I admit it, I love Martha Stewart. I love her drive. I love her insane love of crafts. She had Nathan Lane on the other day making plaster of paris bunnies — it was insane. She had these plastic molds she’d clamped together with binder clips and as she was making Nathan Lane file off the rough edges he looked at her and said “Martha! People aren’t going to do this! They have lives …” and her response was “Oh yes they will.” As though she was going to come over to each and every one of our houses and…
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Here’s what I woke up to this morning — welcome to spring! It’s prettier than you can see in this photo (must invest in new camera) — that pretty spring snow that clings to each little twig. It’s still snowing as I write — nice wet spring snow that will nourish all those bulbs that are just starting to poke their little heads up.
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We’re having a real winter this year — four inches of new snow yesterday, 25 degrees and grey skies today (but at least the wind isn’t blowing). This is the first winter since I’ve lived in Montana that I’ve really wanted to jet off someplace warm for a shot of sunshine (or is it the first winter since I’ve been here that I haven’t gone to California for work?). My bulbs are just barely starting to peek up out of the ground — the last couple of winters have been so warm that they all bloomed early. The silver lining…
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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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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…
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My 97-year-old grandmother asked for an absentee ballot for the Democratic primary so she can vote for Hillary. My grandmother has never voted for a Democrat before in her life, but she wanted to “vote for that woman.” My grandmother was a crack polo player in the 1930s, when polo was a hugely popular public sport (30,000 people took the train up out from Chicago to see the 1938 East-West game, when Will Roger’s team beat the best players from the East coast). Because she was a “girl” my grandmother wasn’t allowed to play — she could play practice matches…
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My milk delivery came yesterday. The thing with buying milk from a real cow is that it’s not always the same. This week I pulled nearly a quart of cream off the top of my gallon, and the cream is thicker than it’s been before. Almost like English cream — slightly lumpy. This might be alarming except that I know my cows (well, I know my cow-lady). I took the leftover cream from last week and mixed it in with the creme fraiche I already had going (I bought a tub at the local gourmet store to use for starter).…