Friday, January 6, 2017

November

I really just want to skip the rewind and jump into NOW--but I'm just OCD enough that I have to at least give a nod to November (and, next post, December)

Not a lot went on in November.  The first week or so was to finish cleaning up after the Howl--cleaning and boxing and dragging stuff back to storage.  Not nearly as much fun as dragging it all out in anticipation of making the magic (i.e. entertaining 1000+ people and scaring the heck out of some of them).  It's odd that even people who help out and participate on the trail think that there's some "they" out there who takes care of such things.  One person asked (as she helped me lay out and label costumes) "do they ever wash these things between Howls?"  I looked at her and said "if 'they' is spelled A-N-N, then yes--'they' wash the costumes."  It takes some time to wash, dry, sort, and box them all.

There was quite a bit of spinning and knitting.  Every year Rob and I make a few things (hats and mitts) out of the wool from the museum's sheep to put in the gift shop.  She doesn't have the best fleece in the world, but after it's been washed and combed it's pretty good.  So I washed, combed, and spun until I was really tired of it.  Rob got tired even faster--he knit two hats, and I did two hats and four pairs of mitts.  I actually had a skein of yarn left over (enough for another hat) but I was sort of over it by then.

 
 
 
Then I started some rather posher spinning and knitting.  In Ed Wood's "Glen or Glenda" he defended the idea of being a transvestite because women got all the things that feel really nice--like angora sweaters and satin nightgowns.  Men don't.  Well, why not?   One of my favorite hats is one that I made of a blend of camel down and silk--that's usually used for something like a fancy lace shawl, but I made a watch cap out of it and it's very soft and very warm.   My brother lives in Boston (i.e. cold) and is rather challenged in the hair department, so I made him an equally posh hat of silk and yak (yes, yak. Turns out the big hairy cows have an undercoat that's close to cashmere).  May he wear it in good health.  (Not saying that he has any tendency to be a transvestite.  Love you, Mike, but you would make a really unattractive woman)
 

 
(really should get a new wig head.  This one gets used a lot for various projects, usually making masks)
 
 
 
Of course, November means Thanksgiving--which we skipped this year.  No, not really.  We had a really pleasant Thanksgiving with just the two of us.  Some time ago--32 or 33 -- Bob's mother and sister decided that Thanksgiving would be at our house, since at the time we were living halfway between the two.  After that, it was just sort of accepted that we would host it.  With a couple of exceptions (one time his folks wanted to go out for dinner, and niece Amanda hosted it the first year that she and Robert had their own house) we had always done the Thanksgiving gathering.  After his folks passed and mine moved to assisted living, I instigated the "day before Thanksgiving" party for our friends so that I could take dinner into my parents on The Day Itself (ever try to fix T-day dinner for four people with one small microwave?  Yes, it can be done.  I am that good)
 
But time has done it's thing, and I realized that I didn't *have* to cook the big dinner this year--so I took it off.  Next year we'll probably go back to the "day before" dinner because it's actually fun, but every 3 or 4 decades it's nice to take a break.
 

Bob has pointed out that there has been a serious lack of cat pictures on the blog recently so he supplied one.  We do have occasional cold days (not often--the saying around here is what we do over the winter depends on whether or not it falls on a weekend) and the cats really appreciate their heating pads, even if they do have to share.
 
 Fiona, Noko Marie, and Nazgul

No comments:

Post a Comment