Life's a Stitch

I’ve covered the knitting part of my vacation, the sentimental journey, now for the grub. One of my favourite parts of travelling. I’ve already mentioned Hart’s Turkey Farm, and Sandy did that description more justice than I could. So, in no particular order, I present to you some other highlights, starting Larry the lobster. Warning: may be offensive to vegetarians and young ones.

1. This wasn’t a case of reclaiming childhood memories.  My sister was called the gourmet baby when she would share occasional lobster tails with my parents on fish eating Fridays, while I insisted on fish sticks. I didn’t learn to like lobster until I was 20. It’s amazing the different things you’ll try for a boyfriend.

Where do you go in the US to buy a 7.75 lb lobster? WalMart, of course. Initially dubbed Larry, elevated to Lorenzo due to his size, he graced the dinner table sans the resident children, who were disgusted we could actually cook something we had named. Chuck grew up on a farm and is less sentimental about these things and the rest of us adults succumbed to practicality.

   

There is a myth that exists that says the larger the lobster, the tougher. Wrong. All lobster has the same tenderness potential, what kills it is overcooking. This one was steamed for 70 minutes, carved up and served on a platter like a turkey. There is more meat in an eight pound lobster than in eight one pound critters, and, at WalMart at least, it’s a less expensive way to go.

2. The mother of all comfort food can be had at Ben’s Kosher delis. Raised Catholic, I consider myself honourarily Jewish. My twice-widowed, Eucharistic Minister mother’s, short but sweet second marriage was to a man who kept a Kosher kitchen. At Ben’s you walk in to the best smells from every bubbie’s kitchen all at once. We had all we could manage: cabbage rolls, Ben’s "we pickle our own" corned beef, potato pancakes with applesauce, Challah and rye bread. We passed on the cheese cakes and strudel.

3. Near Lake George we feasted on sweet ruby red tomatoes and pesto made from the giant basil leaves from my friend’s garden. I am especially appreciative,  as here in BC, we’ve hardly had a summer as evidenced by the pathetic lack of tomatoes in my garden. Tomatoes need heat and sunshine to redden. My house, located up the mountain, is cooler yet, and this year we’ve enjoyed the five cherry tomatoes that ripened against the odds. There are hundreds of green ones still shivering on the vine.

4. A memorable barbecue and wine on the deck of a comfortable low key yacht club overlooking an approaching squall on Manhasset Bay. A guest of a friend I hadn’t seen in 32 years, we reminisced about our coming of age summer of ’68 in Puerto Rico. That summer’s plot and theme rivaled movies such as Now and Then.

5. I can’t mention all the memorable meals. A blog entry should only be so long. I tasted almost all my childhood memories – Clams Casino (whole, not chopped), Nathan’s Famous hotdogs, Penn Station pizza, and East Coast Chinese food. I tried something new – swordfish tacos. It didn’t matter what it was, it tasted all the better in the company of those with whom I share good memories – old and new. There must be an old saying to that effect, but it escapes me.

6. On the topic of dining, how about this sign? We discovered it while roaming the lobby of a hotel. That’s sure to spark some discussion. If you are going to the Sagamore on Lake George, best to leave the progeny with Nanny I’d say:

Let’s say, due to unfortunate circumstances, you are uprooted from your family home late in your teens. You go to college and return to your town on breaks to stay with another family, who fortunately takes good care of you. At 20 you leave for good. You establish a career, a family of your own, but you are almost 4000 miles away from home. More than 30 years passes. With your own family raised you decide to go back and visit the place of your childhood, dragging along your husband of 25 years. That’s me and it’s exactly what I just did.

My life circumstances and decisions put me in a place where I never bumped into anyone with whom I went to high school, had no aunties or grandmas for child care emergencies, no cousins around for the kids to hang out with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not whining. We’re quite happy, but there are things we’ve missed out on.

What is is about those growing up years that seem a far larger a proportion of your life than the actual amount of years.  Is it that time feels like it passes more quickly now? 10 years, for example is now 20% of my life and back then it was 50%? Is it because those first 20 hold so much importance in your development?   

I know I’m not alone and I’d love to hear others’ stories of going home. Here’s what I found out:

1. The distances between places is much shorter than I remembered.

2. The buildings seem smaller.

3. The trees are way taller. When approaching my home town by car, there was what I remembered as a really steep hill from which you could see a park, a pond, the road ahead, a shopping center and some stores. Now, after living in the mountains of British Columbia, the hill was pathetically small, and there was no view at all due to the trees. It was like driving in an urban forest.

4. The traffic congestion is unbearable. This is 25 miles outside of New York City. There is constant traffic. You could conceivably buy a car and never get over 30mph.

5. If I had to listen to it on a daily basis, the recorded voice on the Long Island Railroad would drive me round the bend.

6. Oh the food, the food. There is no food like the food you grew up with. There will be an entire post on food : )

7. Good friends don’t change. Only in looks, a bit, but we’re supposed to. It would be more scary if our faces and bodies didn’t show years of experience. I spent time with six people I hadn’t seen in 33 years. What a thrill.

8. Towns, like people, age. Sometimes with less character. A place I remembered as quaint is now crumbly and stinky.

9. Two weeks is not enough time to catch up on half a lifetime. There were places we couldn’t get to, like my family’s cemetery plot, the house where my grandmother lived, the beach where I hung out with my friends.

10. Time to click the ruby slippers. Although the East Coast was my first home, the West Coast is my home now. So what if the sun sets on the wrong side of the street. There’s no place like home.

Finally, some recent photos: Playing tourist near my home town, my high school and the last shot is part of our hotel complex on Long Island. Believe it or not, it was less expensive than the nearest Comfort Inn.

 

Or lack thereof. I made a fair bit of progress on Print O the Wave until…I pulled it out of my knitting bag and out came the needle without the stitches. Ughhh. Lace recovery put me back from whence I came. 900 miles of vacation driving and not a stitch to show for it.

The trip knitting content took a positive turn with the opportunity to meet the wonderful Sandy, live and in person. One of the positive side effects of blogging is getting to meet people like her. As reported on her blog, in a more timely fashion, we went to Patternworks and had lunch at New Hampshire’s Hart’s Turkey Farm, "where every day is Thanksgiving." I am thankful for getting to spend time with Sandy and hope for more in the future.

My knitting radar was in prime form when this sign suddenly appeared before me while walking down the street in Saratoga, NY. Imagine that! I can smell a yarn shop from miles away, although nobody with me would believe that it was a serendipitous event. Notice their cute window presentation.

   

And in Connecticut we saw some sheep. Although C and I have vowed not to bring more into our overstuffed house, I think these guys might have fit in just fine:

That was one whirlwind trip. Nothing relaxing about it, active and exciting all the way. I’ll start with the story of getting there. Someone, who lives in this house, who isn’t me, and shall remain nameless, booked our flights to the East Coast. Vancouver to Toronto was OK as it can be, on Air Canada. Note: don’t order the $6 Chicken Caesar Salad. I’m still not convinced it was chicken languishing on the wilted bed of romaine. This is a photo of my luggage, with a tag awarded during my last trip on BC Ferries. I am so hoping that the label referred to the suitcase and not the owner:

The second leg of the trip was on Georgian Air. Ever heard of ’em? Didn’t think so. I’m not sure the Georgian moniker came from the name  of the US state or from Soviet Georgia. The two hour trip, powered by propeller, sounded like a huge lumbering flying donkey. Hee-haw, hee-haw brayed the engines over and over again. It was an 18 passenger plane where every seat is a window seat and every seat is an aisle seat except for ours, which were in the first "row" and required accepting responsibility for opening the only door on the plane in case of emergency. The pilot wore dreads. She was barely 30, younger in years than the aircraft itself.

Let me back up. I asked my sister what I could bring from Canada that they can’t get in the US. She requested catsup potato chips. I hand carried six bags of this curiously flavoured snack on the first four and a half hour flight, three and a half hours of delayed layover, finally gently placing them into the closet in front of my first row seat on the braying Beechcraft.

I mentioned that this plane made funny noises. Besides the hee-hawing, there was an occasional BANG. This provided an excellent opportunity to practice the perfect Act of Contrition that even a bad Catholic like me resorts to in times of panic. This came in handy during the landing which felt like Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz. Think in terms of the song from the movie which utilizes words such as pitch, twitch, and unhitch. Are you getting the picture?

Back on the ground, the co-pilot informs me that he thinks I’ve lost my potato chips. Opening the closet to a flurry of red chip crumbs, we found every bag except for one, had burst in the lightly pressurized cabin. Hence the midflight sounds of gunshots.

And that was only the beginning of the trip to remember. Stay tuned to the highlights that include reunions with friends and family (sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between the two) and meeting up with famous fellow blogster Sandy. Thanks to all for the good wishes in my pre-vacation post. I’m going to play catch up with all of you starting tomorrow.

 

Otherwise known in BC as the "dog’s breakfast" – just a mess of different things:

• Look at how many of you supported Gracee in my last post with the cuteness defense! Did I mention that she once ate Chuck’s $1200 hearing aid? The upside of that one was that it was still within two weeks of his year long replacement for any reason warranty.He was informed that he was #10 that year with a dog chewed hearing aid.
• That boy, who lives in our house, but has given his parents a break from his antics by accepting a job at a sleep-away camp as the "skateboard director" (can you imagine the ego that title reinforces?), added three stitches to his tally of over 40 this year. These were caused by introducing his chin to the cement while riding a BMX bike in the camp’s skateboard park.
• Vacation time – this blog is officially on vacation as next week I’m taking my husband of nearly 25 years on the trip he’s always promised me, to see where I grew up and meet the people who are important to me from my younger years on their turf. It’s a crazy nostalgia trip. I’m hoping it will help him to understand how I came to be me, in a culture much different from his Minnesota farm boy roots. Not better, just different. Long Island New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, here we come!
• Guess who I get to meet while we’re there? Sandy!
• You know how much I hate the use of gratuitous exclamation points. I’ve been known to suggest, ever so kindly to people at work, to read over their piece using the word "wow" at every exclamation point. Well I really meant it – East Coast – Wow! Sandy – Wow!
• I am bridge phobic. There, I’ve admitted it in public. The tragedy in Minneapolis, in Chuck’s home state, has reinforced this. Next week will bring the George Washington Bridge, a big one, as I remember, and the Throg’s Neck, an exceedingly skinny one with lots of traffic. Just preparing myself.
• Here’s the knitting I’m toting along – good ole Print O’the Wave, almost half way done:

See you in three weeks. That’s one of the nice things about getting older, adult kids and their friends to keep the house, boy and dog in order while you’re away!

I was going to write good thoughts on darling doggies. The first we met at Butchart Gardens, lovingly pulled in a wagon by his owner. "The most spoiled dog on earth," he told us. The second is Bradford, the pampered pup of artist Ted Harrison, BC artist. Mr. Harrison was an art teacher from England, but in 1967 answered an ad to teach "in the land of the mighty moose, where weaklings need not apply" – the Yukon. He is now retired in Victoria where I had the pleasure of meeting him. The third dog is on my shit list. That would be Gracee, innocently enjoying a picnic at the park. That’s when I liked her a lot. Since then, she has eaten the underwire out of yet another bra and, tonight, discovered a premium leather chew toy. They were on sale but I had owned them for less than six hours. Earlier today I was thinking how, as a puppy, she had only chewed our kitchen cabinets and never a shoe. Until now. Bad dog.

Knitting progress, the modified-to-make-it-larger Landscape Scarf is working:

You know what I mean, some stories just don’t translate to blogdom. I’ll give it a try, though. This one gets filed under out of the mouths minds of babes. Baby boys, that is, age 17. You’ve got the mindset, here’s the story.

The other night Chuck and I were discussing my last post. The conversation led to an innocent enough comment on breast size and the French saying about "more than a champagne glass is too much." Our little pitcher, at 17 has big ears, which apparently perked up at the sound of a breastly conversation. From the other room we hear "I don’t get it." I could see him through the doorway with a look of confusion. He continues, "aren’t champagne glass those tall skinny ones?" I crack up knowing his 17-year-old brain is picturing the contortions necessary to do that sort of measurement. We explain to him that in the old days of our teenagehood, most champagne glasses weren’t of the flute variety. "Oh I know," says he who knows much, "they’re the ones that look like a martini glass without the point. Now I get it!" Maybe he knows too much.

I have no knitting pictures, just look at the last one posted, because after four days of knitting I have made no progress. This is a two steps forward one step backward project. Maybe this week it was four steps backwards. Instead, I’ll rely on cousin Lena’s eye-candy photos taken at Butchart Gardens in Victoria a couple of weeks back. The gardens were planted by the wife of a quarry owner, many years ago, to disguise the ugliness of the mined land. It has its own micro-climate that produces spectacular blooms. In fact, one of the gardeners told us that he has taken plants to his own home, 20 minutes away, only to have them fail due to the differences in climate.

We’ve had a heat wave in BC, and you know what that brings? Lots of office chatter about appropriate workwear. I don’t entirely get it since we work in an air conditioned environment. Nonetheless, people have the need to dress down when the sun shines. I’ve been circulating a couple of articles around the office, prompting much discussion.

Working in social services on the West Coast is a different environment than Toronto’s Bay Street, however casual professionalism is appreciated. What it boils down to for me, are two things. Be mindful of our clientele and colleagues – cover your cleavage, front and back, top and bottom. And here’s where I really draw the line. Don’t let me see your thong. Just call me old fashioned.

Hot weather sunsets:

Rainy weather knitting, the heat was short lived, but the colours are consistent:

My dentist’s assistant asked me if I’d be able to tolerate a minute with trays of impression material in my mouth. I told her I would view it as I did labor, it’s only 60 seconds of my life. Actually labor was 10 to 21 hours of my life depending upon which instance, but that’s not much compared to a lifetime. The woman looked at me like I had two heads, incredulous that I’d compare a visit to the dentist with labor. I reminded her that I’m the sick puppy who once said I go to the dentist for peace and quiet. Looking back, my life at that time must have been mayhem.

This is my second Landscape Scarf, made with the Mountain Colors mill ends of my last post. I thought I’d be smart and make it a little larger than the pattern’s instructions. I thought that I had memorized the rhythm of the pattern and no longer needed to refer to it. And I thought I could get by without counting stitches each row. I thought wrong. Cousin Lena observed that I’ve spent as much time on this scarf as I spent on her entire shawl. It’s only a couple of hours of my life. 

This summer our home will have been visited by Lena, Elina, Elena, Ellen and Lynn. Say that three times fast. Add me, Li, to that front of the mix and you have a mouthful. In high school Mari’s (pronounced Mahri’s) foursome was Mari, Mary, Sara and Amara. And at work, we’ve had two Cheryls, two Cindys, two Sues. Who would have thought names could be so poetic?

While visiting, Ellen, Lena and I made a discovery at Hellen’s in Mt. Vernon WA. Can you say Mountain Colors mill ends? That would be mill ends of their Bearfoot yarn at about half the usual price. Who cares if it’s divided between three skeins in order to make a pair of socks. Or you could buy just enough for a Landscape Scarf. What a find for those making mitred square projects.

I’ve been to Hellen’s many times and have overlooked their basket of goodies until this trip. I don’t get there that often and she doesn’t have a website. I haven’t found an online source for such small quantities and shipping to Canada would defeat the savings, so I’ll savour my occasional visits.