Happy dances

I have a happy dance.  A friend once told me that it looks like I’m marching in the spot.  Not like a soldier march, but like a happy floozy march I think.  I did my happy dance today.  My neighbour even spotted it as a happy dance and called me out on it.  I just kept dancing.

See, I finished my neighbour’s sweater this week.  It’s not actually really a sweater, but a coat.  A goat-milking coat.  A farm coat.  I’m really pleased with how it turned out.  Her husband called it druid-like, and she just might be a druid in training.  I made her a sweater, and she made us a quilt.  I did a lot of happy dances while I was making her goat-milking coat, thinking about friendly neighbours and the economy of trades, but nothing like the one I did today when I saw our quilt.

Jer started tapping our maple trees this week.  We’re evaporating with electricity this year – the fire last year was SO much work, with the wood and the constant supervision and such.  I’ll miss the smoky taste in our syrup, but it makes a lot of sense.  We still have about 1 L of syrup left from last year, so there may be lots of french toast in our near future.

One of our other neighbours gave me a four-harness table loom a couple of weeks ago, and it’s almost exactly like my other table loom, but about 6 inches wider, which means I have way more options in what I want to make.  That said, I do NOT need 2 4-harness table looms, so I’m going to give away my other loom, and in order to give it away, I need to finish the weaving that’s been on it for over a year, but that was stuck in a stupid spot.  I spent about an hour last weekend un-stupidifying it, and I’m LOVING the product now.

Tomorrow I get to spend a day training with Free the Children, an NGO that works in empowering youth to create change.  They put on WE day, and because I teach leadership at our school I get to take part in the training tomorrow.  I’m super excited.  Then on Friday, my leadership group is putting on a school-wide talent show to fund raise for Habitat for Humanity.  Busy week, but it’s an exciting time at school.

Jer’s just about ready to order his first seeds of the year – he’s been pulling stumps out of the garden all week!  Spring feels like it’s on the way, and we’re ready!

Chainsaws and spinning wheels

I broke my car key on Thursday.  In the car door.  At Buckley Bay, the ferry terminal on Vancouver Island.  The spare key was at home, on Denman.  The lovely folks at the gas station at the ferry terminal lent me a pair of pliers to get the key out of the door, but I wasn’t going to put it in the ignition and risk having it get stuck in there and have Volkswagen charge me $794 for a new ignition and $156 for a new key.  So I called work and told them I was going to be late and called Jer and he found the key, borrowed his mom’s car, drove to the ferry terminal, got on the ferry to give me the spare, got right back on on the other side and went back home.  I drove to work, half cursing and half smiling.  The next day the lock was frozen shut again, but my foresight had told me to fold down the back seats and so I climbed in through the trunk.  Part of me thinks it’s awesome that I’m entering my car through my trunk – I’m rather proud of the fact that I used to have a car that was so ghetto that it used to stall whenever I turned left.  Most of me, though, does not want the car I drive now to be ghetto.

I told Jer when I got home on Friday that I thought I should learn to use a chainsaw.  He decided that the bluebird sunshine day we had on Saturday was as a good of an opportunity as ever.  So I learned how to use a chainsaw.  I like chainsaws.  In the same way that I like spinning wheels.  I also love the fact that we moved to a house where our neighbours are textile artists and want to have co-operative sheep.  Co-operative sheep!  Who ever thought I would be so lucky.

Spiced Butternut my ass

Some jobs, some vacations, some days and weeks and months and years are more successful than others.  Some to-do lists get accomplished quickly and simply.  Some take more time.  Some never get finished, for a long list of reasons, be they lost or forgotten or impossible or reduced to irrelevancy.

I had so many plans for this vacation.  I made a mental list.  I was going to reupholster a chair.  I was going to knit socks.  We were going to go to Tofino.  To Victoria.  Cross-country skiing.  Hiking.  We were going to go to the New Years dance.  I was going to get all of my marking done.  Read a book for school.  Read a book for me.  Get in a bunch of firewood, clean our bedroom, lounge in bed and eat bonbons.  I was going to paint the living room, the entry-way, touch up the kitchen.  We were going to finish our renovations (for all of you who know anything about renovations, please don’t laugh here.  Or not out loud at least.  I’m still a little sensitive about this part).

And then the plans started to fall apart.  I couldn’t paint because we hadn’t finished drywalling.  We couldn’t go to Tofino because Mia’s in heat and I don’t want a litter of unwelcome and half ugly puppies (even though they’d be at least half beautiful because she’s the prettiest puppy in the world).  Same for Victoria.  Jeremy got sick and was in bed for 8 days and pretty useless for the 2 days prior.  I’ve never seen him so sick.  I never wrote down my mental list and just kinda got caught up in painting.  And sleeping.  I did sleep a lot.  One day I stayed in bed until noon!  Reading a book!  So I guess I did that.  School got forgotten and ignored.  And without Jeremy to motivate me, I neglected the firewood too.  The bedroom is never a priority, and our renovations will never be done, especially now that our roof is leaking, and we can’t find the leak, so we may be heading into a new renovation sooner than anticipated.  Poop.

Before Jer got sick though, we finished some of the drywalling, picked a paint colour, got Jeremy’s mom to pick it up in town, I opened the can, was surprised at it’s greenish hue, took one swipe of it on the wall and was aghast.  It was supposed to be spiced butternut.  It was neither spicy nor butternutty.  It was Mountain Dewish.  It was yellow with a side of green.  It bordered on neon.  It was not warm or inviting or calm or pretty.  It was bad.  I kept hoping it would get better.  It didn’t.  Not with a second coat, not in different light, not the next day.  So we decided to go darker, bolder, more orange, and paint the other walls of the living room a neutral.  I love the one wall – it’s called Autumn Harvest, but in Martha Stewart’s catalogue it’s called Pencil, because it’s orange pencil coloured.  I wish the other walls were darker – they’re too white – but they’re totally passable and I love our new room.  The baby blue is gone.  Thank goodness.

Christmas was lovely (our first at home in our home!) – we had a friend stay over Christmas Eve and we spent Christmas morning opening presents and drinking tea around our woodstove.  We went over to Jer’s ma’s house to get further spoiled and feast.  New Years was a bust – I painted and cursed at the daffodil citrus chartreuse wall and Jer was feverish and in bed by 7.  And now I have to go back to work tomorrow and I’m not ready but will survive because that’s how I roll.

Who can name the birds?