. Felt too thin. Frogged.
* Nov 9: Gave up on the knitting and warped the Kromski Harp rigid heddle loom with the Lion (with a draft something like 10-0-2-0-2-0-10-0-2-0-2-0-10 to create the same sort of visual impression that the One-Row Scarf creates when done in bulky yarn and left unblocked), and started weaving using the Bernat Harmony as a warp.

The good news is that the woven scarf looks as if it will work out just fine. Which is also good for my sanity, because really, you know? I can’t even handle garter stitch rectangles properly, let alone an actual pattern. I should just stick to spinning and weaving to relax. Speaking of which, the 8 oz of BFL I spun on Lady Jane has all been chain-plied on my Louet S15, and I have 522 yards of fingering weight yarn:

Very pretty. It will be made into a wrap for me (except I obviously SHOULDN’T KNIT IT, which means I need to think about a weaving draft instead). I wish I could shake the feeling of being irresponsible when the fibro is at a point where I can’t do much other than sit and get some spinning done. It uses a totally different part of my brain and conscious mind than work does.

The boy is doing much better, thank you all for asking and sending your get-well wishes. He’s as good as new after the scarlet fever, although he’s still on the amoxicillin till sometime next week. Our bad colds are also pretty much things of the past, thank goodness.

Right. Back into the fray.

Fall Concert Announcement

It’s November, which means that yes, the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra’s fall concert is nigh! This concert’s theme is Transcontinental, and takes you through a variety of European musical styles.

Circle Saturday the 20th of November on your calendars. At 19h30 in the Valois United Church in Pointe-Claire (70 Belmont Ave., between King and Queen), the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra will present the following works:

    Rossini: La Cenerentola overture
    Bartok: Rumanian Folk Dances
    Chabrier: Excerpts from Suite Pastorale
    Chaminade: Flute concertino, Op 107 (Soloist: Stephanie Morin)
    Dvorak: Czech Suite for Orchestra, Op 39
    Brahms: Hungarian Dances 6 & 1

Admission is $10 per person; admission is free for those under 18 years of age. The concerts usually last approximately two hours, including the refreshment break. There are driving directions and public transport info on the church website. I usually encourage people who are vehicle-less to find someone who has a car and share the cost of the driver’s admission to the concert among them. It’s more fun to enjoy the evening in the company of others, after all. And it bears repeating that children of all ages are very welcome indeed.

Rewriting The Day

So! Today is one of our much-anticipated spiritual retreat days. From nine to five, we spend time with others of our tradition, sharing ritual, discussion, and presentations or workshops on different topics pertinent to our practice.

And as I am publishing this at three in the afternoon, you can see that I am not there. Nor is HRH. We’re at home in quarantine, with a little boy who has scarlet fever.

I know, I know. Like mother, like son, I suppose. Fashionably retro.

Yesterday was a ped day, and he and I meandered over to the bookstore as we’d planned. He was awfully quiet, and chose to go lie down on his bed of his own accord before we left. I knew he wasn’t feeling great, but assumed it was the cold both he and I have been fighting all week. He had a low-grade fever but nothing serious, and didn’t have much of an appetite. He did fall asleep while watching a movie and had a two-hour nap, but that didn’t surprise me; the cold had been running him down quite a bit. Then last night after dinner he undressed for his bath and HRH called me in to look at the sandpapery, goosebumpy rash all over his body. “That’s scarlet fever,” I said. (Trust me; I know.) And by the time he went to bed the rash was beginning to deepen into the flushed pink colour that gives the illness its name.

I called our local source of all information — his preschool teacher! — and got the address of the best local clinic to visit. (My first choice is always my own GP, but she doesn’t work weekends.) We considered leaving it till Sunday morning, but decided it would be better to hit it early. His fever wasn’t high, and once the rash breaks out it doesn’t get really worse; long-term complications can arise if it’s not treated at all, but this was only a day in one direction or another. However, we realised that the sooner he got antibiotics, the sooner he could go back to school. The decision to hit the clinic sooner rather than later was also influenced by the insane wait times out here. The general GP shortage in our province seems to be particularly bad in this zone, so there are lots of clinics and they’re always full. If we got out in reasonable time, we thought, we could take the boy to his grandparents as planned, and get to the retreat late.

We were there at 7:30 when the doors were unlocked, along with a small crowd of other people; the doctors arrived at 8:00 and started processing patients; we were home by 11:00 with a few bottles of amoxicillin (oh, the unpleasant childhood memories resurrected by that banana smell). And we also all had a 48-hour quarantine, because the boy would still be infectious, and HRH and I needed 48 hours to ensure we weren’t incubating it ourselves. No contact with children or pregnant women for any of us, we were told. And that’s what clinched things, because one of the attendees at the retreat is pregnant.

So we’re at home today. We’ve declared it a TV day, and watched the last quarter of Avatar season 2 all in a row. I’ve baked chocolate cake; we’ve had popcorn. We’re making the best of not being able to attend the retreat (always frustrating, but especially so when you’re the one who organised it) or spend the day with Grandma and Papa. We can’t go to the concert we were planning on attending tomorrow afternoon, either, because all the performers are children, which has disappointed us dreadfully.

The clinic was terrific, though: great atmosphere and people, and the boy was cheerful and entertained himself with books and crayons. He got a purple mask to wear over his nose and mouth because he had a fever and cough, and he has decided to keep it forever and ever. It’s reassuring to know we have a really good clinic so close to us.

We’re making the best of things. He’ll be at home with me on Monday but back at school on Tuesday, and thank goodness, because I’m on my last week before deadline with the repurposing project and need all the time I can get. He says he quite likes the banana taste of the amoxicillin (better you than me, kid) and that’s good, too, because we’ve got four bottles of it in the fridge and another nine and a half days ahead of him taking it. Good thing we don’t burn toys and clothing after scarlet fever like they used to, because we bought a new tiny stuffed owl at the bookstore yesterday, too.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a cake to ice and an icing spoon to hand to the boy afterwards.

Brief Weekend Roundup: Halloween Edition

1. We spent Saturday in and around Alexandria/Maxville. We took Lady Jane, the 30″ Schacht-Reeves wheel, back to Bonnie and had a lovely visit with her, Rod, Darroch, and Carolyn. The boy quite enjoyed petting Kitten, their full-grown black and white cat, who responded with head bumps and purrs and entertained him by climbing into boxes. HRH scavenged some shutters from Darroch and Carolyn’s pile of water-damaged building supplies, and Carolyn led us to a place that had had shutters at a yard sale last week just in case they still had them, but they’d sold. We had a visit with Jan afterward, which was lovely, too. t! was absent at a meeting, but we met Whiskey, the lovely orange and white barn cat they’ve adopted, and the boy got to play with Carter, too. Not outside, alas; it was rainy, and we hadn’t packed the boy’s boots or rain slicker.

2. It snowed Saturday night, big fluffy Christmas-like flakes. There were about five centimetres on the ground Sunday morning, which prompted the boy to cry, “Come up and see! It’s January outside!” Most of it melted in the sun we had earlier in the day, but there were still snowy patches on the shady sides of roofs this morning.

3. Sunday morning we had our first family sabbat celebration with the Preston-LeBlancs. This is a direct result of dropping the pagan playgroup that we variously left because of travel time, conflict with choir, too many kids making concentration and discipline hard, and a general sense of losing the focus of the group’s initial mandate. We decided to do our own thing, and I think the first one was very successful. We did a brief talk on what Samhain was about, I led a very simplified version of an ancestral visualization that HRH wrote years ago, Paze read two poems and a storybook, we did a craft, and ended with a song. Without consulting one another overmuch we managed to use very similar themes in our units, and the kids seemed to enjoy it very much. Then we got to sit down and share a lovely lunch. I’d made vegetable cheese soup and biscuits, and Paze brought apple dumplings. It was all really lovely.

4. We headed over to HRH’s parents’ house for Halloween prep. The boy decided the pumpkin should have lightning eyes, a lightning nose, and a lightning mouth, so HRH carved it that way and it looked great. Despite being so thick it really glowed because the light bounced off the surprisingly pale interior. We were using a pumpkin from Jan and t!’s farm, and the flesh was very white. HRH left most of it in instead of scraping a lot of it out, as he would usually do to facilitate carving, so that I can hack it apart and cook it for pie fillings and soup.

5. This year, the boy finally got what Halloween was all about. I painted his face to look like two big dark eyes and paler feathers, but the detail was lost in the dark and he just looked like he had splotches around his eyes. He loved it, though, and enthusiastically trick-or-treated around his grandparents’ neighbourhood, chirping “Trick or treat!” or “Bonne l’halloween!” in his muddled fashion. The last couple of houses he waved at HRH, who had been walking up to the doors with him while I waited at the bottom of the driveways, and said, “You both stay here, I can go alone.” Back home he helped his grandfather hand out candy and got to see all the cool costumes (the undisputed winner was the guy who came as a bedside table, complete with lampshade on his head and a tabletop around his neck decorated with a tablecloth, book, glass of water, and pair of glasses on top). One parent cooed at him and said “Are you a dog?” “No!” he said, “I’m a owl!” and spread his wings, then turned around and did the most hilarious tail waggle at her.

He had an odd breakdown at bedtime last night, crying because he didn’t want the weather to get colder. “Well, there’s Christmas,” I said, and he sobbed that he liked Christmas, but not winter. And no, he didn’t like making snow forts and snowballs and snowmen any more, he never wanted to go outside again, he wanted to stay inside where it was warm all winter. I can’t blame him, really. I suspect this came about because he was tired and overtired, really, from a long intense day with lots of excitement.

And now I get to have a bowl of that incredibly delicious leftover soup. I’m on my third pot of tea, trying to cut through the yuck in my sore throat, but the cold I woke up with today has left my head blessedly clear, thank goodness. I’ve been handling my to-do list quite capably this morning, and all that’s left is work on the repurposing project and some celloing this afternoon.