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Category: Hunting and Gathering

Three Things That Make Me Smile

Yesterday was an unmitigated disaster.

But rather than dwell on that, I shall share a few happy bits.

New red birkies. These make me inordinately happy. They make me so happy that i wonder why i thought I couldn't pull off white patent birkenstocks a few summers ago. Are they still cool? Or was white a passing fad? Ooh the possibilities.

Last Friday I went to hear Tessa Lark play Michael Torke's Sky with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. I was so hungry for live music that I went even though I did not feel well, and as much as loved hearing live music, my evening was a struggle. I had not heard this piece before and I wished I had. Usually I find new music exciting — both emotionally and intellectually stimulating, but on this evening I could not connect the notes I was hearing to a pattern. It was as if some some essential part of my wiring had temporarily shorted. By Saturday I had figured out that this was a not-unheard-of effect of the particular mix of drugs I am on at the moment. For a person who considers reading and writing an essential part of her nature, as well as listening to music, this was difficult the most difficult aspect of chemo. And yet, this week, restored, I have been listening to Tessa Lark playing Sky on YouTube again and again. It is a happy piece and I am happy to have been introduced to it.

The Shady Patio. It is a bit hot at mid-day for me to spend time here now, but at the waxing and waning of the day this is where you are most likely to find me. Listening to the birds. Perhaps doing nothing at all.

May 27, 2021
Woolgathering

Somehow, it struck me this morning that it has gotten to be Thursday and my blogging has fallen into arrears despite the fact that I have been working on four, yes four, separate blog posts. It seems to have simply been that kind of week, and I am hoping, since today is cold and rainy, that I can manage to pull something together, even though I am not inclined toward tackling any of those bigger, although not really weightier, posts or projects. Instead perhaps a few small things that have brought me joy this week, not so much a coherent statement, but a gathering of various bits of fluff.

(Success! I posted to the knitting. blog, and this is now the second blog post of the day, one I intend to finish.)

Above and below are photos of the finished Autumn Vine cushion. The lower photo is the pillow in its final home with two other homemade pillows, both of which I have probably posted to this blog over the years. In the photo above you can see the error in the vertical stripe, where I miscounted once between the green and wine strips. At the time I was constantly tired and suffering from terrible back pain, so I intentionally decided not to rip back. I do love the pillow, inordinately, despite the flaw. It is not its existence so much that annoys me as the fact that it would have been easy enough to fix. I suspect there is a lesson in that.

Anyway, my apologies for the overlap today. Both of these photos were also posted over on purlsandmurmurs, along with others, as I wrote a rambling post about pillow placement and the process of finding a home for Autumn Vine. These same photos will probably show up on instagram as well, so if you follow me there you may face repetitious overload.

Yesterday was sunny and warm and I spent some time working in the garden. I planted a few remaining daffodils, which should have been planted long ago and which may or may not bloom this year. And I prepared garden beds for fava beans and peas, perhaps some spigariello and other greens. While I was outside I noticed how pretty the thyme looked in the afternoon sun.

Yes, that photo, too, was lifted from Instagram. Some thyme plants had clearly survived their first summer and winter, but this was one that I feared had died as it was all dried up and shriveled, at least until it burst into new growth. Change. How often it surprises us when we least expect it.

In the kitchen I was admiring my new oven gloves:

I bought these small sized welding gloves from Amazon in January, and they are at the moment probably my favorite kitchen tool. I have kept a pair of welding gloves by the gill for some time, but they are too large for me, and although they work when grilling, I need more manual dexterity in the kitchen. These seem to make everything easier and every time I wear them to lift some heavy pan out of the oven, or remove a hot lid from a pot, I feel like dancing around the kitchen as if I was in some kind of musical.

And while I am on the subject of small kitchen improvements, enter the bar mat. I Intended to buy this long ago, but instead was making do with a microfiber cloth, or a paper towel, or nothing under the coffee grinder and the constant little bits of ground coffee would drive me to distraction. Oh I know they are still there, and I still have to clean the mat, but somehow it feels more contained and intentional now. There are no more little bits of coffee dust skittering across the countertop and the mat is easily lifted and rinsed. It even cuts down on the noise from the grinder. Such a tiny thing, but it elevates my coffee making experience.

Small things, big joys.

February 11, 2021
Three Things Tuesday

I have been hopelessly muddled in a blog post that, if anything, is becoming more muddled as time goes on. It seems that all I can do is admit that sometimes life is more transparent than at other times, and move on to something else.

So I present a few progress notes.

1. I am still washing blanket squares. They are filthy and covered in cat hair and the process has been slow. At least until yesterday, when I made a concerted effort to move forward. I remembered the large sweater blocking board my mom had insisted I bring home the last time I saw her — at the beginning of the year. I did not know what to do with it, or where to store it so it was still in the garage. Yesterday I brought it in to the basement storage room and laid it on the floor next to my smaller gray blocking board. Although you cannot quite tell from the angle of this crude photograph, the white board has three times the blocking space as the smaller gray board. I filled it with wet blanket blocks yesterday. They are taking about 28 hours to dry in the December damp and tomorrow I will wash the last batch. This prospect sparks a little happy dance. Of course the job will not yet be done: I will have to begin the process of planning, repairing, knitting and reassembling.

2. Christmas decorations remain in flux, although truthfully I rarely get the decorating done before the third Sunday of Advent (last Sunday) as much as I always intend to do better. This year progress has been complicated by the fact that I cannot access the holiday ornaments until after I get wet blanket squares off the floor. So it will be later yet. There is still plenty of time. Christmas merely begins on Christmas Day. I always appreciate the period of preparation, of Advent, with its highs and lows, with its call toward mindfulness and care, with the knowledge that each year’s preparation will follow its own path.

This rustic tree is out. But by next weekend my grandmother’s crèche and the sparkly glass trees I purchased the year that I spent Christmas in a small apartment will be out and greenery will be up as well. I am as yet undecided about a traditional tree. The personal, the intimate, connection and kindness are what matter to me this year, including kindness to myself. I am not so much about putting up a brave front as about celebrating joy in the midst of darkness. No floodlights here, merely candles, candles whose light is warmly appreciated. A phone call or zoom, food delivered, a socially distanced glass of wine or cup of cocoa, a note, all are their own kind of lights in the darkness.

3. Surprises are still welcome. This blanket arrived. The purple of the blanket is almost exactly the purple of my couch. Poncho and Moises think it coordinates nicely with their fur. I assume, in time, all will be revealed.

And so I muddle through. I don’t think muddling is a bad thing. Just as the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, the opposite of confusion is not certainty.

December 15, 2020
A Nerd in the Kitchen

Last week I was in search of escarole. It was a commonly available ingredient when I lived in Hyde Park, available both in grocery stores and specialty markets. Not so much in Knoxville, which is a shame because I would purchase it regularly if available. I did not find any in the stores I normally frequent, and so I ventured further afield, actually finding it in a store where I once shopped regularly but had later abandoned due to increasing frustration over a steady drop in quality. I not only found the escarole, but I was pleasantly surprised that the store seemed to have turned around.

I decided it was time to reconsider my shopping trails, and so I turned to my pantry spreadsheet. Years ago, when I still lived in NY State, I would periodically do grocery store surveys, strictly for my own benefit. I would go, pantry list in hand, and compare prices, brands, and quality of the food items I routinely purchased. This was useful both from a budget perspective, and an organizational perspective, because I have apparently never been the kind of person who will buy everything in one store out of convenience, but I do need to know where to get the things I want, and how to balance price, convenience, and availability, given that time is also a commodity with its own costs.

I hadn't done a store comparison since I first moved to Knoxville, 7 years ago now. It seemed to be about time, especially since I have found myself more settled and am regularly cooking again both for others and myself. I simply took my existing spreadsheet and added a set of columns for the stores in the area, both specialty markets and grocery stores, and decided that over the next few weeks I would do a price and product comparison, thinking about where the best places are for me to shop based on availability and, yes, convenience simply because there is a cost to travel and to time, even as a retired person.

There are more stores on this list than on my first Knoxville comparison, mostly because more stores have moved to town, but also because I have moved and have grown more familiar with this area as well. Similarly, there is at least one store that may not make the list simply because the nearest branch is far enough outside my normal circle to make it uneconomical unless it has some prized ingredient that is otherwise difficult to source (doubtful).

Besides, I was already in another reorganization phase. Quite a few of the food storage containers I had purchased 5 years ago had lost their seals, and I was looking for something to replace them. I have long been a person who partially preps and repackages food into storage containers. And I have found that the effort pays in terms of both convenience and freshness, both because the repackaged items keep longer and because I am more likely to remember things I have actually worked with, as opposed to tossing them unheeded into the refrigerator. I also find I prefer to not be assaulted by branded packaging, at least for those items that can be easily repackaged.

Purchasing identical packaging is a luxury but one that brings me joy on a daily basis. Gradually, the contents of the refrigerator are being organized so that I can identify and find everything easily, although there are still a few jars on the side, awaiting an order of a specific size of storage canister/jar. This is important as I generally dislike the refrigerator in this apartment and find it difficult to use; anything that encourages me to open the refrigerator door and actually use something is a good thing.

I also started freezing extra portions of soup as I made it. This seems obvious, but I had not done it in years. I love soup, but I easily grow bored eating the same soup every day for a week. Rather than storing the soup in containers, I decided to try storing it in ziplock bags, each of which contains two servings of soup. This is also probably pretty obvious but I had never done it this way before, even thought I started packaging stock in Ziplock bags over a year ago.

The bags allow me to make a "soup file" in the freezer. The whole system makes it easier for me to see what stocks or soups I have on hand. Having soup in small quantities makes it easier to come up with a meal when I am tired and feeling uninspired. I am far more likely to use a 2-serving package of soup, than a big container of soup. And, since I love soup, and it is a convenient way to use up odd bits that would otherwise languish or go to waste, making soup is an easy feel-good activity.

I've also been engaged in a bit of a baking experiment. I made some shortbread for a friend, the traditional Scottish kind that consists of nothing but flour, butter and sugar. Although I used gluten-free flour because I won't have the other kind in my kitchen, I did use real butter even though I can't eat it. But as I worked I started to think about shortbread. Scottish shortbread is a really simple thing, simple and elegant. The recipe is a classic 321 ratio of ingredients, and the main trick is not to overwork the dough, and to cut it while warm but to wait until it fully cools before removing it from the pan.

My thoughts revolved around whether I could make a dairy-free version of shortbread using clarified butter rather than one of those dairy-free butter blends, which neither taste nor act like real butter. Hence the experiment. This last iteration was very close to perfection, but not quite. The photo above contains pieces from two batches of shortbread. Both are delicious, even if I think there is still room for improvement.

The first was using straight clarified butter, butter in which all the milk solids had been removed, and adjusting the proportions of the recipe to match the weight of the butter. It worked, but the resulting shortbread remains a little too tender and friable. It is difficult to eat without it falling into crumbs in one's fingers. Gluten-free flours do not absorb fat in the same way as wheat flour, meaning I may need to play with flour blends, or increase the protein solids which were lost in the clarification process.

In the second batch I added collagen protein to the clarified butter to replace the milk proteins that had been removed in the clarification process. This batch also tastes buttery and delicious, but it is a little too firm, and it got a little too dark. Of course collagen proteins and milk proteins are not identical, but I also realized that I made a basic miscalculation. I added protein to replace the entire weight that had been lost from the butter in the clarification process, forgetting that some of that weight loss had been due to the evaporation of water. Next time I will weigh the clarified butter and the remaining milk solids and adjust my proportions accordingly. I don't know if the water weight is important in this small of a quantity, or even if I can add water back into my clarified butter mix, to make a new emulsion, or even of that matters. It will be a couple of weeks before I can pick up this challenge again, but I am looking forward to the process.

February 4, 2019
Pretty, Pretty

Deep sigh.

Great progress has been made this week, both in my own inner well being as well on both housing fronts, the unpacking and resettling of the short-term residence, and the bigger project. At the apartment, the sewing room is almost completely unpacked. A few small items are scattered over the work tables, but there is less than an hour of work remaining before sewing machines can be set up and I can start to play.

At the house there is less of immediate interest to show. But there are great long-term plans. I've been looking at paint colors for the new library upstairs, not because we are anywhere near having walls or finishing the library, but because I happen to have carpet samples in hand. The samples have to be returned, and the rugs have not yet been ordered. Even if I were to order them today, they would not be ready by my scheduled move-in date so there is no rush, and every reason to delay, at least for a month or two, before placing an order.

I will be on blog break next week. Back on the 16th.

October 6, 2018
Transitional Spaces, Meandering Thoughts

I am sitting in my empty apartment writing this post. Why? Because it is hot out and I am not ready to go back outside. Also because my computer is here since AT&T came today to set up my internet service. Why am I writing my blog post from a mostly empty apartment? Because fiber.

The apartment is not completely empty. The laundry room is partially organized, which is good because the washer and dryer at the house have been disconnected and prepared for storage. I've brought over most of the pantry. There is an aerobed, a table, a few pots, coffee. There is a bookcase in the alcove that will become my office, and two stacks of Elfa wide single runner drawers filled with yarn. Those came because everything is sorted and labeled and cataloged and I didn't want the movers to mix things up. The wide frame that they belong in is not here yet because it will not fit in my car.

I am tired, and hot, but I am not as stiff and sore as I was. The Elfa drawers were the last big things I brought that had be be carried in front of the body, and lugging them up the stairs, even one at a time (light but still awkward) was still difficult. The simple truth is that I can't carry stuff like that. Everything else can be tossed in a sack or a duffel and carried over my shoulders or on my back. It is still tough going up the stairs, but my back is no longer sore. I huff and puff too much, and am reminded that I miss that earlier Mardel, the one who was a bit of a gym rat, who walked and bike and did furious workouts. That isn't exactly right. I miss the feeling of being capable and strong, but I don't miss being that girl, that girl who worried about what other people thought, that girl who could never believe she was somehow good enough. Now I want to be strong again just so I can do the things I want to do, and enjoy doing them. Now I know I can be strong. I can carry heavy packs up the stairs on my back, but probably couldn't carry a platter of drinks across the room. Now I can accept that I can dig the hole, that I can be tough with a pickaxe, but I can't lift the shrub that needs to go in the hole. I can dig the rocks, uproot them, but I can't carry them away. And you know what, that is all fine with me. None of us are really meant to be solitary, to be completely self-sufficient. I can do what I have to do, and if I had to move that rock I could figure out a way. Solitary gets in the way of solidarity. My skills complement other's skills. Together we turn things around.

But back to the move: I am writing at this little table, the same table I spray painted over the July Fourth holiday. It looks a little lonely in this very empty, very beige apartment, but stuff will arrive and we, the table and I, will settle in. This is not a table for big dinner parties. I could have brought my dining table. But then there would have been no room for chairs. Maybe one chair, with its back to the living room, but what fun is that? I can't imagine anything more depressing than a big dining table with only one chair, no with hope of sharing a lovingly made repast, no hope of convivial dinnertime conversation. Better a smaller table with potential. Although if four people ate here they would have to be four people who didn't mind getting entangled with others, knees touching, feet intertwined. All kinds of potential for trouble. All kind of potential for togetherness.

I'll probably just have people over for drinks and nibbles. And it does strike me as one of those funny little jokes that life plays on us that, now, moving out of my house which is good for entertaining, I suddenly am ready to entertain again. For six months I needed to pull inward and not be particularly social. It had nothing to do with the house and everything to do with me, me and my own propensity to root around in the undergrowth, stirring up the leaf-mold and things that are best left undisturbed. Oh wait. I wasn't the one that stirred the pot. But there is a lot of pot stirring going on the world right now, and a lot of turds are floating to the top. People I once thought of as wise and kind let their reactionary edges show, and burrow deeper. I realize they are often only trying to shut out the unpleasantness, but in reality they just create more cesspools, uprooting even bigger turds. Not everyone mind you, many of us are still kind. But I fear the cesspools will grow deeper and more and more sinkholes will be revealed. I fear more of us will fall in. All the more reason to gather together, to keep each other afloat. Hence parties.

But I digress. The official move is next week. First stuff for storage. Then stuff for the apartment. There are a few more things I have to get taken care of this weekend, just to make life easier for myself next week, but hopefully also to make the transition a little less stressful for Moises and Tikka. Tikka will go back and forth with me, but I've decided that it may be best for Moises if we move to the apartment tomorrow, camp out a bit before the rest of our stuff arrives. He will be upset regardless. But I am hoping he will be a little less upset than he would be at the house, with people moving his stuff around.

And I am thrilled with my small accomplishments:

The little things include my coat and wine closet. There are no closets on the main floor of my house, and no hook, or place to hang a coat either. That will be remedied when I return, but for now I am thrilled to have a convenient place to store coats, and a convenient place to store wine. I've also hung shower curtains, and I am thrilled to have a bathroom that actually has towel bars and a place for toilet paper. The previous owners of my house seem to have removed all the toilet paper holders and towel bars when they vacated the premises. Admittedly I could have replaced them. But I didn't want to spend money on towel bars when I was going to be redoing the bathrooms within a year anyway. Count me cheap, at least about some things. The truth is, I am tired of my efficient, but tiny little bathroom with no place to hang a towel. Perhaps buying a towel bar would have been cheaper than removing a wall and redoing everything, but well, I probably would have done that anyway. I'm still a Texan after all, "go big or go home" runs in my veins, but I'm not all about bigness or space, just getting it right. I'm either all in, or I'm all out. No halfsies here.

July 28, 2018
Five Things Friday

I arrived home yesterday afternoon to find the Amaryllis bulb that I had been given for Christmas had finally taken off, growing long and leggy during the five days of my absence. With the cold that followed Christmas in Knoxville, it had been frozen in a state of what felt like permanent waiting. Of course I could have turned the heat up in my house, up into the 70s, but frankly I am rarely all that cold, and I relished he idea of actually wearing my wool sweaters. I am now excited to see this Lenten Amaryllis indoors at a time when the yard is rich with lenten roses and I see the tender leaves of bulbs massing everywhere around: daffodils, hyacinths, tulips, irises, the occasional daylily. The bulbs are not so much in my yard, as I haven't really planted bulbs yet, trying mightily to stick to my one year moratorium on new plants, but the neighborhood is flush with new growth.

This morning I carted my coffee upstairs to my desk in one of the silver coffeepots I have inherited from various grandparents and aunts. This one is silver-plate, and I am using it simply because it is the first one that I pulled out of the cupboard. I've been using it for my morning coffee for a couple of weeks now. Surprisingly, it makes me happy, and has made me realize that I should really pull those silver services out of the cupboard and consider using them, perhaps even make a decision about which services and sizes and shapes would be useful in my life. It does not keep the coffee warm for hours, like the stainless carafe that is in the kitchen, but I don't really need hours, and I am thinking that a similar pot, perhaps combined with the silver samovar, which has a burner, could even be used for entertaining. Well, idle thoughts anyway.

While my mind is revolving around food and kitchens, I thought I'd also post this photo I took at French Ranges when I was in New York. One of the things I did, since I was in a city with a large selection of showrooms, was look at options for kitchens and baths, both appliances and hardware and hard surfaces. The LaCanche is my dream stove, and although this is not my model of choice, this is my color. it is still early, and there are still options and budgets, and compromises to be considered, but I think the LaCanche will remain the centerpiece of my new kitchen, however that will evolve.

After a morning talking stoves, and wandering around showrooms at 200 Lex we were tired and ready for a rest. We found our way down to Union Square Cafe, where we snagged a table at the bar and settled in for a cocktail and a leisurely lunch. I had scallop crudo and a tuna burger, ending with an espresso, although Liana, brave soul the she is, tried the new dessert on the menu. I've realized that although I love good food and nice restaurants, it was George who was more the white tablecloth, formal presentation person. I'm usually happy in the bar, where everything feels more casual but the food is just as good.

And finally, Tuesday night we went to Jacob Scharfman's recital at Juilliard. Jacob is George's cousin twice-removed, and his father, Dan, was a dear friend, whom I had been happy to get to know in our younger days, even though we had not seen each other often enough as the years passed. Jacob sang one of George's favorite songs, and I am certain he and Dan were both smiling down on this concert. which was incredible. With each work, especially the operatic selections, but also for the broadway song, I felt bereft that I couldn't hear the entire work right then, with this brilliant young man singing. I think Jacob is a young man to follow and I wish him great success. After the concert, Liana and I went for a late bite at Bar Boulud, heads and hearts still swimming with the music. Photo above courtesy of Liana Sandin.

February 16, 2018
Paris Shopping

There were no plans for shopping in Paris. And yet, shopping occurred.

Following the Dior exhibit, we stopped in the museum store. As in the museum itself, the lines were long and there was little which attracted me enough to brave the line, at least until I saw a pair of gloves. I was attracted by a pair of long burgundy gloves with interesting braided and twisted leatherwork. Alas they were too small, and they were the final pair in stock. After a brief google search for other vendors we were off, but were ultimately unsuccessful. I sent an inquiry off via email and the designer replied that she had the gloves, not in the color I saw originally, but in this deep gray, in my size, and they could be shipped to me. And so, the day after I arrived home, a package arrived. I wore the gloves the next day with a grayish green sweater. You probably can't tell much detail in the photo below.

But although I had no plans for shopping, things change. We were in Paris. It seemed our visit could not be complete without a stop at Dior Perfumes. After all Christian Dior had said "A woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting". We each sampled a fragrance or two. Liana adored hers and we went back so she could buy it. The perfume I tried, Bois d'Argent was lovely and soft, woodsy with a bit of leather and incense, but basically too soft and sweet for me. I apparently have trouble describing what I want in a perfume. Perhaps I should have gone back after we went to Serge Lutens, where we were both successful. I took a quick photo as I was leaving the store, bag on my arm.

Lutens' perfume Gris Clair had been one of my favorites for a long time, and it was the perfume that I had been wearing most days since I began wearing perfume again this past summer. In fact it is a perfume I have loved in summer heat, and Tennessee has a long hot season. It opens with a icy dryness that just makes me fee cool as I wear it, but there is also a smokiness, and a softness to it. If soft gray could be a scent this would be how I would imagine it, or if fog could be captured. But it is not a cold perfume, it warms into something soft, on me at least, maintaining that edgy mystery of lavender and a subtle warm smokiness. It lasts a long time on my skin, and at the end of the day the soft caramelized smoke remains, reminding me of that feeling of being cuddled up, wrapped in cashmere in front of a dying fire, warm and safe, enveloped. In that sense it is working well for me now for in this stage of autumnal weather, where the cool lavender echoes the cool crisp foggy mornings, accompanied by a hint of decaying leaves, warms in the afternoon sun, and fades softly into the evening.

Not surprisingly I bought another bottle of Gris Clair. But I also sampled other things. Gris Clair is not, to my mind, a winter perfume, but we don't always have severe winters here. I did not take it with me to Paris because I expected cool and damp, and it is not what I wanted to wear. So we both tried other things. The perfume I ended up surprised me initially, but not really, it was really a question of accepting multifaceted aspects of my personality. Like Gris Clair, there is a hint of darkness, of decay, but it is not decaying leaves. Muscs Kublai Khan is a different perfume altogether, much warmer, more animalic, definitely sensuous and sexy. It opens with an initial whiff of barnyard, but it is a whiff that quickly is enhanced and subsumed by rich warm and even soft aromas, yet it never completely goes away. I'm not sure this is a perfume that I would wear on a hot summer day, it would get out of hand quickly, but on a cool crisp day in paris, for a nice evening by the fire on a chilly night. I felt like myself wearing this perfume, just as I feel like myself with the scent of Gris Clair, but in a slight different way. I think that is what I have learned. I've learned I am very sensitive to and particular about scents, I like a little dirt and depth in my fragrances, some sense that there is more hidden beneath the surface. I need to like the person I become when I am wearing them, and I am not naïve enough to believe that the scent I surround myself doesn't subtly affect my sense of who I am, or what aspect of who I am I am inhabiting at that moment. I don't know if I need to indulge my inner Kublai Khan, but perhaps I do.

November 14, 2017
Not so random thoughts on a Saturday morning

I had a great time in Asheville. I do think it was the best vacation I have taken in a long time, and I was very relaxed. In fact, it probably would have served me well to stay a few days longer, and that is a big change. Just last year I was struggling with staying away more than 2 to 3 days; feeling antsy and like I needed to get home, and then not quite feeling settled when I was at home.

Perhaps that is the key, feeling settled. I feel settled and happy. Perhaps it is easier to go away because I am more settled when I come home. Perhaps being settled isn't as much about a place as it is a state of mind, of learning to accept that sometimes the world goes as we wish and sometime it doesn't, of learning to acknowledge our feelings and respect them, but then to let them go and not let them drag us into depression or anger in some situations, or into frustration or endless yearning for more or better. We never regain what we fear we lost and striving for more doesn't make us happier; often all we accomplish is creating more pain, pain in others we love. We all experience sadness, fear, anger, but how we deal with them is our own choice. Perhaps happiness is just that, acceptance. Happiness comes in embracing joy, acknowledging sadness, and living with the sure knowledge that both will come again.

Perhaps there is more to it than that. At any rate, in my brief time away I've accepted some new insights into the ways I do and do not always handle stress well. I will leave it mostly at that, simply stating that there are still things I internalize too much.

But then, I've also come to think that contradiction and struggle between striving and accepting is part of what it means to be human in much the same way we struggle between wanting to be independent and yet needing others, between creativity and safety. At time life seems to be a long lesson in finding ways to accept and let go. Sometimes we need to step aside, get away and clear our heads.

So I am happy and settled in my new house. But it really isn't about the house, although the house is not irrelevant. Part of my time in Asheville was spent at a craft fair and in galleries. The craft fair was all about things, and I suppose so is a gallery, but they can also be about seeing things differently. I was torn between not needing or wanting more things, and yet at the same time, sometimes wanting. More struggle. I am not about to disparage things in general, things can be fun, they just aren't the be all and end all.    In some ways going to craft fairs and galleries reminded me not to buy, and perhaps that inclination is worth a post of its own. But I did buy a couple of small things, one of which is pictured above. It is a necklace made of automotive springs, part of a line of jewelry made by an artist in Germany. The necklace is light, and springy, and I think it is really cool.

I bought the necklace because I simply think it is neat and interesting and pretty. But I wonder if wearing a necklace made of springs can remind me to spring back and let go.   I wonder if buying a necklace when I am thinking about being tightly wound, a necklace made of springs, can act as a talisman of sorts. I am probably just attaching too much meaning to the thing, but I suspect that even a thing can be a gateway. If, when I wear a sweater I knit I am always reminded of where I was when I was knitting, why can't something I purchased take on equal significance? The danger comes when the things become more important than the memories or ideas they represent, when the gateway becomes more important than the destination, when our talismans become more important than our connections and communities, when our small safe room becomes more important than the village that supports and nurtures us, the village that allowed us to create that room in the first place.

July 29, 2017
A Few Snippets From San Francisco.

All I can say is that I didn't intend to drag this out so long…

Here I am my first morning in San Francisco ready to go out. It is cool and I intend to walk around a while and perhaps snag myself a treat before meeting Lisa for lunch. Although you can't tell, and I forgot to take pictures during the day, the jacket is navy, and I am wearing a winey-purple tunic under it. By the time I met Lisa, the scarf was either tied to my handbag, or stuffed inside.

After admiring each other's watches I mentioned that I needed a second watch, one without a leather strap, one that I could wear working outside in the humid summer heat. I had been considering an Apple watch for some time, especially the lavender-strapped variety she had linked to in her blog. However, each time I went shopping for one in Knoxville the lavender was out of stock, and I was reluctant to order it sight unseen. And so, after a conversation-filled lunch, being only a couple of blocks away, we proceeded to the Apple Store.

The store is architecturally brilliant, and I wish I had taken more pictures, had spent more time looking at the way the store uses light and space, creating something that is both protected and open, modern yet with a respect for the past. Alas I was entranced with the process of spending money and being kitted out in my new watch.

The next day I went to the Fort Mason Center with friends to see the American Craft Council Show. We had a lovely time. I was surprised in that the show seemed smaller and quieter than I had remembered the early shows at Rhinebeck being, or the Baltimore and Atlanta shows, which I remember as being mammoth and crowded. But it has been years, and perhaps my memory is faulty. There was much to see, and I collected some cards from artists whose work I admired. The tiles pictured above reminded me of paint colors I had been looking at recently, and they also appeal to that part of me that loves old Craftsman tiles (and over-the top art nouveau tiles as well), that same part of me that still dreams of a 1920's or 1930s house.

But this necklace was the only thing I purchased. It seems there was a gray and lavender and rose gold theme going on. Two simple beads on a cord. It was the specific shapes and colors that attracted me, and its casual simplicity. The necklace is exactly the kind of simple shape I love, especially in the summer, when it feels too hot for any excess.

August 30, 2016