I mentioned earlier how there was yarn all over our house. Now I’m convinced that it’s multiplying. There are pieces of yarn everywhere I look... the floor, tables, on the couch, in the kitchen sink. I was cleaning the counter yesterday and found a piece of yarn behind the spice rack. I think the yarn scraps have learned to crawl and are seeking out dark corners of our house to set up a comfy little yarn house where they can raise little fuzzy wool children. I have this feeling that two years from now, I’ll move aside jars of tomato sauce on the bottom shelf of the pantry and find a little yarn community in full swing with a little woolen post office and woolen café and little yarn kids gleefully maneuvering their little wool bikes between the cans of organic garbanzo beans.

Currently there is another wool “scarf” laid out on the floor, spanning our living room and dining room and heading down our back stairs. The “scarf” that we dyed in the epic chemistry experiment on our stove was a stage prop. This new scarf is for the outdoor interactive knitting installation between shows.

The click-clack of knitting needles has once again filled the air as Kathleen races to get this piece of knitting done. She’s enlisted volunteers from Wise Daughters Craft Market to contribute to this piece. Even my mom has been recruited to provide a section of knitting. If you’re reading this and you knit and you have some spare time over the next week or so, pleeeease drop Kathleen a line at kathleen.rea@reasondetre.com and volunteer your knitting skills. The faster we get it done the less chance there is for the yarn to gain sentience and take over our house.

In addition to knitting, Kathleen is also preparing costumes. This involves getting pants and t-shirts from the pride of Bentonville... and dying them!!! Until now, I never realized that textile dying was so important to modern dance. The night staff at the 24-hour Shoppers on The Queensway must be getting used to seeing me coming in after midnight and buying multiple boxes of blue and black textile dye. Who else buys dye? It’s in the back corner of the store at the bottom of the tiny rack of shoe polish.

And when Kathleen is working on props or costumes, nothing is safe. My first exposure to her bulldozer drive to create was back on Long Live where we had to make a prop that looked like the headlights and front grill of a car. For the grill, without batting an eye, Kathleen pried off the grate from the bottom of her refrigerator and we screwed it in place on the front of the “car”. We still have that prop in our basement, and the fridge in her old apartment still doesn’t have a bottom grate. Yesterday she casually asked me if I had any sweaters I didn’t want. Ten minutes later and voila:

During the outdoor knitting installation, if you see one of the yarn-ball pockets that looks like tan Eddie Bauer material, that would be my contribution to the cause.

On Saturday, we went to the theater to check out sightlines, get dimensions and other logistical details. It’s an intimate theatre, which I think is perfect for this piece. It will really help you connect with the dancers and the characters they portray.

If you’ve never been to the Winchester Street Theatre, an added bonus to going to the show is checking out the building and the neighbourhood. The red-brick theatre is a former Presbyterian church, built in 1891, with the original stained-glass windows. It’s situated on a quiet tree-lined side street in old Cabbagetown surrounded by Victorian row houses with gorgeous front gardens. Come early and walk around a bit.

Trivia Time: A few houses east of the theater at 94 Winchester Street is a house where magician Doug Henning lived before embarking on his career in magic. Now you know.

Saturday afternoon was spent putting up posters and flyers at local Cabbagetown businesses along Parliament Street. If you’re a Cabbagetown regular and you see a VIVID4 poster up somewhere, post a comment and let me know where. There are a lot of great independent businesses here with a fantastic sense of community, and supporting them gives us a warm fuzzy feeling. Warm and fuzzy... just like a little community of living yarn...

I can't promise the yarn will actually come to life during the show. Then again, as Doug Henning always said, "Anything the mind can conceive is possible." But even if the yarn does stand up and take a bow, you wouldn't notice because the dancing will be so good.