Musings and Ducks

Interesting how in the past three months I feel as though I have gone completely quiet within. I don't have any of the big questions challenging me anymore. In fact, I seemed to have found avenues to inner peace.



I am digging seriously and deeply into the study of my faith. I crochet each night. When I'm not crocheting, I'm working crossword puzzles, perusing the premium channels for unseen movies, and enjoy Tanner's antics and Gus' disdain of said antics.

To the left is a project I finished recently - hand warmers. After completing four of these in various yarn weights, I'm now looking around for a lacy, delicate pattern. If you know of any such out there, I'd love to be pointed in the right direction.

I write when the spirit moves me and find inspiration all around me. Even my approach to blogging has changed. The quieter I feel within myself, the less I need to post unless the mood strikes me. I still read and visit around daily. I treasure the friends I've made here. But now it seems that SFASMT has become as quiet as I'm feeling these days. Perhaps it's simply winter but whatever it is, I am very much enjoying the feeling. I'm very grateful for the serenity that has found me - or perhaps more precisely, the serenity which I have found.

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So - that was last night. This is this morning and one of the great reasons why I feel so good much of the time. The ducks around the lake at work are so many and varied, so full of humor and antics that reflect human nature. A day doesn't go by when I don't hugely enjoy these creatures going about the business of building and maintaining their community hierarchy.

It rained. It poured!

It poured today, thundered even .

Trees bent, rain slashed sideways.

The world was violently alive,

Crowned in its own vibrant light.

Liquid Icicles

Rain bouncing like hail.

An Amazing rainbow visible from one end to the other.

End of the rainbow

Stoplight and Rainbow

Biene's Inspiration

I awoke to snow this morning –
not much, just a thin, dense blanket.
As I watched, light and warmth thinned it further,
Until it almost disappeared.
Rain returned once again and the white became
a passing thought.

My thanks to Biene for the inspiration that sprang from her

own post this morning.

Morning Song

Birds were bursting in

song this morning. I stepped

outside into joy.

My Other Passion

While I've been busy with the kitchen, I haven't let my other passion, crocheting, slack off. I tried knitting for two years and just could not get past knit and purl. But crocheting has become an entirely different matter. I find myself digging into the instructions, googling for tutorials if a technique eludes me, and even have come to recognize when the instructions themselves have gone wrong.

I just finished the runner below. It is made from 100% cotton, my favorite fiber to work with. The runner is also my first granny rectangle. I've displayed it in the first picture so you can get a sense of its size. However, it was destined for the top of one of our bookcases and now the case looks so much softer; a much better look.

Now that I've finished this rectangle, I'm working on fingerless gloves. I've been working in wool and acrylics but I hear the cotton calling me again. I'm imagining some Victorian adornments to add to their delicate femininity. So stay tuned. I hope to have a cotton pair finished next week.

Into The Evening

Luminous myst'ry

Cloud delicately balanced

a brief gleaming veil.

Kitchen painting 101

Four years ago I started resurrecting the kitchen. What was supposed to be a "get it finished NOW" project has become a long term and "work on it when I feel like" project. Well this weekend I felt like it. We have a 3-day weekend at work and it's slow this month so I picked up today to take off as well making it a 4-day weekend for me. Time to start working on the lower cabinets and actually FINISH the sink side of the kitchen. Click here and scroll down to see other cabinets finished a while ago.

After much thought, I decided to keep the lower cabinets solid and suddenly the entire project felt much more manageable. Here's what I've done so far. Stay tuned. More to come between now and Tuesday when I go back to work.

The drawers were finished ages ago. The mosaic work on the top drawer is my work made with found glass tiles from Scraps in San Francisco. Check Scraps out here. Fabulous place. The cabinet on the end will be stained to so the drawers will really POP.

Work in progress. Oven is new. Drawer beneath oven needs to be primed, painted, and stained. This gives you a good idea though of how dark this kitchen was.

Beneath the sink. Interior of the one door has not been primed and painted yet though the other side was. This is a good example of how hit and miss this project has been. Don is out running errands and when he returns I'll have a 1 inch brush so I can be sure to get all the detail work finished this weekend as well. So stay tuned. I'm feeling very motivated.

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UPDATE - It's Saturday afternoon and I've finished all that I plan to do today. I may prime one last drawer under the oven but that's about it.

My Peaceable Kingdom

Something totally heartwarming

Click here and see cute chihuahua's overcoming nature's deficit.
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=5924202&ch=4226726&src=news


And here's their story:
http://www.nsalamerica.org/campaigns/chihuahuas/

Strange Sightings and Sitings

Yesterday, returning from the grocery store, I spotted a computer monitor just randomly sitting on the sidewalk. At that time, the monitor's back was turned, facing the fire hydrant as though in conversation. Later I drove by and it had turned away to observe the passing traffic. Finally, this morning, I saw it still hanging out on the corner looking like a streetwalker a little worse for the wear.

Writers' Island - Over the Horizon (behind me)

Poinsettias, Petunias, and a morning surprise

Every Christmas when poinsettias explode into glorious color, I remember my father and his green thumb, a gift he received from HIS father. Thinking of my grandfather reminds me of his vegetable garden filled to overflowing with beans and tomatoes and onions and carrots and cucumber and, and, and . . . But most of all, I remember the petunias.



Gram and gramps lived in a huge, two story bungalow style house with a full basement and a full attic. At the top of the driveway, to the left, was a double garage with its own walk-in door set into the garage door. I remember being fascinated by the door in a door. In some ways, I still am as I've never seen its like since that house.

Farther up to the very end of the driveway was another garage that stood separate from the house. It was big enough to hold one small car. The doors swung open, outward from the center. It was between these two garages that the flower bed - more precisely - a petunia bed - sprawled in all of its pink and purple and red and white glory. The colors collided together like northern lights in the highest latitudes. Gram and gramps tended that garden every year, nurturing it to brilliant life. I would pick petunias when they got leggy, managing to keep them fresh for about a day. Then I would go out for more as they faded. There was no danger of running out of petunias.

It wasn't until I was much older that I remembered this gift that dad had received from his father. Reflecting on this gift, I brought home five poinsettia plants left over from our annual Carolfest at school. I was reminded of the poinsettias dad planted on the side of our home in San Diego way back in the 60's. Thereafter, until they moved, the brilliant red plants would bloom every season. Looking back on it, I wonder how my dad did it. Dad wasn't a fussy gardener and he didn't coddle his gardens. Yet every year, without any fuss or special techniques, they would come back providing a blast of red from the edge of our property.

How hard could this really be? For years the "care of this plant" directions intimidated me. You know the one I'm talking about - cover them; maintain darkness and a limited temperature range for x number of weeks; and voila - red leaves will emerge. My big question was "Where was this magic supposed to happen?" And more then that - "Who had the time?"

Over the past few years, I learned that following the rules isn't necessarily the best way to go when one is thinking about creativity. So pursuing this idea, I decided to put the rescued poinsettias against the back fence. More precisely, I would have the yard guys put them in. Of course, it rained that weekend so no yard guys. But, Tuesday morning I awoke to the nicest surprise. Don put the plants in, God bless him. Yard work isn't DH's thing but he, I've concluded, is a secret designer. He's done so many little things over the years. Some worked, some didn't, but recently his efforts have been successful. So, keeping that in mind, I'll make sure the poinsettias are watered and get the occasional feed, but that's it. It will be interesting to see if breaking the rules of gardening will bear me the same success as my father and his father before him.

Angry morning sky

blocked sunlight, turned day to

night bringing caution.

Downpours and wind gusts
capriciously scatter
summer's last remains

A Few Things I Found Today . . .

. . . that made me smile -

Julie's beautiful Celtic Blessing
The fabulous Charlie Eye Spy
Something olde
Borrowed thoughts from Noni

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY -
1947 William Dawson becomes 1st black to head congressional committee.

I find this bit of news very interesting as 70 years later to the day, in Barak Obama, we have the first serious black Presidential contender.

Routines

It's January 2nd. I'm back at work. Vacation time is over. Every year, on or around December 19th, I leave work for a couple of weeks. Every year I think about all the things I will do during this down time. And, every year, none of it happens. Each year is different but the plans never pan out.

This year Quanah and Erin were with us for a few days as they accomplished the final leg of their return to Portland, OR. It was a joyful Christmas marred by only a hint of the heartache of November. New Years was quiet as it has been for the past few years now. Since the children have grown and mainly gone, we have tucked ourselves in for a warm night of togetherness and watching the excitement of Times Square.

So - Routine number one is accomplished - Holidays are behind us and all the ideas I had for doing this and that have been moved into my agenda for 2008. As I returned to work today I finally accepted the fact that Routine number one is not a practice run for retirement after all. It is, in fact, a time for me to JUST WIND DOWN.

But now I'm back at work and Routine number two has greeted me.

Structure to my days.
The ability to plan and
organize and
prioritize and
follow the plans.

If R#1 is a time to wind down, R#2 is a time to re-rev my engines.

I'm back to Jenny;
back to writing;
back to being open to inspiration.
I'm BACK.

I've finally GOT IT that I will not have a clue about my retirement routine until I RETIRE. There is no such thing as a practice run. So I will simply wait until the time is actually upon me (and no doubt forget this insight and have to remind myself from time to time). Have any of you experienced this. I'd love to read your stories of retirement.

Resolutions? None. Resolutions are meant to be broken. After all they are only more like guidelines anyway (Thank you Jack Sparrow) There is one thing though I am definitely going to do - replace my camera. My Canon is 3 years old with 4 mega pixels. This was excellent 3 years ago but I'm noticing that results are not so satisfying anymore. Perusing the cases at Target have shown me that low end cameras are now starting out at 7.1 mega pixels. Definitely time to upgrade.

And now - for a new addition to my routine.
Here is a post of a historic fact for this day in history.

1947 Mahatma Gandhi begins march for peace in East-Bengali