fly-by update

What a week. Work has been busy, not least because I've had to take some time off because home has been busy — various members of the family (including me) had various appointments that couldn't be shifted, and so we've started earlier, stayed up later, and paradoxically worked less, time-wise, than usual this week. I wrote a very simple, fairly irrelevant post earlier this week; Blogger ate it, and I've had neither the time nor the inclination to write it again. (It really was negligible. It was about the Spanish Inquisition's hats.)

We took the Spanish Inquisition to the new aquarium last Saturday! And the picture above is the only photograph I'm ready to show you. I know: there are sharks in there, and sawfish, and giant Pacific kelp, and I'm showing you ... jellyfish? But they were beautiful. And they photograph well; always a plus.

Meanwhile, this is what I have been doing this week:

This is roughly how much of a fingerless mitten one can get through when forced to sit still (more or less) for three hours or so at the doctor's office. The pattern is Sherbet Lemon by Ysolda, and the yarn is Alisha Goes Around, Richness of Martens in the "Genevieve" colourway. 2.75mm needles. It was a sock club yarn that I've been saving for something special; I love the colour but I thought that it would be wasted on socks. These are much more fun.

I aded an extra half-repeat so that it goes (roughly) up to my elbows; that's why the beginning of the cable looks slightly different from the original pattern. If I had to do it again I would sit down and plan the tessellations a little bit better, but this isn't bad, and I was anxious to get started. I actually finished them today; in fact I'm wearing them now. And oh, they are so lovely; there's 15% cashmere and 10% silk in the yarn. It's been getting down to the low single digits here in the mornings, and so these will be perfect.

I have also the never-ending sweater (doesn't it seem like I have one of those every fall?) and the Spanish Inquisition's Olivia Petit, which is almost done. I really only have about an inch and then the sleeves to go, but sleeves are never terribly fun, so I'm finding it a bit of a slog. (Also: the alpaca, while lovely, sheds as I knit it, and I am big enough now that my knitting is generally resting on my bump ... which means that, every time I knit it, it looks like I went and rubbed up against some particularly-hyperallegenic cat. So I have decided that they are not really good as subway- or work-knitting.)

And then there is also this (although technically this is cheating; I did these last week):


Yup. (Canadian) Thanksgiving is over, which means it's time. This year I am attempting to be rational about it all and to do a little bit frequently, instead of trying to create 60 cards in the span of a week. So far I am only averaging perhaps a few cards every two weeks, but even then, that puts me ahead of where I usually am. These are being left for now; I've got my eye on a stamp I want to emboss on the top, but I have to wait until the One of a Kind Show in late November to actually get it. Perhaps this year will be the year I actually learn to use the embossing gun effectively.

easing back into it

It's that time of year again!


Okay, no, it really isn't. That would actually be a little insane; even I know that. Although — all of my "October" nesting magazines have arrived, and they all have ads on the back for their November/Christmas/entertaining issues. So it's not outside of the realm of possibility.

It's just that it's been literally years. Remember how I was going to sell some of my designs? And then I was completely bowled over by a bout of flu right at the beginning of December ... and then I got pregnant ... and then I had a whirling dirvish of an 18-month-old ... and now it's three years later, and I still haven't finished the cards I'd pre-printed in 2010. (You can see them, in the top left of the photo, the gold and red.)

So maybe it's about time. I've been feeling the itch for a few days now. Also, I'm trying to plan ahead. I think, by the time Christmas-card season rolls around, I'm going to have a bit more trouble leaning forward. And this way I can do a few at a time, instead of trying to mass-produce everything inside of a week; that part was always a bit insane (but very characteristic, admittedly).

I spent a couple of hours last night just doodling calligraphy, practicing swashes and getting my hand back. I'd forgotten how lovely and relaxing calligraphy can be.

(I just realised I'd promised you knitting, oops. There will definitely be knitting later — I just finished a sweater dress for the Spanish Inquisition; you can see it (the green thing) at the top of the photograph. I just need to get my act together and actually take pictures of things.)

and then there was Christmas

Okay, Christmas. Which was almost a month ago, but never mind. Actually I think we didn't manage to put up the tree until the weekend before, which would have been exactly a month ago. So I am late, but not (too) outrageously so.

I forgot to take pictures of the tree. It was an Ikea tree. (Last year it was a Loblaws tree.) Pd is adamant that we get a real tree, but other than that we're not terribly picky. I think it was a balsam? (I think they all are?) It wasn't very smelly, I'm afraid — then again, I spent almost the entirely of the holidays with a congested nose, so it's possible that my house smelled like the Black Forest and I was merely oblivious.


The Spanish Inquisition helped me decorate the tree. She loves putting things in and out of boxes, so it was perfect. The actual mechanism of hooking the ornament into the tree was a bit beyond her — particularly as I wasn't about to give her any of the ornament hooks — but she totally understood the idea and tried very hard to follow through.


(Here she is trying to balance a wooden ornament on a branch, next to another ornament — which totally makes sense to me. I think next year we're going to have a very bottom-heavy tree, decor-wise.)

The tree was for the Spanish Inquisition. The mantel was for me.

Behold:

Hogwarts Castle, Borgin & Burkes, and Gringotts. There was also Ollivander's, which you can see in the picture at the top of this post.  I was going to add the Hogwarts Express, too, but it turns out that our mantel is a little narrower than I expected. Also, we finished these at the very last minute — literally, at 11 o'clock on Christmas Eve — and I was so tired I forgot about the minifigs — so it turns out that, on Christmas and in the dead of night, only Dementors, a couple of goblins and a few random Weasleys inhabit Diagon Alley. Which I suppose isn't entirely unexpected.

I am really just an average (as opposed to fanatical) Harry Potter fan, and not a particularly skilled LEGO builder (although I do love it); it's just that I happen to like medieval villages, too, so Harry Potter and LEGO and a Christmas village was just too much good to pass up.


And finally, on Boxing Day, we had a big snowstorm — I mean, really, we were buried; it was wonderful. It turns out that there is a great tobogganing hill literally five minutes' walk away from our house, so we gathered some friends and took the Spanish Inquisition for her first sledding run. 


Okay, so honestly, she didn't seem terribly impressed. But the rest of us liked it.

'tis the season

We went to the Santa Claus parade with the Spanish Inquisition! She got very into the foam Rudolph noses — I would open one and she would stick her little face out for me to put it on her nose. Or I would put it on my nose and she would try to swipe it off, laughing the whole time. And then she sat on our shoulders and bopped along to the marching bands.

I'm pretty excited about Christmas this year. Technically, last year was her first Christmas, but she was barely six months old — she was just along for the ride; she didn't really experience it. As magical Christmases go, it was kind of a let-down. I mean, she was happy, for the most part:


The Spanish Inquisition on Christmas Day, 2011, being little.
... but it had absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. In fact, she found Christmas itself kind of stressful — too much noise, not enough naps.

This year, though — this year, she's a lot more aware. She has the requisite skills for enjoying a wee toddler's Christmas: she likes toys. She can sway to Christmas carols. And she loves to rip up tissue paper. Last year, everyone doted on her and she was a little taken aback by all the people. This year ... well, let's just say that she loves the attention.


I'm not sure about the whole "Santa Claus" thing, though. (We actually missed the big man himself on Sunday — the Spanish Inquisition had napped through lunchtime, so we left early so we could all grab lunch before the big crush.) Pd grew up with it, so he's all for it; I'm ... well. Undecided, obviously. It wasn't a part of my childhood, so I'm a little cynical and a little confused by the whole thing. I mean: who gets to be Santa Claus? Doesn't it get weird if three different sets of parents/grandparents decide to all be "Santa"? (Trust me, in this family, it could happen.) And if you think I'm over-thinking this ... well, Pd agrees with you.

My parents weren't big into fostering childhood illusions. I remember them discussing the North American tradition of the Tooth Fairy, and how ridiculous it was that kids could con money out of their parents that way, in front of me. I was seven. So you see, the cynicism is genetic.

So I don't know. I like fairy tales, though, and magic, and isn't giving your kids the childhood you never had part of the point?

a holly jolly Christmas

Happy new year! And it's only the third day — that's not bad. (We'll ignore the fact that I only posted twice in the latter half of 2011. It's a new year, after all. New beginnings.) I was going to get right into it, write about knitting, cooking — or maybe the fact that it is, for the first time this winter, actually winter, frigidly cold — but then I realised, no; you probably want to know about Christmas. And because it still is, after a fashion, Christmas (the ninth day, in fact), and on Christmas one is obliging and friendly, that is what I will post.


We had, actually, a lovely Christmas, spent with Pd's family. We went up to the farm, close to Georgian Bay, and I think it says something about the oddity of this winter that we just barely scraped up a white Christmas. There was a smallish storm on the 27th, but on Christmas Day itself there was just a light dusting of powder on the deck, and perhaps an inch or two on the ground. Normally, by this time the farm is buried under several feet of the stuff. The farm is about half an hour away from Blue Mountain, and there were, literally, cheers when the snow started falling on the 27th.


We tried to go light on the presents this year, but it was open season on the grandchildren. All of the kids were out-sized by their presents, in weight and area. Luckily, ours is still very little, so it was mostly clothes and books, and one already-favourite jiggly horse (official name: Sir Prance-a-Lot. No, really).

My favourite is a blank measuring tape where you can mark down her height at Important Life Events. It's a great idea — easier to move than marking her height on the doorjamb — but the significant downside is that it is incredibly hard to measure a baby.


It took us a couple of tries, and it's still not accurate. Still, it's a little sobering — the measurement looks so long. What happened to my wee little baby?

Christmas decorating

It's impossible to believe it's nearly Christmas. Part of it is, I think, because it falls on a Sunday this year; Christmas on a weekend seems so sudden and truncated, as though you were just fitting it in between regular working hours.

And the other part, quite possibly, is because it was 12 degrees Celsius outside today, and I ran across the street without a jacket and without feeling the least bit cold, and it's a lot harder to find Yuletide cheer when it's sleeting; you really have to work for it.

Christmas snuck up on me this year. Truthfully, though: Christmas sneaks up on me every year. November tends to blow through my calendar like the wind it is famous for and then, well, there it is. And another truth: everything has snuck up on me this year. Understandably so, I would imagine. We did, however, manage to get a tree last weekend, and to decorate it:


It's a bigger tree than we've had before, so we had to get some new ornaments — it was looking a little sparse. My favourite (aside from the obvious) are the "12 Days of Christmas" ones.



I also made a vignette for the fireplace. We're working on getting the "wood burning" part of it working properly again, but it's a multi-step process and the saving of the funds for it is ongoing.


We also went to the Christmas market at the distillery district last weekend, but the only photographs I managed to take were those of the reindeer. The culprit was the excellent poutine: I was occupied in the eating of it, when I wasn't pushing the stroller, and had no hands for the camera. (I regret nothing.) In any case, it was a fun time but the impetus for it was kind of silly: as I was growing up, my family didn't do the big Christmas celebration (they still don't), and every year, that was a little disappointing. So now, of course, I have all these fantasies of giving the baby that perfect, beautiful, Germanic Christmas that I never had, filled with Christmas markets and falling snow and Santa Claus.

Except, you know what? She's a baby. She doesn't care. She fell asleep, and then she was cold, and then she was hungry, and then we went home.

Her feelings are probably healthier than mine.

ensconced

Still at the farm right now — reading my new Christmas books, doing my (not-so-new) Christmas knitting, and playing with my in-laws' new-to-me kitten.


More later, when I return to my normal life.

happy Christmas!

All of the Christmas knitting is done, all of the Christmas gifts are wrapped; we are packed and ready to go.


Well, almost. I should probably leave work, first.

The plan is Ottawa tonight and tomorrow, the farm after that, and we shall return to Toronto sometime just before the new year. I shall be working on my log cabin blanket (it's coming along ... slowly), and this:


Colour-stranded mittens for me (they are Hedda Knits' Joie du Printemps mittens; the name is slightly ironic considering the season, but I suppose it gives me hope. The yarn is Spud & Chloë Fine.) I'm actually much further along than this, and I'm very pleased and excited by how well it's going (and I'm really hoping I didn't just jinx it).

So, a very merry Christmas to you, if you celebrate it, and a very happy solstice and well-earned long weekend to you, if you don't. Whichever it is, I hope your holidays are filled with lovely friends, excellent food, and wine good enough to accompany both.

killer gingerbread, take III

Oof. Today Pd woke up with a possible pinched nerve in his back, George-the-car turned out to have a flat tire, I was late for work, and it was cold, cold cold. It wasn't a bad day, exactly, but it dragged. A lot. I'm not looking terribly forward to Christmas but I am impatient for the vacation that comes after. To me, the best part about Christmas is how everything sort of stops for two weeks — work slows down (as everyone is on vacation), normal activities like team sports suspend for the season, and everybody is just that extra bit friendlier. (Well, almost everyone. Sworn nemeses get bitchier.)

I also like the gifts. It's not the trend to say so, in these austere times, but I like getting prezzies. I like seeing what other people think I might like, or discovering things I never knew existed. Those are my criteria for choosing gifts for other people. I don't care for the consumption part of it, but being forced to think deeply about other people, and showing that you care — even if, sometimes, it is with consumer goods — that can't be all bad, can it?

Anyway. To the gingerbread houses!

In line with my habit of overpreparing, if somewhat preposterously, for everything, we went to Bulk Barn and bought extra candy for the kits. I subsequently divided them into five roughly equal boxes:


Offhand, they had mint chocolate chips, red and green "Christmas" Smarties, jelly beans, Reese's pieces, sugar-free jujubes, Licorice All Sorts, and miniature candy canes. The black boxes are take-out containers from Spring Rolls. (The glass one is because we didn't have enough — we'd gotten rid of our old containers in the move, and I had forgotten to stockpile them through the year.) I was — as always — a little bit worried about whether or not we had enough candy. To give you an idea of how utterly naïve that was ... I still have about 80% of the candy sitting in my house. (One box wasn't used at all, and I consolidated all of the others.)

First up: the children's house (one of two, but I didn't get a picture of the other before it was given away, with gratitude, to one of the parents). Pd and I are of the age now where our friends have toddlers, and this year they were old enough to participate (with adult supervision, of course):


Adult supervision turned out to have been necessary, because when our friends are in parent-mode, they read instructions. When left to their own devices, they ... well. Don't.

When they say that the icing must set for 10 minutes, they're not joking around
Or, they revert to frat boys (and girls).



Meanwhile, a friend of ours chose a smaller canvas:


He later flattened and moulded a piece of caramel into a vest/cardigan (which I regret we did not get a picture of, but by the time I realised we had missed it, the snowman had started melting). It found an appropriate home as the guardian of the requisite "perfect" house:


Sadly, I only contributed very little this year — I was too busy in the kitchen, and then in the drink. (Let's be honest, here.) But I think they did an excellent job without me. I especially like the marshmallow "smoke."

Of course, all parties have a morning after, and this is what we faced on ours:


It's not as bad as it looks, although getting frosting off the extra-long dining table is exactly as bad as it sounds.

my problem is not the lack of preparation.

We had our annual gingerbread house-decorating party this weekend — although, as Pd pointed out, this time it was less of a gingerbread-decorating party than a party that happened to have an overabundance of candy in it. Nonetheless: there was gingerbread, there was the killer eggnog, and there was panic in the kitchen. That's about par for the course.

Because I am me, I made a schedule for the food, including how long things should be in the oven, and what order they should go in, and approximate times for everything. I printed it all very neatly onto Post-Its and stuck them to my cookbook holder in the kitchen:


I felt very secure and proud that this year, everything would be happy in the kitchen — people would not take the killer eggnog on an empty stomach, and there would be no traffic jam at the oven at 9 o'clock, caused by drunk and ravenous partyers trying to cram as many boxes of frozen appetizers into the oven as possible. It was going to be good.

The reality was a little ... different. To whit, Pd and I had the following conversation about an hour into the party:

Me: (somewhat in dispair) I had this whole schedule, and now it's just full of crap.
Pd: I know, sweetie.
Me: CRAP!
Pd: Your schedule was completely unrealistic.
Me: Then why didn't you say something when I showed it to you yesterday?
Pd: I didn't want to discourage you.

Bah. But, to show you what he meant, and because I like to document the full extent of my own massive fail whenever possible, this is what I served:

1. Home-made pizza, cut into small slices
2. Smoked salmon and smoked tuna, on cream cheese and toasted baguette
3. Panini sandwiches
4. Bruschetta (ditto)
5. Roasted garlic (with bread)
6. Bacon-wrapped sausages
7. Standard cheese and pate plate
8. Baked brie (camembert, actually) with phyllo and chutney

And this is what I have the ingredients for in my refrigerator (or freezer), having run out of time to actually make them:

9. Meatballs
10. Crab cakes
11. Garlicky shrimp with vermouth
12. Chocolate fondue
13. The other baked brie

I made everything from scratch, except for the meatballs. That may have been a tactical error. I had a lot of help — some volunteered, some conscripted — but apparently trying to push the first 7 items out of my kitchen, within two and a half hours, while hosting, was somewhat unreasonable. Or so I was told (you know, after my attempt. Not before).

It is not easy being a foodie host. *sadface*

I will post pictures of the gingerbread houses tomorrow. I need to go recover what little of my poise is left.

priorities

Okay, this is stupid. Instead of madly knitting for the three mothers-in-law (er — one of them is not mine) or the friend who is suddenly joining us for Christmas and therefore needs a present, I'm going to knit for the woman who actually gave birth to me. I think, considering all of the stories she loves to tell about how horrible the experience was, that it's only fair.

I'm still pissed that knitting for myself didn't make the cut. I have a pile of socks and mittens and a sweater that I could have, but don't. Who decides this crap?

Oh. Right.

cancelling Christmas

I am still sick. It's a little bit insane. I have spent the last week literally unable to summon the energy to do anything more strenuous than lying on the sofa in the den (now, literally, a den like a fox's, all comfy-cosy with a blanket fort burrowed by yours truly). I think I am a bit better today, but am taking it slowly — I thought I was better last week, too, and tried to go about my normal activites (like work), and ... let's just say that it didn't turn out well.


As such, I'm not doing Christmas cards this year. I kept thinking I was going to be able to — but I've lost two weekends to this dratted flu, and I don't foresee having the time to do them in time for the Christmas mail. I firmly believe in doing things properly if they're to be done at all, and at this late date, there's simply no time — there's still quite a bit of calligraphy and other finishing left to do. So: I beg my friends' indulgence, but for now, no fancy-pants Christmas cards this year.

Honestly, I would cancel Christmas in its entirely, if I could. I am suffering from an acute lack of imagination right now: I can't see myself having the energy to deal with it all, despite its being a fortnight away. Luckily, we made the decision early this year to do very few gifts, so the shopping is almost entirely done and not at all stressful. I wish I could say the same thing about the Christmas knitting, though. I have been knitting this:


My garter-stitch blanket, which is lovely and comfy and cosy, but isn't Christmas knitting. I have not felt up to the tiny needles and complex cables — which is a problem, because now I have just over a week to finish off a mitten knit on 2.25mm needles, and I am not entirely convinced that I'm capable of it. Which I guess makes this traditional Christmas knitting, after all.

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.

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!).

two unrelated things

The full Iceland set is up on Flickr. I hadn't finished putting in all of the meta-data in iPhoto before I uploaded (quite frankly: I forgot), but the photographs themselves are still pretty. Above is Lóndrangar — sea pillars from an extinct volcano, on the edge of the Snæfellsnes peninsula. The water beyond is the North Atlantic. It was stupendously beautiful, even if the weather was not.

In terms of my more current activities:


Still percolating. It's a little bit subliminal, really. The Christmas magazines are out (two of them, now), so it's time to be thinking about this, seasonal 20-degree weather, acres of calendar time and lack of snow be damned. I may have entirely leapfrogged over Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving and Remembrance Day.

attack of the killer gingerbread

Last weekend, we had our annual gingerbread decorating party. (Well, it was the second year. But it was never meant be an annual sort of thing, and this year people brought props, so I think it might be turning into a Thing.)

It's pretty amazing, how certain ... personality traits come to the fore. You take a room full of perfectly reasonable adults, and for some reason all the gingerbread houses turn out like this:


(I told you they brought props)

... or like this:


In case the latter seems innocuous to you, here's a close-up of the two amiable gingerbreadmen at the front of the house:



Yes. It is a gingercide in freeze-frame. Last year we also had the "CSI House," and a horrific "Katrina in New Orleans" house.

Then there is the house that was built by my invitation-only team. (Invitation-only because I think there are very few people who would have the patience to be as anal-retentive as we obviously are.)


Front view, and back view.


This took about six or seven hours. I mean, there were other things in between, including some fairly silly carolling, and a lot of it was waiting time for the mortar frosting to dry enough for our effects, but still. You may notice that the colour pattern of tiling on the roof match on both sides, as do the mini M&Ms surrounding the circular "window." And just look at that old-fashioned wood piling fence, not to mention the woodpile itself. And then remember that, of the two main perpetrators, one was drinking eggnog with something like 25% alcohol content, and the other was drunk on champagne. (That would be me. Somewhere around my second glass, I frosted the roof on — upside down.) We are superstars, is what I'm saying.

Next year we are thinking about tackling something from The Gingerbread Architect. Just think about what we could do wtih the Tudor Revival house — or the New York Brownstone! I've always wanted a brownstone. We just have to recruit someone else to do the baking.