Jananas

I spent two-ish days in Montreal this week, leaving Monday afternoon and returning to Toronto at 3am on Thursday morning. The reason? I got a $30 roundtrip ticket through Coach Canada. Its a good enough reason for me. I arrived Monday evening and my friend Sebastian picked me up at the bus station. We grabbed some food and then headed back to his place for an early evening.

Tuesday morning we got up and Seb was nice enough to play tour guide. First we headed down to Old Montreal to look at all the lovely old buildings. We also found Notre Dame de Bon-Secours Chapel (aka the Sailor’s Church). Seb didn’t know it existed, so it was neat to get to look around it. Its a highly decorated church inside, but I really did like the style of the paintings on the ceiling.

After wandering around the church, we followed the footsteps back to the Marguerite Bourgeoys Museum, which is dedicated to her life and the early history of Montreal. First, we walked the 69 steps up the tower in the church. The steps were a little scary, mostly because the wasn’t really a handrail and when there was it was so low my fingers barely touched it! The view from the tower was pretty awesome.

There are some lovely statues of angels, made of beaten copper over wooden cores. This was taken from the first stopping point. We went up the last stairs and made it to the top of the tower – we were at the same height as the roof of the church! Sadly, from that vantage point we couldn’t get good photos of the statues (even though we were at the same level).

We then made our way back down into the museum. This included going on a little section of spiral stair case that was suspended over the roof of the church in order to get to the stairs. From there we went through the crypt, the special exhibit on pilgrimage, and then through the sections on Marguerite Bourgeoys. Which led us to a room of dioramas of important parts of her life. Women from the church had made all the scenes themselves and for the most part they were well done (or at least not laughably bad). Until we found this one of the stable school she started…

First, why are some of the children dressed like elves? Use the young sir in the front row wearing a white shirt and a red, pointed hat. Yup, elf. We laughed about this for a little bit until we noticed something much, much worse. Why is the Amerindian woman in the doorway have a green face? Green. Green. Green. Ooops.

We wandered around Old Montreal for a little bit longer, poking around in shops when they were interesting and avoiding anything related to Souvenirs. By this time we were starting to get a little hungry. I put in a request for poutine and we ended up at one of Celine Dion’s Nickels restaurants. As far as celebrity owned joints go, not bad! I had decent poutine, although I am a little sad that I didn’t go to any of the places that were recommended to me. We then wandered along China Block, where we picked up some Dragon Beard candy which was delicious (and vegan!). I brought some home to Jason and even though it didn’t survive transit & two days very well it still tasted delicious.

The Knit Cafe is my LYS (local yarn store for those of you not in the know). I had been in one day ogling yarn and their lovely organic cotton when I noticed a sample baby blanket. I fell in love and knew that I’d knit it up for someone. Shortly thereafter I found out that my friend and former coworker Brenda is pregnant with her first child. I’m stoked for her because I know that she’s been crossing her fingers for a while. I’m also excited for me because knitting things for babies is fun!

I bought the yarn for this earlier this month when I was in for a stitch and bitch session. They’d recently received a shipment and because I had limited colour choices/preferences (as they aren’t finding out the sex of their child), I decided to play it safe and buy the yarn now so that they wouldn’t sell out. I picked a lovely soft dove grey as its reasonably gender neutral and is a pretty baby colour.

I had every intention of not starting this project until later this fall, but I couldn’t keep myself away from the lovely soft yarn. The pattern is pretty straightforward and fun to knit. The first 25 rows of seed stitch (thats 25 rows x 120 stitches per row, ugh!) are pretty terrible but once you’re past it its fine. The end result is a soft blanket that looks professional.

I still haven’t sewn ends in, but that’s a project for next week…

I often browse through used bookstores. I like books. I look to pick up things I’ve read and leant to friends and not gotten back. I look to pick up old favorites. I look for things that are fun. Sometimes the fates align and I find the perfect gift for someone else.

In this case, that gift was a Campbells Soup book called ‘Campbell Kids Alphabet Soup: an ABC Book’. The reason why this is perfect is that Jason’s mom collects Campbell Soup paraphernalia. I bought it knowing that at some point we’d be able to give it to her. At first I was thinking that it would make a good Christmas gift. But (and this is a big but), I was worried that as a kids book it might give her the wrong impression and no, I’m not pregnant. Instead I thought that either Jason or his sister could give it to their mom as a ‘hey, we’re having your grandkid’ present (whomever was going to have kids first). I thought it would a perfect and unique way of spilling the beans.

That evening I sent Jason’s sister a message via Facebook letting her know about my awesome idea. Turns out that it really was an awesome and infinitely well timed purchase as she is pregnant with her first child! In fact the news was so new that she hadn’t told either Jason or her mother yet. I’ve mailed the book out to her so that she can pass it on to her mom.

The book is actually really fun. We flipped through it. Each letter of the alphabet has a sentence and a bunch of words/illustrations for words starting with that particular letter. This blog was brought to you by the letter ‘S’.

I’m stoked that I’m going to be a pseudo-aunt. It means getting to knit for babies, which is fun and small and cute and quick! I’m plotting and planning already…

And that dear readers, is how by buying a fitting gift I accidentally predicted a pregnancy.

p.s. this post was only put up after she had spilled the beans to everyone else.

I’ve made a bunch more jam this week. The original batch of apricot jam was such a hit that I made a second batch, this time using the small jars so that they’ll make good gifts. I got 14 x 125mL jars of jam and 3 x 125mL jars of apricot syrup (foam skimmed from the top as the jam boiled and then processed in a hot water bath to can ‘em).

I had some other fruit left in the house that needed to be used up – strawberries, pineapple, blueberries, plums, apples, and mulberries. I decided that I’d try to make some ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ jam. I took some basic long boil jam recipes and boiled it for about 40 minutes with about 6 cups sugar.

This made 3 x 250mL jars and  5 x 125mL or jam as well as 2 x 125mL jars of syrup. Its a sort of strange mixture of fruits, but it certainly smelled good while cooking and tasted good when I tested to see if it was ‘set’. The blueberries also have it a nice dark colour that looks pretty in the jars.

I really like the ladies at Heart Breaker here in Toronto. Its great service, great fun, and I always have nice nails after a visit. Last time I was in I was looking through their selection of Minx Nails and I couldn’t resist having them  set aside the Dee’s Skulls (which are little Mxican Sugar Skulls) for me.

This is one of those things that you do just because you can. And it certainly brightens my day when I look down and remember that I’m rocking skulls on my toes.