The City

the bridge. . ..















the Japanese tea gardens












View from Bourdin's













You know you want one. . .










If you're going to San Francisco















We hiked up the street, and suddenly turned around












What else does one do on Alcatraz?










'



The Warden's house now. Nature's first green . . .














Alcatraz














Powell Street. If you embiggen, you can see the Old Navy at the bottom, where we started.

Home

I'm sorry, I'll post pictures tomorrow. Too tired tonight.

Suitcase is unpacked. Going to have a bath and hit the sack.

Anyone who knows anything about replacing a stolen Canadian Passport - could you leave a comment (don't even ask, it's a long story, which ends with me using my health care card and a business card and my visa and Kuri to get on the plane in Calgary.)

It's good to be home.

Going Home

I love vacations, but I must confess about this many days in - 5 for those of you who are counting - I find myself longing for home.

I check the weather at home and I think about what it must be like. I pet the Inn Keeper's dog (and every other dog, I must be honest) and I miss my girls. I curl up in bed and imagine the cats on my feet. I buy dog bones and think earnestly of how I miss them. Delta's antics become charming, and I wish Maggie would jump up on me for ear scratches.

I sniff the air, and it smells wonderful, but it is not the air of home. There is salt and brine in the air, and there is not smoke and wet leaves and the nip of frost. The stars are clouded out here, the bright lights of them occluding any - and I think of my back deck and Orion. I wonder what the neighbours are up to, what has been happening at work, and what my mother is doing.

And most of all, I think of my house, of seeing my front door. I think about the dogs meeting me, Mr. Spit* opening the front door and standing on the porch, standing so that I can see him under the porch light. I can hear him calling out "hello darling". I can feel his arms around me - squeezing tightly, I can imagine my head against his chest, and I can smell his cologne and deoderant.

All of a sudden, it does not matter where I am. It does not matter that there has been crab, and beer and yarn stores, coffee in small places and unexpected glimpses of the ocean. It does not matter that are small treasures on every corner, and that I saw the sea lions play. It does not matter.

Home is calling.

****
(*) Except that there won't actually be a Mr. Spit waiting for me, he's out of town. But still.

Where You Think You Are

We each gave Lance, the cable car guy our business cards, because he said he'd send the pictures we took of each other, using his camera, to us. Actually, he said his wife would do it, which made me feel possibly more reassured, although the pictures are so boring that I can't fathom what he would do with them. He was bemused of our stories of Canada, and tried to insist that Canada's economic stimulus package should give him a swimming pool. I am sucking on the candy he handed to me, and smiling that he got a camera to take pictures of the tourists, because they always take pictures of him.

The Cable Car guys in SFO are well, colourful. They are loud and sarcastic, and not grumpy, but what my mother would call mouthy. They'll throw you off the car with out a by your leave, because it's full, and they'll stop the car on a street corner, to argue about the sports pool with a colleague.

We took the cable car to the wharf this morning, although we got on the wrong one, and missed our first sailing. And if a vacation is anything, it is a chance to remind yourself to relax, to go with the flow, and to seek out opportunities to be more zen like. As a bonus, we did not have Jane with us, boring and frustrating, insisting on "re-calculating" every 3 minutes.

Today was a zen like day. We did not do much of anything we planned on, or if we did it, we did it out of order and slightly off kilter. Alcatraz was amazing, if only because while everyone started at cell blocks and bars, we started at the gardens, lovingly restored to what they used to be. I struggled to name plants, not because I did not know them, but because my brain would fight. What is an annual, small and paltry in Alberta, is a bush, a shrub, a tree, a vine to cover the side of your house. I know fushia, I do not know it as a shrub, trained up the wall.

We wound up at a place called butterfly, which was a wonderful meal, but not what we planned. My blisters had blisters, and we took decided to take the cable car home for a brief nap. I entertained myself during the wait for the car, by petting the jazz musicians' rabbit. She was sweet and small and cuddly, and oh, I miss the boys and girls at home.

We were going to take the cable car and bus to the Mission district, but through a comedy of errors, we wound up 16 blocks into the Haight-Ashbury district.

Haight-Ashbury is the stuff of my personal legend. I have loved its music, its ethos since I was a teenager. While others talked about Woodstock, I thought of the Summer of Love. It was poverty and poetry, drugs and direct action. I love the music, the rebellion, the very idea of creating, of being something new.

Every neighbourhood in SFO has a smell. The real wharf smells of fish, the start of the tourist wharf has sourdough, Alcatraz is steeped in fog and salt and honeysuckle. Downtown smells, well of money, as I look at the big stores. Mission smelled of tamales, taco's, and hait, well, Haight still smelled, just a bit of jasmine incense.

The area was commercialized, with the idea of gentrification taking root. There did not seem to be much to indicate what had happened there. I thought of the video I had seen about the Indian occupation on Alcatraz, hours earlier, and I thought what I have been thinking about since arriving yesterday:

How things change.

One last request - this the day before my birthday. Aunt Becky has written my birthday blog, but I would like if you would comment, in the next few days, to tell me who you are, why you read, and when you started. Consider it a simple way to make my Birthday special.

Leaving

I'll have left my house before you read this.

I'll be there about 12pm their time.

Look for me.

Grok* the Sock

Look, when the Yarn Harlot says that you can't do something, you just can't. It is not possible. She's that knowledgeable, and yes, she's that good. Also, I like to think I am a smart person. When an intelligent, witty, kind and experienced woman tells me that knitting does not do X, I don't try it. Learn from the lessons of others, you can't live long enough.

On Sunday morning, the Philosophical Knitter and I were preparing to learn about sock knitting. I'm quite enthused. I am working on my first pair of toe-up socks, and I'm hating them. (Non-Knitting translation: you can start a sock at the cuff or at the toes.) And I'm grooving, because my idol is saying that she thinks that toe-up socks are just dumb, because among other things:

"You cannot knit a heel flap with short rows on a toe-up sock".

My eyes travel to the sock I am, at this very instant - this exact instant - knitting. In her class. This toe-up sock.

And, um, more or less, it has a heel flap. Modified. But there was a flap, and then I turned the heel, and then I picked up the stitches along the side of the flap and I knit them, and then decreased, and that gave me a gusset, and yep, this is a heel flap. There are only 2 kinds of heels in hand knitted sock, and I'll be honest, I don't even know how to do the other kind. This *is* a heel flap.

Ummm. Ahhhhh.

And I look at PK, and sure enough, she has the same heel. I know she has the same heel, because neither of us really used a pattern for our socks, and we had a discussion at lunch, and we decided on a heel flap. And in fact, we knit a heel flap. Indeed, when the time came to do the first one, I was in Emergency with Mr. Spit, and I had no Internet, no pattern book, no nothing. I couldn't even use my phone (and while I'm mentioning it, does any one find it odd that my $20 cell phone will wreck multi-million dollar equipment?).

So, I turned the heel. I sat and looked at it, figured out a plan, arsed it up 3 or 4 times, and then just finally dug in and knit the darn thing. And you know what? It worked. Really, it did. As you can see, it looked like a heel! It had short rows, and a gusset. It's a heel man, and I assure you, I started at the toes.

So, now I have this sock, and friends, this sock should not exist. There is a possibility that this sock is bending the time-space continuum, and it is also possibly responsible for every strange thing that Micheal Jackson has ever done. This sock is a problem. And it is sitting, plainly existing, in spite of the impossibility of the situation: a toe-up sock, with a heel flap.

Umm, Erm, toe-up sock with heel flap?!

I start knitting my freak-show sock under the table.

I'm not sure what to do. Do I rip it out? Bury it in my back yard in the dark of night and never, ever speak of it again? Holy yarn, help me. Woolly nylon, this is bad. Cheap acrylic bad. Getting to the end of a 300 stitch lace pattern, out one stitch, bad. Very bad.

I keep listening to the class, learning lots, but honest to wool, my world has been rocked. Finally at the end of the class, I put my hand up, very gingerly. I don't want to ask this question out loud. I want her to come over, so I can very quietly say:

"Umm, Stephanie, I have this toe-up sock, see this one right here and it's really a toe-up sock, and it's really got a heel flap, and yes the gusset goes up the leg and not down the foot, and I made the flap smaller and picked up fewer stitches, but really it's a heel flap and I knitted it on toe-up socks and oh, please for the love of wool, tell me I haven't broken knitting, and you aren't going to take my needles away from me, and strangle me with acrylic, and I'm really sorry, but you see I just didn't know that you couldn't do it, so, well, I did it, and I'm really sorry, and if you can't have a heel flap heel in a toe-up sock, tell me what I've done. Please?"

The Harlot says it's ok.

It's the same style as an absolutely brilliant designer named Cookie A came up with in 2006. It's called Baudelaire. And if I broke knitting, she broke it first. Also, she is teaching at the Sock Summit, so I don't think she broke knitting.

Phew.

*******
It's from Robert Heinlen's Stranger in a Strange Land. No, I didn't get the reference either.

Where Your Writing Will Take You

I brought my Yarn Harlot books to Saskatchewan, all 5 of them. I was truly not sure that I would have the courage to ask. It's one thing to ask a favourite author to sign a book, 5 books seems a bit excessive, and signing 1 story about a baby born still seems just off.

I was looking forward to the book, in early November, 2007, when it shipped with the Amazon order: a few of Dr. Sear's books, Barb Colorosso's Kids are Worth it, and The Secret Life of a Knitter. And I will tell you now, as I go and look at these books on my shelf, knowing that I gave away the book on ages and stages - because I knew that I would read it after Gabriel's death, read it and imagine things as they were not, could never be - I will tell you that it seems slippery, illusory, transitory, that I should remember any of this, any of that time, at all.


I fell into bed that night and I started reading. The Yarn Harlot is a humorist. Or at least - you will find her books as Knitting - Humour. It is, as she she said in her talk, a niche market. And it's true, the Yarn Harlot is uproariously funny. She is a story teller. To tell stories, all stories, and especially funny stories, is to see life, truly. And I suppose when you see life this way, all things are not funny.

Some women, some women, tell me that they knew their baby was going to die. There was a sign, a feeling, a knowing. I will tell you that I did not know. I did not know Gabriel's story. I did not know that babies died.

I brought the book to the front on Saturday night, my name tag marking page 153. I asked her to sign a story, and opened the book.

"You liked this story?" She asked, question in her voice.
No, no. A thousand times, no. But at the start of November, 2007, I did not know that babies' died. I did not know.

A month later, in a dark hospital room, my midwife quilting in the corner:

"It is a horrible truth that you must finish what you start, even though it seems too sad to do."
*********
Pearl McPhee, Stephanie. "'One Little Sock': The Secret Life of a Knitter". (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing) 153-156.

Unravelled

Saturday - 1 am.
Husband arrives home from business trip. Puts GPS in car. Announces that Muenster, SK is not in Jane the GPS. No worries, you have map. Also, Humbolt in in GPS.

Saturday - 9:30 am.
Finish putting baggage in car. Finally important deliberation on what knitting you are bringing. Plug GPS into mount. Get crash course in using. Kiss husband, dogs and cats good-bye. Drive away.

9:31 am
Circle block. Park in front of house, go back in. Get maps, also registration information. You are really leaving this time.

9:50 am
Arrive at other member of knitting-philosopher's group. Do not actually knock on door to let her know you have arrived, rather, walk down the side of her house to check out her very nice looking garden. Is ok, she saw you arrive, and knew to find you looking at garden. Get back in car.

10:05 am
Arrive back at your house to give Mr. Spit key to your mother's house, so he can feed her cat. You really are leaving now. Honest.

10:25 am.
Arrive gas station for fill up. Realize that you can't remember what side the gas tank is on.

10:35 am
Also, you don't know where the hood release is, so that you can fill up the windshield wiper fluid. This is going well, isn't it?

10:42 am
At Tim Horton's for coffee, breakfast sandwich - out of eggs, extra sausage, hash brown thing and 40 timbits. There are only two crueller timbits left. Resolve to try to cope as best you can. Leave with no hash brown. Sandwich has egg.

10:44 am
Ahh, on the road.

1:00 - ish
Holy yarn - how far is it to Lloydminster for bathroom? Also, discuss need for scale of washroom suitability. Decide that you could do scale with woman looking increasingly uncomfortable, with legs more and more crossed. Possibly lowest score could be bush beside highway. Ahh, Tim Hortons.

You know - Jane saying "recalculating" could get slightly annoying.

3:00 pm
North Battleford. Pizza place. Have to beg them to sell you and knitting-philosophy partner 1 pizza, at the 2 for 1 pizza place. Also, as always, get lost. Jane does seem to be sounding depressed when she says "recalculating".

4:00 pm
Saskatoon.

4:20 pm
Wow, they really do the speed limit in Saskatchewan. Completely the speed limit. Exactly the speed limit. Precisely the speed limit. Kill me now.

4:45 pm
Why are there cows on the road? Not cows. Pigs? Pigs. There are pigs on the road. Herd pigs back into farm yard with car. Wonder if you should get out, but decide you can barely see the back end of pigs. Wilbur was cute. This sow and her piglets were not cute. But, would have been waste of good bacon to run them over. Realize you forgot to take picture of pigs on road.

4:55 pm
What is that smell? Ugh, that's awful. Open window to find out. Opening window at 120km/hr is perhaps not clever. Paper goes flying past you. Paper called "map". "Map" will tell you how to the Abbey in Muenster. Express worry. KP partner grew up in a small town. Assures you, can't be hard. Muenster is small town. Abbey is big. Abbey has Cathedral. Cathedral has spire. You can find the spire in a flat Saskatchewan town. Also, still not sure what smell is, but opening window didn't help.

5:00 pm
Jane announces you have arrived at your location. Except you haven't. Pull out Map from Google Map, to figure out how to get from Humbolt to Muenster. Map from Google does not seem to bear any resemblance to present location. For example, none of the highway numbers seem to be the same. Also, no Muenster or Humbolt on map. Town called "Prince Albert" on map. Still not sure where "Prince Albert" is, although Jane keeps "recalculating" and trying to turn you around, as you.have.arrived.at.your.destination.now! Perhaps a few moments of un-philosophical language ensues. Decide to continue to drive straight. Must be sign or something.

5:05 pm.
Muenster - 8 KM
Odemeter - 42,368 KM

5:06 pm.
Muenster turn off
Odemeter - 42,371 KM
(more un-philosphical language)

5:07 pm
Reach end of Muenster. Do you see a spire?
Jane continues to "recalculate".

5:07:32 pm
Aha. Spire.

5:09 pm
Which parking lot are we supposed to be in? And what building? Oh, that was on the map. . . .

5:12 pm
After locating knitter (we saw her shawl, determined she was our kind of person), arrive through front door of Cathedral. Door SLAMS shut behind us. . . .