Blogversary Number One! Happy Birthday, Field and Fen!

It's the first birthday of this blog, hard to believe, but there you are.

I originally started it as a celebration of the blogosphere and my entering into a new decade, and found as HP's health crisis developed, it became a wonderful transmission area for news to friends all over the place of one of the most difficult years in the life of the Adams clan.

It's worked to give me support I hadn't even dreamed of back then, and I am so glad for it.

But it's also been a big part of my art life, both as a visual artist and as a writer, and much more modestly, heh, as a musician (amateur music player, just about adequate).

I was out walking the Preserve yesterday, so I thought I'd give you a few pix. The steps lead down from one trail to another, and they're very steep-looking, no railings, designed by a tall man, I think -- too broad for me to go in one step, not broad enough to fit two steps onto, so they're hazardous.



But once you get down and look back, it doesn't look so hard at all.



Which struck me as an amazing metaphor for the last year, all in all! looked easier than it was to live, but we survived.



And the bench overlooks the lake at the preserve, at the top of the steps. I love to draw benches and chairs, very eloquent statements, particularly in late afternoon light.

And there was a great sunset over the supermarket (sounds like a Randall Jarrell title) so I thought I'd throw that in, too, for your viewing pleasure.





What do you think is an appropriate celebration for the one year annie of a blog? has that been defined yet, I wonder?

Shapes, relationships and edges

My recent thinking about the labyrinth led to a few other thoughts about art and our relationships with shapes, edges, where the real art lies. For me it's not in color, which comes a distant third in importance to shapes,their relationships to each other and to the viewer, and their underlying significance as objects. It's certainly not in making pictures of stuff!

Some of the real joy of art lies in tiny intersections, and as you create the work, there's a stab of out of body insight, in small movements. Like the place where you push down the last thread you just wove in a tapestry, that movement of the fingers and the hugely satisfying covering of the warp in an elegant, unforced kind of way.

Or when you tape around the edges of a paper before drawing or painting on it, so that you deliberately let the work travel over the tape, then after the work is finished, remove the tape to see that wonderful sharp edge where art meets white all around the edges. Just removing the tape is an experience. Seeing how your work now isolates itself from the world and has left your hands.

Or when you make paper, and when it has dried, slide your fingers under the edges to lift it from the support, gently moving under it until it responds to your touch like an animal.

Or when you use water to mold your paper over a form, spraying so that the jet of water becomes your pencil.

Or when you play an instrument and just for a moment, achieve a note that is pure and lovely and has a life of its own, riding on your breath.

Or when you write a sentence that really says what you meant it to, with the rhythm, vocabulary, and cadence that work just right for it.

So often these joyful moments come without apparent effort, and certainly without putting thought into it. It's when you surrender to the materials and let them work, that's where art is, and if you're lucky it comes to you now and then, if only for a moment.

One of the most inspired gifts I ever had is the CD of Sting, thank you, S., In the Labyrinth, which is songs mostly of John Dowland, very different from Sting's usual musical vocabulary. I am much more familiar with Dowland than with Sting, but when he departed from Dowland, to sing an eighteenth century piece, "Have you seen the bright lily grow", he established himself forever in my respect for his musical skills.

On the word "grow" there's an ascending scale which is truly HARD to sing accurately, just very demanding,and I've sung that song many times, with varying degrees of success, mostly unsuccess. He sings it and with the greatest of ease renders that phrase, entirely, beautifully. So I know he knows how to sing. He knows exactly what the instrument of the voice is and how to use it and make it sound easy.

Same with the Mamas and the Paps, those ancient rock legends, whose music is still good, and that's because there are a lot of quotations in it from medieval and renaissance works. John Phillips, I guess, was the writer of a lot of it. Very intelligent musical underpinning, no wonder it's wonderful. If you play medieval and Renaissance music, which I do, you recognize the licks in songs like California Dreamin.

So there's my high flown musings for the day. To be followed by the strictly functional: I'm wearing my latest knitted goods, my new MaryJane slippers, knitted, but with crocheted straps (which I crocheted on while wearing the slippers to make sure they fitted! looked pretty comical). They are almost as hard to make as creating a PBJ sandwich.



I can't get real MaryJanes that fit my bumpy old feet, so I had to make slippers instead.

And you can see the latest joy of tapestry, using mostly my handspun dyed with KoolAid, as I work toward the end of the second panel.



Looking forward to the third, when I will be into the blue, purple, black range. At least that's the plan.

But the piece itself might lead me in some other direction.

However, this being a two-way blogstravaganza, post here the sort of little joys you get, doesn't have to be from art, just from any part of your life. Those tiny things that color the rest of your life and make it a better place to be.

Please share! that would be fun. A lot of people do email me, which I appreciate hugely, and it would be nice to open your comments up a bit to the world, if you'd like to. Just click under here where it says comments, and a posting box will come up. If you can't fathom the ID stuff, just check anonymous (you can put your name in the body of the post, though, so we know who's talking) and go from there. Thanks!

Walking the labyrinth for R. and J Jr.

Yesterday, after many attempts, foiled by weather or lack of respite person to let me get out for long enough, I finally made it to the labyrinth. The combination of weather that was at least not lashing rain, the nor'easter having moved off to sea, and business to transact in that area, and HS being over for the afternoon, enabled me finally to walk the labyrinth for friends R. and J. Jr, who are dealing with difficult health problems.

I walk the labyrinth for other people, feeling that it's not quite right to just do it for my own benefit, but I expect I get a benefit anyway. But it's a matter of putting their issues front and center and finding out what I can do to help, or at least ask the universe to swoop in and help.

What I do is start with the issue or problem, mentally put into words, then a pause looking across the labyrinth, before I look down at my own feet and start the walk, very slowly, never looking further ahead than my own toes moving slowly on the paths.



The thing about walking the labyrinth is that suddenly every thought and movement and sight is suddenly charged with significance.



On the way to the center, it's anxiety and indecision, particularly yesterday, when blowing leaves obscured the white stones that show you the path to take, and I think I probably went a bit wrong once or twice.

At the entrance I found a big leaf, beautiful colors, which I carried around not knowing why, until half way around I realized, oh, this is a stand in for R., she's walking with me in a sense. And the anxiety about getting lost in a labyrinth not more than thirty feet across is more about trying to get everything just right, when really it's not necessary, and not even possible at times. Just seeing as far as each foot goes will get you there.

And on the walk there were late bees and wasps, a ladybug, little shoots of celandine, purslane, chickweed, signs of life all around among the fallen leaves.



At the center where you pause at the four tree stumps that signify the four points of the compass, and where there's a container to put your thoughts and your symbol, I put in the leaf, and took a picture.



Usually I would not do photography, but I wanted to share this walk with the friends I did it for, and I'm pretty sure that's a good motive for introducing high tech into an ancient ritual.

Coming back from the center I always notice my breathing is quieter, my anxieties over with, life more within my grasp. And that's what I hope for the people in my mind as I walk. The prayer flags are Tibetan and fly all the time, sending our thoughts and wishes out to the world and beyond.

Machines ancient and modern

Today is a day of contrasts, since out front they are milling the street.



This means one massive exciting machine is trundling along eating up the blacktop and shooting it out in a stream of digested material onto the back of a truck



which then drives it who knows where and chucks it somewhere. Now and then a third massive vehicle dodges between them in this narrow roadway outside out house and scoops up what the others have dropped, butterfingers.

All this arouses the little kid in me (and in HP, who was thrilled when I ran out in the middle of cooking, took pix to show him and now share with you, the blogiverse), and even though it smells awful and the racket is like hell returned, it's still kind of fun.

Even though the dentist can't attend HP this week as planned because it's too far to carry his gear from the nearest parking spot he might find, and it's too hard for my art friend to visit and make art with me as hoped, same reason. But this too shall pass.

Then tonight, for the ancient part of the equation, is Princeton Recorder Society's monthly meeting, and I show you pic I took of last month's meeting, with a wonderful conductor, not only a fabulously beautiful woman, very medieval in effect, with red hair, black tunic and tights, boots, but a truly great musician, played Carnegie Hall this year, did a European tour, and in the middle of it all gave birth. And she doesn't even look tired.




The instruments we play, mostly recorders, with a few viols, date back centuries in design, though most of us play very modern Yamaha (not motorbikes, recorders) in very well made plastic, which give true tones, very dependably, wonderful to play. I also have a lovely numbered wood soprano which I treasure, bought from the widower of a player, and I play it to honor her as much as to enjoy it.

I'm including a picture of my own family of instruments, ranging from the smallest one, the sopranino, high up in the bat range (you hear this imitating the flute in the Magic Flute, in that bird song, Papagena, maybe), all the way up to the bass, big enough that it needs that neck strap to hold the weight off the player's hands.



Also in the picture is the silver flute, among her friends (!) and a wooden folk flute from Asia sent by a friend, plus a flat reedy sort of instrument that you buzz with your lips, which I can do for about five seconds before my face sort of vibrates by itself. The wood soprano is being guarded by the bass...

The stand that three of them are on is a handy way of having them at hand to pick up when needed, since in ensembles you routinely switch from instrument to instrument for variety and depending on what the piece needs. And no group appreciates waiting whle a player paws through a bagful of instruments in search of the parts then has to assemble the pieces! all these instruments are in three pieces which you assemble for playing, and it's nice that each has a foot joint that can shift to accommodate your own personal fingers, my little finger being very short I need to shift the joint on all my instruments to fit it.

The viol, which I don't play, though when I see the music with the pencilled markings for bowings, makes me look back nostalgically at violin playing before my body threatened to quit on me if I didn't switch instruments, is an old stringed instrument. You see them in medieval and Renaissance paintings, usually played by angels, and it needs an angel to make them sound really good. They are very temperamental instruments, go out of tune if you look at them wrong, but their devotees don't care, they still love them.

The viol joke is that the Renaissance took three centuries, but it could all have been fitted into one century if they hadn't had to keep stopping to tune the viols...

Cut, sew, knit, weave up a storm

The last couple of days have been knitting, weaving, cutting, stitching central around here.

First, to pass on a neat idea: remember the legwarmer notion that HS suggested for HP? and I thought sweater sleeves would do it? I had a better idea! which I have put into effect and pass on to you: cut off the legs of sweatpants, finish the cut edges, and use the legs as legwarmers and the top part as shorts. Wallah, as they say in those misguided DIY shows, legwarmers AND shorts, AND the catheter is accessible. He's very pleased with the first set which he is now wearing, and there are no draughts behind his legs now.

The thing about wheelchairs is that you can cover the top of the person, but it's very hard to stop draughts from getting behind their legs, the logistics of lowering a person into a chair being incompatible with having nice rugs behind there, largely because there's no traction to keep the person in the chair. HP can not support himself sitting upright, and would slide right down and out of the chair if he were not seated firmly on the official cushions ordered up by the medical people.

Our neighbors and local police force, saints in uniform, who have lifted him up off the floor and back into his chair before he had the approved wheelchair, will attest to this. And even a 140 lb paralyzed man, HP is small, is a dead weight, and it takes at least two people to do it. This was in pre-Hoyer lift days. So all this is part of the equation.

The reason I share info like this is in case any of you dear blogreaders, should need to pass it on for the benefit of other people, you never know, and it could save a lot of grief in someone else's life.

On to other creative endeavors: I'm halfway up panel two of the tapestry, and show you a picture here. Once again, it seems that stuff is appearing that I didn't actually consciously put there! this always happens, and it's a great surprise usually. I notice buildings in there now, in late afternoon reddish light. I show you the first panel to see the echoes in the design, intentional, and the contrast in color choices, also intentional. Interesting mix of conscious and subconscious.





The third panel, already warped, will be in the blue/purple/black range, so that a kind of vertical landscape will appear. At least that's the current thinking. I simply never know if that will in fact happen. This work looks ragged right now, because it's still on the loom, with the stay laces at the sides, and has yet to be removed and blocked and kind of neatened up and finished off, so you're seeing it in its raw state, but I think that's interesting.

And lastly, when I lose my art mojo, this kind of freeform tapestry being very tiring to work on, because of all the decision making every minute or so, exactly like painting, I have a nice bit of knitting on the needles.



It's a feather and fan lace pattern scarf, which will probably go to some person as a Christmas gift, since I certainly have enough scarves, and would like to give this one. Not sure of the destination yet, but it's fun to make. I cast this on a couple of days ago.

It's an old old lace tradition, used in the Shetlands and elsewhere, with a lot of variations. Known also as shell stitch, and as shale, reference I think to the wave shapes left on the sand by the receding tide, which Shetlanders certainly knew all about.

So that's us! Happy Saturday, tout le monde!

War and Peace

So the HOA, Homeowners' Association, has decided in its wisdom to replace all our sidewalks and parking lot surfaces. Okay, except that you have to kind of vaporize your car for several days, no parking available, no parking on all the surrounding roads, by law. Hm. Anyway, out front it's all Men at Work, making war on the street as they break up the old belgian block and sidewalk.









View from front door, man at work.

So my walk had to start from the patio door, the front door not being accessible to anywhere I could walk without dodging heavy equipment, and my neighbor's peace roses on her patio fence were still blooming away.



They smell fruity in a way, not very scented, but beautiful and a nice treat that we are still getting flowers galore, not having had a killing frost yet, just a couple of cool nights.

As usual, I take pix while I'm out walking, to show HP when I get home, since he likes to see what's up out there. So you can share, too.

Pizza today

The sure sign of a good home made pizza is -- no leftovers.

In case you fancy trying this at home, I used: Tibetan flatbread for the base. I cooked this completely -- it's easy, really easy, like about as complicated as making a sandwich, see it via Google -- because last time I tried this I thought if I partly cooked it then finished it in the oven with the toppings, that would work. It didn't really, because I had failed to realize that no home oven gets as hot as a pizza oven in a restaurant.

Anyway, this time I cooked it completely, this is done on top of the stove, while I made the toppings -- sliced black olives, sliced white mushrooms, sauteed in butter and olive oil until all the liquid was gone and they smelled wonderful, the sauce made of homemade basil/parsley pesto, made from home grown plants, I have to brag here, cut with some tomato paste and a bit of ketchup, warmed together to make a spreadable sauce, handful of shredded Mozzarella cheese.

On top of the bread came the sauce, then the olives then the mushrooms, then the cheese. Into a 450 oven, until it all looked good, then I whipped it out and served it. All gone in no time at all. Very good indeed. I will have to make two of these if HS wants lunch with us, because he would need some, too....

And the prep work, which was a lengthier affair than I expected, was okay, too, since the extra olives and mushrooms, cleaned and sliced, are now in the freezer for the next time I get inspired to make a pizza.

Very satisfying to make and to eat.

All this fuss about lunch, I ask you. It all goes to prove that deep down I'm shallow!

Tea Ceremony!

Thanks to a wonderful internet friend who found that the Lapsang Souchong tea she bought and found she doesn't like much, is in fact HP's total favorite of all teas, and promptly shipped it to him together with some other wonderful thoughts and gifts, you see here the results!

HS took portraits of the Parental Units officially throwing out the first cup. Couldn't get both of us ready at once, so one shows a cheerful one and a puzzled one, and the next is the opposite, so I am posting the set.



For him: Lapsang with a small spoonful of sugar. For her: black and fruit tea, new experience, and very good it was. HP was ecstatic at being reunited with his favorite tea which I have not been able to find in years. And HS was presented with some once we found that he, the good cook, uses Lapsang dry leaves in the special rub he has invented, to give the smoky flavor.

Note the handknit afghan on HP, and the newly renovated jacket on BP (Beautiful Partner, that's me, not conceited, not at all...). The afghan is a big favorite of Burmese kitty Marigold, who insists on sitting on it at all times. This can be a bit complicated with HP is trying to eat lunch, with a cat between him and his plate..

White Rabbits, it's November!

Frugal Friday

I went shopping in my closet this week. HP needed another warm indoor jacket -- has trouble keeping warm, because of being forcibly inactive -- and I fancied another cardigan. But there was no time to get to the thrift store, so I did the other thing, and realized that we both had what we needed but in different form.

He had a beautiful hand knitted Irish aran sweater (no, not by me, from an expensive boutiquey place) had had it for over 20 years, these things never wear out, and it is too difficult to navigate in and out of it in his current situation. So he needs jackets now. Aha, light dawned, and I cut the sweater up the middle, turned back the edges like lapels, and now he has a very nice, extremely warm, jacket ready to go. The trick was to cut it up the middle of a motif so that it hangs symmetrically.



And, full of ambition, I figured I'd take a terrific heavy cotton sweater of my own, LandsEnd best, which I bought for $2 at a garage sale about 10 years ago, cut that up the middle and have a nice shawl collar cardigan, which would suit me better. It's purple, not my fave color, but looks good if I put white next to my face, not if the purple is there. It makes me look old and tired. Well, maybe I am, but there's no need to look it, too! and since I've lost a lot of weight this year, the sweater was way too big, but is a nice generous size for a jacket, can wear a sweater with it. I should explain that it came in a bundle of terrific LandsEnd turtlenecks, all of them for less than $5 the lot. I liked the other colors, dusty pink, and ivory and jade green, so the purple came along.



So I present to you my happy frugality results. This is actually quite easy to do, once you nerve yourself up to cut through really good knitted fabric, and the results are definitely worth it, when you think that both of these items were languishing on a shelf unworn for ages. And it took approximately 45 minutes per sweater to do this alteration. Piece-o'-cake.

I did get to the thrift recently, though, and snagged three sweaters for unraveling, I mean harvesting (!), purposes, really good yarn that would be much more expensive bought as new yarn. One is multicolored, and will provide a nice range of shades for my tapestry, now on the second, yellow/orange/flame/red color family. One is caramel, great for quiet sorts of knitting for people who are not heavily into color. And the last is charcoal, lovely heavy yarn.

HS had recently suggested that because long pants are not an option, HP might do well with something like legwarmers. A technical explanation here: because of the spinal damage, causing total incontinence, he has a permanent external catheter setup, as well as protective underwear, which between them make it very very difficult to insert him into regular long pants, since he can't assist with movement, and it takes nothing at all to detach the catheter which means back to square one, an hour's work of undressing, reapplying, redressing, etc. So he wears soft knitted shorts. But despite the handknit afghan he uses in the daytime, it's still a bit draughty.

I was going to knit him some legwarmers, thinking HS was really onto something here, until it dawned on me at the thrift store as I pawed through sweaters, that this charcoal one has lovely long sleeves which might make great legwarmers with practically no work at all once I've detached them from the sweater. That was when I realized I could cut his sweater to make the jacket I was at the thrift store idly thinking about, a couple of weeks ago.And the color is a nice conservative one. And he can tolerate wool.

So that's the next frugal adventure around here. If I live to 150 I will not run out of work to do...it's also incidentally how two seniors can survive on social security and a tiny pension each, and live like royalty. At least we think we're royalty.

First Hallowe'en party

As a confirmed Hallowe'en Hater, can't stand the ghoulishness, and how a serious religious day has been turned into a carnival, don't get me started....anyway, once in a while even this curmudgeon can be charmed.

And I was, yesterday, at the H. party given by a neighbor for her three year old and his friends. The moms had set up a little toy house under the trees, like a scene, and hung treat bags about a foot off the ground, so three year olds could see and reach.

















And then a little parade past our fence, and they got to seek. They did have a bit of trouble fathoming what they were supposed to do, and needed some broad hints from moms, but they had a good time.

For my money, the twin Dalmatians were just the ultimate in cutitude, closely followed by the others! the pix are the result of quite a few efforts, since the kids were moving at a high speed, out of camera range all the time, and by the time I'd got a focus, the partygoer had moved before the shutter finished clicking. They weren't posing, didn't ask them to, just playing.

Great fun, and the moms agreed that pix were fine, since I needed to show off their handsome young!

A huge miniature offer for your delight

Folks and blogistas, as you may know I used to be a serious miniature maker, specializing in miniature needlework, and showing at nationally juried miniature shows. Work appeared in some national magazines, too, and I used to run a Minipoint Club, which was a subscription deal where I designed and kitted and shipped a different miniature each month, went on for years sending them all over the world, till I got all tuckered out.

I used to accept commissions for miniature rugs, too, and will never forget the summer I had orders for three Victorian rugs, roses on a black background, and wondered if my eyes would ever recover. I'm a pretty fast stitcher, but each square inch of actual stitching, not counting the design and color balancing and all that, takes at least an hour. All those hours of stitching black, ow! but they were well received.

All these works are one inch to the foot in scale, which is the classic dollhouse scale. And they are not toys -- they're artworks on a small scale. The buyers were serious adults who love the miniature artforms.

Anyway, that was a long time back, and I just turned up a little trove of rugs and pillows and raw material not yet made into pillows, all stitched by me, most designed by me, too, some traditional designs, some in wool, some in embroidery floss, and had a sudden thought.

Why not offer these, one per customer (well, more if it's pillows, they're better in groups of two or three) to my online friends? So I took some pictures of the entire trove I found, once these are gone, they're gone! with a ruler in place to show the scale, and wonder if you would like to either post in here email with your specific request and the address to send it to? please don't ask on behalf of a friend -- I'd like direct communication.

You'll note that there are a couple of pieces of embroidery not mounted as pillows, in case you fancy your hand at creating a pillow using this work as a pillow top -- use a wisp of batting to stuff, and some fine material for the backing, stitch around like a regular pillow.

I used to sell these at a pretty price, but those days are over, really, and though I'm not asking for $$$ (unless you'd like to send a few $$ to your local animal rescue group?) but I am asking some things of you.

One is that you frame the piece if it's a rug, or place it in some kind of vignette if it's pillows, so that it is displayed and enjoyed. The second is that somewhere on the frame or vignette box you show my name as the creator of the piece. Okay, that's it for requirements! Oh no, there's another: please send me a picture of it in its new home, with permission to show it in here if I would like to. Okay, NOW that's it for stringent requirements...

One of my lifelong small missions is to see that good needlework gets its due, so if you accept a piece and display it, you will be a part of that mission, and I thank you.

I've tried to take pix, though my camera is not in a good mood today, that will help you identify the rug, not by location, they are now back in their bags and away, but by color and background, that sort of thing. Step up, they need a loving new home!

Other People's Lives

Strolling around the park today, after the first light frost started to turn the leaves, made me think about how other people's lives tend to look very rosy from the outside. As mine probably does to people who see a happy old lady ambling about in the sunshine not having to be in an office, taking pictures, chatting. And that part of it is in fact rosy -- I am very aware of the blessing of being able to walk at all, let alone for pleasure.

And I'm amused by the library reference man who a couple of years back when I was desperate for internet connection, and had to trail to the libe to get online and get really vital legal and official things accomplished in a mad rush in the 40 minutes maximum allowed, commented, this is nice for you, gives you something to do to help fill your day! having assumed I was a leisurely retiree, I guess, heh.

But when you know the people, you have insight into just what troubles they deal with, and have all the more admiration when they turn a cheerful face to the world. Like our down the street neighbor and old friend, who is the sole caregiver of a wife deep into Alzheimer's who will certainly have to find a placement for her soon, before it kills both of them. But he rarely complains, but would rather talk gardening with me and his plans for next year's tiny garden -- his is even smaller than mine!

And the family next door, teenage daughter valiantly struggling with brand new double whammy of lupus and kidney cancer, all happened in the last few weeks, who is still celebrating Diwali, the feast of lights, and trying to get to dance recitals in the intervals of hospital and chemo. Until this hit, she was an A student, a high level Indian dancer, a violinist, who ran kids programs in the summer.

And her parents, who look decades older than they did a few weeks back, stalwartly affirming that they will manage this, they will have a life, all of them. Their daughter, whose Indian name means Light, is going to have a nice lacy scarf and little artist's blank book for a journal from me as soon as I get the scarf finished. The journal is made already. Just two little thoughts from HP and me, since we just want to do something.

And the great friend on the other side, who is the ultimate optimist. He has had a bathtub standing in his kitchen for two years while he searches for a plumber who can get it upstairs to the bathroom to install it, and remove the old one. All of them have said the only access is via the downstairs ceiling, on account of all the tight right angle turns on the stairs, which has given him pause. Until last Saturday when he got up to find the living room ceiling and a lot of water on the living room floor and a flood in the upstairs bathroom where the &*&*&&*& shutoff had failed.

He was pretty racked up about it when he told me especially since the one shutoff that failed was the only one he hadn't got around to replacing yet. But then he said, with a big brave grin, well, now the ceiling's out, I may as well get M. (local handyman) over to give me a hand installing the tub through it....

He has a very old frail mother at the end of her days in the house, family all trying to take care of her. He's already arranged flextime at work to help with this. And he will come over and help me any time I ask, so I ask rarely, because I don't want to impose. Just not the person who should have to deal with floods and reno right now.

And people who don't know all this see him as a happy go lucky guy whose life is just so cool -- glamorous daughter, brilliant student in grad school, prestigious job of his own, successful wife, pretty townhouse, etc.

Anyway, this is just a little note of praise for people dealing with the hand they've been dealt, and still interested in helping with other people's deals, too.

Little series of pictures in the park:



young man striding around,



old man strolling,



young Indian mother with beautiful baby in sparkly slippers waving them from her stroller.

And remembering that their lives might not be as simple and calm as they look on a lovely fall afternoon, in the park, in the sunshine.

Tapestry update, at last, new vistas and Mrs. Stewart

Tapestry update, at last, new vistas and Mrs. Stewart

My computer with the library in the background is one of the places I’ll be blogging from from now on. My unofficial WiFi access has vanished into the maw of a package which has automatic firewalls.

It used to be that friendly neighbors left their WiFi modem open and didn’t mind the occasional piggybacking from folks like me, but now that packaging is the big deal, they don’t have that option. If you have a cable contract, they take over your telephone, television access, internet access, food choices, fashion decisions, you name it! And automatically put up a blocking mechanism to reject unauthorized people. That means me.

And aside from the sheer cost which is beyond our means, they simply can’t understand a household like ours, where the directv dish is HP’s, the landline phone is his, the cellphone is mine, the internet access is mine. They don’t understand how to separate out the functions and sell you what you actually want, what a concept.

So life will go one and my access will be a bit less frequent but very focused on getting a lot done in the brief times I can be away from the house. And amazingly, on discovering how many times I would be checking email, when really there is very little that is so dramatic that I need to be there on call!

And my organization has to be a bit better, since I found I'd forgotten to upload the pix to the drive before coming out to blog, sigh...but that gave me the chance to do some more pix, too, so all is not lost.

Yesterday I finished a scarf, made three artist books, did some spinning, and read a Mary Wesley novel, all in the time I suspect I might have been foofing around on the internet, doing Vital Research…this is over and above the nursing care, cooking, laundry etc., that consume several hours daily no matter what else is happening. So it goes to show.

And I have made a neat discovery, that in dyeing fleece I can branch out from Koolaid, since I realized, on tidying up the laundry shelf, that I have two bottles, don’t ask me how, of Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing. Remembering vividly making things bright blue when I had intended only to whiten them, I realized that I can use it on purpose as a dye, and did so. Nice blue, almost unobtainable via Koolaid. And not poisonous, as far as I know. I just soaked the fleece overnight in it, and wrung it out by hand, let it dry, and we’ll see how it spins.

And the tapestry is at the end of the first panel, and that blue will almost certainly be needed, once it’s spun, that is, on the second or third panels of this work. So I show you the first panel, still on the loom, where it will stay so that the other panels will work with it as I go, and the empty loom for the second panel. Potential!!






Recorder Society meeting this week, was a blast. The conductor is a worldclass musician, don’t know how we managed to snag her for our amateur group, but she was wonderful. She played Carnegie Hall this year, was in a Festival of Early Music in Prague, and gave birth to a daughter among all this, and cut several Cds, with YoYoMa’s percussionist from the Silk Road Ensemble. And she’s a cutup, very funny, terrific fun to work with.

If you want to see my official pix of conductors and others, I’m the official photographer of the Princeton Recorder Society, which you can find at princetonrecordersociety.com or something of that nature, you can google on it. It sounds posh to say I’m the official photographer, but it’s really I’m appointed because I’m the one who remembers to bring my camera and then remembers to use it! I’m the best they can get, this is not a great tribute to my photographic talent! But do take a look at the website, Tom L. the webmaster is doing a very nice job.

And our latest conductor looks like a medieval angel figure or a pageboy, with long red curly hair, black tunic and tights and boots, and a wonderful face.

So this week we played medieval music, and then for a finale, leapt ahead to the Baroque, all that way, 18th century. Great stuff to play, and she even taught us some new techniques.

Did you know that virtuoso players like her in concert don’t keep changing instruments? As you probably know, different voices of recorder, soprano, alto, tenor, bass, have different fingering and different clefs. There’s no time in the heat of performance to keep switching so they switch the fingering. This boggles the mind! Such mental flexibility is kind of hard even to think about. But she taught us to do it a big, playing altos as if they were sopranos.

I do know how to play the bass as if it were an alto, which involves change of clef and of fingering and of pitch, and often am the only person in the group who can divorce her thinking from her playing enough to do it! It’s intuitive rather than considered. But playing an alto like a soprano was new.

What happens is that your subconscious starts to associate the feel of a given instrument with its fingering and clef, and you have to override that if you change the expectations, great mental adventure. It’s one reason I switch at home all the time between flute and different voices of recorders, to try and maintain the flexibility to be able to play what I mean to.

Anyway, the evening was great fun, once a month HS comes over and sits with HP to let me get out without worrying.

And you want to know what I call a good friend? M., that's who. Who invited me over to her kitchen to make art together (and I did a couple of drawings, which I can show you here, for your endless delight!) and baked a cake, too! not bad. I reciprocate, of course, but it's so good to have this done for me.

Zinnias and books and food and adventures of an immigrant

I was listening to Steve Roberts on the radio today talking about a new book he's written, well, compiled from student accounts, about immigration. He is the son of the first generation, and his interviewer, Diane Rehm, is too. His family from Russia and Poland, hers from Egypt. So they were talking about the huge undertaking of emigrating from the land of your forepeople, and leaving behind all that is familiar, food, friends, maybe relatives, definitely scenery, and all the hardship it entails.

Which is very sympathetic of them, but I think they missed a HUGE piece of this. HP and I are immigrants ourselves, came here on our own initiative in my twenties, his thirties, as a newly married and dead broke couple. We had to sell stuff in order to raise the cash for the sailing tickets! and make a credit union loan before we even landed, in order to be able to actually get overland from New York, our port of entry, to Wisconsin, where HP was to do postdoc. work with other atom scientists. And the day after we got to Wis. I had to go out and find work for rent and groceries, since HP was not going to be paid for another month. In the middle of January. In Wisconsin. Aie! walking everywhere, neither of us either drove or could possibly afford to at that time.

Anyway, I don't want to go on an on in my worn out cardboard shoes and whine, but did want to make the point that we were quite alone, no family nor friends there, we simply broke our own path in life, never took a loan after that credit union one, owed nothing to anybody, created our own careers in different fields.

And it has all been the most amazing adventure! there is nothing, nothing, as exciting as starting over, remaking who you are and what you're about, free of the expectations built into your origins, in a country where we literally have been able to find opportunities to do practically everything we wanted to.

Where my northern Brit accent was not a liability as it was in England, and my religion was not a regrettable fact, as it was there, and where I could breathe the air, which I couldn't back there, either. There was no work there, for people with posh degrees, and I had a short life expectation, I was told by my doctors, not beyond the age of 30 unless I got out, into a place where there was actual air, not the black stuff lying around where we lived. Which unfortunately was where our education was available.

So anyway, that's ancient history, but I wonder if people who have never done it can grasp the excitement of taking your own life into your own hands and deciding where you will be and what you will do. And succeeding, and often failing, on your own terms. Judged as what you are, not who you are related to.

Well, I'll calm down now, and leave you with this paean of praise to the joy of Getting Out and Doing Better!



Oddly enough this program came right after I'd finished reading Hilary Mantel's Giving up the Ghost, a memoir I read while Im waiting for her Booker Prize book, Wolf Hall, for which I'm approximately 254th in line at the libe. And I found that I wish I'd known about her before.

Reading her is like riding a power drill -- she just blasts right through the emotions and memories of her childhood, sometimes funny, sometimes elegiac, always shiningly intelligent and with a huge respect for the intelligence of her readers. In fact she mentions this in passing, that writers need to be able to trust that their readers are smart enough to get what they're offering. She doesn't say, but I think might imply, that if the reader doesn't get it, it's not the writer's job to hammer it home! You practically need a seatbelt to stay with her, going at warp speed through many layers of experience and thinking and dreams and fears and ambitions.

And there are parallels between her life and this reader's: growing up working class in an area where Protestant and Catholic knew who was which, and Catholics heard themselves described in less than happy ways, first in her family to get beyond high school in education, struggling against ill health for years on end.

But here's the truly eerie, woowoo music part: I kept on wondering why her refs. to Bankbottom, and Hadfield, and Hyde, Cheshire were familiar, and realizing, I'd written that address many times in correspondence with an old uni friend I kept up with for many years -- she lived on the exact same street as Mantel grew up on, about ten doors down. Mantel was born much later, so I doubt the families knew each other, but if that isn't eerie...

Speaking of trusting your reader's ability to get what you're saying, Mary Wesley does this all the time. In A Sensible Life, which I have just reread, she does this in wonderful scenes. There's one in which the protagonists are talking at the side of a river where an old trout is lurking, having escaped capture for years by the man in the scene.

The woman after a while indicates that she can see the trout there, though the man had assumed she had no idea. And we know that he thinks he's hooking her, and she knows he is trying to, and is not planning to be hooked. But this isn't shoved home at us, it's just lightly touched on with the few words describing the trout, no need for more. Mary Wesley can not write a bad novel, and I think I've read all she's written.

I thought about that trusting the reader notion, right before I read it in Mantel, so I was kind of pleased that I'd noticed, gold star for me!

And I close with three nice things: one is a view of today's lunch, cooked in one of the many terrific pans I've rescued from the dumpster lately, and a new adventure i food for us.



Mustard greens, sauteed in olive oil with garlic, onions, turmeric, black pepper, with chunks of flounder sauteed separately, then added. Then I finished it in the oven, so the mustard greens were not quite as hot as they started out. It went over big, and fast. So we'll do this again.

I saw a food show about mustard greens and though, hm, must try this. I did blanch a whole bunch of them the day before, and froze several batches for future use like this or in soup or something yet to be invented..

The second thing is a scarf I'm making from the Yarn Harlot's recent blog, although hers was her homespun and mine is harvested lambswool, being created for a friend who has hit a great big snag in life and I think she needs a little present.



I made another scarf, last week, different friend, different sort of present, different yarn, different needles, same stitch, which came out interestingly unlike this one. If you want the pattern it's: cast on 26, or any number divisible by 4 plus two, then a single row is the whole pattern, which you repeat till distracted, namely knit two, knit one in back of loop, purl one, repeat these four stitches all the way to last two stitches which you knit. That's it. Amazingly complicated looking, considering.

And last, not at all least, the last zinnias of summer on the patio.