Having run out of snow, I am saved by fog.
I drove to the barn along more roundabout roads this morning, looking for views and ideas for the next half of March. I found some bark, and some big trees which may or may not translate, and this lovely foggy view back along a tiny dirt road.
I take horses up and down this road, so driving on it feels strange. I should be taller, and clip-clopping, and feel the wind on my face, and see ears framing my view.
We seem to have skipped right past spring and into mid-summer. I heard the first spring peeper frog tonight, just one of him, but where there is one there will be more soon. The weather today was sunny and absurdly warm. I rode two horses; the gray old man not-too-hard so he wouldn't get sweaty and distressed, and the grumpy red mare with some tact. I took each one out to walk outdoors to cool off. One silver maple tree was humming – Margaret and I couldn't figure out what it was until we looked up and saw the bees. Not swarming, just lots and lots of bees making use of the early blooming.
I think I've mentioned it before, but I want to give these circles away. If you see a day you like particualrly, comment or email me, and I'll send it out to you.
I must admit to feeling like Edward Lear’s old man with a beard, because it is just as I feared – while I have no birds in my beard I am watching the snow melt under the (lovely lovely warm) weather and the strong contrasts are vanishing and flowing downstream.
The lower right is Friday, when Alice and I went to see the high school musical Grease, and came home too late to post anything. It shows the small patches of snow left in the shade of the pine woods.
The lower left is a pair of socks, finished Saturday and included because the palette is similar.
Saturday had no post because Alice and I got up waaay too early and drove to Cambridge with friends so she could go to a bunch of interesting and distinctly offbeat classes with other extraordinay middle and high schoolers. She took classes in Greek and Roman mythology, Maxwell’s equations for middle schoolers, introduction to soldering and explosions in chemistry. By the time we were done and home, it was well after everyone’s bedtime. I did finish the socks, and a circle. The circle is the one top right – it looks different because MIT has no sewing machines, so I used some black and gray markers to sketch in what I was thinking about.
The last one is from today, another reflecting tree, with the snows of yesterday upon it. The snows of yesterday are melting like crazy, and I’m going to have to work from memory or modify my point of view.
I rode two horses this morning. The weather made me grateful to have access to an indoor arena, because the rain was pelting down. It got noisy. Kaboose and I had a peaceful hour all to ourselves in the area, working on trotting and cantering steadily and without flinging her head in the air or curling up like a snail. We did well. I rode Nuada only long enough to get him going evenly both ways; he is a stiff old man and weather like this is hard on his joints.
And then I ran 64 errands and picked up two sets of kids from three different families at two different schools and delivered them home and made supper and finished a circle, and now I intend to sit still and knit. And be warm. For 40F it felt incredibly cold!
Els – you asked what I was going to do with these. The local arts group is having a local exhibit of things people did every day in January. I thought I'd stitch these circles to a long red ribbon and bring them along to drape or hang or something. For subsequent months I am not at all sure what will do with them. If you want one in particular, email me and we'll talk.
We have power again, and have gained 100 years of technology more or less, overnight. Al was trying to figure out how far back in time we'd gone when we could cook on the stove, and the water ran, but there was no heat except from the stove (and the people, and the candles) and no light and certainly no internet. It was his thought that we'd lost 100 years of progress in one quick blink. After we regained power, and before friends did, we hosted many people for eating, cooking and several showers. The best comment was from Rachel exiting the shower. She was asked "how do you feel now dear?" and answered "cleaner than you" which brought down the house.
The town and the power company seemed to communicate well, and they got us power back well before their first estimate. I am thinking we owe a lot of thanks to the crews that came in from other states, like the man from Oregon that Cathy was talking to at the top of a phone pole, or the guy from South Carolina who was taking down a tree in Montague.
I successfully delivered two original works, and 10 photographic reproductions (mounted, signed and shrink-wrapped) to the Crane Estate on Monday. The driving got more and more normal as I apporached the coast – fewer trees part way across the road and leaning precariously on phone and power lines, fewer branches blocking off half the road. Mum and I had a lovely lunch (thanks Mom!!) and I drove right back home again.
After a day of breathing and not-driving yesterday, except for a really good lesson on Image, I realized I have to think about November.
Historically November is NaNoWriMo which is short for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is simply to finish a piece of work that you've been hung up on, or have started but haven't finished, or have thought about but never started. The rules can be summarized as: "write, and don't look back." The theory is that once you develop forward momentum it is easier to keep going. The general advice is to write like crazy in November and spend a month revising (like, say, December) and then if you think it is worthwhile, send it out to someone. Not everyone is working towards publishing a book. Many people join simply because they want to have written a book, and this is a handy support group for doing exactly that.
Last year I joined some people working on a craft version of this, called NaNoCraftMo, where we tried to work on something every day. That was when I started trying to capture the pond I am so enamored of in fabric, and produced a series of pieces my mother loved. You can see those here, here and here. Those helped me produce the pieces I just handed in to the ladies in Ipswich. So NaNo was a useful exercise, and I am going to do something again.
Several months ago I joined the World Sketchbook Tour, but I have had trouble focusing on the sketchbook. If I work every day in November, it will be full, and interesting and done. And then I can mail it. My theme is A Path Among Trees which is perfect for the things I've been noticing lately. All I have to figure out is how I can make my fabric things work in a sketch book.
And then I can spend December doing something completely frivolous and foolish that I can choose from a list of frivolous and foolish things I've been keeping for moments like that.
snow, roughly a month too early
heavy, wet, sticky
I'm worried about one of the branches on the birch tree – it may get bent
Apparently the last Hurricane (Irene) made an impression on my subconcious.
Last night it rained and rained, I heard it in my dreams, and about 4 am I woke up convinced the river was rising and we should get to higher ground. I peered out windows and saw nothing amiss, but the echo of 4 am haunted me in the morning. I convinced the kids to put things they treasured into the car, in case we had to run for higher ground, or in case I couldn't get back to the house later. So I spent the day with Aerin's bassoon and laptop, Alice's ancient and beloved bunny, and my computer and camera.
In retrospect, I think I must have been listening to the neighbor's noisy gutters coping with the aggressive mist, rather than actual pelting rain all night. A tour of the local rivers showed them high: the Deerfield was well into the floodplain but not in anyone's basement, the Connecticut was over Elwell Island and up to the front porch of the marina on Rt 9, but not creeping across the fields to me they was I'd imagined.
By the end of the day we'd returned the precious things to the house. But it was an interesting exercise.
kids, bassoon, computers – what would you save?
Feb TIF done
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
The prompt for the February Take It Further challenge was "What are you old enough to remember?"
Growing up, my mother would point out elm trees as we were driving around, and tell us to pay attention, because they were dying. I can remember elms lining Main Street, and an elm in the backyard of one house we lived in. We watched it die. There was another in the hayfield where we held horse trials, and I watched that one die as well – it went from tree to tree with problems to a stump over about 4 years.
This is my memory of that tree, in Lockwood’s field, in front of the mixed spruce/birch forest that edged the fields. I tried to make it insubstantial, the only thing that truly remains of it is the memories of the people who saw it and took note and the stump. I haven’t dared go back in the last 20 years to see if the field is still a field or if it has succumbed to a housing development.
So it made me gloomier than I expected, even though it looks pretty and sunny.
And after all that protesting about bon bons, I made toffee, like this:
The recipe came from my friend the Other Kate, but I upgraded all the materials to my taste. The crackers were originally supposed to be club crackers or saltines, but I used Carr’s whole wheat instead. You really do need the crackery crunch (having tested the end with no crackers as well) so choose something. The recipe said milk chocolate, but I prefer dark, so I used that, creating a small patch with milk chocolate at the end for the kids who prefer that. Since we can’t do nuts, I did the thing with cherries. They would have been good left chewy too. The end result is a far more dark and brooding toffee than Kate served us, but tasty all the same.
So: quilting, embroidery and bon bons – a pretty good weekend! Oh, and snow. Six inches of fluffy stuff, all pretty and white.
Snow last night changed to rain and freezing rain. Everything is coated in ice. No school.
We are home and warm, the electricity is going, and I am trying to work on something. Anything. Drop the mouse and step away from the keyboard…
Alice and I were agreeing that the extreme cold made it hard to think. She says it squeezes the ideas out of your head, and then they freeze. "That would be thoughtsicles, wouldn’t it?"
probably. think sweet thoughts guys, because sour thoughts yields nasty thoughtsicles…
Lee Thomson 