A Rose by Any Other Name

Fortunately I have never discarded my old passports, and all of them include my middle names. I have now been certified by the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) as fit to enter an Ontario classroom and teach secondary school history and drama. But some force in the universe is still messing with my name. Noting that my transcripts for my masters degrees had not yet arrived either at my address or the OCT. I called the institution that granted me this degree. According to their files when I had attended the institution I had a different last name. I would have to send a written notice to change this. Change what? I have never ever changed my name? What is going on. According to their records the transcript seems to have my correct name but I await its arrival to confirm this. Who would change my name and why? Sloppy administrators? Someone hacking into the system in an attempt to apply for a job with an auction house, museum or academic institution? Could this be a desperate form of art espionage?

In the mean time I spent Monday pounding the pavement looking for job oppurtunities. I spoke to several principals who all felt that my best oppurtunity lay with registering to supply teach. I have but will not hear of any results until October.

Stand Back! Knittah Venting!

I'm caught in a bureaucratic net, and I am very pissed off. I submitted in person the last of my documents for my certification with the Ontario College of Teachers: my signed police record check and my Canadian passport. My name on my passport does not include my two middle names. I've never noticed this detail before. It has never been an issue when showing identification before. I've been allowed into corporations, government institutions, airplanes and several foreign countries without a hitch. But for now I am not allowed into an Ontario classroom because my middle name floats in and out of my identification and is not present on my one piece of identification that names my place of birth. Why this inconsistency you may ask? My middle name is long (after all there are two of them). They do not fit onto all applications. When they do I write them in. When they don't I skip them. Very simple. But a serious problem for the Ontario College of Teacher. What awful thing happened to a student, someone's child because of a missing middle name of their teacher? My mind is reeling. Many bad things have happened in many schools, but I find it hard to believe that any of them could have been prevented by the omnipresence of a teacher's middle name. Aarghh!! Okay, I'm done now. I've called my mother to ask her to look for documents containing my middle name and my place of birth. I'm going home now to also look for the same. On the subway I will continue to knit Bad Penny. I just need to complete the waist ribbing.

I Want To Be Queen


Part of Madame Butterfly’s Entourage.

This parade is filled with a mind blowing amount of colour and movement. It seems surreal but it is created and enacted by very real people every year, using various materials and methods to create costumes and colourful movable structures for kings and Queens to parade in. I marvel at the materials and designs of this spectacle.



Many feature fantastical heads of sea creatures, birds, and spirits.







Some individuals get right into the spirit of self adornment. I wonder what he had to do to remove the silver?



Not only do the costumes and structures have to look good but the wearers have to be able to dance and strut their stuff. Some of the assemblages are twenty feet across. During the King and Queen Contest the participants dance and whirl on stage, and then they do it again at the parade the next day. At the parade the Kings often make a game of rushing and whirling towards the onlookers and sweeping or knocking them over with the wings of the costume

Trinidad and Tobago had a World Cup soccer team this year so they were a “little” (just a little) soccer obsessed. The winning King this year was called D’Soca Warrior (Caribbean’s cannot resist puns) and one of the Queens: “Keep Your Head Up T & T We Going World Cup 2010”. The Queens had a four way tie(??). One of the winners Madame Butterfly was in my previous post. And another winner, my favourite, Euphoria is the last queen below.

I took a lot of photos of D’Soca Warrior. I even got close enough to risk getting knocked over (his wings brushed the top of my head)


D’Soca Warrior


D’Soca Warrior closeup

The best male individual was Keeper of D’Cup.


Keeper of D’Cup



I WANT!!



I WANT TO!!



I WANT TO BE!!


Euphoria

I WANT TO BE QUEEN!!

My sister and I walked and danced the full route length of the parade from beginning to end to beginning , about 7 km, and 4 hours—we left at 6:30 pm and the parade scheduled to end at 5:00 pm was not yet over.



Good bye “wonderful festival that has lost its true name”. I still love you by any name. I will be there again next year.

Toronto Caribbean Festival


Toronto Sun, front page August 6, 2006

This is technically not a knitting post so you can stop reading now if that’s what you are looking for. But I love Caribbean culture (I admit to being biased but I’m Jamaican and I think that’s allowable) and I am sure it must have some influence on my design and knitting style. I did take “Bad Penny” with me to the parade and knit on the subway all the way there and back.

The 40 year old event known as Caribana was renamed this year because of financial and legal strife. These difficulties were generally unknown to or ignored by the one million participants who gathered in Toronto’s streets to participate in this annual event, apparently the largest street festival in North America. Here I am below wearing my Jamaican urban cowgirl ensemble.



After forty years (yes I attended the first Caribana parade) I am more practical than flashy with my look. Eight hours of sun, heat and crowds is nothing to get flashy for. The first time attended I traveled like this little girl, on my dad’s shoulders.



Later on as a teen-ager, when I ditched my family and went with a posse of girlfriends I would have had the 70’s equivalent of the outfit worn by these two young ladies, but no cell phone.



How can they hear anything with all the noise around them. Teen-agers must truly live in the cocoon of an alternate universe where they can only hear their own voices. Below we have the typical encounter of two people who haven’t seen each other since last years parade. I used to spend half my time at parades doing this. I think that was one of the main reasons we went.



I went with my sister. My daughter was supposed to come too but she partied too hard the night before and was ill. She missed a good parade, but I was able to focus on taking lots of photos without the distraction of body guard duty. The parade was schedule to start at 10:00 am at the grand stand of the Canadian National Exhibition. We started in China Town with a dim sum lunch at noon. We could have eaten at the parade but I wanted to sit down and have something different. The entire 3.5 km length of the parade was lined with food vendors of every kind of Caribbean food, including mountains of fresh coconuts.



I have featured the Grace truck because this truck stopped at intervals and dispensed much needed free grapefruit pop. Thank you Grace.

We arrived on Lakeshore Blvd by 2:30 pm. This is good timing for this event. The parade never starts or finishes at the designated time. You can not synchronize an event that features maximum improvisation and audience participation and photo ops.



Many tourists took the opportunity to have themselves photographed with paraders.

I’m sure that the truckers driving the 18 wheel flat bed trucks had the most stressful jobs of the parade ;) How could they possibly concentrate on driving through crowded streets with scenes like just outside their cabins.



The gyrations known as “whining”/ “whinin’” (is there a correct spelling for this?) were up to the usual standard set by Trinidad and Tobago Carnival which is the example that this Toronto’s festival follows. There is even a King and Queen contest. Now I have never wanted to ride a flat bed truck while “whining my waist line” (really and truly, you have got to believe me), but I have always wanted to be Queen. More on this in my next installment.

This is the 3 skeins of Malabrigo that I bought at the Naked Sheep. This is a big deal for me because I am supposed to be working strictly from my stash. I have a large stash. I used to pay for storage for this stash before I moved out of an apartment and into a house with a basement. But this yarn is beautiful. I can think of so many things to knit with it other than the tea cozy. I'm sure there will be leftovers.




Here I am at my last fitting of "Bad Penny". I was going to start the bottom ribbing at this point but after studying the photo for awhile I've decided to add another 3 inches to the body. "Bad Penny" was designed as a short sexy top but I think that trend is coming to a close. Also I would rather not worry about whether or not my zipper is showing like it is in the photo. Where was the stylist?!! (Oops she's in the photo!!)

For some reason the name "Bad Penny" brings to mind the 80's bad girl song Brass in Pocket (Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders).

'CAUSE I GONNA MAKE YOU SEE
THERE'S NOBODY ELSE HERE
NO ONE LIKE ME
I'M SPECIAL, SO SPECIAL
I GOTTA HAVE SOME OF YOUR ATTENTION
GIVE IT TO ME
'CAUSE I GONNA MAKE YOU SEE
THERE'S NOBODY ELSE HERE
NO ONE LIKE ME
I'M SPECIAL, SO SPECIAL
I GOTTA HAVE SOME OF YOUR ATTENTION

GIVE IT TO ME

On that note this bad girl will continue knitting "Bad Penny" into a long lean sexy top.

Yesterday evening I finally made it to the the yarn shop The Naked Sheep. That was my first visit. I went mainly to see Rowan Classic Home 5, because I have become obsessed with the tea cosy. Unfortunately (or fortunately because it saved me $40) the tea cosy was the only pattern in the book that I think I would knit. Unfortunately for my wallet I found another book: Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan. Gaughan is my favourite Vogue Knitting designer of the 1980s. This is her first book. It is as awesome as her previous knitting designs, so it had to come home with me. I memorized the tea cozy pattern and bought some lovely yarn to make it with. The Naked Sheep stocks Malabrigo: soft worsted weight merino from a womens coop in Uruguay. The yarn is hand painted. I wanted all of the colourways but I focused on the tea cozy pattern and bought one green and two burgundy/pink skeins( called Little Lovely). I hope they work because I won't have the heart to exchange them and I will go broke buying more.

Bad Penny is coming along fine. I did a fitting last week and it fit perfectly on the top half. The nice thing about knitting a top down raglan is that you can try it on as you go. I hope the bottom end works out too. I should know by next week.

My next project will be a birthday gift for a friend. I really like the garter stitch tea cozy in Rowan Classic Home 5, but I am reluctant to buy the whole book for just one pattern, especially at Rowan prices. I might just fake it without the pattern. After all I will have to buy yarn for this, as I have nothing suitable in my stash.

Now what I do have suitable yarn for is a sweater based on that silver dress in the post below. But not silver: emerald green or sapphire blue mercerized cotton. I could also do a gray wool version. I took a closer look at the construction of that garment today and it looks daunting. The usual Italian bravura finishing. If I go for this it will be a much simplified and/or abstracted version.