A Portrait of the Kids

Our friend, John Corso, offered to come over yesterday and take some pictures of the kids while Katherine is here visiting. Wow - he only spent a few minutes snapping photos and today he sent us this very pretty image. I'm going to have to make him a pecan pie or something to say thanks...

Ray, 15 and Katherine, 23

November Bee Blocks

Here are pictures of the November bee blocks I made for the Cheer circle of do Good Stitches and the link for the tutorial we used. The colors for the blocks were assigned - it will be a bright and happy quilt.

http://mrsschmenkmanquilts.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/butterfly-block-tutorial/

Homecoming

This picture was taken six weeks ago, on the night of the homecoming dance. In high school time, that was ages ago but these two cuties still seem to like each other quite a bit. Young and starry-eyed, isn't life grand?

Ray and Casey

Project Bags Six, Seven and Eight

I have been working at the clinic more than sewing the past few weeks but I still have several small completed projects that haven't made it to the blog. I was pumping out these knitting bags for awhile, unable to stop, and then, poof, I was suddenly done. These last three will likely be Christmas gifts. 

I have a bee block  or two to make this weekend, some placemats to finish up and some knitting projects swirling around in my head. Socks, mittens, gloves? I haven't been able to match yarn with pattern and get going on the next thing. Oh, well, it will come together eventually.

Saturday

Saturday is the best day when you are working. Dave has been home so there are not too many chores - sweep the vacuum around, pop some apple crisp in the oven, scrub the counters - there are a few things to do that I like to have done. There was time in the morning for a walk, and several neighbors were out as well and wanted to chat. The weather, always, is discussed - "Nice day!" - and it is, a mild sweatshirt only morning with piles of yellow leaves lining both sides of the road. I chatted with John about his apple trees "Great crop this year!" and with a dog walking woman about the sheriff who spent a couple of days parked at the end of her drive, giving out 29 speeding tickets and arresting 3 people. She is focused on the mean black lab who scares us all and the "whack job" next door who lives with his mother and is violent. Also, she says, pointing up the hill, Frank was probably one of the arrests because, though he drives slow, he always drives drunk. 

Home again, I talk to Ray about the birds and the bees. It's just a review, really, but I want him to know about the Teen Clinic in town because I would be a fool if I thought he would always come to me about everything. He has a new girlfriend and we invite her to come over some time this weekend. She has not yet been allowed to visit so permission granted to join us for sushi on Sunday is a small victory. 

I don't sew or knit all day. I've been wanting to read more and have started in on the first book of three sent to me by a well read friend. It is called Several Strangers, Writing from Three Decades by Claire Tomalin. Her collected reviews from 1969-1999, published in London, reach way back to authors of the 1800s, recalling this writer or that and maybe the book is too literary or the house is too warm from the fire; I doze awhile on the couch. I don't know most of the references but I do like teasing out the biographical tidbits from the short pieces. She introduces each section with an outline of her career and I want the book to be more about her. She is my mother's age and remembers, vividly, in the mid 1950s "crying into a washbasin full of soapy grey baby clothes - there were no washing machines - while my handsome and adored husband was off playing football in the park on Sunday morning with all the delightful young men who had been friends to both of us at Cambridge three years earlier. I had wanted to do something with my life - I thought I had some capacities, and here they were going down the plughole with the soapsuds". Her charming, brilliant, successful journalist husband became a "bolter", unable to resist the office vamp, and was killed at 41 by a Syrian missile during the Yom Kippur War.  She had three daughters, lost a newborn son and had a second son with spina bifida. I am a lazy, drowsy reader and I want the book to be more of a memoir than it is. She writes well about women, "rescuing them from obscurity"- we are such interesting creatures. 

Knitting Project Bags 4 and 5

The three of us went downtown for Thai food. Ray drives - Dave is the right seat co-pilot - and we chat at the table while we wait and wait for our food. The high school band teacher pops in - he is walking around town with his girlfriend, handing out fundraising posters. No one looks at their phone. Ray explains some calculus that we don't understand and we explain how to calculate a tip when the service is poor. The owner asks how everything was - it turns out his 5:00 server came to work at 5:30 and they fell behind and were unable to catch up. 

Daylight savings time ends tonight. We can sleep in tomorrow and still get up early.