Magirics Monday

magirics ~ art of cookery

A very happy Memorial Day to my U.S. friends. Even though we had our holiday weekend last weekend, I’m still a little jealous that you guys get today off and we don’t. Am I the only one who thinks that all weekends should be three days?

I had a productive weekend, although not in the way I expected. I had planned on buying the bedding plants for the gardens on Friday and then spending a good chunk of my time gardening.

However, Friday was pretty wet, and it was supposed to rain off and on for the rest of the weekend, so I didn`t get my plants Friday evening. Wouldn`t you know that although Saturday started drizzly, by the afternoon things were drying up nicely. And Sunday was so nice I had the deck door open.

But I had no plants to plant, so instead I started working on a christening gown a friend is having me make for her grandson. No pattern, just a couple of pictures to go by. And she ripped out the sleeves from her mother`s wedding gown and could I please somehow include these in the gown? Along with dress sleeves, she gave me some lovely satin material and yards and yards of satin ribbon. Challenge accepted.

Once the sleeves were ripped apart and ironed flat, I had two medium length, oddly wedge shaped pieces of material. A snip here and a snip there gave me two more uniformly wedge shapes. Although they would have been long enough for an ordinary dress, this is a christening gown. So I sewed a 10 inch piece of satin to the bottom of each panel, then cut a piece the entire length for a center panel.

This is where I’d normally post a picture, but despite spending the bulk of my weekend on it, it’s not done yet. I still have the hand sewing - hem, basting down the bodice lining, and buttons - to go. I repurposed the row of buttons and corresponding loops from one of the sleeves for the closure at the back. In retrospect, although it was a nice idea to make further use of the sleeves, eleven buttons is a lot of buttons.

Because the gown is for a baby boy, I didn’t want to make it too froofy, and my friend requested that it be plain, so I used the satin ribbon to trim it at the top and bottom. No bows or flowers. It’s actually turning out better than I expected, I just hope it fits. :-D

Sunday the daughter invited me to go to lunch with them so I took a break from the sewing long enough to celebrate burger day with a Perseus burger from Olympus Burgers. This is from their secret menu, which can only be accessed online - fresh beef patty, crunchy onion rings, aged white cheddar cheese, Olympus bbq sauce, lettuce, tomato.

As part as an art awareness program, there was a gentleman dressed as a Canada goose lurking around and the granddaughter turned out to not be a fan.

Here’s a picture of her hiding behind her milkshake. It was actually a friend of the daughter’s in the goose suit, and it was kind of amusing the way the granddaughter avoided him. She didn’t cry or make a fuss, she just pointedly wouldn’t look at him. It was like, “If I don’t look at him then he can’t hurt me.”

The weather forecast for the week ahead is so up and down I have no idea what to expect, but the only plans I have, other than finishing the christening gown, is for writing, so in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. ;-)

Mulciberian Monday

mulciberian ~ of, like or pertaining to metalworking

It's a funny thing, but now that I'm busy with work during the week, I have a whole new appreciation of weekends.

Okay. Yes, I know just last week I was saying how I liked Mondays better because I can go back to all my routines that I don't have on the weekend, and that hasn't changed. But there's just something about having those two open days at the end of the week ...

And I know there are some of you out there with puzzled looks on your faces because I work at home and isn't every day like a weekend? Technically that's true, but that just opens a whole new can of worms and if you want to read more about it, go here.

But as I was having my breakfast on Saturday, I started wondering what I was going to do with my day. I had this whole day ahead of me, and I could do anything I wanted with it. It was kind of a heady feeling.

Of course then reality intruded and all sorts of things that I had to get done intruded, like buying a new frying pan (when stuff starts burning on to your non-stick frying pan, it's time to get a new one) and a new mouse for my lap top (you have no idea how annoying a faulty mouse can be!), figuring out what that smell was in the corner where my recliner is, baking to be done, stuffed hamburgers for Sunday to make . . . the list was endless. At least it seemed that way when you go from two days with nothing to do to a whole list of things.

But I pecked away at the list, alternating things that needed to be done with things that were fun to do, like sitting out on the deck to have my lunch. So while it was a busy weekend, I still found time to relax a bit.

I am no longer the orchid whisperer. I have, to date, lost FOUR of the blooms off of the bloom stalk, bringing the total down to a measly six. My orchid is still pretty though, and I'm hoping the smaller one beside it will take the hint and grow a bloom stalk of its own.

Meanwhile, the flowers in my garden are doing well and the prettiest of them all is this one:

This is my iris, the only one I've managed to keep alive. I did have some yellow ones in my pond garden, but I have no idea what happened to them. One year I had them, the next year there was no trace of them. But the purple ones ... I received a clump of irises from a woman I worked with a long time ago, and planted them in the pond garden along the fence. These aren't them. I'm not sure where they came from but I know they didn't bloom last year. They've certainly made up for it this year though and I notice they've started to spread a bit too. As far as I'm concerned, they can spread right across the whole garden - I love irises.

I love gladiolas too. And delphiniums. And lilies. I like big plants and I cannot lie. LOL

But the day I went out to take the picture of my iris I ended up standing in the driveway talking to a neighbour and this guy just happened to mosey on by:

I should say "she" because my neighbour spotted a bigger one out behind her house so we figured this one was a female. She didn't seem particularly bothered by us, even stopped to pose when I asked her to. She was more like The Littlest Hobo - she had places to go.

I might have mentioned this before, that we've had some coyotes moving into the neighbourhood. They usually aren't seen this close to the lake, but there's been a lot of development up by the train tracks where they've been living, and instead of going further north, they've come south.

To be honest, it doesn't bother me to have them around. My cats are indoor cats, and I don't have a dog to walk at night, so it's kind of a live and let live kind of thing. I don't even mind hearing them at night when they're hunting, although I have to admit it kind of freaked me out the first couple of times I heard them - I had no idea what it was.

There's a wooded laneway that's been closed to the public where it's suspected the coyotes are living to keep people from walking their dogs up there. Surprisingly, there's been few complaints about them, other than the noise.

Maybe I'm not the only one with the live and let live attitude. Now wouldn't that be nice?