But What the Heck is a Chocolate Pot?
On the 10th of October, one of my innumerable female cousins got married (I suppose there's only... um... seven of us? But it seems like a lot!) and the ceremony was held at Granny and Granddad's, out on a hillside in the sun. It was the last sunny Sunday in October. They were very lucky, something which I think we all reflected upon when we woke up the following Sunday to grey skies and rain.
I journeyed home the preceding Wednesday to help my Mama and make sure I had enough time to do my part. The journey was a bit of a nightmare. I caught Caltrain in the morning; Caltrain promptly ran late, for no discernible reason. Caltrain arriving in Millbrae five minutes late, combined with the usual clusterfuck involving people trying to use the BART ticket machines (whoever designed the user interface for those machines deserves to SUFFER, preferably by watching their train pull out of the station while being stuck in line behind some poor baffled sod trying to buy a ticket FOR ALL ETERNITY) meant that I missed the BART train I wanted, which in turn meant I missed the bus in SF. The bus which only runs once an hour. That meant I sat at the bus stop in SF for an hour, reading my book and being grumpy. All in all, in took me six hours to get to my family's house. In that amount of time I could have driven up to my family's house, turned around and driven home, and then turned around and driven back to my family's house. I try to use public transit, I really do! But when it takes three times as long as driving, the car starts to look really attractive. ARGH.
Sister Person and I did all the flowers - she did the table decorations and I did the bouquets for the bride & her two attendants, flower crowns for the flower girls, corsages for the mothers of the couple and the Granny of the bride, and boutonnières* for the groom & his groomsmen, the fathers of the couple and the Granddad of the bride. I finished just in time, delivering them at 1:00 when the wedding was scheduled to start at 2:00. (Though it didn't start until 3:00, which ended up being just as well, since most of the family was busy right up until the wedding started.) I would not have finished in time without Jake, who held things for me and generally convinced me that no, the bouquet looked fine, I did not need to rip it all apart and start over. I bought all the flowers Friday, then had a Moment on Saturday and decided that I needed something deep, dark red to tie all the colors together. Back to the florists, where there was nothing the precise color I wanted, because it is fall and thus everything is orange, orange, orange, with a little yellow and pink and shocking red thrown in for variety, and then more orange. Have you ever wondered why orange is a fall color? Screw fall leaves, it's because ALL THE FALL FLOWERS ARE ORANGE. The floral shop had bright red spray roses, but not my dreamed-of deep red. Saturday evening was the rehearsal, which I was at even though I didn't really need to be. While wandering around doing other things I passed a rosebush in Granny's garden which had three huge, perfect blooms of exactly the color red I was looking for. They came home with me, needless to say, and it made a good story.
The ceremony was Jewish, and Daddy made the poles for the chuppah (the tent-thingy held over the bride and groom at a Jewish wedding.) Because he is my father, and a little crazy (I come by it honestly) he made it them out of some clear, straight-grain, old growth virgin redwood he just happened to have lying around. (For those of you who do not appreciate the finer points of wood, this is a little like making something out of that 24 carat gold you just happened to have lying around.) He gave serious thought to making them seven sided, for the religious significance, but reluctantly decided it was too hard. Instead he made them octagonal. They were topped with finials he turned on the lathe, and finished with shellac. I think using wood from a nearly 2,000 year old tree for the tent that symbolizes the couple's home should be good luck!
The wedding went well. The aunt doing the food had one minor meltdown moment, but then everyone jumped in to help and that was okay. The bride and groom stayed calm, even through the celebrant arriving almost an hour late due to traffic. During this time the guests were kept entertained with watermelon. Later, when the electric tea/coffee pots didn't work, I called upon the ingenuity of my frontierswomen antecedents, found the largest pots with lids in Granny's kitchen, and started water boiling. (Did you know Firefox spellcheck recognizes "frontiersmen" but not "frontierswomen"? That's ridiculous.) There were no family blowups or arguments, despite one of my black sheep uncles being there. He is, at least, the uncle who seems to be making an honest effort to get his act together, and maybe to reconcile with the rest of the family. I think everyone was intent on enjoying the wedding, which is just how it should be.
My immediate family was seated with the Finnish guests at the wedding dinner, since my cousin knew we liked Finland. They were quite surprised when Daddy knew some of the tiny towns they mentioned. None of my family drinks, so we just passed all the bottles of wine and champagne down to the Finnish end of the table. Since they drank like Finns, it worked excellently, and we all got a laugh out of it. We also discussed pie, since my cousin and her husband had decided to have wedding pies instead of wedding cake. I think there were about 46 pies, half apple and half blueberry. My Mama made 18, my aunt made another 18, and my Granny made 10 or so. (In addition, Granny, who I might add is 87, also made dozens of cookies. She is wonderful and amazing and works way, way too hard. When I am little and old and white-haired I want to be like her, though if I could escape the severe osteoporosis and chronic pain from shingles, that would be nice.) The Finns were excited about having real American apple pie, though they made the mistake of asking Daddy for a "small slice" which meant they got what anyone else might call a normally sized slice. My family goes in for pie in an enthusiastic way. We realized this the hard (but tasty) way when we had 18 pies left over after the wedding.** Everyone was eating pie for breakfast for a week. :D See, my aunt had planned for two pies, one apple and one blueberry, per table, plus some extra. Any table where family had sat polished off their pies (the Finns were good pie-eaters. Between the four of them and five of us, we ate both our pies, and I, at least, went foraging for more later.) Some of the non-family tables, though, had hardly touched their pies! Blasphemy! Clearly they do not understand how to eat pie. (With gusto, and in quantity. ^__^)
Day before yesterday the parents of the bride had a family party to say thank you to everyone who had helped out, and for the couple to open their presents (which had eaten most of my aunt and uncles' dining room.) The aunt in question had figured out that it was cheaper to buy place settings at thrift stores and whatnot than to rent, so they now have a garage that looks a little like a second-hand china shop. Obviously my aunt and uncle don't really need place settings for 180 people, so they're now busy pushing china on their family members. My aunt set aside the Blue Willow for me - I now have another box of teacups, saucers, dessert plates, and dinner place to wedge into my corner cabinet (halp.) Most of it is fairly unremarkable modern stuff, but some of it is Finlandia, also modern but an unusual and lovely reinterpretation of the pattern. I like it lots. I tried to resist the rest... but as my uncle said, I have the family collecting gene. *sigh* There was a pressed-glass bowl (looks like cut glass but isn't) that is now my trifle bowl; it will nicely complement the antique silver trifle spoon Granny gave me a while ago.*** And then there was the chocolate pot, which was the first thing I saw and decided I needed. I think I amused various relatives when I walked into the china shop garage and exclaimed, "Oh, it's a chocolate pot!" Then I had to explain what, exactly, is a chocolate pot: it's basically a teapot, only tall and narrow - teapots being short and round or hexagonal or whatever. If you saw a chocolate pot and weren't aware that there exist specialized pieces of china meant for serving hot chocolate (and I would forgive you for this appalling lack of knowledge, really I would,) you would probably mistake it for a stretched-out teapot. Anyhow, I now have a brace of chocolate pots, though why I couldn't tell you. One is Blue Willow; unfortunately the spout is cracked, right at the base.**** The new one is white with a pattern of yellow and green daffodils around the widest part. It's rather sweet. Assuming the average person owns zero chocolate pots (.0000001% of a chocolate pot being, for all intents and purposes, not a chocolate pot at all,) then I have a number of chocolate pots that is infinitely greater than average. I should probably think up an excuse to serve hot chocolate to multiple people. Then again, I don't have one of those specialized chocolate stirrers that the English invented to use with their chocolate pots.***** I may have to start looking for one.
In other news, topstitching. Auuuughhhhhhh, topstitching. I am making myself a jacket at the moment. When it is done it should be a really nice jacket - forest green brushed medium weight wool on the outside, charcoal grey lightweight wool (blend? maybe?) lining, super-soft, thick charcoal grey polyester fleece lining the collar and cuffs. The outer wool is a dream to work with, and just makes me so happy! All the seams match perfectly! Then they iron out so smooth! I love wool so much! The lining is slightly squiffy, and likes to shift all over the place. Bah. It's the lining, no one will see it. The thing is, I have topstiched every seam so far. Every. Seam. Yes, the lining too. It is beginning to drive me slightly insane. I keep having to remind myself of how pretty it will look when it's done... The pattern is one I have had hanging around for years, and which I picked up for less than a quarter. All the fabric, too, is from my stash, and is either from The Legacy and thus bought for ridiculously cheap (the wool) or left over from another project (the fleece) which is awesome and fun. I like being thrifty! I also like using up some of my meters and meters and meters of fabric, because I have COMPLETELY run out of room in my (seven) storage containers.
So now that I've bored you all to tears with the minutiae of my life recently (an entire paragraph about chocolate pots! RIVETING!) what's up with all of you?
*That word is impossible to spell. It must be French. Stupid French. This is the language that also gave us bureau. Bastards (which is Old French. Modern French is bâtard, because of course the letters needed hats, just to complicate things. I think I could get along with the Old French.)
** I made off with one of the leftover apple pies at the end of the night (carefully selecting on of Mama's, of course ^_~) and brought it over to Jake's Mama's house. Of course, she had decided to bake two apple pies that day. We ended up bringing one of her pies home with us.
*** A trifle spoon is a decorative and largely useless spoon for serving the dessert trifle. Trifle, while delicious, is not something I make every day, and thus the trifle spoon doesn't get used much, if ever.
**** When normal people crack china, I think they throw it out, or if they're feeling resourceful, look for the superglue. Me, I contemplate penetrating epoxy and heat guns. (Heat increases the liquidity of some types of epoxy, thus allowing them to wick better!) Then Jake affectionately calls me a crazy lady.
*****Of course they exist! What else were the aristocrats supposed to do with their time but invent useless pieces of kitchen equipment like trifle spoons and chocolate stirrers?
Entry originally posted at annoyedwabbit on Dreamwidth.org
I journeyed home the preceding Wednesday to help my Mama and make sure I had enough time to do my part. The journey was a bit of a nightmare. I caught Caltrain in the morning; Caltrain promptly ran late, for no discernible reason. Caltrain arriving in Millbrae five minutes late, combined with the usual clusterfuck involving people trying to use the BART ticket machines (whoever designed the user interface for those machines deserves to SUFFER, preferably by watching their train pull out of the station while being stuck in line behind some poor baffled sod trying to buy a ticket FOR ALL ETERNITY) meant that I missed the BART train I wanted, which in turn meant I missed the bus in SF. The bus which only runs once an hour. That meant I sat at the bus stop in SF for an hour, reading my book and being grumpy. All in all, in took me six hours to get to my family's house. In that amount of time I could have driven up to my family's house, turned around and driven home, and then turned around and driven back to my family's house. I try to use public transit, I really do! But when it takes three times as long as driving, the car starts to look really attractive. ARGH.
Sister Person and I did all the flowers - she did the table decorations and I did the bouquets for the bride & her two attendants, flower crowns for the flower girls, corsages for the mothers of the couple and the Granny of the bride, and boutonnières* for the groom & his groomsmen, the fathers of the couple and the Granddad of the bride. I finished just in time, delivering them at 1:00 when the wedding was scheduled to start at 2:00. (Though it didn't start until 3:00, which ended up being just as well, since most of the family was busy right up until the wedding started.) I would not have finished in time without Jake, who held things for me and generally convinced me that no, the bouquet looked fine, I did not need to rip it all apart and start over. I bought all the flowers Friday, then had a Moment on Saturday and decided that I needed something deep, dark red to tie all the colors together. Back to the florists, where there was nothing the precise color I wanted, because it is fall and thus everything is orange, orange, orange, with a little yellow and pink and shocking red thrown in for variety, and then more orange. Have you ever wondered why orange is a fall color? Screw fall leaves, it's because ALL THE FALL FLOWERS ARE ORANGE. The floral shop had bright red spray roses, but not my dreamed-of deep red. Saturday evening was the rehearsal, which I was at even though I didn't really need to be. While wandering around doing other things I passed a rosebush in Granny's garden which had three huge, perfect blooms of exactly the color red I was looking for. They came home with me, needless to say, and it made a good story.
The ceremony was Jewish, and Daddy made the poles for the chuppah (the tent-thingy held over the bride and groom at a Jewish wedding.) Because he is my father, and a little crazy (I come by it honestly) he made it them out of some clear, straight-grain, old growth virgin redwood he just happened to have lying around. (For those of you who do not appreciate the finer points of wood, this is a little like making something out of that 24 carat gold you just happened to have lying around.) He gave serious thought to making them seven sided, for the religious significance, but reluctantly decided it was too hard. Instead he made them octagonal. They were topped with finials he turned on the lathe, and finished with shellac. I think using wood from a nearly 2,000 year old tree for the tent that symbolizes the couple's home should be good luck!
The wedding went well. The aunt doing the food had one minor meltdown moment, but then everyone jumped in to help and that was okay. The bride and groom stayed calm, even through the celebrant arriving almost an hour late due to traffic. During this time the guests were kept entertained with watermelon. Later, when the electric tea/coffee pots didn't work, I called upon the ingenuity of my frontierswomen antecedents, found the largest pots with lids in Granny's kitchen, and started water boiling. (Did you know Firefox spellcheck recognizes "frontiersmen" but not "frontierswomen"? That's ridiculous.) There were no family blowups or arguments, despite one of my black sheep uncles being there. He is, at least, the uncle who seems to be making an honest effort to get his act together, and maybe to reconcile with the rest of the family. I think everyone was intent on enjoying the wedding, which is just how it should be.
My immediate family was seated with the Finnish guests at the wedding dinner, since my cousin knew we liked Finland. They were quite surprised when Daddy knew some of the tiny towns they mentioned. None of my family drinks, so we just passed all the bottles of wine and champagne down to the Finnish end of the table. Since they drank like Finns, it worked excellently, and we all got a laugh out of it. We also discussed pie, since my cousin and her husband had decided to have wedding pies instead of wedding cake. I think there were about 46 pies, half apple and half blueberry. My Mama made 18, my aunt made another 18, and my Granny made 10 or so. (In addition, Granny, who I might add is 87, also made dozens of cookies. She is wonderful and amazing and works way, way too hard. When I am little and old and white-haired I want to be like her, though if I could escape the severe osteoporosis and chronic pain from shingles, that would be nice.) The Finns were excited about having real American apple pie, though they made the mistake of asking Daddy for a "small slice" which meant they got what anyone else might call a normally sized slice. My family goes in for pie in an enthusiastic way. We realized this the hard (but tasty) way when we had 18 pies left over after the wedding.** Everyone was eating pie for breakfast for a week. :D See, my aunt had planned for two pies, one apple and one blueberry, per table, plus some extra. Any table where family had sat polished off their pies (the Finns were good pie-eaters. Between the four of them and five of us, we ate both our pies, and I, at least, went foraging for more later.) Some of the non-family tables, though, had hardly touched their pies! Blasphemy! Clearly they do not understand how to eat pie. (With gusto, and in quantity. ^__^)
Day before yesterday the parents of the bride had a family party to say thank you to everyone who had helped out, and for the couple to open their presents (which had eaten most of my aunt and uncles' dining room.) The aunt in question had figured out that it was cheaper to buy place settings at thrift stores and whatnot than to rent, so they now have a garage that looks a little like a second-hand china shop. Obviously my aunt and uncle don't really need place settings for 180 people, so they're now busy pushing china on their family members. My aunt set aside the Blue Willow for me - I now have another box of teacups, saucers, dessert plates, and dinner place to wedge into my corner cabinet (halp.) Most of it is fairly unremarkable modern stuff, but some of it is Finlandia, also modern but an unusual and lovely reinterpretation of the pattern. I like it lots. I tried to resist the rest... but as my uncle said, I have the family collecting gene. *sigh* There was a pressed-glass bowl (looks like cut glass but isn't) that is now my trifle bowl; it will nicely complement the antique silver trifle spoon Granny gave me a while ago.*** And then there was the chocolate pot, which was the first thing I saw and decided I needed. I think I amused various relatives when I walked into the china shop garage and exclaimed, "Oh, it's a chocolate pot!" Then I had to explain what, exactly, is a chocolate pot: it's basically a teapot, only tall and narrow - teapots being short and round or hexagonal or whatever. If you saw a chocolate pot and weren't aware that there exist specialized pieces of china meant for serving hot chocolate (and I would forgive you for this appalling lack of knowledge, really I would,) you would probably mistake it for a stretched-out teapot. Anyhow, I now have a brace of chocolate pots, though why I couldn't tell you. One is Blue Willow; unfortunately the spout is cracked, right at the base.**** The new one is white with a pattern of yellow and green daffodils around the widest part. It's rather sweet. Assuming the average person owns zero chocolate pots (.0000001% of a chocolate pot being, for all intents and purposes, not a chocolate pot at all,) then I have a number of chocolate pots that is infinitely greater than average. I should probably think up an excuse to serve hot chocolate to multiple people. Then again, I don't have one of those specialized chocolate stirrers that the English invented to use with their chocolate pots.***** I may have to start looking for one.
In other news, topstitching. Auuuughhhhhhh, topstitching. I am making myself a jacket at the moment. When it is done it should be a really nice jacket - forest green brushed medium weight wool on the outside, charcoal grey lightweight wool (blend? maybe?) lining, super-soft, thick charcoal grey polyester fleece lining the collar and cuffs. The outer wool is a dream to work with, and just makes me so happy! All the seams match perfectly! Then they iron out so smooth! I love wool so much! The lining is slightly squiffy, and likes to shift all over the place. Bah. It's the lining, no one will see it. The thing is, I have topstiched every seam so far. Every. Seam. Yes, the lining too. It is beginning to drive me slightly insane. I keep having to remind myself of how pretty it will look when it's done... The pattern is one I have had hanging around for years, and which I picked up for less than a quarter. All the fabric, too, is from my stash, and is either from The Legacy and thus bought for ridiculously cheap (the wool) or left over from another project (the fleece) which is awesome and fun. I like being thrifty! I also like using up some of my meters and meters and meters of fabric, because I have COMPLETELY run out of room in my (seven) storage containers.
So now that I've bored you all to tears with the minutiae of my life recently (an entire paragraph about chocolate pots! RIVETING!) what's up with all of you?
*That word is impossible to spell. It must be French. Stupid French. This is the language that also gave us bureau. Bastards (which is Old French. Modern French is bâtard, because of course the letters needed hats, just to complicate things. I think I could get along with the Old French.)
** I made off with one of the leftover apple pies at the end of the night (carefully selecting on of Mama's, of course ^_~) and brought it over to Jake's Mama's house. Of course, she had decided to bake two apple pies that day. We ended up bringing one of her pies home with us.
*** A trifle spoon is a decorative and largely useless spoon for serving the dessert trifle. Trifle, while delicious, is not something I make every day, and thus the trifle spoon doesn't get used much, if ever.
**** When normal people crack china, I think they throw it out, or if they're feeling resourceful, look for the superglue. Me, I contemplate penetrating epoxy and heat guns. (Heat increases the liquidity of some types of epoxy, thus allowing them to wick better!) Then Jake affectionately calls me a crazy lady.
*****Of course they exist! What else were the aristocrats supposed to do with their time but invent useless pieces of kitchen equipment like trifle spoons and chocolate stirrers?
Entry originally posted at annoyedwabbit on Dreamwidth.org