An Unremarkable Spring - yes I know it's the fall

I’ve fallen very behind on my posts. I have a few in the wings for the next while, but instead of trying to catch-up, we’ll just erase the spring, shall we?  It wasn’t terribly notable.  I travelled quite a bit, a garden was put in, but because spring took its sweet time arriving, and was so late and so damp, it was a less than stellar year. The yard is normally terrorized by unruly cucumber plants bent on world domination, but this year, almost half my plants drowned and the rest remained demoralised even after a turn in the weather. My tomatoes eventually flowered and fruited, but we will head into the first frost with green tomatoes and no Greek salads.

I did a read a few books, but honestly, only a few were particularly memorable. I know we knocked off Emancipation Day for bookclub. I remember being underwhelmed and though interested in the history presented about race relations in post WWII Windsor/Detroit, I found the supporting characters mundane and the main characters unsympathetic.  I also read The Girl on the Train at the behest of every newsstand kiosk, blog, best sellers list etc.  Honestly, the book was hard to escape it was/is so much the rage, but, the thing is, I could have cared less about the horrible people contained within the book and the misery they caused each other. Sure, you can never truly know another person, but good grief, that is an unbelievable level of manipulation and spineless addled-mindedness. Sure, maybe the two attract one another, but I felt only relief when the book was over.  Maybe I am too naïve, but there is no way I could accept the premise of this novel, let alone that such direly stupid people could function as contributing members of our society.

On the more positive side, I also furthered my Neil Gaiman experience by reading the classic American Gods (4*) and The Ocean at the End of the Lane (4.5*). Both are gorgeous reads, full of mind popping visuals and truly immersive worlds. I also had the pleasure of reading Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance.  It was delightful as I feel Aziz himself is; quirky, cute, but holding substance. I didn’t find the results of the research particularly earthshattering, but the fact that he undertook the research was fairly remarkable.  What I know for sure is that I am grateful that I am not part of the Tinder revolution. I found LavaLife hard enough on the ego/self-confidence. A swipe? Icky.

With A God in Ruins, I was devastated that Teddy fathered such a reprehensible off-spring. My heart broke for him, and for me since Life After Life was as near a perfect story as could have hoped for. I know (no, really, I am full of a very deep understanding) that there are gross people in the world. I guess I just don’t care to read about the undeservingly entitled and unpleasant people in the world of fiction. I see too many of them in the grocery store and on the bus. Of course, we all have our stories, we all became the person we are today due to a series of defining moments of our lives. And we all have our own unique hardwiring which dictates how we will experience and allow those moments to shape us.  I guess my own wiring and defining moments harden me from accepting those moments as unredeemable.

March Bookshelf

Wow. I was completely convinced that I had already written this blog post until I got into a discussion this afternoon with a work colleague about a letter we were writing. My colleague wanted to use the phrase 'spectacular wilderness' in the letter, but I have a thing about the word wilderness, especially in the context of a National Park. I had planned on quoting from this blog post to explain my position on the word, but then realized that said post did not yet exist in finished form, just in pencil scratches in my notebook. So...

Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage, by Kathleen Winter

My interest in Boundless was piqued by a review I read in the Globe and Mail last September. At the time, we were in a Franklin Frenzy!! The announcement that after 170 odd years of the Franklin Expedition being 'lost', the Erebus had been 'found'. Don't get me wrong, from an archeological 'discovery' perspective - pretty huge (full disclosure, I studied archaeology in university, so I am in no way throwing shade at the field of study). But from the government's sovereignty perspective, claims to the North - strong and free - perspective, from an announce-able perspective: GRAND. Yes, I am cynical, because the thing about archaeological 'discoveries' is that they are a lot like anything else in the purview of white men and Western culture: someone not from that culture knew. Someone was a guide. Someone had a story. While it may be big news and all new to those guided and those that listened to the stories, it was not for the guide and the storyteller. I am often horrified by the continued under valuing of Aboriginal culture. It is a remarkably absurd hangover from our colonial past. How can we discover something that was already known?

Likewise, what is wilderness? In western culture, wilderness is bad, it is wild, untamed, it is the place of the deep dark forest where the big bad wolf waits to gobble-up wayward girls.

Merriam-Webster defines Wilderness as:

(1): a tract or region uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings (2): an area essentially undisturbed by human activity together with its naturally developed life community

But there are no true equivalents in many other languages. In fact, when many 'wildernesses' were being 'discovered' there were all manner of human beings inhabiting the tract or region. In Ucluelet, where I grew up, there are dense forests, stunning mountains, raging rivers and the thunderous ocean. Many non-aboriginal members of the community would refer to this area as 'wilderness', but the Nuu-chah-nulth word for the same area is "nisma" which would translate to our land.

Winter covers these topics with the tone of a lyrical storyteller. She is a witness to the experiences of those around her, and she eloquently captures her own conflicted feelings about the western values with which she was raised and the utter respect for the values and knowledge of her Inuit traveling companions, the interest and awe of following in Franklin's doomed footsteps and the utter absurdity of the reverence western culture holds for foolhardy exploits of a long dead white guy.

I highly recommend: for the lovers of Emily Carr and Margaret Laurence

Love at First Stitch: Demystifying Dressmaking, by Tilly Walnes

I love Tilly's blog, Tilly and the Buttons, and was excited when Mollie Makes reported that she would be releasing her first book. It doesn't disappoint.  Beautifully executed, the book is bright and colourful and as easy going as its author seems to be.  She has some wonderful tips for beginners, easy to follow patterns and straight-forward projects that can easily be modified with personal touches and whimsical fabrics.  If you're thinking of trying to build some of your own unique wardrobe staples, this would be a nice addition to your craft room. 

Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

When I was in high school, I read a book by Deepak Chopra called The Return of Merlin. The premise is that many of the mentally ill homeless in our cities are actually members of King Arthur’s court, displaced in time and utterly confused by the displacement. The Fisher King had a similar theme, though, ultimately (SPOILERS) mental illness was the root cause of the delusion, not time travel. In Nevermind, the homeless and the lost fall through the cracks of London above into the dangerous and slightly out of phase London below. London below is filled with monsters and mystery, fiefdoms and courts, hardship and magic. Because it is out of phase with the topside world, topsiders only experience these monsters and mysteries as shadows and easily ignorable people and movement.

The Doctor (so many things in our lives are relatable to Doctor Who, if you try) has repeatedly told us all that there are reasons we are afraid of shadows (hello vashta nerada), what's under our bed (um, yay) and that thing you can't quite see out of the corner of your eye. But though fear may be a superpower, living afraid is no place to be for the long term, and Gaiman makes the case for sometimes being lost, sometimes being forgotten and sometimes being a hero in your own story.

 

 

February Bookshelf

Shack-Wacky Puppy.

It's kind of hard to believe that it's March already, though quite honestly, that goodness.  February was balls out awful.  So far, the year of the Goat has been fairly harrowing, so I'm hoping I got my bad luck out of the way early.

I am also over the snow.  Like, really over it.  I thought I was over it last year, but I have several feet of compacted snow and ice over my gorgeous garden, and a couple of shack-wacky wiener dogs that are pushing the limits of my sanity.  As a friend recently pointed out, with both dogs and children, 1+1=5.


I did get a bit of reading in this month though, so that's the up side of being a virtual shut-in.

The Circle, by Dave Eggers:
I wanted to like The Circle.  People have been talking about and talking up The Circle.  But I did not.  We've heard it all before: corporation starts out making life easier, has great intentions, then the wrong people get involved and bingbangboom, corporation has infiltrated our whole life and we're doomed, the end.  Great.  In this case, perhaps we're reading a satire (it is Dave Eggars after all) and not an actual warning or seeming prophecy (1984).  But the characters are wooden and derivative, the ideas less fresh, and the wilful naivety of the 'protagonist' disheartening. But the Luddite alternative was equally ridiculous.  And if that's the point, and you have a genius like Margaret Atwood adding to the genre with Oryx and Crake, and authors like Gary Shteyngart trying something new in Super Sad True Love Story, what's the end game?  We've been here, done that, and nothing has been added but a layer of money to Eggers's bank account.

Yes Please, by Amy Poehler:
Everyone loves Amy (yes you do).  And I like Tina too, don't get me wrong, but Amy and I, we'd be dangerous, slaying bottles of wine and the egos of over inflated suits at fancy restaurants.  This book wasn't laugh out loud funny.  Tina's was funnier, so, for that matter, was Mindy's.  It is a pretty solid self reflection, and a love letter to her craft and the many people that supported her along the way.  Though she is amazingly gifted, what I liked about this was the acknowledgement that yes, hard work and talent are important, but so is support and so is living a relatively charmed life.  We'd all like to think that hard work and talent will get you anywhere...and for some lucky people, it is enough.  But the acknowledgement that privilege has something to do with it, well, that it a level of self awareness and maturity that we don't often see in celebrity.  Now that Parks and Rec has ended, I'm excited to see what's next.

When the Saints, by Sarah Mian:
This was our bookclub selection for this month.  A true pleasure to read.  If you've lived in a small town, you are aware of this story and you've seen this family. The characters are vivid, the language is poetic and the writing is embedded with both levity and grace. Tabby is a beautifully executed character that I loved immediately. I can't recommend this one enough.

Mollie Makes, Volume 50
For such a milestone magazine (let's be honest, 50 is pretty impressive in this day and age), I was a little underwhelmed by this month's edition.  Perhaps I am in a crafting rut.  Perhaps they are.  Still, it was pretty to look at, and the articles we interesting (especially about creative couples!), but I closed the pages uninspired to create any of the offerings.  A first.

Simply Crochet, Volume 28
The March edition of this magazine also had less pop for me then usual.  Regardless, I have bookmarked a couple of patterns to try - one is a lovely daffodil, which would make a cheerful brooch in this transitory time, and the other is this month's granny square - Granny Phylis.  I do aim to finish my quilt by the end of April, so, I should probably get on it!

Happy almost, almost spring.

I found this ridiculous creature in Yellowknife last April. 
We could have one here too, but it would be an iceman.  Stupid winter.

xo
s.

My Bookshelf - January

The Pokey Little Puppy - A classic

 

I am a reader, not a writer. As you sit and read my writing, that sentence will either be utterly perplexing or undeniable fact. The truth is, I like to write, but I'm not all that good at it. But I know good writing (and good writers), and I emulate and mirror, but the threads I weave don't usually create a fabric that could keep you warm at night. I am, however, a magnificent reader. I devour words, my brain sponges ideas, my eyes search out the next literary meal. I flip thoughts and concepts, devices and language over and over, likely imbuing each with far more meaning than what was intended. But that doesn't matter. These are worlds, character, experiences to explore, try on, absorb. They become a part of you, a moment of time, a fixed point to return to. Books are our histories, our treasures, our weapons, our time-machines. They have always been my fortress.

For the next while, I thought I'd give you a sense of what sits on my bookshelf each month, what I thought of them and what they each inspired. I'll also point you to an all time favourite that you may want to explore your self.

January was a lighter than average month for reading. Between a new puppy and absolutely no time in an aeroplane (a place that the fortress is incredibly important to my sanity), I found many other things to occupy my time. But I did manage to read the following:

The Paying Guest, by Sarah Waters

Some of my Halifax ladies and I have a very informal book club. Our guys like to get together and drink beer...we decided to put a little structure around getting together and drinking wine. We all have weirdly divergent schedules, so we probably only manage 5 or so gatherings each year where we can all be there. We've recently decided that the host of the evening also picks the book. At our last meet-up (I want to say early November), I chose our next book based on a rather stellar review in the Globe and Mail. We finally had a chance to sit down and discuss at the end of January. Two of our five didn't finish it (it's a long book), and the other 3 of us each gave it a 3/5 on Goodreads. However, as we started to discuss what we liked and didn't, I realised how much more I liked the book than the initial knee-jerk star rating system indicated.

The book is a great character study of women in post-WW1 England. It explores class and privilege, grief, sexuality, and the Victorian generation trying to cope with a world with no men. It is written in the quietly stuffy way the mind of such a woman dealing with these conflicts would experience them. Stiff upper lip, chin up, keep calm and all that, but acknowledging that the status quo led to the war, and left something scratching at the back of skull, something unbalanced. I loved her voice, her doubts, her neurosis. There was probably at least one too many twists than necessary, leaving me feeling like the author was trying just a titch too hard, but if you have any interest in WW1 era England, women's suffrage etc, I would strongly recommend.

Serenity Vol 2, by Joss Whedon

I've never really been one for graphic novels. I didn't read comics as a kid (full disclosure, I hated Archie and his gang. Why two women were fawning over that jackass didn't make any sense to me. I've always had a bit of an attitude about these things). I do love the Marvel universe on film. I am also a huge fan of sci-fi - Star Trek, Doctor Who, Firefly, Buffy, Supernatural, yes, even Star Gate. Last Christmas, one of my BFs got me the most perfect thing I had ever seen - a graphic novel mash-up of the 11th Doctor fighting Cybermen-Borg hybrids with Captain Picard. Come on! It was amazing.

Every Christmas, Jeff and I binge watch a TV show or two on Netflix. This year, Jeff suggested we re-watch Firefly/Serenity on Netflix. I fell back in love with Malcolm Reynolds. I couldn't just leave Wash and the Shepherd dead. I required more of that universe. Happily, the story has been expanded. I'm looking forward to re-entering that world at carefully rationed times in the future.

Chatelaine Magazine, February 2015 

I've been a subscriber to this magazine for the last 6 years or so. Sadly, since Jane Francisco left as editor-in-chief, the magazine just hasn't been the same for me. However, because of Chatelaine, I have cue cards full of recipes. I was inspired by a couple of recipes this month 1) Turkey Chili with Chedder Cornbread and 2) Coq au vin blanc. I can report that with a few substitutions, both turned out well. The Coq au vin blac was maybe only okay, but the one pot comfort of the Chili was very welcome during the blast of winter the Maritimes has been having of late.  I substituted chickpeas for the bean medley, and made cheaters gluten-free cornbread (Bob's premix gluten-free) in order to really simplify the whole meal.   

Mollie Makes, Issue 49

I have an e-subscription to this magazine full of craftiness. There are interviews with crafty people, links to crafty sites, crafty tends and crafty projects to inspire your crafty juices. Beautiful photos and easy to follow instructions sit well on the pastel hued pages. I love it. A couple of crafty projects that I could see myself trying 1) the Jackalope Tote - I keep meaning to try my hand at embroidery, and 2) the Patchwork Needlecase - for Christmas, Jeff signed me up for a quilting class at Patch Halifax.  I now have the itch to quilt everything.

Simply Crochet, Issue 27

I also have an e-subscription to this one. Since learning to crochet, it has been my go to for fun projects and a supportive online community. Sister publication to Mollie Makes, magazine follows a similar format, except it is all crochet all the time. I was inspired to try 1) the Chunky Cowl - I knocked-off in a couple of hours, and is very cosy indeed, and 2) the Winging It blue cardigan - I love the retro vibe and the sparrow detail, though I am slightly intimidated by the commitment!