Genevieve's Journeys

Ok, I'm taking a liberty, because some of these 'days' have overlapped in real-time - so I actually did the research over two days, not just one, and did some shopping on the same day as I did some research. It's my blog, and my challenge.

Yesterday after skiving out of work in the mid afternoon I took myself to my favourite shop, Cornelissens, for a Christmas treat.

I'd been resisting buying the specialist gilding equipment for a long time - looking for homemade bodge-fixes instead, because I'm not a gilder, I'm a calligrapher, right?  - but I've decided I don't want to fight with my tools. If they'll make the difference between frustration and success, I'm willing to spend some money.

My stocking included:
- a glass muller: I was sold on this when Mistress Oriane asked 'what are the lumps in your gesso?' and truthfully I had not done nearly as much grinding as is suggested in 'the gilded page'. So today's project is to Get It Right, or at least follow the instructions.

I was surprised to find that the Cornelissens mullers are made individually, so they vary even within the small med and large designations. So the staffer brought up three for me to fondle, and number 2 was a perfect fit for my hand. It was striking how different it felt in my hand.

- a gilder's pad. The staffer started describing the destinctions between the 'economy' and the 'professional' pad, and I told him I'd only ever planned to buy the economy one. (Honestly, he was struggling to explain the difference - AFAICT it was nicer finishing nails round the edge). I could have made one, but that would cost me more in time and fuss than the £27 it cost me. If I ever get to gild a wall, I'll make a bigger one for myself.

- a thick gilder's tip, the specialist brush that I saw all the cool-kid gilders using on YouTube.

- starter pack of loose gold. This is not really a bargain, you're better off buying a standard pack and sharing it, but I wasn't clever enough to plan that. If I finish this pack, I'll know I'm keen enough to buy more.

- more titanium dioxide dry pigment. I found some watercolour version, but am sticking to dry til I get a working gesso, then I can play with the recipe to find out what can change.

- a bunch of 15ml containers. I'm finding our small-container supply stretched as I mix and collect bits, and we can only consume so much mustard in tiny pots.

Why am I blogging on Christmas Day?  Because our Christmas is spent very quietly at home.

If you don't own a car, and get out of London on 24 Dec, you're stuck in the city for 2 days, because the Tube doesn't run on 25 Dec, and the near-traditional Boxing Day Tube strike is on 26 Dec. (Given the flooding this year, lots of people are stuck in crap places anyway - I'd rather be at home.)

So we take advantage of it, and hole up with food, drink, holiday TV (Dr Who! Her Majesty in 3D!) and crafts.

It's the best holiday imaginable.

On Boxing Day we're headed to Sir Vitus and Lady Isabel's house for a feed, but til then...gild on.

We took Harley to the vet this morning. 

The lymphoma on her small intestine had grown in the past two weeks, and was noticeable from the outside as her belly was getting larger. She'd lost weight, so even though her belly was curved, she was getting increasingly bony everywhere else.

She was having trouble finding comfortable positions for sitting and lying, laps were no longer comfy, and she was increasingly retreating to quiet places in the house to be by herself. Her fine conversation was dropping off, though she'd still purr when stroked or brushed.

We talked it over, and felt we'd rather say goodbye while she was still moderately well, rather than dragging out a lengthy illness.

So last night we fed her as much jellied mush as she could eat, and spent a lot of time on the sofa with her.

Today we asked the vet to put her to sleep, and kept her company as he did so, and cried.

We're both pretty wrung out. 

We've had a number of large tomcats circling the close this year; I think the oldest and crustiest is losing his control in the face of new incomers. One is a very attractive ginger spiral tabby - attractive on the outside, anyway. 

But when you come home to find him in your living room....he's not nearly as cute. We'd caught him in the act of housebreaking via the catflap, and he'd been there long enough to leave a musky smell of tom behind (not the marking-territory-piss smell, just musk). 

Even less cute is the snarling spitting snapping raging furbag of claws and teeth that Robert grasped with a welding glove (just back from fencing practice) and carried out by the scruff, at the end of his long arm, and flung firmly into the close.

Poor Harley was well out of her league though she made a valiant defense, and she spent the next hour creeping and skulking around the flat, checking the living room window as if expecting him to appear in it any time. She didn't want to nestle in bed but preferred to lurk on the stairs keeping watch, and only retired an hour after bedtime.

Our vet has said we can bring in nuisance toms to be neutered - it's a free service, because they are a pest, and east London is overrun with unwanted cats. Next time we catch him, he's going straight into the carrier. He can sit and spit outside all night.

Still at the new home ranch on the outskirts of GTA. Packing clothing, trying not to take Too Much Stuff (tm) back to the UK. Sigh.

...hate it when that happens.

Yet another costume book en route; Medieval Tailor's assistant, for less than the cover price even after shipping.  (Not a huge gem, just rounding out the bookshelves.) Just as well I'm not going to any of the reenactor markets this year, but maybe I can get Sarah Thursfeld to sign my copy at the next MEDATS session...

Still waiting for an Elizabeth Zimmermann (EZ) knitting book, long promised to myself, to show up, ordered last week; looking forward to trying the famous Baby Surprise Jacket, which has its own fan club on Ravelry. Oddly, EZ is practically unknown in the UK, though every American and Canadian knitter I've met is a fan of hers.

A propos of not much:

We had a quiet weekend, with both Robert and me taking turns sniffling and making tea. We showed up willing at the local revel, which was well attended, and contributed to the hats, helms and hair discussion, but we opted not to share a buffet with our friends at the risk of spreading our contagion. 

Both of us found it hard to leave at dinner time though - it felt terribly wrong to be walking out the door just as the lights were going down and the buffet was laden with food, with our friends all dressed and ready to sit. 


It was a weekend of movies:

• No Country for Old Men (just about the strangest mainstream movie I can remember);
• Live and Let Die (had forgotten just how silly, sexist and unbelieveable Bond movies were at this point - not bothering with it again);
• XMen-Wolverine (don't remember even ordering this one);
• The Queen (much better than I expected, with the actors capturing uncanny likenesses of the main participants - voices were particularly good, I thought). 

Caught up with the premier of Downton Abbey last night, which we'd missed. I'm liking it better and better, and am bummed there's only 7 episodes. All the characters, except one,  seems to have more than one facet to their character, which is remarkable.

Saturday AM Robert and I circled the neighbourhood and put up notices about the pusscat, and today the ones we saw on our morning walk were still up, so hopefully anyone who can identify her has a chance to do so.
Madam NoName is not, as I first thought, a polydactyl puss (extra toes) - she just splays the ones she has so her paws look enormous. She's a keen kneader - she kneads while sitting on a tile floor, waiting for a string, or pacing around the flat, and she also does 'air kneading' when she's flopped on her side or back - no kneadable surface required. And she purrs if you simply talk to her and have her attention.
Looking more closely at her colours, I can see the tabby stripes in her larger orange patches, and increasingly she looks to me like a ginger tabby- and-white who got coated with black, and she has cleaned off just patches of it.  Robert, in turn, thinks she looks like a black-and-white cat, who picked up some ginger patches.
This morning I was pleasantly surprised to find her sitting quietly on my wool carpet in my room, having nosed open the door at some point overnight: no complaining, no Simon's Cat efforts to wake me (unlike China, who had no such reservations). This was the second morning I'd found her in my room, apparently waiting for the humans to wake. I'm expecting the other shoe to drop, because the chance of finding a self-training cat that learns to wait for breakfast just seems too good to be true.
Robert's has had a couple of bouts of allergic reactions, but he can usually pinpoint the source - handling a kitty string toy, then rubbing his face; getting wheezy after several minutes of kitty exercising chasing string around the living room. Puss is a string devotee, and something of a purist - string, with no danglies attached, thank you very much. Fortunately, vacuuming was painless for him, though Madam is not a fan of the Noisy Dirtsucker.
He says he's never washed his hands so much in his life. I hope it's helping, because Madam is certainly making a home here, and it would be very sad to lose her to his allergies now.

Some pleasant parts of my recent trip to Canada:

- appreciating brilliantly clear, crisp, sometimes more-than-just-crisp cold weather. Felt like March ought to - with promise of spring, but winter not quite given up yet.
- driving a normal car, and not having to constantly think about which side I can pass on.
- eating lots of fresh fruit and veg - it's harder to find the same good quality of F&V in the UK, even in nice neighbourhoods
- visiting with Godwin Hrothmundsson, a friend from Greyfells, where I joined the Society.
He now lives in Toronto, not far from my parents, and is now owned by a lovely playful cat named Aoife.
He's taken up both birdwatching and photography of late.
- getting caught up with some archery-related friends, who I haven't seen in years. For the past couple of visits, I've thought 'geez, I really should call C.' and then promptly forgot about it. This time I actually called her, and she in turn found J., so we could go out for dinner together. They both look happy - happier than when we were all involved in competitive archery. That's not the fault of the archery, more the fault of our individual lives at the time.
- catching up with a high-school friend, Alan, who works at Sanctuary in Toronto.
It's a fairly traditional street mission, but with a minimum of guilt and preaching. He's about the only evangelical I'm still in touch with from highschool.
- finally meeting lanifer  and L. and dining with them and larmer . We had a lovely dinner in a sports bar, of all places, opposite the ROM. This part of Toronto always reminds me of dropping in on Eoforwic meetings, and of Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionovar tapestry, which starts not too far away on the UofT campus.
These visits were very nourishing while I was in TO.
I also managed to speak with my former roommate C, and my friend Enid, both wise and thoughtful ladies. Sarra managed to call between flights as she and her family were in transit, which I really appreciated.
It was wonderful to hear all their voices. Makes me wonder why I don't call more often.

Having come home I've decided:
- I want my own space, ie. eventually want a house. I don't know how realistic it is to hope to buy w/in the M25, but if I do get fulltime perm employment, I'll start a saving plan towards a downpayment.
- I want to declutter, and stay on top of it. This means fighting clutter more regularly, not just periodic, pre-move clearouts that are so hard and so exhausting. It means making new habits to deal with it.
Seeing the consequences of decades of just Building Another Shelf and Storing it in the Garage at my parents' home has told me how I don't want to live.
At Easter, the example of my family home was still vividly with me. It drove me to clear the lounge of the worst of the clutter. While Robert could probably think of more restful ways to spend a holiday afternoon, he willingly sorted and cleared and cleaned; we cleared half of one large bookcase, and most of a small bookcase of assorted Stuff. We hope to stash the small ugly bookcase elsewhere after the Blessed Visitation of the Plumber (now delayed another month, but that's another whinge).
I even pruned the library, as did Robert - anathema, I know.
Books are the hardest to let go of for me, especially reference books. But if I haven't read them since I bought them, and I don't have a plan to read them, then they're not doing me any good.
(It's easy to say that, of course - right now they're stacked in the Going to Oxfam space on the stairs, so they haven't actually made it out of the house...)

I think I've found their hideout - my woolen stockings that I wear at events...

We've been in this flat for two years, and have watched the lino floor get steadily grubbier. London is awfully grubby. I don't remember having to clean things like windowsills and keyboards nearly as often in Ottawa....

Mopping didn't seem to affect the grime, so I thought it was permanent damage to the floor, that would require a professional clean to remove.

My industrious sweetie has proved me wrong, with a can of Ajax and elbow grease - which of course means I have to chip in my own said grease. Since I complained, I now get the pleasure of remedying the problem.

This is our first go at the floor.

I can't decide which is scarier:

- the difference between before and after
- the fact we lived with this grime for so long - oink oink oink!

We can't dislodge the imprint of past underlay adhesive - it appears as a rusty zigzaggy pattern in patches on the floor. The original tile colour is blue-gray (visible close to walls) but it appears greenish thanks to the yellowish tint of the underlay.

But by gum it'll be clean. Ooof.

What happens when you complain about the floor... you have to do something about it