Finito

Sigh.

Jbab

She’s gone. (As and aside? See all that luggage? Yarn.)

The top ten things about having Juno visit.

1. She gleefully played along with my families attempts to immerse her in Canadian culture. She watched this movie:

Mwbjt

as well as “The Trailer Park Boys” (She already knew about SCTV. Don’t worry. I didn’t neglect the comedy of our people.)

2. She drank Canadian beer. (I will not tell you what kind of Canadian beer since it’s only going to start an “I can’t believe you gave her that swill” argument no matter what I tell you it was. Suffice it to say that it was Canadian, it was a micro-brew and it contained a Canadian amount of alcohol.)

3. She drank the cocktail of our people.

Ceasarctd

I insisted that it didn’t taste like clams and pretty much forced it on her. In the end (though it did take her a long time to drink it) she did say it was “pretty good”. (An aside here? While I did not make the Caesar in this picture, an interesting Harlot fact is that I make one of the best Caesars you are ever going to drink. Ever. Everyone has a gift, and while I was hoping for tact, intelligence or great beauty, it would appear that my gift is making an absolutely terrific Caesar.)

….for people concerned with accuracy and tradition of Caesar consumption, be assured that she did have it at brunch, and that brunch was in the afternoon.

4. If you happen to leave a tiara on the dining room table (what?) then Juno will put it on. I don’t know why I love this…goodness knows I didn’t leave a tiara there…but I really do.

Princesscasst

This is really just an example of the way that the woman slid flawlessly into our lives for 5 days. She held her own in endless conversations with the girls about boys, hair, jeans and why all of this will be ok when they are thirty…she giggled her way through Joe’s parade of ideas for filling the queen sized air mattress on our living room floor. (Really, his crowning glory was when he came home after a few pints and “Hockey Night in Canada” and explained to us that if we stood the mattress upright and put the pump at the top, less air would escape while we were capping it, since “gravity would be on our side”. God, I love that man. )

5. I took her to St. Lawrence Market, St. James Cathedral, Financial district (but we didn’t do the underground city) , Yonge Street, showed her the CN tower, went to Old City Hall, New City Hall, the Eaton Centre, the Hudson Bay company and…well. A whole bunch of other places and she didn’t complain at all. Not only did she not complain, she pretended to find it interesting.

6. Juno has, and I cannot stress this enough…an unlimited ability to discuss knitting. I don’t know what I enjoyed more. Talking about knitting for hours or the way that Joe rolled his eyes every time that he discovered that we were still on the topic of knitting. (For the record a discussion about gauge, sizing and the ways of the blocking mysteries is a completely different conversation than that of ease, sizing and the ways of the blocking mysteries.)

7. She is a fast learner and very clever. She mastered the hand cards in moments. (The first moment was hysterical though, Juno loaded the card…as seen in the picture below:

Hcdcct

picked up the cards, and in one swift, sure movement, completely transfered all of the wool from one card to the other, absolutely intact. It was impressive, though sort of defeated the purpose of carding.)

8. Her complete weakness in the face of the drum carder.

Dcshetns

(Juno is seen here learning that she was mistaken about shetland.)

9. Juno is, despite always looking good and appearing “finished”, very, very quick in the bathroom. Joe’s concerns that adding a 5th woman to the bathroom linup (we only have one) was going to completely finish his chances, proved to be unfounded. The woman is in and out of there in a heartbeat.

10. The yarn. The wool. The patterns, the discussions. The yarn shops, the knitters, the knitting, the carding, the spinning. The stash-diving.

Juno brought me some of Gladys, her wonder fleece,

Gladystuft

(Official fleece of the 2005 TUFT year.)

I love this about knitters and spinners. Juno brought me fleece and fibre (the hostess gift of choice in these parts) and I gave her fleece and fibre from the stash. It isn’t an exchange or an obligation, it isn’t even a gift. Knitters and Spinners embrace the “each teach one” philosophy, and I’ve never met a spinner who didn’t shell out what they had so that other spinners could learn more….

it’s remarkable.

Junomilliewindow

I could say something mushy here, something about how incredible blogging has been in my life and how I’m really the sort of person who hasn’t got a lot of friends, just a few good ones that I’ve had forever..and that I’m shy and I never thought, never in a million years…that I would get a whole bunch of new friends. I could tell you that I thought that intimacy with a buddy was the byproduct of years and years of experience with someone, and that I was absolutely gobsmacked to learn that there is a group of people out there with whom I need little time to feel as though they belong completely in my life. I don’t know what it means that all of these new friends are knitters. Something good though. I could tell all of you that the friendship and camaraderie that this blog has brought into my life in only 22 months has meant a great deal to me…but I won’t…’cause that would be mushy. I’ll just say instead that if you get a chance to have a knitter sleep on your living room floor for 5 days you should do it.

I’m off now, to try and recover my home from the ravages of 5 days of spinning, knitting, drinking wine and ordering take out while pretending that laundry does itself.

Mordalep

Or maybe I’ll knit….The damage to the TUFT facilities are significant, but Hank is staying here for a few days, so I’m thinking that other than a rendezvous with Mr. Washie to put everybody back in clean undies, cleaning up before the five year old goes home would be stupid.