A Great Rabbit

A dear artist friend has created a wonderful installation called Voices at Hand that has been taking her around the province for the last couple of years. It's a letter reading performance and she has been gathering letters as she goes, sorting them into categories, and sharing them on her blog. She's recently moved into Trent University for a short stay and has just posted about the Stewart family letters that she found in the Trent Archives. The Stewarts were one of the first Peterborough families.

She's posted two letter excerpts - the first about travelling in winter (9 miles in one day!) and the second is a juicy gossipy one from Ireland. It contains the line that inspired the title of this blog and the jumpy-belly, happy feeling I have this morning. It is, after all, the birthday of my two beautiful boys - they are 11(!).

Mary Anne Garnet is just going to be confined again for the forth time — She is a great rabbit She married just two years after you — She is a poor douny indolent looking thing — it tires one to look at her...

And here they are, the birthday boys. Then (with their extremely unhappy, I-can't-believe-they-brought-in-TWO-usurpers, three-year-old big sister)...

...and then...

... and then...

...and then... (sorry - still waiting for my daughter to teach me how to rotate this...)

...and now!  Mr. Li, born first at 7:30 am...

..and Mr. T, born an hour later (he really wanted to stay in and he's still a bit of a homebody) at 8:30 am.

Happy Birthday boys!

Chartreuseum

A few days ago I promised a picture of the new flooring for the bathroom. It's Marmoleum and when my friend and flooring advisor MM and I went to pick it out we were oohing and aahing over all the colours and patterns. But, this one stuck for me. It is dee-lish. 

Plus, being all "natural" (made with linseed, resins, wood powder, backed by jute) you probably really could eat off it. And it smells lovely - takes me back to the time my mom was a 4H Homemaking club leader (I was too young to be in 4H so just hung about watching the cool older girls). It was in the seventies so the projects were cool - one was making lino-cut prints from linoleum which is basically the same as marmoleum. Hence the scent memory. That picture does not do justice to the colour, "chartreuse".  It is really lovely.  

 The jute backing. Nice.

This is what it is replacing although the colour is all wrong in this photo - it's off-shite (ha ha! typo) actually it's off-WHITE with gold swirls and fairly worn out.

I Don't Deserve To Be So Happy

I've decided to begin posting things that make me inexplicably happy. These will only be the things that make me feel, like Scrooge at the end of the Alistair Sim film version of A Christmas Carol says, "[that] I don't deserve to be so happy."
(And that scene is one of the things that makes me feel happy - in a deep down, can't explain it way - why should that make me feel so happy?)



So the thing that made me happiest this week was this tiny news item buried into a back page in last Friday's Globe and Mail (which was delivered despite the fact that we only get delivery on Saturday... coincidence? I think not!) The picture is from the online version of The Guardian. Seems that the authorities in a Russian town would not give a group a permit to protest in the town square, so after many months of waiting, they came up with this solution. The police were totally freaked out and were seen to be writing down what was written on the signs. I can't decide if my favourite is Sailor Moon protesting Russian political corruption or the little Lego police officer keeping an eye on it all.

Oh My!

I just noticed that the wonderful librabygirl, blogger of Living in the Kingdom of Too Much, has posted my blog on her list of some blogs she likes - eek! I feel the need to post more regularly. I've actually had some (ok - maybe 2 or 3) strangers looking at the blog. I had a spike in my stats from 0 to SEVEN one day. I've now had visitors from Australia and the US (although this may be my parents who are in Florida for the winter).

So, this is just a quick message before I leave for work to anyone who's visiting to say I promise to try to post more regularly. I have an update to do on the reno soon and then I'll start cleaning the cupboards so there will be more added to the Winklepedia. Hang in there. I'll give it a go.

(PS. Thanks a bunch librarygirl.)

Let the Restoration Begin

Now that all the mechanics are tip-top and brand-spanking, the kitchen can be put back together. That includes drywall and wallpaper. To that end, here's what's been going on this week....

The new ductwork for the new island range hood...

 The framing in of the plumbing to create new bulkheads...

 The strapping of the ceiling to create a level surface for the drywall...

And four hours of wallpaper stripping later the pros have removed... 6 inches along one 6 foot span... Wow, I'm really happy I'm not doing that job...

And then the drywall - yep, that's the hood duct, and you will note the further 6 hours of wallpaper work by two male strippers with a giant steamer and they've managed about a foot wide and maybe 10 foot span...

New bulkhead (still needs a little drywall underneath)

And the corner where this whole adventure began, ready for tape and mud.

This is the only wallpaper that will remain when it's all done - the kids height marks for the last nine years, and the heights of many of our friends kids too.

Oh, apparently the wallpaper above the door was holding the plaster in place and so now, it's drywall. There's another spot like that above the living room door that I expect will have the same result...

Wallpaperless. Or at least, less wallpaper...

Within a week we could actually be living in this room again. What a concept.

Oh yeah, the bathroom is on it's way too. I'll save that for my next post. You can ogle my pretty flooring sample...
cd

Missing...

...any knob and tube wiring in our home is now GONE! This is the very last, very lonely knob. Bah!

 ...seven foot long fluorescent tubes...GONE! Phooey! (Really, who would put those in a HOUSE??)

...to be replaced by tube free joists... 

 ... newly wired boxes waiting for new fixtures...

 ...newly wired switches, waiting to be...

 SWITCHED! and ...

...lovely white wires, waiting to connect our...

 ... family "nerve centre"...

... toaster, blender, cuisinart... but not fridge (now on it's very own circuit!)...

... new undercounter light...

... new, safer porch light, and if something does manage to blow...

...we can find it on our FULLY, CORRECTLY LABELLED panel! :woot:woot:

Can you tell, it's very exciting? One more small bit of plumbing and the reconstruction can begin.  Yahoo!

Winklepedia Part 2

First, I started documenting/cataloguing all my Kathie Winkle patterns. Thought it would be neat to see how many different ones I have. I also follow librarygirl's blog livinginthekingdomoftoomuch.com and she also collects Kathie Winkle. She recently made an offhand comment about her 200 pieces of KW to which I replied that she "has it bad" as I only have 157 pieces (a number I pulled out of my hat). She then counted and found only about 120 and said I was WORSE and so I had to count... 174. Yikes. There are a few more lying around the house filled with keys, earrings, etc and some in the garden box ready to be put outside (cracked, broken, etc.)

Ah well, here is today's Winklepedia entry:

I start with this lovely plate given to me by my dear friend Jane - right off her table! It does not have the customary Kathie Winkle signature but I'm pretty sure it's hers. If you know otherwise, let me know. Anyway, it is adorable! "Pomella"

 I found this one along with a lidless sugar bowl at the World Famous Gilmour Street Garage Sale. It's called "Lemon Grove". My friend Cathrine (also a Winkle Nut) has a pile of plates like this. This is an odd luncheon size plate (between a sandwich and a dinner).

This is a recent find and only in a creamer so no label at all. But it is the same size and shape as my other winkle creamers and obviously in the Winkle style. I don't know name - can you help?

I have a whole bunch of sugar bowls and only a couple with original lids. This is another one of which I have no other dishes so I don't know the name.

 And some more sugar bowls that I finally found a use for. From left "Lemon Grove",  "Capri" (I also have a platter in Capri", and "San Tropez".

That's all for today.