Warm Your Feet with Slippers this Winter

My Mother has decided to make slippers for Christmas this year. She knits. I crochet and sew. We have tried two patterns found online so far. One did work but the slippers are pretty huge and floppy. I do like the chocolate brown colour she knit them in. They remind me of the sweater she knit me when I was still in high school, same colour and same style of knit.

We have looked at a lot of patterns. Some just don’t look right. Some are too cute for me to consider – maybe if I were still a child. Some patterns look so complicated I don’t think I’d want to start them as just a light-hearted project. But, a few look great. One I especially like but it’s a knit pattern and we need to get out and buy a set of four knitting needles for it. We haven’t done that yet. (It’s on the to-do list).

This whole winter slipper project started because I have bought so many slippers and then found them disappointing. One pair actually lasted a second winter, but then I decided to get a fresh pair and used the pink furry stuff they were made from for a holiday gingerbread man I was sewing up. If I had known those were the last slippers I would find to be good, I would have kept them. I bought three other pairs after that. All of them fell apart, became worn out or were awful because they didn’t have some tread – especially bad when the floors are a bit wet in the kitchen or bathroom.

So on the project goes. Between the two of us we will create a great pair of slippers, one method or another. I haven’t bought a pattern book, but looking online does make it tempting. I found one pair made from felt, those look warm and toasty for a cold winter.

One interesting thing I’ve discovered – in the US people leave their shoes on in the house. As a Canadian this sounds really odd. We take our shoes off at the door. That’s why we wear slippers in the house. Or, socks or just bare feet, if we don’t have slippers to put on.

You Thought it was Just Baby Shaking…

I read this whole thing in email. I don’t know how or why it was sent to me. I don’t have children. But, as I was reading it I had the thought… why don’t car manufacturers just have a setting which keeps the car from overheating inside? They have many other safety features for children/ parents. It would also save all those pets left in cars.

There are all sorts of stories that are almost identical to Brenda’s, all over the world. They are all incidents in which tired, busy or overwhelmed parents simply forgot to take their kid to a babysitter, or into the house after being out, and they were left to die in hot cars.

Each year in the US, about 37 babies and toddlers die when they are accidentally left strapped in car safety seats or become trapped in vehicles that rapidly heat up.
Since 1998, there have been at least 570 documented cases of heatstroke deaths of children in vehicles.

It has become my mission to speak the message of being a “conscious” parent. I now appear in articles, blogs and the like discussing top tips for mums to slow down and stop being “rushing women”.

Here are some of my top tips to prevent accidents like this:

Never leave a child unattended in a vehicle.
If you see a child unattended in a hot vehicle, call 000.
Be sure all occupants leave the vehicle when unloading. Don’t overlook sleeping babies.
Always lock your car and ensure children do not have access to keys or remote entry devices. If a child is missing, always check a pool first, then the car, including the trunk.
Keep a stuffed animal in the car seat and when the child is in the seat, place the stuffed animal in the front seat with the driver. Or, place your purse or briefcase in the back seat so that you will have to look in the back to retrieve it, thereby seeing your child.
Make “look before you leave” a routine whenever you get out of the car. I see some stores has a sign on its entrance that reminds shoppers to be sure that they have all their children out of the car before they go in the store.
Have a plan that your childcare provider will call you if your child does not show up to daycare

Pumpkin City: Early for Halloween

Pumpkin city

Pumpkin city

I especially like this idea. I could make a row of them like a candlelit village. I’d rather have these than a scary jack-o-lantern face.

Pumpkin City

A passel of pumpkins provides the backdrop for a quaint village scene.

Step 1: Carve a hole in the bottom of each pumpkin, scoop out the pulp, and return the cut pieces.

Step 2: Print out these house templates. Resize on a copier, scaling the images to fit your pumpkins.

Step 3: Cut out stencils as directed on the templates and affix to pumpkins with masking tape. Trace on the designs with a felt-tip pen.

Step 4: Remove stencils, then carefully carve along the drawn lines of the houses’ windows with an X-Acto knife. Fill in the designs using a fine-tip brush and black flat acrylic paint; let dry. Affix a battery-operated votive candle in the base of each pumpkin with adhesive putty.

Read more: Country Living

Continuing My Obsession to Know Everything…

HubPages has a lot of good posts about Toronto and area history, with photos. Here are links for you to follow, if you dare share the obsession.

The Gooderham Family

Fort York

Canadian Bank of Commerce Building, 1905

Campbell House

Dominion Public Building

Riverdale Farm

Central Technical School

Cornell House

Vaughan’s Belltower Landmark

Zion Schoolhouse

Post Hill House, Ajax

Ashbridge’s Estate

‘In the Way of Progress’ Mural

Thomas Foster Memorial, Uxbridge

Gibson House

Castle Frank

Alexander Muir Mural

Spooner’s Garage Mural

York Memorial Collegiate

1845 Commercial Bank Building

Confederation Life Building

The Don River

McCowan Log House

Pioneer Memorial Cairn, Pickering

St. Augustine’s Seminary, Scarborough

Sir Adam Beck Statue

Massey Hall

Union Station

Cathedral of Methodism

St. Lawrence Hall and the Canadian Bank of Commerce Building

Parliament, Queen’s Park

Casa Loma

Casa Loma and Henry Pellatt

Toronto Brick Works

Toronto Harbour Commission Building

Gladstone Hotel

Edwards Gardens

Davenport Church

Scarborough Rifle Co. Mural

University Club of Toronto Building

Native American Nations in Ontario

The View from my Front Door Today

This morning I heard a police siren and ignored it. We hear them now and then as they head to some location in our small city. We live in the almost suburbs, a quiet area with four elementary schools on the same street I live on. Traffic is limited to 40K through the school area and only goes up to 60K farther along. This street has young families and older couples with empty nests. It’s not the street for turning up 20-something young women dead in a dumpster.

I wish I could talk to my Grandfather. He thinks the way I do, he doesn’t judge people too easily and he thinks well of everyone, expects people are basically good and care about each other. I’ve had some cynicism creep in over the years but, essentially, I still think the same way too.

My Mother is assuming the young woman was troubled, the type to be out drinking and screwing around. I don’t assume anything about her and I don’t feel like judging her or making any decisions/ predictions about who she was. I’m mostly angry, deeply, tremendously angry. I’m so angry I’m trying not to think about any of it too much.

I wish I could ask my Grandfather what he thinks about the world today, the “war against women”, the type of lives young women lead these days, the type of lives young men lead these days. I wish my Grandfather could tell me what he thinks. But he’s been dead a long time now. Cancer. So he can’t tell me a thing.

I don’t want to think about the women in my family, our experiences with violence against women. My own, personal experience. My sister who was raped and saved from being murdered and having her body dumped somewhere only because someone heard a noise and came to check. My sister has four children now, two of them are daughters. What will their future be like? In our family (my Mother, myself and two sisters) only one of us has escaped violence or predatory experiences by men. Not a great statistic for my sister’s two daughters. It’s not wondering which of them will be molested, raped or worse. It’s wondering if both of them will and will one of them be killed.

Like the girl, the young woman, in the dumpster today. Just three or four houses up from my house. I watched the police car parked to block the street all day. They left after 8:00PM. It was a long day to leave a car running with lights flashing. I wonder how they keep the battery from dying.

I don’t want to think too much more about it tonight.