Ordinary Time

Today was R.'s 21st birthday. She chose cereal for breakfast and a green curry chicken and green bean stir fry with dumplings for dinner. Chocolate cake was her dessert of choice which we had with fresh raspberries.  Cool cards from Grammy  Opening Grammy's gift Happy birthday, dear girl! We love you!! But how on earth can you be 21?!

To be clear, there is nothing finished to share, but there is significant forward motion. First, I had my last hardanger embroidery class tonight. I'm realizing I shouldn't take night classes. I am not a night person and not at the top of my game. But anyway, I finished learning the rest of the techniques I needed to know to finish my piece. Here is where it stands currently. Because of the white fabric on a white table it's kind of difficult to see the cutwork. Here is a better view of where it's cut and how the wrapping will look when it's finished.  The other bit of forward motion is that the loom is dressed and ready to weave. So, finally, all 40 inches and 900+ ends have been threaded, the warp is wound on, the front has been tied on and the tension evened out, errors corrected, and the warp opened up to weave. The combination of the width with the stickiness of the wool yarn could mean this will be a slow weaving project. We'll see. We'll also see abou...

I spent all day talking about weaving and the Fine Line Creative Arts Center in the Fine Line booth and the Fiber and Fabric Craft Festival today. I've pretty much used up all my words, so you get pictures.  These are pictures of the moon that L. took a while back that I never shared. The rest of the garden around the pond that I finished. It has been the sum total of my gardening in the past couple of weeks.  Y. braided Buddy's mane. Timmy and Kaspian are good enough on their halters now that they got to go in the rotational grazing pen. And loved it. And pictures K. took on his way home from work tonight.

Last night, J. and I went to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in their Land of Hope and Dreams concert. This was a huge bucket item list for J., and was made possible thanks to TM and JH buying him the tickets. I got to go because it's not as much fun to go to a concert by yourself.  I enjoyed the concert and was glad I was able to go. I need to also say that I did not fall asleep. My children will be relieved to hear that. I also need to explain that statement even though I will not be able to use the story as one of my ultimate 'two truths and a lie' statements. You see, in my early 20's, before J. and I were married, we, along with my future sister-in-law, went to see the Violent Femmes and Elvis Costello. I never got to Elvis Costello because I fell asleep during the Violent Femmes. True story. I'm very good at sleeping. I don't think I've been to a concert since until last night. You can now understand my children's concern that there mig...

You know that I am always going on and on about the importance of reading to your children. I am 100% certain that this one thing alone builds a scaffolding for later learning that cannot be replicated in other ways. Still, I am always happy to come across articles and research supporting the benefits of reading out loud to children. In this particular article, the research suggests that it also supports social skills .  What I found interesting was the fact that there were benefits whether or not parents stopped to ask questions about the content. I'm not sure if these questions were to confirm comprehension or ask leading (or perhaps not leading) questions regarding the plot. It still confirmed my suspicion that children are capable of gaining a great amount of benefit just from listening. I think sometimes parents make things too complicated when really they just need to read the story.  Another study I would love to see done involved reading to older children... even high ...

I've been doing things, really. I have all 900+ ends threaded on the loom. I have drafted and made a skirt and T-shirt, and am now working on drafting a pattern for a peasant blouse. There are over 600 hexagons sitting in a bag waiting for me to start playing around with them to see how they'll fit together in a quilt. I have a sweater cast on knitting needles. And for none of these things do I have pictures to of which to share with you.  Here is what I do have. The beginnings of my real hardanger project.  And Timmy the sheep who I sheared yesterday.  I was able to completely shear Timmy in less time than it took to only halfway shear Fred. My hunches were correct. Fred's wool is so thick, stretchy, and full of lanolin that he is really hard to shear. Plus, his wool is black and his skin is black. For anyone who has knitted with black yarn, you know exactly how difficult it is to see what you're doing. I also sheared Timmy in a different way so that I had better angle...