Guess Who Came To Dinner?

The big flag at the main entrance to Canada 9 is not usual - so that means the guest must've been someone special, right?

 Indeed, 'twas so:  we were honoured by our PM, Stephen Harper (speaking above), who arrived in the company of the two big guns of defence (Minister of Defence and Chief of Defence Staff, also above).

 Better yet (for some), they brought with them two young ladies from the national women's hockey team (they won gold in the Vancouver winter Olympics, thus the medals), and Jarome Iginla from the men's Olympic gold-winning hockey team (teal shirt, and he modestly left his medal at home) .

And the band played on.... a wonderful, international ISAF folk band, made up (left to right) of a Brit, Canadian, and two Americans.  They were all good, with great voices, and the Canadian fiddler  superb - I wondered if he was of Nova Scotia's musical heritage.

What am I wearing?  My blue zebra linen suit (I joke I'm the decoy - it's very non-camo!) over a printed silk crepe sleeveless top with a pleated neckline. Linen from Fabricland, silk from Fabric by the Yard, pattern, well, I'll have to look it up.  All comfortably loose and cheerful.  I get a surprising number of compliments on this blue zebra look, and frequently get asked for photos. People here are starved for a little normalcy - living in a world of camouflage, even international varieties of it, does get monotonous.  Me, I'm sooo looking forward to a dress!!!!

A Different Kind of Embroidery

The famous KAF Boardwalk is a quadrangle of sea-cans - ie, sea containers - with windows and doors cut into them, all facing inwards.  The central area houses an imported from Ontario all-Canadian hockey rink, a fenced-in basketball court that doubles as a mini-soccer field, a couple of volleyball nets, and a wide expanse used by football (the American kind), baseball, and rugby afficionados.  The Boardwalk is really truly a boardwalk, and it's nicely roofed against the blazing sun.

The seacans house a miscellany of shops, serving up fast (and not so fast, when available) food, cold and hot drinks (espresso over ice!), Afghan jewellery, scarves, woodwork and of course carpets, internet, banking, barbering, alterations, and, surprisingly, embroidery.  Let's take a peek into the embroidery shop, shall we?  Here's one of the machines:

They're serious, dedicated, computerized workhorses.  You won't find any flowers and butterflies coming out of them, though - the customers just aren't the butterfly types.  They need serious insignia, and that's what they get.  C-IED right above my right hand, for example?  That's counter-improvised-explosive-device, and the brave fellows who wear them disarm deadly home-made-mines, if you please.

I'm wearing a Vogue Montana jean jacket in grey linen from Michael's, with matching wide-leg pants, btw. Wrinkled of course, but since everyone around me parades in fatigues, I dig being a little rumpled.

 The shop is a family business, and the owners (mother and daughter, I presume) are Russian-speaking Kazakhis.  For the right price, they'll embroider any design on anything you please - flowers and butterflies included. The name tags hanging off the counter are luggage tags - ingenious!

How many nationalities can you spot on the wall?

It's really, really hot here now.  The day after I took this pic, the little thermometer topped 50 degrees Celsius, and upon cooling, promptly gave up the ghost (the surface tension at both ends broke the bead into a bunch of discontinuous little lines). 

Of boys and their toys

Life without sewing?  It demands something else by way of diversion to occupy the time. To wit:

1. work

2. work

3. gym aka PT

4. work

and more of the same.

Not much time for the internet, either.  And the bandwidth is woefully slow.

One of our diversions is the weekly bazaar at the edge of the base.  It's open for a mere 3 hours once a week, and provides a welcome high point to the week.  It's staffed by local men and their sons - like the charming young man above, who sold me one of the plastic-encased spiders for my own boy who's probably the same age.  We never see any Afghan women or girls - they're completely invisible, er, absent. More's the pity.

The other diversion takes a little more work than just spending money, but it does involve money as well:  fundraising runs.  One of the ones I participated in shortly after getting here was to support the young fellow's school. Note, my dear lady friends, one and all, that this is a boys' school.  Literacy Illiteracy rate for women in this neck of the woods runs to 90%.  Yes, that's correct:  nine adult women out of ten can't read or write.  A dismal number of girls get to go to school.   I wish we could all get together and do a fundraiser for a local girls' school, don't you?  

And now for the toy:  like my ride?  Just one of the big toys for the big boys (& girls) I work with here.  Don't I just look like a military tourist? This is the only bit of green for miles and miles of here.  

Happy sewing, everyone! 

KAF Look of the day

With  drastic temperature changes from morning to mid-day to evening,  frequent though brief showers and a nearly complete lack of any cover from fiercely bright sunlight between them, layering is the correct approach.

The long-sleeved tee is Jalie 2805, from a delicious blue-tan heathered stretch cotton from Emma One Sock; the slacks are my self-developed TNT, from a stretch cotton herringbone in very pale tan, an exact match to the local dried mud, accessorized with one of my keyhole silk chiffon scarves - wonderful for keeping the neck warm. Barbed and razor wire form a common thread in the local scenery.

The boots and coat were my big but essential purchases for this assignment.  The coat (though it has absurdly long sleeves) is roomy enough for a thick under layer and did a beautiful job doubling as a very warm blanket on the two long haul flights that got me here. 

 I'm standing in front of the Canadian memorial to our servicewomen and men, who lost their lives in the line of duty here.  The sculpture is an inukshuk.

Up, up and away!

The time has come....

...to put away...
...my sewing machines...
...my serger...
...my fabrics...
...my patterns...
...my Burda magazines...
...and return all my unconventional sewing aids (chopsticks, toothpics, the rolling pin, and the like) to their rightful place in the home...

Yesterday I made three workout tops. Today I pack. And tomorrow?



How did my self-clothed deployment project turn out?  With the exception of pj's and hats, I made pretty much everything on my list.  I BOUGHT only a suitably mud-coloured convertible winter/raincoat and one pair of gym shorts - but neither of these were on my list to begin with. 

I leave you with the trailer for Kandahar (2001), a superb Canadian-made movie that predates the current conflict, but instead shows an expat woman's perspective of her country after the Afghan-Soviet war. Highly, highly recommended.