Passing

Well, my grandfather died within a half hour of my last post.

I am mostly relieved that his suffering is ended.

I won't be around online for a few days while we travel to the funeral and spend time with family.

Unheimliche

It's been just over ten years since I moved out of my parents' house to attend school, and just over four years since I stopped coming back over the summer breaks to work at the historic site.

Every time I come home, it seems like something changes a little bit more, and it becomes less and less home and more and more my parents' house.

Over the last two years, my parents have replaced all of the windows and doors. The new door in the front hall has a much bigger pane of glass in it; it lets in so much more light now that, for the first few times I was home, I kept going into the hallway to close the door because I thought it was open. We also used to have an old church pew as a bench in the hallway, but it's gone now.

The living room has had its carpet torn out and replaced by a beautiful auburn hardwood floor. Less than a year ago, my parents finally threw out the camel brown velour couch they bought shortly after they were married (in 1977) and replaced it as well. Now there's a new couch and a fancy La-Z-Boy that's more comfortable than most beds I've slept in; there's a vintage crystal chandelier and beautifully framed art prints.

The biggest change is the kitchen, which my dad gutted completely. Gone are the cheap cupboards and drawers of my childhood. Now I have no idea where anything is (to be fair, the redesigned kitchen is sufficiently awesome that the increase in storage space means that no one knows where anything is anymore). The appliances are fancy (the convection oven in particular) and the granite countertop is a thing of dreams. Our big kitchen table (scarred by years of less than careful activity) is long gone; there is a tiny table with two chairs just for my parents.

One of the hardest things about growing old for me is not that I don't need my parents, but that they don't need me.

Don't get me wrong: I don't begrudge them this beautiful space that they're building together. My parents have been together for 40 years this year (married for 34 of them) and I'm old enough now to see that their life together hasn't always been easy or simple. It's more just that every change makes this place more unheimliche (unhomely), familiar but also strange. And eventually it isn't going to be my home any more, for real.

Though I have to admit that on these 30+ degree days, I am grateful that they broke down and put in central air conditioning when they replaced the furnace.

Long Weekend

July 1st is Dominion Day up here in Canada; our annual celebration of that time when some old white guys got together and decided that it was high time we separated ourselves from Mother Britain. This year, we got to take an extended trip to visit our parents. My parents and I spent Canada Day wandering around downtown Barrie. My mother went for a 5K run while my father and I took in the sights at a street fair. One of the things we found was the former Robert Simpson brewery, now branded the Flying Monkeys Brewery, which was selling beer samplers for $4. After we collected Mum from her run (complete with patriotic running gear, from that time she went and ran the 5K at the Loch Ness marathon), we made our way back to the brewery. The Confederation Amber Ale was my favourite, although they had an orange/wheat beer that was also quite good. About halfway through our beer sampling, we collectively realized that none of us had eaten very much that morning, and that the alcohol had gone straight to our heads. There's nothing quite like the realization that both of your parents (and yourself) are a bit drunk at 11:45 in the morning...

So we found pulled pork sandwiches and a most delicious lunch was had.

I also found a cheese shop called Gouda For You, at which I purchased a ginger-mango Stilton, a Mont St. Benoit, and a caramelized onion cheddar. Lovely all around.

The best news of the week/end for me, though, was that I finished my lovely cardigan:

This pattern (Cirilia Rose's Ephemera Cardigan) went into my Ravelry queue the moment I saw it as part of Berroco's newsletter. It reminded me of my favourite cardigan, a hand-me-down from my friend Jess, which was from the Gap and black. The cardigan, having since gone to the great thrift store in the sky, had hook and eye fastenings up the front instead of buttons, a look I find quite figure flattering.

The cardigan is knit from Knit Picks Gloss in the fingering weight, which is a 50/50 wool-silk blend. I had the yarn dyed by Sharon at Three Irish Girls in Eavan. Eavan is pretty much the perfect colour for me: a deep, inky blue (one of the colours of the sky at twilight that I can never quite capture with my camera). Eavan is also one of my favourite names, and it is one that I will be lobbying for if ever I have a girl child. This blue is a great colour for me, if I do say so myself.

I made some mods to the pattern, mostly with the hems and the button bands (is it still a button band if there are no buttons?), and I'm really pleased with the way that it looks. I can hardly believe that I made it.

ETA - The tape on my arm in the second picture is covering a henna design on my arm.

We'll be dead before our time is due

It's the Victoria Day weekend here in Canada, where we all get an extra day off to celebrate the birth of our deceased monarch. Her birthday is actually the 24th of May, but we celebrate it on the last Monday on or before that day. I usually try to avoid travelling this weekend, since it marks the beginning of summer for Canadians, which in Ontario means the beginning of cottage season. Unfortunately, I didn't think the dates through when my dad asked me if I'd like to go see The Cars with him in Toronto on the 20th. I wound up coming down on Thursday to avoid the truly awesome traffic that long weekends inspire around here, and I'm hanging around until Monday to head back up to the Bay with Youngest, who got hired to work as a massage therapist by Middle's workplace for the week.

The concert was pretty good--it's been a long, long time since I've been the youngest person at a concert, but I had to have been pretty close to that last night. It was at the Sound Academy, formerly known as the Docks, which is a venue that's right on the docks in downtown Toronto. The sound was excellent, which was nice, particularly since I was expecting something closer to the godforsaken Koolhaus (formerly known as The Warehouse, since that's quite literally what it was). In some ways, it was strange to be at the Sound Academy--in its previous life, it was one of the premier venues for techno music and rave culture, and Mat spent a fair amount of time there in his younger and more foolish days.¹ Having been to a lot of concerts with me, he always talks about taking me to a rave, but luckily I've never had to actually go through with that.

I have started a new pair of socks with Handmaiden's Casbah (80% merino, 10& cashmere, 10% nylon) which I think is probably my all time favourite sock yarn. My previous pair, now about two years old, are in great shape despite being washed and dried in machines on a regular basis; one may have an issue soon, but that's because of the lace pattern on the front--the soles are in great shape, even the heels. I'm really excited for the new pair and how quickly they're working up.
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¹ He'd actually never been to a music concert before we started dating, just lots of raves and DJ shows. He also had pink hair for a long time.

Jasper

We adopted Jasper in the summer of 1999. He wasn't supposed to come home with us; we were actually getting a kitten for Youngest Sister following the death of our latest cat. Every time we went to the SPCA, though, there was this one adult cat who kept sticking in our minds. When Youngest finally picked out a kitten, a little calico baby, my mom said, spontaneously, "Let's get the tabby, too; your dad really likes him."

He had been at the shelter so long (over a year)¹ that we didn't have to pay any adoption fees for him; they were just happy that he was going to a home. Later, we would remark that we couldn't understand how he'd gone unnoticed for so long: while he wasn't the most beautiful cat, his personality more than made up for it. He loved all of us (excepting, perhaps, Youngest) devotedly. Even though he and Padme² were not litter-mates or even related, they were best friends³, often snuggling up together:

Of all of us, though, Jazz was most devoted to my mother. He would stay up at night when she was working nights at the hospital, and he would wait for her to come home in the morning. If she didn't arrive home at 7:30, he would start to prowl around the house to look for her. He would then sleep on the bed with her for the day. He would sit on the computer desk when she was using the computer, and he would come up behind her and poke her in the back if he thought she wasn't paying enough attention to him.

He was an exceptionally friendly cat. My dad nicknamed him, "The WalMart Greeter" because he would forget about everything as soon as he heard someone on the doorstep, and run to the front door to say hello.

Unlike most cats, Jasper loved having his tail pulled. If you put your hand on his tail, he'd lean away from you so that you were pulling on it. We always had a hard time explaining this to people, who thought that we were making it up--until they saw him in action, and how loudly it would make him purr.

You may have noticed that this post is mostly written in the past tense. Jasper got sick about two weeks ago. Youngest took him to the vet's after he failed to get up for breakfast one morning. His bladder was enlarged, and he was unable to pee. After a few days of being catheterized, he peed on his own and came home, only to wind up back at the vet's for the same reason the next day. He spent a few more days with a catheter in, peed successfully, and came home again...and went back to the vet again two days later. My parents made the decision to euthanize him, and they buried him in our backyard on Thursday evening.

It was very strange to be home for Easter. Between missing him and wondering if she'd made the right decision, my poor mum was so sad. For me, the hard parts weren't the big things--I knew he wouldn't be there to greet us, and I knew that he wouldn't be begging for food around dinnertime. It was the small things: coming around a corner and expecting to see him on a chair; finding his fur on the bedspread in my bedroom; listening for him in the morning.

I'll miss him for a long, long time.
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¹ Thank heaven we lived in an area that could afford to have a no-kill shelter.
² Yes, 1999 was the year that The Phantom Menace came out. Why do you ask?
³ Except when he would forget about the time he had the Big Operation and force himself upon her.

The Handmade Christmas

I love the idea of the Handmade Pledge: giving handmade gifts is such a noble (and cool!) idea. I don't follow the pledge to the letter, since there are some people who would rather not get something made by a person instead of a machine, and sometimes a non-handmade gift can be more practical. I've also amended the pledge to include books and tools as acceptable gifts; I figure that if it can help you make something on your own, then I can't really ask for anything else.

I also don't do the second half of the pledge. I don't ask people to give me handmade gifts because it's a request that would (mostly) fall on deaf ears, and I don't want to put people under that kind of pressure. (Plus, I also like non-handmade things sometimes, like my awesome Scrabble pyjamas that my mom got me this year.) Thus, it was a big surprise for me this year to receive several gifts that were made by the givers. I have some very talented friends and family.

My sister-in-law made a bench for our entryway for us. She made the bench and then worked a mosaic design on the top in glass:



My friend Jamie made me a case for my interchangeable knitting needles:



My friend Steph made me a scrapbook page in a shadowbox:


And Youngest Sister made a bag. Actually, that's not true. She made me The Bag. The Bag To End All Bags. It's gorgeous:


The cat loves it too:


I am very, very lucky to have people who care for me enough to make me a gift of their time like this.

Decemberween

Happy December. My sore throat has come back full throttle, along with some sinus pain. Seriously, can I not be done being sick now? The area between my nose and my throat feels bruised, almost. Ugh.

This is the last week of the calm before the storm: on Monday, my students will begin to hand in their final papers, and then it will be a mad dash to get everything marked for the exam on December 20th, and then it will be a mad dash to get the bloody exam marked quickly so it doesn't hang over me for the whole holiday as per last year. At least this year we have a late start in January, which should afford me some breathing room.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew with Christmas knitting this year, but I guess I'll need to have something to break up the monotony of all that grading. I really want to CO stuff for myself, like some nice warm socks, and maybe a pretty shrug, but I can't. I need to finish my mom's sweater (still plugging away on the hood; it looks gorgeous with all of cabling but I just want it to be done), a fornicating reindeer hat for Mat's dad, a long cowl for Youngest (why-oh-why didn't I just buy her the one at American Eagle that she wants me to remake for her?), mittens for my cousin, assorted hats...at least hats are quick, right?

There's no time to blog--if I'm gonna get this done before Christmas, I better get cracking. Back to the hood!

A Conversation With My Father

Blech. My beloved has gone deer hunting for the week, and I am ill and behind on my work. In absence of a real entry, I'd like to share with you a conversation that my dad and I had over Thanksgiving weekend:

Dad: I really like the kilt hose that you made for Mat.
Me: Thank you. I really like them too.
Dad: I like them so much that I want a pair for Christmas. I'm putting in my order now.
Me: As long as you have no illusions about there being a pair of kilt hose under the tree on Christmas Day, I would be happy to make you a pair.
Dad: That's fine.
Me: I'll find some patterns this weekend to show you and you can pick one.
Dad: No, that's okay. You can just make me the same ones in the same colour.
Me: If that's what you want. [silently dies a bit inside]
Dad: Do you know how much kilt hose cost?
Me: Not really...as much as you want to pay for them, I guess.
Dad: The ones your mother bought me cost $40.
Me: That's nice. I like the colour of those ones. [They are a nice forest green.]
Dad: I like the ones you made more. I bet you could easily sell those for $40.
Me: Dad, they have handmade kilthose at Burnetts and Struth. They're made by little old ladies in Scotland.¹ Do you know how much those cost?
Dad: Not $40?
Me: No. More like $100. And the yarn that they're made from is not as nice as the yarn that I used.²
Dad: So I shouldn't tell other people you'll make kilt hose for them?
Me: Probably not.

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¹ The name of the person who knit them is on the tag. It's kinda neat.
² If you know anything about yarn, I used Knit Picks Bare in the sportweight. The B&S kilt hose are knit in a worsted weight heritage yarn like Briggs and Little--very heavy and very itchy, I should imagine. There's nothing wrong with this--it's just not as fine as what I used, and results in a very different looking sock.

I Would Be Happy Just To Hold The Hands I Love

It's been eleven days now since I got married, and I think that I have finally decompressed enough to actually give a proper write up. The weeks leading up to the event were pretty stressful, as a lot of stuff needed to get done (including my bloody fascinator *and* all of the jewelry for the girls). At the same time, work started to get busier (a trend that has, unfortunately, continued up until the present). Mat made the mistake of saying, about five days before the wedding, that he didn't think planning a wedding was really "all that much work." Let me simply say, for the record, that he's quite lucky that he said that in a public place in front of other people, because if we'd been alone I don't know what I would have done to him.

The day itself was sunny but cold. We had been really worried that it was going to rain, and prevent us from having the ceremony outside. It was grey and overcast early in the morning, but the sun did come out and the rain held off. I was much calmer than I had thought I would be, and everyone kept commenting on that. One of the few advantages to getting married far away from here was that I had to have everything ready before we left on the Thursday, so by the time I arrived at my parents' place, there wasn't anything left to worry about.

Once we arrived at the museum where the ceremony was to take place, we went upstairs to hide out. It was then that the first (of two) almost-bad thing happened: my poor mother fell down the stairs, ass over tea kettle. She tore the skin off of one of her knees and one of her elbows, and she now has a bruise the size of a grapefruit on her arm.¹ My poor mum. Her Haruni shawl was beautiful, though.

Outside, we lined up around the side of the building with my friend (and former THSWSNBN boss) Larry, who graciously agreed to pipe us in.

Just as Larry was gearing up to play Paul McCartney's Mull of Kintyre for us, Youngest Sister suddenly realized that she didn't have Mat's ring anymore: it had been in her purse, which was now with one of our cousins in the audience. We had to call off the start of the ceremony so that she could go find it...and then it began.

We were married by a provincial court judge, who was Mat's Boy Scout leader when he was a child.² We had three readings as part of the ceremony: a Neil Gaiman poem that Mat picked out; a selection from Le Petit Prince, done in both French and English; and a few verses from the Song of Solomon. We wrote our own vows, and Mat either broke down and cried during his or was attacked by a vicious swarm of insects.

Between the ceremony and the reception, we were able to get a few pictures over at THSWSNBN:

The reception went beautifully: the hall looked wonderful, the food was plentiful and delicious, the speeches were funny and brief, and the DJ was excellent. We really could not have asked for anything more.³

Oh, and for those of you who've asked, this was our first dance:

Song for a Winter's Night-Gordon Lightfoot
Uploaded by StonewallStudios. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.
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¹ It has been speculated that she gave herself a mild concussion, but we'll never know--she refused to go to the hospital, saying she would not go to her own ER on the day of her daughter's wedding with a head injury.
² And also the father of the friend who introduced us.
³ Except for my grandfather to have been there, but at least he is in a safe place now

an embarrassment of riches

I am chez les parents for one last night, though I will be up and on the road quite early tomorrow morning. One of my aunts in Toronto hosted a bridal shower for me today, and it was a really nice afternoon. There was sushi, cupcakes, fifteen different kinds of cheese¹, wine, tea, champagne, sandwiches...so much delicious food.

When my friend Jess got married last summer, she told me that one of the biggest surprises about getting married is how generous people are to you. And even though I knew that was true, I didn't realize exactly what that would mean for me until today: It truly is an embarrassment of riches to be loved by your family and friends. The shower was a recipe shower--my sister sent out recipe cards with the invitations, and everyone brought recipes and kitchen supplies to the shower. The best recipes are the family ones, copied out by my grandmother from her cookbook, where her mother originally wrote it, or from the Women's Institute cookbook my grandfather's mother helped publish up in Timmins in the early twentieth century, or my cousin's recipe for cream filled Easter eggs.

I am so very lucky. Even if they did make me wear the bra.

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¹ Maple cheddar! Guinness cheddar! Caramelized onion cheddar! Cheesegasm!

Another Long Weekend

August is a busy month for Mat's family. The Simcoe Day weekend (known to other Canadians as the Civic Holiday) is a family reunion for his dad's side of the family, which is always hosted at my in-laws' house. The following weekend is the reunion for his mom's side of the family, with a different location every year.¹ The week after that is Mat's birthday.²

So this weekend was the paternal family reunion, featuring a grand total of 31 people. I should probably preface all of this by saying that I love my inlaws very much: they've always been very accepting of me, despite our cultural and religious differences, and they've never made me feel anything but loved when I am at their house. That said, there are very real cultural differences, and a long weekend of that can be very overwhelming, especially for an introvert.

It was especially bad this year because of the wedding. There were guests at the reunion who are not invited to the wedding. (Mat's great aunts and uncles and some of his second and third cousins; we've had to draw the line at our first cousins because it would've added approximately 50 people to his half of the guest list. I am meeting almost of all these people for the first time this summer.) Most people, I think, would be fairly sensitive to the delicacy of these situations, but we got asked more than once where these relatives' invitations were. Awkward. I also got to attend a Passion Party put on by my future sister-in-law, along with her cousins and aunts. More awkward but eventually hilarious.

I got to have dinner with my parents and spend a few hours with my mom, which was really nice. My grandfather's condition is worsening (mentally at least; not sure about the physical) and he's been hospitalized for the time being. He will probably move from the hospital into an old age home. This has been a long time coming; it has been very hard for my grandmother and some of my aunts to admit that my grandfather's needs to go beyond her ability to care for him. I'm hoping that the transition goes well for both of them. Growing old is scary.

I skipped out on a good chunk of the 50 Days of Tea since I wasn't at home, but I did have a peach-mango white tea today. Very nice taste; lots of scent; not convinced that Lipton's much vaunted pyramid-style tea bag really makes all that much difference.
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¹ Yes, this does mean that every five or so years, they will host back-to-back reunions for about sixty people total.
² I have bought him an iced tea set, and I will be buying him a sgian dubh for his kilt.

Mom's Magical Mystery Tour

Longtime readers of the blog (as well as those of you who know me in the flesh) will be familiar with the exploits of my mother. My mother is awesome, but she might also be totally nuts. While I was home last weekend, she let me know that she needed me to come back this weekend to whisk me off on an adventure--and not just any adventure. A surprise adventure. A surprise adventure that I still know nothing about, even though I'm back at my parents' house and we're setting forth tomorrow. In short: insane but awesome.

The first part of the surprise was revealed tonight: I received an envelope with a map in it. The map took me to the house of a girl I went to high school with, who runs a small salon out of her house. I now have lovely, well -shaped, iridescent fingernails, and bright, cheerfully orange toenails. My hands and feet are delightfully soft, and I feel very relaxed.

I'm the oldest of three girls, as you've likely surmised.¹ According to my dad, my mother is having severe moments of "My baby is getting maaaaaarried," so she has planned this weekend as a special mommy-daughter weekend that will let us spend some time together before I get married. It's definitely a very sweet thought on my mother's part. I have absolutely no idea what we are doing tomorrow, but I do have a couple of possible ideas:

1. Winery tour of Niagara region²
2. Trip to Stratford for Shakespeare
3. Trip to Toronto for shopping and theatre³
4. Yarn crawl of southern Ontario
5. Tea crawl of souther Ontario
6. Visit to an alpaca farm to help in alpaca shearing⁴
7. Spa day⁵

I'm not sure if I'll have any internet access while I'm gone, but I'm definitely bringing the camera. Stayed tuned for the big reveal!

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¹ It is, indeed, why I refer to my sisters as Middle and Youngest.

² Kind of have my fingers crossed for this one, I'm not going to lie.

³ In which case, I really hope it's Jersey Boys

⁴ It's my imaginary magical mystery tour, and I'll shear alpacas if I want to, okay?

⁵ Given that I've already had my hands and feet done, this seems less likely.

A Heavy Heart and Lots of Prayers

A few weeks ago, my maternal grandfather fell in the shower. It didn't seem to be a big deal at the time, but then he started complaining of headaches and began throwing up. My grandmother brought him to the hospital, where he was x-rayed. The x-rays show a subdural hematoma; he's bleeding at the base of his brain. None of this is very good (particularly the vomitting), but it's even worse given all of my grandfather's other health problems: renal failure, stroke, electrolyte imbalance, diabetes, and alcoholism. He's 86, too, so when all that adds up together, it makes for a pretty grim picture. No one really knows what is going on. The hospital can't do anything for him other than treat his pain and his nausea, so they won't admit him; the brain bleeding is either going to heal itself or it isn't.

I don't know how to feel. I don't want my grandfather to die, but I don't want him to suffer, either. I've been trying my best to pray for peace for both him and my grandmother, but I've had a hard time controlling my emotions and focusing them towards that end.

Rather than dwell on the negative, though, I thought I'd tell you a little about my grandfather, and maybe tell my favourite of his stories. My mom's father is a joker and a trickster. He grew up in Schumacher, ON, which is now part of Timmins. He was one of several children. He worked on the railroads¹ and eventually wound up working for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Peterborough and Scarborough. He always has a joke, or a rhyme, or a song for his grandchildren. He loves trains, birds, gardenning, and the Royal Family. He has such a tremendous sense of humour, and tells stories so well. Here is one of my favourite grandpa stories:

The Story of Tom, Lloyd, and the Daisy Air Rifle
When Tom (my grandfather) and Lloyd (his brother) were young, there was nothing in the world that they wanted more than a pair of Daisy air rifles. Trouble was, their mother flat out refused to let them have guns. They began secretly squirreling money away, pledging that once they had enough saved up to buy two air rifles, they would go to the store and buy the guns regardless of what their mother thought. When that blessed day came, however, the store only had one gun in stock. They elected to buy the lone gun, and went off into a field to try to shoot some stuff. Once they ran out of logs and rocks to shoot at, Lloyd said to Tom, "I wonder how much it hurts to get shot by one of these."

The two boys decided to find out. They drew straws; the person drawing the short straw being the first person to get shot. Tom drew the short straw. He bravely walked away from Lloyd, and bent over, offering his buttocks as a target.² Lloyd aimed, fired, and hit Tom square in the butt. It was the worst pain he had ever experienced in his young life, and the worst part was that he couldn't even do anything about it. He knew that if he so much as whimpered, Lloyd would chicken out and break his end of the bargain. Thus, he held in his tears just long enough to shoot his brother in the butt.

(Afterwards, of course, both boys cried, and had difficulty sitting properly, owing to the pellets in their butts, which resulted in both their mother's discovery of their evil plan and her confiscation of the air rifle.)

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¹ In the earlier parts of the twentieth century, the only choices in northern Ontario were railroads or mining.
² When my grandpa told me this story, he told me that there was a reason why they were going to shoot each other in the butt, but I don't remember what it was.

Twenty-two years ago today, Youngest Sister was born. My mother's friend Laura had come down from Toronto to take care of us, since my father was away at a training exercise, and my mother had a history of going into labour while my father was out of town. We were eating dinner when the phone rang: "It's a girl," said Laura, and I was disappointed. I already had Middle Sister--what did I need another girl for?

Youngest is almost a full seven years younger than I am, which has often lead to conflict for us. When we were younger, our conflicts were exacerbated by the fact that I was older and therefore always "should know better" which meant that if she did something wrong, I usually got blamed for it. This was usually furthered by the fact that our lives were just so different--by the time that I went away to university, she hadn't even graduated from elementary school yet. We also have very different personalities: as much as birth order is pop psychology, some of the ideas resonate really clearly for my sisters and me: I am bossy and need to be "right", Youngest has a healthy disregard for rules and a driving need for attention. (We won't talk about the Middle Sister.) We still have occasional clashes, but these are relatively minor.

In spite of all that, Youngest and I have developed a really strong relationship over the last few years. She has grown up to be an intelligent, capable, and beautiful young woman, and I couldn't be prouded of her. She is so much fun to spend time with, and she is both funny and fearless. She is newly certified as a registered massage therapist, and intends to return to school as a mature student to pursue nursing. She loves music and reading fantasy/sci-fi. She has the most beautiful tattoo of a purple starfish on her back. She had, at one point, almost twenty piercings in various places on her body. She is the poster girl for the Historic Site Which Shall Not Be Named's Sister Site; her photograph is on billboards and in brochures. Though we both have our dad's colouring, she looks so much like our mother (which is strange, because I look like so much like our father, but Youngest and I also look quite alike). When I get married in October, she will be my maid of honour. I hope that she knows how awesome and special I think she is.

Happy birthday to my favourite sister who does not live in North Bay Rock City.

message in a bottle

I have the most enormous pimple on my nose right now. It started a couple of days ago on the inside of my nose, but now has migrated/grown to the outside of my nose, where it is swollen, red, and sore. When I woke up this morning, my beloved said, "If it makes you feel any better, I won't call you Rudolph...to your face." When I got to my parents' house, my mom said, "What happened to your nose?" Sigh.

It was a busy weekend in the land of my childhood, but I did get a lot of things for the wedding done. I am realizing more and more that I need to accept that nothing I can do for the wedding will make everyone happy (and sometimes, it won't make anyone happy). It is a bit frustrating because people keep telling us that we have to do what is right for us, but then they are offended or unhappy if the things that we want don't match up with their ideas about how things should go. I just need to remind myself that no one is trying to make me mad, and that people are only doing what they do and saying what they say out of love.

And when that doesn't work I will lock myself up in a small room and knit feverishly until I feel better.

This is shaping up to be a busy week here, as I have a number of school commitments to deal with, and my conference paper at the end of the week. (And no, of course it's still unfinished...why do you ask?)

I have a good mother, and her voice is what keeps me here

My mom is really neat. Like really neat. So neat that I don't even know how to begin to tell you about how neat she is. So maybe I'll start with this picture:



My mom is the second oldest of five girls--she's the one with the cat shirt on. Four of the five girls are nurses, as was their mother. (The other does something with computers and maps.) My mom trained as a nurse at St. Michael's hospital in Toronto, and lived downtown while she was doing that. This has made her absolutely fearless: she can cross a busy downtown street while my sisters and I can only look at the oncoming traffic with total fear. St. Mike's is also right by Massey Hall, so she and her nursing friends would sometimes get to meet the musicians performing there.

My mom loves sock monkeys. She had one when she was a kid (that she still has, though he is missing an arm). She calls sock monkeys "minkeys". This interest has resulted in a family sock monkey assembly line at several points in the past. In fact, this spread to last year's Sister Weekend, from which we have learned that you should never drink and sock monkey.



My mom is one of the most generous people that I know. For the last several years, she has been travelling to Nicaragua to help run medical clinics in rural villages, as well as volunteering at the children's hospital in Managua. During her time there, she has seen and done some incredible things. The first year that she went, she met a woman who had just had a baby girl. As there were no respirators, my mom took turns manually "bagging" the baby so that her lungs would be forced to breathe. The woman and my mother spent a lot of time together, and the baby was eventually named "Luisa", the Spanish version of my mother's name. The next year, when my mother returned, her friend walked several hours to attend the closest rural clinic, and she brought with her a gift for my mother: Two live chickens, chosen because they were the most valuable gift that could be given. (And yes, she is actually holding the chickens by the feet there.)



My mom is also neat because she isn't afraid to be quirky or weird. For example, the year before she turned fifty, she told people that she was fifty-one, so that when she actually turned fifty the following year, no one made a big deal out of it. She also went through a phase where all of her MSN Messenger conversations with me contained no vowels, only consonants. t trnd t sh ws trng t s hw lng t wld tk t brk m. Of all my mother's quirks, though, my favourites are the ones that involve Jasper. When Kinsey, our twenty lb. torty, passed away, my mother promised Youngest Sister that she could pick out the next kitten. They visited the animal shelter a few times, and Youngest picked out a little calico who turned out to be Padme. My father had admired an older, friendly grey tabby named Jasper, so when we picked up Paddy, my mom decided to bring Jasper home too, as a surprise for my dad. As such things often go, Jasper soon fell in love with my mother. He is so attached to her that he "works nights" with her--when she has night shifts, he will stay awake all night so that he can sleep with her during the day. (He also knows what time she should be home, so if she is late, he gets upset and starts to walk around the house to look for her.)

These are only a few of the reasons that my mom is neat. There are lots more.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week - Day One

I was taught to knit by my dad's mother when I was fairly young--perhaps about 8 or 9. My wee Scottish grandmother taught both Middle Sister and I at the same time, at her house in Peterborough, and I can remember the small, white, garter stitch square that I produced, and how much it bothered me that it was ridged. I had thought that I would produce something flat and beautiful, with rows of tiny Vs--I had no idea that stockingette would take work. My grandmothers were both quite crafty, although the impression that I have is that my dad's mother knit and crocheted exclusively, where my mum's mother did just about everything under the sun: knitting, crocheting, tatting, sewing, smocking, painting, everything.* One of them made this for one of us girls at some point:





I didn't stick with it, being fairly involved with a number of other creative endeavours (and, of course, having my nose permanently stuck in a book, which made doing anything else pretty difficult). In fact, I wouldn't pick it up again until the summer of 2000, when I started to work at the Historic Site Which Shall Not Be Named. For the first time in my life, a wholly Protestant work ethic asserted itself: I could not stand to be on site without something to do with my hands. I borrowed an Opinel knife, grabbed some kindling, and carved my own cedar knitting needles. (In case you were wondering, cedar is a singularly poor material to make knitting needles out of, as it is so soft that it breaks without much encouragement.) I sort of remembered how to knit from my grandmother's lessons, so I got someone else to cast on for me, and away I went. Even then, I didn't do much with it when I wasn't at work.

Three years after this, I asked Middle Sister what she wanted for Christmas, and she asked me to buy her a knitting book for beginners. As soon as I saw the cover for Stitch'n'Bitch, which has just been published, I knew it was exactly what she was looking for...what I didn't know is that it was what I was looking for, too. I began to knit more frequently, and to choose projects that were actual projects, and not just scarves. I realized quickly that all of the time I had spent knitting in the seventeenth century had led to a lot of creating my own stitches and ways for doing things: I had even figured out a way of purling backwards so that I didn't have to turn my knitting at the end of the row--I would just work back across it. Following patterns meant having to un-learn some of the things I had taught myself, because it made following patterns very difficult. I also wrap the wrong way, which meant that for the first few years that I knit, all of my stitches were twisted. (Rather than changing my wraps, I eventually figured out a way to accomodate for this; it's one of the reasons why my gauge is generally looser than the norm.) When I moved to Guelph to do my MA, I was faced with the reality of living alone in a city where I knew no one and nothing, and knitting became a solace from some of that loneliness. (It also eventually led to some friendships with the other people in my program--there were a lot of knitters that year.)

Knitting means something different to me now than it did back then, but that's the story of how I became a knitter.

*My mother also knits: she went through a fair isle sweater phase that outfitted us three girls, our cousins, and various friends of the family in beautiful pastel sweaters. However, she never really tried to get any of us to knit, perhaps because she is a leftie and all of us girls are right handed.

Hippity hoppity

The Easter weekend was a busy one. Co-ordinating two families' worth of holiday time is challenge to begin with, which is further complicated by a) the fact that we live 3ish hours away from where our parents live, and b) our parents' families live between 1.5-3 hours away from our parents, in opposite directions. So this round, we had Friday dinner with Mat's parents, and a Sunday lunch with mine, and forewent the extended family. It was still quite busy, though, and not helped by the really gross head cold I came down with last week. I'm still not feeling great, but am vastly improved over Friday and Saturday.

We visited Burnett's and Struth, the kilt store, so Mat could try on jackets to go with his kilt. I was thoroughly unprepared for how dashing he would look. I'd seen him try on the kilt back in August when we bought it, but that was nothing compared to seeing him try it on with a tuxedo shirt and proper jacket. Oh my goodness, I am a lucky girl. His family thinks he's stupid for wearing a kilt when it's not his background, but it makes me really happy. (It makes my dad really happy too, though I think part of that can be attributed to the fact that my dad is no longer the only man in our family.)

I ordered my Flora Macdonald sash, and Mat picked out a sporran. We also checked out the kilt hose--they even have some handmade ones there, all knit in Scotland, with each label identifying the knitter and the place where they were knit. (Only $100 a pair, knit in worsted weight wool.) Still planning on making socks for Mat; still not fully reconciled to doing it in fingering weight. It will have to be sport or DK for sure. Summer knitting, here I come.

We also started our gift registry at Sears. Mat has a hard time with the registry: He thinks that we already have lots of stuff, and doesn't see the point in registring for more. I can understand his desire not to acquire more stuff (we do, after all, live in an 875 square foot house), but there are a couple of good reasons to do a registry. First, people are going to buy us presents regardless of whether we have a registry. Having one prevents us from receiving six blenders (at least in theory). Second, a lot of the stuff we do have is from when we were students, which means that it's old (a lot of my stuff was secondhand to begin with) and/or probably cheap (see: our microwave, which is decidedly wheezy and tempermental). As a result, I've been making a lot of the decisions on my own. It makes me a bit uncomfortable to do this--and it makes me feel a little bridezilla-y--but it's the only way it's going to get done.

I have devised a small game to amuse myself, in which I select totally inappropriate/silly things and tell Mat that I'm going to put them on the registry with the description of being "for him". So far the list consists of: the Koolatron Vending Machine Refrigerator, the Country Cats kitchen set, and the Koolatron Lunch Box Stove.

I don't think he thinks it's very funny, but I do. (And, it should be noted, I haven't actually registered for any of these things, nor will I.)

Knitting history

While visiting my parents this past weekend, I recovered a piece of my family's knitting history: the duck vest. This was made for me by my mother or one of my grandmothers. (Mum isn't sure which; she thinks that it was her, or she thinks that she has the pattern for it somewhere.) It's made in a dreadful acrylic, of course (it was the 80s) but is really quite sweet otherwise (in a hideous 80s sort of way). There was an elephant vest to match, which featured an i-cord trunk on the front and a tail on the back.

Awesome.

drink up, baby, and stay up all night

I've been visiting my mother for the last few days, and it has been absolutely wonderful. After spending an afternoon with a few friends and my mother, I departed for one of the girls' house armed with my knitting and a bottle of red wine. We wound up watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Women's Moguls on the Olympics, and the bottle of red wine was consumed entirely by me. It was interesting to revisit 2001, as it has been several years since I'd watched it last. I was quite surprised to learn that it is actually only 2h25 long, as I would have bet good money on it being more in the four hour range. It turns out that it only feels four hours long. My main memory from the last time I watched it was that I'd spent most of the film reflecting on how much George Lucas had cribbed visually from the set design of the spaceships. My main memory from this time will probably be that the ending is pretty incomprehensible when 3/4 of a bottle of red wine is inside you.

Post-red wine, my mum and I took a trip down to Toronto to visit her parents. My grandfather hasn't been well lately, so I was excited but apprehensive about seeing him. (He's 86, and has a number of health issues related to age, in addition to a recent diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis.) He had a really good day, though. He was chipper and full of jokes, and even agreed to come out of the house to visit a farming store. He doesn't remember my name, but he does remember who I am. (I blame my mother for giving me such an outlandish name.) ;) My gramma was in good spirits as well. She's not much younger than Grampa, but is in much better health. The responsibility of taking care of Grampa falls on her, and I imagine that can be very trying sometimes. They have been married for almost 60 years.

On the knitting front, I've been working on a pair of mittens for the Ravelympics. I don't want to post pictures until I've managed to knit a little more of them, so that the pattern is more visible. I've had to rip them out entirely once already due to gauge issues, but I think the end result will be worth it.

The best thing that I have done so far on reading week, aside from consuming a large amount of delicious sushi, is write a short story. It's the first thing I've written in almost six years, aside from a few snatches of very bad poetry. It's not any good, but it makes me so unbelievably happy to have written something again. Let's hope there is more to come.