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Dawn-watching

Such a life affirming event and it happens every single day. Watching the night turn into day,  experiencing the moments of transition from darkness to light - magical, mystical.  The changes are subtle but definite.  Sunny dawns are more dramatic than cloudy dawns but each is a panorama, each is different.

And one can get so taken with looking to the east, to the rising sun, that it might take a bird flying past or a passerby breeze to prompt the turning of the head and looking west.........

Fabric Button : Raincoat

The forecast snow that got licked by a warm wind at one in the morning (so said the weatherman on CBC Radio: it cheers me to know someone is taking notes of such things) turned to rain and had me rummaging around for a rain coat.

By the time I found it the sun was out.  (This is more due to Victoria's quick and sudden weather changes than to an inability on my part  to reasonably  locate a specific garment.) 

Before I put the raincoat back in the closet (actually, it is still not put back: the sun is out but there are clouds and wind scooting about and it just might be needed....) I took time to admire the button; the texture and exact match please me.  It was made by cutting the raincoat material into a thin strip and then crocheting this 'yarn' around and into the center of  a wire hoop - a bracelet, if I recall correctly.   I attach it in place at the back  of the button with a safety pin.  (I have said it before and I will say it again - I love safety pins!)

The coat is a simple T-design with the overlapping fronts  which looks good on any body shape.  I had hopes that this fabric would be completely waterproof (it stood up to my spitting on it - discreetly! - in the thrift store linen section) and it is pretty good but still more "water resistant" than "water proof". It is magnificently windproof!

The stiffness of the material definitely allows for clothing as architecture which houses the body and lets the body move within the garment.  What I particularly like about this coat is that it 'talks' as it is worn - sort of like the swish of ski wear but not dependent upon fabric brushing against fabric for the sound: no, this cloth 'sings' on its own drape.  I did hem the front edges  and neckline to give a bit of a ridge  but the sleeves and bottom edge are left free and express this in a satisfying flow- look and flow- feel.

It is now raining again!  Raincoat is ready and waiting!

It's Sunny. Yikes!

It is  gorgeous and sunny.  It feels like that kind of day, living  in Ontario, when the icicles would be melting and water running under the frozen slush in the gutters and you sighed deep down to your heavy-duty,  no-nonsense boots because you knew winter may persist longer but it was on the way out. 

That memory came to mind and made me smile, here on the west coast.  What made me grin yike-ishly was how the sun shines on every grease spot, every splatter, every boil-over mark on the stove.  And the thought of spring sort of urges one to remove the evidence of slovenly  casual, winter  housekeeping.

I was a bit surprised to discover that as well as those black things that cover the gas exits, the metal gas exit surrounds can also be removed  to expose grimy  stuff underneath.  The stove is more than a year old and it has been cleaned many,  several , a few times but never quite so thoroughly.

Here is what it looked like with everything put back together.  Even the kettle got its shine again.  It is positively brilliant and that is why I got out a pair of sunglasses. 

Ladybug ; surprising twist to the saga

The ladybug who had begun to visit me at dinnertime and ate the piece of potato I offered and then did not show up for several days and I was worried that it was 'something she ate';  the ladybug for whom I Googled and found out that if a ladybug hatches in your home and you want to keep it alive and well until released outdoors in the spring, the food of choice is aphids, second choice soaked raisins;  the ladybug who did not show up for this more suitable food:  that ladybug!  Well, listen to this. 

A few evenings  ago I turned off the computer and stood up to walk out of the room.  I chanced to look down and noticed a  dark spot on the floor which, in the dim light, I thought was a piece of mud that had come off my shoe as I came into the room because it was exactly where I would have stepped as I came into the room.  I picked it up carefully - not wanting the lump to crumble into crumbles of dirt - and discovered it was a ladybug. 

I took it into the kitchen and looked at it under the light.  It did not move or respond to my attention - no, not CPR: gentle pats.  I had cleared away the raisins and wet cloth days before when ladybug had not returned but got out the glass plate again and put the 'corpse' on it, on the table, thinking to have not exactly a funeral the next day but some sort of memorial: maybe bury the ladybug who had shared my dinnertime in the scented geranium pot by the door looking out onto the deck.  I marvelled at how it had appeared in my path, so to speak, and that I had not trod on it and crushed it; wondered if it had been on the ceiling and fallen just then.  I acknowledged the loss.

Next morning - the plate was empty!  I now know ladybugs are either very sound sleepers or they do mini hibernations.  As I picked up the plate I discovered the ladybug had crawled over the rim and was on the underside.  Well.  I soaked some more raisins,  wet another piece of paper towel, put the raisins on the plate, nudged the ladybug along to the food.  Well, again!  She perked up immediately,  climbed onto one of the raisins, latched on and, unless she flies around at night or when I am away from the house and returns to the exact same spot - she has not moved since.

Joshua and His Gang ; Chapter Two : Look Alikes

Southern Ontario    The Fifties

CHAPTER TWO LOOK ALIKES

Old Man McTavish had watered his front lawn that morning so Joshua and Bill sat down on the curb in front of the McTavish house. The hot afternoon sun was not so hot near the wet grass. And it smelled good.

Piya came along and sat with them. She looked up at Old Man McTavish's house and frowned. "Won't he yell if we sit here?"

"Naw," said Bill. "He's gone to do lawn bowling." Bill's mother knew everyone and everything in the neighbourhood and Bill liked to hear his mother talk so he sort of knew everything too.

"Oh," said Piya and relaxed. She began to dig bits of dirt out of the cracks in the curb and flick them into the road. She wanted to see how far she could toss them.

The boys were tiddly-winking stones into the grating in the gutter.

Ingrid and Sam and John came racing around the corner and down the block. They fell into place along the curb.

"We wondered where you were," Ingrid gasped in her breathless voice. "We thought you were at the playground."

She used the ends of her incredibly long braids to wipe the dampness off her forehead.

John used his hands to make a teeter totter and to make a swing swing. Then he slid down a slide and everyone slid with him. Ingrid wondered how John felt to be able to make such pictures just using his hands. She wondered if he knew how well he could do it. She would ask Lucy about this when she got the chance. No use asking John. He was just a boy.

Bill was watching in fascination as well. "Too hot to slide," he said when he had slid down a few times. "Where are - oh, here they come."

The twins, Ellen and Lucy, came out from the walkway across the street. They squeezed onto the curb.

"This is a six-person seating place," hollered Sam, "So just squash off!"

Joshua started to move down to make room but the twins both stood up at exactly the same time.

"Why can't we be proper twins?" Lucy asked so sadly. "We think together and sometimes we move together. But we don't look at all alike."

Ellen looked sad as well. Sam pushed Piya off the curb so Ellen and Lucy could sit down again. Piya punched Sam and started for home but Bill grabbed her arm and sat her down on the other side of him and Ingrid made a funny face at her to make her giggle.

Joshua wriggled his glasses up and down his nose. "Stand together," he ordered. "You two, I mean," he said pointing at the twins. Ellen looked curious and moved to stand closer beside Lucy but Lucy frowned at Joshua's bossy voice.

"Let's see how you look side by side," Joshua continued.

The gang looked at the twins. The twins looked at the gang. Then the twins looked at each other.

"See," complained Lucy. "We are totally different. People don't even think we are sisters let alone twins."

"I've got an idea," said Ingrid. "Ellen, you stand on your tiptoes a bit, yes, like that. Lucy, you scrunch down a bit. There, now you're the same height."

The twins looked at each other.

"Hey, I'm looking right in your eyes,"

"Hey, I'm looking right in your eyes," they said together.

"All wrong! All wrong!" Sam shouted. Everyone looked at him. "You may be the same height but you sound completely different. Lucy, you got to talk lower down, like this, and Ellen, you got to talk higher."

"How's this, is this better?" Lucy asked, deeper, while Ellen was saying, "Do you mean like this?" in a lighter voice.

"Great!" Sam yelled and Piya giggled and John, who thought the whole thing silly, rolled his eyes and made his playground motions.

The twins walked around in their new heights practicing their new voices while the gang watched and criticized.

"You've got to change your eye colour," Bill said after staring at them with his eyes half closed and being thoughtful. "Ellen has such blue eyes and Lucy's are much darker."

"You can't change eye colour," said Piya. "I know because my doctor aunt said I couldn't when I told her I wanted green eyes."

"Sunglasses," Sam screeched. "I'll get some."

He raced home, threw himself upstairs, grabbed a pair of sunglasses from his eldest sister's dresser, dashed downstairs again and into the kitchen, rummaged around in the drawer in the phone table and found another pair.

As he was zooming out the back door one of his brothers was coming in.

"Hey, take it easy," he said to Sam. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Sam hollered and raced madly back to the gang.

"Here!" he screamed, giving each twin a pair of the glasses.

"The glasses should match," said Piya. John rolled his eyes and climbed the monkey bars at the playground. He was doing such a good imitation with his hands of going up and up that Bill almost told him to be careful.

The sunglasses did not match. Ellen's were orange with black stripes. Lucy's were plain white.

"At least their eyes look the same now," Sam said loudly. "You can't really see them at all. Hey, where's Ingrid?"

"Here I am," she panted, running up to them from along the block. "I got it." She waved a bag at them.

"What is it?" Sam demanded.

"Dye. My mom uses it on her rugs. I got a dark one for Ellen and a light one for Lucy. If their skin was closer in colour it would be a huge improvement." Her mother was always talking about “huge improvements” of one sort or the other but changing skin colour had not been one of them as far as Ingrid could recall.

She opened the bag and took out two jars.

"It's powder," Bill said.

"Oh, I forgot," groaned Ingrid, hitting her hand against her head. "You have to mix it with water."

"Ohhhhh," everyone said in a disappointed voice, except for John. Piya giggled but that was what she did no matter how she felt.

Joshua gave a long sigh and a huge roll of his head and as he did so he noticed a pool of water on the sidewalk that was left over from Old Man McTavish's lawn watering.

"Water!" he whooped and surprised even Sam. They all knelt around the puddle, even John. He was becoming interested in the whole thing. Besides, the playground was hot.

"Don't push me," Piya said to Sam. Joshua was going to push Sam out of the way but decided to make room for everyone instead. "Spread out," he told them. And they did. Then everyone fit around the puddle.

Ingrid opened the lighter powder and poured a bit on the water.

"Here's a stick," John offered. "Can I mix it?"

"Sure."

The water turned pinkish. Ingrid put more powder in. John stirred. The water got pinker and quite thick.

"Perfect," announced Ingrid. "Now, what will I put it on with?" Just as she said this one of her braids fell off her shoulder and dropped into the pink liquid.

"A brush, a brush!" shouted Sam.

"I guess it is now," Ingrid said with a shrug and a laugh.

She looked at Lucy. "What should I do first? Your face?"

Lucy looked at the pink goop. "Maybe my hands first," she suggested. "Then I can see them turn colour."

"Okay." Ingrid dipped her braid in the dye and brushed it over the backs of Lucy's hands. It went on like paste."

"Awfully pink," said Joshua. He personally thought it was exactly the colour of some pigs he had seen once at the Saturday Market but he decided not to mention this.

"It will be fine when it dries," Ingrid assured him.

When she had covered the backs of Lucy's hands she leaned back onto the grass. "Oooooh, it's wet," she said. Then she had an idea. "I know.  I'll sprinkle some of the dark powder on this wet grass and you wipe your hands in it, Ellen."

"Okay," said Ellen, looking doubtfully at Lucy's bright pink skin.

Ingrid swished her pink-tipped braid in the grass to try and clean it. She wondered what her mother would say.

Ellen rubber her hands in the dye on the grass. They turned a purply brown.

"Yech," said Bill and John and Piya.

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Ingrid said. "Lucy, wipe that paste off on the grass."

Lucy did so and her hands were now sort of orange.

"Now we're even more different," Ellen said. "Well, at least it will wash off."

Ingrid didn't say anything. Joshua looked at her and raised his eyebrows. "It will wear off, I'm sure," she whispered to him.

Everyone sat around quite quietly.

"If your hair was the same colour it would make you look more alike," Piya suggested.

"We could dye it - " Ingrid began.

"No thanks."

"No thanks." the twins said together.

"If both were either curly or straight it would be enough, likely," said Piya.

Ellen looked at Lucy's curly/curly hair.

Lucy looked at Ellen's board/straight hair.

"Iron yours," Ellen said. "I'll help. Then we'll both have nice straight hair."

"I'm not going to iron my hair," said Lucy. "I like curly hair. We can curl yours. Mom has a permanent in the bathroom cabinet."

"I don't want curly hair," shouted Ellen. "I want you to have straight hair and look like ME!"

"I want you to have curly hair and look like ME!" Lucy yelled back.

"Hey," said John and Bill and Piya and Ingrid.

"Hey!!" said Sam, only louder.

Joshua was the one to roll his eyes and stay silent.

"Straight hair, straight hair, straight hair!"

"Curly hair, curly hair, curly hair," bellowed the twins and you can figure out who said which.

"Oh great," Joshua finally said, "Now we have a war on our hands because two people DON'T want to look like each other."

"I don't want to scrunch down."

"I don't want to stand on tiptoes," hollered the twins.

Bill and Piya shrugged and went off home.

"I don't want lighter eyes,"

"I don't want darker eyes," yelled the twins.

John and Sam and Ingrid sighed and drifted away.

"I am proud of my braces."

"I am proud of my straight teeth," cried the twins.

Joshua threw up his hands and walked away.

"I want to be ME!"

"I want to be ME!" the twins shrieked.

"Get off my lawn!" Old Man McTavish screamed from his front porch.

Ellen and Lucy clutched at each other in shock. Old Man McTavish! Where had the gang gone?

"Yikes."

"Yikes." they yelled at the exact same time. And ran off home.

   

Knitting Gurus

When you do something across more than five decades, if you have a nosy  inquisitive nature, you start to think about the activity, wonder about it, consider the components, experiment with slight or major changes, delight in the sharing of observations with others similarly engaged, wish to explore it further.

Activities such as breathing, eating, sleeping come to mind.  And knitting.  Life essentials.

I've heard that knitting is the new yoga: it is meditative, relaxing, productive, an exercise of body, mind and spirit, leads to self awareness, keeps us out of mischief, is harmless etc.

Okay, then - Knitting Gurus, take up your knitting needles and expand this horizon.   KIP!!!!!  (Knit  In Public)   Wear what you knit (or crochet or weave or sew - expressing oneself in fibre has no borders).

If you can look down at yourself right now and see one thing you have made - *.  Two things - **.
Three things - ******.  Four things - ********.  You get the idea.  Rapid growth of star points!

You know how a knitted item - or a person knitting - is a magnet for others to stop and chat.  That's community.  And a channel, of sorts, for those knitters who are now using clouds as unlimited fleece, an eternal skyfull stash.

Those are woodsman socks in the photo with a sprig of rosemary and lavender tucked into them;  knitted purse; stroll through stash scarf; fingerfree handwarmers made from cutting off the cuffs and part of the sleeves of a thrift store sweater.

I'm having fun.  I'm serious.  Knitters - show and share!

Some Old Things

The item in the bottom left hand corner was found at the Flea Market on Niagara Street on the weekend.  We (the seller and I) believe it was used on the scalp but whether it is meant to hold shampoo or water or perhaps a lemon rinse is debatable.  Next time I see the local Tupperware lady I will ask her. 

The right hand item is for salt, meant to be taken on picnics; it was already in my kitchen but I had to take it out and introduce it to the new addition from an old era. 

At the Flea Market there was an object so identical to the one shown that for a moment I wondered if I had perhaps gotten rid of mine and that was it but when I got home, there was mine, still around.  The man selling the one at the Market thought it was for spices and I said I found it worked better for salt.  He agreed it was carved from one piece.  The mortar does not detach from the pestle. I think it is splendid and wonder if the same person carved both.

Dining Companion

The ladybug who startled me by landing on the mystery book I was reading during dinner awhile ago came back the next day.  Thinking I was not being a very gracious hostess I put a morsel of food on the table for her;  a piece of potato to be exact.  She walked around it, climbed on top of it, seemed to eat some of it.  Later I wondered what would be her choice were she in charge of the menu.  Good old Google.  Aphids!  Cupboard (and garden outdoors!) were bare of aphids.  Soaked  raisins were the next suggestion - this in an article for those wanting to keep ladybugs who hatch indoors during the winter as pets until they can be released outside when the weather warms. (Pause here for, once again, silent amazement at the information available on my trusty PerCy  with Google pointing the way).  A wet piece of paper towel for a drink was also advised.

That is what you see in the picture: raisins and drink and, no, the ladybug did not return and bring two friends:  those wooden bugs were sitting on the counter so I put them on the plate.  Perhaps not a good idea.  Ladybug has not appeared at dinner since.  Perhaps she is still digesting the potato.  I am feeling a bit worried. 

Origami : Dancing Couple

This dancing couple is folded from a single sheet of paper, six inches square, black on one side, white on the other.  It was done by my middle son many years ago.  I was impressed when he did it: it has delighted me ever since.

Origami is a wonderful pastime.  This is a complex example; other origami is quite simple. 

Paul Jackson, a master of Origami, acknowledges the origami properties of other than paper.   

I agree!  Each morning I 'fold' the knit afghan on my bed with purpose, with intent.  Casual folds, letting the fibre suggest the result, trying to pay attention to my role in the endeavour.
Each day is different. 

It is fun!

Knitting : Handspun Backpack

Over the years, at garage sales, I have been buying up wool from beginner spinners who consider their first attempts to turn fleece into yarn as "mistakes".  I love these "mistakes" and agree with experienced spinners who comment that these items speak of a special time and are worthy of being honoured. 

Some of this yarn got knit into a panel and then turned into a backpack by attaching it to a linen skirt (two dollars at a thrift store) as the actual bag.  It offers  beauty and function.

My attempts to spin, using a drop spindle, have been rudimentary, satisfying, and have not led to a desire to explore further or on a wheel - but - I would want to spin with the wonderful random thick'n'thin results of these "mistakes" and which, I understand, once "corrected" (to even, smooth yarn) can never be repeated.