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Saturday, September 28, 2013

A Blanket for Jo

When Mr. Ed and I were looking for our first apartment together we looked everywhere. I swear we saw every vacancy in Toronto. We saw one apartment that was so tiny we would have had to take turns living in it and another that was the home for half the Knights of Medieval times. That one was filled with shields and broadswords and had an...interesting smell. We did not take either of those. 

When we finally came to the collection of apartments where we would eventually live we saw two options. One was completely forgettable and likely more appropriate and the other..the other was on the top floor over-looking the subway yards. It was, to say the least, noisy. But for some reason Ed we fell in love with it. I got dizzy on the balcony and you had to have the TV volume up SO high in order to hear anything (subway goes by every five minutes) but if you leaned out over one end of the balcony you could see the lake, sunrises were stunning and we were the last point in the building to lose light at the end of the day. We never needed curtains and hardly ever lights. I was bright and large and airy and though there was much about it I hated (laundry, malfunctioning elevators, ongoing construction, the noise and dust of the subway) there is a lot about it I miss.

On the day we checked it out there was a young woman sitting in the hall. She had locked herself out and was waiting for her husband to come home. She found the whole thing hilarious and was sneaking bits of muffin under the door to her dog. She had the biggest blue eyes and the biggest smile. And she told us we should take the apartment so we could be neighbours. That was Jo


Of course we did take the apartment and she and I became good friends. We used to sit in the hallway on rainy days and let our dogs run up and down and up and down (very pet-friendly building. I think we had 8 dogs on our floor alone!). We did crafts together and invented recipes together. The guys would hang out in my apartment and play video games and drink beer and we would go over to her apartment and watch chick flicks and knit/sew/craft to our hearts content. We combined our banana bread recipes to come up with a much better one, she taught me how to make amazing slow-cooker ribs, and I made "everything" cookies that her husband ate like a man starved (he wasn't).

Eventually she and her husband bought a house and moved away from the city. I was crushed to lose my buddy (though I think Mr. Ed was happy to get his wife back!) but we made the best of it and we  had a great time when I visited trying to track down the perfect Chinese take-out in Barrie. On the day they moved I remember opening my front door to find a large bin of yarn. Of course I had to make something out of it for Jo and this is what I came up with:


I've had it tucked away for ages now, always planning to give it to her and then forgetting. This last trip I had it all packed and then left it siting at my front door! It's really getting ridiculous. And before you assume that i really don't want to part with it, rest assured it's always belonged to Jo, I'm just a very good tidier-upper and our current lovely old house has moths. So all things wooly must be wrapped and packed away carefully. I don't get to see Jo all that often anymore - Ottawa, five kids between us, busy jobs, husbands who travel, etc etc etc. and often it's kind of a "surprise". But she sent me an email that she may be coming to visit this weekend. And now I'm totally prepared :) All I have to do is prep the banana bread!

Yarn: no idea, not even my stash :)
Pattern: Mile-a-Minute afghan from my Grandma (Dad's Mum)

2 comments:

Mrs. Match said...

What a sweet gift! Eventually it will make its way to her. Mmmmhmm banana bread!

Knit and Purl Mama said...

What a beautiful gift.