My trusty sidekick

A creative mess is better than tidy idleness.

I don't remember my first sewing machine. I learned to sew in Intermediate School when I was about 12. I've no doubt my Dad was thoroughly excited for two reasons. First, my eagerness to use my new talent would save us money. Two, I became creative, and my Dad was all about being creative. He could look at anything and figure out how to make it himself, then go home and do just that. From then on I sewed almost all of my clothes, plus most of my sister's and my Mum's clothes as well. Skirts, pants, blouses, jumpsuits, ballgowns. All I needed was a few hours on a Saturday to churn out whatever new lovely I needed for a hot date that night or church the next day. I remember sewing couch cushion covers, piped all around, when Dad got it in his head that he could re-upholster an old couch.
At some point I acquired a snazzy Elna, which I loved and took with me when I moved to Wellington and then back home again after my Dad died. Due to voltage differences, it stayed in New Zealand when I moved here in December 1979, but the first thing Jeff and I bought after we got married was an inexpensive sewing machine. I sewed for a drill team in Huntington Beach that first year and made dress samples for a friend in the fabric business after that, so I felt justified in upgrading to my trusty Viking a couple of years later. It cost $475, which was a small fortune at the time, but I was earning money on it and, once again, sewing all of our clothes on it. I made Jeff a brown, wool suit shortly afterwards.

Here it is, almost thirty years later, almost none the worse for wear. It did lose its zipper foot sometime back, a victim of one child or another, so I have to hand-sew all my zippers. Not a big sacrifice, because I avoid zippers like the plague anyway, and they actually look better when they're sewn by hand. I suppose I could buy a new zipper foot, but that would be too easy.

The machine got a real workout when the kids were little, I even sewed the girls' underwear. I never attempted boy's underwear, for obvious reasons. Then, when they were all teenagers, it lay idle for months at a time, except for making prom dresses and curtains and the occasional bit of mending. Since Kenzie was born, the old Viking has seen a resurgence in activity. That girl loves her dresses and skirts, so it's been fun to get creative again.

This is the result of my break from work. Nine baby blankets, a music bag, a shopping bag, and (not pictured) a cover for my doumbek.

What's a doumbek, you ask?

That's my drum. It is a very special doumbek because it has a tambourine inside.

My big push for 2010 is to be creative with all of the fabric and yarn and doodads that are in my so-called sewing room. Somebody asked me, why don't you just give it away? Well, I suppose I could, but I'm needing a challenge. This will do until I can figure out the bigger one.

An unexpected precipitation

Carl Reiner, the actor, once said, "A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water."

It snowed unexpectedly yesterday.

Commuters took hours to get home.

Even the weather forecasters were caught by surprise.

In less than an hour, everything was covered in a white blanket of powdery snow.

The view from our back window was suddenly picturesque, instead of grey and bedraggled.

It snows rarely enough around here that I forgot the eerie glow that the snow reflects at night.

I took this photo a few seconds later with the flash.

I stayed in the house all day, except for a quick trip out to the shed to look for my car's chains. Jeff and Jon had been eagerly anticipating their outing to see Avatar last night. Sadly, it took Jeff three hours to get home and their plans fizzled. They have rescheduled for when Jon and Jenny get back from their trip to Utah.

I kind of missed the excitement that a snowfall brought to the house when kids were young. All the bundling up in boots and gloves and jackets and hats. Holding mugs of hot chocolate to warm the hands when they dragged back in. Melted snow puddles on the floor. Blasts of cold air as they enter and leave the house. Piles of wet clothes to wash. Runny noses and red cheeks. Frozen toes and fingers. Footprints all around the garden.

To tell the truth, I was a little bored.

There, that's twice I've used the word in the last week.

Must be time to get back to work.

High fashion...

...for lounging in front of the woodstove on a cold winter night in Oregon.

Black stretchy pyjamas.

(They're slimming you know.)

Green knitted-by-me prayer shawl.

Pink fuzzy socks gifted to me by piano students.

Playing on Jeff's laptop and waiting for Tom Selleck in Jesse Stone: Thin Ice.

Wake me in April, would you please?

The Hummer

Jeff and I had a quiet Christmas day. We slept in, ate leftovers, thought about going to the movies but by then it was too late to catch a matinee. I refuse to pay $10 each to see a movie. We puddled around on our computers and took a nap. Getting, frankly, a little bored.

Then I got the brilliant idea to take Jenny and the boys to see a light show that I had heard about at a house in Amity, about 20 miles from us. It is apparently fantastic, with 20 minutes of lights synchronized to music, mostly Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which plays on your car radio. I told Jeff to copy down the directions and address while I took a shower and off we went. We drove around for almost two hours and couldn't find the house. No one at the general store in Amity had heard of it and yet they have their own website. Strange, we thought. Even if Jeff had copied down the directions or the address wrong, surely he wouldn't have gotten both of them wrong, and it looked so straightforward. The gas tank was almost on empty so we gave up and came home.

Unfulfilled.

Jeff fell asleep and Thomy wanted no more part of Christmas lights.

So we dropped them off at home and drove up to the ritzy housing development in town where they have a whole street of decorated houses. The best part is in the cul-de-sac, although it was mighty cold once you got out of the protection of the street.

Without the flash you get a better idea of the magical effect.

I made a video so that you can see more of the street. When I played it back I realized I was humming. Jeff is sweet and laughs at my humming. It bothers some people. My sister and I were driving in her car a few years ago and I was humming, as usual. She said, "Do you always do that?" in a slightly testy tone of voice. Yes, I do. I don't know when it started, or why I do it. I usually hum the last tune I heard, which, in my life, changes frequently. Sometimes, when I have to learn a difficult tune for my music therapy groups, I have to practise the song 20 or 30 times. Like "I can Sing a Rainbow," which has a key change halfway through. I hummed and sang that one for weeks before I could get it out of my head. And even now it creeps back in sporadically. I hum a lot when I'm at the grocery store. Once in a while I catch someone else humming. We just smile at each other and walk on. As Adrian Monk would say, "It's a blessing.......and a curse."

I can't even figure out what song I was humming, it must have been on the radio before we got out of the car. The trouble is, sometimes I sing notes in my head instead of out loud, so you don't get a good sense of the melody, only random snatches of the tune. If you can decipher it, let me know and I'll make it worth your while.

Oh yeah. We checked the directions when we finally arrived home. Jeff got both the directions and the address wrong. What are the odds of that? Maybe we'll try again tonight.

NOT!

Christmas joy, with photos, hopefully, fixed

Christmas Eve was pretty riotous at our house. Jon had to work later in the evening so our time was limited. The meat wasn't "falling off the bone" yet when he and his family arrived, so we opened presents first. My policy has always been that we read the story of Christ's birth before we open presents. This has been met with various degrees of enthusiasm over the years, depending on the ages of the children. This year, I had about 20% cooperation, but after announcing that there would NOT be any presents unless we read about the real meaning of Christmas, things improved somewhat.

Daniel faded fast. The excitement of it also being his birthday celebration proved to be a little too much.

We gave the older grandchildren money for designated classes this year, in an effort to not contribute to their piles of stuff. Here is Thomy opening his envelope. He will take art classes in January. He has incredible fine motor skills, which Jonnie attributes to playing video games. He also has a lot of patience and is painstaking in his colouring and art work, so I think the classes will open his eyes to new ideas.

Daniel got money for basketball or science class, depending on what is offered when the new Park and Rec schedule comes out. Kenzie gets a month of horse riding lessons.

Everyone got cozy fleece pyjama pants from Nana and Papa.

Natalie, showing off her new pants, hairband and purse. The girl has impeccable fashion sense, don't you think?

Let the feast begin. Roast beef with mashed potatoes and corn and peas and killer rolls. Sparkling grape juice. My rolls have been less than marvelous lately but these were divine. Maybe it was all the butter I slathered them with before I rolled them into crescents.

Last Christmas I bought a box of Christmas crackers at Costco. Crackers are an integral part of the Christmas celebration in England, so they bring back sweet memories for me. We've had them a few times with our family, but they weren't always easy to find and even then were expensive. A cracker, if you don't know, consists of a cardboard tube wrapped in pretty foil paper. Inside is a party hat, a prize, and a joke or saying, kind of like a fortune cookie. When you pull it with a partner, it splits unevenly. The split is accompanied by a small bang which is ever so thrilling! The bang is from the effect of friction on a chemically impregnated card strip. Crackers were invented in England in 1847 by a sweet (candy) maker as a promotional gimmick. Thank you Wikipedia.

Chris got the prize he had coveted, a mini tape measure. These were high-quality crackers. Daniel got a metal yo-yo.

Jon and Jenny look less than thrilled with their cracker experience.

Note the quality silver party hats.

If you can get past Bethany's fearsome face.

Jeff, eating his peas and corn. I think that was all he ate.

Jonnie, expounding on the evils of monoculture, specifically potatoes in this instance. Luckily, I had prepared yellow potatoes that were organically grown by Farmer Brown, rather than the ubiquitous russet.

Natalie, at the end of the day and with chocolate face, riding her and Joshie's new rocking horse.

A Happy Christmas to all my friends and readers.

I hope your day is (or was) as merry as mine.

Fearful Symmetry

I have spent almost 54 years not thinking about persimmons.

That's strange, you think to yourself, I think about persimmons quite often.

Forgive me for saying that you are full of:

Tommyrot.

Balderdash.

Poppycock.

A few weeks ago there was a lot of buzz on the Prepare Now Yahoo group about an order of persimmons that was coming to town. I resisted ordering because, don't you know, I have never tasted a persimmon and ergo find it hard to get excited about ordering a 20 pound box of them.

Nevertheless, I must have been pondering the subject in my subconscious because some nights later I had a very vivid dream about the magical fruit. I can still recall the texture of the skin as I peeled the fruit and the smoothness of the inner flesh as I sliced it. The taste was divine, sweet and creamy without being cloying at all.

I awoke in the midst of the dream and thought to myself that perhaps (!) I might actually like persimmons. If you know me at all, you know that I am somewhat of a picky eater. Certain things will never cross my lips because of their smell. I have tried, darn it, to eat salad ingredients but they just taste like grass. Suffice it to say that I am not an adventurous eater. I have attributed that sad state to the fact that I am a bit of a super-taster, which, for you doubters, is an actual scientific state of being. Really. It is.

The persimmon tree species diospyros belongs to the ebony wood family. Diospyros means "the fruit of the Gods" in ancient Greek. Persimmons are high in nutrients but eating too many unripe fruit can cause bezoars that require surgery in most cases. What is a bezoar, you ask? Think hairballs in cats. Same kind of mass in the digestive tract. Yummy! Moral of the story, make sure your persimmons are ripe before you ingest.

So, on with the persimmon story.

Last Saturday my friend Barb and I decided to walk at the local university's track, which is close to her house. It is one of those nice soft tracks and my legs have been hurting lately so we thought we'd give me a break. It was a cold, damp, morning, but we had a great time catching up on all our news and NOT talking about persimmons.

As I was leaving to return home she gave me...

three

perfect

persimmons.

What Nana did today

Walk with Barb. Check.
Get mammogram. Check.
Get blood drawn. Check.
Pick up beef from Janine's freezer and give her some pumpkin bread. Check.
Make Kenzie's Christmas dress. Check.

You can't tell, but the fabric has pink and white polka dots and glitter all over it. Two of Kenzie's favourite things.

P.S. If you click on the photos you can get a nice close-up of the fabric. It's rather pretty and Kenzie has been nagging me for quite a long time to make something for her out of it. I have a new thing in my head, that I should use up the resources I've been accumulating before I buy new stuff. One down, a gazillion to go!