The Perogi Slipper Taken May 18, 2014 with Samsung Galaxy S3
I know, I know – somewhat of a disappointment… but I should be grateful she let me take a picture at all.
Tonight being Sunday, I popped over for dinner with Ruby around 5:30. It was her turn to cook, and she was a running “a little behind the times”, as she puts it.
Her back bothers her a lot more lately, and being on her feet at the stove must really be hard on her – so I was slightly dismayed to realize she was making a perogi dinner for us. She had to be on her feet the entire time it was cooking, and she wouldn’t let me help.
Kaylee loves to make snow angels… Taken January 12, 2014 with Samsung Galaxy S3
There’s something wonderful about winter walks with the dog – especially on a Sunday afternoon, when it seems like no one else in the city is out and about.
We almost always go to the same place every time – a field across from a ball diamond just a few blocks from home. We usually pop across the road to the ball field, too, but it’s almost all I can do just to get around in there, as the snow is knee deep and Kaylee spends most of her time there “swimming” in the snow – which she LOVES to do – and is much less likely to break a trail for me, like she does very generously in the spot where these photos were taken. Continue reading “A Winter Dog Walk-About…”
The Haweater $3 Bill Taken February 11, 2013 with Samsung Galaxy S3
When Ruby ran a restaurant on The Manitoulin, the Tourist Association put out “The Haweater 3-Dollar Bill”. It was valid currency in most businesses, as well as every bank and credit union on the island.
She doesn’t think it’s still in circulation now, but I think it was a really cool idea to keep visitors coming back. Ruby says it was mostly the tourists that actually used the bill for currency (and most she had to convince that yes, it really was a valid currency). She thinks most of the tourists likely took it home as a souvenir, rather than spend it. Business owners put any they took in promptly into their deposit bags, and the locals never bothered to use it much, if at all. Continue reading “A Not-So-Phony $3 Bill…”
This is a “pulled” or “drop-stitch” scarf. It’s knit on 4 needles and then, when binding off, every second stich is just dropped off the needle. Yank on it really hard, and it “pulls” down into a nice fluffy scarf.
I made this at Ruby’s while were watching the Blue Jays play. Well… Ruby watches the Jays play – I knit things, and listen to her yell at the television.
It was Ruby who showed me how to make this scarf.
The other day Ruby got laughing over a friend of hers. Trudy lived across the street from Ruby for years, and they were great friends. Now, they generally just talk on the phone, as Trudy lives way on the other side of town.
When Ruby was a young girl, her school in Northland had a fair once a year, in the spring. It offered the usual school fair “stuff” of the era; games of chance, 4H projects, etc., and students could show off (and sell) their needlework and baked goods.
One year, Ruby won a needlepoint contest – got a trophy and everything. Another year, she and her sister Joycie entered a singing contest. They won 10 cents each for climbing up on the back of a hay wagon and singing “The Little Shirt My Mother Made for Me.”
The real killer year for Ruby, though, was The Year of the $5 School Cake.
She and her sisters each baked up something to sell at the school bake table every year. This year, Ruby had baked a chocolate layer cake. It was a beautiful cake and she was really proud of it.
On the walk to the fair, Ruby fell behind a little, walking veeeerrrryyy carefully to make sure her cake survived the journey intact. She was just coming to the edge of the fairground, far behind her sisters, when a stumbling drunk guy comes reeling towards her, and stops her.
“Hey,” says the drunk. “Whad’ya got there?”
Ruby tells him she’s got a chocolate cake to put on the school bake table.
The drunk says, “Yeah? I’ll give you $5 for it.”
Ruby, not being stupid, promptly handed him the cake. $5 richer, she went wandering around the fair grounds until she found her father at the ice cream stand.
Her father loved ice cream. He looked forward to the school fair every year, just so he could get an ice cream cone. He also loved children, and every year, he bought every kid that came along an ice cream cone too.
When Ruby found him, he asked, “Did you sell your cake?
Ruby said, “Yup,” and told him about the drunk, and showed him the $5.
Now, Ruby’s dad had probably just blown (at 5 cents a cone over 20 or 30 kids) around a buck and a quarter. Ruby, on the other hand, had just gained $5 by scalping her own school cake. All her father could think of to do was laugh.
Ruby has no memory of what she might have spent that $5 on, and it drives her crazy that she can’t remember.
“That was an awful lot of money back then,” she says.
All I can picture when she tells this story, is the drunk – stumbling through the woods and across fields carrying a chocolate layer cake…
