to be thankful

The problem with Canadian Thanksgiving being so early in the year is that the trees have not had a chance to fully turn colour. Although — as Pd pointed out, as we were driving along the Niagara Escarpment — that might be an illusion because a lot of the trees we were looking at turned out, upon closer inspection, to be conifers. Nonetheless, here is a picture of my in-laws' deck, replete with squash; that is the closest to a Thanksgiving image I could come up with today.

And actually, yesterday the temperature was somewhere in the mid-twenties, and today it's in the high teens, so it doesn't feel much like late fall anyway.


This year has been a bit of a medical annus horribulus for our family. Just over a year ago, my mother-in-law went into the hospital with severe abdominal pains and came out with a diagnosis of cancer (thankfully she is in remission now); my father was hit by a drunk driver (not yet fully recovered, but healing) my father in law was in an ATV accident and lost the tip of two fingers (thereby gifting the rest of us a verbal punchline that will never get old). And, of course, there is the Kidlet: by the time she left the hospital in mid-September, she had spent a cumulative seven of her nine months in a hospital. March and April, essentially.

Every family has weeks, months like this. We are not unique. We are, however, incredibly lucky — that we have all survived, more or less; that everyone is still alive, relatively intact (give or take a finger or two ... you see?), reasonably healthy and hale. So I think that this year, as we gave thanks, it was pretty obvious what we were thankful for.



Health, kids, hope. And turkey duck. What more could anyone want?

false start

It really was my intention to start blogging again. I even took pictures (with a real camera, not my iPhone!) of things I wanted to blog about. For instance:

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Two weeks ago, it was astoundingly nice — 21 degrees Celsius and sunny, as though the world felt a little guilty about the horrid winter and late spring, and had decided to give us a little early summer. (And then, as it does, decided that perhaps that would spoil us — spoil everything — and rescinded the offer, which rather explains why the tulips are surrounded by snow.)

And then the weekend ended, a week passed, then another weekend, and oops. All I can say is that this whole blogging while parenting thing is a work in progress.

The gardening while parenting thing, though, is working a little better.


This reminds me of a story that a family friend told me recently: apparently, when they were younger, their family had the most beautiful English wildflower garden. They lived in the country. The kids (there were three) would get home from school and their mother would just set them to work weeding. And it was more than beautiful; it was practically Platonic: the physical manifestation of a page from a gardening magazine, with wildflowers waving in the breeze and masses of butterflies.

Then the kids graduated from high school and now that garden is essentially a meadow. I visited it the other day and the grasses were literally taller than me.

This makes me feel better.

I am hoping that this year I might actually get to garden. It's early days yet, which means that I still have hope. The Spanish Inquisition is starting to show signs of interest. She's a bit young for weeding but apparently I now have free toddler rake labour. We'll see how that bears out.

weekend(s): dinosaurs! goats! and a baby giraffe

It was the Santa Claus parade in Toronto on Sunday — but alas, not for us. The Spanish Inquisition seemed to like it last year, so we'd planned to go this year — but the forecast kept calling for rain, and she had a not-insignificant cold already, and ... to be honest, Pd and I were just Too Damn Tired. (There is the parade, which is entertainment in and of itself, but you have to get there early to get a good view, and the Spanish Inquisition is not the patient kind of toddler. If such a thing even exists.) So we ran errands and had an easy day of it, and I am trying not to feel guilty.

After all, on Saturday we did do this:


Her first trip to the museum, specifically to see dinosaurs, and she got to play archaeologist. To be entirely honest, I don't think she knows what that means, but she did seem to enjoy it. She knows that word "museum" from Olivia, but she thought that she would also get to see baby horses, which ... not so much.

She probably thought this because this is what we did the weekend before last:


The Royal Winter Fair, where she got to feed goats and, yes, pat horses. (I think they may have been ponies, actually. Or, at least, very small horses.)

And the weekend before that:


We saw the new baby giraffe at the zoo. (I say "new." It's taller than Pd, who is six feet tall. I suppose that's small for a giraffe.)

So it's not as though we're depriving her of experiences, or of things that she enjoys. It's not difficult, actually, to find fun things with her; the problem is that one have to keep finding or doing them, and at some point I need a nap.

FO: Roo

Here, finally, is the Spanish Inquisition's new purple sweater-coat:

The penguin buttons/bribe totally worked; she loves them, and they don't disrupt the pattern too much (and the button band makes the jacket close fully, which is good).  I originally envisioned it as an early fall jacket, but it's too cold for that now, so she gets to wear it as a cardigan. Which is fine. She's worn it a couple of times since Thanksgiving, and it fits perfectly — which makes me feel a bit better for insisting on re-knitting it in the 24" size, as this means that the original (22") really was far too small. I would have preferred a longer length, but it's hard to adjust on the fly.

This coat has a garter border at the bottom of the coat and somehow, I managed to knit a different number of rows for the back and the two fronts — and not notice until seaming. This means that I even blocked it without noticing the discrepancy. Luckily the fabric is very dark (this photograph was taken in nearly-full sun), and the Spanish Inquisition moves around a lot, so I don't think anyone will notice. But I'm a little appalled that I managed to do that. It's not like the pattern doesn't give me the exact number of rows I should be aiming for.

The only other problem was that the penguin buttons are very, very skinny, so they kept slipping out of the buttonholes as knit. (I used a simple double yarnover-k2tog). I sewed the holes tighter when we got home after Thanksgiving, and now they're fine.

The yarn is Berroco Ultra Alpaca, which is 50% wool and 50% alpaca, in the imaginatively named "Deep Purple," between 2.5 and 3 skeins. 4.5mm needles. The pattern is Roo from Twist Collective, by Kate Gilbert.

thankful

I know that I am a little late posting this. I needed to wait for Pd to stop hogging the computer* so I could offload (and then upload) some photographs** so that this isn't completely boring, and it took a little while.

* By "hogging," please read "using the computer for his kick-ass programming skillz that actually helps pay the bills around here." My first-generation Air (which is what I am using right now) is no longer capable of supporting my photo -taking and -editing habit, so we got a shared desktop a few months ago. We have an agreement, actually, that I can use the desktop pretty much whenever I like, but it's a lot easier for him (and better for his back) to program with the big screen and proper chair ... and I feel kind of bad kicking him off to support my emphatically nonprofitable blog, while he works to keep me in knitting and crafting supplies (not to mention food). So I am happy to wait.

** Yes, this means that I actually used the proper camera this weekend! The iPad is convenient but the lens is rather soft, have you noticed? Of course, what happened then was that the Spanish Inquisition stuck her fingers on the camera lens while I was packing, and I forgot to wipe it clean, so for the first hour or so I was completely flummoxed as to why I couldn't focus properly, even on manual. Soft focus or toddler smear? — ultimately, it's all the same, really.

Anyway, it was Thanksgiving, and I am most thankful for my favourite two people in the world:


Sometimes we are sleep-deprived, and sometimes we are cranky, but for the most part we are all happy and silly and content, and when one of these people grins a silly grin at me, my heart explodes with joy.


(And yes, that is the purple sweater, take 2. The penguin buttons/bribery totally worked. Details later.)

our little dictator of cute

A few days ago, I was using my iPad to check the weather forecast before we went out, when the Spanish Inquisition noticed what I was doing. This is what happened next:

SI: Mummy take a picture!
Me: No, sweetie, mummy's just checking the weather.
SI: Mummy take a picture NOW!
Me: Oh, you want me to take a picture of you eating a snack?
SI: Yeah!
(I go to the other end of the dining table and prepare to take her picture)
Me: Okay, say ... Hi, mummy!
SI: HI MUMMY! (pause) Want to see!
(So I show her the picture, and then move to take the iPad away)
SI: No, want to see AGAIN!

So here, courtesy of her Royal Cuteness, is the Spanish Inquisition having a snack (and mugging for the camera):


It's a little blurry because while she likes posing for the camera, she hasn't quite grasped the concept of holding the pose. So now, instead of a lot of blurry pictures of her running, I have a lot of blurry pictures of her grinning.

Like everything else, it's a work in progress.

In this picture, she is wearing the green dress that I knit last week — Spud & Chloë Sweater. about 2.5 skeins, pattern out of the Vogue Stitchionary and my own brain. Strawberry buttons at the top. It's a sweater dress and goes down to about her knees — but I haven't managed to get her to stand still long enough to have any pictures of the bottom half yet. Rest assured that there is a bottom half ... and that she's wearing pants. Usually.

catching up

The weather has turned cold, I'm wearing my beloved jackets and wooly socks (sometimes) again, so — it must be fall, and time for me to get back to blogging.

(I say this, and we are in the middle of a one-day heat wave — 40-degree Humidex and everyone is running for air-conditioned cover. O well. At least the light is right.)

I didn't mean to go dark. To be fair, that means almost nothing; I never mean to go dark. This summer passed in a haze of fatigue and nausea, which would have made me entirely cranky if I hadn't been too sick to have moods. (Pd will probably tell you that this is not true. I had moods. I had, in fact, two that I spent a great deal of time veering between: tired, and difficult. Oh, and hungry. Is hunger a mood?) Anyway, it's very hard to blog when one is trying to either a) sit very, very still whilst avoiding looking at the computer,  or, better option, b) lying prone on the sofa, so: no blogging. And, sadly, not much gardening, either, so the garden is a right mess that I have washed my hands of until next spring.

 Because, yes, absolutely, I think it is going to be so much easier to garden when we've got a toddler and another wee kidlet. I'm starting to imagine the garden as something akin to retirement planning — and by "akin," I really mean "part of; not executed until." This could be applied to other things, too, like "time," or "positive bank account balance."

Meanwhile, the Spanish Inquisition turned two. She continues to be a reasonably happy kid, and we are very lucky that, so far, the two's have not hit the terrible stage. On the other hand, there is definitely a palpable change from, say, 18 months. To whit: the kid runs (see picture). She started walking later than usual, and so is making up for lost time by being speedy. Consequently, I have lots of summer vacation photographs, not so many not-blurry ones. And even then, they are usually of her moving.

Enough, now. I'm still organizing photos back into Flickr so it will probably be a couple of days before the next post, but I will be back. I have so much knitting to show you! The kidlet is due in winter, so my mind has been living there — that's what pregnancy does; it collapses the seasons in between. So I have been planning and planning, and knitting like a fiend.

when a finished knitted object means an unmoveable force

A close member of my family got married last week, and even though it was a very simple ceremony at the civic centre, the Spanish Inquisition still needed an outfit (read: not her beloved overalls, definitely not her cargo pants — is there anything cuter than a 2-year-old tomboy?). Since it was going to be a cool-ish spring day, I decided that she needed a cardigan to go with her dress.



The pattern is Kitty (Rav link), the yarn is a sock-yarn something, from Lettuce Knit, and the colourway is (I think) "Kitten Whiskers." It's not what I would have chosen. It's a bit too twee, the cream and the pink and the name, and in any case the Spanish Inquisition is the kind of child who insists on feeding herself soup, so generally speaking I know better than to put her in white. But this was a last-minute thing — they announced their intention 8 days before the deed — and the cardigan absolutely had to be white so that it could match a variety of dresses, in case the one I'd ordered didn't arrive in time. So, "Kitten Whiskers" it was, and a green satin ribbon from Mokuba to rescue it from cutesy-ness.

In the end, though — not so much with the wearing. You can see it bunched up in my lap, instead. (Notice how the ribbon matches the dress exactly, though? I'm very proud.)



She just flat-out refused. She's been having a bit of a difficult week; we think her molars are coming in, and so she's been more opinionated, more irritable. And when I asked her to put the cardigan on, she said NO.

Multiple times.

And then grabbed it out of my hands and tried to throw it to the ground.


So, no pictures of the Spanish Inquisition in the cute cardigan. I had, in a fit of cover-my-arsedness, also picked up some pink ribbon that exactly matched the pink splotches in the yarn, so while I vastly prefer the green, I'm going to replace the ribbon and see if she'll change her mind.

Otherwise ... well, I have a couple of neighbours who either have or are expecting girls. And they don't knit.

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?

but what about the kitchen?

I have a small tradition of gardening on Remembrance Day (or, this year, its weekday substitute). I get the day off, and because it's not a family-themed holiday — usually, not even a long weekend — I have no plans except puttering at home. (This isn't a problem. I quite like puttering.) So, gardening.


It's mostly just a matter of raking up the leaves from the path (I leave the leaves to decompose over the winter in the garden itself) — our neighbourhood is full of mature oak trees; absolutely lovely in the summer, but it's paid for in the fall — and weeding. A couple of years ago I planted the spring bulbs, but this year I was not nearly that organized and so, no bulbs. I neglected the garlic, too.

But what about the kitchen? you ask.

Did I mention that the roses are still blooming? The yellow 'Graham Thomas' has come and gone — it was lovely, perfect, bowl-shaped like a peony, which of course meant that I loved it — but 'The Fairy' and 'Amber Rose' are still at it, despite my ceasing to deadhead sometime around September.


They are so lovely, and so surprising, that even Pd has commented on them. Not that he doesn't notice them in August, say, but they are so exceptional right now, in this cold, that they drove him to comment.

And the kitchen? you say.


Also, I've been knitting. I finished my cardigan; it hasn't been blocked but I've worn it at least a dozen times. (I finished it right before a cold snap, so it got pressed into service right away. I'm too impatient for blocking; what if I want it, and it's still wet?) I made little striped leggings for the Spanish Inquisition.

They were leftover yarn from the stash — the white is Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino, and the grey is (I think) some BMFA Woobu in (again, I think) Valkyrie. Anyway, they are soft, lovely and warm, and you have to imagine them slipping over little black boots; they are absolutely adorable.

And yes, that is absolutely a (defunct) cell phone in her wee little hands. She kept trying to grab ours, and playing with them, so in the end we gave her one of Pd's old ones that was going to go into the donation bin. She is perfectly happy with it. She's too young to actually play on the smartphones, so she just likes pressing the buttons and holding it up to her ear; the lack of interactivity doesn't faze her. It does make me wonder, though, if we spend too much time on the phone with her around.

 And what, you say, paragon of impatience that you are, about the kitchen?

What, the adorable picture of the baby wasn't sufficient distraction for you? (Obviously not.)


I was going to blog about it, but then things got busy, and complicated, and tiring. We've been working on it on weekends and most weeknights. It's amazing: what feels like a treat at the beginning (take-out every night!) begins to feel more like an interminable purgatory of the stomach (oh God, please oh please can't I just cook?). I can't wait until 100% of our kitchen appliances are inside. Right now we're running about 50-50: the fridge and the dishwasher are in, but the stove and exhaust hood are not. (And in case you think we prioritized the dishwasher — well, yes, we sort of did, but also mostly because it's one of those built-in ones, and so we had to build the cabinets around it; it couldn't wait until we were done.)

The tentative schedule was this:

Week 1: Demolition (of everything — cabinets and floors)
Week 2: Tiling (and between weeks 2 and 3, grouting and sealing said floor)
Week 3: Construction

There were small things in between, like electrical work and painting. We didn't finish sealing until the last day of week 2, but that still hewed to the schedule. And then, I figured — how hard could it be to build Ikea cabinets? We're pretty handy and can run up a Billy bookcase right lickety-split. So how hard could it be?

In case you ever need to know this: Ikea cabinets are not Billy bookcases. Billy bookcases, for example, do not need holes for plumbing. Also, the ease of building a kitchen is directly proportional to how straight your walls and floor are. This is not a problem in condos, or new builds, or old houses that have been taken down to studs and then rebuilt. Unfortunately, our house is none of those. We did think about levelling out the floor — but then, as Pd pointed out, our walls would look crooked.

As for the timeline ... we are currently in week five. Week 6 starts tomorrow.

Into the fall

Fall is my favourite time of year — the crispness in the air, the deeper, darker colors, the clothes. I'm not a great fan of what comes next, and November is never not depressing (much like March) — but the transition time, right now, the still-hot days and the cool nights, is perfect.

Fall knitting, too, is deeply satisfying. It's the timeliness of it. Mid-winter, all you want to do is knit fast as you can, before hypothermia sets in — and Christmas knitting is only gratifying after it's done, not during. I never knit sweaters in the spring; there's just no motivation. And summers are for socks or shawls or other small things, something to take the edge off and keep your hand in, but small enough that you aren't sitting with a pile of delicious alpaca in your lap — because, trust me, nothing woolly is delicious in 40-degree heat.

But now! I am already well on my way. Before August ended, I had cast on a small cardigan for the Spanish Inquisition — Olivia Petit by Connie Chang Chinchio. I love the back detail.


It's lovely in the original cream, but I had quite a bit of Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend left over from another sweater project, so in it went. It's 70% merino, 30% silk; super soft and warm but not, unfortunately, machine washable — I'm less picky about that in my own sweaters, frankly, and as I was anxious to get started and the yarn store had yet to get their fall yarns in, I decided to overlook that small deficiency — and it is super adorable. I knit the 12-month size; the Spanish Inquisition is on the small side. It's a little bit big on her, which means that it's perfect.

The super cute buttons are dyed mother-of-pearl from Fyberspates. I happened to be on their web site (investigating their yarns, of course), and they were, simply, perfect. One thing I have not been able to source to my satisfaction, in Toronto, are buttons. I'm sure that perfect buttons — perhaps even the perfect button store — exist, somewhere, in this city, but I have been unable to find them. I even deputized my mother — so far, nothing. I have lucked out, here and there, but these are the only buttons I've used so far that are both perfect for the project, and perfect by themselves.

It's been very cold in the mornings this past week, and particularly this weekend, so we've already put the sweater to use. I would say that she loves it, but honestly? She doesn't really have an opinion about clothes. Shoes, on the other hand, she definitely has an opinion on: they belong in her hands, or in her mouth, but not on her feet. Never, ever.

And now, something for me. This is a sweaters' worth of Fyberspates Scrumptious 4-ply in "Water."


This is a yarn I've been meaning to try for a while, but haven't been able to find in North America. (WEBS carries it now.) It's 55% merino, 45% silk — do you sense a pattern? It's because I love things that drape, and nothing drapes like silk (or bamboo — but that's another story).

It is going to be a Pas de Valse — actually, it's already most of one; I've only got most of one sleeve and the crochet edging to go. It's a surprisingly fast knit. (I know, this isn't the best in-progress picture ever. I just wanted to capture the beauty of the silk stockinette. This colour is perfect for a blue-grey obsessive like me — incidentally, the colour in the photo above is slightly more accurate. It's getting harder to take photographs in natural light, now.)


I originally knit this pattern when it was first published, out of some BMFA Wooboo (which is 40% bamboo). Unfortunately it hasn't held up very well — the yarn was a bit thicker than called for (it had originally been for another project), and I had had to do some re-calculations on the fly, and so it was always a bit on the larger side. Now it's a bit misshapen and droopy. I love it, though; it's a staple of my fall wardrobe, so this year I decided it was time to knit a new one. I'm very excited.

I haven't decided yet what I will knit after this is finished. Socks? A shawl? (A lace project in the winter is never remiss. I may knit shawls in the summer — but fall-winter is when I start them.) It's too early to think about Christmas, so this knitting time is all about me, me, me. It's not often that I can say that anymore, so I will revel in it while I can.

photoblog: the Spanish Inquisition is one!

I promised a wrap-up of the Spanish Inquisition's first party, didn't I? And that was almost a month ago. Bad me. My only excuse is that July was unbelievably busy — the Spanish Inquisition started daycare (I've mentioned that), which means that she a) hasn't been sleeping as well, and b) has already brought back daycare germ factory germs, which are better crafted, more resilient, and more deadly than regular hoi polloi germs. They've got some really good quality control, that germ factory — sadly so, for us.

But! Her party! We had it at our house, and it was for her little friends — the neighbourhood 2011 baby brigade (with an honourable membership for one who was born around Christmas, 2010) — so there was lots of opportunity for crafting and decoration. Because I am still me, and that is what I do.

The spread:

The cake:

The favours:



And finally, last but not least, the birthday girl:
The party kept her up a bit past her bedtime, so she was a little stunned.

crafty preview

The Spanish Inquisition is almost one! I know; that's insane. It feels unbelievable. It's been almost a year since the initial scare, and the long hospital stay, and the big, upending change in our lives.

She is still perfect.

Anyway, we are having a party — or rather, a series of parties; it's a long story that inevitably ends with "... and we have a small house" — as befits a Big Girl Birthday, and I have been crafting up a storm.


The paper pinwheels are party favours, from a Martha Stewart kit. The pom poms (above) are also from a MS kit. I've since attempted to make my own poufs; I'll show them to you in a party retrospective.

I've also been making buntings, diving deep into my chiyogami stash for the little flags —

Of course I had to incorporate chiyogami in there; it's an important birthday. I even broke into the Brazilian marbled paper I've been saving up (that's the green, in the picture, and there's a red-peach series in there, somewhere). And there's another, bigger bunting that I haven't taken a picture of (but will when it's up); it's lovely patterned paper with blue-and-white twine, says "happy birthday" on it.

The favours are wrapped in matching paper. I was also going to do a vellum overlay, but I think I'm out of time (and paper), and Pd is starting to give me that "I think you've gone nuts" look and backing away slowly.

I do know that the Spanish Inquisition won't care, not really, and that she certainly won't remember any of this (although it will live on in pictures, I'm sure). But let's face it: the first birthday party isn't really for the kid, it's for us, and I demand decorations, and crafts ... and, apparently, gluten-free cupcakes.

(That last one is a bit of a surprise. We'll see how that goes.)

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?