The cathedral near our temporary home is open again after being closed for months for a major renovation, so I went there for Easter mass - early, to be sure to get one of the chairs that are standing in for pews until the floor is down. And 'early' means 'knitting time.'
The temporary plywood floors bounce like crazy as people walk over them, and my chair did too... usually churches are all about providing stability, so it was an interesting sensation.
I love going into churches to see how they were decorated, and looking at the stained glass and thinking about the people who donated it in memory of somebody they loved. My favourite church so far is the one in Bay Bulls, which I visited when I was in Newfoundland last spring:
I still remember how clean and calm it felt in there. It's great that the placement of the wood planks gets to add to the sculpted feeling of the roof. Also I really, really loved the light fixtures, of which I could not get a good picture because they were lit and my camera is not super exciting on the feature front.
I'd gotten used to the cathedral having scaffolding over the ceiling to support the team of artists who were repainting it, but I know this is quite a difference to what was up there before:
I was in to see it just before Christmas when there was a big open house, too, and everybody was asking out of the sides of their mouths: what is with the salmon pink??
Now that the work has progressed farther I can see that a lot of trouble has been taken with the grey on grey walls, some of which appear to have been sponged. On the upside, it's a much brighter space than it was in the old days, though of course - it's still not finished, and we may be seeing some more dark accents to pull it all together and warm up the cement feeling. I think the focus was on putting it back to the general style it had when it was opened in 1848. I am trying to imagine what our frugal 1848 immigrant ancestors would have felt about stone painted to look like stone, with salmon pink accents.
I am wrong to judge though, because I had ONE JOB and that was to wear Easter stripe socks since I wasn't knitting Easter stripe socks. I forgot though. And they showed, too. Rats!
When I was prepping the vegetables for our Easter supper - Pete barbequed steaks on the shared terrace - I remembered a recipe I'd seen for fruit cobbler. I did take a picture to show you but it does not do the thing justice, even though I used my beautiful new yellow pan to bake it. The recipe was super simple and super delicious without being terribly sweet, so if you're thinking about cobbler, give it a try - and do add more fruit if you like. I used 3 cups of frozen blueberries and raspberries, following advice from other reviewers. I had it hot from the oven and cold from the fridge and it was fabulous - totally irresistible - either way.
As for prep: couldn't have been easier! I put together all the dry ingredients while the vegetables were cooking, then quickly assembled it while Pete served the plates, and slipped it all into the oven to cook while we ate. In the house it will be easier still because the range I picked has an independent baking oven so I won't have to do any choreography at all.
Ah, the dream of 'in the house'. That magical time when there will be no renovation to organize or interior decor to agonize over. Lots of windows (even if they are tinted green) with light pouring through (even if it's tinted green too) and clean new furniture on which to photograph all the knitting I'll be doing again. Heaven! Well, it'll happen soon enough. Meanwhile, it's nice just to have a weekend that isn't too complicated, don't you think?
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