Lee Thomson

Mar 26
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The snowbank next to the house. Melting slowly. The grass next to it is turning green.

Major migraine, bed now.

Mar 25
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Alice’s footprints across the backyard, having melted and showing the green grass peeking up. Or perking up.

I managed a yoga class today, but needed a nap after. My new friend Lynne came by and we went to the Hands Across the Valley Quilt Guild show. It was awesome. Completely. Fabulous. Plus Lynne showed Cathy and me her foray into dollmaking, a gloriously embroidered flat doll. She’d used lots of floss, some strands were two colors together, and gone densely across the surface in flowers and leaves and swirls. I was impressed.

Lynne trained as an artist, and she had a different perspective on the quilts than I did with my craft and sewing background. It was interesting what we both liked, and what we found lacking. We agreed that many pieces needed only more thread – more quilting – to pop them from interesting to fabulous. The quilting really makes the quilt.

I was trying to photograph the melting snow, and found tulips nosing up on the south side of the house. Go guys!!

Mar 24
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

There is a lovely Tom Chapin (Harry Chapin’s brother) song, a lullaby round that sings about what kids need before bed:

Oh Mom, I need a glass of water,
just a small one,
Mom, I need another story,
just a short one
Mom, I need another hug,
please

I cannot hear it without tearing up and laughing, simultaneously. Putting Alice to bed is more and more like this. We’ll get it straight, eventually.

I accompanied Aerin to her friend’s Bat Mitzvah today. It was interesting. In a liberal college town, the only possibility was a strongly reformed congregation, and there was a lot of equality in the congregation. I liked many parts of it. Aerin did all the right things – I was very proud of her – and wound up making friends with another girl there, and dancing, and laughing and having a great time.

Bat Mitzvahs are good for knitting. Several people admired the sock-in-progress. I felt I was channelling the Harlot and Representing like mad.

One woman asked how many hours it took to make a sock. She gave me a funny look when I said it didn’t matter, it was what kept me happy and polite. I really have no idea, and there didn’t seem to be a good answer for her. I also had two very nice conversations about knitting what pleases you, plus a location for a yarn store in Brattleboro,  another one about the right kind of mood for getting into Terry Pratchett’s books, and one long one about kids’ relative happiness at school and home. Quite nice, all told.

Mar 23
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Alice’s footprints off across the backyard. I am pleased to see that the grass is starting to come up, and I made a point of embroidering it in even greener.

Today is just not a talkative day.

Mar 22
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Part of a painting experiment, using a lot of water and trying to get lots of flowing shapes. Some success. I have some other pieces that will make nice backgrounds for later postcards. To my astonishment, when I dropped paint on a piece of silk the drops formed squares. That may be visible soon.

Plus, the child that WILL NOT SLEEP. aaaargh. I need more sleep than she does. I’m pathetic. She’s just young.

Mar 21
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was trying to catch the steam, because I feel it is under-represented in this month’s water theme. I mean, I’ve got ice and snow and melt water and puddles, but only one steam. The reason there is only one steam postcard? Photographing steam is hard, especially when you haven’t read the manual for the camera and have no clue what 1/2  the settings are or what they are doing.

So we have this morning’s breakfast, warholerated. And I did it all myself!

Have I mentioned that all these pictures are mine? I got so worried about copyrights a couple years ago that I started making all my own stuff, wherever possible. Patterns for dolls and their clothes, stamps for anything, basically anything anyone might contest ownership, I have made my own version. Between the digital camera (which I heart, big time) and Photoshop Elements (which is pissing me off less with experience) I have all of my world at my fingertips for photos, and now I that can print them on fabric it makes me very very pleased with myself. Smug, even.

Mar 20
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The dripping melt water cascades off the roof at the Cotton Mill, where the circus school is waay up on the third floor. I tried to catch the way the sun sparks off the drips as they fly away sideways. Bright sunny day, and warm.  Alice stayed home again, so we went together to Jr High to help the 7th graders make paper mache masks. We were so successful demonstrating that the teacher let us take home our demonstrator. He is a scale model of the BFG (Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant) and we will finish him with thrift store clothes and dowels, and donate him to third grade.

Both Al and Red Kate came to circus this afternoon. Red Kate kicked up into a handstand, 2 weeks ahead of schedule,

and Al cleared a lot of stupid stuff out of his head just by hanging upside down. Ariana came up with us too. A friend of Aerin’s from gymnastics many years ago, she is in the touring company of Circus Smirkus in the summers, and one of Aerin and Alice’s heros these days. She is bendy and strong – she was showing Alice what kinds of things she might do with some additional strength. Like pat herself on the head with her feet in a handstand.

Next to that display, my posings on the trapeze are just silly. Fun, but silly.

All three grownups were giggling all the way down the stairs. My hands still hurt.

Mar 19
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I am still loving the snow storms. This one is this afternoon, looking across the back yard at the swingset and the toppled jungle gym my dad made and the spring horse. The red of the horse makes me think of the William Carlos Williams poem about the Red Wheelbarrow:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I think it is the red seen through the glaze of snow.

Alice was home sick today. Not terribly sick, but sick enough. I got some socks started, and she watched a couple hours of Avatar. The rule is all the TV you want when you are sick, until your brain turns to guacamole. I ask them, at regular intervals, "Is your brain guacamole yet?" and unbelievably sometimes they answer yes and turn it off.

I managed to accomplish a draft of the March journal page, all about Aerin. It is starting to look like this:

And, I made these:

My kids have had the greatest third grade teacher ever, or at least since my third grade teacher. Mrs. Battey teaches the kids  early American history, and she is a great believer in learning by doing, so they will clean and spin (and ply) wool and then weave (on card board looms) a coaster or bag. These are drop spindles I made for the spinning part. I get to start them spinning tomorrow, and over the next week I have to make a small cardboard loom, warp it and start weaving on it.

The kids do other fun Colonial Times stuff. They’ll do a big session of games kids played, and another on chores they did. The girls in class are always, Always, outraged at the number of things they were not allowed to do, and the boredom of the things they were. I keep telling the girls that NOW is the best time there is for women. They still don’t quite get it. I’ll keep pounding. It is my job.

Mar 18
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

A couple days late, but I managed to snap this as I was going (very slowly, thank you for helping me worry) over the bridge headed home on Friday. The snow was blowing about like crazy and someone had slid into the curb and a cop was keeping people from hitting him and incidentally taking up an entire lane. When the light turned red, we all stopped for a long time. I wanted to catch the way the snow obscured the view, something that would be ripe for more wispy fabrics except I ran out.

I love this bridge. I love the other bridge too – the bike path bridge. When we first moved out here, the bike path was coming “in about two years”. It took a decade, but they finally pushed it through. Even before the path, Al and I climbed out onto the bridge, hopping from tie to tie until we were half way across the river, looking down at the island in the middle. I still stop in the middle and admire the view, upriver and down river, every time I ride across. And I make a point of noting the river as I drive over. I taught the kids which river this is when they were tiny. Alice really got into it – lisping “the mighty Connecticut” from the back seat every time we crossed any river. We have a couple good ones. The mighty Deerfield. The mighty Millers (we dumped in a snowstorm in March one year, one develops a profound respect for the river admiring it from eye level in the snow.) The mighty Quabog (substantially smaller) and the mighty Quinnebaug (really a very nice small stream, just wide enough for a canoe to make it around the bends. It’s an old joke by now.)

Mar 17
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Or at least, there were 13 candles before they got blown out and a horde of hungry 13 year old girls descended on it. Plus the dad, and the little sister and Red Kate. Yeah, I had a little piece too.

Red Kate helped me wind off the Socks That Rock Sock of the Month yarn. We agreed it looked like one of those huge hay bales – all it needed was a green towel to look like fields, and some tiny model cows and horses….

We had lots of snow last night. No circus this morning. Lots of digging out. Tomorrow’s postcard is a picture from yesterday. How confusing is that?

Oh, and a happy St Patrick’s day to you as well.

But really, Happy Aerin’s Birthday. No we’re not Irish. She’s named after a character in a book.  This one, and this one. I recommend them both. highly.