blurg.

I guess it'll be after we get home from the cabin that I get back to it. Maybe.

Look for me in August. :)

Oregon!

One Home

William E. Stafford (from Kansas, former Poet Laureate of Oregon)

Mine was a Midwest home—you can keep your world.
Plain black hats rode the thoughts that made our code.
We sang hymns in the house; the roof was near God.

The light bulb that hung in the pantry made a wan light,
but we could read by it the names of preserves—
outside, the buffalo grass, and the wind in the night.

A wildcat sprang at Grandpa on the Fourth of July
when he was cutting plum bushes for fuel,
before Indians pulled the West over the edge of the sky.

To anyone who looked at us we said, “My friend”;
liking the cut of a thought, we could say “Hello.”
(But plain black hats rode the thoughts that made our code.)

The sun was over our town; it was like a blade.
Kicking cottonwood leaves we ran toward storms.
Wherever we looked the land would hold us up.

*****

Anna and I are off to Oregon today for camping and family and coffee and fun. I should be back on the 19th to tell you all about it. Hope you liked poetry week. It was fun for me! :)

Kansas Poet Laureate

Door of the Grass

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

for Beth

Where to go now that all roads dissolve?

How to follow deer paths or sudden partings of

big bluestem, little bluestem, switchgrass

into the field so deep that you can no longer see the edges?

No need to answer, says the wind. Just walk.

Just stop in this surprise of clearing

where some other has stopped before you.

Listen to the careful tremble, the heavier rushing

tumbling upward and out from the tops of

bordering cottonwoods. Let it sweep back

over you. Your mind only blossom and stubble,

breaking against what you thought you knew

until it too blows free or roots deeper

into something like bedrock turning under us.

Here in the house of the grass,

wind tells the sea in you, the old stars in you too,

welcome home.

Our new U.S. Poet Laureate

One of the Lives

W. S. Merwin

If I had not met the red-haired boy whose father
had broken a leg parachuting into Provence
to join the resistance in the final stage of the war
and so had been killed there as the Germans were moving north
out of Italy and if the friend who was with him
as he was dying had not had an elder brother
who also died young quite differently in peacetime
leaving two children one of them with bad health
who had been kept out of school for a whole year by an illness
and if I had written anything else at the top
of the examination form where it said college
of your choice or if the questions that day had been
put differently and if a young woman in Kittanning
had not taught my father to drive at the age of twenty
so that he got the job with the pastor of the big church
in Pittsburgh where my mother was working and if
my mother had not lost both parents when she was a child
so that she had to go to her grandmother’s in Pittsburgh
I would not have found myself on an iron cot
with my head by the fireplace of a stone farmhouse
that had stood empty since some time before I was born
I would not have travelled so far to lie shivering
with fever though I was wrapped in everything in the house
nor have watched the unctuous doctor hold up his needle
at the window in the rain light of October
I would not have seen through the cracked pane the darkening
valley with its river sliding past the amber mountains
nor have wakened hearing plums fall in the small hour
thinking I knew where I was as I heard them fall.

Anna's Fourth Year

written for her fifth birthday May 19, 2010

She still doesn't like to drink

anything unless you

count answers

because she'll drink

you dry asking--

abstract words

will be dripping

with meaning

you've wrung into her

bucket of thoughts.

She asks to make dessert,

maybe cinnamon toast.

She tells you she's

used too much sugar

(force yourself to swallow

with a smile).

She creates and crafts

construction paper hair

for her doll, a

picture of LOST's island

for Daddy, a pillow

for Mommy imprinted

with her small hand. She

goes to pre-school and becomes

older, talking about kids you

don't know, her world bigger

than what you contain, her body

nearly too big to hold

when she sleeps,

her ingredients and ideas

beyond what you supply

(more than the love

of one person.)

She poses just how

she wants to stand

no matter what you think.

She digs her

own thoughts

in Poppa's garden,

piling up questions

like a bucket of potatoes.

--Aunt Linda

Antidote

We had to write another poem this year for the Summer Reading Program.

Antidote

One, two , three,

Four, five, six.

One, two, three,

Four, five, six.

Kick,

and pull,

and move,

and breathe,

and leave

the brain

on land.

Silly Sisters

I got up, picked out my clothes for church-jean skirt, white shirt, ooh! I'll wear my pink shoes. Fun.

Then I went to town to pick up Abby and laughed and laughed when she stepped into the car.

Luckily she thought it was funny too.

Skee-ball

Anna Sews

For Anna's birthday she got a kit to make a purse.

A PRINCESS purse.
She was very excited-she had her own needle and thread, and got to practice whip-stitching.
Here she is with the finished product-quite proud.

Thanks Kiki and Joe!

Awesome marriage advice

While blog hopping (ah, summer) I came across this amazing article; The National Marriage Project offers five tips for marital bliss. I'll excerpt the part I thought was fantastic (This is the very FIRST recommendation)

Make Your Own Homemade Goods
In 2008, national restaurant sales fell for the first time in 40 years. While unsettling for restaurateurs, this reversal reveals a promising revival of the home economy. Media reports suggest that an increasing number of Americans are growing their own vegetables and fruits, cooking their own meals at home and even sewing their own clothes.

Families who craft homemade goods may one day look back at the recession as a blessing in disguise. That’s because research shows that household production strengthens the sense of solidarity between spouses, as well as between parents and children. In short, the family that makes together stays together.

Aha! Now to convince MJL that we should make stuff instead of (or while, I'll compromise!) watching TV. :)

Mouse blanket

I found this perfectly wonderful project a couple of months ago and since it was on my Spring List to make something for myself, I settled down to make it.

In the winter, when I'm spending too much time looking at craft blogs and shopping on Etsy, my hand gets cold.
But not with my handy mouse hand blanket!

Fun and silly and perfect.

Shirt Purse

I had this shirt from Goodwill that didn't really look good on me (puffy shoulders make me feel like a football player) but I loved the color and the embroidery.

I was browsing through my delicious links, and decided to try to make this purse.

It really was not hard! I followed all of the instructions carefully (a great departure for me) and I'm so pleased with the result.

It has a lining, and nice pockets sized for my phone, and a magnetic snap.

It was a super fun project, and carrying it around and getting compliments is pretty good too. :)

Trash to...trash can

I had this nice wooden planter, then the bottom fell out, but it was still a lovely shell, so it sat on my project table for 18 months.

Then I hot-glued a nice heavy plastic sack (who can throw those away?) to the inside around the top and made Anna a new trash can!

She had re-purposed her old trash can as a wig/hat stand. (It didn't occur to me to disallow that-just thought I ought to make her a new one. Strange? probably.)

Serged tablecloth

One day at the very beginning of summer I took a deep breath and got the serger out of the box. I got it threaded, played around a bit, and then started my first simple project.

I was attempting a rolled hem around the edges of this piece of double-knit fabric from Goodwill.

New tablecloth!

Early Bird Christmas Crafting

You may have noticed my new button over there on the side. I found this the other day, while avoiding my chores. :) I started a little late, but I have made several things already this summer, so I'm not too worried.

Here's the book I made to keep track:

I really like it. It's from the outside box from a DVD (obviously), and I put large envelopes in to act as dividers for different gifting categories, and also as a spot for receipts and other bits of paper, and it has a ribbon/velcro closure which may marginally decrease the likelihood of peeking.

Whee! And yay for Christmas all the year. :)

Summer List

So here's the progress on Spring:

Spring 2010:

1. 1 Scrapbook Project. Please. (that's the magic word, right?)
2. Sarah's Birthday gift.
3. Finish Room in the basement with Matthew.
4. Plant Garden.
5. One small landscaping project.
6. Anna jammies!
7. Anna Birthday Dress.
8. Run away with Anna.
9. Make something with Jelly Rolls.
10. Make something for myself.
11. Anna hall pictures.
12. Anna 8x10's for year.
13. Anna and Grammy Rita book.
14. Video Project.

Wow, I feel great about that. Almost everything! That's the nice thing about no school. It kind of feels like cheating.

The summer list falls half in my summer and half in the beginning of the year, so I'm trying to remember that and be reasonable.

Summer 2010 List

1. Keep up with garden and trees.

2. Preserve something from garden.

3. Make something from Jelly Rolls.

4. Scrapbook Project. Thanks to a free photo book offer from Shutterfly, I made Kiki & Joe's Wedding book!! Only 3 years later. :)

5. Complete the Sew Along.

6. Make a facebook page or group or something for my students. Susan is making a page for me! Kind of cheating, but it did get done...

7. Make Christmas gifts. Also cheating a bit, I made some...

8. Go to Oregon.

9. Go to the Cabin.

10. Make Anna a First Day of School Dress.

11. Make Anna a nap mat.

12. Cabin Book

13. Anna Fans Book I got started. This is going to be an enormous project.

2 years.

"Joy is in our hearts"--Sara Groves

Click tag "My Mama" for more videos.

Luggage Tags

Anna and I each got a new pair of pants this Spring, and they both had lovely hard cardboard tags. I couldn't possibly throw those away.

So I cut some cute pictures and words and remade them into luggage tags.

I plan to write our info on them and then maybe use the heavy lamination at Staples, or maybe just let them get beat up. Luggage tags so often are lost anyway...

Notebook frenzy.

Abby sighed sweetly and smiled when I lugged in all of the paper things again.

We made lots of notebooks.

This one was a notebook Susan gave me that had a nice heavy cover and holes that matched the bind-it-all! So I cut some paper, new and recycled, and refilled it. :)

I added an envelope in the back as a pocket. I'm very pleased with this addition. Handy for coupons, etc.

My favorite part of making notebooks is that after making one (out of trash), you can use the bits of paper left over to make another one, and then another, and the good feeling of making something out of trash is exponentially increased every time.

Anna Cards

The first week of summer Anna had VBS at BCC, and so Abby and I had several evenings sans kiddo to do whatever we wanted. Which I decided was paper crafting. (It may be appropriate to say whatever I wanted, but she's a good sport). We made LOTS of things.

I saw this sometime ago, and tucked it away in my brain as a brilliant use of the artwork that accumulates. Anna Art note cards!

And then we dug unto the stash of beautiful illustrations from books that have been destroyed and made another set. Abby made these. Didn't she choose some fantastic images?

More to come!