A Figgy Christmas

One of Aunt Celia's stories is up on her blog, Http://gryffinitter.blogspot.com, or, if you are lazy a bit, just click here.

Mrs. Figg and Mundungus spend Christmas together in this one, and I must Aunt Celia seems just pleased as punch with it.

I had words with Dad just before fall term started, in case anyone noticed - all Muggle priv's were cut off after our last big blowout. No one can see how I dare but his closest friends - Dad is the biggest mush for his kids there ever was, really, although I am sure you couldn't find an old Death Eater who'd believe it for a minute; he's worse with us than Hagrid is with those monsters... but I have put my foot in it time and time again this year and he let me have it but good.

So, anyway, here I admit it publicly. Yes, dad, doing nice little things for Muggles without them realizing it really IS fun. And how you get away with it on your scale I will never know...

SSShh...I don't do all my shopping at the Wizard shops..

I don't do all my shopping at the wizard shops for a number of reasons: price, availability, quality, and my mother not being great at math and sometimes crying when she has to convert galleons to pounds to American Dollars before she can figure out to her own satisfaction just exactly what something is costing her.

Today, for example, I went shopping at a number of shops, and none were in Misterius Alley. All of them yielded fun fiber stuff.

The first one is a little thrift shop in the dungeon of a Muggle Church. The ones we go to don't have these, generally, so this is a different kind of Muggle Church but the ladies are nice, and Mom figures in this day and age anyone whose trying to be anything like decent needs all the help they can get and we shouldn't be too picky who they are getting it from as long as it works, so we shop at all of them. Anyway, I got a bunch of stuff there, but two things were especially knittery and one crochetty. One is a salad spinner, which I can use when I wash fleece, or yarn, or knitted items, to get extra water out of the washee. I think this one is strong enough - the last one kept jumping the track and having little nervous breakdowns, but this looked, I don't know, sturdier somehow. Three American Dollars. I also got a BIG cotton sweater from that Muggle GAP shop - a dark green, with gold edging, and four really nice buttons, all in cotton - should be enough for something, don't you think? Probably something, and a market bag or two as well. Fifty American cents.

Fifty cents.

I can barely get over it.


I also got a dozen crochet hooks - the tiny ones in sizes like 12 and 14, which are hard to even find thread small enough for - sewing thread is too thick. Yes, I said, too thick. But anyway, a dozen of these little beauties, for four American Dollars. One just cannot complain...


And of course, there was a sale at Smiley's. I love Smiley's. It is...magical in its own way, and this was the best sale they have had in a while. All the bags of yarn were twelve dollars. The ones I got were A Nylon Ribbon from Nashua, 148 yards to the ball, ten balls, 4-4.5 stitches to the inch. Should be enough for something, eh? A nice cotton sportweight in scarlet (Well, I AM a Gryffindor...) A ribbon yarn from some fancy company in hot pink, a different ribbon yarn, again from fancy company, in turquoise, and a bag of fancy sock yarn - grey with black shiny stuff and silk - that goes with everyone's robes unless you go to Bauxbatons and then you have more trouble than your socks. I also picked up three balls of Bamboo in cream for a baby sweater and two sets of double points. Oh, and one ball of wool.

There was SO MUCH terrific stuff - I mean terrific - this hot pink Rowan wool, a fantastic periwinkle wool, two different fantastic colors of boucle, worsted weight wool for two dollars a one hundred gram ball...

AND I met a woman mom worked with in 1985. Lord, to think I wasn't even born... she hadn't even met DAD yet... yikes. Seriously, she is always saying that Smiley's is the place she has run into the most people she knows from other places of any in NYC, and that is saying something pretty wild...

So why do I feel like I'm late when I am not?

And why am I panicking when I probably really don't need to? Anticipation? Habit? Spring Fever? Guilt because I have to get together with a piece of duct tape before I can properly post the package my spoiler in the other swap sent????

ESPECIALLY since there is some hope of my having way too much knitting time next weekend, cause what if I get to go to MS&W??????

Today, they really lowered the boom.

So you all know I am in such deep hot water for saying bad things about Muggles that I may never get out. Today, they did a really weird thing. At least Dad did. He took me to a wool festival with the rest of the family (I expected to be not allowed to leave the house, even though they did let me go home since Dad asked...) and he gave me money and said to pick out a spindle.

Now I've been spinning forever. You are simply not one of Mom's kids and unable to spin. I think the youngest she's taught anyone is like 3. (although cousin Rosemary was playing with roving before that.) Anyway, we looked around and he got me one of these spindles (cherry Tsunami, 2 inch, .75 ounces. Scroll down to see it). And then he told me about the day he and mom got married. Not the most famous part, but the part Dung is always mumbling about that I never entirely get.

See, when they weighed the wands at my parent's wedding, my mom of course didn't have a wand. So she brought her drop spindle and put that on the scale.

Now no one expected this to move the scale at all, because the scale weighs the magic of the witch or wizard who owns the wand, not the object the magic is in, so everyone was waiting for Dad's wand to practically crash through the floor - which was exactly what it did - and for mom's spindle to just hang there, weightless. But that was NOT what happened. Her spindle balanced out his wand.

So now I am supposed to try to find a way to take this spindle, which is not magical to begin with, and, without using any magic (Don't even give me a suggestion - he's an AUROR - he KNOWS) I have to find some way to make the magic in it equal the my dad's magic.

And then I have to write an essay about what I learn from this.

Expect me to be off double not-so-secret probation sometime around the return of King Arthur...

Parvati Patil
George Weasley
Minerva McGonagall



1. This “Harry Potter” character’s first name comes from Roman mythology. The mythological character’s twin brother is named Romulus. What is the Harry Potter character last name?

b. Lupin


2. Which “Harry Potter” character’s first name is the Roman equivalent of the Greed Goddess Athena?

c. McGonagall


3. In ‘Harry Potter’ World, this wizard has created the Philosopher’s Stone (called the Sorcerer Stone in the US). The historical figure from the 14th and 15th centuries was a scribe and a manuscript-seller who became famous as an alchemist. Who is this individual?

Nicholas Flammel

4. What is the first name of a character whose last name is the name of a Bulgarian leader from early 9th century who doubled the country’s territory?

c. Viktor


5. Which character’s name is the name of goddess in Indian mythology?

b. Patil


6. “Where the Wild Things Are” tells the story of Max, a young boy sent to bed without his supper for his wild antics. Who created this winner of the Caldecott Medal?

a. Maurice Sendak


7. What was NOT one of the unexpected defense mechanisms that Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Griphook encountered in their attempt to rob Gringotts?

c. Anti-summoning Enchantments

8. What was Snape aiming at when he cut off George’s ear?

c. Another Death Eater’s wand hand


9. How much older than James was Lily? (Referring to Harry’s parents, not children).

d. 2 months

10. Food is one of the five exceptions to what magical law?

b. Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration

Deep, philosophical thoughts about pattern naming...

All right, so I am sitting here, contemplating the names Muggles give to knitting stitch patterns and how they , excuse me, ladies, screw them up so royally all the time. Like how they call "Eye of the Phoenix" stitch "Eye of the Partridge" and how they can't seem to decide when a cable stops being an ear of wheat and becomes stag's horns, not even in the big three volume set I am having to use because Sadie Snidewhoppet's Slytherly Stitch Stash is out of the Library again. Which also reminds me that it is absolutely pathetic to be a grown woman writing books and referring back to your school house. I mean, really, has NOTHING happened to her since graduation?

My aunt and my mother are pathetic in this way and it always makes me cringe. What the heck is an SAT and why on earth do they think anyone cares what they got on theirs back before Voldemort disappeared the first time? I mean, gosh, I think my dad still had his NOSE. How much further back can you go before the Muggles were pressing their test results into clay tablets with little cuneiform sticks?

Anyway, I am fueled in all of this brilliant analysis by peeps, which are a delicious thing made out of marshmallow and finely granulated, dyed sugar, and produced, in this case, in the shape of little chicks. Well, sort of. I think you have to know they are chicks before they look like chicks. My Grandma sends them to me from the US cause we don't have them here. I have a mutilated one floating in my hot cocoa right now. I got the idea from a book I saw in a craft store about how to cook with peeps, and if it had been a reasonable price I would have gotten it, but I thought that almost thirteen dollars was a lot to pay for a book that showed you how to float peeps in hot cocoa...or espresso...and thought these were two different recipes...

I am not entirely forgiven, but they have thought up a way to punish me...

They are making me list every single trip I have ever been on, starting with "Home from St. Mungo's when you were born, Lassie!" and ending with "Hogwarts Express back to Hogwarts after Christmas Holiday."

Then, I have to figure out how much each one would have cost a Muggle, not today, no, but back in the day it happened.

And then, I have to figure out, using the cost of floo powder through the ages, how much each one of those must have cost my parents and so forth...

and THEN I have to come up with some dollar figure, adjusted for inflation, of how much more it would have cost a Muggle to do what I have done than it cost my family. Oh, and I can't even use a Muggle calculator, no, must all be done with a pencil on paper.

I am consoling myself with peeps my Grandma Mary sent me. I love you, Grandma!