Turkey Talk

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. There is so much to be thankful for this year. Friends, family, and beloved pets made it all worthwhile. I'm grateful to have a job that allows me to do good. I'm looking forward to holiday celebrations for the first time in more than a decade. I might even get a tree this year.

My sister and brother-in-law hosted a delicious dinner their home near Milwaukee, WI. We watched football and then A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. I got to snuggle with the nephews, learn more about Thomas the Train, and read books about farts.

Exploring my sister's garden was a treat. The lettuces and Swiss chard are still intact as are most of the herbs. The trees seem so much taller and more numerous in the north. The nearby lake is amazing. The light shocked me the most. By 4:45 in the afternoon, it is as dark as midnight. Most of all, I got to spend time talking to my sister and helping in the kitchen. She's such a good friend, and having her at such distance is a real sadness for me.

Just when I thought it might be okay to go back to Wal-Mart, I heard another sickening story about Wal-Mart pricing practices that are making it difficult for their suppliers to stay in business. So my opinion that Wal-Mart creates poverty was reinforced for the millionth time. If I do buy a tree, it won't be from there.

In unrelated news, my darling kitties were well-cared for by a friend and her daughter. I suspect they were even spoiled. Murphy the Beagle stayed at Mom and Dad's house. Mom laid out some strict rules at the beginning: no dogs on the furniture or bed. Dad reports that by the end of the week, Murphy was not only sleeping on the bed, but his head was on the pillow between Mom and Dad. He sat on the couch with them while they watched movies. Even though they were in good hands, I missed the fuzzy ones something fierce and was happy to see them again. They even let me hug them more than usual when I got back.

Holiday Weekends

This holiday weekend has been especially lovely. Not only did Andi and her husband host a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with two kinds of stuffing and cranberry sauce with crystallized ginger and other undisclosed special ingredients, but I got to hang out with friends on turkey day and knit. Being invited and included meant a great deal to me.

I had planned to take Rum Balls. I planned ahead for the ingredients and shopped in advance -- except for one crucial ingredient. Many years ago, I bought a giant bottle of rum and kept it in a kitchen cupboard next to my recipe box. (This doesn't qualify as a family tradition -- more of a family habit -- but if I were looking for rum at my parents' house, grandparents' house, or sister's house, the rum would be in a lower kitchen cupboard next to the recipe box.) In any case, when I moved out of my parents house, I bought a bottle of rum to use when I made things like rum balls. Since then, the bottle has always been there and always produced when called upon. The holiday cookies, the occasional rum and coke in the summer, the special ice cream sauce. . . until this Thanksgiving. The never-ending bottle of rum produced only a quarter cup of rum before the bottle was empty. I was shocked, but managed to recover and scrounge around for a different offering. Andi didn't blink at a substitution and happily accepted a bottle of wine instead. 

The rest of the weekend has been filled with crocheting and knitting and spinning. Since the green stuff roving is all gone, a replacement was in order. The crimson combed top from Christopher and Nancy Mercer's The Naked Pines was impossible to resist. I tried very hard. From the moment Mimi carried it out of the backroom at Twist, I wanted it. The reasoning about having several pounds of BFL at home that were waiting to be dyed or the several pounds of Border Leicester didn't make any difference. This needed to come home with me, and I'm glad it did. It is spinning up beautifully in subtle shades of a dark red. Mmmm. Just what I need to fuel the holiday spirit.

Mom even came to Twist to knit with me and Jill. She's working on a Christmas stocking for a grandchild. These stockings have a long tradition in our family, and she said this is her twenty-first stocking. It is the traditional bright green, red, and white intarsia stocking with a little bit of blue as an accent. She was having a hard time focusing on the stocking since she was sitting right next a bulky Rowan wool and some lovely worsted alpaca. She was also intrigued with a striped scarf that Jill was knitting with Noro. I think she might be interested in some non-seasonal knitting.