The First Kite Cozy

It hardly seems fair. I was almost finished this second cozy when my eye swelled up again. Maybe I am allergic to wool! Now that would be really unfair ... I have just started having fun with wool and want to continue to knit and felt and construct things with felted wool.

Kites

Today I will be doing last minute things to get ready for Mud Mama's arrival ...moving dog pillows out and cribs in to my den ... setting up everything so that I can use the laptop instead of the desktop ... buying groceries ... making sure the sleds are up by the car for them to use if they arrive at 3 a.m. as expected ...

I will deliver the cards and tiny gifts to my neighbours ... Christmas tree ornaments I made of pottery ...

But I also want to make the next tea cozy ... the second in the poetry series ... it will be a colourful kite on a pale mauve background ... I will post a photo when it is ready ... it will be a Christmas gift for a tea drinking friend.

This is the Leonard Cohen poem that will be included:

A Kite is a Victim

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you've written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.


I also like these two:

March by May Richstone
A boy with a kite
In windy weather
Tying the earth
And sky together.

... and this one by Emily, a grade one pupil working with the word "kite" ...

Kites fly high in the beautiful sky.
Ice cold kites freeze in the wind.
Twinkling kites swerve in the wind.
Ends of kites are pointy.
Swiveling kites surfing in the sky.

Tea Cozies and Poetry

Not sure where this idea sprang from ... or why ... but I decided a way to create a series of tea cozies that were related but all different would be to seek out simple images like the balloons from Tamarak's painting (ones that can be cut from felt) and include with each tea cozy some lines of poetry about balloons or kites or butterfies or whatever.

Some interesting snippets I gathered as I researched balloons:

"Even lead balloons float if the magic is strong enough."

"I hate letting my mind wander.
I'm afraid it won't come back."

The balloon seller is seen metaphorically as a "dispenser of joy; a harbinger of spring."

"Our papas have formed a poetry club ... poems have balloons and sex and giraffes in them."

I began with a memory of a poem about an old woman selling balloons but I couldn't find it on- line. I did find 99 Luft ballons, and I discovered several other poems about balloons, one by Sylvia Plath and one by Carl Sandburg.


Then I went looking for poetry about kites. I was able to find Leonard Cohen's "A Kite is a Victim You are Sure of", and discovered some new ones as well.

Another series I would like to do is based on Tamarak's Arctic paintings. The colours are strong, the shapes simple, and the lines bold.

And then there could be a very open-ended series based on nature which would go well with these lines by William Blake. ("Auguries of Innocence")

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand
And Eternity in an Hour

Of course, how many people actually use tea cozies? I keep running into people, even tea afficionados, who dip their tea bags into mugs instead of making tea properly with fresh boiling water in preheated pots left to steep the requisite period of time. Coffee, which I can no longer tolerate much of, is given far more respect these days.

I guess maybe the idea of tea cozies married with poetry comes from my own practice of bringing a tray with tea pot, cup and milk jug up to my den where I reflect on things first thing in the morning.

Is this a case of it gets worse before it gets better?

I sure hope so because my poor bulbous eye is worse today than it was yesterday before I started the antibiotics. I would hate to think I sat in an emergency room for 6 hours for nothing! And of course I wasn't sitting alone. Tanya lost a day at work because of this ... but I think she was not quite as dismayed by that as she might have been.

They are predicting all kinds of dire weather over the next few days so even if I wanted to get out I couldn't. That takes care of displaying my ugliness to the world, but I am a little concerned in case I need to return to the doctor. Oh well, no point in worrying about it. Worrying won't change the outcome.

Today I am going to unravel the first enormous sock I made so that I can re-knit it properly. It took me three tries on the second sock to get it right. I had never knit socks before and the pattern directions were confusing. When they are finished I will felt them down into slippers for Mud Mama. They are knit in a beautiful hand dyed variegated pink and violet wool. I love knitting with wool that is sensuously beautiful and feels good in my hands.

Mud Mama is bringing with her a bunch of wool from the Valley Fibres store near her home. I have placed a limit on the dollar amount but am leaving the choices up to Mud Mama who has a wonderful sense of colour and to the store owner who understands wool. It will be a wonderful Christmas present to myself that will keep me happily occupied after everyone leaves and I am once again a hermit with dog.

Not really going to drink tea cozies ...

The problem with writing and editing as soon as you open your eyes is that you sometimes completely change the meaning of the sentences you try to correct for style. Yesterday I drank tea and worked on the first felted tea cozy. I did not drink a felt cozy. I also made banana bread and sorted out tree lights and began putting away sculptures that will be replaced by Christmasy stuff. And I shoveled heavy sludgy snow.

That didn't leave me a lot of time to do more than marvel at the political situation ... but imagine ... we are going to have proportional representation ... real democracy at last. I rather wish we had chosen it in a referendum rather than having it come in by the back door ... but under a Conservative government led by Stephen Harper, that wouldn't have happened.

But back to the mundane ... I am discovering that planning a cozy, like planning a slipper, is a major problem solving exercise for someone who is spatially challenged. I have to think, cut, try on, then think and think and think some more. I spent much of yesterday looking at the deep turquoise cozy and trying to figure out how to fit it on the tea pot. Then I tried to cut out a felt gold fish for it. It looked like a spiky blob. I tried on a felt heart. Then I decided the cozy needed a felted liner. If I used the heart instead of the gold fish, the liner and stitching could be a dark red. Once I had made that decision I discovered that I had lovely felted pompoms from the same felted sweater source. And the cozy which I had been trying unsuccessfully to put on a round fat pot actually fit properly on my tin tea pot which originated in India. It is the one I use every morning and it has to have a cozy of some kind because the tin conducts the heat to my hand so that it is impossible to pour without burning myself. It has been wearing an old hat for the last year.

So ... today my plans are to bake bread, wrap gifts, work on that cozy, finish shoveling, and check to make sure I can get the car out tomorrow. Leonard was here with his plow last night after I had gone to bed. Because of the hour I couldn't move the car for him to clear that area. Every time that happens I have to dig myself out. It is bad enough to have to walk over 1/4 kilometre to get to the car but when you have to carry a shovel with you to dig out as well, the idea of a trip loses its appeal.

By the end of the winter I will have perfected all systems and will have appropriate shovels and sand at all stations and will keep an extra sled up where I park.

At the Christmas reunion last week, a man I didn't really know while we worked together said his wife would never consent to live anywhere that didn't have a basement, a garage, and no work connected with it. He couldn't even imagine her living as I do. He had tried to introduce her to the idea of living in one of the condos on the river at the edge of the village and she was horrified by the primitiveness.

Tomorrow I want to go to town to make sure I have enough lights and food for the weekend's fun. If Pat and that gang come as well, we will have a contest. Everyone will go out to find the four trees and bring them back. Then people will be put in three teams and will either pick rooms out of a hat or choose rooms. Their challenge will be to create a Christmas tree that fits thematically into the the setting. Then we will all tackle the bathroom tree. I have found all kinds of lovely beads and possible ornamentation as well as things to set under their trees ... all from my usual Christmas tree ... moose ... mice ... a Mongolian ger and boots ... rocking horses ... even a teddy riding a tricycle.

Well, now, on with my day!

Happiness is Unbloggable

November 25, 2008
Some things are just not bloggable ...

I am pretty open about what I consider bloggable ... perhaps too open for some tastes. Menopausal symptoms and other details about aging, minutiae about felting projects and doggy clients, and my weather updates, for instance, may be too unpleasant or too boring to warrant posts. I do, however, lead a pretty tame life, and if I am to blog, it will be about what is in my own restricted world, a world that shrinks each year.

It occurred to me yesterday that my interests have changed considerably since I moved to the lake ... blogging ... dogs ... cooking and baking ... felting and knitting ... and raising healthy house plants. I have never raised healthy house plants before and this is my first blogging experience, but animals have always made me happy, and the other housewifely pursuits are all reminiscent of the things that gave me pleasure during the most contented time in my life ... when I was living in an old school house in the country and raising children. But I am discovering that happiness is not very bloggable.

I won't be blogging about my new love interest because I have no idea where that is going, and that is about the only interesting thing happening in my life. I feel a bit like the woman in "You've Got Mail" every time I turn on the computer, and it is fun to feel as if my sap has begun to flow again. But I won't blog about that ... at least not until he becomes a fixture in my life ... and then he will probably be one of the boring things I blog about.

Old Tango went home yesterday and I feel as I always do when a dog I like leaves ... partly relieved of the extra work ... partly sad because he became part of the family for a short time. I have received a few inquiries about sitting during December and January, and my pocketbook will certainly be happy about that. Kenya will be too. They are all young dogs who will play with her: a 7 month old Bernese, another 3 year old Bernese, and Remi, the Golden Doodle pup and her best buddy. We get to meet Maggie the three year old Bernese on Sunday afternoon.

I have finished four pairs of felted slippers: two for adults and two for children. I like three of the prototypes and have learned quite a bit as I have progressed. One thing I have learned is not to use the bootie pattern again. It makes a wearable slipper but is knit on too small needles and I don't like the way it felted up. Sort of bloblike in appearance. I will post a photo as soon as my dial-up connection allows me to. I think the dog geegaw saves it from being tossed aside as just too ugly. I am going to cut inner soles for it so that it has more body, but I will wait till I have Max's feet here to do that.

Today I will shovel the new snow, go for a real walk with Kenya and finish up the leg warmers. And maybe I will discipline myself sufficiently to finish Max's striped sweater. I should because tomorrow I am going to buy more wool and then it will be even harder to finish up the tedious work of sewing in threads. It is always much more exciting to start a new project. I can't make any more slippers till people send me their footprints ... but I do want to get started on tea cozies.

Carlos' Unfinished Floppy Slipper

Carlos' First Slipper

This one is a challenge because one of the woollens I used did not felt well so it is floppy rather than stiff. No smart remarks about this or Carlos will be ticked off. Anyway I will post a photo in a few minutes.

Maybe someone out there has a suggestion that does not entail starting over!

Forgotten Woes and Warm Legs

This morning Tango again woke up feeling frisky. It is as if he forgets his age after a good night's sleep. He bounced, was very interested in Kenya's nether regions, and insisted on the patriarch's right to be first out the door. Then reality set in when he discovered once again that he needs to lean on a rock if he is to pee standing up instead of squatting. But after several dribbles he was happily on his way back inside to enjoy the warmth of the in-floor heating and some kibbly bits which we have conned him into thinking are cookies.

Kenya wakes up much as I do ... slowly. There is a cadenced rhythm to her mornings. First she climbs into bed with me and curls up against me so that I can stroke her head and neck. After that we both relax and just enjoy the comfort of knowing we have bed buddies. When I go downstairs she heads out to pee and I set the kettle on to boil. She arrives back and eats her Dentistick in her crate. Then she is quite content to follow me up to the den where she hangs out with me till I have had my tea, read my emails and written some morning words.

I am sleeping well again. I think it is CBC's recommendation of daily lentils and rice to settle adrenal glands plus the extra water and the homeopathic whose first ingredient is Bushmaster snake venom that I started taking for hot flashes and night sweats.

I am making leg warmers so that I can wear skirts all winter long even with sub-zero temperatures and dogs. This pair is a jewel-like purple with a multicolour section at the top (or bottom). I had made fingerless mitts for myself with beautiful wool from Nova Scotia and had lots left. There are strains of mauve and gold and all colours in between in it and it feels good in my fingers as I knit on bamboo needles.

Today I may start Carlos' slippers or maybe start on a tea cozy. Or perhaps I will discipline myself and sew in the loose ends of Max's striped sweater and put it together.

Felting with Dogs

There are felted sweaters on every counter top, the table is covered with pattern pieces, buttons, felting needles, inner soles, thread and wool, and I cannot see the floor for the scatter mats and sleeping dogs. I alternate food preparation for all of us with short burst of walks and craft projects now that Old Tango is here.

Kenya has adjusted to his presence in an interesting way. She doesn't even think of asking if he wants to play. She realizes he is a different species of being. But she has also become very quiet in the way she deals with her role as mom dog. Tango invariably comes into the kitchen when I am cooking and there just is not room for him to be there safely so I tell him , "Out of the kitchen," and herd him out. A few minutes later he is back but Kenya is hovering behind him. I tell her to leave and she does and I praise her. Then I tell him to leave and he obeys and gets praise too. The third time Kenya sees him heading back in she gets there first and walks him gently back out. No yippy bitching, no noise at all in fact ... just doing her job in a way that works well.

She is an amazingly adaptable girl ... and very bright.

I have finished the first of Tammy's slippers. I used a loden green sweater and cut three pieces plus the inner sole to create a slip-on that is cooler than the bootie types are. Tammy hates shoes and this is the closest thing to barefoot I could come up with. One of the top pieces laps over the other and will be secured with a very pretty piece of jewellery that goes well with the green. The inner sole is felted to the slipper sole. Right now it is a different colour from the slipper but I could felt something onto it that works better with the loden than dark red does. The problem is that the felted covering would get rubbed off by the friction of her feet. Hmmn! Need to do some more thinking about this.

This kind of work is all consuming for me. Everything takes much longer than it would take someone with inherently different skills. I have no sense of spatial relationships so going from a sole to a slipper requires an intelligence I don't have. I have to try things out and actually have the finished pieces in my hands to see what I have done wrong. I am using newspaper to make patterns first so that I don't destroy too much of the felted material, but it doesn't always work.

It also takes me much longer to thread a needle these days! And I managed to break five felting needles at once by not holding the tool perpendicular to the material. Mud Mama did warn me when she was giving me my first lesson in felting.

But I am having fun. I couldn't make a whole bunch of slippers that were alike but making each one unique is proving to be fun.

Don't forget to send me your soles if you want a pair in the basket to greet you when you visit.

A little of this ...

The slippers in the last photo were knit and then felted ... and then I added a pair of toucans I had hanging around. I still have to add a hidden button for anyone who wants really cozy.

Today I will be working on the second idea. I start with felted wool and cut out the pattern pieces and then sew the slipper together with a blanket stitch. I have a feeling they will be bulkier and also sturdier, but I am afraid they might not be as neat and tidy because the process of felting covers a lot of mistakes, and these new ones have been felted before the mistakes are made.



Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained and besides I will have lots of adoring eyes on me as I work. Old Tango is doing fine and Kenya realizes he is too old to harry as she does younger dogs. I think she is confused by the juxtaposition of infirmity and calm assurance that he is still THE GUY.

After breakfast we will go out for a walk. ( I expect Tango and I will walk while Kenya plays and chases sticks.)

Finally ...

Kenya has been sending me strong messages since yesterday.

"It is no fun playing by myself," she said this morning as she flipped a kong under the table, and stomped to the back door where she flopped down heavily with a hard done by sigh.

"I just want to finish knitting this slipper foot," I told her finally, "and then we will go out."

Well then I had to do some seams. All the while Kenya glowered at me from her doorway.

Finally I went upstairs to wash and dress. Kenya followed me into the bathroom and from there into the bedroom. Each new location was announced noisily with a thump as eighty pounds hit the floor.

Down to the front hall. Bundling into a jacket and my hiking boots. Putting a couple of good cookies in my pocket. Then the camera. And finally her collar and leash. Only then did the suspicious glowering look leave completely. Suddenly she turned back into my cheerful fellow adventurer.

But she made sure as we headed up the hill to pull me away from the direction of the steps because that way led to the car. And she wanted to walk.

As soon as she was sure that we were indeed going for a real walk her ears perked up and her step became light and bouncy.

We stopped to say hi to Tom enroute and then we headed up to the gated logging road by his place. It has woods on both sides and lots of hills. There is a fast moving stream and most importantly ... lots of sticks. It has been off bounds for the past couple of weeks because of hunting season, but today the gate was locked to strangers and safe from hunters, so it was our destination.




As soon as I unhooked her leash she was off, nose to the ground, following a trail. Then her head rose as she sniffed the air expectantly. A grouse hurried out of its hiding place and she made a half hearted attempt to chase it, but it was not a serious thing. She learned long ago that birds have wings and she doesn't.

She found some large sticks and allowed me to break them into manageable pieces and then we played her favourite game.

"Drop one," I commanded.

No response except for a bounce away from me.

"Drop one please."

She nudged me so that I held one stick lightly. Then she delicately dropped the other one. I picked it up and tossed it into the woods. She watched carefully where it landed, dropped her other stick by the edge of the road and made her way over logs and brush to get the one I had thrown. On her way back she picked up the second stick and arrived at my side panting around the two sticks in her mouth.

"Drop one."

This time she dropped one immediately and bounded off in pursuit.



After a while she became more alert and the sticks became secondary. I sensed that something unusual was in the vicinity. I call this road the bear road, so we turned around just before we got to the stream she likes. When the gate came into view I attached the leash and we headed back sedately to our own road. Then I removed collar and leash and we played fetch all the way home.

I went in but she chose to stay outside and take a swim in the frigid waters of the lake. By the time she asked to come indoors her coat was stiff with ice.

Now she is curled up on her couch drying off and warming up. It has been a good morning for both of us.

In a few minutes I will go down and make banana bread and pear clafouti from the fruit that need to be eaten up, and then I will knit the second cuff for the prototype of the first kind of felted slippers I am making. Once that pair is put together and ready to be felted, I will start on the second type which is made from felt I have made from old knit goods. All the insoles will be made from a mohair blanket I felted. I have to figure out how to give the slippers a bit of grab on the bottoms ... maybe leather?

Any ideas? Or do I need them for adults' slippers? My floors are not slippery slidy unless you are an eighty some year old dog whose hind end doesn't work well. He comes this afternoon by the way.

A Jumble of News

Well ... lots of news:

I keep forgetting to blog about the beautiful healthy coyote I saw dead in the ditch on Mountain Road on Friday. S/he had been hit by a car and I felt as saddened as I would have if it had been someone's pet. It was the first time I have seen a coyote close up. Its incisors were half the size of Kenya's and s/he likely weighed about 15 pounds less than Kenya ... not skinny at all, just a well proportioned smaller animal. And certainly not at all feral looking ... or wily.

I have finished Merle's Door and written a letter to the author thanking him for restoring my faith in my own dog rearing philosophy.


I just started reading another book on the Book Club list: Heather O'Neill's Lullabies for Little Criminals. I was captivated from the first page.

I've been baking and cooking up a storm and enjoying the Suzie Homemaker feeling that comes over me when I tip loaves of homemade bread onto the counter and look out over my healthy house plants at the lake beyond.



I spent a few hours yesterday painting stars with glaze to help Carrie prepare for her show next weekend. We munched on the chocolate zucchini bread I had brought with me. Carrie asked me if I would consider sitting a potbellied pig. She is thinking about getting one this spring but needs to know that she has a reliable care back-up plan.

I've also received a couple of queries about dog sitting. Yay! Some money-making potential finally!

I have been working on a sweater for Arrow for Christmas, and I also want to make a basket of felted slippers to keep at the front door, so if you visit often, please get me an outline of your feet or your favourite slippers.

As part of this project I contacted a Mongolian friend to ask for Mongolian patterns for slippers and boots. Seema didn't have information on felting at her finger tips but said she would hunt for it. Then she posed a question: "Would I consider coming to Mongolia for six weeks this spring to conduct lessons for ESL teachers?" Well ... that was certainly a surprise ... but I felt that old excited whoosh of anticipation surge up and asked a few questions myself to determine whether I could do it.

I just received a copy of my friend Philippe's novel in the mail yesterday, and Claire's chemo is producing good results ... her tumour is shrinking.

So ... life is good and I feel younger now that there is promise in the air.