Whatever Your Normal Is

Another holiday season, and another Christmas at home with my family in Winnipeg. There are some things that never change: Christmas Day with loads of visitors and an enormous amount of my favourite foods:

And an intense, Winnipeg winter:

And of course, my yearly visit with my Winnipeg knit-buddy: Linette. You must seek out your kindred whenever you can.

We met up at the same coffee shop, both of us 30 minutes early, both of us eager just to get on with our knit-visit. We ordered our coffees, and sat in the same area we sit in every year. Before we started to catch up, Linette pulled out a box...

Linette had read my post from a few weeks ago about never having had a macaroon before, and promptly sent me a message that that was a situation she was going to have to remedy. And behold, the delicious bounty that sat before us:

Thiis is the third photo I took of them because I was so excited that my shaky hands made the first two shots blurry.

Linette bought them earlier that morning and carried these delicate tasties around with her all day around town, on buses, through downtown stores, protecting them like Fabergé eggs in a Walmart on Black Friday. That's dedication, if you ask me. I was ever so grateful, and super excited.

We dove in and each had one, biting into them in silence, and savouring each chew. We stretched them out, stopping conversation to pick one out of the box to eat in silence. And each time, we entered some kind of warp zone where we forgot where we were and what we were talking about until we shook ourselves out of the sugary heaven we found ourselves in and landed back on planet Earth. I'm not exaggerating. We were stupid lost, but stupid happy.

We chatted about our families, vacations over the past year, and of course, our yarn adventures. She told me about her recent knit retreat (of which I'm thinking I need to do sometime), and we shared our pitfalls and successes with our projects. We talked about her alpaca allergy (which makes me so sad), and her subsequent foray into silks (which makes me so happy). And then, I said, "So... how about we go to a yarn store?"

Twist our rubber arms, why don't you?

We hopped onto a bus to Wolseley Wool, and I did my customary thrice-over on the place. I lingered on this baby jacket knitted from the Little Rowan collection, which I'm thinking would be really lovely in an adult size:

The folks at Wolseley Wool are smart cookies: When we walked through the door, we came face-to-face with a table with a Christmas tree decorated in yarn accessories, and surrounded by skeins upon skeins of luxury yarns, including the infamous Madelinetosh. And it wasn't long before one of those skeins appeared in my hand and stayed there for the duration of my visit. And then it wasn't long before I brought it to the till and paid for it to come home with me:

And yeah, we'd JUST finished talking about how we were both trying to stay away from variegated yarns, even though they are sooo pretty. Gah. It'll all work out, I'm sure.

It's funny how relationships develop. Linette and I had dinner ONCE a few years ago when she and her family came to visit along with a mutual friend, and somehow, this friendship was born. But I guess that's  how also traditions are born: we find something we like to return to, and we just keep doing it until there is no question that we will do it.

And now that I've had macaroons, it would be ok with me if we added that to the tradition. It'll be like having a turkey dinner, or decorating a tree. We could just make it... you know... the normal thing.

Anything can become "normal," after all.