n o d d y b o o m

death of an art project

One thing I keep re-experiencing over and over,  but never quite learning from(?) is that I should never tell anyone what I am thinking about creating.  Telling someone what I think I want to create before I've actually created it always leads to me never culminating that idea.  Always.

Perhaps because those ideas usually get shot down.  Because I haven't created them yet and they're quite rough and flawed and unpolished, still.  They're so new, I haven't yet begun to figure out how to put them into words, so they sound... unpromising?

I might for example think, "Wouldn't this yarn crochet up into a really cool tee pee and wouldn't it be grand to take the kids old forgotten tee pee and repaint the wooden base with several layers of paint (which could represent the multiple emotional and physical characteristics of my own human experience) in different colors and textures and use rubbing alcohol to remove some of the paint so you can see through the different layers and experience the depth of color, blah, blah, blah.

The tee pee would, for me, be reminiscent of the sort of symbolic "house" you run into in fairy tales such as,  "The Three Little Pigs";  It's the house that symbolizes one's growing ability to protect oneself (hopefully) through acquired wisdom and experience.  You live, you learn.  You learn, you build a stronger house, so that you don't get hurt, wounded, screwed over again.  That house.  I need to build that house.  I have wanted to build that house for a long time.  This would be my own unique "tee pee" version of that house, (rather than the traditional brick), because my childhood was very mobile and tee pees are transportable, so I can relate to them in that capacity.   Plus I happen to have one I can work with.

Anyway, all of these delicious details are spinning around in my head, but the only words that come out when I go to share the idea are:

"Maybe I'll use this yarn to crochet a tee pee." 

"What?  Naaaahhh.  That'll take you, like, two years.  You'll never have time to work on anything else.  Anyway, where would you put something like that?"

Limp.  I'm so limp.  I am immediately deflated and limp.  I am a shriveled up stump of what was once swollen and steadfast and tall and proud. 

Limp.   

I should never, ever talk about these things.  Ever.  I should just do them and then wait for the bloodbath.  Or the applause.  Whatever.  At least the work will have been done.  It won't be some lost idea floating around in nothingness, wondering why it never had a life.  No. 

I will learn to say nothing.  "What are you working on?"  Nothing.  I will learn to smile and be demure.  I will learn to not care when I say, "I want to crochet a tee pee" and they look at me like I just said "I want to spit on your baby".  Excuse me?  Have you ever seen that look when they just stare back at you for a good five seconds with that frozen open mouthed smile plastered on their face and no words coming out and their eyes blink a good six.. eight times?  I will learn to ignore that look. 

And I will build that house.  One way or another.  I will build that house. 

And it will be strong.

about my oven

Addie, you'll be interested to know that I just figured out after eight years of living in my house that the electric oven heater thingie (what the heck is that called?) that goes on the bottom of the oven was not even plugged in.  In fact, it was not even in the oven.  It was sitting in a cupboard.  In my kitchen. 

So, the whole time I thought my food was being cooked from above and below it was really only being cooked from the top. 

I mean, does anyone else in the world do something so silly (for eight years) as to not realize the bottom heater of their oven isn't even there and yet keep turning the select knob to "top and bottom heat"? 

Glenn, please don't be ashamed that you know me.  Please don't abandon me as a friend and swear never to share your bread-baking secrets with me just because I neglected the details of my oven for eight years, even though I use it (ostensibly) to bake.

Please don't.

And I'll promise to continue to love you guys even though you've moved miles and miles away from me to a dreamy farmland up north and haven't even sent one blinking photo. 

Deal?

Quick "White" Bread

2 1/2 cups organic, unbleached white bread flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon fresh yeast
1 tablespoon sale
1 1/3 cups warm (filtered) tap water

Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl with a wooden spoon and slowly add water until it's a shaggy mess (you may or may not need all of the water.

Put the Kitchen-Aide to work with the dough hook attachment until the dough changes consistency (about 15 minutes).

Shape the dough into a ball, put it in a bowl rubbed with olive oil and cover with a wet towel.  Let rise two hours (or until double in volume) in a warm place (I'm using my lovely oven that has been heated just slightly as it's a chilly day).

Once the dough has risen, punch it down, give each child a handful and let them knead and shape it into whatever they want.  Then place it on a baking sheet, dust it with flour and let it rise again for twenty minutes or so while the oven heats up (set the oven to 425 degrees).

Bake for about thirty minutes.  When it's done, the bread should sound hollow when you knock on the bottom of it.  If it doesn't have that "hollow" sound, let it bake for a few more minutes.

Eat it warm out of the oven with home-made honey butter or fresh cheese. 

Store any leftovers (if there are any) in an airtight container and use for nut butter and jelly sandwiches the next day.

Happy Michaelmas (yesterday or today, depending on which calendar you look at).

volunteer season

It is a chilly, gray, dreary day outside and all I want to do is sip tea and be warm in the house and play with yarn, but I really need to throw on a sweater and go to the market or we will have nothing to eat for dinner tonight. 

I was going to talk about how "volunteer season" (borrowing that from Marie) has started up again at our school and how I swore up and down all summer long that I would have nothing to do with it, being that I gave six months of my life last year to the school's Winter Faire and it was obvious, by the end of it, that my family was quite a bit Mommy/Wife deprived and needed me to come home.  So I did.  And I have been.  And I still am.  I'm here and throwing myself into our house and our lives and our meals and into spending time together, which is precious, after all. 

I was going to talk about all that and then I wasn't because this weather makes me sleepy and unable to think clearly (and write clearly) and I really need to get out of the house to buy food.

But I'll talk about it for a minute, because I'm here typing anyway and I suddenly feel like it a bit, so I might as well. 

School has started back up and I feel myself yearning to help out again, though in a different way than I did last year.  I'm not going to take on so monumental a task as chairing an event, perhaps ever again, but I am more than happy to make things for the teachers and the classes as they need them, when time allows in my schedule.  I like making things and it makes me feel good to support a school that truly values handwork, and a community that I know and love and believe in.  I know my work is putting smiles on children's faces and is appreciated by many.  I feel good supporting these teachers who nurture and treasure and guide my children.  Really good.  In a spiritual, soul-moving way.  In an - I'm doing something good for society - kind of way.   

Even though it's a small thing I'm doing.  Making bags and crayon holders for the first grade, here.  But someone has to make bags (I think they're meant to hold "dragon tears" and I think they're something to do with math) and crayon holders for the first grade (they will begin writing this year).  Someone has to do that, and I like doing that sort of thing, so it might as well be me.  Someone else will make crowns and capes.  Another will chair the Halloween Enchantment event.  Yet another will be the Volunteer Coordinator.  Someone else will make food for the festivals.  We all pitch in, in our own way and together we build a school for our children.  An amazing school that gives our children one remarkable experience after another that they can carry with them through life. 

It's tremendous, isn't it?  Our role in society?  How big it is?  How important?  We do these small things that really add up into one big gigantic thing because it has to do with creating the environment that our children grow up in, which will ultimately form them as people and affect how they move in society when they are older.  That's enormous.  That's huge. 

We need to remember to thank ourselves for what we do and realize how important our roles are.  How important these small and large jobs are.  Our effort is the catalyst for what is to come.  How monumental is that?

But I can't really get into this right now.  This could turn into a really long blog entry about volunteerism and parenting and I have to go to the store, so I'll end this for the moment knowing that the bags and crayon holders are completed and handed in (Marley was pretty pleased to hand those in to her teacher and the smile on her face just about made my week). 

Next on the agenda is Halloween costumes,  as well as a few things for the nursery/toddler classroom that needs many things before it can open next month(!) and the kindergarten classroom that currently has nothing adorning its walls.  Phew.  Please let me know if anyone has the inclination and time to handcraft something for either of those rooms.  I know the teachers and children would be more than grateful.

Be well everyone.  Enjoy the fall air!

handspun

One skein (nearly) of corriedale and mixed fiber (mostly different types of wool and a little sparkle) that needs to be plied. 

If you want a good laugh, please watch this video, (if you haven't already seen it).   Miss Addie just sent it to me and it's hilarious.  Seriously.

Addie, do you have your blog up yet?  I'm craving photographs.  I'll bet the trees are starting to show their fall colors...?

Lemon Tea Cake

I meant to post this last week, but life has been getting busy around here (volunteer season has begun at school, you know, fall has landed, and Halloween is around the corner, among other things), so I'm just getting around to posting this now.  But better late than never, because this is the best tea cake I've come across so far. 

As I may or may not have mentioned, one of my missions in life is to find or develop a cake recipe (to be made from scratch) that's as moist and delectable as the ones my grandma used to make out of the box.  Now, I can pull off a "box cake" in my not-so-perfect-but-good-enough-for-now electric oven that's pretty darn good, but most of the cake recipes I've tried from scratch come out either dry or otherwise imperfect in some annoyingly disappointing way.  This simply will not do.  I'm convinced that somewhere out there in the world is the made-from-scratch recipe I've been looking for and one day I will find it.  I want, specifically, the perfect Devil's Food cake recipe, the perfect vanilla cake,  carrot cake, banana cake, Red Velvet cake and pound cake.  That's the short list.  But, anyway, if I could have just those, I think I could live the rest of my life out peacefully. 

This Lemon Cake (or Lemon Bread) is straight out of "The Village Baker's Wife",  with a few adjustments to suit my personal preferences.  It's kind of like a lemon pound cake, only slightly less rich.  We gave one to Marley's teacher, who's new in town and happens to like lemons and one to Marie who made me Chicken Soup last week when I was sick because she's such an amazing friend!  I was thinking of turning the whole food swap thing into a game of recipe tag, or something, but we, all of us, are already dedicating ourselves to so many projects at the school and at work and in our personal lives, that I simply don't know if there's time.  But let me know if anyone wants to play and I'll come up with something simple that we can fit into our already hectic schedules.

Here's the recipe:

Cake

1/2 cup organic butter, at room temperature
2 1/4 cups rapadura
4 large organic eggs
2 2/3 cups all purpose (or whole wheat pastry) flour
1 1/4 teaspoons celtic salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/3 cups organic milk, at room temperature
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest

Lemon Glaze

the juice from one lemon
1/2 cup rapadura

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter two 9 x 5 (or three smaller) loaf pans. 

In the bowl of a tabletop mixer fitted with the flat beater, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add the eggs, one at a time, waiting until each is incorporated before adding the next (it really does make a difference to add the eggs one at a time). 

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking powder.

Alternately add the milk and dry ingredients to the batter, mixing thoroughly after each addition.   Add the lemon zest and mix just until blended.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pans, filling them a little more than half full.  Place the pans on the center rack in the oven and bake for approximately 30-35 minutes, or until the loaves are golden brown and spring back when gently pressed (I turn my loaves 180 degrees in the middle of the cooking time to make sure they cook evenly.  Electric oven, remember?).

To make the glaze, combine the juice and the cane sugar in a small bowl, stirring frequently to dissolve the sugar.  When the loaves come out of the oven, pour the glaze over them and let it soak in.  Let the cakes cool in the pans on a wire rack.  When they are completely cool, remove the loaves from the pans.

Devour ravenously.

rain in l.a.

Finally, finally.  I think I had forgotten what it feels like, rain.  I have mixed feelings about it (personal reasons which I shall reveal), though truly it's like air.  I feel I can breathe again.  The city has been washed clean.  You can see far into the horizon, quite a rare thing here.  The clouds in the sky today were beautiful. 

See?

But the last time we had a really hard rain, our house leaked horribly.  Horribly.  Worse than you can imagine.  We had to undergo major, major construction to repair all of the damage.  The roof needed to be redone, as did the balconies, the basement needed to be completely re-waterproofed, the garage had to be rebuilt from the ground up, etc.  It was straight out of a Hitchcock movie or worse.  A nightmare.  I never, never want to experience anything like that again, please God.  Waking up in the night to the sound of water leaking everywhere; out of the windows, the ceiling, the kitchen, the bedrooms.  Oh my. 

The basement flooded one night during a hard pour at one in the morning.  I was seven months pregnant with Marley.  There were already buckets all over the house and towels lining every window and now we had to carry two rooms worth of furniture up the stairs from the basement into the living room.  I'm truly surprised I didn't go into early labor going up and down those stairs carrying all that heavy stuff (thank goodness I didn't). 

Graciously, several of our lovely friends came over and helped us move the furniture (can you believe how lucky we are to have friends that would come over at one in the morning to move furniture???  Neither can I, but we do, lucky us). We had just gotten everything upstairs and were ready to toast our success when a tarp covering the roof and balcony collapsed, flooding water into one of the upstairs bedrooms.  The water  saturated the floor and leaked through the ceiling below... right into the living room.  Yes, the living room ceiling was raining.  All over the furniture we had just brought upstairs to keep dry.  Everything got soaked.  The couch, among many other things, was ruined.  I think I started laughing maniacally at that point.  The whole experience was beyond anything I could comprehend.  We proceeded to move the now soaked furniture as quickly as we could into the hall, where there was reasonably less water, and called it a night. 

We spent the rest of that year at my parents' (thank you parents) house and didn't move back into our own home until Marley was six months old.

It's crazy when I think of it, but there was a lot of good that came out of that whole episode as well.  There always is, isn't there (thankfully)?  Anyway, our house is like a boat now, or at least, it should be, after all the work we put into it following it's more than thorough water-logging.  It held up just fine last night, with the exception of one clogged drain, quickly remedied by Chris plucking out a few stranded leaves (thank you honey).

But you can see why I have mixed feelings about the rain.  I love it so.  I love how it makes me want to bake and sew and drink tea and light a fire and surround myself with crafty goodness.  I love that.   

But I also live in fear of my house leaking again.  I think I always will.  Well, I'll try not to let it consume me, but it's just one of those things that experience does to you.  It makes you wary, which is a good thing, in the end.  As long as you don't let it get to you.

So, quick, everyone run out and make sure all your drains and gutters are clean and your patios are sealed and your sump pumps (if you have them, which we do now because of the basement) are in good working order, because the rainy season is beginning.   And if those things aren't functioning properly, you're in for a whole mess of trouble. 

Believe me.

dear lili

Thank you so much.  You have made my day.  I'm honored that you enjoyed my blog, you who I have long admired for your strength, your intelligence, your kindness and your commitment to our society.  I would love to talk more about the different concepts of the Waldorf School.  Mind you, I'm no expert.  But so far, I really like what I see.  I like the information I receive from the teachers.  I like the changes I see in my children.  The philosophy and the environment seem to embrace and nurture them.  The teachers at the school truly believe they are making the world a better place by guiding the children under this philosophy, the idea being that these children will become the best people they can possibly become, growing up and learning in a Waldorf environment, which will ultimately effect how they behave in society and how they appreciate the world and all life upon it when they are older.

So, for example, rather than teaching a "class" about the "environment" and telling the kids that the world is losing "X" amount of rain forest per hour and perhaps showing them pictures in a book and giving them a recycling assignment, etc., Waldorf teachers simply create a classroom setting where the children are surrounded by natural, handmade materials (ie:  in nursery and kindergarten, the toys are mostly hand-made wooden or felt toys or hand-carved blocks with indistinct shapes and soft, hand-sewn dolls with hand-knitted blankets.  That sort of thing.).  There are no plastic toys.  There are no action figures.  The children are brought up in a simple, unprocessed environment and taught to use their imagination to turn these things into whatever they want them to be and to respect these things that come of the earth.  They may not hurt them.  The dolls are always placed carefully in their beds (dolls are representations of humans, so they are not to be harmed).  They are trying to help the children develop a connection with nature from the very beginning, because they will then be more likely to respect it when they are older, simply having loved it as a child.  It is a subtle and yet powerful message that teaches the children to honor and appreciate their environment (and each other) through experience, rather than being told to honor and appreciate their environment.  Naturally, the teachers recycle and all that, but it is simply done and not explained.  They are teh example for the children to model themselves after.

And, not that a class about "the environment" is a bad idea.  I love that idea.  But I think here, the concept is to try and help the children first form a bond, which would then make them want to take that class because they would want to learn more about what they already love, and coming from that place, they'll also, probably, be more inclined to want to help.

It gets more complicated than even that, but there's a taste.

Another thing the teachers do with the children is to make food in the class every day (this is only parent/toddler, nursery and kindergarten classes) and to work with their hands (all grade levels do this) every day, the idea being that the children will learn the process of things by accomplishing them, themselves.  They make bread.  They make butter.  They make their own tortillas, etc. (and naturally, everything they work with is organic or locally grown or brought from a parent's yard or something).  If we had a larger campus with animals on it, they'd probably milk their own cows and goats as well.  They sew.  They knit.  They make things with wool and wood.  These actions give them a greater understanding of the world they live in, in a personal, tactile sense.  They experience everything first hand.  They create it.  They live it.  And they seem to quite enjoy the process.

Finally, everything the teachers and the children do revolves around the seasons.  Now, for example, they have an autumn circle with autumn songs, etc.  There is a rhythm to what they experience in the class that is in tune with what is happening in nature.  And there is a respect for nature in everything they do.  There are prayers before meals.  There are candles that are lit.  There are moments of complete silence.  I have watched an entire class of nursery age children sit completely still and with reverence for a good 15 minutes to listen to a story told orally, right before being let out for summer vacation, no less.  They experience these things, and these things become tools they can reach for when they are older and living in our extremely fast-paced world and expected to move quickly within it.  I know that I often find comfort in that rhythmical connection with autumn that comes at the same time every year, no matter what else is going on in my life (and I didn't go to a Waldorf school, I'm just fortunate enough to be experiencing it through my children).  It's like a touchstone of sorts, to be connected with the seasons and with the earth.  It holds you together, even when other things in life may be falling apart.

I hope that helps.

I love that quote from Emerson, "Try once and fail, try again and fail, try a third time and fail better...".  If only we had the determination of that one year old who is just learning to walk.  They must fall a hundred times and yet they continue to get up and to try and they don't stop until they are walking on those two precious feet and then, boy, what a smile!

Toning up my calligraphy, by the way.  Might want to use it for holiday tags and such.

st. michael fighting the dragon

First of all, thank you again dear friends for your kind words and support.  I am incredibly touched.  Thank you.

I just received a letter from Griffin's nursery teacher, which blew my mind, and I'd like to share it with you.  It reads:

"Dear Parents,

Soon, it will be the time of the autumnal equinox, reminding us that it is time to prepare for an inner journey.

Just as we humans experience a breathing in and breathing out, so our planet has a rhythmical breathing.  Spring and Summer are a time of breathing out, we are more extroverted.  Fall and Winter mark the in-breath of the earth.  Things contract.  Plants die away.  The trees grow bare and Nature faces death.  All life recedes within the earth.

One great symbol for this inward turning is the Archangel Michael.  Michael opposes the forces of materialism and opens a pathway to the spirit for humankind.

The Festival of Michaelmas is the beginning of the in-breath of the year.

Our minds turn inward to thinking, often evoking a struggle within us.  Here we have the image of Saint Michael fighting the dragon as a symbol of our conscious striving to be brave and true and good.

The festival dates back to the early Middle Ages.  It is a festival of fellowship for good, of decisions carried out with courage.

In our time, now that the dragon is cast out into the earth and dwells among us and often within us (!!!), we need each others' support for strength.  We have to find the courage to take a stand, to follow through with our decisions and to overcome our habitual behaviors."

Well, there you go.

Now I've been at the school for, what, 5 years now?  So, I'm sure the teachers have passed out letters like this many times before.  (In fact, I have most of them saved in a folder.  I'm going to have to go back and read some of that stuff).  Anyway,  this time I'm actually paying attention.  The information is truly resonating with me and I am so glad my children will have these teachings to help carry them through the rest of their lives when it comes time for them to battle their own inner demons and so forth.  Thank you Waldorf!

I, myself, will be paying much closer attention to the "in-breath" of everything around and within me, I think.  I've already begun that journey with the passing of the new year, but I look forward to truly embracing this idea as I let go of some things and invite others into my life.   I think I'll hold onto that image of St. Michael fighting the dragon, for a while.  That's a good one.

Be well.

By the way, that's Marley working on a "scratch-art" drawing.  The kids made their own scratch paper by first covering some heavy watercolor paper with crayon and then painting it black.  Once it's dry you can scratch through the black paint with a toothpick or just about anything.  Fun.

new year plans

I'm not jewish (in fact, I wasn't raised around any one particular religion, though I've been exposed to several over the years) but I do truly feel that my new year begins right around now, which happens to coincide with the beginning of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah four days ago), so I'm going to go with it.  Why not.  Half my family is Jewish.  My stepfather is Jewish.  My brother and sister from that marriage are Jewish.  I have a great respect for the Jewish religion and my respect for religion in general seems to strengthen as I grow older.  I seem to have more admiration and appreciation for it.  I understand it a bit more, which is lovely, considering that I wasn't raised around it and found it confusing in many ways for years.  I still don't take my kids to church or temple, because, as I said, I don't have an incredibly strong affiliation with any of them, never have, but I sneak spirituality into their lives through Waldorf education and we celebrate all the major Christian and Jewish holidays with my culturally mixed family.  So, hopefully my children will somehow learn in their hearts of the greater power(s) that exist(s) and is/are there for them in some way and a respect and reverence for all things living and beyond.  One can only hope.   

Anyway, For me, this time now truly feels like I'm beginning a new year and I am newly inspired in my thinking and my plans for my many creative endeavors to come.  Right now, all of my ideas for projects seem to center around fairy tales. 

It's appropriate, I suppose.  My daughter has entered the first grade, which, in a Waldorf school, means that she will be studying fairy tales.  And not the Disney versions either.  No.  The Grimms versions where the pigs actually get killed by the wolf and Cinderella's stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to fit into Cinderella's small shoe.  Gruesome, yes, but these stories are meant to educate us about the human journey and those "gruesome" parts of the stories are serious lessons that are there to aide us on that journey.  And they do.

We are all complicated creatures, we humans, and our lives are complicated and often challenging.  Life isn't as Disney has portrayed it, and we need to learn that, that's normal and that there are ways of dealing with life's challenges when they arise.  That third pig learns to build a sturdier house to keep out the wolf.  We, as humans, often find ourselves in the same predicaments over and over, but we get better at handling them.  We get wiser.  We create stronger boundaries for ourselves, and eventually (hopefully) build that brick house which ultimately protects us from a bitter end. 

So,  it's fairy tales and all the learning they inspire that are guiding my visions at the moment.  I'm really excited to see what happens.  Blessings to all.

thank * you

I want to thank my wonderful friends for all their kind words and loving support regarding my "letter" to my inner critic.  Thank you very much!  The warmth of your thoughts is greatly appreciated.

I battle those inner demons on a fairly regular basis and it is only on occasion that I am able to banish them, at least, for a time.  That letter I wrote got rid of them for a good couple of days, which was lovely, but now I'll have to think of some other ploy as they are creeping their way into my thoughts yet again, damn things. 

One of you dear friends compared that dastardly inner critic with the Queen of Hearts from that lovely little story of Alice.  How very clever that was of you to say "off with her head"!  And how true that that must happen.  Perhaps a drawing (or ???) will come out of this?  With someone(me?) brandishing a weapon against a(n inner) demon?  I think I need something like that on my wall to remind me of what I'm up against and what I need to do to protect myself.

My version of that dress, by the way.  I forgot to take photos of the pockets.  Later perhaps.  Those pockets were nearly the end of me.  I had no idea how to get them in there.  I ripped the first pair out and threw them in the trash.  The truth is, I really don't know how to sew, I just wing it and keep winging it until I get something close to what I originally wanted, often loaded with mistakes.  I'm not formally trained or anything.  My grandma is an amazing seamstress.  Flawless.  She taught me how to read a simple pattern when I was thirteen and we worked on a dress together.  I've been flailing along ever since.  But I'm quite pleased with myself every time I complete a project, regardless of the results.

But that's not what I was talking about.  What I wanted to say, was thank God for knitting and needle-felting and spinning and such.  I'm much better at those things and they've really been a wonderful way for me to drown out the negative with the positive and keep those demons at bay.
Crafting(?) is like an oxygen mask for me.  Without it, I don't think I could breathe, and I certainly wouldn't be able to take care of my family.  No, that would be impossible.  Well, not impossible, but dauntingly challenging.  I mean, even more dauntingly challenging than it already is, though I love it so.

So, on that note,  I need to thank my husband, who has always been incredibly supportive of all my crafting craziness, and puts up with the piles of wool on the floor in various places around the house, as well as the stacks of fabric and papers and tools that he inevitably trips over from time to time.  Thank you, honey, for being so understanding of all my crap everywhere and for knowing that I absolutely can't live without it, which means that you have to live with it.  Thank you. 

And while we're at it, thank you(!) for letting me drag you down to the various flea markets around town that are mediocre at best, simply to fulfill my other need to scavenge and thrift even though you can't stand it.  Thank you for standing there, with the kids (because I thought it would be a "good experience" for them - we learn some things the hard way, don't we?), eating crappy hot dogs in the sweaty, stuffy heat, while I picked through dirty old teacups.  Thank you. 

You have also been completely there for me when my inner demons simply get too brash and I simply get too grumpy.  Thank you sweetie.  I love you with my whole heart. 

Please ignore the fact that the shawl (above) is completely unblocked.  Just pretend that it is and move on.  Marley doesn't know the difference (yet) and, anyway, it worked out fine for the wedding.

Blessings to all and may you have a wonderful new year (happy belated Rosh Hashanah!) filled with laughter and love and lots of fabric and yarn, should you be so lucky.