28 minutes

December 9, 2015, from 4:21 p.m. to 4:49 p.m.

It was possibly the most spectacular sunset that I've ever witnessed. Photos taken on my phone, unedited.  I was mesmerized. 

beyond the summer solstice

This post was started on the solstice but I got interrupted several times and didn't get back to it.  Which, come to think of it, is actually pretty typical of how things have been going lately...

Sorry not to have been more present here.  A couple of people have asked if I am okay.  Yes, but quiet.  Listening more. Talking/writing less.  Trying to find a better balance with how I spend my time.  Less sitting.  Less on-line.

I did some eco-printing with tiny windfall leaflets off our pecan tree and have been stitching on a few of the cloths.  Not sure yet if they are a series of small cloths or if they will become components of something larger.  This one is on a piece of old linen that has been dreamy to stitch on.  I really liked the ghostly mirror image where the cloth was folded during the dyeing process and have been playing with black and white on it.

We've had an unusually wet spring/early summer.  The ground is saturated.  I can't remember ever having to wear boots into July before.  The rains delayed getting a garden planted, but everything else has been so lush.

And although I've been trying to spend less time on-line, my niece talked me into doing Instagram so I could see photos of her baby.  I've been surprised to find how much I like it.  There are a lot of artists, cloth makers, nature lovers on Instagram.  Some family members, who don't do other social media, are there.  It is fast and easy to load images and it is so easy for me to keep my phone (which has a decent camera) in my pocket, as I walk about outside.  So it seems a good fit for now, especially for the summer.  Obviously not everyone has a device that can do Instagram but you can look without being signed up if you'd like to.  I am here and I've added a button under my profile on the right side.

If you are still checking my feed after the long silence… thank you.

dogwoods ~ wordless

partial lunar eclipse

Full moon, 5:04 a.m., spooky, hand-held from my phone.

It was cold this morning so I watched from indoors.  There was a little bounce back reflection in some of my photos from shooting through the window.

We were not in the path of the total eclipse, but the sky was crystal clear.

This last shot was taken at 6:17 a.m.  Maximum eclipse occurred about 7 a.m., so by then the moon was below the horizon.

shift

This is the photo I was looking for.  From September last year.  This is how I'll best remember Izzy.  She was a tortoiseshell tabby and perfectly camouflaged for living in the woods.  There were so many times she would be right there but unseen until she moved.  A little watcher cat.

The temperature is in the 60s today and it feels so wonderful.  Last week our driveway was nearly impassible with ice and snow.  Over the last few days a pair of Canada geese have been coming in, landing on the ice, and looking around.  They should be building a nest by now.  Today the ice has receded, so hopefully they will be back.

I heard spring peepers on my way into town earlier!  The sound caught me by surprise and filled me with delight.

My eye appointment with the specialist is tomorrow.  It has been a long six week wait.

I turned off the sign-in requirement for comments, so if you've had trouble with that maybe it will help.  If spam starts coming in I will reset it.

Just about to click publish and 5 geese flew in honking……..  Hello spring.

saying good-bye

Izzy died yesterday. She was one of three feral kittens that came to live with us nearly 16 years ago. She was wary, very intelligent, not extremely affectionate, and always retained some of that wildness. She was getting more frail, nearing the end with kidney disease and I was dreading taking her to vet and having to try to medicate her. In true Izzy fashion she took matters into her own paws.  My husband found her body by the side of the road. I didn't think I'd miss her so much when the time came. I was wrong about that.

full moon

 March full moon.  Taken through the window because as the moon was rising, the temperature outside was about 15 degrees and dropping fast with the clear night sky.

It was so bright out there with moon on snow.  I took a photo of the ground through the window.  This is what the camera recorded.

I can't tweak the contrast enough to show what I actually saw (bright moonlight on snow) but below is a bit closer. These photos that look black but hold images always amaze me. They are perhaps a little like our limited vision of "reality".

the shortest month?

February 23, 2015 ~ 5:15 p.m. ~ 16 degrees F

A couple days before that, on the 21st, a freezing rain left the trees coated in ice. 

Pretty.  But very cold and hard on the foraging creatures.  The deer are eating cedar trees because they can't get to much else.  

The pond was thawed out early in the month and some Canada geese flew in and looked like they were sizing up nesting places.  It made me hopeful for spring.  The pond is frozen again and the geese left.  Hopefully they will come back.

We've had some very cold days but not a lot of snow.  It has been much worse elsewhere.  My niece lives in Boston and gave birth to her first child in between blizzards.  Winter has brought about 8 feet of snow to that area this season.

Sorry I haven't had a lot to say lately.  Not much stitching is going on, partly because I'm having an eye problem that affects fine focusing.  I knitted a hat and am working on a lace knitted scarf.  The scarf is a very soft silk/bamboo blend.  I blocked the end to see how it would lay because it was rolling in on itself a lot.  I think it will block okay.  My eye doctor has referred me to an eye specialist in St. Louis.  They are going to "probe" the ducts that are supposed to drain tears, because they are apparently blocked.  I don't think it is a serious problem, but the idea of having a probe stuck into my eyelid is a bit frightening.    And so it goes...

unfocused

December 25  ~   Geese heading south

The new year has rolled in with jumble of conflicted feelings.  I'm feeling my own mortality and a sense of urgency but it is all so unfocused at this point that I'm not sure what to make of it.  I have that feeling of standing in front of the open refrigerator, hungry, but I don't know what I want, nothing seems just right.  So I am sitting with that for now, giving myself permission to let it be what it is.

We have had only a couple of very light dustings of snow this winter but there have been spells of very cold days where the daytime highs were only in the teens. And those days brought amazing sunsets.

I'm not having many thoughts to share right now, but I do have some sunsets.

January 5

January 5

January 6

January 6

January 17

January 17

winter solstice

The shift.  And the return to growing light.

The solstice brought a beautiful sunny day in a sea of very grey days.  But weather has been mild after a November plunge into the very cold.  Last year the pond was frozen solid by now.  I'm grateful for the reflections and the wind on the water.  And I'm grateful that the days will lengthen now.

I've been wordless and unplugged for a bit.  Thank you for your companionship and comments through the past year.  

capturing

November 14, 6 a.m., looking out the window toward the west, it was 16 degrees Fahrenheit.  

There have been winters here where we don't get that low all winter long and here it is mid November.  Winter.  Here we go.

Back to this cloth.  I really like what Dana (Raven and Sparrow) said in her comment about "a lost or unacknowledged emotion, surfacing suddenly and quick to fade".  This has been pulling at me.  

I haven't had a lot of time to stitch, but here is where I am at.

 I especially like this.

When I hung it up to look at it for a while, I suddenly saw a new shadow there just above the center of the cloth.  I need to look at it for a while, but it seems want some more stitch there.  Maybe…  And then perhaps I will try to heat set the dark marks and give the cloth a swish in cool water to remove the surface dirt.  Where it goes from there I don't know yet.

It is snowing today and cold.  But there is this unexpected gift…  

A friend has a potted tree she calls a lemon eucalyptus.  She moves it outside in the summer and into her greenhouse for the winter.  To get it back inside she had to trim some branches.  And she thought of me.  Plucked the leaves off the trimmed branches, bagged them, and popped them in the freezer.  Did I want them?  Uh--Yes, please!  I probably wouldn't have frozen them.  I probably would have pressed them between newspapers until I could get to them.  But here they are.  Eucalyptus?  They smell lemony and wonderful.  I'm pouring over India Flint's "Eco Colour" book and hoping I can do something with them this week.