bears, skirts and dinner

"On this mountain [God] will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, The web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces; The reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for the Lord has spoken."

                                                              -   Isaiah 25:7-9

Meanwhile, tomorrow is the feast of St. Patrick; I'm working, so we had the dinner today. The crockpot did much of the work.

The cabbage was in another pan.

I've been reading "The Bears and I" by Robert Franklin Leslie. Published in 1968, the author is a young man in the north woods of Canada. Are there any of these type of men left? Can someone live like that in this day and age?  Anyway, he has to "adopt" three motherless cubs, and he tells the story so well; it's a page-turner!  I had brought the book home for my mother years ago and it was such a favorite with her, I'd gotten her a copy to keep. After she died I ended up letting it go, as I figured I'd never read it, but at work last week it came across the desk and I was suddenly interested. It's hard to put down! Bears are more like us than I'd realized. If you like animal stories, I very much recommend it.

"A wild bear grows to maturity and stays healthy for his twenty-five or thirty years on a vigorous program of physical exercise and diet unparalleled for any animal of his weight. I've watched both black and grizzly bears swim across the lake three miles wide, then climb over a mountain on the other side when easy alternative routes were available to them. I have seen black bears gallop down a mountainside and ascend a 200-foot fir without even breaking their speed - climbing by throwing their arms and legs around the trunk like a pole-climber - until they were near the top of the tree."

                                                -  The Bears and I

I saw this image on pinterest and saved it. I've got a sweater this very color, although not a turtleneck and not cropped. But that's all right. I have black suede maryjanes and I could copy the look well enough. So I poked around online and found some quilting cotton that is almost exactly this pattern.

I made a casing for an elastic waist, put in wide pleats, and it is machine basted. If i hadn't been so busy with the corned beef dinner, I could have made more progress. But it's an easy design to make and won't take much longer.

"To a bear, loss of face represents genuine calamity. Within his local society, withdrawal from any struggle most generally incurs loss of pecking rights - the established wilderness protocol of who has the right to clobber whom."

                                                  -  from The Bears and I