Le Tissier Designs

Of Larks and Linnets and Flying Fingers

Tag: family

  • From Traditions to New Memories: Our Unique Holiday Story

    From Traditions to New Memories: Our Unique Holiday Story

    This year was not a traditional Christmas for our family, but it was perfect nonetheless.

    Quite often our Christmas Day is culminated with Christmas Dinner that will encompass everyone, friends and family – up to 20 or so bodies at the table. And it all started as the smell of the turkey pretty much enveloped our guests as they walked in the door and up the stairs to the living room which had a center table set-up with a cheese board, and lots of baking. At the table there will be crackers, toasts, a table groaning with more food. There is always so much conversation and laughter punctuated by the occasional sip of wine!

    And the conversation. Lots of individuals catching up and sharing the happenings since their last visit or since last Christmas. And I am at the head of the table ready to refill bowls, pass the gravy and listen. I listen and just take it all in and I take so much joy in the presence of family and friends. I do not usually get much visiting in or get to share in the finer details of the evening, it is just not possible to do it all!

    This year was different. Because we have downsized and the space needs work and mostly because we need a kitchen renovation – the stove doesn’t work well enough to bake anything properly so we decided not to do the big dinner this year! I do not trust the stove! The kitchen reno will be happening soon, hopefully! That will another full story or two I am sure!

    So, as a result these things happened:

    My brother and his wife did Christmas dinner. It was just us and them. Much laughter, starting with the fact that they chose Prime Rib for dinner not turkey! Guess what we were doing for Boxing Day! Yup! Prime Rib! Another family Christmas tale was born. We laughed and visited for a few hours.

    Boxing Day lunch a good friend and her son came for lunch. We have know each other for over 38 years, we even shared a home with our children for 2 of those years. That was a two hour visit with lots of laughter and conversation.

    Boxing Day dinner, my son, daughter and grandson were there! There was laughter and conversation, memories and more conversations.

    Day of after Boxing Day my nieces and nephews and their family came for a quick visit – that turned into a couple of hours of shared laughter and memories. All of us sitting around the table, eating the nibbles and just being together.

    So – the moral of the story – sometimes the ritual forgets the point of the season! The shared time and love with family and friends. I did miss making my small Christmas gifts, the baubles and tree decorations. I really missed decorating our home. What we did was very minimal as we had to buy everything as almost everything we owned related to Christmas was in the back of the storage locker!

    Who know what next year will bring!

    Happy New Year to all!

    Lynette

  • My Grandmothers Pots

    I have a few of my Grandmothers pots. They are Guardian Service Ware. She had bought them from a travelling salesman in the early 40’s. They were very expensive then and very well made. They are very heavy cast aluminum with glass lids. Originally they had heavy metal lids as well but they switched to glass during the second world war.

    I think my Grandmother bought them over a period of a few years. She had the most amazing collection of these pots. From serving ware, trays and coffee pots to every cooking pot and skillet you could think, in every size.

    The Guardian Ware pots and pieces were/are very heavy, made from thick cast aluminum and with pieces that could multitask. For example the big Stock pot, a 12 quart, kettle oven, canner, stock pot. that will take a large turkey and turn it into stock, also came with stacking racks to cook up to two pies and and canning insert! It did it all! My father took it camping once and made biscuits in it on the fire.

    My father bought them off of my Grandmother in the early 1970’s. We grew up with food cooked in those pots. As my father got older and cooked less often he started to pass the pots along – quite a few to me. I have the big stock pot that I am using plus a few other pieces. My two roasters have the metal lids. One is a turkey roaster that will hold up to a 22 lb turkey! It is perfect. The heavy metal lid holds in the moisture and cooks the turkey faster! My brother has a few pieces as well. They are amazing.

    I mostly use the big stock pot for turkey stock. These pots are not recommended for anything tomato based. The acid in the tomatoes leaches aluminum from the pot. Not good for us. (My mum her spagetti sauce in those pots, before we knew about the aluminum! That might explain a few things) The only physical drawback the pots have is the lids. Those glass lids are heavy and can take a little beating but they are glass. They are hard to replace.

    My favourite pots in the set when I was younger were the triangularly shaped pots. They usually only came out when we had company. A big trivet, designed to be used with the pots, was set over the largest burner and then the three pots were set on the trivet and they cooked three vegetable at once! My father still had the set 25 years ago. He used it at Christmas. But we can’t find it now. My brother has looked through all of the boxes. I keep hoping that there still is a box that he hasn’t checked.

    The Guardian Ware pots are over 80 years old and are still used and collected today! Sometimes old is better, great pots can last and be heirloom items. Of all the things our family gave us, to my brothers and I, these pots hold the most memories and are the most coveted!

    You can find pieces on Ebay and Etsy and there is also a collectors site to look for pieces that you may be missing! I recently saw a gravy boat available for sale! it was tempting.

    Happy Cooking!

    Lynette

  • Happy Valentines Day!

    Happy Valentines Day!

    How do you celebrate Valentines Day? Do you mourn lost loves and hold those memories close to your heart? Do you gather your family close to you and hold them dear? Where does your heart lie?

    I do them all. My family keeps my heart. Husband, children and grandchild, all are loved equally well in different ways.

    My Father is still with me and loved as well.

    But my Mother and Grandmothers and Grandfathers are all gone. They are always loved and always with me in Memory.

    Granny Baptie would approve of the Scottish themed Greetings for the Day.

    I have always found Valentines Day awkward. It usually speaks of only one kind of love when we know there are so many other kinds of love out there – family, friends, activities, yes activities! How much time and effort do we pour into all those things that we love and enjoy!? I know my heart and it lies with many.

    Do we love those things for only the one day? No, but we do make that special effort to love them all harder I think. We take the time to contemplate life without them and we mourn those whose love is lost to us.

    Mother on the right and Grannie Baptie to the left, Myself and Beth, 34 years ago. Three years later both my Grandmother and my mother were gone. So many memories.

    It is snowing here. A serious snow, coming down hard, not the kind we usually get, big lazy flakes that melt as soon as they hit. This snow is lying and accumulating at an amazing rate. It is a wonderful day to stay home and contemplate the energy of the skies as they send snow down upon us.

    Snowy days are perfect for hats. We don’t get that many of them here. And yesterday I was lucky enough to get pictures of hats in snow on Elise for some new patterns. A couple of those patterns were released today and the others will be released over the next few weeks.

    Todays releases are Valentino and Dahlia! Two fabulous (well I think that they are fabulous!) fair-isle hats with beautiful crowns. Fair-isle hats are very satisfying hats to design.  While they can start very plainly, they almost always finish up with a bang, a pop, a fabulous farewell in the design of the crown.  Usually, the name of the hat comes from the design that ends up on the crown.

    They are part of what I am calling a Hearts and Flowers Special. Purchase Valentino on Ravelry and use the code Sweetheart to receive Dahlia for free. Happy Valentines day.

    It will be blackberry pie today – the berries are thawing right now.

    The rest of today will be for my family and my other love, knitting. Working on some fingerless mittens to go with the FlatIron hat.

    FlatIron in the Snow.

    Be well and spend the day doing what makes you happy and loved. Love your friends and family as you will and task yourself with only the things you love to do. If that is PJ’s and coffee – so be it! Do it with all your heart!

    Love to all! Lynette

  • Working on Serenity

    Working on Serenity

    The title this week is perfect on a number of levels:

    a.) I am finally able to work on the edging of The Serenity Wave Shawl. I have had a back issue for the last few weeks that required pain killers and muscle relaxants. Apparently drugs, knitting lace edging and adding beads to said edging do not work well together! Who knew!? So the shawl edging had been on hold for a couple of weeks. I got back to it this week and I am at about 40% of the edging done. I can hardly wait to finish the knitting and block the shawl.

    b.) I have been working on my own Serenity. Peace of mind in this crazy time has not been easy for any of us. And I had been having a rough time of it lately.

    So I took this last week off. I napped. I rested. I knit. I visited one of my favourite relatives, my Aunty Evie, and really tried to work on looking after myself. It has been a good week.

    My auntie and I share a love of sewing and fabrics. So I had to show her my new purchases from Gala Fabrics – the best fabric store and another reason to visit Victoria. They have this vintage woolens section…. $10 a metre. It was so much fun!

    My back is starting to feel better, my shawl edging is finally under way and my ebook, 7 Hats More is slowing growing.

    I added a new pattern on Tuesday, Diagonal Spin and will be adding another one tomorrow.

    Usually my knitting keeps me sane, but some weeks are more challenging than others. I have been feeling challenged lately.

    Do you have tasks or activities that you indulge in that helps you look after your sanity?

    For me – I knit – first in line. I bake and/or cook – second in line. And I love to walk on the beach or in the woods – third in line. And lately harder to do, harder to make time for, simply harder.

    Perhaps because it means leaving the house – leaving this very safe place and entering a not so safe environment. I use up all my courage heading out the door every weekday morning to go to work! Don’t get me wrong – I love my job, but in these Covid times everytime we step out our doors we are adding a little risk to our lives. I am newly risk adverse. Well not newly – I am not much of a risk taker in any way, but I have never before considered walking out my door risky business.

    Perhaps I am channeling my inner Bilbo.

    “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

    Lord of the Rings

    So I am determined to add a walk to every weekend. We will see how I do. The payback is worth the risk.

    Earlier this week, between the rains we went for a short walk at Departure Bay Beach, just down the hill. It was the morning after the big windstorm and there was debris, shells and leaves on the beach. The skies and views were still very grey, so that the colours of the leaves and shells popped!

    I also practiced a little yarn therapy. Never heard of it? I thought not. It is also called retail therapy. I bought some new yarn. Technically I ordered new yarn and it arrived this week.

    Kate Davies is one of my favourite knitting writers and she also creates wonderful yarns. Schiehallion is her new yarn and it is a bouncy, wooly, dk weight yarn that comes in all of my favourite colours (I added a little extra purple as well)! How could I resist?!

    I hope that you manage to find some serenity in your life.

    Be well and knit happy!

    Lynette