all the while she keeps insisting
November 20, 2008 | Filed Under inspired | 4 Comments
i really need good boots! and new glasses! this girl, mia, has been haunting me (must be because she’s inspired by witches) lately. i love her massive scarf. one year, for christmas, my mother made me a scarf that was about six feet long and was crocheted with two strands of yarn. it was the color of oatmeal, yummy oatmeal, and it was very warm. i tried to wear it, i really did. it made me hot. it was like wrapping up in a woolen rug. i don’t know what i did with it. where did you go, longest scarf in the world?
the dishes are done, ernie is reading to the boys, lola, who crawled in after them as i sat here clicking through the looks of helsinki. annie brought some kind of chocolate devilry over last night and now i can’t stop thinking of it. secret stash of m&ms does not do the trick, i promise you.
never worries about his line
November 20, 2008 | Filed Under lists, ordinary | 1 Comment
jude has a red one, henry’s is white. they run through the yard plunking pecans into these buckets for a penny each. thankfully they grow tired of the job before they earn more than a dollar. ernie cracks the nuts with the palms of his hands and the boys think he’s the strongest man in the world.
lately i’ve been thinking a lot about christmas trees, places in the mountains having snow, the books i’ve yet to read, how big sunglasses make a girl marvelous, even when she feels like a hag, my cold sewing machine on the sunporch, bagels and hot chocolate, and a lot about all of the work to be done for the show at art & light and for the crazy thing i did at the same time: poppytalk!
there are lots of amazing people with tables at poppytalk this month. a few i’ve spotted and love are the wondrous letter press work of yeehaw industries, this amazing quiver of clips by suzy jack, this handy and very cute tiny coin purse by summersville, quirky owl ornaments by mud puppy, and the ever-wonderful assemblages (and this one!) by katie runnels.
so, before you darken the doorstep of a mall, please, please be sure to look for something handmade, either on etsy (i hope you know that you can search locally so that you can support your local artists? do it!) or other online handmade marketplaces, being sure to check out the finest of the fine on poppytalk or papernstitch, or make something wonderful yourself. you can do it, i know you can.
spreading myself around
November 10, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 4 Comments
the dishwasher screams through the night, the volume of its churning growing louder with each wash. it will die soon and i will stand at the sink for hours on end, no doubt, back to cooking everything in the same pan, avoiding the mixer, things that must be chopped, chicken, meat of all kinds. hopefully not. remember how much jude loved to wash dishes when he was a wee lad of two? i felt so montessori letting him splash in the water, puddles on the floor, irritation mounting. he still loves to stand on a stool in the kitchen and work alongside me and that is something that i love.
royal family tags, in the shop soon: only one set as seen above, so watch for them!
today, with the help of you-tube, i answered henry’s question, “what is yodeling?” and almost wish i hadn’t. you can buy instructional cds, you know, and you also know that this will be next. we have an accordion for accompaniment, a shivering steal from the salvation army, the one that creaked in the floor and had the woman with the crooked face working the counter. what other wonders are there in the world for him, now that the hiccup in the throat of a yodeler is out of the way?
everything is orange and yellow now. our pecan trees are winding up to throw their fruit at us and we are ready. pie!
notes to you, a few
November 6, 2008 | Filed Under lists, ordinary, royal buffet | 2 Comments
sweet potato fries: i think of you often and wonder if when i make you for dinner if you will, indeed, be all for which i ever hoped, longed, dreamed.
yellow leaves in the back corner of the yard, over the fence, on the tree of the neighbor: how alive you are, how yellow and green, the light glowing from the veins of you seems to come from you yourself and not from the sun that somehow finds you there in that forgotten shady place.
yokoo: wondrousness around my neck. three cheers for winter weather, the color of pureed pumpkin, a ring of cozy fire.
chocolate in trick or treat bags of sons: stop whispering to me as i pass through the kitchen. really, now, stop. you’re starting to sound like the voices in the jungle on LOST.
this joy + ride: everyone knows about you, loves you, and so do i.
seventy degrees: thank you for hanging around into the depths of fall, into november, tricking us into thinking that christmas can’t possibly be coming
hallmark magazine: thanks ever so much, amy, for including royal buffet in your carnival of green crafts! awesome!
leafy, leaf, leaf
November 1, 2008 | Filed Under extraordinary | 2 Comments
girls, dancing, hair free on the wind, their necks are bare, their feet, legs. it’s nearly dark, the last strings of sun stretching in cord and web to glint and glisten on the tops of their heads. they laugh and take no notice. “you’ll catch your death!” sniffs mother bird in warning, taking flight from the shoulder of the reddest one (the one who stayed in the sun too long, freckled, burned), gray wing and feather flying further south than girls red and gold and sparking fire can imagine. and she is right, of course. a few weeks and they will stand alone and quiet, the sun seeming silver on their naked backs, eyelashes on their cheeks, girls asleep for winter. the quiet scuttle of squirrel, lonely and long, the dream of a green laugh, shiver of rain, pallid strands of their hair a brown blanket at their feet.