Bookslut picked up on the indelible image of Wendell Berry mucking out his composting privvy by pointing out this really interesting interview over at Mother Earth News. Some of his points seem a teeny bit dated (Green Acres? Who has watched Green Acres in 25 years?) but as always, it’s the way Wendell Berry champions those old, unsexy values of work and fidelity and discipline and the hard work of learning a craft. Which sounds very grim, but like the monastic rules, it’s the idea that through discipline comes joy. For instance: BERRY: It’s like having a milk cow. Having…
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Funny the way synchronicity works — I’ve been thinking a lot about how skills like learning to knit, or sew, or garden, or cook — skills some of our mothers (or in my case, my grandmother) discounted as being the kinds of skills that keep a girl tied to a domestic existence that stifles other opportunity — are for me a fulfilling way of refusing to cede control of my basic lifeskills to the corporate behemoths that seem to have taken over our lives. If I can sew a skirt, I’m not entirely beholden to clothes made in factories. If…
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Here it is — my first sweater. It only took me four years — well, it really only took about a month of actual knitting — I started it a couple of times and had to pull it out a couple of times but finally, it’s done. I’m wearing it now. It’s cozy and heavy and although the sleeves are a little long, it actually fits and the proportions are right — I’m going to do another one in this same pattern but using Becky Weed’s gorgeous wool she mills over at 13 Mile Ranch. This will be my locavore…
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I could see the early parts of the eclipse from my living room window, and so I watched it for a while while I sewed my sweater together (not a Franken-sweater although somehow the two front panels of the cardigan are about an inch longer than the back panel. Luckily, this one calls for a decorative crocheted edge which I’m relying on to hide such things). When it was nearly at full eclipse, I stepped outside to watch. All up and down my street there were people standing in their yards watching the eclipse. A couple of high school kids…
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Look at my new pruning saw — isn’t it beautiful? The most beautiful thing about this pruning saw is how well it works. I’d been using a hacksaw, which was really arduous, but this baby, with it’s many sharp teeth made short work of the overgrown golden plum tree, the overgrown local plum tree, and the last of the two weedy ash trees that were taking over my garage. See what I did with my new saw? It was a very productive weekend. Now let’s just hope for one of those springs we sometimes get where the weather sets up…
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My movie marathon continues, and the sweater I began in 2005 is nearly complete — to be fair, I’ve put it down for months at a time, and then pulled out whole sections, but it’s the first one I’ve ever knit. Of course, the proof will be when I put all the pieces together — will it be worth wearing or will it be a Frankenstein’s monster of a sweater? We’ll know soon … So, as the award season bears down upon us, here’s a roundup of what I’ve been watching this week: The Lives of Others: Like The Diving…
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Look at Valentine the pig — it’s not photoshopped, there was this story in the Daily Mail earlier in the week about this adorable Glouchestershire Old Spot pig who came out covered in hearts. The farmer who bred here has been breeding Old Spots for 25 years, and is pleased to see that the breed’s come back from near-extinction. My own pig project is on hold for the moment. All my partners in pig raising/curing are tied up with other projects, as am I, and so for now I’ll just have to settle for whatever non-CAFO pork I can manage…
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Here’s the poor post-op dog. There are so many staples in that leg that it looks like he’s got a zipper — he’s not really putting weight on it yet although he’s toe-touching a lot. He also seems to think that when in motion, it’s important to go everywhere as fast as he can on his three legs — I think he’s trying to outrun the leg that hurts — but it keeps following him around. He’s in pretty good spirits — bored, and occasionally making a run for it, or doing something he shouldn’t like jumping on the couch…
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It was nice out yesterday — at least for a while — it got up into the 40s, and the sun shone briefly, so I got much dog poop cleaned up, and then, as sometimes happens this time of year, the pruning bug hit me. First, I took on my plum tree — which is really a group of four or five trunks, all of which grow parallel to one another and sort of form one “tree.” The last two years I’ve had not only a huge glut of plums (these are the little local plums) but many of them…
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Sorry for the spotty posting this week — Owen-the-dog had ACL surgery on Wednesday. He’s fine. Home on the couch next to me, but in considerable pain and will have to be on-leash or in a crate for the next few weeks. And my Dad had surgery in the Czech Republic, where he lives. He’s had an odd cyst behind his ear for decades, and the doctors decided that it was time to take it out. It was in a dodgy spot with a lot of nerves, and he was nervous he’d wind up drooling for the rest of his…