September 11 again

Another beautiful sunny early September day, and nine years on, the trauma still lingers, underlined by the lovely day, just like the one which created a Before and an After in so many lives.



Before, I was a single woman, closest friend an able bodied man, both of us with a flourishing petcare practice, I also with an busy art exhibit and teaching schedule.

After, a coupled woman, partner gradually, then suddenly, totally disabled, with no petcare practices, and a different sort of artwork.

So much is different now. Friends who fell away when our lives became harder and more circumscribed, other friends who stepped bravely forward and generously did what they could to help. New friends appearing who never knew us before anyway.



Neighborhood changes, now with Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and friends of other beliefs all around, our dearest neighborhood friends, a friendly mosaic of a street.

Neighbors who are devout gun owners and hunters and fishermen, one of whom firmly believes the Preserve should be opened up for hunting and fishing, otherwise it's a waste of nature! others who will not even willingly kill an insect, nor ever even touch meat. But all are our friends, who have shown themselves to have true grace under pressure.



I wish this for everyone, particularly today. That a little neighborhood that can live in peace and amity, newcomers among families who have been here hundreds of years, letting each other follow different customs, that neighborhoods like ours become more and more common in this country.

Then we'll know that the grownups have won.

Dolls, miniatures, farmers and dollpeople

Those of you who own miniature needlework made by me know that I used to have another life, in a galaxy far far away, as a miniaturist working in the needlearts, needlepoint, which I renamed minipoint, trapunto, drawn threadwork, embroidery, all in one twelfth scale, which is the standard dollhouse miniature size.

Intended for adult collectors, these were items which I designed and sold and kitted, and were covered in national magazines,when I was a juried participant in national miniature exhibits and shows. Big deal. Well tiny deal in another way. But a very happy period, among a lot of other things I was doing at the time, so what else is new.

In the course of this, a lot of people would say they loved my own work, but really really would like to learn to do it rather than buy it. So I ended up designing and assembling kits for items like pillows, bellpulls, pictures, doorstops, purses, all the sorts of accessories the well furnished dollhouse needs.

And one thing led to another and I ended up with a Minipoint Club, which people bought a year's subscription for one kit and a newsletter per month. This was long ago, when color xeroxing was a tricky affair, and very difficult to accomplish, early machines being run by technicians rather than laypeople.

So getting my charts accurately copied was a big deal, since I designed them in the exact color the kit called for, with stitches lying correctly, so that even a beginner could make these items.

Of course, since the items themselves were miniatures, the chart was a whole lot bigger so that you could see what you were doing. And I supplied the chart, the exact amount of embroidery floss in the right colors, to allow for some redoing as well as success, and a needle stuck into each piece of mesh.

This was 24 stitches to the inch if I remember correctly, not available in stores, and the needles were size 8, also not available in stores. I had to buy them directly from the manufacturers in the smallest quantities they would sell, and I still have hundreds of size 8 needles lying around somewhere, since they sold in units of thousands! you'd be surprised at how heavy a tiny package of needles is.

The newsletter I typed up and xeroxed off each month, with news of my garden and fun items in it, and jokes, and serious notes on the history of needlework and why we should protect old needlework from being thrown away by auctioneers unaware of its value or beauty.

I got wonderful responses to the newsletters, too, with people getting right back at me to share their gardens and jokes and so on! This was in the 70s when there was terrible distress in farming in the midwest and west, and quite a few of my members were farmwomen.

One in particular I remember, used to look forward to her kit as the one spark of light in her life at the time. One time she wrote to me from the cab of their pickup, parked outside the bank, where her husband was trying desperately to get his loan extended so that they would not lose the farm.

Initially I thought people would sign up for a year, then think, well, that was nice, and go on to other pursuits. Then I would be able to repeat designs without cheating anyone, rather than have to think up a new one each month and chart it and so on. But nooooooo. NOBODY dropped a subscription. In fact I ended up with about 100+ people, in the US, Canada, England, Australia, NZ and Holland. People would sign up their mothers and sisters and second cousins once removed.

So not only did I have to create a new design each month, but the short joy of creating was overtaken by the drudgery of copying, assembling, counting, labeling, stamping and shlepping, oh dear. And I didn't set a high price at all, figuring it was just a nice little hobby business, so the profit was marginal at best, not much reward for the work, if you look at it that way.

Anyway, after a few years I regretfully closed the club, thanked everyone and encouraged them to reuse old designs if they wanted to continue, and got all kinds of wonderful letters from people begging me not to stop!

Even some people who had been so baffled at the outset that I'd asked them to send back the kit, I would put in the first few stitches and leave the needle in place, so that they could follow on, and mail it back. Light dawned, they were able to finish, and were very happy with themselves.

A lot of the members were living far from towns or any place they could get help and advice, and this predated the internet by decades, so it was a kind of lifeline for women wanting some creative stuff in their lives at a minimum cost.

In fact the designs do live on, some of them being used in the summer program in our township, taught by a master embroiderer from material I distributed when I spoke to a meeting of the local embroiderers' guild chapter all those years ago!

Very very few unfriendly encounters in the course of all of this, if you don't count people who were new to miniatures, were more doll people, who angrily wrote to say, this chart won't WORK!!! it's TOO BIG!! this purse will be GIANT SIZED for my doll, etc., and had to be talked down to calm, then reminded that they were following the chart with miniature mesh, needle and thread....and eventually they came to understand the difference between a dress pattern and a needlework chart. That was one confusion that would never have occurred to me.

But that was before I met doll people! I've noticed that serious doll collectors I've met all have doll like appearances -- perfectly symmetrical faces, bright eyes, little mouths. Some of them even look as if they were dressed by a loving owner! go to a doll show and you'll see what I mean.

Nice people, but very different from miniature makers, many of whom are somewhat anxious perfectionist types! in fact this is a reason I hold down my mini making, because it caters to the neurotic side of my personality, which I don't want to encourage! you can get very worked up over getting things Just Right, and there are times when life only calls for Just Good Enough.

And working to create the Dollivers and letting it go where it will has been a lovely insight into dollmaking and how relaxed and whimsical and silly it can get.

Just don't tell them I said that.

Dollivers and Old Lace

Since the Teddies for Haiti activities, there has been unrest among the Dollivers.

Even though they got TWO new dogs, about which there's some dispute over naming, maybe the big dog should be Olivier, and the puppy should be Olive in honor of the Mason Dixon dog, see Mason Dixon knitting blog, funniest blog on earth, there's still grumbling about how teddies get all the new stuff and Dollivers get nothing, we tell you, nothing....

So it just so happened that I was taking out the garbage the other day and there in the dumpster area is a very nice, clean, perfectly good hatbox complete with lid, perfect workbox for my sewing stuff, which came home with me. And there in it was a child size lace glove.

Which the Dollivers seized on and said, oh, LACE! this is something like! get making stuff for us. So the glove became a lace blouse for Dreads who has tolerated wearing a lovely warm raglan sweater and hat through the heatwave and was ready for a change, a jabot for her sister in the pink outfit, and a pair of lacy socks for two others. Not a scrap of glove left over after these adventures in cutting, no sewing involved.



One Dolliver has no lace getup, but I pointed out she has a DOG. And the little porcelain Dolliver has the puppy.



So they can all stop fussing now. Thank you.

Napery and nostalgic thoughts, in overdrive

I was organizing the linen closet, posh way of saying pawing through a tumble of sheets and pillowcases and towels on the two shelves above the water heater, and wondering how to put them so I can get what I need without having it all fall on my head, when I found a terrific old heavy cotton tablecloth, a, cough cough, wedding gift which dates it to 1963, and which we never use.

Cloths are no use to us for various reasons having to do with HP's great upper body difficulties with navigating tableware and numbness not knowing what he's grasped. Rather than have that trick about whipping the cloth from under the plates several times a day, we have tablemats and napkins but no cloth.

Anyway, the napkins to this cloth were worn out years and years ago, but the cloth used mainly for picnics, still holds up like new. So I decided to split it into a whole bunch of cloth napkins for which we have massive use. I avoid paper as much as I can, not wanting to burden the earth more than we have to.

So I have the pleasure of some simple hand hemming to make nine nice new napkins. No sewing machine in this house, I hate them. I had one for years and years and having used it twice, while hand sewing dozens of things, gave it away to a good cause.

So here's the before

and current



still in progress. One of those pleasing old fashioned things to do, simple fine hand sewing for a purpose. My mother, who was gifted way beyond her education used to comment that she hated sewing classes in school, and used to moan "in the white, out the red, gah" about the practice they had to do,working on red and white gingham.

This was a girl who grew up to learn her own hand tailoring and dressmaking among other accomplishments, bored to tears by this simple stuff. She comes vividly to mind while I stitch on my red and white gingham napkins, but I think she'd see why this is okay. Mitered corners, hidden hems, all that.

I had intended to listen to a playaway library book while stitching, and got out the bio of Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire (early ancestor of Diana, and unnervingly like her) but the ^&^&^^& playaway did what they usually do -- skipped, looped, the slightest tiny move on my part such as threading a needle, causing the whole thing to go dead then start up at the beginning AGAIN, until I threw it back in the case and into the Return to Libe with Complaint basket.

I have simply never had any luck with these things. I suspect they're too delicate for lending and borrowing, and after the first listen don't hold up. Like the CDs and DVDs you borrow -- if you're lucky they work without jamming and looping but often they're just worn out and bent and generally Very Annoying.

Last evening we watched A Mighty Wind. Christopher Guest, one of his great movies. I'm glad I realized it was him, since the listing in the paper didn't tell anything. It is a hilarious and wonderful skewering and sendup of the folk music scene of the 60s, what the participants can remember of it, and the middle aged breakdowns trying to relive their great days, with an audience in much the same situation, all very happy and narcissistic and self absorbed, determined to snort their way to world peace.

Guest is the Molly Ivins of movie -- no need to exaggerate, just portray exactly how things are and you fall down laughing at how wonderful they are. I love that the same ensemble shows up in his movies. Parker Posey, the divine PP, appearing here as a folk singer (remember her wonderful part in Best in Show as the yuppie dog owner?) And all the others, like seeing your friends putting on another show in the barn, only these guys know what they're doing.

HP had been asleep for the first part of this, but woke and got interested and after I explained the premise, began to enjoy it hugely. I was so heartened that he got the satire and cracked up laughing, stayed alert for the whole thing, long after he's usually sleeping. Great evening's entertainment, and a change from the other narcissists slugging it out at the US Open...

I wonder if Guest has in mind a tennis movie....I can see Serena being portrayed with that little girly voicy, talking about doing good things, and helping people, and how her tennis will lead to world peace...while snarling at line court judges and screaming threats in between times....ah, that would be fun. And Federer, sore loser, grousing in three languages after a defeat...and Mirka telling him to shut up and load the private jet with the wallets....

Speaking of cracking up, a couple of recent comments, and emails about how reading in here gets people all tied up with ideas and thoughts and not quite able to get them down, I feel a bit abashed when this happens. I have a high mental energy level and get people excited and a bit worn out at the same time.

Years ago, I had various small businesses, micro bizzes, really, and also used to consult to small biz, to get them from stage one, startup, to stage two, being really on the road, making the transition to longterm operations. Since I was charging an hourly rate I really liked to give value for money, was totally prepared, and absolutely poured it all over the poor recipients, with no idea that they felt as if they'd caught an express train in the middle of the back...

Until one, very honest, very nice guy, said, did you know I have to lie down for an hour after you leave? I mean, it's great stuff, but the speed, the intensity,gads.

So I learned to watch, and after a while say, hm, I could really murder a cup of tea...whereupon they'd leap up, delighted to get a break, and I would have a totally unwanted break with tea thrown in..but this was my normal way of thinking and working, and it's hard for me to remember that other people have a different speed, various gears, overdrive not being their sole approach! anyway, I'm just sayin'

I used to teach about antiques and collectibles, back in the day, and one of my favorite environments was a big classroom with chalkboards on three sides at the local high school. By the end of the session, all the boards were jammed with my notes in passing! and when people asked questions, I could run around and point out the answers already up there, just remind them of the context, etc. They used to say, but you came in without notes, where did this stuff come from? and I'd puzzle a bit thinking, well my head, really, where else? this is just the knowledge I planned to share this evening. Oh.

I've taught a lot of classes and workshops over the years and have never been able to fathom teachers who used the same notes every time, even the same jokes! I never taught the same class the same way twice, much more interesting that way, also you have much better ideas as you go along, fed by the participants. But then I was the maker of my curriculum, too, always a big plus for an ornery type like me.

So, back to les moutons, and a nice Labor Day weekend with great sunny cool weather, what a treat.

Bon Voyage, Bears!

The Dollivers, their shaggy dogs, and the three bears had a grand farewell party,



complete with high fives from the little porcelain Dolliver to the last of the bears, and the shaggy dog? he followed the Dollivers home, they had to keep him. Then they found a shaggy puppy for the porcelain doll, sigh.



so,dog farewells before they leave,



and general partying and noise.

And the official Bear Farewell Portrait



Tomorrow they set off on the first leg of their journey: here to PO, to Canada, to mom of nurse, to nurse's suitcase, to plane, to Haiti and the arms of little kids. With great thanks from me for the chance to do this, and for the imaginative approach of a nurse planning to take her own personal gear in a small case and stuff her one allowed suitcase with bears, if'n she gets a whole lot, which I hope she will.

Bye, bears! great fun to work with all of you. Study your French on the flight, okay? Dites bonjour aux gosses Haitiens.

Blood, prayer and bread

Unavoidable echo of Churchill's oratory, don't get me started....so many problems with that person, but the rhythm of his prose took hold at an early age, as a little kid in the house with the nine o clock news from the BBC in wartime, bringing us, as the old joke went, news of fresh disasters...

Anyway, the blood reference is to a routine blood test thing I had to do, nothing alarming, but pretty high tech when you think about it. A person had to get it, but a machine will read it, pass on the info, a computer will record it, and blessedly a person will call to let know what's up.

So, since I was in the neighborhood and had coverage for HP, I nipped over to the labyrinth, with the intent of walking it with A. I. in mind, a thing I do now and then, keep a specific person and their current situation in mind.

It was one of those scrappy experiences, where my mind was all over the place, outdoing the monkey mind in its antics, and I remembered the sage who said, don't worry about it, you're just hearing the normal noise in your head! keep walking slowly, watch each foot advance, see what happens to you.

And what happens is always amazing. This time I found a little square of glass, glittering, sharp edges, but beautiful, very mathematically sharp, too, oddly appropriate for the recipient of the meditation. I carried it around and placed it in the center of the labyrinth where you put an object, and stand confirming that you have arrived at the center with your questions, before turning to exit, and experience the unwinding that always happens in the labyrinth.

There's always a new thought, or message, or something. And this time it was about how this was my job this fine Saturday morning, to walk the labyrinth with a particular person and her family in mind. No need to stress over how engrossed I could get in meditating, just do it. No need to stress over whether it helps her, just do it.

Chop wood, carry water.

Then home to lovely lunch with HP and HS, who always enjoys his Saturday meal with us, and a discussion of the newest high tech enterprises he's embarked on. Then later I made a batch of bread, ancient food, ancient form of meditation. Bread is alive, that's why it's so good to work with. It works back at you. And we ate some of the results today, so good.

One extreme to the other -- ancient to modern and back again in one day.

Bears for Haiti, Chicken for Dinner and face blindness

Food always being of interest to all, here's today's dinner (and tomorrow's in fact, since this is at least two meals' worth of chicken) which is my own recipe you are free to swipe if desired.

Chicken thighs, sauteed first on top of the stove on a bed of garlic cloves, mustard greens, portobello (sp?) mushrooms chunked, chopped scallions, spiced with cumin, turmeric and garam masala and salt, then finished in the oven at medium heat. Served with roasted potato wedges. Dessert fresh plums, prune plums being in full swing right now.

The chicken is great nuked on the second day or just served cold.

And the Dollivers are Doing Their Bit, knitting Bears for Haiti. A Ravelry friend's daughter is a nurse about to go to Haiti to work in a tent city and hospital there, and wants to take a lot of handknit bears to give to little children, since the doctors have affirmed that a new soft toy can do almost as much for a little kid as medicine.

So we have undertaken to ship a bunch of them to this nice woman to take with her, and here's our first, since finding out about the project a couple of days ago.



Teddy needs to be stuffed, scarf stitched in place, happy face embroidered on, then he can wait for a couple of others and all travel together. Anyone who fancies doing some of this, email me for the deets.

Last, and sort of related but not quite, is a wonderful piece by Oliver Sacks in the current New Yorker about face blindness, which he has to a marked degree. I do too, and it's very comforting to know that a brilliant man like him has a similar perceptual disability. Unlike synaesthesia, which is an outright gift in my life, this face blindness is a definite social handicap.

What it is: the inability to recognize people's faces, even if you know them fairly well, and complete inability to recognize people in photographs. In my case, as soon as the person moves or speaks I'm fine and now I know who they are. Mostly. I have been known to completely confuse two people and carry on a conversation that baffled the other person who was not who I thought she was, sigh, awkward.

I even have the distinction of having sat next to a nice woman on the bus many years ago in England, and noticed that she got off at my stop, and was heading in the same direction as I was, and then as I turned onto my street, she caught my attention, and I finally realized that it was my mother. She was cracking up laughing and said I was absent minded. So I let people think that, easier than trying to explain!

But it does offend people very much since they assume that if you were polite you'd remember them. Oh, to live in a world where everyone would wear a name tag! then if I see someone out of context I'd still know them. As it is, I go around with a friendly expression and willingness to pass the time of day with anyone who indicates they know me, rather than look rude and try to explain I have no idea who they are. Meanwhile frantically trying to visualize the person at the library? the doctor's office? the food store? the vet's? the park? where, where??

This hitch is also shared by Jane Goodall, who says she had trouble learning one chimp from another until she knew them well, and was always getting lost in the forest. Well, yeah. I've been unable to recognize my own house if I come at it from a different direction. This used to amuse HP very much when we were first married back in the Pleistocene Era, and we'd go out for a walk, come back from a different direction and I would have no idea I was at my own front door again.

So, bear with me, and Ruth L thanks for letting me tread water in the library yesterday when I was talking with you. The pink rain hat totally disguised your identity for a few sentences, until I saw your husband and put it together. Oh well!

Come to think of it Bear With Me is a good theme for today, bears being on the agenda and all.

A time to dye

Fabric, that is. Recent thrift store finds for harvesting purposes needed further color work. So out comes the KoolAid as usual,



and the white all cotton sweater becomes a nice pale green,



which became vanishingly pale after the rinse, so it now has a spatter of bluing across it to make a variegated effect. And who knows what else will happen before I've done with it. No pix till it's done.

And the chartreuse ew silk knitted Liz Claiborne sweater is now in pieces and dyed with a mixture of blue and purple and yellow KoolAid to come out as a nice variegated warm orangy rusty color.



It's always interesting to see what colors do to a fabric that's already a neon color to start with.

These are not meant to look like the finished idea, folks. They are raw material for making other things, either by unraveling and reknitting or crocheting, or simply cut out like fabric to make other items. Dollivers are jonesing for new dresses and purses and who knows what else...and the variegated idea looks very chic in use. Much better than those flat, dopy solid colors beloved of traditional knitters the world over...cough cough.

This sort of dyeing is great because you can use the microwave and regular kitchen containers with no fear, since it's a food item, and the only bad part is the ghastly fruit flavors that scent the kitchen in the process. But I can plunge my hands in with no fear other than staining them. Given my aversion to gloves for any purpose, this is a Good Thing. And you can find easy instructions just using Google.

Come to think of it it's probably okay for medium aged kids, with help with the hot water part. Or absent minded old ladies like me. Nothing toxic anywhere.

Ecce Panis, Amici!

If you are fortunate enough not to have had either a. a classical education, i.e. forcefed Latin and Greek, or b. a Catholic upbringing, i.e. forcefed Church Latin, you will need a translation, which is roughly: Behold, my friends, bread, or more to my taste Hey, fellers, bread!

We had a moderately cool day, weather in the mid eighties, so I got to work to make my first foray into the no knead bread world. I've made a lot of bread over the years, including the kneaded kind which was tough on my hands, and the bread was so good it was eaten far too fast.

I would make what I thought was enough to last us a week at the usual rate of consumption, and find by next day just a bit of end left. So I thought, dangit, what's the point, they'll only eat it!

But now if I don't have to knead it, and if I can keep a supply of dough happily waiting a few days in the fridge, it's better, so I am back into it. And I made the Classic Wholewheat Loaf, baking two loaves from the dough I'd prepared. What fun.

It tastes absolutely great. nice crust, nice crumb, (note my new casual use of technical terms I just learned this week), went over well.



After I'd taken the book's tip and used my oven thermometer to discover that my oven is about fifty degrees wrong, the big fibber, and I put the reading up a lot.

And finding that putting a broiler pan with hot water in it under the bread made a terrific steam atmosphere for it, and that my old cookie sheet, rubbed with a wrapper from the butter -- always save them in the freezer, to grease dishes with -- and finding that my hand driven wooden flat spoon thing worked perfectly fine with minimum stress, and finding that my local supermarket has started stocking King Arthur flour, a first, and vital wheat gluten, which stunned me, thinking it was going to be a specialty search.

So many discoveries in the course of doing an age old low tech thing.

Now I'll take the book back to the libe, in anticipation of receiving my own copy soon in the mail.

And sorry, I don't ship!

Down on the Farm with the Dollivers

A couple of Dollivers decide to come along on a trip to the local you-pick farm, which I love to go to, to encourage local small farmers. The whole family works all the time, and in the summer it's the younger generation in charge of the fruit and veggie area, ready picked as well as pick it yourself.

This is the Stults farm, which has ceded development rights to the state in return for a sizable $$ compensation, and the agreement to farm it forever. So this area of the town is protected and beautiful forever, crops of all kinds, mainly fruits and vegetables.

So, it being a short car ride, I took the latest Dolliver and her sister, dressed in their best, with me. I explained it's a farm you don't have to dress up, but was met indignantly with what do you think we are? ruffs and scruffs? we are wearing our best outfits, complete with earrings, so neener.

Ooooookay. So we posed at the farm sign, one Dolliver falling down repeatedly and finally clinging on long enough for a picture, hair blowing in a brisk wind. Then we found that her sister had lost her earrings already, but they turned up in the car, then we posed and shopped.



The Stults family are such good businesspeople, and now grow all kinds of vegetables that appeal to the Indian population of the township, who love to pick fresh and many of whom are strict vegetarians, so they're excellent customers. Items like bitter melons and other things I don't know how you cook them, as well as all the other more familiar crops.




Dollivers checking the cantaloupes

And were all very amused by a nice lady with two little girls who said she'd come to pick raspberries, then proceeded to ask the kid behind the counter how to recognize them, where were they, how do they grow? the kid, straightfaced pointed to the field behind her and said, see all those rows of bushes? all full of raspberries. You just pick them. Ahhh.

But I admired the mom for being willing to look silly in the course of giving her little girls a summer adventure of picking stuff on a farm. Many years ago, I took in a summer renter, a very young girl originally from Trinidad, then from New York city, who was a brilliant engineer and was doing an internship at a local company.

I had been horrified by their personnel department who had been sending her, a 17 year old girl, alone, to terrible neighborhoods in Trenton, really dangerous places, and who called me (I worked at the YW then) to ask if we had a residence in Princeton.

I realized that what was driving them was the nasty assumption that a young black student would not easily find a place to live. So I was so mad I said I've got a spare bedroom, I live right down the road from you, walking distance to work for her, refer her to me. And her family to make sure they know she's safe.

And she came to us for the summer. In the first day she was there, I was called by every one of her five brothers, checking me out! and her father actually came to visit, charming man, who visibly relaxed when he met me and I assured him his daughter was safe and we loved her, and my son, then about 13, would be her friend too! so it went well. She was astounded that I had no trouble with his Trinidadian accent, since I knew tons of people in England from the islands.

But I was reminded of her when I heard the raspberry lady, because at that time I had a big vegetable and fruit garden, and one evening I asked her would she please nip out and pick a bunch of cucumber and tomatoes for salad. Forgetting these are temperate zone vegetables.

She wandered about outside for a while with the bowl I'd given her, until I finally went out and she said, um, which are cucumbers? and do tomatoes grow underground? should I dig? so I showed her and she was amazed at finding them on the vine. It became a huge house joke that summer, she being a terrific kid with a great sense of humor.

And, back on the farm, scream, shock, horror, as I was ready to leave I realized I'd left the Dolliver girls posed at the pepper display.



Unharmed, indignant at what a rotten mother I am, leaving the kids behind, we proceeded to the library.



Where the Dollivers relaxed with an issue of O to check on what ways they should improve their lives, such as finding a new home where their mother won't go off and leave them...and noticing that she's about to borrow a book about making dolls from old socks, ptui.

So home with lovely Jersey peaches and tomatoes and green beans.

Clouds rapid sequence

I took these pictures yesterday evening right after a big thunderstorm, in the space of just a few minutes. Wonderful rapid changing sky, no time lapse photography involved.

Eat, Pray, Kill!

Late summer, and the heat exhausted my hanging containers of petunias, despite twice daily watering, and the hornworms exhausted my hanging tomatoes despite daily picking off, who knows how these little guys managed to locate and climb up to the tomatoes, what powerful instincts. Anyway, these are all now in the woods for the animals to shelter in and eat and generally reduce to new topsoil. And they have been replaced with some nice bright new yellow daisies.



Meanwhile, it being late summer, reading is going on apace, and vague plans for Fall new projects and learning skills. Every fall I used to take up a couple of new pursuits and some of them have stayed in my life, others have fallen away. Playing recorder and flute were a couple of them, and they'll never go away.

Learning Hindi was one that fell away very fast, after the teacher announced on the first night of class that of the eight sessions planned, she would be in India for a wedding for three of them, had not mentioned this to the school admins...and her English was so heavily accented that I couldn't tell when she was speaking English and when Hindi. She was nice, but a nonstarter for me. I got a refund.

But nowadays it's harder to get out in the evening. Recorder monthly meetings will still be on, but classes, meh.



However, I do have plans. A terrific book I found at the libe, and have ordered for myself, since it will get use in the kitchen, not a good environment for a libe book, is about bread making.

And the great part is that you are making a risen bread but you don't knead it. My hands are not up to kneading, never have been, so this is a great notion. And these blessed writers point out that you can use a spoon to mix the ingredients, you're not stuck with massive pieces of kitchen equipment such as food processors.

I'm against machinery in the kitchen, beyond my little stick blender and a tiny version of a processor, a gift, and a little hand mixer, largely, figuring I'm not running a factory floor.

But a lot of recipes demand the food processor for breadmaking and I'm not sure what the heck to do if you don't have one, so I pass on them. But this one is definitely on the schedule for as soon as the weather cools off enough to switch on the oven again. And these writers explain how to make dough ahead of time, keep it in the fridge and be ready to bake a loaf when you need one.

So this is the Big Food Adventure of the Fall. I will either go very quiet on this if it doesn't work out, or I will bore you senseless, dear blogistas, with pictures and much bragging if it does work out. In which case the pix will have to be taken fast before the food has vanished. HP is definitely interested in what transpires on this front.

That's the Eat part of today's thoughts. Then there's Pray.

The Japanese stone gardens book is a wonderful browse just as an art journey, no need to have one or build one in order to enjoy them. But I do suddenly have plans for miniature versions of these, maybe installing my tiny moss gardens with their glass globes in a tray of gravel, combed into interesting shapes.

Sand would be nice but as a cat owner, I hesitate. All you cat owners will know if you put out a nice arranged tray of sand anywhere in the vicinity of cats, it will quickly be adopted as a luxurious new litterbox. So sand is out. But we'll see about other items that might work. As to praying, this is a very meditative art.

And finally to Kill. Robert Parker is always a great, fast, easy read, suspense and puzzle all about murder and wit and excellent dialog and no wasted time on descriptions, perfect for summer when your brain is kind of at a lower ebb than usual. And he wrote dozens of them, with various different detectives, sardonic Bostonians, sardonic female mixed up Bostonians, sardonic psychologists, sardonic Westerners, sardonic gay giant guys with great unarmed combat skills, you get the pic. And I'm undyingly (!) grateful to Maureen J. for introducing me to him a while back.

Great fun to read. Well, all the Eat, Pray, Kill books are great fun to read.

Young Collectors' Summer Show

At the library where a while back I showed you a terrific elephant collection in the glass case, today there were two collections, all done earnestly and with great seriousness by the young collectors, and shown in the cases near the checkout, so that they get a lot of attention from other kids and adults like me.

One is the keychain collection of an eleven year old girl,



I think crafted by her from those standard keychain things, great fun, kids waiting to check out books, picking out their favorites and so on,

and the other is a fearsome exhibit of Wild Things put together by a seven year old boy. It looks like the natural history version of paper dolls, where you pop out and build the shapes to make various interesting things.

He had three shelves, showing his versatility!

The Great Barrier Reef,



Ancient Earth



and the Amazon Jungle.




I had just been reading magazines, total luxury, on my respite time at the libe, looking at interior design things full of artful whimsy and witty little ideas, the kind that if a decorator does it it's witty, and if a civilian does it it's more like what the heck is that thing? anyway, all very self conscious, especially the playful stuff.

So what a treat it was to see this simple, serious presentation of stuff with no irony intended at all, just the enthusiasm of a young collector or two. So I thought I'd share.

General Dolls' Hospital cue music....

So, the endless rolling heatwave driving me to ever more esoteric indoor pursuits, I decided to repair the porcelain miniature doll I'd rescued from the dumpster along with some big and beautiful unplayed with ones which I freecycled ages ago to very happy moms who planned on them for Christmas surprises for actual children.

Anyway, this little doll, very nice face, all porcelain and jointed and hideously dressed in horrible Victoriana, sorry if you like that period, but oh well, and her hair and clothes were GLUED on, heresy.

And I found that her arm fell off at the elbow and her leg came off in my hand, and I realized why she'd been tossed. Long long ago, I had a big doll, probably baby size, but I was small enough to think Trixie was Big, who was similarly jointed, except she didn't have elbows and knees, and one time she just fell apart, head shot off, arms and legs likewise, very traumatic for me her mother, and I rushed her to the Dolls' Hospital around the corner, aka toy store with a nice man who said, oh, I can fix her up easily, come back for her tomorrow.

And I did, and there was Trixie good as new (well, she was handed down from an older sister, so I guess I mean good as I'd ever known her!) head and limbs all back in place. And I realized they were all attached inside on elastic and hooks, aaaahhh.

So when I examined this new little doll, I had a flashback to how Trixie worked, and was able to do likewise with this one, except that the pegs that held the elastic were broken off.



So I inserted some canvas in a roll, up through the leg, hooked up the elastic from the inside and stitched the canvas to it, then let it pop back, so the leg went back just right. Then I took a look at the knee, similar sort of exercise except no elastic, just canvas, glue and a scotch tape splint holder. And the elbow, which was much harder.

They do say that elbow surgery is much trickier than knee or hip, and as a surgeon on dolls, I can attest to the truth of this saying. However, after a while in intensive care while the glue dried,



under the eyes of the Nurse Dollivers, she came through, and discovered that while she was under, I had designed and knitted her underwear and a dress and organized new hair.

No more glued-on wigs and glued-up dresses for her, no, we knit and sew around here and make clothes you can put on and take off and change up.

So she sat up, took notice and got dressed and adopted a triumphant attitude.



This was so much fun I don't plan on growing up any time soon.

Glorious freecycling

As you know I'm a confirmed freecycler, giving and receiving regularly, and often very happy both with the transaction and with the resulting products (or space in the house!).

Recently two particularly good ones. A poster requested a commode for her very aged relative coming to stay, and they all suddenly realized she can't do stairs, and they have one bathroom up one flight, oh dear. So I got back in touch, since we have such a thing in perfect condition.

HP became paralyzed so fast -- over the course of a few hours he went from a person who could walk with a walker plus help, even do stairs with help, to someone who could not even support himself in a chair, total loss of mobility from the chest down -- that we got virtually no use from it, so it should go to someone who can get the benefit.

So my email bounced. Oh dear. So I posted asking her to get in touch explaining what had happened. Whereupon a whole bunch of people responded, some not understanding I was in search of a particular individual, some saying don't worry, I took care of her already, some saying are you giving or asking, etc. Comedy of errors ensued. But I did pursue it since this is the kind of item that if you need it you NEED it, and it's not a frivolous request. Finally gave up on trying to establish who was the original seeker, concluded she was already helped, ended up offering it to another person who came hotfooting over and I was so glad I'd done it.

Very sad story of her husband, only in his fifties gone to being almost an invalid, great pain, several unsuccesful spinal surgeries, very serious hospital problems, etc., all this happened in a mad rush, oh, I remember that feeling, and she's almost beside herself with fear and worry, now that he's home and trying to walk a little.

So we had a nice chat on my doorstep and I tried to be encouraging, and reviewed other stuff they might need that we have, and she departed feeling a heck of a lot better and as she said, not so alone. So that was a wonderful side effect of the freecycling impulse.

Then, the universe watching out for me, an freecycling offer of two pure wool large man sweaters, with pix appeared. The pix looked like a kind of greyish plain knit and a kind of darkish charcoal plain knit, so I thought, ah, harvesting! much good quality yarn in there, in acceptable colors for HS or others.

So yesterday, on a day when the heat index was in the 100s AGAIN, and high humidity, but I had the respite time, so I went out, I picked them up, and was stagamazed to find: two brand new, one still with original tag, handknit Irish aran sweaters, far far far too good to unravel, one with a signed tag of the knitter on it, in a natural creamy color,



the other in a darkish tweedy flecked with blue and green kind of subtle color.



And large was no overstatement. The sleeveless one will work as a winter tunic for me over tights, and the other needs some attention to the sleeves in order to become a winter dress for me. Both perfectly beautiful. What a treasure. I suspect they were gifts to the freecycler, not to his taste.

Anyway when I thanked him after I got home and realized what I'd been given, he got back saying, oh that's fine, then, and who knows maybe one day it will get cool enough to actually wear them!

Happy Weekend everyone! and please remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki in your prayers and making of peace cranes and walking the labyrinth and other observances that may suit your style.

Robin, robin, who's got the journals?

This post is in the nature of a housekeeping venture. Partly because it's August, and another heatwave is hitting us, and my brain is ticking gently over, more in reptilian mode than its usual high speed operation.

However, there are just a few things. One is: the Round Robin Journals. I'll post pix to remind you about them in case you have one or both lying on your desk and you've forgotten what they heck they are.






Please: who's got them????? and do you need to be reminded who gets them after you??? interested parties need to know. Just email me, okay? You don't want to be hunted down by the Dollivers.

That reminds me that a couple of people wonder what sort of comments I get when I set the Ds up for a photo shoot. Answer: none! very funny. Either people think I'm demented and they'd better not get me upset, or they think something very strange is happening and they don't want to be involved, or they know me and think, oh, I'll check Field and Fen in a couple of days and find out what was going on. Whatever, nobody says anything, which is actually funniest of all.

Next, a lot of people email me saying dangit they can't post in here, because they don't have whatever the ID is that the system is asking for. But all you need to do if that's the case, you don't have a Yahoo or a Google account, etc., is post as Anonymous! what a concept. If you put your name in the body of your comment, we know it's you. In this context anonymous just means not a specialized ID. Nothing more sinister than that.

And it's August, famous birthday time. No, not Barack, though I hear he has a bday around now, too, but Handsome Son!!! next Sunday. And one of our neighbors and great friends will be 75 on the same day. All the best people! and then there's Carol Q. and Liane and Eepy (on the Glorious Twelfth, Grouse Shooting opens in Scotland) and Marnie, blogger extraordinaire, and I always overlook SOMEONE, sorry, like I said my brain is at a low reptilian hum, rather than actual memory mode.

Anyway, happy birthdays to all, Hippo Birdies Two Ewes, bonnes anniversaires, felicitations, festina lente, very appropriate for a bday in hot weather, come to think of it...

Mini vacation at the Preserve

Yesterday was the first day in weeks that was lovely, perfect 80s, low humidity, little white clouds dancing around the sky, and I had a couple of hours' respite, so I spent them at the Preserve. The Dollivers dogged, or dolled, my footsteps but never mind about them....

Here's the establishing shot showing where the day unfolded. See, I didn't work in public TV for nothing, folks:




There were a lot of birds out enjoying the day, too and the late summer seeds on all the wild grasses and flowers, several goldfinches in full mating fig flying around like bright little aerial dandelions.


The preserve backs up on to what used to be HP's workplace, back when there was a nuclear reactor there, deep in the woods, long since decommissioned. It produced experimental scale isotopes for chemists and various other brainy atom guys to work on, including some of the earliest isotopes used in cancer treatments.

It was what brought us to Plainsboro in the first place. But there was a lot of fear about reactors in the 60s when it was built, so it was kept a bit quiet, just not to alarm people for no good reason. Even though what HP was actually in the business of doing was developing approaches to clean water production for domestic use!

Anyway, it was a remote location, and back in those days we had one car per family, so I would drive in now and then to his work to get the car for the day. And we'd see red foxes now and then sporting in the woods, and one time what looked like an entire field of dandelions, which rose in a flock and whirred away! one of the last big flocks of goldfinches before development closed in on them and now they're a special treat, tempted around with niger seed and special feeders.

But that was then and now we have the Preserve to enjoy and walk in, and generally loll about in. The Dollivers are seen with the Preserve building in the background,



where there are all kinds of classes and specimens and interesting things afoot.

And on the same bench,



looking out over the lake before venturing on a hike. One of them is an amateur photographer who has not got the hang of keeping her face out of the lens.



You look in here? no? can't see anything anyway, oh look that's my face! and she points out that I've been known to take a picture of my thumb the same way.

And a closeup of an insect obligingly sitting for ages on a grass stem.



Possibly a cricket, since they look like that when they do their little flying jumps, or maybe a dragonfly, of which we have many species.

Then in the middle of the steps leading up from the building



to the main trail, on the way to the beechwood, a mature beautiful stand of trees which generates its own climate.



In winter if you walk here, it degrees warmer and cosier even on the bitterest winter day, and in summer it's like natural air conditioning.

Time for a rest before hiking onward, to the lakeside.

Around the lake we have eager beavers constantly felling trees and blocking the paths and the lake and anything else they can get at



so you see one of their artworks, the remains of what was quite a substantial birch tree way back before they gnawed it down.

Then, hats safely stowed in the bag,



they climb in, they say bound and gagged, I say gowned and bagged, for the ride home.

We're all hoping you noticed the addition of a new Dolliver, whose leg you saw in process recently, and who looks remarkably like Bette Davis, and the snazzy new raglan sweater and hat worn by Dreads, from leftover lovely homespun gifted yarn most of which went into a scarf for the Great Me.

And as the sun sinks slowly in whatever point of the compass it sinks in, don't ask me I have no sense of direction, us synaesthetes rarely do.....