Knitting 40 shades of green

Trip to the Dentist

I hate going to the dentist. Now, I know that no one really wakes up and says "yea, I have a dentist appointment today" but my dislike of going to the dentist is deeper than that. As a young child I had a dental hygienist who was from Germany. I remember her [now I am pretty sure that my memory is faulty as we magnify our fears] as a very large and imposing woman. She would yell at you with her German accent and I am sure on more than one occasion she brought me to tears. You would often hear the formidable "you're not flossing" as you passed the exam room where she was working on some unsuspecting victim patient.   As an adult, I had a conversation with my father about her, thinking that my childhood fears might be unjust.  My normally stoic father commented, she was pretty harsh when cleaning your teeth.**  I was terrified of her and whether due to poor childhood dental hygiene, too much sugar, or bad genes, I cannot say, but I often had cavities and had to return for subsequent visits after my cleanings.  It seems I had fillings in most of my baby molars and quite a few of the permanent ones as well.  So, my trips to the dentist have been many.  I have always been afraid of needles and often have to be given extra shots of Novocain as I can still feel the drilling.   

When I was in college I tried to remain faithful to my twice a year cleanings because I have always hoped that prevention would avoid more trips with Novocain and drilling (the truly traumatic part of dentistry).  Before heading out to Costa Rica for 5 or more months I stopped by my mother's dentist to have a check up.  He decided that my wisdom teeth (or at least one of them) was impacted and should come out before the trip.  He referred me to an oral surgeon. Because of the short window in which the surgery needed to be completed, there was no time to meet his or have a consult before he was to do the procedure.  The office where this oral surgeon worked was undergoing massive renovations and as I waited in the outer chambers of the office, loud clanging and banging could be heard from other parts of the building.  Next thing I know, the surgeon comes out with a monkey wrench in hand and introduces himself.  To hear him tell it, my eyes became as big as saucers and I never actually looked at him, only at the wrench until he had sense to explain that this was not part of his surgical kit.

So, I went for my 6 month cleaning last month and saw a new dentist (while I have fired my share of dentists over the years, this new dentist comes to me by way of retirement -- luckily, I get to keep the wonderful hygienist associated with the practice.  One of the pluses of the dentist who  had retired was that he felt that whatever made the visit easier for me made it easier for him and was quite free with the Nitrous Oxide, the new guy a little less so but he is coming around.)  The new dentist felt that several of my teeth that had been "watches" needed to be taken care of.  He had a few silver amalgam fillings he wanted to replace and a crown he thought I needed as one of my molars had cracked.  That is three additional appointments that I have had over the past month.  I won't go into any of the details (like when the dentist walked out in disgust because my gag reflex is so keen that I had ruined the first mold for the crown) since they are all still a little too fresh.  However, I did a bit of self medicating.  I bought some sock yarn (kind of a lot considering how little yarn I have purchased lately).  There is some Socks that Rock, a sock of the month club (or two), a Celtic sock kit, Regia silk and some trekking.  I will take pictures and post them tomorrow to share my new acquisitions.  I will spare you the picture of my new crown. 

**As an aside, I was telling my current hygienist about my "apprehensive" nature as a dental patient and mentioned this chapter of my childhood dentistry at a practice (although my dentist has long since retired) that still exists in town.  She said that she works at that practice once a week and the German hygienist is still there.  One of her favorite stories is when she was passing an exam room and over heard the following exchange.

Hygienist hands patient a tissue.

Male Patient:  What is this for?

Hygienist:  Spit or tears, vhatever!

Apparently after more than 30 some odd years (and I don't remember her as a young woman) she has yet to develop a softer "bed side" manner. 

Cookie Saturday

As a child my mother was constantly making up new family traditions.  One of my favorites was called "Cookie Saturday".  This was a ritual for an early weekend in December.  The female members of the family would assemble at my grandmother's apartment (and later at our own house) and bake cookies, tons and tons of cookies.  I remember the entire dinning room table covered in different types of cookies.  We would then pack the cookies up into coffee cans (remember when we bought our coffee in a metal can with a removable plastic lid?) which we decorated in wrapping paper for the holidays. These cans would be distributed to friends and neighbors through out the holidays.

Well, my friend Kirsten decided that she was going to have a cookie baking party at her house this Saturday and while it is a little early for Cookie Saturday, as the Saturday after Thanksgiving it should surely count.  I came for the early shift and helped her to make the spritzes (you know the cookies made with a cookie press?)

I also helped with the Bavarian (?) Nut Horns (Kifles if I am to believe my Google search) and making a batch of ginger bread cookie dough.  After I left they made chocolate chip pecan cookies, a cranberry bar cookie and chocolate mint fudge.

In the next couple weeks I have plans to make a few more holiday favorites.  If you should be in the area, stop by for a couple of cookies with milk or tea.  There are plenty to last throughout the month. 

As an added bonus, I stopped by to pick my cookies up this morning and was able to catch the Dupont Circle farmer's market to pick up some seasonal fresh vegetables and dairy for local meals this week.  (Sorry for skipping that feature last week but with all the travel and family meals I was not able to pull off  a mostly local meal.)

They say it's your birthday...

well, actually, they don't say it is my birthday -- the family story is a little different than that (considering all of the family stories I might start to wonder if I was adopted if I didn't look so much like my mother).

So the story starts with my mother being very sick and needing to go to the hospital. If it was ever determined what the sickness was, I am sure that I don't remember it. Anyway, my father was sitting around at the hospital waiting for the doctor to come out and give him an update on my mother's "condition". While he was waiting a neighbor stopped by and they decided to go out behind the hospital for a cigarette (it was 37 years ago, everyone smoked). While they were walking in the woods behind the hospital (and possibly taking nips from a flask) they came across a garden. It was November so much of the garden had been harvested but there were a good number of cabbages left in the ground. As they were walking by one of the cabbages let out a cry. My father went to investigate and found a wee bairn under a cabbage leaf. He rushed the baby back into the hospital and while he was gone my mother's condition seemed to have improved and she was delighted with the baby my father had found. Maybe I am an original cabbage patch child.
[As an aside other than the dolls of the 80's, the only references to this myth/theory I came across were on blogs discussing teaching of alternate theories to evolution (stork theory, cabbage patch teory and intelligent design). There was nothing on the orgin of the theory or what culture it comes from -- although there was talk of cabbage in helping with fertility and being fed to new brides.]

Fairies

Legends say that on certain moonless nights, a fey child will be switched at birth with a mortal child.  This unknowing child grows up unaware of its true place in the order of things.

When I was younger and my sister and I would fail to see eye to eye on something, she would accuse me of being a fairy changeling. It is kind of like accusing your sister of being adopted -- a way of saying we couldn't possibly be related because we are so different. I always kind of liked the idea of being a fairy.  They seemed so magical and mysterious living in the shadows.  When I read myths of Avalon, I thought it was kind of a cool and became immersed in the legend about the Lady of the Lake.  Later I did some research and fairy changelings weren't mystical, eccentric children but rather sickly babies. It is thought that the Picts, who were driven into hiding when the Celts came to Ireland, may have actually stolen traded babies with the Celts and in this way they were able to introduce more genetic diversity into their clans (although I doubt they explicitly understood what they were doing).  Not so sure it was good to be a sickly baby -- maybe I should have taken it as an insult?

Why all this talk about fairies?  Well growing up my family had lots of fairy traditions.  My favorite was the birthday fairy and I will be waiting for her tonight.

Happy Birthday, mother!

My mother turned 68 yesterday. She says that she likes being older because you are allowed to be as silly as you want. (I have to admit that I had to ask when her age had stopped her from being silly.)

She has taught me a lot of good things over the years. Most of which seem to boil down to "don't get side tracked by your problems, solve them". I remember being on the dock at the summer house her father had bought when she was a child. I had dropped something in the water and as I started to cry, she shouted at me "Action, not reaction". That sort of sums up my mother...she is a problem solver, a quick thinker and a creator. She builds things, but they are usually more functional than beautiful. Presented with a problem she would not complain instead she would find a way to solve it.

She was not one for drama or tears, and if she was angry it wasn't something she held onto. She let it go. When I dropped and broke the glass canister for the blender, she walked in, grabbed the broom and dust pan, and confidently stated "I always wanted one of those in plastic". Then handed the broom to me and had me sweep up the mess.

She trusted me and trusted my judgment. She let me make decisions and taught me to live with the consequences. (You don't have to take your coat if you don't want to but don't complain about the cold if you choose not to.) When I tried to be mellow dramatic and take the weight of the world on my shoulders (or at least be responsible for ruining everything). She would say "Don't take so much credit, you couldn't be responsible for all of that if you tried."

She is retired now and enjoys her gardening, and her chickens and most of all her grand children. So for her birthday I drove down and had lunch with her and then my sister made dinner and cake. I hope she enjoyed her birthday and I am wishing her many more.

November 23: Happy Thanksgiving

I spent many a Thanksgiving of my youth in Northern NJ.  We would go and visit my grandparents and have dinner at my uncle and aunt's house.  They both lived on large half acre lots in old suburban neighborhoods.  There were woods behind all the houses, the kind that you imagine have many creeks to play in.  It was my idea of quintessential 1950's suburbia. 

In late fall when all the leaves are off the trees and there is a steady drizzle or light rain from a  low cloud cover, I think of these neighborhoods and the many Thanksgivings and Christmases we spent in these houses.  It seems that it was often raining during these family get togethers.  The houses were large with formal parlors in addition to a living room/den with a TV.  We would play in the basement and generally try to stay out of the way.  We would hope to sit at the children's table so as not be made to eat scary  gelled salads of tomato aspic and  avacado (although  I think I may have been the only one who didn't like this) by loving relatives.  We would wait forever for the grown-ups  to finish eating so that we could all go into the front parlor  for desert.

The weather brought back these memories today as I drove down to my sister's house for Thanksgiving.  Soggy yards, trees bare of their leaves, dark heavy skies, and then the sun came out just before it set and I was returned to the present.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

November 5: Birthdays, princess for a day

While I was growing up my parents were always creating new traditions and celebrations.   We weren't so tied to this is the way it has always been done.  We were more likely to mention something and try it out and like it -- then that would be the way it was for years and years. The history of the family traditions were usually measured in years rather than in generations but that was OK. 

My favorite of the family traditions was "the birthday fairy".  I am not sure where this came from but it was the way it always was as long as I can remember.  Birthdays were a big deal in our family and they had the anticipation of Christmas only more selfish, everything was about you.  (Well, aside from the year that I got a tricycle for my sister's birthday after mine was run over by the van, sorry about that sis).  The birthday fairy, like all fairies, was not one to show herself.  Due to this she usually came in the night while good children were sleeping.  Waking up on my birthday, I would hurry down to the dining room, which had been decorated with balloons and streamers, to find a pile of presents that had been left by this generous little fairy.  I don't remember if I got a presents from mom or dad -- it didn't really matter because the birthday fairy had the present thing covered.  This was one of the few mornings during the year that we ate breakfast in the dining room and not at the eating counter in the kitchen.    Later there was a favorite meal served for dinner and I generally remember these family celebrations as happy times (unlike my birthday parties that always ended up with tears for the silliest of reasons -- there is something to be said against too much sugar and high expectations).  For one day a year, it was all about me. 

Later, as an adult, I dated a guy who could do some really nice things but it was always unexpected.  A week or two after my birthday one year he offered to take me to a really nice restaurant.  When I questioned it, he commented "well, it is your birthday month."  I kind of like being able to spread out the specialness and celebration over the course of a month.  I can see family and friends and not feel as if I have been on a whirlwind of outings and feel absolutely exhausted.

So here is to the start of my birthday month (rule is it starts the day of your birthday and lasts until the end of month, not so great for those of you born in the later days of a month).

Chickens

Jessie over at What Housework is moving.  She had put a bid on a house and was greatly stressed out over a snafu in the contract (which has been worked out), so she did what any self respecting transplant to Vermont would do she took a poultry break. 

I don't claim to understand the chicken thing, but here is my experience with it.  My sister moved out to the middle of nowhere to have room, that includes room for chickens.  I take all the blame.  When I was living in Vermont, my sister took the train up from Maryland to visit me.  Since we had grown up in the city, I thought a visit to the Chittenden County Fair would be in order during her visit.  She fell in love with a chicken.  I had to convince her that the Amtrak people weren't going to be happy with her.  She left the chicken at the fair but it was my first clue of her love for chickens. 

A few years later she moved out to 15 acres in the country and finally got her chickens.  She is fond of less commercial and rare breeds so she has chickens with feathers on their feet that look like they are wearing bedroom slippers.  She has chickens with tufts on their heads that look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, and she has little chickens and big chickens.  She also had two lovely little girls. 

My mother, having retired and deciding that she hated traffic, bought some land down the road from my sister to be close to the grandchildren.  Along with owning land, apparently comes the desire for chickens. Here are a few of my mother's chickens.   She recently hatched out 19 eggs and has a broody chicken who is working on hatching out a few  the old fashioned way.  But most importantly, is the style the chickens live in.  My mother made them a stained glass window for the hen house.

We are all Irish on St. Patrick's Day

May St. Patrick guard you wherever
you go and guide you in whatever you
do--and may his loving protection be
a blessing to you always.

My ties to Irish heritage are somewhat circumspect.  I grew up in a household that was fiercely aware and celebrated its Scottish Heritage.  There were kilts and tartans and bag pipes.  There was the occasional Caeli dance to watch and the annual Scottish Walk with Clan Lindsay.  There was the kirkin'  (or blessing) of the tartans at the National Cathedral.  Clan motto:  Endure Fort (Endure Boldly).  Scottish -- thistle not shamrock.  This is the story of my father's people. 

My grandfather (on my mother's side) died when I was just a wee bairn of 5 months.  It was reported to me that he always talked of his Irish relatives (his was an Old Virginia family) and my grandmother was English enough to deny they existed.  This is the story I grew up believing at least.  I never gave it too much thought.  A colleague and good friend popped her head in my room one day as the work day was winding up and said "you're Irish , aren't you?"  I told her my story and she invited me to come to a meeting with her "Beer would be served".  This meeting was a planning meeting for our local St. Patrick's Celebration Parade (I'd say St Pat's Day but it is held the first weekend in March).  I joined up.

I asked my elderly grandmother (the same one who taught me to knit) to tell me about my Irish relatives, referring to her husbands kin.  She pipes up with "you mean your great great great grandmother O'Neil?"  That would be the Lords and Kings of Ireland for those of you not familiar with Irish history.  Her great grandmother was an O'Neil.  I rest my case.

The knitting story

I have been diligently seaming away on Salt Peanuts and it was probably a good decision to look up seaming in my needle work book because it it coming out pretty well.  I have set the sleeves in and sewn one sleeve and one side just leaving the side seam and sleeve.  I still have to track down an appropriate ribbon for closure.  It may involve going downtown to G Street Fabrics. 

As for the needle work book, it is Readers Digest Complete Guide to Needlework.  My grandmother seemed to get every book that Reader's Digest ever published.  On the inside cover it has the date she received it and her initials.  Three years later it is inscribe with the date of my birthday and signed Your Loving Grandmother.  I turned 12 that year and was likely giving gifts of hand embroidered handkerchiefs and stitching away on counted cross stitch.  I didn't ask my grandmother to teach me knitting until a few years later.  I don't remember her as a prolific knitter although she was involved in many needle crafts, needle point and quilting and sewing and my sister had a crochet afghan that she made. I can remember exactly two thing that she ever knit me.  The sweater that I was going to be my first project, and a hat, a sort of beret out of the leftover wool.

When I was in junior high or maybe high school, Elle magazine used to run a knitting pattern in each issue.  I diligently tore these out and saved them, determined that I would learn to knit.  I bought some lovely cream wool and took it to my grandmothers with one of these patterns.  I roll neck sweater with a seed stitch on the upper half.  My grandmother patiently taught me to knit and I made the gauge square for the sweater.  She taught me the importance of measuring gauge and then it was time to go home. 

The next time I saw my grandmother, she handed me the completed sweater.  She held the belief that it can often be easier to do it yourself than to teach someone else to do it.   Because she was a true knitter she didn't follow the pattern absolutely and made a few changes, like putting cuffs on the sleeves rather than letting them roll. 

I didn't attempt knitting again for another year or two.  I sat down with that gift she had given me for my twelfth birthday and retaught myself to knit, making a lovely cardigan for my mother, who still wears it and was very impressed at how well it was made and that the sleeves were the same length.  I will call my mother and get her to send a picture of the sweater and post it later this week.