getting closer to seasonally-appropriate

So, after all of that planning and hand-wringing in October, and then the actual making of the cards at the beginning of November, I have done ... absolutely nothing Christmas-related since then.

Well, strictly, that's not true. I spent a couple of nights this week making this:


Which I am very pleased with. (It is missing a ribbon, which I haven't bought yet — it was sort of a spontaneous project. I am thinking some sort of plaid.) It took so long because tracing out and then cutting leaves? Takes time.

For those of you that are interested, the tutorial is here. Mine is made from craft paper gift wrap (printed with Christmas motifs), and the colour leaves are from washi. You can make it out of anything you happen to have lying around, really.

But anyway, aside from a paper wreath that I very suddenly decided to make, I have not done any work. I still love the idea of crafting in general and handmade Christmas cards in particular, but I think I may be over the actual doing of it. Doing takes work, and time. Time that could be spent sleeping. Or, I suppose, cleaning — although that never seems to get done, either (oops).

This may change after this weekend. We are going to the One of a Kind Show tonight (whee!), and that always signals the beginning of the Christmas season for me. And this year we've got an entire house to decorate! We may even get a real tree.

Indoor gardener

Do you remember how I brought my beleagered strawberry pot of herbs indoors for the winter? It was a very sad, sad shade of its former self: it had fallen over on its side, and had subsequently crushed the tarragon and basil to death, and the thyme and oregano had been underwatered and were the colour of dead things. Ultimately, the oregano looked like it might stage a creeping return, but I cut back on all of the dead tarragon — which reduced it to a nub, basically — and resigned myself to starting over with new tarragon and thyme (and basil) next year.

Well, that was then. The basil is still dead (it is now living as a twig), but —


That little sprig of bright green? That's new-growth tarragon. It's healthy, too. I'd seen it before, but I had been worried that the lip of the pot would shade it too much. Apparently not, and now it's tall enough that it has all the sunlight it needs. And even better, those little sprigs of green around it? That's oregano, now fully recovered and colonising the top of the pot, because it's outgrowing its little side balcony:


And, finally, most surprising of all?


The thyme came back. A lot. (It had previously been the colour and texture of hay — like, 1 cm-high hay, but still — so this was a tremendous surprise. I didn't think there had been anything left to photosynthesize.)

This indoor/winter gardening thing is working out so much better than the whole outdoors thing, so obviously it wasn't my utter lack of conviction that was the problem; it was the fact that I took my lack of conviction outside. It wasn't me; it was the garden that was totally lame. That is now my story and I am totally sticking to it.

Photoblog: the Royal

Wow, sorry for the silence. I'd meant to get this up before o'er long, and then life/stuff (*coughRock Bandcough*) got in the way. As I had mentioned, the main impetus for going to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair was this:


Superdogs
... but we did the traditional Royal stuff, too.

We managed to catch a horse demonstration, for example:


It was for saddlebred ... something. (The reverb on the announcer was tremendous; it was really hard to make out what he was saying.) It was very cool, until the horse threw a shoe. Then it was still cool, but we were distracted by the shoe.

We also looked at cows, including wee dairy calves:

The term "wee" is relative.
We petted animals who deigned to let us touch them in exchange for food pellets.




Including little baby ones!


There were also Silkie chickens dyed odd colours ("for fun," they say), and wee little bunnies ... but not for petting.




Also popular, and I sort of regret not getting a picture of this: stands of Dyson Airblade hand dryers next to the "washing stations" at the petting zoo. Pd wanted to take one home, but I thought someone would notice and take umbrage. I was, however, terribly impressed with the branding opportunity. Who would have thought petting zoo = product placement for $1,000 hand dryers? Not me, but perhaps that's why I'm no longer in publicity.

Moving on.


Piglets! These were behind glass. I noticed a distinct lack of pigs on display at the Royal, which Pd explained by pointing out that, despite what I've been taught by Babe and EB White, pigs are actually very ornery and not calm enough to just keep around like this. Well, fine. But I can't believe EB White would lie to me like that.

So we moved on to the sheep.


Of course, being me, seeing sheep immediately leads to ...


Fleeces! (And fleeces lead to yarn. Yum. And I'm not sorry, either.)

And finally, the traditional agricultural fair competition: butter sculptures.




These were not the winners (I think they were second runner up and critics' choice, respectively), but we liked them the best. The winners were technically superior but kind of boring.

We also saw the displays for the other traditional competition — giant vegetables — but declined to document it. As Pd says, giant vegetables are odd: they never look quite real. Maybe years of watching CGI has spoilt us, but honestly, Mother Nature really does not upsample well at all.

Meanwhile, on our way to queue for Superdogs, we passed by (I think) a display for canola. It had interactive stands for kids. Anyway, we are pretty sure we shouldn't have been able to access the systems utility, but we did:


Somehow, Pd always seems to find the broken computer. I don't know how he does it; it's a gift. Or a curse. (He fixed it, though. He rebooted it. Don't tell the IT guys.)

And then ... Superdogs!

We had decided to make our way to the arena about an hour before the scheduled showtime, as it was the last show of the day (we had gotten to the Royal late, and they don't have evening shows). It was lucky we did, too: they had already started letting people in — we didn't have to queue, at all — and there were so many that they decided to start the show half an hour early. In the end, they supposedly turned away something like 500 people. If we had opted for the suggested-arrival time of half an hour prior to the show, we wouldn't have gotten in.

It was a show, not a competition, so it only lasted about 25 minutes. It was super cute, though.


Noah, a Pyrenean sheepdog. (I had to look up his breed later, but I should have known that it was a sheepdog, judging from my reaction. I loves sheepdogs.) There was also an Afghan, which I didn't get a picture of, but it was absolutely beautiful; tall and elegant.

The main event was an obstacle course race run by eight dogs (four for each team). The Boston terrier ran for our team first, and he was pretty good:


The other team had the Old English sheepdog, later, and ... okay, the sheepie was nowhere near as fast as the Vezla or as smart as the border collie, but it was really, by far, hands down, no contest, the cutest.


Especially since it got confused and skipped the high jump on its side of the course, but turned around and ran half of our side of the course. And then ran back and had a tug-of-war with its trainer, who was trying to get it to do the weave properly. And then it may or may not have slid off its pedestal at the end of the course by jumping onto it too fast.


I got to pet it later, after the show. His name is Puff Daddy and he is five years old.

I want one.

placeholder

We went to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair this weekend! I've been looking forward to this for weeks. (Although, to be absolutely and scrupulously honest, it was mostly because I wanted to go to the Superdogs show, because one of the Superdogs is an Old English sheepdog named — I kid you not — Puff Daddy. But we saw and I enjoyed other things, too.)

The full photoblog will have to wait, though, because I am feeling a tad delicate this morning, thanks to the (very) recent acquisition of Rock Band 3. It was the first time we've played it in our new house, which means that it's likely the first time we've played Rock Band this year. That is, as you can imagine, way too long, so we are thinking about having monthly get-togethers with friends for Guitar Hero/Rock Band goodness. Because everybody's life can be a little bit improved with some loud belting out of Bon Jovi, yes?

(Don't pretend you're too good to appreciate Bon Jovi. Or Survivor. If you don't enjoy singing Eye of the Tiger with three of your closest and possibly tin-eared friends, then you a) have no soul, and b) are not welcome in my house because it's just going to make you miserable.)

We also curled — as substitutes on a friend's team — and it was a lot of fun. We still didn't win, but at least this time it was close. (The last few times, it has been less than close.)

And I made a very good risotto (my usual recipe).

But, okay, the best part of the weekend really did have to do with a race, a tunnel, and a sheepdog.


Pd calls this the sheepdog hadron collider. Look at him go!

dead things can also grow, can't they?

I have today and tomorrow off from work, because Remembrance Day is a holiday for the civil service and I thought a four-day weekend would be rather nice. (And so far, it is.) So I took the opportunity to take twospots' advice from my previous post, and planted the peonies.

Luckily, it's been a fairly warm week and the warm weather seems to be holding. I was out in just jeans and a hoodie and felt perfectly comfortable, so I'm hoping that the ground is still warm enough (despite some overnight frosts) for the roots to establish themselves. If they're still alive, that is.


This is what the roots looked like. They were soaking in water because that's what the Internet said to do, if the roots looked dry. (They looked like branches with globules. I decided they fit the definition of "dry.") My father-in-law told me not to be alarmed by their state, and that they were actually supposed to look this way. Since he's the one who lives on a farm, not me, I believe him — with some skeptism.


Anyway, I dug a hole, I made sure the eyes were about a half to an inch under the soil (there were multiple eyes) — you can see it in the above picture (I hadn't finished backfilling yet), just like the Internet said. And then I mulched it with leaves, just like twospots said. I am doing my very best to follow instructions to the letter, and not get creative. Creative is bad.


So now we wait. This whole waiting for four-to-six months so see if things are actually working (see: tulips, garlic, peonies) is just killing me, though. Who wants to wait so long to be disappointed?

(I am trying to be optimistic, but it's being tempered by what my brain tells me is pragmatism. Remember the strawberries? The tomatoes? The entirety of my far-too-grandiose plan for the garden? I am trying to learn a lesson here, is what I'm saying.)

Finally, does anybody have any ideas what these are?


They are little, and white, and everywhere. I have been pulling up clumps of them. They appeared around the end of summer, early fall. I assume they're weeds, since they're growing like them — but, then again, my garden also spews forth rosemary and sage like weeds, so who knows.

On the upside, my neighbour was also gardening today, and we had the longest conversation we've ever had (it lasted maybe 10 minutes). It turns out that he doesn't know anything about gardening, either — their front yard was landscaped with hardy bushes and rock paths by a previous owner — and they had a "wild flower garden" in their old place, too, that they didn't know how to deal with. So at least they don't see our front yard as a sign of moral degeneracy. Phew.

Is it too late to hope for flowers?

Last weekend, we went to visit my father-in-law up at the farm (near Collingwood).


Yes, there is snow there. (Picture taken through a window; hence the blurriness.)

Now, here's the question: he gave me some peony rootballs. We've had some overnight frost in Toronto, but also daytime temperatures approaching 10 degrees (Celsius) — do you think it's too late to plant them?

Or, even if it might be too late, should I plant them anyway and hope for the best? (Does it make a difference that these were outside until recently, and so have hardened to cold already?)

And if I shouldn't plant them because they really do have no chance ... what on earth should I do with them? ("Compost" is not an option.)

...
In other news, I managed to do something to my thumb while bouldering yesterday; I'm not exactly sure what, but it hurts (and it was bleeding). It's amazing what one needs the left thumb for. Here's a list I've compiled so far: opening shampoo and hair conditioner bottles, clipping fingernails, doing up buttons, pulling up zippers on boots, knitting, holding a book open to read. Funnily enough, typing is not on the list (yet).

Yes, I am having a difficult day.

FO: Still Light

The never-ending sweater in sock yarn is finally finished!

It took me just about a month, which in retrospect is not a huge amount of time — I would have been able to do maybe two pairs of socks in that time, knitting steadily, and instead I knit the equivalent length of three pairs — but still. All that stockinette. And there's not even that much shaping to do, so it really is just the same knitting, around and around and around.

I am very glad that I twigged onto the gauge trouble and decided to omit the arm shaping. The upper arm is the only area where the gauge demon turned out to be a problem, but even then it's not horrible — the yarn does stretch and I don't mind tight sleeves. (I usually have the opposite problem on sweaters, which I hate.)

It is not quite finished yet. I haven't found a nice button for the back (which isn't strictly necessary, anyway, I don't think), and I need to make a decision as to whether I should sew the pockets to the body, and where to do so. Before I do the latter, though, I wanted to wear the sweater a few times just to see how the pockets work best.

It is the perfect weight for now, and I am kind of sad that I don't have another one ... but I don't think I will be knitting another sweater on wee needles any time soon.

Details:
Pattern: Still Light tunic by Veera Välimäki (Rav link; she doesn't have a web site)
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock in Alcaucil, 3 skeins, knit with 2.75mm needles

...
And I think that will be the last FO post until Christmas, unless I manage to finally finish the Aeolian shawl, which is unlikely at best. I am now onto Super Secret Christmas Knitting, which I have dragged myself into kicking and screaming, as there are of course other things that I would rather knit (specifically, things for myself). So it's probably a good thing I haven't got the Habu yet ... but oh boy am I thinking about it.

changeover to winter

I really love our street, and the dawn light in the morning is fantastic — if you can get over the fact that it's dawn and you're leaving for work. I can generally keep up the pretense that it's an enjoyable autumn until Hallowe'en, but after that it's the runup to Christmas, which means snow, which means winter, which means cold. This morning, coincidentally enough, was also the first day this season that it was below freezing when I walked out the door.

And it was snowing yesterday — not much, and very wet; most of it melted practically before it hit the ground, but it was definitely snow. And last night, after all of the trick-or-treaters were gone, we realised that we had no food in the house and went online to check the grocery store's hours — and they had already switched their flyers into Christmas mode. So the changeover happens fast.

Of course, I didn't really wait for it. This is what I did on Saturday:








The majority of the cards (third picture) are standard Gocco screen prints, from my own freehand drawing. I knew they would work (even though they're a new design), so I spent most of my time experimenting with incorporating some Chinese brush doodling (yes, that is absolutely the correct term) and cut paper into my work. I'm very bad at the latter, though — as you can see by the last picture — and I need to figure out how to stop the very fibrous paper from catching on the cutter. So the cut paper may need to percolate for another year while I work on my technique.

I'm very pleased with the Chinese brush, however. It's nice to know that I've retained something from grade school (because it's certainly not the language — sorry, mum!).