So far, so good

Monday morning update: 7.7" total ... and the rain has stopped for now. While that may sound like a fair bit, it fell so slowly and steadily that the ground was able to soak it all up. We even saw a bit of blue sky and the sun setting in the west last night ...

Sadly, the storm continues to pound our neighbors to the east with no end in sight. There will be much work to do.

Sunday morning update: 4.65" of rain yesterday, 1.8" overnight. No wind damage. We'll continue to keep our fingers crossed.

Saturday 
Hurricane Harvey has been kind to our corner of the Hill Country so far: a couple of inches of rain and some natural tree pruning courtesy of 20-30 mph winds ...

Wentzville 2017 - Eclipse

We head outside 

called by the changing light 
to seek a gauzy crescent funneling 
through a pin-pierced hole 

This is not the golden glow of dawn 
nor the rosy tinge of sunset 
not even the green fug betiding storm 

Rather it is a silvery light 
that throws grudging shadows 
but gives no warmth 

The silence is total 
street lights flickering to life 

A lone birdcall cuts through 
swallows darting in a twilit sky 

Quickening darkness 
overtakes long minutes of wondering 

Shadows finger out of western clouds 
as eastern cumuli glow a defiant white 

Cricketsong rises up 
to greet a single star shining in the gloam 

Something beyond twilight falls 
undeniably 
stirring deep-plumbed tears 

Until seconds become fleet 
and breath releases in a sigh 
with the return of the light 

as if 'twere a dream

Photo credit: Melissa Walker

#Charlottesville

If it wasn't personal before, it's personal now.

My first trip to Virginia took place in the fall of my junior year in high school. Visiting two campuses as part of a college-shopping tour, I ultimately chose William and Mary in Williamsburg. But it was a close call and I could have just as easily ended up at UVA in Charlottesville.

The 35 years I spent in Williamsburg, getting my degree, meeting and then marrying Don, forging a library career and raising two daughters, included many trips to Charlottesville. I well remember listening to Bonnie Raitt singing in the UVA arena, visiting Monticello with 3 year old Meg and tiny infant Melissa, eating "grillswith" (griddled Krispy Kreme donuts topped with ice cream) at the corner cafe and bagels from Bodo's. When we drove Meg home with two broken arms after her car accident at Smith Mountain Lake, we stopped in Charlottesville to pick up sandwiches. Wanting to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in style, we went to the Boar's Head Inn. We cheered from the sidelines as our local high school football team won the state championship in Charlottesville.

You get the idea.

So this past weekend hit home, or close to it. Raised a radical liberal New Yorker, I went off to college and learned fast that many (not all) Virginians referred to the "War between the States" or "the recent unpleasantness" rather than the Civil War. The Commonwealth celebrated the birth of Jefferson Davis, but there was no observance of Lincoln's birthday. And when a professor waxed eloquent about the virtues of sorghum over maple syrup, I muttered under my breath "but we won the war," and then took a long drag on my cigarette and blew smoke. Tobacco. How ironic.

Virginia changed a lot 0ver the 35 years from 1974 to 2009, when we finally pulled up stakes and headed for Texas (I know, I know). It had moved from red to purple and was leaning blue. There was hope.

And the decision to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville was yet another step in the correct direction (I won't say "right"). Though it ended in tragedy, I dare to hope it galvanizes other localities to see the insanity of memorializing hatred and slavery.

So today I stitched, taking words written by Marti in New Mexico, in response to the Peace Pin Project that began last February ...

"Hope is standing up not standing aside ...
to connect in a way that helps to make us all one ...

There will be other peace patches for a cloth I'm thinking will be named It's all connected. Eventually, I hope to have enough to make a two-sided peace shawl, stitched together Pojagi-style.

And there will be more posts after Don and I finish up our month-long joyride taking care of Parker (who enters daycare next week) and return from our birthday season visit to Jackson and Jace in St Louis ...

Getting ready to roll ...

Because life goes on and I have much more to say.

Happy birthday J!

From my daughter's Facebook post ...

J's birthday cake request was for Strawberry Shortcake from the book Cook-a-Doodle-Doo by Janet Stevens (a perennial read-aloud favorite when I was an elementary school librarian and now a go-to storybook with my grandkids) ...

in which the great grandson of the Little Red Hen bakes a cake with the help of his friends ...

and they all lived happily ever after ...

Homesteading

This is The Land as the Crow Flies as it stands right now (about 40" wide by 19" high) ...

Over the past few weeks it has morphed considerably from green grids of cloth weaving laid out linearly ...

to various trials at angles ...

along with a fair bit of design mending as I realized I wasn't happy with some of my fabric choices.

There was also consideration of how and where to eventually place the house ...

and how to represent the stone wall boundary lines (torn strips of linen rolled between the fingers and couched down with two strands of floss), as well as the topographic elevation contours (detached backstitch worked with two strands of variegated floss) ...

So far, so good.

Stitching the floodplain

The first part of The Land as the Crow Flies (20" high x 15" wide) has been basted down using Jude Hill's glue stitch ...

I played around by imposing an angled frame with a 4 1/2" square opening and a 5 1/2" exterior over each cloth-woven square ...

basted down the raw edges up to the inner frame dimensions ...

which is easier to see from the back ...

then cut away the excess ...

and started overlapping the pieces so they were effectively 5" to a side ...

After which I played around with different arrangements until I settled on one that represented some of the major features on the floodplain (dry creek bed channels, scoured bedrock, poverty weed patches, etc.) ...

Next up will be the greener, tree-covered part of the property, as depicted in these composite shots ...

Here's hoping I'll be as happily surprised by the results as Parker is here ...

(Seriously, I'll use any excuse to include grandkid pictures in my posts)

Process

This was my Father's Day gift to Don ...

an incomplete label that promised a piece of cloth to be finished this year.

As we flew home, I couldn't help noticing the patchwork of land and cloud shadows, so much like the vision I have for this new cloth ...

So when we got home, I walked out to the flood plain ...

taking pictures of droughted milkweed ...

the few patches of green amongst rock and dried grass ...

the sereness of it all, like a Wyeth winterscape ...

Then took a screen shot of the accumulated images, cropped and rotated it ...

comparing it to the first piece of woven cloth (in the manner of Jude Hill) ...

considered the cloth strips already assembled, made more ...

and continued ...

on and on ...

How time flies

The sock puppets were a wonderful diversion, if not exactly as I had imagined they might be ...

Boys will be boys ...

And if the weather wasn't as sunny as usual, still there is nothing better than a walk on the beach ...

Unless maybe it's a bonfire with s'mores ...

or a trip to the aquarium ...

or a dip in the pool ...

or making cookie dough (with some baked cookie dough for those who prefer such things) ...

There was even some stitching on a family sampler long in the making, now nearing its end ...

All our grandchildren together for one last picture ...

until next year.

Whimsy

Last year I decided to make sock puppets at the beach with the grandkids, after which they could put on "shows."

Logan (then 12) helped me shop for supplies: feathers, colorful foam shapes, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, glue dots, and socks (some gently used).

Unfortunately, the boys were only 3-going-on-4 years old ... too young to visualize how to put puppets together, let alone put on "shows." So this year, I decided to make the puppets myself ...

then see where G and J's 4-going-on-5 imaginations might take them.  And I don't doubt that 2-going-on-3 Jace will get in on the action, too.

Even if the whole idea goes nowhere, I must say I had a lot of fun making sea gulls ...

pelicans ...

jellyfish, rainbow sharks ...

sea horses, coquina clams ...

turtles, blue crabs ...

and whales ...

However, with any luck, there will be pictures of the puppets in action to share next week. We'll see.