Twists of Fate

The veil is thin, and the dead are near. The harvest is done, and we enter the dark time of the year.

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m actually looking forwrad to it for once. I could use some time to reflect and think about all the changes from this year.

Happy Samhain for those who celebrate!

——-

This new job is sucking all my time like a big fat…timesuckingthingy. I was able to break the gravitational pull long enough to escape to Vancouver for the weekend though! And it was lovely.

Dude! My new RLBFF (real life best friend forever) Erynn and I went up to Vancouver on Saturday for the Halloween Haunt thing there at Bridge Studios. And while I’ll get to that more in a moment, really, the highlight of the entire trip was getting to hang out with new friends Bruce and Heather at their apartment in Vancouver for about eight hours. Bruce is a fairly recognizable face, and my inner fangirl was all asquee.

But I played it cool. He and his wife are terribly lovely people. I think we all got on like a house on fire. She does lovely handcrafted jewelry with semi-precious stones (if you’re in the Vancouver area and reading this, drop me an email and I’ll try to hook you up with either shop names or will forward your info if you’re interested in meeting her for custom work), and we spent a good 30 min or so going over her work. I was most appreciative - she does a lot of different things than I’ve seen with other people’s work (Cherry Blossom Designs and Stone Lotus Creations are my main points of reference), and they tend toward bold and very colorful. I apparently was super appreciative, because she gave me a cute pair of earrings. YAY!

I’m sure Bruce (I get to call him Bruce…weeeeeeird!) wasn’t quite sure what to expect, though Erynn told me that of course they would hope that anyone she brought with her to meet them would be cool and not freaky. He’s an interesting guy - very mellow, very likeable…just a regular guy who works at a funky job for a living. They have a gingery cat with a half-tail. I can’t remember his name, but he’s a rescue and apparently hides whenever someone new is in the apartment. But he came out to greet me, and both his mom and dad were quite impressed by that. :D

Now, the Halloween Haunt! We said goodbye to B&M and headed to the Accent Inn, which is right across the street from Bridge Studios. Unfortunately, no pictures allowed during the tour, and I didn’t get a pic of the MGM sign outside that has SG1, Atlantis and something else
on the Marquee. But it was a neat experience - we got there about 15 min early after snagging a piece of pie at the diner attached to the Inn (very reasonable, I thought - $100/night for a queen double, and it was neat and clean and tidy and right across the street) we walked
over to get in line.

They had a puddle jumper there in the “lobby” of the building where everyone was lining up. I bought a single raffle ticket ($5 each!), because mama needs a new Crackberry (one of the prizes). Anyway, they were doing pictures in the puddle jumper, also for $5, so I ponied up the fiver so Erynn and I could see the main part of the craft. If you didn’t pay for a picture, you could just look at the cargo area with all the webbing and stuff. BTW, for fic type purposes, you could totally fit like 25 people in there. Standing room only, but you could squish. *G*

The tour itself was kinda lame - our main tour guide was a total dork, though cheerful enough. Our group number was 42 (we are the answer to the universe!), so you know they must just be annoyed at having to do this by now. There was one younger girl there with Downs Syndrome who was really askeered by it all, but she got through it with smiles and by clinging to the hands of her parents all the way through. Her reactions were great! It was neat to watch someone not so jaded go through the whole thing. I was usually the first through the door after the guide (I hate being boxed in like sheeps), and tried to examine all the SGA stuff as closely as possible w/out touching anything.

They wouldn’t let us w/in about 10 feet of the actual Stargate, which was sadmaking. They had put a shit ton of spider-webbing in the middle of it though, which was cute. Part of the reason no pics was that some of the sets are “live”, even though SGA is on a filming hiatus right now. They didn’t want spoiler stuff leaking to the ‘net, or so the guide said. WhatEVAH!

While not scary, the effects, makeup, set dressing and the stunts were fantastic. The whole thing is a volunteer effort, and all the money goes to the BC Childrens’ Hospital. There were about 30-35 people per group, and they still had three days to go. Not a whole shit ton of money generated from the tour itself, considering how long it must have taken to actually do up the whole thing, but still a great thing to do for a charity. And fun!

I was really dragging by the end of the tour though. I feel like I walked over half of Vancouver that weekend! We met with another FOE (Friend of Erynn) who used to be the extras wrangler for SG1, but is now making his own films. He was a great guy, and was enthusiastic about his new project - a film about the last night of Eryol Flynn’s life. He died in Vancouver, and…well, it was interesting. We were supposed to meet with another friend of hers who was also a part of SG1 at one point in time, but he was working on the set of Fantastic Four 2 and was unable to meet us. Something about shooting the helicopter scenes?

We did meet a lovely woman who had nothing to do with the entertainment business that Erynn has known for years. She’s a writer, and a pagan, and we went to a remarkable park in Burnaby:
http://www.city.burnaby.bc.ca/cityhall/departments/departments_parks/prksrc_prksan/prksrc_prksan_brnbym.html

The totems are really awesome, and it was a crystal clear day to be up that high. I have pics and will post them later. It was just super cool. We had breakfast, and a cup of tea and a nibble after the park, and by then both Erynn and I were drooping, so we dropped The Lovely Lady off at her apartment (she had three fuzzies!) and headed home.

It was a great weekend, I would totally go back to the haunted house next year, because it was cool, and hopefully meet up with the lovely lovely peoples again for a bite to eat and a chat.

And now I’m back with my nose to the grindstone, and should be getting offline to head to a meeting. Whee! Pics soon, once I extract them from the camera.

Can you believe I was in a whole ‘nother country for nearly two entire days and didn’t once think about visiting a yarn store? *gapes* I just realized that. I must be ill. Good lord!

Happy Mabon! I wish I felt like preparing a big old feast to celebrate the holiday, but I’m going to have to settle for leftover Pagliacci’s pizza and a coke. We’re halfway through Fall in the way I think of time, and the world reflects those changes. It’s getting cooler, and it’s downright nippy at times. The harvest is proceeding apace, and it’s a bountiful time with a bittersweet twist.

I know I’m not quite ready for the light to dwindle and leave us with months of darkness. Or, here in the PNW, days and days and days of unrelenting, soggy grey skies. It’s been overcast and raining here for quite a few days now, and I feel this sense of panic that’s proving a bit hard to shake. I’m sure it’s a result of still being off-kilter from being ambushed by family, but it’s a very disconcerting feeling.

To combat this, I’ve been working steadily on a few knitting projects. I needed a break from size US 0 & 1 DPNs, so I’ve been working on the Portland Pullover from Fall IK ‘06. I’ve just placed all the stitches for the body and the sleeves on the circ, and will work on the yoke tonight. I don’t think I’m going to finish it tonight, but perhaps by the end of the weekend.

Question on finishing, as this is my very first sweater. Do you wash/block the sweater before or after sewing up the sleeves and weaving in the ends? There really won’t be many loose ends here on this project, but I’ve not actually done this before, and feel a bit dumb about asking. However, I’d also really like to avoid frogging Colinette Mohair, so better dumb than bedraggled. Anyone?

I just put in another batch of fleece to soak. Nadine from Skylines Farm. Again. I just love her fleeces. She’s also listed in the sidebar if y’all want to go look. I think she’s about sold out for the year, and considering how many fleeces she had this year (over 70? I think?), that’s quite a testament to the quality and popularity. Of course, me pushing it like a dealer on a playground probably doesn’t hurt. I really should’ve spent more time washing in the past couple of weeks, but I’m way behind schedule.

And can’t quite bring myself to care. “My Give a Damn’s Busted” by JoDee Messina seems to be my anthem lately. I’m not really a country music fan, but she’s naturally in my range and I enjoy singing along with her. Plus, it blocks out the sounds of my neighbor having truly enthusiastic sex up against the wall between our apartments. Last night was especially…operatic. I have to wonder if the person he’s with is a professional (singer! geez! brains! gutter!), or if she’s just naturally got big…lungs.

Er, yes. There is just no way up from where this is heading.

To address a comment my beloved KnitterPatter left - I have no idea how to address the RSS feed issue with the giant question mark. I do know that if you go to bloglines and type in the URL for the blog, you can sub that way. I just haven’t had the energy to dig into learning .php from the ground level, so it’ll be a while before I can truly customize the format here. If you have any suggestions about that, please do leave a comment.

How y’all doing?

Technically, I think Lammas or Lughnasadh would fall on the 9th this year, but many Neo-Pagans celebrate it on August 1st. I’ll open up a bottle of mead tonight, and probably one on the 9th, just because. *G*

I usually take the Sabbats to stop for a bit, to slow down and do a simple ritual and take a moment to appreciate how “the wheel of the year turns”. To me, this is the beginning of Fall, and the harvest. What am I harvesting in my life now? Have I tended to my mental/emotional/physical/spiritual crops so that they prospered, or did something wither on the vine here due to distraction and lack of attention?

There’ve been a lot of changes in the past six weeks or so, and I’m still reeling from a lot of it. There’s a lot of uncertainty in my future, a whole lot of questions that need to be answered. But for now, I shall sit back, cast a circle, light some candles and do some meditating, and offer up some bread, cheese, fruit and wine as thanks for the wonderful things and people I have in my life.

Abundance is all around me, and I thank Them for allowing me to partake of the harvest.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, enjoy the longest day of the year! Bask in the light and the warmth, and revel in this period of bounty! I know I plan to today. The fact I have plans to go to two LYS has nothing to do with it.

Really.

Why are you looking at me like that?

Also, here’s a question for blogland. I’m waffling between the Alvin Ramer super mini combs (probably in cherry) because I was recced them three times over. However, the Forsyth four pitch comb set looks really stinkin’ nice too, mostly because I see reports of them separating dual coated fleeces really well. I like this idea, as I have a bunch of Icelandic and Shetland in my stash.

So, recs on either? Pros? Cons? Help?

I remain fantastically cranky (family issues, work, etc), but wanted to drop a line to say I wish everyone who may see this a marvelous, wonderful, superfantastic Beltane today! The light grows ever stronger, and the earth is ripe and ready to create all that is necessary for another successful year.

May all the seeds you have planted in the past months bear fruit and bring you joy in the months to come!