That Flat Scout

Some time ago (too long really, but I plead book related insanity and shortages of time) Flat Scout came to Toronto. Flat Scout is the two-dimensional buddy of the Real Not Flat Scout, who did a fabulous job of shepherd(ess)ing me around Albuquerque when I was there. Since The Real Not Flat Scout was not coming anytime soon, she sent her way less interesting envoy. Flat Scout. Our Mission? Show her Toronto. We did our level best. Our first attempt? We gave Flat Scout and a camera to the children and sent them out into the world. This was not as effective as one would have hoped. (Next time we shall send the children with Flat Scout, a camera and spare batteries.)Several wonderful opportunities at The Canadian National Exhibition (it's like a county fair, but for the whole country) were lost, though the girls did try to get Flat Scout and the Canadian International Airshow in the same shot.

Those planes are fast though. Undaunted, the girls stopped in to see Hank. Undaunted by laminated cardboard hotties, Hank immediately grasped the importance of his guest and dressed up in his Spiderman muscle suit for the occasion.

From there, Joe and I took over. Armed with fresh batteries and faced with an epic rainstorm, we took to Toronto's streets. What the hell. We do it all the time with a sock.
Where to go first? Our favourite...

Little India. I thought that since Flat Scout was used to hanging around fibre artists she might enjoy an Indian silk shop. She was moved I think. (That's more than I can say for the owners. Their son tried to translate about what we were doing, but the words "Flat Scout" "New Mexico" and "Knitbloggers" apparently don't translate well into Punjabi. We settled on calling her a "Tourist". )

We continued East and went to The Beach,

and proved to Flat Scout that there is surfing on Lake Ontario.

We like to pretend she was stunned. (Frankly, not much seems to impress her.) We took her to Toronto's Historic Distillery District.

It's Toronto's only pedestrian only district and full of galleries, arts centres, dance and things to do. (There's a Spa too. Flat Scout made some noise about that. We looked the other way and went to Chinatown...

where Flat Scout did no better at identifying vegetables than we do.
We hit Old City Hall (1899)

New City Hall

We took her to Yonge Street, the longest street in the world, and to the Financial District.

Joe wanted to take her to eat a breaded eggplant sandwich in St. Lawrence Market...

but I pointed out that she needed to still be "Flat" Scout when she left. (If you do nothing else in Toronto, eat the eggplant sandwich at Mustachio's at the bottom of the stairs in the centre of the market. I hate eggplant, but I love these. Turns out just about everything can be yummy if you slice it thin and deep fry it.)

We were almost done with Flat Scout, but there was one more thing we wanted to do with her.

We took her for a pint (or two) at the 'Shoe. The Horseshoe Tavern (Do call it "the shoe" if you want to sound local) is a club that's been open since 1947. On any given night of the week this clubs got the cream of the crop hanging out, and there's no end to the interesting people you'll met. Flat Scout sat in a room that's hosted Blue Rodeo, Bryan Adams, The Tragically Hip, Melissa Ethridge, The Watchmen, Big Sugar, Amanda Marshall, Wide Mouth Mason, Great Big Sea, Stompin’ Tom Connors, The Band, The Blues Brothers, Prairie Oyster, The Police, Hootie & The Blowfish, Wilco, Ben Harper, Leahy, The Ramones, Cramps, Dick Dale, Bruce Cockburn and, in one of their surprise Toronto events (1997) The Rolling Stones. (The Stones actually have a close relationship with Toronto.) In any event...Flat Scout seemed unmoved by all of that too...and unlike Real Not Flat Scout, she can't really handle her beer.

We pitched for home, where Flat Scout hung out on top of the piano for a while (I was writing a book and getting married) until today, when I showed her that I had finished some socks:

Opal colour 226, 2mm needles, my standard sock recipe

That I was thinking about some more socks with some really special yarn.

More about that on Monday...

and I proved to her that I'm still working on the Wedding shawl, even though it missed the wedding.

Who gets Flat Scout next?