Candy corn is still in season

Just in time for Thanksgiving:  a skirt I made for Ada.  

Here she is in her new candy corn skirt. Isn't she sweet?  

Ghost in the machine--so no photos for this one.

I don't believe in ghosts. I do believe in machines. But something weird is happening around here lately because I have "experiencing technical difficulties" with lots of my favorite little gadgets. Here are the happenings in the last two days:

First, it's the light on the garage door opener. It stopped coming on when you open the door.
Then it's the door on the car, which gets stuck every time we've driven for the past two days.
The magnetic strip on the credit card is unreadable (okay, not a gadget, but you get the idea).
My ipod says "okay to disconnect," and that's all it does now.
The card on my camera is shot, and the excellent photos I took of the leaves this afternoon are gone.
The printer fights me with almost everything I send to it.

Is there a ghost in the machine? Probably not. But I'm counting my blessings that the heat works, our modem continues to function, and that our fridge seems to be running strong.

Sorry I couldn't share those great photos of the leaves--I'm chalking it up to an exercise in fleeting beauty.

Turkey Craft Roundup--you're invited!

Thanksgiving is only 3 weeks away. So I've got turkeys on my mind. I love turkeys. Turkey dinner, turkey art, turkey themes.  My tastes are wide-ranging, from simple hand-turkeys to Monets Les Dindons.

This year I'm starting a little flickr group called "Turkey Craft Roundup." I'd love it if you'd join! All you have to do is let the turkey-crafting mood strike you, take a picture of what you've made, and upload it to the turkey craft roundup group on flickr. Blog about your turkey, and use the Mr. Linky on this post to share what you've done.

Here are a few of the things I've made for past Thanksgivings:

Turkey placemats for the girls and for Ada's baby.  The feathers on these are actually pockets that hold a fork, knife, spoon, napkin, and a Thanksgiving note.  The girls really love eating off of these.

Turkey pom-poms, a la Martha Stewart.  Mine are a little cockeyed, but I think that's part of their turkey charm.

Hand turkey shrinky dinks, which I made into charms for the grandparents. This was a big hit.

Next up:
A skirt inspired by turkeys. Here are the fabrics I'm using.  

This project is more abstractly turkey, but I'm really loving the colors and the idea of "feathers." One night of insomnia, and this baby should be done...

What turkeys are you making?

A poem for an autumn Thursday

I heard the crack of geese calls breaking the air yesterday morning, and it made me think of this poem. Which doesn't do the poem justice, since it really isn't about the geese at all...

It is such a memorable poem, and it is one of my very favorite poems in the world, by one of my very favorite poets.   From time to time, I find myself repeating the lines of this poem as if it were a mantra.  Which it should be, come to think of it.  

If you don't know this one, take a look. If you do--enjoy, again.

Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — 

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things.

Pumpkin patch

Sometimes it feels as though our town is a throwback to another time.  There are no franchises here, no stoplights, and the farm stand uses an honor system for accepting payment.

A simple pleasure to visit this pumpkin patch on a sunny afternoon.  Here are the girls weighing their options for the best pumpkins.  

Esme finally found her favorite, which is just her size.   

Color and texture

This unexpected combination makes me think that purple, green, and blue are my new favorite colors.

Hydrangea, sedum (Autumn Joy), and rosemary. 

Parting gift--autumn

Autumn has been teasing me for a few weeks now. One minute it's rainy and cold, thick with the kind of fog that chills you to the bone. The next minute, it's crisp and cool, the sun riotously crossing the sky. The leaves on the trees, too, seem undecided about what to wear each day. And so it is at the start of fall when you live in the northeast. I actually like the surprise of it--each day I get to dress for an entirely different season. Of course, this is bound to end soon...fall is truly around the next corner, with no more surprise summery days up her sleeve.

With that, I've had this poem on my mind lately. It's one I wrote years ago when I lived in Chicago, and these sorts of days were more common at the end of September...

Last Days

October

comes wafting in tonight

over the blue and yellow of

an Indian summer afternoon,

over the fumes of

the snaking rush hour.

And shadows creeping from under trees

and viaducts

swallow the last of September.

The sound of a lone cricket

chirping

tonight becomes an apparition 

of July.

Outside my eleven o'clock window

the static white noise 

of the rusting oak

pushes me into

dreams of you

over fields and seas.

K.R.

Spider's eye view

My husband is a man of many talents, and one of them is taking photos. This spider caught his eye recently. Here she is in her house outside our front door.


A shift in focus, and here is how the spider sees our house.


I love her beautiful colors--so reminiscent of the fall to come. Happy autumn.

Joyful moment

Sometimes our awareness of the world unclouds for a swift and fleeting moment, and for just that instant, you can feel the amazing gift of your own life. I love these joyful moments, and I try to hold onto the memory of each one when they come.


You must know what I mean--you are toodling along through your life, doing something very ordinary, when something strikes you as particularly poignant. And for that brief moment, you realize how full and beautiful and perfect life is, just as it is in that space of time. If I am lucky, I can hold that feeling for a few minutes--and then it's back to the routine perceptions of everyday life.

One morning last week I was hit by that feeling again while washing the breakfast dishes. The air was late-summer cool, and filled with lazy cricketsongs, and it flowed in the window near the sink. I turned on the faucet, watched the soap bubbles and steamy air as it floated around my face, and suddenly I was profoundly happy. While washing dishes.

Call it an epiphany, call it a brief rapture, call it crazy. But as mundane as life can be, it is a blessing just to be. In fact, mundane itself is a blessing. I am grateful for the slow times, my uneventful seasons, my simple routines. It is a fortune indeed to have dishes to wash, a sink to wash them in, and senses to notice the tiny beauties that surround the most basic of days.

May we all have these moments, shimmering, delicate, and fleeting as soap bubbles.