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I don’t know about you, but in my family, much of the holidays is spent sitting around, before and after meals. Yeah, I know we should be tobogganing or cross-country skiing or something HEALTHY but we DON’T DO THAT, OK?

Anyway, I may be sitting, but I’m not idle. I like to have a little something handwork-wise on the go in between rounds of turkey, trifle and Apples to Apples. On Christmas Day, I pulled a ball of blue yarn (Vanna’s Choice, come to think of it) out of my bag and started knitting. I ended up with this bunny. The ears took a few tries, but overall I’m happy with Blue Bun Bun. I think I’ll make another and draft a pattern while I’m at it. (It’s knit in th round on DPNs, naturally. Like I’m going to put unnecessary seams to sew in a pattern of my own making.)

I ended up blogging here even less this week than I expected; such is the nature of the holidays! So let me just send out this missive wishing you peace, love and joy this holiday and in the new ear. Also, a photo of my Christmas tree — the first time I’ve set one up for myself.

xoxo!

Gentle Grains doesn't appear to have a website, yet, so here's a photograph of the pamphlet!

Last night I was heading home from some Christmas shopping when I stopped in at VitaHealth on Osborne. In the little area between the till and the bath and body section was a petite blonde woman standing behind a large, round table covered with delicious, bite-sized baked treats.

I asked her what was up, and she said, “I have a business called Gentle Grains, and I bake things that are all gluten, dairy and nut-free.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say at right that moment because I was so in awe. Gluten-free AND nut-free? The exact combination of allergies in my family?

She told me that she had taken baking at Red River College and then had stayed home to raise her children. Now they’re in school, so she’s giving this business a try. From the brochure:

The Gentle Grains story starts in the early ’80s when, as children, growing numbers of our friends and family were being diagnosed with celiac disease. Unable to eat the gluten in wheat, barley, ry, most oats or any of their derivatives, we were sorry to see people we love turn down birthday cake or a slice on pizza night. We were nearly as anxious as they were when eating out, imploring a restaurant’s waitstaff to keep their meals gluten-free, only to return home with them that evening, bed-ridden sick with gluten contamination.

Here’s Gentle Grains’ current menu:

• Bagels
• Artisanal bread
• Pizza crust
• Yeast-free buns
• Breadsticks
• Cinnamon buns
• Muffins (Pumpkin, blueberry-lemon and apple-cranberry)
• Cookies (Choco chip, gingerbead, oatmeal raisin)
• Cakes (Vanilla and chocolate)
• Tortes/squares (Mint chocolate and butterscotch)

Gentle Grains is currently retailing at VitaHealth stores; it’s bakery is in a rented community centre kitchen! No website yet, you can email j.lawrence  (at)  live  (dot) ca or call 204-998-3683.

I purchased one of the GG pizza crusts, which the VitaHealth guy enthusiastically described as not the “best gluten-free pizza crust,” but the “best pizza crust ever!” I also picked up a half-dozen of the yeast-free buns, which are delicious (the pizza crust is in the freezer, being saved for later!). Now, the price point on these items is high — $7.99 for the crust, $8.99 for the buns. But people who shop for GF products know that there is a higher cost to these things (unfortunately). Most of us are used to buying frozen products, and these are fresh, too.

Anyway, I’m going to do my part to buy lots of GG products at VitaHealth, so they’ll have no choice to stock her entire line of delicious baked goods!

Some of you readers will be familiar with much of the following content by virtue of following me on Tumblr, Twitter, or Facebook. I thought I’d post some of my favourite sights and such from the past week anyway, with a bit of expanded commentary, for my own reference and, hopefully, for the enjoyment of people who don’t actually feel the need to visit every single one of my online haunts.

1. THE CLEVEREST CEPHALOPOD

Octopus carries around coconut shells as suits of armour (ScienceBlogs, Dec. 14)

-Cephalopods are all the rage these days, even when they aren’t exhibiting signs of bona fide tool use. I’m not sure that primates like bonobos, capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees look quite as elegant or mesmerizing when they use sticks or stones to achieve their food-gathering objectives. I’m as wont to anthropomorphize animal behaviour as anyone, so I’ll go ahead and say that it almost looks like the octopus in the video is having fun.

2. INDIE ART AND MUSIC STARS DRAW DAVID BOWIE

Tunde Adebimpe's illustration of Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie

One of my personal favourite indie rockers, TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, is the latest to add to a two-year project collecting 2D interpretations of Bowie. This is inspiring me to knit up the pattern of ZS-era Bowie that appears in the book Knitted Icons. (The book was a gift from a friend, and so far I’ve only made up the Albert Einstein doll.)

3. THE SARTORIALIST SHOWS SOME RANGE

"On the Street....Chapel St., Melbourne"

I don’t regularly read The Sartorialist anymore, mostly because I find his taste to conservative and mainstream to be of any interest to me, but also because the vast, vast majority of his subjects are skinny white people. And believe me, some of my best friends are skinny white people, but I much prefer blogs that feature an unconventional physical type or, better still, a wider variety of ages, genders, sizes and ethnicities.

But! A Twitter friend linked to this post and suddenly my interest in the most famous fashion blogger ever was renewed. This veiled woman is stunningly stylish — a concept which is anything but new to me, personally. I’ve had hijab-wearing friends who were both modest and fashionable, and I see women like this frequently in my everyday life. So, it’s nice to see them represented in such a mainstream venue.

4. EXCELLENT GIG POSTER

Top Canadian music blog i (heart) music had this poster for a gig in Toronto, the illustration of which captured my imagination in a big way. It has many features I like — northern lights rendered as text, a polar bear, and a warmly-dressed little girl, the latter two components combining to form what I choose to believe is a reference to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Unfortunately, I can’t make out the artist credit, so I don’t know who drew this!

5. LET’S ALL LEARN FROM HIS MISTAKE

The story of a guy in Alberta who (illegally) jumped on a train in an effort to speed his trip home on a very, very cold winter night and ended up being stuck in a frozen train car as the train continued to speed up and head of a town caught my attention because I used to live near the town in which it happened. I first heard the story on national CBC radio show As It Happens, where host Carol Off was appropriately sympathetic to the guy, who would definitely have frozen to death on that train if he hadn’t had his cell phone with him (which he used to call 911).

I know a lot of people (based on cursory glance of the CBC.ca comment pages) think this guy is an idiot for jumping on the train in the first place (and using taxpayer resources during his rescue). I certainly don’t disagree that it was a stupid move. (Let’s all learn second hand from his mistake, OK?) But I can’t be too hard on him, because I, too, have done less-than-smart things while trying to make my way home on foot during an extremely cold winter’s night. Something about the cold makes your IQ (or, at least your logical reasoning skills) drop a few points. Granted, I’ve never done anything as ill-advised as jumping on a moving train, but still.

Well, not today today, but a couple days ago.

I was going through the mail at work, as is my prerogative. Moments like this one make me relish that prerogative.

I came across an unusually pristine bubble mailer — we get tons (not literally, because they are quite lightweight, so perhaps I should say VOLUMES) of bubble mailers, and few are as clean and unrumpled as this one. Perhaps Beth at Indoor Recess has some special bubble mailer powers?

Anyway, then I noticed the stamps. They were unusually relevant to my interests:

Outer space AND and dragonflies. (Specifically, the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and Aeshna canadensis.)

So, was there any question that I’d find something unbearably wonderful inside the envelope?

Read the rest of this entry »

NB: THOSE WHO ARE NOT NERDS FOR BOOKS OR FANTASY IN GENERAL CAN SKIP THIS POST

On Tuesday, for the first time since 1995 (or 1996, he can’t quite recall), Neil Gaiman came to Winnipeg. (Click here if you have no idea who this guy is.)

And we came to Neil Gaiman.

He did a reading from his newest book, Odd and the Frost Giants, which I regret not buying, because it involves Norse god characters and I’m a sucker for that sort of thing (which is why I went out on a very cold Tuesday night to see Neil Gaiman in person, I suppose). He was quippy and answered pre-selected questions with with and grace and flair.

Quotable Neil:

“Nobody can stop me! They’ve handed me the microphone. I am now king!”

-On his acceptance speech for the Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book at the Indies Choice Book Awards, where he announced, off the top of his head and spur-of-the-moment , a continent-wide contest where the independent bookseller that threw the best Graveyard Book Halloween party would receive a personal visit from him. McNally Robinson was one of the winners; the other was a store in Decatur, Georgia.

“If I pick randomly, it’s not going to be Winnipeg in December.”

-On his decision to visit both front-runners in the competition instead of flipping a coin or picking “randomly.” Over 40 parties were held throughout Canada and the U.S., but none in Alaska or Hawaii. Neil expressed his great disappointment there were no submissions from the latter, and with temperatures like ours, who can blame him?

“I don’t know if you have been at a signing at 10 o’clock at night with hungry eight-year-olds, but trust me, the right thing to do is get them to bed.”

-On why the kids in the audience would get their books signed first.

“I was fascinated by the way women would fall in love with him and he would not notice.”

-On Richard Curtis, whom Gaiman says was the basis for the character of Richard Mayhew in Neverwhere (though the character’s appearance as described in the book is that of the actor who played him in the simultaneously produced/written BBC miniseries).  Gaiman went on to claim that Hugh Grant’s entire public persona is basically that actor “doing Richard Curtis,” who directed Grant’s star turn in Four Weddings and a Funeral. He suggested we watch interviews with Grant from before that movie for proof of the change.

“I hate the expression ‘be good.’ It implies, ‘You sit there and don’t cause trouble’… I think people should make a mess.”

-In response to the question, “What do you feel it means to be good?”

“She’s like that, but turned down.”

“I’m convinced the Amanda Palmer who gets on stage is unembarassable.”

-On girlfriend (and Dresden Dolls singer) Amanda Palmer in real life, as opposed to her stage and public persona.

“Audiences expected someone who talked in flawless iambic pentameter.”

-On why, after his 1999 book tour for Stardust, Gaiman started blogging — to strip away the mystique surrounding him as a public figure.

“You can pour them, like pizza sauce.”

-On bees. Gaiman is an amateur beekeeper, a hobby he put off taking up for years due to his assistant Lorraine’s fear. He told the story of how his first shipment of bees arrived in the mail on a day he was out of town (as Lorraine had feared). Gaiman’s friend and co-beekeeper poured out the first package of bees (they in a docile state when transported) while Lorraine watched. She insisted on pouring out the second packet and ever since then, Gaiman says, has been “one with the bees.”

Another question concerned his response to the amazing dolls and sets created for the film adaptation of Coraline. Gaiman said that at first he felt guilty about all the work that went in to creating a visual representation of what originally formed effortlessly in his mind. This changed, however, after he did a signing at Laika, the film’s production company. He met a carpenter who had seen the DVD extras for the film version of Stardust, where Gaiman tours the sets and remarks on his “guilt” surrounding the thousands of hours and millions of dollars that go into bringing his ideas to the screen. The carpenter said he shouldn’t feel guilty, because “If it wasn’t for people like you, I’d be making shelves!”

+++

In summary: what a treat.

We stuck around for awhile after the reading in hopes of getting our books signed; while Neil and Co. promised that every single person who wanted a book signed would get it (and I believe them!), we weren’t sure we wanted to spend several hours in line to make that happen. For us, a fleeting face-to-face moment and a scrawl of ink wasn’t the main draw. The reading itself, and the excitement surrounding it, was the nerd-rush we were looking for!

Other highights:

- seeing lots of friends and familiar faces

- overhearing a couple of super nerdy guys (you know, the kind who would correct you on a small detail from panel three of page 45 of Watchmen at the slightest provocation) pronounce Neil’s surname incorrectly (it rhymes with “layman,” not “pieman”).

-the families with younger children who were in attendance, and their varying levels of hippiedom (Long hair. Beards. Embellished felt vests. Plus some Scatterbained Professor types).

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