Of blazing trees, bean soup and cats in hats

This evening for a few minutes, there was a lovely phenomenon I see occasionally, for a few minutes.  Suddenly the trees out back appear to be blazing red with the setting sun.  But when you go out to see the sky, there's no sign of where the rays are coming from. Sky grey and cloudy.  So I guess the rays must be sneaking between buildings where they can't be seen from the ground.  It's usually five or fewer minutes and the show's over.

 When this happens, my living room is filled with pink light.

And since Handsome Son is coming tomorrow to dinner, I started thinking about the menu.  Made a big pot of kidney bean and tomato soup for starters.  Seasoned with sumac, baharat, kosher salt and black pepper, all cooked with the garlic before the onions are added.

And there will be  flounder baked with a bit of the savory mushroom roulade stuffing I made a lot of and froze the extra.  The rest of the stuffing, there's quite a bit, will go with the pasta you see in the background.  Rigatoni? ziti? Chime in if you know.  Dessert is snickerdoodles with a pot of tea and probably a Poirot video, son partial to them. 

And since Beautiful Metaphor is all full up with doings at the Plainsboro Library Gallery, I thought I would sneak in the almost finished second small weaving here.  I spun all of the fiber, dyed the parts with the more subtle colors, but the brighter ones were roving already dyed.  I plied several colors, too, to get shades that would suggest shape and distance.

It's a kind of landscape, stretching away to the sea and sky. The colors not true in the pic.  The top band is a lovely green.  And some people see it as a geologic formation.  Fine by me!  It's small,  13 x 8 height precedes width, inches.

The cats are getting in the mood for Inauguration Day, the Dollivers not very enthusiastic about turning out for it.  They said they'll wait till the movie comes out.

Anyway, the pink pussyhat made for, um, a cat, shows them at their least cooperative. Don't try grabbing either of these, um, cats...

 We'll get you for this, Boud..

But on less scary subjects, I make art to a background of audiobooks of some kind. Not music, never music. It demands attention from the same part of the brain that's trying to make art, and competes, so the art will never be as good.  I know when a writer plays music while they write, because the thumping rhythm rises above all the prose.Particularly a writer  playing Beethoven. It doesn't end well.

Anyway, the current book is the Essays of Montaigne, from my Hoopla library collection.  It's very timely indeed, about lying in politics, chicanery, death, lousy memory, and all kinds of subjects.  Amazingly up to date, too.  He never palls.  Highly recommended.  In translation, I have to say, since the days I could easily read this in the original are long behind me.