A little looking back.

"Iced in" here in northeast New York.  I do not dare go out the door.  I know if I fell my head would gravitate to the pavement first.
Murphy's Law.
So I am baking my annual huge batch of Greek Honey cookies, and the house smells 'loverly'.  I will then distribute them QUICKLY because otherwise, I will eat way too many.  They are so addictive.

The GOOD NEWS for the WEEK............Next is home!!!!!
He must have gotten himself snowed in someplace, and didn't want to plow through the deep snow.
He was gone for several days, and L and I both worried that the fox had gotten him.
But nope, he's back, loud and lovable as ever.

What a relief.




I finally took the finished products off the AVL, just because I knew what  hemming job I had facing me, and figured it might be smarter to break it up.  So I hemmed 24 towels and 6 table runners, and put them on my web site.  Now I'll finish the rest of the warp.

I am still not sick of this pattern.  It quite mesmerizes me while I am weaving.
Not a bad thing.

I love the 8/2 unmercerized cotton, they make hefty, thirsty towels.  But I also love the feel of the Cottolin, which is a cotton/linen blend, so I think I am going to do some towels in that next time around.

I just read The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan.  It was hard to put down.  A good read that definitely pulls you into another world for a space of time.  Also not a bad thing.

Maybe it's the time of year, or the circumstances of this particular year, but I find myself meditative, contemplative, reminiscent......... more than usual.
Maybe it's getting older.  Thinking of times past, people gone, parts of my life that only exist in my mind and heart, and sometimes, in my dreams.
Ah.  How life changes over the years.  It is good, I think, that you don't really know that, when you're young.  No matter how much someone may tell you, you don't really get it until you are older, and so much of your life is history.
And maybe it's because there is a lot more history to remember, than there is future to anticipate.
It's just the way it is.

My mother wrote in a diary faithfully, from 1969 to just a couple of months before she died.
I used to joke with her, that no one would ever read them.
Not so funny now, not at all.
I've read them through 1975.
On one hand, it helps me to remember the way my mother was, in her forties, and fifties......instead of in her eighties, like I knew her at the end of her life.
She was a gardener extraordinaire, and a seamstress.  She was a doting mother of one: me.  And she adored her granddaughters from the minute they were born.
She was a huge part of our lives, for so long.
And reading them, also reminds me of my own life, and how things were back then.  So different.
Names, places, events, things that I had forgotten, were suddenly right before my eyes again.

But I will never understand, really, my mother's style of writing.
It certainly does not resemble mine.
She talked of meals and bowling and gardening and dishes and ironing and "puttering" and a myriad of daily things.   If I had a dollar for every time she said she made tea, I would be a rich woman.
It is hard to read, because you have to plow through all the trivia.   In fact, if you weren't there, and you didn't know what really happened, you could never guess from her diaries.  You would think that this woman just had a boring life of a bunch of repetitive things.
You wouldn't know about her joys.
Or her sorrows.
Or her doubts.
None of that.
She referred to troublesome, sad, disruptive, painful, and even wonderful events, with one liners.
And never how she felt about any of it.
And the real disturbing things.........she left those out completely.  I could read a reference to going here or there, and know what was unspoken, but other than that, her life reads like a monologue of days.
There were times, reading it, when I was stunned.  I wanted to yell at her, WHAT?   You didn't even mention what happened???  You didn't even say how we cried???  How we hurt??  How angry you were???  How our lives were impacted???
No, nothing.
I wish now that I had read them while she was alive.  One at a time.  I could have gone in to her room, and asked her, "Mom, how did this really make you feel?"
And strangely enough, she would have told me.
But she wouldn't write it down.
Wow.
I guess the part that really gets to me, is that she wasn't a 'flat' person.  She was very passionate about what she loved, and what she didn't.  But apparently, there was something that did not allow it to flow from her pen.  For reasons, now, that I will never really know.

                                 My mother with my daughter, Morgan.

And I guess I am just the opposite.  NO FILTER, I've been  accused of having.
I'm just me, and I'm out there, pretty much exposed for much of the time.
And the people who love me, well, they just do.  And the people that don't, well, they don't.
And they don't have to read my blatherings.

 I'm pretty sure though, that if my daughters ever go back to read my blog, to see how I felt about
something or other, it won't be a mystery.   They'll know.
And that's not a bad thing either.