Spring is offically here...

First wash of the season out on the clothesline today! Can't wait to hang the sheets out later this week. :)

2010: A Year in Knitting

For the fourth year now since I've been knitting hardcore, I feel the need to do an accounting of and document my year's fibery achievements. Actually, I feel the need to create a spreadsheet about them, but it being nearly midnight and I'm on my second glass of Saki, it's best that I just blog about them.

In 2010, I finished 52 WIPs! I originally thought this was a record, but in doing a quick calculation (because I can't find my calculations for past years anyplace...though I know they're around) based on my Ravelry projects page, I see that in 2007, my first big knitting year, I amassed 53 FOs. (That was the year I did a LOT of the same project, over and over...mitts, hats, felted bowls...that had to bump that number up.)

Still, 52 is nothing to sneeze at. It means I averaged one FO per week. Considering the year that this was (adjectives I might use: stressful, chaotic, unsettled, aggravating, scattered), I think that's pretty good.

Just for the sake of comparison, in 2008, my FO tally dropped to 46 and stayed there in 2009. Those years, though, I also was doing larger projects, and I'd also started spinning, which vied for some of my knitting time. So, still, pretty respectable.

(Just a note here that I realize I'm coming at this as if it is some Olympic-grade competition, which it clearly is not...at least not anywhere but in my head, and I'm only competing against myself.)

Because I know you won't be able to sleep unless I give you the specific break down of my FOs, I've done the math for you (because I care, dontchaknow ;))...

This year, I knit:

8 Shawls
8 Pairs of socks
8 Stuffed things/toys
7 Hats
5 Sweaters
4 Scarves
3 Cowls
2 Cozies
2 Baby sweaters (both test knits)
2 Dishcloths
1 Dog sweater
1 Pair of mittens
1 Mutant blob of a blanket

Numbers aren't everything. I like to think I'm also becoming a better knitter, not just a prolific one. In general, I feel confident that the more I knit, the better I get at the craft in general. I've definitely become a far better continental knitter this year, to the point that I hardly ever throw anymore, unless I'm binding off. As far as techniques, I learned how to do applied i-cord and got far better at cabling without a cable needle. I'm much more confident in my lace knitting abilities, and I am more sure than ever that I hate feather and fan. (I'm not sure that last one counts as an achievement, but it is most certainly a fact.)

I did some test knitting this year, which I enjoy doing. And I continued to spin, though I didn't have the time to spin as much as I'd have liked. (Tour de Fleece was a big fail for me this year.)

One very big achievement this year in my knitting world wasn't even directly related to the craft but instead facilitated it: my new knitting room/office. Right now, it is doubling as my grandson's bedroom while he's visiting, but I'm looking forward to much more creating and inspiration from that room next year.

Looking head to 2011, I want to continue to challenge myself with the projects I choose to make. I want to be more selective in what I knit and what yarn I use, because life is way too short to knit things you don't enjoy, and there's too much good yarn out there to knit with fiber you just aren't loving.

I'm planning to do a stashdown the first four months of 2011, leading up to Spring Fling at the end of April. (Yes, I got in again! Third year! Yeay!) Except for special circumstances, I really want to be good and knit only from my stash. I've joined Stashdown 2011 and Year of Stash Socks on Ravelry to help me with this goal. I'm also going to be more active in putting yarns up on my trade/sell page at Ravelry. I know I'll probably always have a stash of SABLE proportions, but I'd really love to get it down to a little more manageable size.

I also want to make better use of my pattern resources. I have so many books and pattern PDFs that I have never knit from, and I want to change that. My goal (not just for this coming year, but ongoing) is to try and knit at least one pattern from each of the knitting books and magazines I own, and if I can't find even one pattern I like enough to knit, or if the book/magazine doesn't have something else meaningful in it, then I'm going to get rid of it. (That said, I'm not going so far as to say I won't be buying new books and magazines. If I'm not allowed to buy yarn, I have to have SOMEthing to get me by, ya know? ;))

Lastly, I intend to put more energy into designing this year. Check that. I intend to put more time and energy into writing up my designs and publishing them. I actually did design a fair few projects this year, and I managed to get a few of them up on the site. But I have so many more I want to release. I really want to focus more time and attention on that. I said that last year, and it didn't really happen. I hope to change that in 2011.

So, those are my reflections on 2010 and my thoughts toward 2011. I hope you all have some good things you can carry with you from this past year (I know that for a lot of people, 2010 kinda sucked, but still, you have to find value in the small, bright points where you can, you know?) May 2011 be good to you all...health, contentment, and always lots of fibery goodness. :)

Happy New Year, my friends!

Merry Christmas, my friends...

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Whether or not you're done with your gift knitting (I'm not...one person is going to be getting a hat au needles, I fear), or your cookie baking, or your last-minute shopping, I'd like to wish you all a peaceful, warm, and meaningful Christmas. I hope you will be surrounded by the love of those who mean the most to you, and if that isn't possible, then may you be comforted in its absence.

I am so blessed in my life on any given day, and I often overlook it because I focus on the small, the petty, the unimportant. This Christmas season, however, I'm reminded of what is most important. My house is very full right now -- small house + six people + one dog = kinda crazy! LOL -- and we are bound to get on each others nerves before it's over (eh, it happens), but these are the people who mean the WORLD to me. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Lastly, I've posted some version or another of this in past years, and I do so again now because the song is one of my favorites. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas, in pictures...

So, Christmas is...

...less than 10 days away. Unlike some years past, when I've been insane in my plans to knit Christmas gifts out the wazoo, my plans this year have been incredibly modest. I started out with plans for four knitted gifts, three of which I would have some leeway in the deadline because I probably wouldn't see the intended receivers until after the 25th. None of these projects are particularly large...no sweaters or afghans or anything crazy like that. Not even any socks, which though they are small are far more time consuming due to their small gauge.

So far I have done well with sticking to the plan -- four knitted gifts. Period. One is done. One is more than half done. One is started. That's pretty good.

But now I'm noticing the crazy beginning to seep in. Like, oh, maybe a hat for my hubby. I haven't knit him a new hat in a couple years, and the last one I made him is looking kinda shabby. I can whip out a hat in a few hours. So...maybe a hat can be added without increasing my stress. Sounds pretty reasonable.

But then...there's the sweater I have started for my daughter. It's more than halfway done. And I found the perfect turtle neck to go under it! That would make a nice Christmas gift, wouldn't it? Yes, it would. This would take more time and effort to get done than the hat, but still, not all together undoable.

But...if I knit something for the husband and something for the girlie, that leaves the boy child out. And though he's a boy, he does appreciate the hand knits, I gotta say. He's been bugging me for a pair of gloves for years now. To this point, I've told him I don't do fingers. But really...how hard can they be?

I won't even dwell on the handful of casual friends I have who I've started thinking I'd like to knit something for, just because. That crosses over from crazy to lock-her-up-now.

To recap: there are less than 10 days until Christmas. Of the four definite knitted gifts I'm planning, only one is complete. I'm considering three more, with the fantasy of possibly another four more if I suddenly learn to exist without sleep and find a way to stretch the day to 30 hours instead of 24. And none of this even touches on the other stuff I have to do -- the mailing, the baking, the wrapping. :::sigh::: I was feeling so virtuous due to having accomplished most of my shopping earlier than usual. Karma doesn't like the virtuous.

The kicker here? I have been finding everything to do in my spare(ish) time except knit. I've even been spinning this past week, for Pete's sake! Who does that when there is gift knitting to be done??

Fa la la la la, folks...it is most definitely the season for fiber-induced insanity. And I imagine that more than a few of you might be suffering from the same malady. May we all make it out in once piece!

Fast week...

I'll tell you what...time needs to slow down just a tad! September flew by, and now October is following suit! What's the hurry??

Last week was a blur of good things. My mom and step-dad were in town for a week, and while I didn't get to spend nearly as much time with my mom as I'd have liked, it was nice to get to visit with them here for a change (instead of us going to Florida).

Sadly, I took very few photos from my mom's visit. This is one of them. Mom, Ralph and Emma.

Last weekend was also the local Apple & Arts Festival, which Kevin and the kids always take part in (I go up for a few hours and walk around...they do the work!).

The shingle mill, where Kevin (on the right) spends most of his time at the festival.

Amid the visiting and the fall festivities, I tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy with regard to our school work, the gym and our fencing/climbing days, though everything got modified to accommodate the extra activities. One thing that was a constant throughout, though, was the knitting. I am working away on my socks, both the Zombies and the Mystery Socks for the Soctoberfest KAL. Also making some progress on the girlie's sweater, but mostly it's the socks that have my attention right now.

Lest I bore you with any more chatter, how about some pictures? (And warning -- there will be another picture of the mystery sock in this bunch, so don't look at the last photo if you don't want to see it!)

Apple & Arts Festival purchase #1: apples. Half of this bag has already been cooked and used in a pie. Yum.

Apple & Arts Festival purchase #2: freshly ground grains; in the jars there is whole wheat flour, buckwheat flour and cornmeal. I love using this stuff! So fresh and good! It all needs to be kept refrigerated or frozen since there are no preservatives in any of it, thus I put some in the jars and some in vacuum packages to use over time.

Apple & Arts Festival purchase #3: I usually don't purchase much in the line of the "arts" that are offered at these festivals anymore, both because I don't really need any more crap in my life and also because most of it is pretty country-themed, and I am not much of a country-themed person at this point in my life. Pottery, however, always calls to me. I found these buttons at the only pottery vendor at the festival...they're kind of quirky. Bigger than buttons I'd usually buy, but I thought they'd be neat to use one at a time for buttoned neck warmers or something. More than that and they'd get pretty heavy.

The Zombie lives and is coming along quite nicely! It's actually a couple more inches up the leg at this point. And look! I turned my first toe-up heel...

A gusset heel, it was very easy to do. I ended up with a little gap at the top of each heel where I rejoined the stitches in the round to the instep, but I think I know how to avoid that on the second sock. I'll just stitch these up to close them when I'm done.

And finally...the mystery sock. Clue #2 finished on the first one...

What a crazy-pretty sock this is turning out to be! It looks even lovelier from the side view, but both of those that I look on the sock blocker turned out blurry. Will try again later.

Oh, and though I have no pictures of the evening (or at least none that turned out well on my cell phone), my friend Angela and I spent a very loud night last Saturday at the Social Distortion concert, which was awesome. Totally love their music. (I will say, though, either I'm getting old, the acoustics of the Ches-a-rena leave something to be desired, or the people working the sound for the two opening bands were on crack because it was painfully loud at points, like I thought my ear drums might explode -- and that's saying something, live music lover that I am, the louder the better. But not so much in this case.)

Lastly...our VoaT photoblog is focusing on the theme "Small" this week. Tomorrow is the last day for it, as a new theme will start on Sunday. Stop by and visit! :)

Great day at GLFS...

The Great Lakes Fiber Show on Saturday? Awesome! What a nice event that was! Granted, I really only have Maryland to compare it to, and it certainly was nowhere as large as that, but it was big enough to provide a day's enjoyment! Less crowded and decidedly lower prices are just a couple of the good things about smaller shows in general. Cosy went with me -- it was so much fun to have someone along this time! It was a perfectly beautiful, sunny, hot day to walk around and inhale the fresh country air and fiber fumes. (Thank goodness, though, most of the vendors were indoors out of the sun, otherwise we may have melted!)

I managed to lug my good camera around with me all day and not take one picture. I'm pathetic. But I did take pictures of my goodies once I got home, so we'll go with those, 'kay?

After going to Maryland and being overwhelmed pretty quickly, I set two goals for my shopping at this fair: one, to buy fiber that I've not yet spun, and two, to buy fiber I could dye. (Dyeing is my next step into this world of fiber madness.) I met both of those goals. Yeay!

First the fibers I haven't spun yet...

Silk...oooooh! ahhhhh! Look at these colors!

Cashmere! I'm going to spin freakin' cashmere!

Camel!! This is soooo incredibly soft! I just want to pet it.

And then the fibers I'm planning to dye...

These are one pound bags of roving! One pound! On the left is a Sheltand/Romney cross and on the right, alpaca. (Which I've also never spun, so it meets two goals!) While they are both colored fibers, I've been assured they will overdye nicely. I also bought some smaller bundles of white wool for dyeing...not recalling what they are at the moment, but just imagine white piles of fluff. That's them.

I can't wait to learn how to dye. I have a goal to eventually (maybe?) open an Etsy shop with hand-dyed fiber and possibly my handspun yarn, too. We'll see. It's a distant dream. Must go one step at a time.

Aside from meeting these two goals, I also got to meet Chris from Briar Rose Fibers! That was very exciting...she's such a lovely lady. I've purchased fiber from her online shop several times now, and the fact that she was going to be at this show was one of the reasons I decided to go. So, of course, having all her goodies in front of me, I had to buy some!

These two balls are Cormo...(which I've also not spun yet, so, goal!)...

...and these two are merino. Part of my rationalization for buying these is that Chris doesn't carry either of them in her online shop. She only carries BFL online. So this was a show-only chance to get some other wools in her beautiful colorways. Happiness! :)

Have you noticed how well I did in not buying any yarn at this show? I was sooooo good. No yarn! None! That is...no yarn until I came to the booth that had a little basket of this by the register...

Qiviut!!! I've never found qiviut anywhere before! I should have put something in the picture with it to give you an idea of scale, because baby, this is one small ball of yarn! It's a little over 200 yards, but it is only the size of a small apple. Or a tennis ball. It's a luxury yarn, that's for sure. This isn't pure qiviut, but a blend with merino and silk (45%/45%/10%). It is incredibly soft and cost more than I'd ever spend on 200 yards of yarn on any other day. But I couldn't pass it up because who knows when I might find it again? I see a lovely qiviut cowl in my future for next winter.

Lastly, these...

...I'm a sucker for pewter buttons. Love 'em!

Ok...that's it for the GLFS round up! I have more I was going to post -- some spinning stuff and knitting stuff and gardening stuff -- but I'll save that for tomorrow. I'll just leave you with this...

Nigel hopes everyone had a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend, and he thanks those who gave their lives defending our freedom.

(And he wanted me to add that the dead thing in front of him? It is actually gone now! He's so relieved!)

2009

I'll have more coherent thoughts to share soon on the subject of the new year, but as I've indulged in two -- yes, count 'em, two -- Yuenglings tonight (watch out, I'm quite the partier, LOL), allow me to simply offer these wishes...

Grace and peace to you all in 2009. May you realize your heart's desires. May you know you are loved and have great value. Know that your life is a gift, to you and to others, maybe even someone you have yet to meet. Blessings to you, dear friends, and Happy New Year!

Merry, bright...

Is that the sound of...Christmas?

I started listening to my Christmas music playlist this past week...

I remember how, for many years, I was all about traditional Christmas songs. I grew up with Johnny Mathis, Peter, Paul & Mary, and the Norman Luboff Choir, and that was my Christmas music. Later, my parents bought other Christmas albums -- mostly country -- and it annoyed me when they'd have a bunch of songs on them that I didn't know. Silly, really...I mean, how many artists do you really need to listen to singing Silver Bells and Hark, the Herald Angels Sing? Srsly.

Thankfully, my holiday music preferences have widened over the years, and I am more wont to listen to the non-traditional songs now. (Though I will admit that I have at least five different versions of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" on my iPod.) In addition to the "top 20" songs on the playlist above, I've got a ton of Trans-Siberian Orchestra (I so want to see them in concert one of these years!), some Celtic Christmas music (The Night Heron Consort), Handel's Messiah, and, yeah, Johnny Mathis' Merry Christmas...just can't let go of the classics. 

Some of my favorites from the ones listed above, though, are Rudy by The Be Good Tanyas (makes me cry!), Gary by MC Lars (makes me laugh!), Barenaked Ladies' God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (all three of which are part of the extended version A Winter's Night CD), and Snoopy's Christmas (which I posted about last year). The one I play the most, usually in the car and really loud, is Relient K's version of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Dude...rockin'!

PS...if you figure out what they're saying in the "five golden rings" part of Day 10, would you let me know? It's driving me nuts that I can't figure it out.

PPS...in the world of knitting...I was just booking along on my Paley yesterday...finished the left front and did the entire right front. As I was about halfway through the right front, however, my knitter's Spidey-sense started kicking in telling me something was no right. The right front was going way faster than the left had gone, and it clearly seemed I was working with fewer stitches than I had been on the left (as opposed to working with fewer marbles, which is not a rarity in my world). As we knitters are wont to do, though, I kept going a while before finally giving in and comparing the two panels. Yep. The left was about 2" wider than the right. I knew I had the correct number of stitches on the right because I'd counted them several times, both before and after the decreases in the first stockinette row. So I counted the stitches on the left panel. Uh huh. Too, too many. I know I'd counted them too, but clearly I counted wrong. :::sigh::: So, today's task was to rip out the left and start it over. Thankfully, it moves along quickly, but really? I prefer to knit these things only once. All I can say is this sweater darned well better fit when it's done. 

Happy October 1st!

That was the greeting I received from my daughter upon waking up this morning, so I'll pass it on to you. :)

I'm always happy when it is September because it means so many things...the start of school, the start of fall, my birthday...but I think October is my favorite fall month of all. It's definitely cooler, the leaves are really starting to turn color, we're fully into our fall/school routine...it's just a good, good month. (And it ends with Halloween to kick off the fall/winter holiday season!)

In the past couple of years, we've taken week-long fall vacations to my mom's house in Florida, either at the end of September or in early October. I'm glad we forewent that this year. As much as I love seeing my mom and step-dad and the beach, spending such a big chunk of time in a hot and sunny locale at this time of year just seems wrong. Summer is over. I want it to be over. I want to enjoy fall. And so we are doing this year.

And so we've been doing our usual fall things. Both kids had their annual physicals last week (healthy and growing!), and dentist appointments this week. Because of that aforementioned "growing" thing, today we're doing the bi-annual weeding through of clothing, discarding into giveaway bags that which no longer fits, and then we'll be heading off clothes shopping after lunch. As my daughter has pointed out to me yesterday, if we do not go shopping this week, they will FREEZE this weekend...and seriously, we can't have that, can we?

Temperatures are supposed to be blessedly seasonal this coming weekend, with and actual zero percent chance of rain for Saturday, which bodes well for the annual Apple & Arts Festival. This is one of those events Kevin and the kids go to every year. Kevin often takes a couple days' vacation to help prepare for it, and it is one of the shows to which he and his dad take tractors.

Like most festivals, there are lots of food and craft vendors, but as the name would imply, there are also a lot of apples and apple goods -- fresh pressed apple cider, apple tarts, apple pies, and just apples, apples, apples to buy and bring home for your own apple-y enjoyment. Kevin brings home a big bag of them every year and I cook them up into pie filling, which I freeze and use over the winter. (Last year I we lost the whole batch of filling after the bottom of the pan scorched beyond redemption and the whole vat of filling ended up tasting "smoked." Not good.)

I admit that I have not been to the festival in several years. I usually enjoy the time home alone, not needing the temptation of any of the crafts to purchase nor needing to indulge in any of the fattening, fried fair-foods. I usually rationalize it by considering it a daddy-bonding event. But I've decided I'm going to go this year. On Saturday. The whole day. It will be a nice day to spend with my family. I'll bring my camera and I'll bring some knitting, so when I've had my fill of browsing and eating, I'll still have things to do. I'm looking forward to it! 

PS - The Purl Bee has a lovely pattern up on her site for a cloth apple picking tote...I think I'm going to make one of these for this weekend!

September 1

Finally, it is September. I've always loved September, for many reasons.

• My birthday is in September (the 27th).
  
• Fall officially starts in September (this year, on the 22nd).
  
• Leaves begin to turn color in September. 
  
• I start to wear my warm, cozy sweaters in September (the evenings do get cool, if nothing else!)
  
• School begins (or has just begun) in September.
  
• Life returns to a predictable rhythm in September.
  
• I feel the undeniable urge to take stock and get organized in September.
  

And that's where I'm at today. Getting organized. We'll be starting our new school year tomorrow -- our ninth homeschooling year. I've got the books ready. Our basic plan changes little from year to year at this point...we have a rhythm that works for us, and it only needs tweaking here and there to accommodate new activities and other scheduled elements outside of my control. 

I clearly remember those day-before-school-starts butterflies I felt as a child. I don't know if my kids experience the same thing (I should ask them), but I still get them. They're borne of anticipation for getting back to a comforting routine, for what we'll learn, for how my kids might possibly surprise me (they always do). 

September also makes me take inventory of my own personal routines and what changes I might make that will benefit both me and my family. One clear change is my bedtime. I've slipped back into the 2 a.m. habit. I need to go to bed earlier. I always feel better when I do. It's just such a hard pattern to establish because it does not come naturally to me. I also need to put firmer boundaries around our weekdays. It's so easy to be flexible with our time since we homeschool, and when the kids were younger, it wasn't much of an issue. But now, our school work takes more time, and flexing our schedule too much becomes detrimental. 

I need to run less. Run, run, run. That's all I seem to do. And it's my fault, I know. I've allowed it to be so. Some running is clearly necessary. But I feel like I am always running anymore. I'm tired of running. I want to be home. Related to this is wanting less temptation to spend money. When I run, I spend. A few dollars for a mocha. Another tank of gas. Grabbing lunch on the go. Buying things we don't necessarily need just because I'm at the store anyway. I need to slow down, run less, and spend less. 

I need to prioritize my time when I'm home, too. There are so many things I enjoy doing, things I want to be doing. I want to knit. I want to write. I want to scrapbook again, at least a little bit. I want to have time to read. The #1 thing that keeps me from spending time on these things I enjoy? The computer. Yep. My pretty little MacBook with its wireless internet connection...such a wonderful thing, yet such a temptation, too. A total time-suck. Like many people, I've battled with this for years. I remember back when it used to be e-mail that took my time away. Checking it every few minutes. Now, it's web sites like Facebook and Plurk and Ravelry. Nothing bad about these sites in general...I just spend too much time on them. I need to adjust that. 

So...September 1. A lot of changes are brewing. And I love that. It's time for some change. We'll see how it goes!

Sighting...

I've been watching, these last few nights. It's been so hot, I was sure I'd see one -- at least one -- but the nights remained dark, save for the stars and the waxing crescent moon.

But, tonight...tonight they were there! The first fireflies of the year. First one, then another, twinkling along the pines edging our yard. When I see them in the woods below our house, farther away, they remind me of little fairies...tiny Tinkerbells flitting about in celebration with the night.

Summer is officially here.

Today...

...I started the day with coffee and deep-fried sugar and white flour -- the latter so not my typical breakfast of choice, but it was Fat Tuesday, so it is tradition here in our house...enough so that my daughter remembered and has been reminding me for a week, "Don't forget the donuts!"


...I received some yarn yumminess in the mail from The Loopy Ewe. It was my first order from them. It will probably not be my last. I got some Duet in Enchanted Forest...

...and some Numma Numma Blackberry Jam (I'd buy this sock yarn just based on the awesomeness of the company name! Numma Numma...how could you resist?)...


...I got my hair cut and colored...my son took the picture with my camera on manual, thus the blur...same color I've been getting and loving...the cut is a little different this time...shorter in the back, a little edgier (not that you can tell so much from this picture)...I cannot believe how much I've been loving my hair in the past six months or so...it's unprecedented...


...finished a pair of socks for Emma...


...worked on my February homeless hat...a little freestyle Fair Isle action...


...took the kids to archery tonight...


...and now here I am. Going to go make some ham salad for Kevin's lunch tomorrow, and perhaps even some homemade granola, if I feel overly ambitious. And I'm going to watch some of my DVRed Mythbusters episodes. And I'm going to knit.

What a good day it's been.

Feast of St. Brigid

Ever since all of my pre-vacation reading I did for my Ireland trip a few years back, I've had a growing fascination with St. Brigid (pronounced bree-git with a hard "g", and meaning "fiery arrow"). February 1 is traditionally the Feast of St. Brigid, which I did not know until today, so clearly my family and I missed out on any big Feast of St. Brigid celebrations we might have undertaken had I been more up on my saint days and thus better able to plan. (There are tons of Brigid bios online, all slightly different in story it seems, but this one is pretty good, if you're interested.)

However, reading the Yarn Harlot today, I saw that she was taking part in the third annual Silent Poetry Reading, which was happening today in honor of St. Brigid. Those in the blogosphere taking part did so by posting a favorite poem on their blogs. So, in the spirit of "better late than never" and with a half hour left in the Feast of St. Brigid Day, I'm going to share a poem I loved from the first time I read it...enjoy!

Heaven on Earth
by Kristin Berkey-Abbot, from Whistling Past the Graveyard, 2004

I saw Jesus at the bowling alley,
slinging nothing but gutter balls.
He said, "You've gotta love a hobby
that allows ugly shoes."
He lit a cigarette and bought me a beer.
So I invited him to dinner.

I knew the Lord couldn't see my house
in its current condition, so I gave it an out
of season spring cleaning. What to serve
for dinner? Fish -- the logical
choice, but after 2000 years, he must grow weary
of everyone's favorite seafood dishes.
I thought of my Granny's ham with Coca Cola
glaze, but you can't serve that to a Jewish
boy. Likewise pizza -- all my favorite
toppings involve pork.

In the end, I made us an all-dessert buffet.
We played Scrabble and Uno and Yahtzee
and listened to Bill Monroe.
Jesus apparently has a healthy appetite for sweets,
I'm happy to report. He told strange
stories which I've puzzled over for days now.

We've got an appointment for golf on Wednesday.
Ordinarily I don't play, and certainly not in this humidity.
But the Lord says he knows a grand miniature
golf course with fiberglass mermaids and working windmills
and the best homemade ice cream you ever tasted.
Sounds like Heaven to me.

New Year...

After what was a busy couple of weeks for us over the holidays, I'm finally taking some time today to think about the new year. I love this time of year...I love taking the time to reflect on life, on where I've been in the last year and where the next might lead.

I used to be a resolutions fanatic, but I gave that up some time ago. Three years ago, I created instead a list of intentions for the new year...thoughts about how I wanted to live my life more intentionally. I liked having those thoughts to guide me through the year instead of a harsh list of resolutions that left me feeling guilty when they so easily were broken.

That year, I also chose to use one word as my word for the year, a word to encompass all those things I wished to focus on. Appropriately enough, that year my word was intention. Living with intention. It was also the year I turned 40. I do not think the two things were unrelated.

Last year, I chose a new word for my year...balance. Looking back, I'm not sure I achieved balance in the way I'd intended it when I first chose that word. 2007 was a year of some amazing revelations for me...primarily, I realized how much I'd been living my life the way I thought other people wanted me to live it and not paying much attention to who I was and what was important to me. I spent a lot of time last year working though some periods of anger and resentment in certain areas. It was not easy, but it was good. I let go of a lot of the fears I had...fears of disapproval and judgment from those I love. Thus, I feel like I began to balance my life out on a grander scale...all those years of trying to fit into other people's expectations, now beginning to be balanced by fitting into the life that is truly my own. And thankfully, I feel free of most of those angry feelings I went through as I was re-discovering who I really am. It was a weird, unexpected process to go through, but I'm glad it happened. It's made me a better, happier person.

So, this year I've been trying to think of another word to capture that which I want to focus on for 2008. I've decided on deeper. Now that I feel like I have a renewed direction for my life, I want to explore it more deeply, continue to get to know myself as a woman in this stage of life and examine what that will mean as things continue to change. I don't want my passions and enthusiasm to stop at a superficial level but instead I want them to go deeper into both the big things in my life, as well as the little everyday things.

I think it is going to be a good year.

Snoopy vs. the Red Baron...

Why is it, of all the songs played at this time of year, this one always makes me cry?

The first week of December brings...

...thoughts of getting organized for Christmas. Granted, the decorating is mostly done. (My Dickens-ish village houses aren't up yet, and the outdoor lights aren't up but the weather isn't cooperating for those anyway.) And I have my Christmas knitting schedule in place (and have already deviated mightily from it). Now to plan for the rest of it.

Cookies to bake. Cards to send out. Picture to send out with cards. Presents to wrap. Places to go. People to see. Etc.

My all-time favorite parody version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is "The Twelve Pains of Christmas" by Bob Rivers. It's hilarious, even moreso because I think everyone can relate to something in it, even if not to the degree represented in the song. And as the song goes on, the whole thing becomes more frenetic and insane...so much like the holidays can be. Art capturing life! LOL If you're so inclined, you can listen to the song here...it's #10. And if you have a warped sense of humor like my family and I have, you might also enjoy song #2, "Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire." Mmm...tasty! ;) (Note that there are some song titles on this site probably deserve at least a PG-13 rating.)

That said, in recent years, I've been pretty good about slowing down the pace of Christmas a bit. There are some things I just choose not to bother with. One year I hardly baked and instead bought my cookies from my mom's Cookie Lady. Several years ago, I decided I would only decorate with the things I absolutely loved instead of every piece of Christmas stuff I'd collected over the years. One year I didn't send out cards -- at all! Last year, I gave up the notion of the "perfect" family Christmas picture and instead made use of Photoshop and put together a collage "picture" using shots of each of us individually throughout the year. (So much better and less stressful for us all!) Some years I put Christmas letters in my cards, sometimes I don't.

This year, for the first time in nearly a decade, I bought my Christmas cards instead of making them. I'm doing another collage picture, but no letter. If the outside lights don't get hung, I don't care. Cookies will get baked, but maybe not 12 different types. And knitting...knitting will get done...or not. It's all good.

Thanksgiving Day musings...

Growing up, Thanksgiving was always my mom's holiday to host. She loved it. I can remember her making the stuffing the night before, helping cut up bread into cubes and then toasting it (which I never understood why you'd do that if you wanted moist stuffing) and eating a few of the squishy cubes along the way. I've got vivid memories of our kitchen in the hour or so prior to the big meal, my mom and her cousins' wives all in there taking care of last minute preparations. Flo always -- always -- brought her special hand potato masher to use, because the mashed potatoes wouldn't taste right being done any other way. Someone would hold the pot, and she would mash them into white, fluffy goodness. Sometimes we'd play some sort of game that lasted the whole day. One year, it was the safety pin game...everyone got a safety pin, and if you were caught crossing your legs, you lost your safety pin. Somewhere, I have the funniest picture, taken at dinner time, of Wilma peeking under the table cloth during the meal, trying to catch someone off-guard and take their pin.

As we kids got older, got married and had kids of our own, it was no longer feasible to continue the same hosting arrangements for the holidays. There was more extended family to be considered and to share the holidays with, and so things changed. Unfortunately, they changed the same year my dad died, which made things even more different that year. No dad. No big family Thanksgiving. Life goes on.

A couple years later, though, I found myself in my mom's place. Thanksgiving became my holiday to host for my mom and step-dad and my in-laws. Some years we had as many as fifteen people here around our table. The only year I didn't cook was the year I was pregnant with our second child and due within the week. I vividly remember our first Thanksgiving here...it was the first year my husband and I were married. My son was eight. I remember that morning, all three of us cuddled in our big bed, watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV, late autumn sun streaming in through the windows. Later that day, I remember my husband carving the turkey that had cooked overnight (that's how Mom used to do it, as she said it helped cut down on the mess later in the day), standing in our chilly kitchen, that same soft gold sun shining through the bare branches of trees and into our kitchen resulting in shadows and light that will always be a part of my memory of that day. It was so special.

Now here we are, fourteen Thanksgivings later, and things have changed again. My mom and step-dad moved to Florida last year, and while they came back for Thanksgiving last year, they aren't doing so this year (they'll be here for Christmas instead). I miss my mom's presence. I had to bake the pumpkin pies this year. That's what she always brought. I realized, as my daughter and I were mixing the filling yesterday, that I don't even own the right spices for pumpkin pie filling because I never needed to make it before. (We improvised. Hopefully they'll be edible.) I just spent a half hour on the phone with my mom this morning, talking about our day ahead (they'll be celebrating with some friends down there...my mom hosting the meal) and other things of little consequence. Just the talking is nice, though. Thank God for unlimited calling plans.

And this year, my oldest son is also missing from our Thanksgiving picture. He'll be celebrating this day at Parris Island, with the drill instructors and 84 other recruits in his platoon at basic training. I keep hoping he might get to make a call home today, but I'm prepared for it not to happen. Or for it not to be to me, anyway, as he does have a wife who is higher up on the call list. Either way, I miss him. He's a third of the way through his training almost, so I just keep thinking about his graduation in January and seeing him then. But it is still going to make today (and Christmas) feel strange.

I might feel a little blue today because of the changes that have happened this year, but it doesn't make me any less thankful. I know I am blessed...with love and family and health and a home and food and more material things than I really need. More than anything, I have the promises of the one who provides these blessings, the one who says, "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." (1 Thes. 5:16-18)

And so I give thanks...for everything.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

Peace.

Sweet...

The girlie and I spent today baking Christmas cookies. Mmm. The house smelled so good.

Growing up, my mom would bake for what seemed like weeks...one kind of cookie each day until she had an impressive variety with which to fill the cookie trays she made to give away to friends and family. When I got married, that's how I did it too. That's how it had always been done, and I knew nothing else. I did this for years, dutifully making a cookie list, checking it twice to make sure I had all ingredients on hand, and then I baked for days on end until all of my cookies were checked off the list.

Some time over the past few years, I finally came to the realization that: this is a pain in the ass. With all of the rest of the things going on in December, who in the heck wants their kitchen looking like a wreck for days on end? So, one year, quite by accident, I discovered the joy of getting the majority of my baking done in one day. One messy day. For whatever reason, I'd been behind the eight ball that year and was thinking of skipping baking all together because I didn't have days to spend on it. But then, despite how daunting the thought was, I decided to do it all at once. And it was great. And so a new tradition was born.

The kids and I made our cookie list the other day when we were eating dinner at Denny's in the midst of their Christmas shopping trip. We decided on sugar cookies (a Christmas cookie staple), peanut butter cookies, peanut butter blossoms (can never have too much peanut butter), M&M cookies, spritz cookies, shortbread cookies, noodle cookies and cheesecake squares. After a late start to the baking (dubbed by my daughter as "Major Cookie Mayhem"), we managed to get six of the eight varieties done today. We'll do the remaining two tomorrow afternoon. And come Monday, I'll be able to have a nice cookie tray ready to send to work with my husband for his office.

Some friends of mine think I'm crazy for putting myself through this self-imposed baking exercise each year. But really, after cutting back and not baking as much for a few years, I realize how much a part of the holiday experience this is for me, and I love doing it. (If you need proof of how important Christmas baking is to me, consider the fact that three days after I came home from giving birth to my middle son, via c-section, I was up baking Christmas cookies. That's dedication!) And I love that my daughter loves doing it with me, knowing that someday she will likely make it a tradition of her own.