Christmas Wrap Up

It has been a miserable couple of days around here: Mat and I have both been violently ill for the last 48 hours, which is not good at the best of times, much less when you are coming off the complete and total circus of Christmas.

All things considered, Christmas wasn't actually as crazy this year as I had been afraid that it would be; we managed the family gambit as well as could be expected: Christmas Eve at Mat's parents' place, Christmas morning at my parents, Christmas dinner at my aunt's in Toronto, and Boxing Day at Mat's uncle's in Sudbury. We were exhausted by the time that we got back to our house...and then the plague hit.

I managed to finish all of my knitting but one in time for Christmas. The Fornicating Deer hat went over quite well, as did Youngest Sister's cowl (she hardly took it off the whole time we were home). Youngest Sister also created the most wonderful thing for me--a Yellow Submarine/Beatles bag. I'll have to get some pictures of it soon...just as soon as I get my brand new Nikon D3100 DSLR camera. It should be here on Friday. I am thrilled. I have had a devil of a time trying to track one down in person, but managed to find an online retailer who not only had it in stock, but had a slightly lower price on it. I've spent the last couple of months trying to re-train myself to look at the world with a photographer's eye, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what I can do with something more than a point and shoot camera.

Countdown to Giftmas

The last week or so has been a frantic exercise in grading on a deadline whilst attempting to prepare for the holidays. Some parts of it went quite well. (Grading finished 24 hours before it needed to be, yay!) Some parts of it didn't. (No tree or lights or other Christmas decorations at the house, boo!) In good news, I have almost all of my Christmas business figured out, and have only a few small gifts left to pick up. Heck, I've even got stuff wrapped already, which is quite unusual. All I have left to knit is a pair of mittens for my cousin (made from some soft semi-local baby alpaca--yum), which likely won't take more than a day or so. Actually, now that I think about it, I need to finish the hat I'm working on for Mat, but that should be easy enough to finish up today.

The handmade piece de resistance for this year, though, is the hat I made for my father-in-law:

A storm front moved westward through NBRC yesterday, gifting us with about 40 cm of the white stuff. Today, we've got a different storm front moving east from Montreal, but this one is only bringing 10ish cm and a great deal of wind. The schoolbuses are cancelled throughout the city; my sister's office has closed for the day. The university is still open because the city buses are still running. (Those jerks would keep driving through the apocalypse, I think.) Fortunately, I had no plans to go to the school today. Classes finished on Friday, and my exam isn't until next Monday, so it's all grading from here on out. I can't think of a better day to spend holed up with some essays, the cat, some knitting, tea, apple cider, and some knitting.

The knitting guild's holiday party is tonight. I'm making pulled pork in the slow cooker, and serving it with tiny slider buns. We're also doing a blind stash exchange, where people will wrap up things from their stashes and we'll pull numbers for them, so I need to figure out what I can bring.

I grafted the hood on mom's sweater last night. I am quite proud of this--grafting in pattern is not an easy challenge, but somehow I managed to get it right on the first try. Unfortunately, I am now about 90% sure I don't have enough yarn to make the sleeves, and I am freaking out. I think that I need to step away from the project for a while so that I can figure out what I want to do about it. There are a few people on Rav who have yarn from the same dyelot, but I feel strange about PMing someone and saying, "Hey, want to sell me some of your yarn that you obviously have earmarked for other projects?" Currently I'm kind of leaning towards just buying more from Knit Picks and alternating skeins if the colour shift is too dramatic.

Touring History

Mat and I are beginning to put togethr our plans for our honeymmon, which we will take in February during my reading break. The honeymoon itself has been the source of some vexation for both of us, as we have very different ideas about where such a thing might take us. He would like to go to a resort and bake in the sun for a week; I would much prefer to do something more cultural.¹

Obviously, I want to go to Scotland. I'm not so sure I want to go to Scotland in February, per se, but that's where I want to go again, and soon.

However, we have arranged a compromise: New Orleans. It has food, history, culture, music, and a nightlife. The flights for the week we want to go are relatively inexpensive, and there is just so much to do there. The historian in me is thrilled by the idea of haunted tours, cemetary tours, Garden District tours, French Quarter tours, walking tours, swamp tours, etc.

The humanist in me (and perhaps, dare I say it, the pinko Commie in me), though, has mixed feelings about two of the possible tour offerings: Plantation tours and Hurricane Katrina tours. The relationship between history and tourism is always an uncomfortable one, as it has to preclude learning at some point and move towards spectacle: "Come see where the levees were breached! Marvel at the hard working people of the Ninth Word as they attempt to rebuild thier lives!" or "Come see where B'rer Rabbit was written! Eat lunch in honest-to-goodness slave quarters!"

Which is not to say that these things are not interesting to me, nor that there isn't value in seeing them--it's more just the way that they are marketed that disturbs me. When history becomes spectacle, there is substantial danger in losing the significance of the events. Eating a meal in slave quarters, to me, validates a particular period and a particular lifestyle in a way that I'm not comfortable with.

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¹ I can spend approximately 30 minutes baking in the sun on a beach before I am bored out of my mind, and I can't imagine doing it for a whole week. Yes, you're right--"relax" is not in my vocabulary.

Counting down the days

We went away for the weekend for the first time in more than a month, and we did it for fun for the first time in more than a year. It was very exciting to get out of the city. We visited old friends of Mat's, who are becoming my friends too. We ate Thai food (mmm summer rolls) and went shopping for crafts and books. Michaels, which is about the only big box craft store we have in Canada, does a line of $1.50 accessories that are colour and pattern co-ordinated, and the pre-holiday set this year was knitting themed. My favourite part? The best wrapping paper ever:

There are matching cards, notebooks, pencils, pencil cases, etc. I also have a roll of blue cabled paper, but I haven't broken into it yet.

We are in the final week of school, at long last. My students will hand in their final papers today, and I'll be grading well into infinity. There are about eight inches of snow outside, and I have yet to solve my winter boot dilemma. (I have a gorgeous pair of Hush Puppies, which are knee high and lined, but they also have a three inch block heel, which I feel is a bit dubious in times like these.)

I finished three hats in the car this weekend, but the hood on my mom's Rogue is continuing to kick my butt.

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!

Strange Days Have Come

On Mondays, I only have one hour of class, and it's a class that I don't even teach in, and it's a class at 3:30 in the afternoon. At the beginning of the term, when I found out my schedule for the year, I was thrilled--how could I not be? Unfortunately, my peaceful, easy Mondays began to fill up quickly, and now most of my Mondays involve 7+ hours at the school or in meetings.

Today was no exception, and it was made all the more frustrating by the quality of the meetings. The first was derailed by an unfortunate discussion of the merits of social media (and a refusal on one party's part to acknowledge that not wanting to join Facebook is a legitimate position) that took up the first 50 minutes of the meeting. The second was with a former student, whom I normally quite like, who was exhibiting some decidedly snowflake-like behaviour. It was a very uncomfortable situation: I'm torn between my desire to help my former student and my desire to point out that she has been hoisted entirely by her own petard here, and that now is the time to quit making excuses, to quit complaining, and to start doing instead.

I'm twenty rows in to the hood on mum's sweater and it looks pretty cool.

The Big Sneezy

The cold rages on, and I am so flipping happy that it's the weekend. Winter arrived quite suddenly today in the form of about 10 cm. of snow. Naturally, I had taken the car in for an oil change just yesterday, and I had contemplated bringing the snow tires along to get them put on, but Mat talked me out of it: "I figure we've got at least another couple of weeks before we'll need them," he said to me. Foolish boy.

But then, I'm the one who listened to him, so I'm actually the bigger fool there.

The annual downtown Christmas walk happened tonight. I didn't make it through the whole walk because it was cold and windy, but I enjoyed the little bit I saw: a Salvation Army brass quartet, later joined by a piper; a guy roasting chestnuts on an open (propane) fire; 20% off at the yarn store...I was good, though, and only bought one skein of yarn. (Dream in Colour Classy in Wisterious.) The chestnut--my first--was very good, though.

I have been meaning to share this project for a while, as I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. A while ago, back when I had borrowed GirlTuesday's spinning wheel, I turned this:

into this:

Like most of my handspun, it looked just fine in the skein and seemed pretty content to stay that way. Then, I was given a beautiful handmade teapot (with matching cream and sugar set) by Grrly as a wedding gift, and all of a sudden, my handspun knew exactly what it was meant to become:

The pattern is Baby it's cold outside, written by my friend Trisha. I had to adapt the pattern because of the Asian-style handle on my pot, but this worked out quite well for me since it meant that I got to knit it in the round. I did a buttonhole for the spout, and used ribbon to lace everything up. It works extremely well--I think I need to make matching cozies for my mugs.

New Patterns

Some days you have to take the good with the bad. Last week, I had a very sore throat and swollen lymphs nodes in my neck for most of the week, which seems to have transitioned into a full blown cold this week. As of last night, my voice is starting to fade. The good, I guess, is that my students are all involved in a peer editing exercise during class this week, which means that they work hard and I don't have to talk much, which is optimal for everyone involved.

I've been making good progress on the sweater - the back is now worked to the shoulders and bound off, and I'm plugging away on the front. The sleeves are what concern me most: I don't have a good track record with set in sleeves, but I figure that as long as I am patient and take my time, I can do this.

The best news from yesterday, though, is that the two patterns that I submitted to Three Irish Girls have been published and are available for sale on their website. Strangely enough, both patterns are mittens--I don't actually make that many mittens but apparently that's all I can write patterns for. The Breakfast at Jessica's mittens are done in a beautiful blue wool-silk blend, with picot edges and white bows reminiscent of a Tiffany box. The Glasgow Cathedral Mittens are modeled after the Millenium Window in Glasgow Cathedral. I had originally envisioned them in brilliant shades of blue, but the green-based handpaint in the sample is quite fetching.

Three Irish Girls released a whole new lookbook for Fall 2010, with 41 patterns and 33 new colourways. The lookbook can be seen here, if you're inclined to go looking for some yarny loveliness. My favourites are Carey, Eavan, and Mairin

When I first started blogging, all those years ago, I assumed that the act of blogging would serve as an outlet for my emotions. I thought there would be a cathartic release from sharing how I felt with anonymous strangers on the Internet. What I have found is actually the opposite--when times get bad, I tend to post less and less.

There are lots of reasons for this: Sometimes, the problems that I have are with people who read this blog. In my first year as a blogger, I wrote something about a friend that criticized how she handled a situation. Months later, she read what I had written, and reacted by cutting me completely out of her life. I was young and foolish, and I had a hard time negotiating those barriers between the public and private, and it cost me a friendship. Now that I am older and supposedly wiser, I try to deal with my problems in person rather than delving into the passive aggression that the internet fosters so easily. It doesn't always work, but at least it doesn't create any more problems.

I also don't write about the bad because committing it to words makes it real. I've owned a house for two and a half years now, and it is easily the most stressful thing that has ever happened to me: we've had carpenter ants, mice, sewage backups, a basement flood, plumbing problems, a roof leak, and lots of much more minor things. Writing about these events and the pure, unadulterated panic they entailed would actually have made things worse for me. (In fact, I can feel my blood pressure rising even now when I'm mentioning them in passing.)

So things have been quiet here lately, as I'm sure you've noticed. I had such a good posting record over the summer, and I completely blew it when I went back to work. I love my job, but it is both intense and stressful, and this year I am involved in a fair amount of extra-curricular stuff that is also intense and stressful: I've been negotiating a new collective agreement as part of my union. It has been practically a part-time job in and of itself since August (consuming 10-15 hours a week of my time). Things have taken a turn for the worse this; the administration has decided to cancel all future meetings, effectively ending negotiations for the time being. We get to file for conciliation soon, which means that my bargaining preparations will now be preparations for other things.

I've also been knitting my mom's sweater. I've promised her it will be finished for Christmas, and I intend to keep that promise. I think I hate the yarn, though.

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.

Sharing Birthdays

The day before I turned 3, my mother went into labour, and produced Middle Sister. I was sorely disappointed: my mother was in the hospital for my birthday, and Middle was not what I had believed her to be. She was not the fully formed playmate I had wanted, and she had failed to materialize in time for Hallowe'en, so we didn't get to go trick-or-treating together. Such is life when you are 3.

We went out last night to celebrate our co-birthdays, and we had a really lovely evening with our friends. I had to give Caitlin an IOU instead of her actual gift--I'm buying us tickets to see Hawksley Workman when he comes to town next April, but the tickets haven't gone on sale yet.

Today has actually been pretty quiet. A few of my students made me a birthday card (on lined paper with highlighters) and Mat made me a cake. The most exciting (questionably so) thing that has happened today is that the computer in my office stopped working halfway through the day. My office computer is an IBM NetVista Pentium 4, complete with original floppy drive, and it has been getting increasingly cantankerous these last few months. It currently takes over half an hour to complete its turning on cycle. I am hoping that I will be able to have it replaced fairly shortly, as it makes it very difficult for me to get anything done at work.

C'est l'Hallowe'en, hey!

(A wee trip down memory lane for those of us educated in Ontario's public school system- Matt Maxwell was a mainstay of our French program.)

We will be attending the annual Hallowe'en party that friends of ours throw tonight. Mat works today, so we are getting off to a late start and jetting down. He is excited to be going to a place where people will recognize his costume. I am excited because I am part of a group costume.

The roommates and I used to do group costumes when we were in school--we did both Star Wars and X-Men themes--but after I moved out, that just sort of...stopped. Last year, I had the best idea for a group theme: we could dress as the characters from Clue. Unfortunately, the H1N1 hit and I had to bail on the party, leaving my poor Miss Scarlet costume to go unworn.

This year, my friend Jessica and I decided to dress as the White and Red Queens from Through the Looking Glass. She had the further idea to make our costumes burlesque themed, and once that happened, the whole thing snowballed: we're being joined by a burlesque Cheshire Cat, as well as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and a straight-thugging White Rabbit. The only thing we lack, funnily enough, is an Alice.

For my costume, I purchased a red and black corset on eBay. I then bought a sewing pattern for a saloon girl costume, and madea bustled skirt in red satin with black lace trimming. (Jess found an online free pattern here but I was unable to wrap my head around how it got put together, so I went with a commercial pattern.) I have stockings, garters, shoes with a t-strap, a lace fan, gloves, and jewelry, as well as a bobbed black wig. It's going to be awesome.

I'm currently working on designing a cloak to wear, since it is flipping SNOWING outside.

Nameology

Now that we are married, the question of what to do with my name has been a fairly frequent one. I am keeping my name for a variety of different reasons: I like my name; my mother regrets changing hers; I can keep my red and white health card¹, etc. Mat has offered to hyphenate his name if I want to do the same. I figure that we can take some time to decide--I can't change anything until we get our marriage certificate, which will be roughly 10-12 weeks after the wedding.

I've been very surprised by how controversial this decision has been. There have been unexpected moments of support (my dad is really pleased that I want to keep my name), but a lot of people have been quite negative about it, like the woman who sold us our marriage license. The latest in this line of people has been a supervisor at our local bank.

We received a couple of cheques as wedding gifts that were made out to Mat and Rhi FrenchLastName, and we went to try to cash them on the weekend. We weren't sure if we'd be able to, but figured that since people get married all the time, the bank would have some kind of contingency in place.

Not so. The bank teller had to get her supervisor, who told us that it was impossible to do anything--even deposit them--without the marriage certificate and change of name documents, and that we would have to go back to our guests and ask them to write us new cheques. "It's only naturally for people to assume that you'll take your husband's name," the supervisor said to me.

But the point, I think (and I did say this at the time) isn't that I don't intend to change my name. Even if I wanted to change it, I couldn't until I had my marriage certificate, which would still take nearly three months, which is an awfully long time not to cash a cheque that someone's written for you. "But at least you'd have the paperwork," sniffed the supervisor, which is also not true, since you have to send away for it all to a processing centre that's 14 hours away.

So I came home and did a little creative googling, and it turns out that there are no formal rules about these things at banks², and that it seems to depend largely on who you speak to at the bank. Fortunately, I have a friend who works at a different branch of the same bank on the other side of town, and we'll be going to see him later this week.

On the knitting front, I have been picking away at my mother's sweater in hopes of having it finished for Christmas. I also knit a cozy for my teapot out of my very own handspun. It's quite lovely looking, I think. I have also wet finished all of my Targhee handspun, and I'm looking forward to turning it into a hat and mitts soon.

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¹ Several years ago, the Ontario government decided to switch our plain health cards, which look not unlike a social insurance card, to photo ID health cards. The photo cards (which do not count as a legal form of government ID) have to be renewed with a new photo every five years. The red and white cards have no expiry dates. Every time someone in the medical field sees my card, he or she tells me to guard it with my life.
² Well, probably there are, but they don't seem to be observed with any consistency

The Tenth Doctor

The first of Mat's Hallowe'en costumes:

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

To Tide You Over...

Yes, I know I haven't blogged about the wedding yet. I promise that I will soon--I just want to make sure I do it justice.

In the mean time, here is a picture of my fascinator to tide you over. I made it two days before the wedding. Naturally.

The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Mostly. It has been a hell of a couple weeks around here. I might have to write this entry as a bullet point list for the sake of clarity. I'm hoping your regularly scheduled blogging will resume shortly. Anyhow, here is what I've been up to:

• Collective Bargaining - I sit on the bargaining committee for my union, and we have finally started negotiating a collective agreement with the university's administration. Things have gone quickly so far, but we still have the big stuff--compensation and workload--to get through. It will be very interesting to see how this goes--the Ontario government has asked for a two year wage freeze for all public servants/groups that receive transfer funds; it is likely that we will be offered 0-0 for the next two years.
• New school year. You'd think, since this is my fourth year in this job, I'd remember how hard that first week of classes is: a million names to remember, new schedule and locations to memorize, no more napping in the afternoons...but I didn't remember, and last week just knackered me. I'm so lucky to have Mat in my life--if I were left to my own devices, I would probably eat pizza for the entire first month of school because I am just exhausted when I get home from work right now.
• Test knitting. I'm almost done my second test knit. The first was a stranded pattern done in sport weight yarns, so it was a slow(er) project. I've only knit one other stranded project in my entire life, so don't ask me why I came up with a fairly involved stranded design...but I did. My second knit is in a worsted weight yarn, and I'm so happy that I saved it for last because it's working up like a dream. I'm going to mail them out tomorrow, and then I just have finish writing the patterns.
• Bachelorette party. This was a very good night. The theme was "Wear It Again" (as in, wear a dress that you've only worn once) with a side of "underwear" (everyone brought me a pair of gotchies and I had to guess who brought me which). There are lots of photos here, although I will warn you that there are pictures of a) crocheted thongs, b) phallic pastries, and c) firemen having hoses pinned on them.
• Various and sundry wedding planning. I finally have all the fascinator things, but haven't quite figured out what I'm doing. I do not have all the jewelry things, which is irritating. At times like this I feel like the persecution complex that I have in relation to Canada Post is actually quite justified.
• My cat hates me again.
• I AM GETTING MARRIED IN TEN DAYS FRAK

With a bang and a whimper

There are two sayings that I like to pretend were said by my grandmother, although I think I probably picked them up from all that nineteenth century literature I read when I was a kid. They both essentially mean the same thing, I think. The first is, "it never rains but it pours" and the second is "if it's not chickens, it's feathers." So I'll leave it to you to guess what kind of week I had.


Collective bargaining began this week, and occupied six hours of my time on Thursday, plus countless hours of my thoughts since then. I also had dinner with my mother and one of her friends from nursing college. On Friday, I attended a Deans' Breakfast for the frosh, followed by an information session for the English majors, and met with the union's Scholarship Committee. On Saturday, I volunteered for the local AIDS Committee's annual AIDS Walk, and somehow got suckered into doing work with Excel spreadsheets.¹

Saturday night made it all worth it, though. Friends of mine put together a record label for artists in North Bay Rock City², recorded an e.p., and held a record release party at one of my favourite bars. After the week I'd had, I had more or less talked myself out of going until one of the performers emailed me to tell me that he thought I should go--so I got out of my comfy pants and into some other clothes.³

This was the best decision I'd made all week. The martinis were $5, I was only minorly socially awkward, and the music was amazing. Generally, when you've got a multi-artist e.p., you're going to wind up with something that you don't really care for, but this was not the case on Saturday. Everyone who took to the stage was awesome: there was a great mix of originals and covers. (My favourites were Matt Murphy belting out Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz," Tyler MacIver's version of Tommy James & the Shondelles' "I Think We're Alone Now"⁴ and Kyle Fowle's Sonic Youth cover.⁵)

Headliner Craig Cardiff played a set mid-show, which felt very intimate as he invited people to sit down on the floor and on the stage. I didn't because I didn't want to abandon my totally sweet bar stool, which was still less than ten feet from the stage. His set was excellent even without my favourite song, "Albion Hotel," and he played a lovely cover of "What A Wonderful World" as his last song.

I'm always a bit worried when I go to friends' creative endeavours, because there's always that slightly possibility that your friends are going to suck, and then there's some awkward lying involved about how much you enjoyed stuff.⁶ Fortunately, no lying would've been required for this show: I had a great time, as evidenced by the fact that I stayed out til 2 a.m.

Overall, I couldn't have asked for a better night out, with one exception--I forgot to grab myself a copy of the e.p.
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¹ There really aren't words to describe how much I hate Excel/how stupid Excel makes me feel. Also, it was Excel for Windows Vista, which is even worse. I really hate the MS Office suite for Vista. Obviously, no one at Windows has ever heard the phrase, "If it's not broke, don't fix it."
² Despite the nickname, North Bay is very seldom a Rock City.
³ I tweeted about this at the time, but I still want to know: What does one wear to indie concerts when one is a grown up? This was so much easier when I was 16 and could wear a pair of Converse One-Stars and a t shirt I'd painted a slogan on myself. I ended up in a (machine) knit dress and a pair of jeans.
⁴Yes, it is the same song that Tiffany covers; it just sounds more impressive if you know the original artist.
⁵ Though, as I tweeted at the time, every time I hear Sonic Youth now, it reminds me of the part in Juno when Juno is angry at Mark and she tells him that she bought a Sonic Youth album and "it was just noise!"
⁶ This is undoubtedly a residual effect from one of my exes, who--while he was a talented guitar player--definitely thought he was a lot better than he actually was, and would get upset if he wasn't given what he thought was his due after shows.

Les Invasions Barbares

I've written approximately four half posts here in the last few days, but I just can't seem to settle on anything. I have only a few days left before the semester starts, and the time seems to be filling up quickly: I have meetings with my chair, with the scholarship committee, with the collective bargaining committee, and a breakfast with the first year students, as well as a visit from my mother. (One of her best friends from nursing school is teaching in town for a few days, so she's driving up to visit Middle Sister and I, and have dinner with her friend.)

I've also got knitting to do. I sold two patterns to Three Irish Girls a few months ago, and the yarn arrived last week for me to work up my samples. I need to finish them quickly so that I can mail them away to Minnesota. (I'm very glad that I started with the fingering weight project first; the worsted weight one will take less time to knit up.) I'm still plugging away on my mum's Rogue (the goal is to finish last year's present for this year's Christmas). I've also got the idea in my head that I want to make a Little Sister Dress for a colleague whose wife just had a baby girl.

The competition list for the Elmvale Fall Fair are up now, and I am bound and determined to enter some of my hand knits this year. There are several different knitting categories, which generally have fewer than five entries in them. I also have this crazy idea that I could throw together a few sewing projects for that too...plus the sewing and knitting projects I want to have done for the holidays this year.


Speaking of holiday knits, I finished these yesterday, and I foresee a fair few pairs in my future. The embellishments are done by needle felting, and I added a few of the beads leftover from when I made Larisa.