every friday should end with yarn and a disco ball, no?
Tag Archives: life
unexpected vistor
this wee little moth
(it’s only as wide as my thumbnail)
stopped by to set for a time on the back porch railing yesterday.
i looked it up and they officially named it the ‘mournful thyris’.
perhaps the black edges of its intentionally tattered wings
reminded someone of the old mourning tradition
of rending one’s clothes to show the depth of grief?
and though i’m usually all for factual accounts,
in this case i want a little more fantasy to the story, please.
it’s so obvious to me that this little moth is hip.
he is wearing black from head to toe with fashionably worn edges.
also easy to see he’s an artist
by the liberally splattered white paint droplets.
probably he’s in the middle of creating a piece that explores negative space.
i can almost see the large, dark canvas in his moss lined studio
where he’s using that white paint to define the blanks
in his interpretation of figure-ground reversal.
the only move he made as i took these pictures
was a slight fluttering of his wings.
it looked like he was resting,
that the energy he’d used on the still wet painted canvas
had drained him and he’d flown off looking for renewed inspiration.
i felt a twinge of sadness that his ‘stroll’
had deposited him on my bland and uninspiring
stark white porch railing … and then i saw it.
there was no need for him to travel even one wingspan farther,
because he was standing still on that very same
uninspiring stark white porch rail
and soaking in the most
gorgeous rays
of the early evening grey sky light.
the kind of light that has inspired painters for decades.
while i, so caught up in the mundane daily repetition of things,
would have missed that light altogether
but for being reminded to look by
the ordained visit of this
tiny little moth.
so they can call him ‘mournful thyris’
or technically ‘pseudothyris sepulchralis’
but i will always recall him as a reminder that the created world
has a glorious story to tell, if only i will listen.
‘moth’ taken from 4:19-20 of job.
home, sweet.
a whole cluster
of nice things happened today.
my ‘brick house’ boheme sari ribbon yarn arrived from camaj fiber arts
(to knit a silk ‘water under the sky‘ for my very own),
my 4 yr old helped me pick out
a few new blooms for the backdoor garden
which has begun to emerge from under about 5 yrs of overgrowth,
i used the antique shoe brush that my dad gave me for the first time
(i am totally old-school when it comes to shoes,
it’s leather and polish all the way),
and a box arrived from
this month is
a ‘test-run’
for me.
will i really
make the time
to create, if
all the ‘ingredients’
come nicely
wrapped
up all in a box?
we’ll see. so far, it’s just the first month, so more on that soon.
baby boy and i got the plants in before the rains came down,
the brush is perfect in all its antique quality,
and the box…i’ll crack that open
later tonight and see
how it goes.
not too shabby for a monday as i’m left
feeling very grateful and at peace with just about everything.
‘later’ taken from 20:25 of proverbs.
same old, same old it’s not
the hazy early morning light
seemed to forecast a normal type of day
but that was just not to be.
because later that day, under the same sort of light
my dad taught my 14 yr old
how to mow with
the ride on.
he sat on my rock, with her younger siblings
and a few assorted neighborhood kids
to ‘supervise’.
the smallest of the onlookers
was by far the loudest as he chanted
‘go, go, go, go!’
trying his very best to be heard over the
roar of the engine, unsuccessfully.
and then, as if pretending
that this day which feels so monumental
(watching my oldest baby do such a ‘grown-up thing’)
was ‘just an average day’ after all,
things have wound down to quiet knitting
which is the ending of a lot of good days around here.
‘rock’ taken from 32:31 of deuteronomy.
the beaten path
one of the few things i miss
from before i had kids: time alone in the out-of doors.
time to walk in the quiet and just be
especially in the woods.
so, for my birthday a few days ago i finagled just that
and it looked like this.
first my excuse: wheelbarrows that needed emptying.
once there this is looking up…
and even farther up…
then down…
and an even closer look at the ground…
all the sights and smells and the soundlessness
of the hush, filled me right up.
out with the old wheelbarrows full, in with the
new thoughts of growth and spring
and the beauty of naturally aging things
like this bark i caught as a last shot
on my way back to my new year’s beginnings.
five-five
my kids made me crackers.
all by themselves they cut in the shortening,
rolled out the dough, etched the circles, and added a ‘secret’ message.
sj, ez, elsa + t, i ‘heart’ u, too!
love how the exclamation mark starts a line,
like the end of the row was an inconvenience for their creativity,
so they just plowed right through it.
yup, those are my kids.
100 percent.
careful consideration
why is it that a reflection
can speak to me
more loudly
than looking directly at the actual thing?
does the image being ‘once removed’ cut out the distractions and the glare,
paring it down to the essence which i can grasp more easily?
today i wonder what my reflection says or fails to say about me
as my kids played with othello pieces
and jenga sticks under the
kitchen ceiling fan.
if 8oz is good…
since my man was
headed out to run errands,
i asked if he’d pick up our favorite ‘easier than slipping on ice’ meat spice.
as we’d spent the last two years using up the last bottle,
it wasn’t an emergency, but definitely something i wanted on hand.
a few days later he proudly handed me
the supersized bottle on the right
note: normal bottles of various spices are about 4″ high.
our original vial of adobo was a hair over 6″.
the 1 lb, 12 oz canister of adobo i am downright afraid to measure.
needless to say, we now have enough
to last us until our 14 yr old moves out for her first year of dorm life…
and i so wanted to say “what makes you think that if 8oz is good, 28 oz is better?”
but i know there are times i’ve headed out to the lys
to replace a misplaced dpn
and returned home with enough yarn
in tow to create a sweater, or two.
so i zipped my lip.
and smiled.
‘better’ taken from 8:8 of corinthians.
as fast as i choose
i don’t often feel
rushed or hurried by outside forces.
i’m pretty easy going in my days and at ease in my nights.
but on days like today, the rate of speed at which my head
is churning out new ideas
threatens
to topple me into something like stress
or nearer to chaos than i want to choose to live.
time for ice cream, a breath of prayer and a little strumming
in my prototype mountain colors glove
to set me back on course.
a time to tune
today the kids are back in school.
now i have time to put much needed new strings on.
tonight the house will be filled with sweet dreams
fueled by 6-stringed lullabies.
‘stringed’ taken from 67:1 in the psalms.