Here's a project I began a few years ago, but when something has a place in this house, it can easily be forgotten. But then I remembered it, and would like to finish it.
I'm just "quilting" these two fabrics together by hand, with different flosses as my whim dictates. Half is done, and I'm going the other way.
I finished tying the baby quilt today, and it's washed and ready for my friend's little one. I tied it on the "wrong" side, as the floral is so busy - I thought it would just add to it. This gives the whiteness and bit of interest, and hopefully conceal the tasselly ends from their cat - I know how that can be!
Gretchen had asked me what I'm going to knit next, and I thought maybe a shawl, but a friend told me the fingerless mitts I'd made for her years ago finally wore out. So, I ordered yarn to make another pair and am waiting for it to arrive. I remember enjoying making them back then. Let's see if I can do it again without too much head-scratching!
I've been going through my old British Country Living magazines - I kept three issues for each month, not being able to part with them. Until now, but I'm cutting out anything which appeals to me, and putting it all in red folders, one for each month. This will take up way less room! There's a magazine swap bin at the library so they can go there if they aren't too cut up.. A woman named Sally Coulthard had a column every month; she's got a farm and animals and she does country things. Then I saw a book review, of a book she wrote about sheep. I found a copy in a nearby library, and was amazed to find a list of books by her on the back flap - she's written many books! Here are a few. So I guess she's really a writer who also has a farm.
Anyway, she did lots of research and the book is very interesting. The one I saw in the magazine is called A Short History of the World According to Sheep. The one I have is called Follow the Flock. It has to be the same book. It seems the ancient Scythians were the ones who really mastered the use of felt and they would carry their sheep when they moved around, strapped to the backs of the horses. And, did you know the Romans' shields were covered in felt? Pliny said, "wool is compressed also for making felt, which when soaked in vinegar is capable of even resisting iron..." I wonder how true that is.
This little piece of whatever is almost done. It might not look bad in the spare bedroom, under a lamp.
I suppose you would only know about Baker & Taylor if you were a library worker, but they are a large book distributor in North America. Where I work, we've always gotten our books from them; now, they are going out of business, and my boss has had to find another company.
Baker & Taylor had two Scottish Fold cats for mascots. If you went to a library conference, you could get a paper shopping bag with their photo on it. And other things. They passed away years ago, but the B&T bags, and calendar, kept going. In fact, they would ask for photos of library cats for the calendar - I had almost forgotten that.
The cats lived at a small library in Nevada, but were obtained for the library by B&T, who thought it would be a cute PR thing. They never expected them to be such a hit. Anyway, this book was written by a librarian at that library, and I couldn't resist when I heard about it. I don't know how a company can go from the largest distributor to libraries, to having to close up shop, but it's sad. My boss was faithful to them till the end (and a cat lover, I might add). It's not a gripping story, but under the circumstances I'm interested to know the story.
I am almost finished with the navy shift with purple flowers. It is the second of three summery dresses I thought it would be good to have for the hot days. But I thought of it a little late and it got cold before I could make them. Still, I could wear this with a navy pullover, which I plan to do. I wore my sunflower dress for the last time yesterday with a rust pullover sweater over it. This dress looks rather gaudy to me, and without the sweater I wouldn't have worn it to church, but, wouldn't you know - I got too warm and had to take it off. So there I was in a sleeveless dress in October. Well, we had doughnuts and coffee afterward, and as I stood in line for a doughnut, a young woman nearby said she really like the dress! (At that point, I looked down and saw a long thread hanging!)
Well, it was pretty cool today and will be freezing tonight, so I guess that's the end of summer. The forecast predicts days in the fifties and sixties. I went out, picked all the red tomatoes, and a pepper. I cut down the three basil plants - one plant will be plenty next year - and sat on the back step in the sun, picking all the leaves off them. I had to dress warmly, but it was lovely. I covered the tomato plants with sheets, since they keep producing. My plant out in the backyard garden had so many of these tiny ones on it, but I didn't cover it - that's enough. But they look like jewels.
It was good just to be outside for a while. I don't make it a priority often enough.
Last week I found a couple of pieces of something near the litter boxes downstairs; I thought the cats were responsible. But it was two pieces of wet wood - a leak!. Rather alarming, so the plumber got called. He came by to have a look, which meant everything had to come out of my closet, so he could get access to the pipes.
It’s not quite seventy degrees today. And by that, what I really mean is, it’s thirty degrees cooler than it was yesterday.
I finished my firefly dress; I was going to wear it tomorrow to work - now I hesitate. Is seventy one degrees too cool for sleeveless? Probably, especially after such a cool, damp day.
I had such a time getting the armhole binding to flatten out.
Wetting it, then pressing, over and over, to gently stretch the fabric. Patience and persistence were what I needed.
Last night's sunset -
I actually had to close my windows tonight - it's cool, and damp, which makes it feel colder.
"St. John's narrative of the Resurrection opens on the morning of the first day of the week. It is still dark - just the way it was at the beginning of time before God said, 'Let there be light (Gen. 1:3). But a light is about to shine, and a new creation is about to appear.
The stone had been rolled away. That stone, blocking entrance to the tomb of Jesus, stands for the finality of death. When someone we love dies, it is as though a great stone is rolled across them, permanently blocking our access to them. And this is why we weep at death - not just in grief but in a kind of existential frustration.
But the stone had been rolled away. Undoubtedly, Mary Magdalene thought a grave robber had been at work. The wonderful Johannine irony is that the greatest of grave robbers had indeed been at work. The Lord said to the prophet Ezechiel, 'I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves' (Ezek. 37:12) What was dreamed about, what endured as a hope against hope, has become a reality. God has opened the grave of his Son."
- Bishop Robert Barron: a meditation on John 20:1-9
It's the last Sunday of the liturgical year, the feast of Christ the King. This would be celebrated at the end, because proclaiming someone a king would be a culmination of their life. And next Sunday begins Advent, which is the beginning of the liturgical year. It would have to be the beginning, because it is the quiet, reflective time before Christmas, the birth of Jesus, and we know that life begins, not at birth, but before that, at conception. So, we honor that presence of him in his mother's womb for the three or four weeks before Christmas, waiting and preparing with her for the birth.
It's nice for the merchants that Advent starts on December first this year, since all Advent calendars I've ever seen seem to think it always begins on that date. But Advent is not something invented by those who sell Christmas decorations. It was observed by the very early Christians and officialized in the fourth century - that's pretty early! They observed it practically from the beginning.
Christ's reign is a conquest not over political enemies
but over the powers of sin and death.
His rule is redemption.
- from Magnificat, November 2024
Put no trust in princes,
in mortal men in whom there is no help.
Take their breath, they return to clay
and their plans that day come to nothing.
- from Psalm 146
I finished C.S. Lewis book. Toward the end, there was a section that seemed so dense and I decided that I didn't have to read every word, but then, looking at the last chapter I felt like reading it.
Jason Baxter speaks of nostalgia as a positive thing: "Lewis was nostalgic for the future." he says. "The old model was not wrong, strictly speaking, but a kind of deep, human subconscious desire for a world that, in some sense, we are meant to occupy, but not yet."
He says, "The experience of nostalgia is a feeling of beauty's remoteness, but only because it is so far in the future, rooted 'deep down things'.* It is hope. And the great thing about true hope, this nostalgia for the future, is that it has none of the irritability, fear, anxiety, and discouragement that flavors many of the words of those who describe the demise of Christendom in our day. We were denied the garden, and then we were exiled from the enchanted cosmos. Now we must own our modernity, But by doing so, we engage in an extraordinary ascesis of the senses. We must move forward and look beyond."
- from The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis
*God's Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is smeared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell; the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
It is entirely spring-like today; I saw a neighbor pruning his grape vines earlier. Why not? Although I know nothing of grapevines. It's going to snow on Tuesday.
About a week ago, a chunk of our wooden back-door stoop broke off; well, the house is sixty three years old. My brother planned to fix it, but it's winter. But then it got warm! And today, when he gets out of work earlier than on weekdays, he is working on it. The cats are closed in the spare room, where I'm sure Annie feels safe from all the noise, and Daisy feels overwhelmingly curious, and maybe a little scared, but not enough to quell the curiosity.
I finished the RFK Jr. book - it was excellent. I like him. May God keep him alive. I was reading Towers in the Mist, but it's one of Goudge's historical ones, and I can't seem to get in the mood for it, so I've put it aside. I'm still going through Christina Rossetti's poems.
And somebody dropped off the cat stories at the library this week. That's more my cup of tea at the moment.
There was a spectacular sunset and I almost missed it. I just happened to go to the front of the house for something, and wow!
The camera never seems as enthusiastic about sunsets as me. It was more brilliant than this. Believe me!
Advent began a week ago, and with it I started on the Christmas cards. I figured out that if I do five cards each night, I'll have plenty of time to send them all, with only a minor effort and maybe fifteen minutes spent. So far, it's going well.
It finally dawned on me that I cannot clean the kitchen all in one day. Well, of course I could, if I didn't do much else. I'd rather not do it that way. So I made a list of what tasks cleaning the kitchen consists of, and I do as many of these on kitchen day as I can, and then the next day I'll try and do just one more. And the next, etc. If it's after working all day and I'm tired, I won't, but it's always in the plan, and if I can do it, I will. But, I'm going forward.
For years, at certain sunny times of the morning I'd notice how dusty the cabinet doors were, but wiping them all down thoroughly is a big deal, and then they get dusty again in no time anyway. After years of this futility, I got the notion to count them; there are twenty seven, plus two sections I also need to wipe down. So now, I just wipe down cabinet number one on the first of the month, the tenth cabinet on the 10th, etc. It takes seconds, and there is no more dust to be seen. On Sundays and holidays, I just don't do it and those get wiped the next month.
Right now, I'm also trying to bake for Christmas and decorate, so there's always too much going on. And in between, I try to keep up with my reading and sewing. I prefer it this way: doing a little of this and a little of that. It all seems to get done, or enough of it does to make a difference. Does this all seem nutty to you, or does it make sense?
The very rainy weather pattern we were in seems over, and it's actually been September-like at times, in the high seventies and how eighties. Amazing! And very welcome. But all my plans for the backyard garden were foiled and now I just have to learn from this and forge ahead.
We'll see how it goes.
I am already finished with the reading challenge I was following! I didn't expect it. It's the third year they've issued one, and I didn't finish the first. The second, I barely made it, but it felt like work. And then when they offered this year's, Angelina said that the books she wanted to read just seemed to fit into the reading challenge. This seemed incredible to me, but I thought I'd try it. And that's just how it was! So, it's October and I'm done. Not done reading, though.
I heard a loud thud coming from the living room, and was almost afraid to look. But Daisy had knocked over the scratching post, and was wrestling with it. She's done this more than once - I guess she wants to teach it a thing or two. So cute.
I feel inclined to re-read Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft. He is a motorcycle mechanic, among other things and he sees a problem in our distance from understanding how things work, things which are among us as everyday objects. He says: "A decline in tool use would seem to betoken a shift in our relationship to our own stuff: more passive and more dependent." I think of sewing; I need to make time for my projects, rather than hope I can fit them in. It's been a real problem lately.
My brother just called to me - Daisy ate a piece of tomato. I tried to tell him she'd done this before - hadn't she? But no, it was Annie. (Having a blog can be very useful at times.) So, it seems we have tomato-eating cats. Not sure it's a good thing.
We have marigolds still thriving outside, and I know calendula is in lots of homemade salves, good for soothing the skin. But I think ours are tagetes, not calendula, so I will not be making anything with them.
I finally saw a rabbit today; I've been looking. The little chickadee still flutters over my brother's car when he's home, and I've seen a sparrow hang around the nest and even go in twice, but coming out right away. I don't like it.
I've been continuing the plan of cooking the same meals every week for the whole month. It's a good way to hone a promising recipe, perhaps finding ways to make it more cheaply, or improving it in some way. I like it - less menu planning, anyway.
Poor Dolly's allergies are terrible right now. She's always had them, some years worse than others. Her eyes stream and she ends up looking like Alice Cooper. No photos! I will not photograph Dolly unless she's looking her beautiful self. She's eighteen now, by the way.
Someone is coming Thursday to look at the tree stumps and remove them. And we're still thinking about what kind of trees we want to replace them. Another cherry, for sure, and something else. Nothing slow-growing, or too tall.
I picked up a book about education in our state during the Revolutionary War, from 1763 to 1800.
"Parents and relatives, school and church, town and state shared the responsibility for guaranteeing the piety and morality of the next generation...The colonists themselves recognized that the Revolution occurred only because the commonality could read and write. The Patriots, believing education determined the character of a people, recognized the crucial but indirect importance of morality in creating and sustaining the Revolution....Americans were thankful that they could perceive the difference between creeping authoritarianism and necessary order. Eighteenth century man believed that anarchy in the state would lead to chaos in church and family. Parents, ministers, and magistrates should cooperate in instilling the right mixture of assertion and deference in each citizen. Education was the method by which a society could preserve what was most essential School, church, and family worked together to inculcate correct attitudes towards God and country."
- by J. William Frost
