My mother and I headed downtown this past Saturday to meet up with the Ottawa Knitnites Group in Majors Hill Park for the secondary 2009 World Wide Knit in Public Day. Unfortunately we arrived late (it ran from 11-4pm but we didn't show up until about 2:00pm) and we didn't manage to meet up with the group! Either we're blind (totally possible), they'd already left, or they'd headed to the backup location of the Earl of Sussex Pub because it was threatening to rain (although it never did). (Edit: I found out later that we'd missed everyone by about ten minutes, as they'd all headed elsewhere for cake! Bad timing on my part.) We'd already carted our knitting and seating downtown, so Mom and I set up on the York Steps to knit and watch the world go by.


We had a great time, and although nobody asked why we were sitting there knitting we did have one gentleman of questionable sobriety request that we tell the people at the American embassy that they were killing too many people overseas. (The American embassy is on the north side of the steps and the Connaught Building is to the south.) I got about halfway through a simple toque knit out of the pettably soft Tangled Flocks yarn that I bought at the WW Boyce Farmers' Market in Fredericton before we decided to pack up and move on to Piccolo Grande where we indulged ourselves in some absolutely fabulous gelato. Our hands were occupied with bowls and spoons or we would have knit there too!


While we were downtown we had to stop by the Chapters store there, of course. My mother and I are both constitutionally incapable of being in the vicinity of a bookstore without stopping in, although we both often manage to leave without buying anything (that's usually a budget consideration and not a lack of books we'd like to have, though). I didn't manage to escape without a purchase, but it wasn't for me, I swear! Only because I already have a copy of Subversive Cross Stitch, I will admit -- this one is intended as a gift. I also found two books that I am interested in ordering in the near future: Socks à la Carte and The Creative Family. Socks à la Carte really appeals to my style of knitting, which is for the most part "figure out on your own how it's done and then figure out how to make endless variations". This book has its patterns arranged in three sections: cuffs, legs, and sock bodies (feet). The page layout is set up kind of like one of those children's books where the pages are divided into three parts (usually head, torso, and legs) and you can mix and match -- except that each of these parts has a pattern on the back of the photo. Genius! The Creative Family is another book that fits right into my personality, mostly because I already believe in the book's primary point that encouraging creativity in a family is extremely important. I can't imagine a headspace in which my parents hadn't provided a positive environment for my creative endeavors and did, in fact, pass down many of their skills while teaching me to take pride in the process as well as the finished product. The Creative Family is by Amanda Blake Soule, who you may know from her Soule Mama blog/website.


(Click the pics to check out their Chapters.ca listings.)
Speaking of craft books, my mother and I were thinking that it might be fun to put together a photo book of pictures of people knitting in places around the world. It wouldn't be about different styles/projects of knitting or anything like that, but more about how knitting can bring people together from so many varied locations and cultures. WWKIP day in a book, really. The idea has probably been had before, but has it been executed? And executed well? I wonder... It could be a lot of fun!

P.S. If you're interested in more WWKIP Day photos in online form, check out the World Wide KIP Day Flickr pool.

On Sunday, June 20th I had the opportunity to attend the Medieval Festival that was hosted at Upper Canada Village. Upper Canada Village is a historically recreated settlement similar to King's Landing and the Acadian Historic Village, among others.


(Image courtesy Google Maps.)

• A: Upper Canada Village

The Village is meant to depict a typical Canadian settlement of approximately the 1860's. However, the Medieval Festival this year was set up in one of the fields just outside the village and was more representative of the Middle Ages (approximately 500 AD to 1500 AD). This did cause some furor with the local history buffs (more info here), but it didn't bother me at all. We have no recorded history from the Middle Ages that originates here in Canada, so where is a medieval festival actually appropriate in this country -- or even on this continent?




You can find the all of my photos from the Medieval Festival in my Flickr account here.

Friends Bill and Brenda Fedun of the South Tower Armouring Guild had a fantastic arms & armour booth at the festival, but somehow I forgot to take pictures of their setup! Bill did post some pictures on his blog, though. Actually, I wasn't terribly happy with the quantity or quality of my photographs from the festival, which was mostly due to my daughter's new-found fear of cheering crowds necessitating that we stay far away from the most interesting (and hence loudest) action. Even so, we did get a decent view of the morning joust, just not one that was photo-worthy. However David MacKinnon, a comrade-in-arms from South Tower events, has some absolutely fabulous photos of the event in his Fotiki account if you're interested.


You can find the the rest of my photos from Upper Canada Village proper here.

We needed to take a break from the cheering joust crowds and since the ticket to the Medieval Festival included admission to the Village proper, we packed my daughter up in the baby backpack and went for a wander around town. I hadn't been to Upper Canada Village since I was a child on a school field trip; to be completely honest, what I remember the most was feeding the fish and the massive rumbling gears underneath the sawmill. But as an adult with a rekindled interest in traditional crafts such as woodworking, knitting, sewing and embroidery, I discovered that the Village provides an intriguing interactive historical viewpoint.


I did find it rather amusing how many of the "interpreters" (the guides and performers dressed in period clothing) referred to many of these crafts as if they were dead and gone in the modern age. The lady in the McDiarmid Home was dyeing small batches of hand-spun yarn, a process that hasn't changed all that much except in what chemicals are used. The woman minding the two girls in the Ross Farm house was going on at length about how it was wonderful that the girls had had the chance to learn old-style embroidery techniques -- and she was referring to the cross-stitched bookmarks that they were working on. Now, I know that these people were trying to act as per their historic period and not "metagaming", as it were, with knowledge of the future, but it's not as if such crafts have become obsolete, they're simply no longer necessary for day-to-day survival.


If you're from the Ottawa/Montreal area and you haven't been to Upper Canada Village yet, or if you're visiting from out of town (or especially out of country), I would highly recommend visiting this attraction. I know that I looked at it from a crafter's point of view, but it holds points of interest for everyone. Even my husband, the computer engineer, had a great time, although I'm pretty sure he was looking at how the machines worked and not what they were making.

On Saturday, June 6th I had the opportunity to check out one of the farmers' markets in Moncton, New Brunswick. Well, technically the market I attended was in Dieppe, which is adjacent to Moncton proper, but there is no visible border between two cities and they're both part of the Greater Moncton Area (GMA). So far as I know there are actually two farmers' markets in the GMA:


(Image courtesy Google Maps.)

• A: Dieppe Market (Marché de Dieppe), 232 Gauvin Road, Dieppe NB, marchedieppemarket.com
  
• B: Moncton Market (Marché Moncton), 120 Westmorland Street, Moncton NB, marchemonctonmarket.ca

( More about the Dieppe Market behind the cut... )

You can find more pictures from my trip to the Dieppe Market and their accompanying descriptions in my Flickr account here.


In other news, this past Saturday (June 13th) was World Wide Knit in Public (WWKIP) Day. Unfortunately I was unable to participate that day, but there is a secondary day this coming Saturday, June 20th. I hope to be able to make it to the event hosted by the Ottawa Knitnites Group at Major's Hill Park; you can find the details here if you're interested. I am scheduled for laser eye surgery tomorrow afternoon (a long-awaited yet much-worried-about procedure), and although I should be feeling well enough to attend but I may not yet be able to focus well enough to knit. The doctors assure me that I should be able to see to drive in a day or two, but will I be ready to concentrate on small handiwork by then? I can't be sure. And unfortunately I can't knit without looking, although that's a skill that I am working on.

I'm in the middle of a trip to New Brunswick to visit family I haven't seen in years, and I don't have too much time to write as I'm staying with my grandmother who is sadly not set up with internet (or anything more technological than basic cable, really). But I wanted to share my trip to the Fredericton Farmer's Market (aka the WW Boyce Farmers' Market) this past Saturday.





You can check out all the photos I took and their accompanying descriptions in my Flickr account here.

My front hallway was free of clutter for a very brief stretch this past week, so I wanted to take the opportunity to post about my sewing nook in my front hall. This nook used to hold a simple blanket box, but when my husband's Oma passed away in 2007 I inherited her old treadle sewing machine and thread organizer. The sewing machine table fits perfectly in the nook underneath/beside the stairs, so now it sits there pretty much permanently. Sadly enough, it was only last week that I got around to hanging the thread organizer that Opa originally made for Oma's craft room.



You can see the table and thread organizer in their original "habitat" in Oma's old craft room here, and read about her here.

I promised a post about the major May garage sales this year, and I always come through on my promises. I'll work from most recent backwards. This past Saturday, May 23rd was the Great Glebe Garage Sale 2009. As usual, it was a huge event, covering a huge area, which is about 90% residences/schools/churches and 10% businesses. Can you imagine having this kind of crowd at your front door, even for one day a year?




( Read the rest behind the cut... )

I can't wait for next year!

P.S. If you're interested in what took place last year, check here for the Glebe and here for Blackburn.

In my opinion, my mother makes the best macaroni and cheese ever. My mom's home-made macaroni and cheese was such a favorite of mine that I requested it for my birthday dinner for at least twenty years in a row. Mom is not a fan of instant mac-and-cheese of any brand, so when she made macaroni and cheese she made it from scratch. Her preference for fresh home-made food has ruined me for instant/pre-packaged dishes of any kind (much to my dismay in college when fresh ingredients were a costly luxury). Mom also made her spaghetti sauce from scratch from the cherry tomatoes that she grew in the small strip of garden along the side of the house, cooking up huge batches in the fall that she froze to last us the rest of the year. The funny thing is, Mom doesn't even like to cook! She does, however, like to eat good food.


Mom's Home-Made Macaroni and Cheese
Mom's recipe originally came from the back of a box of dried macaroni noodles, but over the years she modified it until it bears little resemblance to the original. This recipe makes a lovely creamy cheese sauce for the pasta and creates a crispy crunch on the top of the casserole. The crispy top is generally everyone's favorite part and is fought over in my house.

( Recipe... )


This recipe is very flexible. Here are some variations that I have tried:

• Use a different kind of pasta. Most smaller pastas, such as penne, rotini, rigatone, shells, or wagon wheels, work just as well as macaroni. Penne rigate is a favorite of mine and is actually the noodle used in the above photo. In any case you'll need about two cups of dried pasta.
  
• Use fresh pasta instead of dried. The yield for fresh pasta is different than dried, but in the end you'll need about five cups of cooked pasta.
  
• For a healthier dish, use whole-wheat pasta, skim milk, and low-fat cheese. You may need a bit more flour to thicken the sauce.
  
• If you're cooking without a stove, prepare the sauce in a microwave and bake the final casserole in a toaster oven. You can even "bake" the casserole in the microwave, but the top won't get crispy (as I learned the hard way when my oven broke when cooking dinner for my in-laws for the first time).
  
• Change up the cheese; use a blend of cheddar and mozzarella/gouda/etc., or switch up the cheese entirely. Sharp cheeses work best.
  
• To make baby food for an older baby, use whole-wheat noodles that are made without eggs and whole-fat milk. Skip the onions and the crispy top, and omit the baking stage altogether. Run the macaroni and cheese through a blender/food mill/food processor to make it smooth, adding whole milk gradually until the desired consistency is reached. This works best while the mixture is still warm, as it does congeal when it cools. My daughter is 9 months old and loves her macaroni and cheese almost as much as her mother does!

I promise to post soon about the start of garage sale season and all of my wonderful finds, but I couldn't wait to show off my latest biscornu design. A while back one of my Flickr friends posted something about being inspired by traditional Ukranian Easter egg designs (also known as pysanka (singular)/pysanky (plural) -- please correct me if I've gotten this wrong), which made me curious enough to do some research myself. Way back when I was in my early teens I made my first and only pysanka under the close supervision of the mother of one of my friends, and since then I have had the utmost respect for people who regularly use this technique. It is tiny, delicate work that requires a lot of practice, an extremely steady hand, and a great deal of time. Unfortunately I don't know anyone anymore who could help me acquire this kind of skill (although I don't know that I'd ever have such a steady hand or, with a now-nine-month-old in the house, the requisite amount of time). But after a bit of sketching I realized that the recurring geometric designs and motifs of traditional pysanky translate very well to embroidery.



I designed the pattern around the middle of March and started stitching around the end of that month. I completed the second side just today. I stitched the designs 2-over-2 (including backstitch) on 25-count eavenweave with DMC floss. Of course, because I am me and I see potential biscornu designs wherever I look, I had to finish my designs as a biscornu.



I intend to make these patterns available to the public when I reopen my Etsy supplies shop in July. For now the patterns are designed and stitched but not yet polished enough for use by anyone but myself. My patterns are marked up in pen with notes and corrections that need to be inputted into the computer before I let anyone else try out this design.

There are so many pysanky designs out there that I want to try and translate to cross-stitch -- just use the Google image search and look up "pysanky" and you'll find pictures of so much beautiful work! I am honestly in awe. I would have enough inspirational material to design a book of pysanky-based embroidery out of one simple search!

In related news, apparently cross-stitch is "achingly hip" again due to the Urban Cross-Stitch movement. Personally, I'd add Subversive Cross-Stitch and Mr. X Stitch as major influences to the modernization and resurgence in popularity of embroidery.

(Biscornu pics cross-posted here to the cross_stitch community.)

I'm enjoying participating in the snapshot_hunter community! This week's theme is "yellow" and I submitted the following photo here:


(Click the pic to view it larger.)

Kids' toys come in such vibrant colours. My daughter's bath toys are especially eye-catching. She also has the Fisher Price Tubtime Tugboat set, but the classic rubber ducky is still my favorite. What can I say, I grew up with this song:


Rubber ducky you're the one, you make bath time lots of fun, rubber ducky, I'm awfully fond of you...

I saw the snapshot_hunter community on the LJ spotlight a while back and I figured I'd try my hand at it. This week's theme is "trendy" and I submitted the following photo:


(Click the pic to view it larger.)

My friend michikobud in the Egypt exhibit at the 2005 Expo in Aichi, Japan.

You can find my entry in the comm here. Ancient Egyptian culture and art are always trendy, so much so that Egypt is trying to copyright their antiquities to generate revenue. (More info here, here, and, well, you can Google it just as well as I can).