Little Bear Walks The Dog, on Sheinkin Street

Note new Nimrod sandals and trendy off-the-shoulder shirt (improvised by Herself).

I am flying behind them :-)

Misty Morning at Le Vieux Monastere

Misty Morning at Le Vieux Monastere
Originally uploaded by savtadotty

This is where I spent my marvelous knitting workshop week. More photos from France at my flickr.

Kate Reports!

It turns out that one of my co-campers, Kate Buchanan, was sent by a Simply Knitting British Knitting Magazine, to report daily from France on camp activities. Kate did a fantastic job, with photos. Scroll down if you don't see her report after you click. Saturday and Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

Globetrotting Savta

Knitting camp was so smashing that I started a group blog for the campers. Photos and updates will be posted there starting next week.

Meanwhile, Claude has posted a report and photos of our short but very sweet meeting (chocolate croissants and fine company!) in Paris almost two weeks ago. We managed to squeeze in quite a lot of catching up while riding the bus, eating, drinking coffee and walking around a bit. I hope we can do it again...anywhere at least one of us speaks the language.

Now I'm running around London with Prowesslessnesslessness, Pippi Bluestocking, and Little Bear, and having a great time. We've visited the Princess Diana Memorial Playground twice, ridden many tubes and double-decker busses (sp?) and eaten countless pizzas. When you travel with an almost-three-year-old, gourmet dining is just not happening. I'll be home this weekend with many photos to upload.

Untangling Knots, Part III

Nine and a half hours' sorting through papers, conference proceedings, technical papers, personal letters, postcards, old bank statements, etc. If Rappy had left me out of her sight for more than two minutes, I would have run away to join the circus. And tomorrow will be more of the same, but boy am I getting rid of excess baggage! Wheeeee!

And speaking of running away, I will be away next week vacationing at a residential knitting workshop in a converted monastery (with swimming pool) in the neighborhood of La Rochelle, France! Ooh la la! Pippi Bluestocking calls it "Knitting Camp," which is a suitable description for someone like me, in her second childhood. And then, thanks to Ryanair, I will be cavorting around London with that very same droll Pippi, together with Prowesslessnesslessness, and Little Bear, for several days. I'm telling you all this for two reasons: 1) to make you jealous, and 2) to warn you that blogging may be spotty for the next few weeks. Au revoir and cheerio!

Untangling Knots, Part II (Updated*********)

While I was composing Untangling Knots, Part I, I took a break and visited a few of my favorite blogs, and thanks the to The Ice Floe I learned that yesterday was lgbt (that's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) family day, and bloggers who wanted to commemorate the occasion were invited to do so and notify mombian to add their posts to the collection. I sent mombian an email regretting that I'd missed the deadline and learned that I can still contribute! So this post takes on a new meaning.

Nine years ago my daughter elswhere and her partner had a commitment ceremony, which I've already blogged about. Almost seven years ago they had a daughter, my first grandchild, Mermaid Girl. (Elswhere blogs about Mermaid Girl's doings over at Travels in Booland). Four years ago they got married legally, in Vancouver, with Mermaid Girl as flower girl. During those years I've had plenty of time to get used to being a grandma in an lgbt family...and not just used to, but proud of. Most of the time my concerns are not that my granddaughter has two mommies, but that one of her grandmothers (me) lives so far away that she can only see her at great expense. I do what I can to compensate for the distance: Skype calls, notes, gift packages, blog, and most of all, knitting. I knit for her and for her dolls.

Since Mermaid Girl has great fashion sense, and is very interested in how she dresses, I have taken to bringing my knitting design book with me on my annual visit and letting her choose how she wants her sweater to look. This year's choice is quite complicated: ladybugs, twelve in all, around the bottom border, a dog and a teddy bear in the front, and a robin redbreast and a butterfly in the back. That means a lot of colors. Which means a lot of tangles. It will get worse before it gets better!

But don't worry, I'll post photos of the finished product.

*********Update: Done!

Beshert! Untangling Knots, Part I

Remember last September, when I was in despair about making absolutely no progress on the cleaning up and throwing out of stuff?

Well in order to empty the bedroom so it could become green, everything movable had to be moved out. Including the computer. I could not imagine voluntarily forswearing the use of my computer for several days, so John Leonard graciously helped me move it and its associated desk-like surface into the machsan. However, to do that, the machsan had to have room for it. So we made all the stuff on the machsan floor go away, and now I have a private little computer room.

(Do you think moving the computer from the bedroom to a separate room will affect the content of my blog?)

But it didn't stop there. At a recent Soup Salon, Noorster allowed as how Rappy had helped her to apply Apartment Therapy and the results were spectacular. I went to inspect, and engaged Rappy on the spot. That is, through a confluence of circumstances I can only interpret as beshert, Rappy is on a temporary hiatus from her usual work and has time to spend as an Apartment Therapist for selected clients/friends.

On the appointed evening, she came over and did a five-minute reconaissance, after which she informed me that things were going to get worse before they got better. Not only was all the stuff from the newly-painted bedroom still clogging up the living-room, but all the stuff from the new computer room - not counting the computer and its desk - would have to come out, temporarily clogging up the newly-painted bedroom, because a total overhaul was necessary. And since over the years that the computer was in the bedroom various work and household administration files had migrated from one room to the other, there was not only too much stuff, but what wasn't too much was in the wrong room.

Upon further analysis, it beame clear that the computer was going to remain in its new home, turning it forever from machsan into office, and therefore an air-conditioner was required. The air-conditioner that makes most of my apartment habitable in summer doesn't have enough power (or vents) to reach the computer room. When the room was a machsan, serving the functions of a closet/attic, climate control wasn't important. But for someone who went into the computer industry back in the 1950's mostly because of the guaranteed air-conditioning (!), the idea of sweltering while trying to type in a Tel Aviv summer was most unappealing.

Enter Amnon, the air-conditioning guy. I called him on his cellphone and he happened to be driving his truck around the corner from me at the moment of my call (another beshert!), and could come over to inspect immediately. It was a Thursday, and by the following Monday my new air-conditioner was installed. Not a moment too soon, for later that week an emergency editing job came my way, simultaneously with a heat wave.

So this past week all the piles of stuff in the living room and the bedroom sat patiently combining their years of accumulated dust with the new dust from the air-condition installation that was layered over everything, while I happily untangled knots of turgid prose in a business document. While so doing I realized that my life at the moment is devoted to untangling knots: metaphorically both in prose and in piles of files, and literally in my knitting. My next post will be more about the knitting...and the tangles therein...