More Halloween houses

Getting creepier...

Hell, meet handbasket

Ever wonder where "going to hell in a handbasket" came from? Well, I can't tell you, and neither can Wikipedia, really.

Wikipedia does offer a nice definition though:

"a situation headed for disaster without effort or in great haste."

My definition:

"this week."

(I celebrated by watching Poltergeist last night, and some of The Power, while trying to finish the next big deadline project on my list. Didn't help much, but next time I stumble across paranormalisms in the bedroom closet I won't mistake them for overwrought dust bunnies. And that's something, isn't it?)

Tea leaves in the sky

I had a great aunt who could tell fortunes with tea leaves; my mother took me to see her sometimes on trips to stay with another great aunt, the one who lived alone in her own house till she was over 100 and then went on a year or two more in a retirement home.

This is only a small digression because I so often will smell something that takes me right back into the long-lived aunt's kitchen, bright and warm on a dark cool night, with bread toasting - the only food a very small Mary would eat in a strange place. (the tea-leaf-reading aunt, on the other hand, offered chocolates, which a very small and chocolate-obsessed Mary was too shy to take. Fat chance of that happening now!)

Last night I had a different memory trigger - a darkening sky lit by bright turning leaves. It reminded me of the light in the sky after a storm near the house I grew up in, but the leaves reminded me of those long-ago fortunes. I wonder if you can tell a fortune with any of these?




This one, on the other hand: it's an inkblot, or a passing collection of clouds.


I see:

an anteater
a teddy bear head
a big ol' branch about to drop on the lawn.

Halloween houses

Normally my neighbourhood is pretty warm and friendly, but it doesn't look that way just now.




You might have to click on these pictures to get a real sense of the way my neighbours are thinking. And the mood is spreading... I'll post more proof this week.

Seriously, that last pumpkin-on-garbage-can: scary! I am totally copying it when it's time to carve my pumpkins.

We got beets!

I just love that line from The Simpsons, with which Lisa greets her father on her return from the grocery store - so happy and optimistic - and I think of it every time I get beets.


Soooo... it's fall, aka harvest season, aka the best time of the year at my local fruit and veg. store, and I have so dropped the ball on cooking meals that I totally forgot to go in there until yesterday,

when I noticed I'm coming down with another cold and needed some lemons for hot honey and lemon. Pause for sympathetic murmurings.

Then I nearly left without the lemons, having filled up my bag with pears and apples and other goodies.

Do Brussels sprouts count as goodies? I think I've only cooked them once before, but I figured if I was to try them again, In Season and Local is a good time to do it. I found a nice recipe for Brussels sprouts and carrots, and improvised slightly with balsamic vinegar instead of cider vinegar, not having any of the latter in the house:


... and - well, not so nice really. But edible!

The beets, on the other hand, wrapped in aluminum foil and stuck into a hot oven for a couple of hours, were the beets. A bit smells-like-soil, a lot sweet and yummy.

Haunted, or haunting?

Last Sunday's outing included a stop at City Hall in Burlington, Ontario and, specifically, the war memorial that stands beside it. Apparently the statue is haunted - people say it blinks, changes the position of its hands, smokes a cigarette, etc. - and some of my party were interested to see it.

Well, if I were the ghost of a local boy who'd fought in the war and was buried in France, I would haunt the thing too. The site is lovely and old-fashioned, with large trees and a well-kept flagstone path around the base, an old brick house to the rear of the park and a vintage commemorative fountain at the entrance.

But the more I looked at this statue, representing a WWI soldier in full winter uniform, the more I was moved by its beauty. Days later I'm still thinking about it, about the artist who made it, and about all the local boys who wore these clothes and that gear.

The legs are wrapped, the greatcoat's folds heavy and pushed up against the back of the right leg as if by a strong wind. The gloved hands, cast so realistically that you can imagine hands inside them, rest one on a rifle and the other on the wrist of the first. The breast pockets are full, as are the belt's pockets - ammunition, I assume - and a knife and another weapon I couldn't identify are slipped through the belt at one side.

There are many more burdens, too. The figure wears two small satchels slung across the shoulder on one side, and a third on the other. Plus a backpack, and a small roll on top of that. Underneath the metal helmet is a woolen one, the kind mothers and sisters and sweethearts knit for loved ones and strangers alike. It fits snugly so that only the face shows: and what a face! Handsome, noble, resolute, brave - and above all, young.

I've thought often about the ordeal soldiers endured in that terrible war, but this statue brought me a new level of understanding of the sheer physicality of the effort - of the need for warmth, and the cost in weight of having it.

The statue is, I would guess, about 7 feet tall, and it stands on an similarly tall base memorializing the names of local boys who died in WWI, then WWII, and finally the Korean War. One name, Warrie, struck me especially, and I was pleased to find a reference to him on this page, which includes the best image of the statue I could find online - click on the picture for a larger view.

I was less pleased to learn that Warrie fought in the field for eight months before dying in an especially horrific battle. What torture those eight months must have been.

Not being able to find a more detailed photograph saddens me, though I doubt I could have taken one myself, the statue being so far above the ground. Not being able to find the name of the artist - it must be recorded somewhere, surely? - saddens me more. But what saddens me most is knowing that this memorial, with so much to say about sacrifice and tragedy and loss, is visited by hordes of people, myself included, for its entertainment value alone.

Maybe there is a bright side: maybe in staring intently at its unseeing eyes and its hands for some sign of movement, they too catch a glimpse of what those men went through.

Fall Sale followup

I didn't find any buttons or blankets or wool sweaters for felting, but I didn't come away empty-handed from the Awesome Fall Sale last week, either:


I have such a weakness for lacy and/or embroidered handkerchiefs. They don't take up a lot of room, which is an important consideration for me, and they're very pretty, and just rare enough of a find to feel exciting. Someday - probably a week Tuesday when I'm in the middle of writing an inspired piece that everyone will want to read - I might even think of something to do with them.

The plain white cloth underneath the hankies looks totally ordinary unless you happen to notice it's linen. And if you pick it up, you'll find it's linen that's been washed and ironed enough over the years to have a wonderful heavy drape. I found one pinprick of a stain on the underside near the edge; otherwise, it's in perfect shape, and it set me back all of $5. Again: no idea what I will do with this. But I'm happy to know that if I ever need a 3'x3' linen cloth, it's neatly folded in my cupboard and ready to go.

In the textile sections I found a lot of vintage knitting needles that I resisted, being distracted by this Singer sewing machine attachment. I love my old 1940s model, but I do wish I could serge the odd edge now and then. Zigzagging is a reasonable substitute though, and for a buck, I figured I could gamble on this 1950s attachment fitting my machine. Sometime this week when I get a chance (and if I think I don't have time, I'm sure to make it by sitting down to write a first draft of the aforementioned inspired piece), I'll find out whether or not I won the bet.