Having a fallow time...

I guess I've been having a fallow time of not blogging so much.  I'm ok with that, but I miss blogging.  It's not that I don't have anything to blog about, it's more that I've got so much on my mind that it's hard to sort it all out and figure out what I want out there in public.

It is supposed to be 60º today.  I'm freezing.  I don't know if there's so much water in the air that it seems cooler than it is or what. 

A dog found us the other day.  We were saying goodbye to Dinah after a sleepover when Rachel announced that a strange dog was in the driveway.  I went out to make sure it was friendly before everybody came out and he ran right up to me, wagging his tail.  He seems to have been cared for, was clean and had a choke chain on, but so far no one's claimed him.  I call him Elof for a joke.  He looks a lot like my great-uncle Luther did at the end of his life with his sweet saggy jowls (the dog, not Luther) but for some reason Elof tickled me more.  (Elof was another great-uncle, brother to Luther.)  I  need to make some more posters to put up in the neighborhood.  Here's a picture of him. 



He's cute but I'm hoping that someone claims him soon.

I was blogging in Friend Leigh's comments section the other day about Rachel's "lambie" and thought I'd drop it in here as a quick Monday Memories.

When Sarah was born and was sick, I bought her a lambskin to sleep on.  Lambskins are supposed to make the baby sleep better, grow faster, etc.  Grow Sarah did, but she didn't take a shine to the lambie (pronounced with the "b" intact) which was fine since we had Rachel two years later.  Rachel, on the other hand, loved lambie with a vigorous passion.

If Rachel was upset, all we'd have to do is hand her the lambie.  She'd rub it on her face, stick her thumb in her mouth, and all was right in her world.  She also liked to rub pieces of lambie between her thumb and index finger and, indeed, eventually pulled lambie to pieces doing so.  We collected the lambie pieces because they were worth their weight in gold.  Nothing but nothing could soothe Rachel like a piece of lambie.  It was a sad day when Rachel was grown up enough that lambie did nothing for her and we threw out the collection of lambie bits that we'd saved.

Once, we dropped something off at Kinko's for Doug.  He went to pick it up hours later and, upon entering the store, saw a piece of lambie that Rachel had dropped when she entered.  He chuckled to himself and related the finding when he got home.  He knew we'd been there.  Lambie was there.

Sarah had her bink (a pacifier or "dummy") and Rachel had lambie.  Abby was just a rabid nurser.  I guess I was her lovey.  I'm not sure that the twins had lovies other than each other but that has always seemed to work for them.  Friend Husband had a blanket with fringes on it (it was called the "fringe-ah" by my mil).  I had a doll that I slept with from the time I was two until I got married.  Sometimes when I'm really upset, I still dig that doll out and sleep with her clutched to my chest.  Lovies are so powerful and special.

What do you remember about your lovey?

Monday Memories

A recent memory:

We have lunch once a month with a couple from a sister congregation.  This had started when Friend Husband preached once a month at a neighboring congregation and the preacher from that congregation had us over to lunch between our first service and their second (where FH preached).  They also invited this other couple, so the three families would lunch together once a month.  The preacher and his wife moved to Texas but we and the other couple continue the tradition.  So...

Yesterday was our Sunday to lunch with the Watsons.  We met them, their daughter, and some other friends from their congregation at Wendy's.  We generally have a pretty boisterous time.  Good times.  As is per usual, the women and the men separated into different groups so we were having some sort of raucous discussion when Rachel, my easily-embarrassed 12-year-old walked up.  Friend Husband had given the children Frosties a while back and her question when she walked up was, "Do I have a mustache?"

My answer?  "Not yet, but give it 30 years."

The pregnant pause was followed by my daughter's indignant squawk, "Mother!  I meant now!  A Frostie mustache!"

"I know," I said with a smug look on my face.

The rest of the women burst out laughing, me along with them, to be followed by the easily-embarrassed 12-year-old.

Good times.

Monday Memories

Whew!  Well, that was fun!  Did y'all have good New Years celebrations?  I was conked out as 2008 rolled in, as I had planned since I had to drive to Knoxville the next day.  We had a nice leisurely breakfast, then drove to spend the rest of the week with my sil, St. Amber (just kidding, after the Thursday Thirteen last week, I'm sure y'all think I'm nuts), and the girls.  A good time was had by all.

One of the fun/cool things we did was to stay up late talking.  I think that Amber and I must not get too much adult interaction, ha ha!  The last night we were there, all the larger girls and the two moms were in the living room, reminiscing about all sorts of wild and scary things.  The girls enjoyed hearing stories about themselves (and their cousins) and we got to share a warm family time.  Then we yakked it up after they went to bed.  It was truly a wonderful end to a lovely trip.

And today I was cooking Indian food and thinking about my garden from this summer.  At least at the beginning of the summer, I cut and dry a lot of herbs for use in the summer.  There wasn't enough rain for any decent basil this year, so that was a no-go, but my lemon balm and mint crops were outstanding.  One of the recipes I was making called for mint powder, so I went looking for my mint.  Generally, after the herbs are dried, I put them in old spice bottles from an old set that Friend Husband snagged me at a garage sale.  I was hunting up the mint and found a likely bottle, although it smelled like it had been sitting perhaps a bit too long.  I shrugged and started putting pinches of it in, grinding it up in my fingers as I let it sift down into the bubbling chick peas.  Then I suddenly realized that it wasn't mint I was putting in there, it was lemon balm!  I figured that I hadn't put enough in to make a difference so I went, found the mint, and proceeded to pulverize some of that into the stew.  As I did so, I thought about my herbs and how much I enjoy playing with them, cutting them back, drying them, using them, giving them away. 

It was a neat thing to remember, even though it's not freezing cold here in the midst of winter.  In fact, it may have gotten up to 70º F today.  We enjoyed the springlike weather as much as we possibly could, playing outside and opening all the windows to air out the house.

However, this is the story I want to share for Monday Memories, because it is one that my girls shared Thursday night and got us all to cackling.  Perhaps I should have stayed with the reminisces about parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, and mint, but this is one of our favorite stories about our cat, Aragorn.

When Aragorn was a younger cat, the vet suggested that, alongside his cat tree, we set up a bird feeder.  Dr. Clemons thought that it would be interesting for Aragorn to sit on his cat tree and watch the birds on our big picture windown out back.  We also thought it would be interesting, inveterate bird watchers that we were then, so we put a little feeder up on the window.  It wasn't long until the birds found it and were helping themselves to the seed on a regular basis.  And Aragorn was, indeed, intrigued by the birds outside the window.  So intrigued, actually, that he forgot that the birds were outside the window.

I don't know what possessed him that day, or why that one bird was so interesting.  It looked like any other bird that had visited over the course of the week or so that the feeder had been up.  We were all in the dining room, where the picture window and cat tree are and, as the novelty of the feeder hadn't worn off, we were all watching the birds at the time of the event.  For suddenly, Aragorn leaped from his high perch to thunk against the window, right where the bird feeder was.  Of course, the birds flew away (and indeed, we didn't have much luck luring that particular kind of bird again) but the embarrassment was not quite complete for our intrepid cat.  Instead of being able to slink away to nurse his wounded ego, he first had to undergo the supreme humiliation of falling into the wooden umbrella holder (under the picture window), extricating himself, and then slinking away.  It took him quite a while to get over that, I think.  We didn't see him for some time.  Of course, we didn't really mind, as we were laughing so hard, we might not have been able to see him anyway.  Poor Aragorn!  I hope he's forgotten it, but the girls haven't because they shared the story with their cousins last week, in and amongst the hails of hearty laughter.

Monday Memories and a tag

Lori tagged me (sounds like I've got a split personality and am running around tagging myself) for this...

1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.

2. Post these rules on your blog.

3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself

4. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.

5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.

Seven random or weird things about me, in the style of Monday Memories:

1.  I have been depressed pretty much all of my life.  The last 3 or 4 years have been unusually bad, though.  I am thankful that it seems to be abating thanks to prayer, meditation, mediation, and medication. 

2.  I have double-jointed knees and fingers (but not thumbs or elbows).  I can touch my pinky fingers to the backs of my hands.

3.  When I was in high school, I wanted to be a high school lit teacher.  One of my high school lit teachers dissuaded me from doing that and I decided that I wanted to be a psychologist.

4.  I can knit and tat but crocheting is beyond me.

5.  I find it quite difficult to do anything mindless without a book to accompany me.  When I have to brush my hair (which is quite the task, given how long and thick it is), I read while I do it.  I have to fight myself not to read while I'm drying off after a shower and getting dressed.

6.  I minored in Middle Eastern Studies because I wanted to study Israeli military history.  It never occurred to me that I could just read stuff and educate myself.

7.  I love history and studies of different cultures.

Well, I guess this turned out to be less of a "Monday Memories" thing.  I was thinking about the answers last night as I was nodding off and of course, didn't write them down.

I tag whoever wishes to do this (sorry, cop-out, I know, but a lot of people resent tags) and especially Sarah and Shawn, if she isn't too offended by doing tags.

Monday Memories-Family Reunions

Needless to say, I've been thinking a lot about our family reunion coming up. Mostly I've been thinking about the logistics: how to keep the twins occupied on the long long trip to Texas, how to be able to bring decent food both on the trip and to the reunion when I can't cook, and trying not to get too stressed out about the entire situation. I've also been fondly remembering the family reunions of my childhood.

One of the main reasons that I want to go to this reunion is because of how wonderful they were for me, growing up. Yes, they were also boring in parts, but I also had a great time. My children don't have those memories so much. My family is in Tennessee and Texas and Friend Husband's family is now located in Florida, New York, and California and we just don't get together for the express purpose of catching up with extended family. When I was growing up, it was a given that we would be going to my mom's two reunions each year. Her father's family reunion (the Anderson reunion) was always in June and her mother's family reunion was always in October, and they were always different in tone and in activities.

The original Anderson family had something like 14 children in it (I'll have to check with Cousin Gwen for the exact numbers). Those children, their children, and grandchildren got together for years at Aunt Nina & Uncle Jack's house on a farm outside Austin. The main cool thing I remember about these reunions was that we got to drink all the soda we could handle! Back in the days before free soda refills and Big Gulps, this was indeed a bounty. They chilled the glass bottles (and later the aluminum cans) in a giant soda cooler filled with ice and we could just go by and snag them as we wished. There are other things I remember about this reunion: playing in the barn and in Uncle Jack's woodworking shop, listening to the ladies talking, exploring the old farmhouse (claw-foot tub, side porches, and Cousin Anna's room in the front of the house), running around the yard in the heat with all of the cousins, and admiring Aunt Nina's iris bed that seemed to stretch on for miles and miles. Before we dug into all the good, homemade food brought in, the "girls" (my grandfather's sisters) would link hands in a way that allowed them to cross their arms in front of each other, and would "sing grace". My memory is that they would sing the old Lutheran hymn "Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow" but I may have that one wrong. It was an amazing thing to see stern Aunt Nina, fashionable Aunt Maedell, and all the rest of the aunts singing with one voice together.

Then we dug into the food. Of course, what I remember most were the desserts and just the general bounty of the table. I tried ostkaka for the first (and last) time there and other Swedish delicacies as well as the time-honored pies, cakes, and cookies that were the more usual fare. I don't remember now where I heard this story, perhaps my brother told it, but apparently my grandmother baked her spritz cookies for the Anderson reunion every year and was miffed that they were never grateful to her for the effort. Having made them on occasion myself, with her cookie press, I can attest to the fact that they are somewhat of a production. A wonderful production but time-consuming nonetheless.

As much as I loved the Anderson reunion, I felt more comfortable with the quiet people at the Carlson reunion. The Carlsons were my maternal grandmother's family. There were originally 12 children: six boys followed by six girls. Only the youngest daughter, Della, is still living. I was amazed to find out that all of the children in this family survived to adulthood, as did all but one of the Anderson children (Daisy died of whooping cough as a child). Childhood mortality being what it was and their being raised on a farm made me think that they possibly would not have made it that long but they certainly did. All but two of the children married and most of them had children of their own. The Carlson reunion was always in October but the location varied. Sometimes it was in San Angelo, at my Aunt Edith's house, sometimes in Brady, at Brady Park, and sometimes in Melvin, at the Fire Hall. Last year, Cousin David moved it to Brownwood State Park but after meeting with some reluctance, it was moved back to the Melvin venue.

There isn't just a lot to do in Melvin other than hang out at the Fire Hall and talk to family. When I was young, Mom would let us wander around the town, looking in all the vacant storefronts and poking around in empty lots. That was pretty cool for a child who was pretty much sequestered to where Mom's voice would carry when she called me home. Even then, I would gaze in at the mess inside the abandoned buildings and weave stories about the people who populated them.

Needless to say, I'm not going to be letting the children wander around Melvin. There are just too many wicked people in the world, but we may do a lap around just for old times' sake. My Uncle Elof and Aunt Sally's house is right around there, I think, and I may try to walk over there and try to capture yet more of my fading childhood memories. Of all my great uncles and great aunts (and there were many), Elof was my favorite. He always had something to say to us and had a fun sense of humor. And I hope to go to the cemetery and see the graves of my great grandparents and their children. I just love cemeteries.

Anyway, mostly what I remember about the Carlson reunions were the chill in the air and the quietness of them all. The Andersons weren't a rowdy bunch by any stretch of the imagination but the Carlsons mainly sat quietly talking and reminiscing. And drinking endless streams of coffee. I couldn't get over the amount of coffee those Swedes could consume during the course of the day. The food was, of course, wonderful (that's where I got my recipe for jambalaya, which Friend Husband just loves) and it was fun running around the playground at Brady Park, or playing in the playhouse in the back of Aunt Edith's house, but the big thing was everybody sitting around talking, then the family groups being photographed. Once, the Brady paper came out and took a picture of everyone for publication in the paper (yes, Brady is small enough where a family reunion can be news).

I hope the children aren't too bored by the proceedings. If I know the girls, they will sit quietly reading and the twins will be rumucking around the building, sneaking food. Since Aunt Mildred has passed, it's unlikely that we will have any huge displays. (The last time that Aunt Mildred came to the reunion, she was already well into either senility or Alzheimer's. The usual restraint of the Carlson women was not the greatest with Mildred anyway and on this occasion, she let loose with loud, raucous stories and songs. I believe that that was the year that I dragged Friend Husband to the reunion. It was a good time.) At the end of it, the girls will probably ask me why we traveled all the way to Texas to sit in a building with a bunch of people they didn't know. I will have to tell them that it's all about family.

I love my family. My mom was very involved with her extended family, at least by today's standards, and I absorbed some of that, being raised in her home. I enjoy hearing stories about the original Carlsons as well as their families. We are an amazingly diverse bunch of people (especially now that I've integrated the family with the addition of the twins!) and it's interesting to me to have some common memories but also to hear what's going on with their own lives currently. I guess that the girls might get a sense of that when we get together with my brother and his family and they can run willy-nilly with their cousins and enjoy the love and fun that my sil provides us. I doubt that the Carlson reunion will last until they are grown, but perhaps they will have one small memory of these quiet people to take with them into adulthood. Perhaps they will not remember or enjoy it at all but it's worth the chance for me. I will enjoy the reunion, if not the preparatory business beforehand. And that is why we are driving halfway across the country to the family reunion.

First Day of School

Today is our first day back to full-fledged school.While I think we all have mixed feelings about it (we love to study but we also love the freedom of summer), I think we’ll do ok.Our schooling has changed over the course of the last 7 years and so have our attitudes toward it.

 

I remember the first summer we homeschooled.I had convinced Friend Husband that Sarah would benefit more from being at home than from doing whatever it was in public school.From her demeanor, it was clear that some sort of something bad was happening there and I didn’t want to lose any more of my daughter than was already gone.(Turns out that it wasn’t gone, it was just hidden behind a wall, but that’s neither here nor there.)

So I planned.I planned for a solid 6 months before we started.I sought the counsel of knowledgeable homeschoolers (like Angela, who I met at this time).I looked at books (I think I read every homeschooling book in the Kenton County Library System), I perused websites.I researched homeschooling laws.I gathered information and bided my time.My plan was to teach Sarah and Rachel (a kindergartner at the time) for the summer and if it didn’t work out, I’d send them both off to public school and no one would be the wiser.Needless to say, that didn’t happen and here we are, the first day of our 7^th year of learning at home.

This is Sarah’s first day of “high school”.It’s Rachel’s first day of “middle school”.It’s Abby’s first day of “third grade”.It’s the beginning of a brand-new year.

I remember that first year with great fondness.I knew, even as I was making plans, that I would look back at myself then and roll my eyes.I do, but it’s more the sort of thing you’d do to a beloved but enthusiastic younger brother or sister.I wish I had some of that enthusiasm today.What I have now is knowledge and history.I know that things can and do go wrong, but I also know that we have the tools to persevere and triumph over our problems.

What I didn’t know then but know now is that our family has benefited immeasurably from the homeschooling experience.Yes, we’ve gained the book knowledge, legal knowledge, and some organizational skills.We’ve realized that we can be quite creative and flexible if need be.But the benefits run deeper and I’m more grateful for them than I am for anything else.We’re a closer family because of homeschooling.It’s true, we all get on each other’s nerves but we also cherish each other more, I think.I have gotten to know my girls more deeply than I would have if I’d sent them off to someone else for hours a day, 180 days a year.I think I respect and understand more of their strengths and weaknesses than I would have otherwise and I think they know me better than I ever dreamed of knowing my own mother.(Which is very scary!)We’ve gone off on tangents, we run into brick walls, we’ve found things that work and we’ve found things we’ll never try again.Most of all, we’ve found each other and that’s the most precious thing we’ve learned in our years of homeschooling.

Happy new school year, to all of you!It’s a time for new beginnings, a time when the slate is clean and everything is possible.I love that about beginnings.But I also like knowing that, no matter what happens, we’re together and we can handle it.

Monday Memories

Did I ever tell you about my "Dite"?

I've been thinking a lot about my father's side of the family lately, what with finally meeting one of the 3 cousins I have on that side and with my grandmother's passing last week.  We were not allowed to know much of anything about my father's side of the family and since they didn't come looking for us, we didn't know about them until we were adults and sought them out ourselves.  But I do have a few memories of them from early, early childhood.  One of them is my "Dite".

I don't know how the term "dite" came about, but that's what I called my great-grandmothers.  At some point in my very early childhood, I was allowed to stay with one of them overnight.  It's always been a tenuous memory, so I must have been very young.  I remember a very tidy house and a woman I didn't know who let me eat peppermint ice cream that night.  I was entranced, but I don't remember much of anything else.  After asking my father about it, he told me that that was my paternal grandmother's mother but I never thought to ask him much more about it.

It's a weird thing, having half of your life story stripped away like that.  Of course, we knew Mother's family very well and there were certainly plenty of them.  But as I've grown older, I realized that the whole history of that side is gone to me, for the most part.  Some of that is fine, every family has its skeletons, but as a psychologist and just as a curious person, I wonder what family mores and traditions went into turning out the people who are my unknown family on my father's side.

Then I think about Keziah and David and just mourn.  I have no way of finding out anything about their birth family and I feel that hole for them already.  I don't exactly know what to do about it, either, other than to be aware that that might be a concern for them when they're adolescents and beyond.

I guess this turned out to be more about family than Dite, but everything is connected in the undisciplined chaos that is my brain.

Monday Memories

I've had a lot of stuff going through my head today. It being Memorial Day, we made our annual trek to the Local Little Burg's Memorial Day Parade. This was the place that I mentioned last year in terms of everybody giving us weird looks because of the twins. This year, no one gave us a second glance other than to note that we had two toddlers with us.

The trip was a success in Abby terms because 1) there was a lot of candy thrown and 2) the parade itself wasn't long. It was a success for me because 1) no one got hurt and 2) it didn't rain as it threatened to do most of the morning.

It did give me a lot to think about, though. The parade winds through Local Little Burg's "main street", then to the LLB Cemetery.

Personally, I like cemeteries. Friend Husband and I spent a lot of time walking through them when we were dating. It makes me sad that we will probably be cremated and won't "be" someplace where someone can plant a peony bush and come to "talk" to me. LLB Cemetery is one of those old-fashioned ones where you can plant stuff, etc. My mother is buried in a "memorial park", which means that you can only leave flowers in those dumb little vases and nothing outside of those is allowed. Former Stepfather was very proud of his choice in this because he doesn't like cemeteries where you can plant things. Something about their being "low-class" or something. Whatever. It's not like I'll be making the trek to Austin to put flowers in Mother's stupid little vase anyway. But if I could, I'd plant a rose bush there.

Anyway, we got home and after an extensive nap (wherein I dreamed that I was driving on some newfangled highway that Austin had built and I was lost and freaked out by the traffic flying around me), I went out to plant my annuals. Unfortunately, I found more weeds that needed to be pulled and did more weed pulling than planting. But it got me to thinking about a question that Sarah asked me a couple of weeks ago and that is, "Why did you start gardening?"

I don't actually know why I started gardening. I started when we moved to Columbia and lived in the rent house. I had quite a large veggie and flower garden that I literally hacked out of the back lawn. I enjoyed planting things and seeing things grow. I still don't remember what possessed me to do this, though. It was certainly not something I ever did as a teenager or young adult. I didn't do it at the rental we lived in in Austin (I didn't even have potted plants outside there, although I did have a few inside.)

So I don't know what moved me to start but I do know what moves me to continue despite the pain, expense, irritation, etc. It just gives back so much. You have to spend a lot of time outside in the fresh air when you garden. I probably wouldn't set foot outside without mine. You get a lot of exercise, especially this time of year when you (I) have to weed so much. I haven't even gotten my mulch down yet, I've had to weed so much.

I just love it in the spring when the first bulbs are peeping up and bringing some color to a grey and cold world. I enjoy knowing my plants, season after season. Just today I was delighted to see that my columbine seems to be spreading as well as whatever the white flower is that is blooming now. It's going to be a stellar year for sage and lemon balm and the mint is doing pretty well too. My roses are just blooming their heads off, for the first time ever and the lilies in my memorial garden look like they're taking over the back yard (note to self: divide and move some of those guys out this year). The yellow bush that the new neighbors next door wanted to throw out is sending out baby shoots and it always reminds me of the Curmudgeonly Bud who lived there before the new neighbors. We talked about gardening a lot and I remember when he planted that bush in his garden, the summer before he died. He said that if it didn't do something and look pretty, he was going to pull it out and be done with it. The bush lasted longer than Bud did.

I remember my mother when I see my roses and I remember Debbie when I pull a plant that isn't exactly a weed but sorta lives in the wrong place. (Debbie once said, quoting another friend of hers, that a weed is any plant that is where you don't want it to be.) I remember my beloved sister-in-law when the lilies down by the mailbox bloom, and when I'm transplanting monkey grass, because I got them from her in Wichita. I remember my friend Pat, who now lives in North Carolina, because she gave me so many of the pretty plants that thrive so in my gardens today.

I also remember my mother when I see the lacy coreopsis start to bud and bloom. Mother used to give me money for my birthday and I'd spend it either on fabric or plants (or both!) I bought the coreopsis with the last birthday money she gave me, 9 months before she died. I have a memorial garden where I remember Mother, my late, great mil, and my husband's grandmother. It's planted with roses, lilies, and forget-me-not. I think they would have liked that.

Well, I'm blathering on. I guess it's just a healing thing to be outside in the fresh air and thinking about so many positive things and having so many lovely memories to sift through. And when the irritating memories filter in (as they tend to do), there's always some stubborn weed or tree rootling that needs to be manhandled up out of the ground.

I never thought I'd be one of those old ladies that putters around in her yard and makes bigger and bigger gardens, but I guess that's where I'm headed. I suppose there are worse things to be in this world.

Adventures in Fiber II: Monday Memories

*Edit* The pictures aren't coming up so you should go over to my other blog to see them, if you wish.

While I realize that it's not much of a "memory" having happened over the weekend, I'm going to "reminisce" about the Fiber Festival over the weekend. Generally, I think we had a good time. I know I did, as evidenced by the goofy pictures of me that Friend Gina took. The Festival itself was smaller than I thought it might be but I thought it was a good size to not have so much to do that you're overwhelmed. We also found a sort of local yarn shop that looks like it has good prices, so might be worth the hike out there. And we learned an awful lot about alpacas. Much alpaca knowledge was garnered. And I learned how to needle felt, which isn't quite the idiotic thing that I thought it was. In fact, given that you're repeatedly stabbing something that won't be hurt by your stabbing, I saw it as therapeutic. (Yes, I am a strange person with strange ideas about therapeutic techniques.)

So anyway, the first slideshow is pictures of the many many animals outside the venue. They were very cute. It was a tempting thing to think of carrying one home in Gina's Honda. Sadly, we came home alpaca-less. Aren't they as cute as they can be?

Ok, the next set of pictures were inside the Festival itself and also outside. But they're specifically Fesitival related. My favorite part was walking around and touching everything. I love fiber arts because they're so tactile! I can't walk into a fabric shop without petting the fabric and apparently I can't walk through fiber displays without touching all the samples and yarns. I got to touch mohair for the first time and it was just magnificent. We also saw some absolutely gorgeous yarn that I had to rub on my cheek as well. It was the beautiful blue and purple skein that Gina photographed with my charming mug next to it (not!). Too bad it was something like four times as much as I've ever spent for a skein of yarn.

We were on a mission to find sock yarn. We looked at skein after skein after wonderful skein of sock yarn. I almost bought some black yarn to make Friend Husband some socks until I found out that it was some kind of exotic mix...something like alpaca and mohair or something. I decided that that would be a bad choice of fibers for a first sock experience. Plus there is the chance that Friend Husband would refuse to wear exotically-fibered socks even if they were a plain black. But we did look and take pictures. Friend Gina almost bought a skein of the pretty sock yarn we saw outside (pictures below) but ended up not. And how glad she was that she didn't!

At some point in the afternoon, we decided we'd seen enough and we packed up to head home. As we were driving and talking, Gina mentioned a yarn store that she'd Googled in Franklin, which was on our way home. Hey, I'm up for almost any shopping excursion when I'm with a friend, so we decided to stop in on our way home. After a few turnarounds, we managed to find Yarn & Needles on the River. Lovely lovely store in a 150 year-old house. Gorgeous! We walked in and Gina turned around to say, "This is my new favorite place!" Then we noticed the signs that said "30% off yarn, 50% off patterns and books. All sales final."

Uh oh. Gina guessed correctly that they were going out of business. As a matter of fact, we were there for their last hour of business at that location. In that hour, I managed to enhance my stash greatly with Cascade 220 yarn (for which there is a master plan), and sock yarn. Gina only enhanced her stash one bag's worth but in the meantime, she attempted to coerce one of the store employees to open a store in Lebanon, OH, nearer to where we live. So, sadly Yarn & Needles on the River is no more but we have some bee-youtiful yarn (and fun pictures) by which to remember our fun excursion.

I have had very few girlfriends in my life. In my earlier years, I hung out more with boys than girls because we were more alike. In graduate school, I discovered a little bit more about sisterhood but then we moved and it became just me and the (little) girls again. In Gina, I can have that sweet friendship that I have missed all these years. It's just too much fun to go out yarn shopping with someone who understands. Now, if I could just convince her to quilt...

Monday Memories

I was out planting another rose bush this morning and thinking about roses and my mother. The two seem intertwined in my thoughts and memories. I never smell a rose without thinking about Mom and it's not often that I think about Mom without also thinking about roses.

Naturally, the rose was Mother's favorite flower. After she died, we had a discussion about what had been her favorite color rose but no one seemed to really know. I think she just took what she could get and called it good. She herself never raised roses (although my late, great mother-in-law did, and in the desert at that!) but she enjoyed it when people sent them to her. For my birthday every year, I sent her a bouquet of long-stemmed roses. Depending on how flush I was at the time, I'd send her 6 or 12 but I always sent her some with a thank-you note for having given birth to me.

The first birthday after she died was a hard one, for many reasons. Of course, you miss your mom when she passes on and then you realize that she's not going to call you on your birthday to wish you a happy day. (Actually, I used to call her at about the time I was born and say, "What were you doing on this day 'x' number of years ago?") Since my birthday is right around Father's Day, the pain of Mother's Day was still fresh and I just felt very out of sorts. Believe it or not, I really missed sending my mother roses on my birthday. That's when I got the idea that I'd buy myself a rose bush on my birthday, in her memory.

Now I am different than my mother in this respect. I'd rather have a rose bush, that will presumably be putting out roses for years, rather than a long-stemmed bouquet. So I set out to find a rose that would say "Mother" to me.

There are a lot of roses out there!

I went through various ones with significant names, then thought it might be cool to get a blue rose, since her favorite color was blue. In the end, I picked out two "Love" roses and a "Gemini" because I was running out of time to get them in the ground. The Love rose is self-explanatory, I think. The Gemini I picked because my siblings and I are all "Geminis", born in an 8-day period in June. Here are pictures of them (not in my garden, unfortunately):

Love on the left and Gemini on the right.

The rose I was planting this morning was a gift from a dear friend. We met in an online group years ago and have grown to be friends and "sisters" in a lovely sense of the word. The rose she sent me was "Sisters In Heart"...isn't that just perfect? Here's a picture of that rose (again, not my own):

A few years ago for Mother's Day, Friend Husband gave me a rose bush because he liked the name of it. It puts out the most fragrant blooms...I just love it. Here's the rose (Angel Face):

So no profundities today (not that that's a regular feature here), just thinking about roses and my mother and summer and wondering what this summer would be like. And when my roses will start blooming again.

Monday Memories

I was thinking about Friends Judi and David, who are now back in Texas, enjoying the warmth and sunlight (send some our way, won't you?). Most of the time, we get little visits, although they have lived in this area on two separate occasions for a year apiece. In fact, it was Friend Judi who kept Rachel and fetched Sarah when I went to the hospital to have Abby.

Anyway, this is not making much sense. What I mean to say is that, for the most part, we have whirlwind visits with them and then they're gone. I was thinking back to some of the former visits and three were particularly memorable, for some reason. The first was the first time I met Friend David.

Friend David and Friend Husband have been friends since they were boys. I only have one friend with whom I've had a relationship since junior high and a few have kept in contact (or re-contacted) since high school. So I'm amazed that Friend Husband, the most reserved man on the planet, has this friendship of 30+ years' duration.

Friend Husband and I had a rather whirlwind courtship. I mean, we'd sort of known each other for a while, but we didn't go out together, as I was engaged to someone else. So when Someone Else dumped me, Friend Husband jumped on the opportunity to ask me out. We went out, we fell in love, we got engaged. Very quickly. So quickly that I wondered how long it would last. When I heard that his friend David was coming to town for a visit, I got nervous. What if David hated me? Would that cause Doug to see me in a different light and dump me too? I had been told that David was really really bright and that sort of freaked me out too. I mean, I'm not completely stupid but really smart people generally make me feel really dumb.

Anyway, so we set out to meet at the University of Texas campus. I had another meeting right before this one, and I had just gotten rid of that person when David and Doug walked up. David was neatly dressed, dark and quiet. We met, we hung out. I don't remember what we talked about at all but it was a pleasant experience. I wasn't quite as freaked out about meeting the rest of Doug's friends when we went to California that December. I had passed the David test.

Another memorable visit (for me, anyway) was when they came to visit in Missouri. We went to the Missouri State Fair one day and another night sat up half the night playing board games and eating. Now this is what I remember the most. You know what we were eating? Chopped liver and raw chocolate chip cookie dough. Yeah, now you know why I weigh two tons. I had made a big bowl of cookie dough, planning to bake cookies and had not gotten around to them. I made the chopped liver (think of it as cheap paté) for an appetizer. We sat and ate that stuff all night. The savoriness of the liver offset the sweet richness of the cookie dough perfectly. Once you had a bite of one, you had to have a bite of the other. It was madness. I was very sick the next day. I wonder how many grams of fat I consumed that night...and I wonder if they remember it too.

We have had many fun visits over the course of the years, including this last one. I think the one that surprised me most was in June, 1994. I had had a miscarriage the month before and was extremely depressed. Doug, Sarah and I went to Texas to visit my family and my mother planned a surprise dinner at The Salt Lick. She contacted my friend Ann-Marie and David and Judi and they all surprised me at Mother's house before we went out to eat.

(That was also the night that O.J. Simpson went on his famous "low-speed chase". We watched it for a while when we came home, until Ann-Marie pointed out what a bizarre and idiotic thing it was to do. Do you remember what you were doing that night?)

So, anyway, I was amusing myself with memories of David and Judi over the years. I'm no longer afraid of Friend David (although Friend Judi gives me pause sometimes...just kidding, Judi!) and I love seeing them. It's nice to have friends.

Monday Memories, a bit late

Today I am going to reminisce about the first time I met Friend Cherylyn in person.  We had known each other through the late, not lamented e-group Lives of Simplicity and through other groups and had really hit it off.  I knew she lived in Oklahoma but, not having much occasion to go to Oklahoma, I didn't think much about being able to meet her in person. That was, until I took the girls to camp one summer (I'm thinking 4 summers ago now) and realized I'd be within driving distance of her house.  Or maybe she realized that.  At any rate, we set up a meeting date and time and looked forward to meeting in person.

Now, I will say that I don't make a point of meeting everyone in person who I like online.  I am a little nervous about that endeavor, depsite the fact that it's always worked out well for me (note the presence of Friends Gina, Diane, Cherylyn, and a few others in my life today).  I had "known" Cherylyn online for a few years and she never sent out any red flags for me in that period of time.  I did take the precaution of leaving the girls at camp with Friend Janet, in case something untoward should happen, but I went off excitedly to meet my friend.

As I was nearing Cherylyn's house, I called Friend Husband to tell him I was on my way.  He questioned me extensively about who it was I was meeting, how I met her, and how it was that I knew she wasn't an axe murderer.  (On a side note, why is it that they always ask about axe murderers?  Why not serial killers or Ginsu knife murderers?  How many axe murderers are there in the world anyway?)  I answered him the best I could, while trying to figure out how to get where I was going and added, "Well, I left the girls at camp with Janet so if I get hacked to death, you don't have to worry about them."

He was not amused.

I signed off with the promise that I'd call him when I left so that he wouldn't worry, parked, and made my way up her tidy sidewalk.  And from then I was engulfed by the energy force that is Cherylyn.

Now she will probably take offense, but that was one of my first impressions of her:  her enormous energy.  That and her big brown eyes, full of humor, intelligence, and interest.  Her three little girls were there and we had a lovely afternoon, chatting and laughing, watching the little girls play.  I left exhausted but happy.  It was a lovely start.

Over the years, Cherylyn has become another sister to me.  It was to her house that I went after leaving Mother in the hospital for the last time.  She has welcomed not only me but my family and even my nasty dogs into her lovely home and always makes me think I'm doing her a favor by letting us stay.  Her home is one of the mainstays in our summer sojourn to Oklahoma.  I'm so lucky to have her in my life and I thank God for her.

Monday Memories

Today I am going to reminisce about the first time I met Friend Cherylyn in person.  We had known each other through the late, not lamented e-group Lives of Simplicity and through other groups and had really hit it off.  I knew she lived in Oklahoma but, not having much occasion to go to Oklahoma, I didn't think much about being able to meet her in person. That was, until I took the girls to camp one summer (I'm thinking 4 summers ago now) and realized I'd be within driving distance of her house.  Or maybe she realized that.  At any rate, we set up a meeting date and time and looked forward to meeting in person.

Now, I will say that I don't make a point of meeting everyone in person who I like online.  I am a little nervous about that endeavor, depsite the fact that it's always worked out well for me (note the presence of Friends Gina, Diane, Cherylyn, and a few others in my life today).  I had "known" Cherylyn online for a few years and she never sent out any red flags for me in that period of time.  I did take the precaution of leaving the girls at camp with Friend Janet, in case something untoward should happen, but I went off excitedly to meet my friend.

As I was nearing Cherylyn's house, I called Friend Husband to tell him I was on my way.  He questioned me extensively about who it was I was meeting, how I met her, and how it was that I knew she wasn't an axe murderer.  (On a side note, why is it that they always ask about axe murderers?  Why not serial killers or Ginsu knife murderers?  How many axe murderers are there in the world anyway?)  I answered him the best I could, while trying to figure out how to get where I was going and added, "Well, I left the girls at camp with Janet so if I get hacked to death, you don't have to worry about them."

He was not amused.

I signed off with the promise that I'd call him when I left so that he wouldn't worry, parked, and made my way up her tidy sidewalk.  And from then I was engulfed by the energy force that is Cherylyn.

Now she will probably take offense, but that was one of my first impressions of her:  her enormous energy.  That and her big brown eyes, full of humor, intelligence, and interest.  Her three little girls were there and we had a lovely afternoon, chatting and laughing, watching the little girls play.  I left exhausted but happy.  It was a lovely start.

Over the years, Cherylyn has become another sister to me.  It was to her house that I went after leaving Mother in the hospital for the last time.  She has welcomed not only me but my family and even my nasty dogs into her lovely home and always makes me think I'm doing her a favor by letting us stay.  Her home is one of the mainstays in our summer sojourn to Oklahoma.  I'm so lucky to have her in my life and I thank God for her.

Monday Memories

I am a dingbat but I am aware that it is Sunday night.  I will not, however, be around tomorrow until possibly very late so I thought I'd throw this out tonight.

BTW, Friend Gina and I had a great time at the knitting guild on Saturday.  We were the youngest folks there (by decades) but we got to know some charming ladies.  We also did a field trip to a knitting store.  I knew it would be interesting and weird to make my first visit to a yarn store.  My first trip to a big quilting store gave me a panic attack.  This didn't give me a panic attack but I felt more like I was in Chinatown in San Francisco and couldn't read the signs.  I saw (and patted) much gorgeous yarn but as I didn't really know what it was all useful for nor how much to get, I didn't lose control like I do at Meijer with yarn at 90% clearance.  I did see some sock yarn that looked quite yummy.  One was knitted into a scrumptious green sock with various patterns attributed to the yarn rather than the knitting.  I started salivating but I did not buy any yarn.  I'm pretty far away from socks at this point and I exercised a bit of self-control there.  But I know where to find my sock yarn when I want it (and it was sheer pleasure to see and handle some of those beauties).  So that, Friend Gina, is why I didn't go off in the yarn store.

Ok, today I am going to remember the first two quilts I made.  I know that those of you who have made scores of quilts will probably think this a ridiculous blog.  I haven't made scads of quilts and it is easy for me to remember my first two because I made them for my first two daughters.

Back when I was young and had been married a few years, Friend Husband and I decided it would be a good time to start our family.  Back then, I was as fertile as a rabbit and it took no time at all to achieve this momentous science experiment.  As I started telling people and enjoying the shocked looks (remember that I was in a very liberal graduate student environment at the time and they thought it was wild enough that I shared my husband's name let alone procreated with him), a dear friend told me that I needed to make something for the baby.  I asked her what she had in mind and she said, "Oh, I don't know, something like a quilt." 

Ok!  I had read Little House on the Prairie repeatedly in my youth and figured that I could do that.  The nine-patch block was mentioned as the first block that most little girls made so I decided (the first of many decisions that led me down the primrose path) that I'd make Sarah's quilt be a nine-patch.

Shall I enumerate all the idiotic decisions I made after the first one (of relying on my memories of LHOTP to help me along with this)?  I shall.  Among them were these:

1. I decided that I wanted to make the quilt to be unbelievably soft for my newborn, so I chose flannel for the fabric.  (Collective groan here, fellow quilters.)  Actually, flannel isn't that bad to work with...if you don't buy it at WalMart, which I did, and if it doesn't have a great big weave to it, which this did.  Nevertheless, I moved on with my flannel.  The other thing you have to know about working with flannel (especially poorly woven WM flannel) is that it stretches, so you have to be careful.


2. I decided that the only way to quilt was to do everything by hand.  After all, that's the way Ma and the girls did it, right?  Dumb dumb dumb.  And dumb.  Especially since I had done precious little hand-sewing at that point in my life.


3. I didn't really measure the squares too well, I just cut them out with a pair of scissors.


4. I didn't remember the concept of seam allowances that Mrs. Baker had tried to inculcate into our feeble little brains in 7th grade.  My seam allowances varied from infinitesimal to ½ inch.  Yeah.  Yuck.


5. I didn't know that you don't generally use cotton blends to make quilts, so I chose a poly-cotton blend to do the sashing.  Easier to hand-sew but totally different from the holey flannel in the rest of it.


6. I didn't know how to hand-quilt (I didn't know how to do any of this, to be quite frank), so I decided to embroider hearts in the 9-patch squares.  That worked for one of the patches, then I got sick of it.  Oh, forgot to mention that I was using a ginormous wooden hoop to quilt in (it was the closest I could get to Ma's quilt frame).  I don't really remember how I got the rest of it quilted, but I did it.


7. I also had no clue how to bind the thing and of course didn't bother to ask someone who might actually know.  I ended up rolling up the edges, sewing them down, and cutting off the parts that stuck out.  Oh, ouch.  This just hurts to confess.

By the time I finished Sarah's quilt, she was 18 months old and I thoroughly hated hated hated quilting.  Unfortunately for me, (well, fortunately, but you'll get the picture here in a minute) I was pregnant with Sarah's sister Rachel.  Every mother knows (until she has several million children like I do) that what you do for one, you have to do for the other.  So I felt obligated to make Rachel a quilt, although I hated hated hated quilting with a passion.

This time, though, I wised up.  I had purchased a book somewhere along the way that had beautiful pictures of quilts and the patterns for how to make them.  Hallelujah, she can be taught!  Of course, they were full-sized quilts, but I decided (there I go deciding again) that I could use their measurements and cut them down to a crib-sized quilt.  I did much better on this one.  The only thing really dumb that I can remember doing is cutting myself with the rotary cutter (see, I graduated from scissors) and using the (admittedly red) piece of fabric that I'd bled on in Rachel's quilt.  The other dumb thing I was doing at that time was taping down (with masking tape) my fabric to the cutting board before I cut it.  I couldn't figure out how to make it stay where I wanted it to otherwise.  But Rachel's quilt was made in much less than the 2 years that it took me to make Sarah's.

I hired an Amish woman to quilt it (it was an Amish-style diamond in the square quilt) and also to bind it off (see, I was very wise by this time) and she did a lovely job.  It was ready and waiting (having already been embroidered with Rachel's name by me) to take her home from the hospital.  What a beautiful memory that was! 

Some day I'll have to blog about other quilts I have made (there haven't been all that many, so I can remember them very well) but those are my memories of the first two quilts I ever made.  By the time I was finished piecing Rachel's quilt, I was merrily ensconced in the world of quilting and I have loved it ever since.

I will mention here that I cast on for my first knitting in the round tonight...a hat for Keziah.  Wish me luck and speedy fingers!