A Song Cue
From Mushroom:

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
5
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.


Í say móre: the just man justices;

Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
10
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—

Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Bob has company

There's an old saying that bad money drives out the good. You take enough hot checks and you'll start demanding cash. Modern religion is a lot like that. There are so many over-zealous and under-sensitive fools trying to convert you to some shallow and superficial fundamentalist sect, and so many fanatical puritans and so many devotees of odd and esoteric Oriental cults- the very words of Christianity have become corrupted and have lost their meaning. God, salvation, Christ, worship, prayer- the counterfeit currency sometimes takes careful examination to distinguish it from the good money, and people are skeptical of it all.

- "Padre", ca. 1975

Please take a moment,
if you would, to pray for this little guy and his family. From a blog Sissy follows.
Thank you.

Is it just me

or is it really heart-meltingly sweet that Bubs refers to his own sister as "Miss O"?

Natural Dyeing
While V. took Bubs to the park yesterday morning and MJ had a nap, Nini and I wound a skein of yarn on the niddy noddy and cooked up a pot of onion skin dye from husks collected from the natural foods mart. She liked tearing up the skins into little bits, but found the one-hour simmer and one-hour steeping steps a little boring. We used the rest of the white fleece spun from my spinning lessons- one large skein and one small. The big one got the whole process, the smaller one and an orphan skein of my eBay fleece got the second go-round.
Remember when I said that that yarn wanted to stay natural? Should have listened- it did NOT like the dye. I'm trying to come up with a Martha Stewart-esque color description for how it turned out. "Dirt Dobber" is about the best I can do.
The others are lovely shades of rust, though.

In Line with the Latest
from Mushroom and the QP on the transcendant qualities of the arts, this always heartens me.
Dedicated young people making music.

Snippets

'Fan Target's' boyfriend is in town for 2 weeks, so we had Family Dinner on Saturday. She wanted to share the tradition of Marshall's Bar-B-Que with him, so we picked up a couple of family packs. And we ate off the Fort Worth Centennial plates I inherited from my grandmother and which are only used for family and honored guests.

While Sissy, Miss O and I cleaned up the kitchen before game playing and dessert, Marge and Davy fed Morgan Jane her dinner. "Let's just stuff her under our shirts and make a break for it", he said.

They are going to Arkansas this week, so he can meet college friends and see her school. She is a little apprehensive about this because strange things happen on trips to AR, but maybe if he's there, nothing odd will occur.

There is much progress on the toilet-training front, but people have threatened to quit reading if we don't quit writing about poop.

I finished my spinning lessons and have ordered a wheel of my own. Not the Cadillac design, more of a Hyundai, but with the potential for add-on's. I would be going through spin withdrawal, but I have to wind (and/or untangle) all the skeins I've made so far and wind them into balls, which keeps me busy. And I want to catch up on the sewing and clear my decks, to be able to spin guilt-free when it arrives.

Ro has gone to Austin to see the boyfriend in his roomates's movie at South by Southwest. It must be a sign of the times- everyone now has a movie that they edited in their bedroom, instead of a novel. She made them a cake, decorated to look like a wheel of Swiss cheese, a gigantic kitchen-wrecking project, but very cute. It seems the film is about a goat named Artois and goat cheese. As far as I can tell.

She got free show photos from "Rumors" because she was nice to the photographer, who appreciated it. She is 'jus' adorable' as the Tiny Cop. The other actor is about three times her size- no wonder they get a nice laugh.

Turning the back yard into my little mini-farm is one of the smartest things I've done lately. It's practical, it's exercise, it's soothing manual labor, it's meditative and prayerful and it's good stewardship.
Alas, many of the groups you turn to for advice, products, philosophy or fellowship are fanatic ecologists. Even the Catholic Bishops Conference for Rural Living has drunk the 'climate change' kool-aid. So, the winnowing of useful knowlege from hysteria is time-consuming, but worth it.

It's not the Christmas ham, but still...
Worst dog ever.
(Not really)

Got a new show
to do. Called Sylvia, about a middle-aged couple and the dog that comes between them. One cast member plays three roles: a guy in the dog park, a well-to-do woman and a unisex counselor.
He can manage dog park guy, and probably part of the counselor, but I have to do the lady from scratch.
I've been lucky so far- located a pair of size 12 heels, a size 44D bra and a 2X shape slimmer, aka a girdle, and the right size pantyhose at Marshall's. The dress has to match the shoes, which are an unusual plum suede, but nice. So- I make the dress, to have total control over it, and accesorize with jewelry, purse and shawl from Sam Moon. And possibly a new wig- the theater's collection is in kind of bad shape.
The dog is played by a young woman, who wears people clothes. She needs one sewn outfit: a poufy skirt and a shrug, with a hairpiece and bow, a baggy sweater from Goodwill, a little black dress (Marshall's again), and kneepads. Oh, and pumps for the dress. I wanted to update her a little- give her a graphic tee or some such, but the director likes the original cast photo, so we're going with that.
I'm really concentrating this time on making the decision and sticking with the first suitable materials that click. No hunting the elusive perfect fabric hiding over the rainbow.

A Modest Proposal for the Energy and Economic Crisis
from Tracey at Beyond the Pale.

In Which I Strike Off On My Own

Several years ago, when I first thought of taking up spinning, I bought a sack of roving off eBay. Roving is cleaned, carded wool formed into ropes. I dug it out, postponed my assigned homework, popped an empty bobbin in the flyer and spun it all.

It took about 3 1/2 hours, or one episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, one of The Andy Griffith Show and all of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. (Yes, I don't watch TV during Lent, but stuff you've seen at least 10 times doesn't count. So much.)

Then I unwound it off the bobbin onto something called a niddy noddy, tied it with a figure 8 in four places to make a skein, soaked it in the sink in warm water and a little detergent, rinsed it well and hung it in the bathroom to dry.

It was gone in the morning- brief alarm- but Ro had moved it to the sewing room so she could take a shower.

It looked like this:

I briefly considered dyeing it, but decided it wanted to stay natural. I wound it into a ball and am now knitting a scarf out of it.

I probably shouldn't be impressed by accomplishing something billions of people have done for thousands of years, but I am.

It's a little like being The Magician. There's the same element of effortless concentration- or at least I can see the potential for it- and the transformation of one thing to another form. It's like knitting, but at a higher level.

Happy Ash Wednesday
I was at the UPS store yesterday, mailing a package to our son- a copy of One Cosmos Under God, because I thought he might like Godwin's unsaturated language. I was trying to write a note about how I was sure it wouldn't give him the Jesus-willies, but the proprietor was watching The View and I was deeply distracted by how much I wanted to climb into the TV and give Joy Behar a sound thrashing.
Way to start Lent, there, Sal.

P.S. Spinning is in a zone all by itself. I may have to invest all my spare moments in it, just to survive the times. I could work my way through all the sheep breeds, then add the other protein fibers: cashmere, camel, mohair, llama, silk. Then I could take on the plant kingdom: flax, cotton, bamboo, hemp. And then blend. And learn how to dye.
That could keep me busy 'til 2012.

Be Prepared...
for the Boy Scout Food Drive!

Met with Kris and some volunteers to set up the Holiday Site for the intake from Scouting for Food.

Thanks to the help, tables were moved into place, pallets and labels were put against the wall, miscellaneous hoo-hah left over from Christmas was corralled out of the way, categories for food sorting were taped to tabletops, the floor was swept and we're set for tomorrow.

Now, the Scoutmasters will move tables into a better formation and otherwise re-configure the set-up [because they're MEN and know our business better than we do, ; ) ] but that's okay.

If not too many cans get broken (don't ask) and no one gets seriously injured, then the day is a success.

Thanks, Scouts!

Rumplestiltskin, look out

Had my first spinning class today here. It's about an hour's drive from home, but so worth it.

The beginning spinning class is taught one-on-one and the first session is about three hours. Then you're turned loose at home with the class handouts, a drop spindle, two bags of wool roving (grey and white) and a spinning wheel, the model above, to practice for a week, until the next class.

Spinning, it seems, is all about using physics to put twists in fiber. Which explains the puzzling captions in Spin-Off magazizne about 6:1 ratios, etc. All the motions are simple, but co-ordinating them is the trick. But the teacher assured me that, just like knitting, it will all come together once the muscle memory is established.

It was a little hard to pay attention to the lesson, since the store is a treasure trove of everything fiber: wool rovings for spinning and felting, 'blank' yarns of various weights and all sorts of fiber for dyeing, dyes, spinning and weaving equipment, handspun and hand-dyed yarns, home-made soaps, two looms and a kitchen area for dyeing.

My major assignments: learn to treadle the wheel as slowly as possible to be consistent. And to practice drafting, which is drawing out a thin bunch of fibers from the larger mass, on the drop spindle.

And possibly spin on the wheel. But I'm in no hurry.

Happy Birthday, Sissy

Thirty years ago, when they handed you to me for the first time and I looked into that level, blue baby stare I thought: "Uh-oh, this one is going to keep us up to the mark."

And you have. Thank you for always being the arbiter of excellence and for putting up with your eccentric family.

We are so very proud of you and love you so much.

(Oh, and thanks for the grandkids, too!)

Mom

Happy Valentine's Day
Keep your candy and flowers.
A middle-aged guy sitting on cold concrete, screwing angle irons onto 2x6's so his honey can have another garden bed...
That what I call romantic.

Hahahahaha...
'Cause I've only been telling them since February 3, 2002 that someday this would happen...
Telling them? I've been playing the Goldberg Variations on this theme.
Now I can't stop laughing.
Sometimes I'm not a very nice person.
Heh.

Snippets
Someone had to wear a hat into and out of preschool to cover up his latest bruise:
"I threw a Thomas the Tank Engine into the air
It fell to earth-on my forehead."
because his mother thinks one of the directors has her CPS eye on her.

He also needs some friends who are not his six-year old sister, because when I pointed out the hewge nails in the bins at the "Bob store" (Lowe's) to him, he told me "Oh, Mimi, those are jus' adorable."

We managed to wrestle the new twin beds into place next to each other and plan to make them up with a combo of king and twin bedding- I'm a covers stealer. The cats are enthralled. There is actually enough room for them to sleep with us now. I was a little bored with buying coverlets that turned out to not be the thing, so I made him buy the quilt, so he got just what he wanted.

The new couch arrived, but we're still a little shy of it.

There has been an exciting number of new birds at the feeders this year. I've put five on the list in the Petersen's Birds of Texas I keep on the cookbook rack. Besides the kinglet, we've seen two types of juncos and two types of woodpeckers. Even a mocker has shown up and they rarely eat at feeders. I need to put some fruit out for him. I think it's the combination of foodstuffs we're using: songbird feed in the lantern feeder, sunflower seeds in the flat feeder (where the squirrel parks his fat bottom for minutes at a time), suet mix in the holder and a birdcake of sunflower, peanuts and other stuff stuck together with corn syrup in another holder, and shelled corn on the ground for the doves.
While Ro is at work, we're going to sneak the bat house onto the side of the house, under the eaves...The idea of them gives her the heebie-jeebies, but I need them. For the garden.

There was a elderly gentleman in the Dallas Antiques Roadshow end-cap segment who announced that the little bowl his sister had made him bring was not worth "jack-doodley hoo-hoo."
Ro: "Oh, we are so adopting that."

In which we break a solemn vow (again)
Thirty-odd years ago when we were first married, Bob and I made a solemn vow that when we were more mature (like forty), we would never have "old people arguments".
Anyone with elderly relatives knows what I mean: those torturous debates about what restaurant you ate in in some unidentified town that had such good chicken- or was it the steak?
The route you took to get from Point A to Point B twenty years ago, on a trip you don't plan to repeat. The year some family event took place. Those kinds of arguments.

Alas, we started to fall about ten years ago. I don't know why. Maybe it's the grind of living together for decades that makes you want to be right about something once in a while. Maybe it irks you because your nearest and dearest is living in a fog of mistakeness- even over the stupidest stuff imaginable.

The other morning at breakfast, we got into one of those. It was about
oh, this is so embarassing I can barely say it
No, seriously- I'm so mortified
where Corpus Christi is on the Texas coastline.

Now, to anyone not embroiled in an old people's argument, the solution to that is glaringly simple: you go get one of the thirty Texas maps, both ancient and new, lying around the house and look it up.

But not us.

We actually wrangled about this for five minutes: I describing exactly where it was, he insisting that I was wrong and it was someplace completely different. There was a lot of 'north, south, east and west" thrown around, in fact, I remember "south by southwest" being mentioned.

At one point, I leapt to my feet and held out my forearm at a 45 degree downward angle. "Look! Here's the Rio Grande border. My elbow is El Paso, my hand is Brownsville."
"I don't think the border is that straight. It curves more."
"It's my arm! It does not bend upwards!"

I think it was here that he went for the map and found that Corpus is, indeed, where I said it was. He thought it was near Louisiana-why, he could not say. I had to concede that San Antonio is west of Fort Worth, if you draw a straight line down from Cowtown. So, it was a draw.
And we sheepishly agreed never to do that again.
Until next time.

"Fan Target"
Sissy:"I want to write a post to cheer Marge up- but I don't want to hurt Ro's feelings."
Me: "Oh, please. She'll think it's fantastic. Besides, she has a job."

A few of my own:
If you had a Margaret, she would actually listen with interest when you said 'See, I worked the raglan flat, then I cast on some stitches for under the arms and worked the body in the round" without her eyes glazing over. And you would be happy hanging around for half an hour giving her your opinion while she arranged four original skeins on the yarn shop floor in different combos, then switched a couple out, then deleted one, then went back to the originals and then decided to buy none of the above. Because knitting is a passion the two of you share.

If you had a Margaret and said 'I'm trying to broaden my horizons and am going to read a graphic novel', she wouldn't roll her eyes and say "Sheyah, right, Mom." She would explain why Gaiman might not be your cup of tea and then e-mail you some starter suggestions with the Amazon links.
'Cause she likes to help people grow and expand.

If you had a Margaret, your garage and storage unit would be full of straight chairs, because she buys those like other people buy shoes.

Go read and see why I'm one of the luckiest moms in the whole world.