by Kat | Nov 4, 2024 | General, Welcome
The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July. — Henry David Thoreau
I love November light especially in the early mornings at sunrise, which have been so lovely recently, I just love the glow the sun gives to the trees that still have leaves!
I also enjoy all that November holds in her days: Election Day – tomorrow (if you haven’t voted, please go vote), Veterans Day – next week, and Thanksgiving Day – later this month! These are some of the best parts of November and I will also celebrate a beloved son-in-law’s birthday this month as well.
Those things aside, I do have some things I need to accomplish this month! It is a short list, but that does not mean it will be simple to accomplish!
Lotsa bulbs… oy.
- Plant this box of bulbs. The daffodils and alliums will be the easiest things to get done… but I have 50 grape hyacinth bulbs, which are supposed to bloom over several months, that I want to plant in a “challenging” area in my yard. My hope is that this plethora of hyacinths will fill a dull area with some color once the snowdrops are done!
- Figure out how to get back to my daily painting practice. I have not picked up a brush since Franklin arrived and I miss it terribly.
- Catch up my Autumn Pages… I am woefully behind. Stitching + Franklin might be the greatest challenge of the month, but I know what I want to do! I just need to pull the fabrics and get them cut out and stitched down. My last pages turned out wonderfully but they are still not done!! I need to add some leaves to the “moon tree” and the date and time. Small bits, but I need to figure out a way to work this into the schedule!
October 17th sunset and moonrise were at 6:34PM in Erie, PA
And there you have my November intentions! Wish me luck fulfilling them!
What about you? What do you hope your November holds?
Header photo by Anton Atanasov
by Kat | Oct 4, 2024 | General, Welcome
In October, a maple tree before your window lights up your room like a great lamp. Even on cloudy days, its presence helps to dispel the gloom. — John Burroughs
It is the month I eagerly anticipate all year… my most favorite of all!
Although, it feels very off to be delighting in these days as my neighbors to the south are struggling mightily. But we sent off a donation or two… it seems so inadequate to just send off money but I know that all these donations will make a big difference. And despite the enormity of this disaster, there are bright spots that shine brighter than the trees will… stories of people helping each other. That gives me hope… and I hope it brings hope to those affected as well.
My October List of things is short this month:
- We head to Erie next week (and I am so very ready for it!)
- Then… once our Erie Time has finished, we will go pick up our new puppy!
Perhaps that is exactly how it should be to allow for maximum reveling in October days because just 4 days in and I have been doing LOTS of reveling!! The weather has turned nicely this week. We got some rain (we could use more, but I am not complaining!) and the past couple of mornings have been quite chilly! Yesterday morning, I watched the fog roll in (literally, I could watch it roll down the hills behind our house!) and it was incredible to watch! I have pulled out a couple of lopapeysa’s to wear… and they are the perfect woolly layer! Might a Mr. Heater have been nice? Yes… it would. But I have not “done” anything about making that a reality. (Done, as in tell Steve to order something! Ha!)
After taking August and September off from baking sour dough bread, I feared my starter (which, for those wondering, is nameless) would be dead. Not at all! It just needed a bit of “reviving” and 36 hours later was raring to go so I baked bread yesterday and was happy to have a fresh loaf of bread to go with the tomato soup I made!
Now I am off to do a bit of garden clean up on this amazingly gorgeous morning! Happy October everyone!
See you all back here on Monday!
by Kat | Sep 2, 2024 | General, Welcome
September is the other January. — Gretchen Rubin
Hello Sweet September! You are one of my favorite months and have been for as long as I can remember! I love every thing you bring from the return “normal” schedules to the changes that happen with the weather!
So what do I mean by normal? Well, the kids are back at school and I do love watching the neighborhood kids head to the bus stop in the mornings and head home in the late afternoons. There is delight in sitting on my porch in the morning and I confess to eavesdropping on conversations as they wait for the bus. “Kid Banter” about sports… hockey and soccer are big in my neighborhood but sometimes there is a bit of “Dad Advice” to the waiting charges. Dad Advice can be really quite eye-opening… the “make sure you pay attention and listen” talk from last week will be most memorable because I think the squirrel and birds were the only ones listening!
I have noted the shortening of days as August raced through, a shortening that becomes more pronounced in September. I gave in last night and turned on lights in the living room after dinner… sigh. I have softened the blow of the waning light by turning on the fairy lights on the mantel and in the Gnome Hutch but yesterday’s clouds required a bit more light. I am not complaining though because those clouds brought some much needed rain!
September mornings have the most glorious light… it just glows and I am going to savor every morning I can on my porch! Yes, I am not giving up my “outside office” yet… after all, I have an abundance of sweaters to pull on to ward off the morning chill.
I have only one thing on my “list” this month… to make every effort to get that blasted sweater done! (Stay tuned for an update on my woes on Wednesday.) Sometimes sweater knitting is not for the faint of heart… sigh.
Welcome September! I hope you are bringing all the sweater knitting juju my way!
What about you? What are your plans for September?
The above photo by Plato Terentev
by Kat | Aug 5, 2024 | General, Welcome
August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time. — Sylvia Plath
Hello August and Hello Gentle Readers!
It is my hope that August holds some (more) rain this month…we’ve had some but we need quite a bit more in my neighborhood!
Welcome to the last full month of summer. The month where the tomato plants are supposed to explode with an abundance of fruit. Mine? Well… there will be some cherry tomatoes… though likely not enough to share and my big tomato plants were a bust this year. Not a single tomato blossom ever appeared. So a less than stellar summer for tomatoes.
So what can an August without tomatoes hold for me?
Some poetry for what ails me!
Well… thank goodness for poetry. I am reading poetry every day (especially poets who understand grief… Ada Limón and Ocean Vuong, I am loving my time with you!) The Sealey Challenge talks about reading one book of poetry a day… and some days I might read an entire little book of poetry. But most days, I have found that just sitting and lingering with a few poems are my sweet spot. (For my fellow Rilke lovers… Mark Burrows has a new translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus)
A deeper dive into Time, thanks to the latest Emergence Magazine publication! It is chock full of good things!
To fuel my creative soul… I signed up for a MDK class with Cecelia Campochiaro. I have my “kit” and I am itching to begin “micro-swatching” with a color way kit that channels Carole… The Dahlia Color Set:
I love these colors and I am really excited to see how they marl!
There you have my hopes for August… what about you? What do you hope this month holds for you?
Header photo by Fauzan Fitria who had the perfect image for today’s date!
by Kat | Jul 1, 2024 | General, Welcome
It was an early, very warm morning in July, and it had rained during the night. The bare granite steamed, the moss and crevices were drenched with moisture, and all the colors everywhere had deepened. Below the veranda, the vegetation in the morning shade was like a rain forest of lush, evil leaves and flowers …
― Tove Jansson, The Summer Book
This might be one of the best opening lines of a book and one that certainly describes how I think of July in my neighborhood.
But!!
While we had a plethora of “pop up” rainstorms Saturday making the day warm and muggy but a front moved through late Sunday and this morning temps in the 50’s greeted me… Hello, July indeed!
But I know that before I know it, July will have raced past and August will be upon us… so I better have some things I’d like to focus on this month, right?
- Cast on and finish my 7th pair of socks this year! (Yes, I finished pair number six with a day to spare!) And I’d like to figure out how to knit those “heel tab ” shortie socks… so I began this pattern yesterday afternoon! For the Yarn Mavens here… I have no idea what yarn this is. It is something I tried to use in another project some years ago.
- I got myself back to my daily stitching last month, and July is ready to begin as soon as this is posted. But I would like to find some minutes this month to “catch up” the end of April and begin and finish all of May.
- And as far as the “big thing” for the month… I really need to do a big clean out of my closet. It has lost the plot (or I have given up on it…) and it needs a reorganization!
- I have a couple of “lighter” sweaters (i.e. ones I wear in the deep freeze that is my house when the AC is blasting!) that have “thinning” elbows and loose buttons that need a bit of TLC. I think I have some yarn from when I originally knit them, but how to accomplish the “bolstering of the elbows” is currently being debated in my brain.
June lines give way to July flowers… and a start on a sock!
And there you have my list for July!
What about you? What is on your list this month?
by Kat | Jun 24, 2024 | General, Welcome
Time moved in two directions because every step into the future carried a memory of the past… — Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1
I have mostly ignored Ali Edwards this year and in past years, I don’t think I have paid much attention to the “companion word” lesson. But time just seemed the perfect word for companions… it seems to invite them.
- I thought about time and space… such perfect companions.
- And then there is the juncture of time… an intersection, as it were, of things happening. Perhaps an ending and a beginning.
- Then there is the time of music… rhythm and all the delight it brings to my day!
- And how about set time… the scheduled time of our lives. Not much fun here… but it is perhaps the most necessary sort of time!
- At 63 I am most familiar with the keeping of time in years, months, weeks, days… I remember time dragging when I was young, but my thoughts on this being the final Monday in June surprised me… this month just raced by!
- Finally… when you add all these things together, I have my life experience… the collection of minutes, days, weeks, months, years… all of which are memories of the past… lots of memories to carry with me into the future!
I have been thinking about those memories a lot this month as I contemplated companions of time… and so I would add another companion to time… memory. In my “memory thinking,” I thought about how my grandparents shared memories… vivid memories… every time I visited them. I need to keep those memories… so I am going to begin a bit of a memory journal, where I can write down the stories that were shared with me. That way, their memories can live on past them… and past me.
Added to all of that is my reread of Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1 and my month has been full of time contemplation! I don’t think I really tuned in to all the fascinating time references that Auster shares in the lives of Ferguson… but this time, with time on my radar, I am finding so much to contemplate, to consider, to change my view. I think that my reread of 4 3 2 1 was a timely intervention by the OLW gods!
…and while all people are bound together by the common space they shared, their journeys through time were all different, which meant that each person lived a slightly different world from everyone else. — Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1
I love this thought… though we are all in the same “time frame” we all have very different journeys. A gentle reminder for kindness, empathy, and openness to those who cross our paths… I need this reminder more often than I’d care to admit!
And there you have my collection of thoughts on time this month… (and for those keeping track, this month a word began showing up on my radar all over the place! I am thinking… potential OLW ’25?? And while I am excited by this, I know the journey to December still has many days to go, but I think this could prove to be a fascinating word to study!)
I would like to thank Carolyn for her timely reminders on our OLW updates because I really needed that reminder this month! Stop over there and see how everyone else did on their word journeys!
See you all back here on Wednesday with some Unraveling!
