knitnut.net

Wig weirdness

Zoom! — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:51:51 +0000

I went for a walk the other evening and found a trail of discarded wigs and pieces of wigs along the side of a 1km stretch of Merivale Road. Upon returning the next day to photograph them, I was disappointed to see the best one was already gone. It was a very long black straight-haired wig.

I took pictures of some of the others.

Do any of you have any theories about how these wigs came to be on the side of Merivale Road?

My theory is maybe they were used as disguises in the commission of crimes, and then hastily discarded afterward. (Although, if I were going to hastily discard my disguise after the commission of a crime, I’d put it in a bag in a public garbage receptacle.)

No related posts.

Hemorrhaging money from both ends

zoom! — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:40:26 +0000

Last night GC and I went to Loblaws and gathered a bunch of ingredients for a Cob Salad. Then we unshopped, putting all those ingredients back where we found them, and drove over to Farm Boy instead, because we love Farm Boy. (Sometimes when we can’t think of anything to do, one of us will suggest that we go hang out at Farm Boy, and we both brighten up. It’s the friendliest grocery store in town.)

But actually, this post isn’t so much about Farm Boy as it is about the conversation we had on the way home from Farm Boy.

We were talking about the health care system and how the aging population might bring it to its knees if we don’t fix it first (obviously not “we” as in GC and me, but “we” as in Canada).

As we all know, people tend to use substantially more health care resources towards the end of their lives, when they’re old and/or sick. If a huge chunk of the population gets old at the same time, it’s going to overburden the health care system.

The topic wandered around to whether one political party would be more inclined to fix it than another. I said I didn’t think so, because it’s largely a function of demographics, and none of the political parties can do anything about the fact that the boomers are getting old.

But then it hit me that maybe the Conservatives are the least likely to fix it, because they’re working against the shifting demographic reality instead of with it.

The reality is that with an aging population, you have increased expenses on the health care front. But the same demographic reality also means a falling crime rate, since crime is most prevalent among young men.

A smart government would use the savings from the falling crime rate to help offset the increasing health care costs.

The Conservatives are doing the opposite: Despite falling crime rates, they’re pushing through their so-called Law and Order agenda, which will force us to spend significantly more money on cops, courts and corrections. Mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses – just one element of the Law and Order agenda – will necessitate the expansion of our prison system to accommodate the sudden influx of new prisoners, most of whom have committed victimless crimes.

Instead of reaping some economic benefit from one end of the demographic reality to apply to the other end, we’re going to be hemorrhaging money from both ends as a consequence of Conservative ideology.

Missed appointments and a hummingbird obsession

zoom! — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:40:16 +0000

I don’t know what’s going on, but lately I’ve been completely addle-brained about doctors appointments. Everyone misses an appointment now and again, but I’ve missed four in a row – two with the breast cancer surgeon and two with the oncologist. These are just routine follow-up appointments to make sure the cancer hasn’t come back.

It’s getting to the point where I’m wondering if I’m subconsciously doing it on purpose (is that a contradiction in terms?). I was scheduled to see the surgeon on February 4, but I had to reschedule to March 8, because I was in that 8-day career planning thing. But then on March 8, I got the time wrong in my head, even though it was right on the calendar.

As for the oncologist, I can’t even remember why I missed it last time. But this time it was because I got on the 86 bus going in the wrong direction, and by the time I figured it out I was in Nepean and irredeemably late. I ended up at GC’s house, eating homemade soup and playing with the lovebirds, instead of at the cancer centre having my breasts thoroughly groped.

I haven’t been entirely remiss. I’ve done the pre-appointment mammograms and blood tests. I just can’t seem to show up for the actual appointments. I’m really starting to wonder about myself, especially since I successfully made it to approximately 118 appointments last year without missing a single one.

Here’s something interesting: a live web cam of a hummingbird nest. Phoebe the hummingbird is usually in it, keeping her eggs safe and warm. They’re scheduled to hatch between March 14th and 16th. I’m mesmorized.

Do you actually wear handknit socks?

zoom! — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:11:44 +0000

Look Duncan, new sox!

I finished knitting a pair of socks yesterday, and then I broke them in by wearing them to the meeting with the employment counselor, which is about 5km from my place. 7,500 steps. 3,750 steps per sock.

Normally I don’t wear my handknit socks when I go out walking, because I’m very hard on socks and I can’t bear the idea of getting holes in the toes after all that work. I just keep them in the special handknit-sock basket on top of my dresser, and once in awhile I’ll pick out a pair to wear around the house, or around someone else’s house.

Handknit socks don’t make a whole lot of sense really. You spend $20 on the yarn and maybe 40 hours of your time to make something that you could buy for $3.97 at Zellers.

XUP and I talked about this one day. She couldn’t understand why anybody would do that. And on a purely logical level, I agree with her. It makes even less sense if, like me, you’re reluctant to even wear the socks because you’ve invested so much time and money in them.

But there’s just something about handknit socks. I can’t explain it. Everybody who knits socks knows what I mean. Right?

By the way, there’s a contest over at Wandering Cat Studios. You just have to pick out your favourite colourway from her succulent hand-dyed yarns, and you’ll be entered in the draw.

Not feeling much like me

zoom! — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:09:00 +0000

It’s been a funny sort of week. The weather is glorious and everybody else seems to be feeling the weight of winter being lifted from their shoulders. People look lighter and happier.

Not me. I’ve been feeling unusually stressed out and a little depressed the past few weeks.

A bunch of things are weighing me down. Even the fact that I’m feeling stressed out and depressed is stressing me out and depressing me. It’s not compatible with how I see myself. I’m the one who’s supposed to ride the waves, roll with the punches, get back on the horse. I’m supposed to be the eternal optimist. Nothing’s supposed to get me down.

So I went to see a counselor. She told me that sometimes people summon up reserves of strength to sail through a crisis (like cancer, for example), but once the crisis is over, the feelings catch up with them. And that’s when they start showing signs of stress or depression. Maybe that’s what’s going on with me.

Unemployment is kind of stressful too. Career-changing, job-hunting, financial worries – it all adds up.

All I know is I feel ten years older than I felt a year ago. And I physically feel something unpleasant in my body. It’s in my stomach and chest and face and shoulders. It builds up until I sigh deeply, which relieves it temporarily, and then it starts building up again.

I tried googling stress. But it freaked me out to read about what all that extra cortisol is doing to my body. Yikes.

What else is new?

I heard from my ex-husband a couple of days ago, for the first time in 10 years. He sent me an email saying he’d found my blog and has been reading it. That gave me a moment’s pause. I mean, I write this stuff and I put it out there for anybody and everybody to read, but every now and then I’m startled to find out that a particular somebody is reading it. Like my ex-husband. I felt the same way when my mother started reading it, and when my son did, and when my boss asked me if I was Zoom.
Last night we bought some Hoegaarden beers and drank a toast to Dave1949’s health. He just finished his cancer treatments and is looking forward to starting to feel better soon.
GC and I went to the Ottawa Calligraphy Society’s open house the other night and some scribes made us these lovely complimentary name plates.

My lucky week: blood.claat

zoom! — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:48:02 +0000

I was fortunate enough to be given complimentary tickets for the opening night performance of blood.claat at the Great Canadian Theatre Company last night, just for being a blogger. Not only that, but GC and I got the best seats in the house: front row, center.

I’m going to tell you something about me: I’m not very good at interpreting art. Be it novels, plays, movies, whatever, I tend to be too literal. Metaphors elude me. I have trouble making implied connections; I need things to be spelled out for me. I often find myself at the end saying “What happened?” and having to google it to find out. And I’m not just talking about David Lynch-style movies, where nobody else gets it either.

So with that in mind, let me say that I think blood.claat is about the cyclical rhythms of life itself. The menstrual cycle figures prominently, and is a metaphor for bloodlines and history repeating itself from generation to generation.

We all know our children are bound to make mistakes, but there is a peculiar anguish in seeing them repeat our mistakes. The main character in this play is a 15-year-old Jamaican girl, Mudgu, balanced precariously on the razor edge of girlhood and womanhood, being forced to repeat history.

blood.claat is a one-woman show, and that one woman is an extraordinary chameleon. Her name is d’bi.young anitafrika. She both wrote and performed this play. I was mesmerized by the sheer range of her abilities, and by her acting agility. When she switched back and forth between the roles of 15-year-old Mudgu and her boyfriend, for instance, it was the most incredible thing. It wasn’t like she was playing these roles. She was a 15-year-old-girl. She was a 20-year old boy. She was a granny, a religious auntie, a tribal warrior, a Canadian border guard – she was all of them, and more, transforming herself instantly and seamlessly from one into the next.

The story itself is a powerful and evocative one. It demands a lot from the audience, emotionally. There are some disturbing scenes, but there is also a great deal of wit, which helps to rebalance the mood. I don’t want to give away the ending, but let’s just say the future holds promise, as always.

While it stands alone, Blood.claat is the first in a trilogy of plays written by d’bi.young.

d'bi.young and moon, a few years ago. (Photo:Women's Press)

After the show, d’bi.young’s little boy, Moon, wandered onto the set looking for his mom. She was backstage changing, so he played with the sword prop. He looks to be about five or six years old and is very, very cute.

Blood.claat – one oomaan story – is playing at the Great Canadian Theatre Company until March 21. Half the proceeds from the March 16th show will be donated to the relief effort in Haiti. To purchase tickets, please visit www.gctc.ca or call the box office at 613-236-5196.

Alice in Wonderland: I loved it anyway

zoom! — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:28:26 +0000

GC and I won tickets to go see the advance screening of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland last night. (Thank you, Penguin Canada.)

Going for free is a treat, but it isn’t as easy as paying to see a movie. First there’s a lineup to get your pass converted to a ticket. Then there’s a lineup to get into the theatre area. Then there’s a lineup to get into the theatre. (Throughout all this, you’re not even guaranteed a seat, because there are more passes than there are seats. Kinda like flying.)

Before entering the theatre, we had to surrender our cell phones and cameras, to prevent us from recording the movie and putting it on youtube or something. (Why would anyone do that, anyway? It sounds like an awful lot of trouble for nothing. And wouldn’t it be blurry, since it’s a 3D movie?)

Once inside the theatre, there was a draw in which three people were selected to go up front and answer trivia questions about the movie, sing, and win t-shirts.

And then, finally, an hour and a half after we got there, the movie started!

GC and I recently read Alice and Wonderland, and this movie isn’t that book. This one’s about Alice returning to Wonderland as a young woman. The story is okay, but nothing spectacular.

Maybe it was because we were sitting so close to the screen (fourth row), but I had mixed feelings about the 3D effects.Or maybe it was because the 3D was added post-production, as an afterthought. When it did work, though, it was quite impressive – for example, in the very last scene, there’s a butterfly, and I literally reached out to touch it.

Despite the lackluster storyline and questionable special effects, I loved this movie. The characters were wonderful, and I was charmed by them. There were so many characters who made me laugh out loud. The White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the bloodhound, the Mad Hatter, the wise old hookah-smoking blue caterpillar. My absolute favourites were the lovable and hilarious Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, or as the Red Queen called them, “My fat boys.” These two alone are worth the price of admission.

If you do go see Alice in Wonderland, I’d love to hear what you think.

No related posts.

An interview with Duncan

zoom! — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:58:05 +0000

News of Duncan’s fame has reached all the way back to his roots. The Ottawa Humane Society blogged about him yesterday.

You’d think his head would be swelling by now, but no.

“Duncan,” I said, “The Humane Society blogged about you! They heard you were the star of a romance novel!”

“Oh I’m just a minor character,” he said modestly, “But I was definitely the catalyst for that steamy sex scene in the bathroom.”

“How does it feel,” I asked, “To be immortalized in novels and art and the Humane Society’s blog?”

“Zoom,” he said, “I’m not going to lie to you. I’m flattered. But at the end of the day, I’m just an ordinary Norwegian Forest Cat who puts his pants on one leg at a time.”

“You’re too humble,” I said.

“You’re right,” he replied. “If it weren’t for my excessive humility, I’d be practically perfect.”

Then he yawned and fell asleep, signaling the end of the interview.

Some-candidates meeting

zoom! — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:26:59 +0000

Last night GC and I went to the so-called all-candidates meeting for the Ottawa West-Nepean provincial by-election. It’s GC’s riding, and he wanted to better acquaint himself with the issues and the candidates before deciding who to vote for.

Two of the mainstream candidates – the Liberal and the Conservative – didn’t even bother showing up to make a case for themselves, despite the fact that this was to be the election’s ONLY public all-candidates meeting. They’re begging for votes, yet they snub the voters.

I believe GC crossed them both off his list.

So who does that leave? The NDP candidate (Pam FitzGerald), the Green candidate, Mark MacKenzie, and the lunatic fringe candidate, John Turmel.

John Turmel. This guy has been running for office as long as I can remember. He’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for having run – unsuccessfully – in 72 elections. He rants and raves about poker, interest-free loans, bartering and marijuana. He’s opinionated, theatrical, big and belligerent, and he waves his arms and hollers his opinions. I kept thinking he was going to accidentally smack Mark Mackenzie, who had the misfortune to be seated next to him, with one of his flailing arms, and at one point he did elbow him in the head. Everybody else tolerates John Turmel, but the photographers seem to love him because he’s such a spectacle.

I wonder if anybody ever invites him to dinner parties. Imagine a dinner party with John Turmel, Lowell Green, Marvin Glass, Don Cherry and Big Bud? (If you’re not from Ottawa, you might not recognize some of these names – what they share in common is that they’re all overly opinionated men who entertain no possibility in their own minds that they might occasionally be wrong. They also all believe in the power of volume to prove a point.)

Anyway, I believe the some-candidates meeting helped GC narrow down his list. He’s still got a couple of days to make his final decision.

Duncan’s been immortalized AGAIN

zoom! — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:33:01 +0000

You guys are NOT going to believe this. Remember two years ago when Duncan was immortalized in a piece of street art by Elmaks? Well, it’s happened again. This time he’s in a novel. I’m not kidding. I was reading a book, when suddenly, completely out of the blue, right there on page 37, there was Duncan. Duncan!

At first I thought maybe it was just a coincidence, but then, some pages later, there was a description of the cat, and it matched. I sent a message to the author, Rachael Herron*, and she confirmed it: the literary Duncan was modeled after our Duncan!

You really have no idea how thrilling it is to find your cat in a novel.

Duncan, of course, is pretty cool about the whole thing. He’s a cool cat. He says Johnny Depp is going to play him in the movie.

If you want to read the book, it’s called How to Knit a Love Song, by Rachael Herron. It’s a romance, but it’s a GOOD romance. I wrote the following review on Amazon:

“I don’t usually read romances, but was drawn to this one because of the knitting angle. I really like it. It’s entertaining, funny and charming, and it has some sizzling sex in it too. Best of all, it doesn’t trivialize women the way the romance novels of my youth did – the main character isn’t sitting around waiting to be rescued or swept off her feet or dragged kicking and screaming to some gothic castle where she will succumb to Stockholm Syndrome. The icing on the cake? It’s got a fabulous cat character in it. Terrific first novel. I’m looking forward to Herron’s next book.”

*Rachael Herron is the famous Californian knit blogger Yarnagogo, and she was instrumental in the conception and creation of the Zoom blanket.