Category: Prattling On

Happy Blogoversary to me

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DSC00407

My first blog post 5 years ago today was about Bluebonnets, which have once again just popped up seemingly overnight (I realize the above image is not a bluebonnet). We had a big thunderstorm and I spied about 1.5 inches in my easy reader big print rain guage… so more will be up this weekend. May be a great weekend for driving around with no plan but to stop and take pictures of anything that catches my fancy.

I named this blog after my two cats Bean and Noodle. Bean passed away that summer, but Noodle is still hanging out on the front porch on his favorite wicker chair today while I'm at work. I can't believe he is 13 this month.

I was thinking about how much has happened in just 5 years. My sister and I found our mother, lost our mother, DH and I bought our first home, managed to end up with 3 dogs, learned to knit (and discovered that I love it), ran for city council in my new hometown, was elected to city council, am presently running for re-election (unopposed), started quilting, gardening again, printing. The list goes on. I guess what I'm seeing here is that I have really grown into myself in the past five years,  though it did take me until the first half of my forties. But hey, any gardener knows, the late bloomers keep the garden interesting.

Oh, I thought it was time to finally create a new header for my blog. The cute plastic flowers and fancy edge are from Kitschy Digitals

Handmade, just not by me…

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Patterns

While I may sew a little, I am not afraid of pillowcases, elastic waist skirts, and curtains… I do not yet have the skills that these cute little numbers would require. So I am enlisting the help of a local seamstress to whip them up for me.  I battled with my inadequacy at first but hey, I'm supporting a local artisan and my local economy. Keeping it handmade and local doesn't mean I need to do it all. Need to remember that.

This morning I filed for re-election for city council… this time I actually get my name on the ballot. I ran as a write in last time. I stopped by City Hall this morning to drop off my paperwork and pay my water bill… and the city secretary gave me a pink cupcake. Small town living rocks.

Monday I fly to the Bay Area to visit my sister and her boyfriend. She's taking time off after some surgery and I so looking forward to hanging around knitting, laughing and watching a lot of movies. My kind of break! The only hard part is trying to decide on a project to start & bring on the trip. We tend to do a lot of laughing and chatting when we visit so I should keep the project easy peasy. I may end up just knitting a big tube scarf out of my cashmere, but these are some contenders…

Maybe
 

Raison pour laquelle je blogue

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Evergreen

Yesterday afternoon I went to see Julie & Julia. I went by myself, which is my preference. Years of waiting tables at night afforded me the luxury of solo matinees for years… in fact I was so spoiled by it that actually hate going to crowded movies at night. I still love to steal away in the middle of the day, it just rarely happens these days since a trip to the movies is a 50 mile round trip.

With the release of this movie there has been a lot of discussion online about the reasons people blog. Some people blog in hopes of being discovered by a literary agent or publisher and landing a fat book deal. Others blog about specific subjects and somehow become regarded as experts in the field. Some may actually have the expertise to back it, some just some experiences to share and a voice that makes people listen. Artists, designers and stylists blog because it's a super user friendly way to show their work instead of a website.

Why do I blog?

Mine is a more personal reason. I started blogging to share my life with the women in my family… most importantly my mother who I met when I was 39. Long story short… my sister and I were reunited with our mother who had put us up for adoption when I was 8 and she was 5. We had spent the three years prior to adoption with an amazing foster family, with whom we have always remained in contact. So really we had not seen my mother since I was 5, and my sister was 2. When my sister found her, we traveled to New Jersey to visit her for a week. My sister and I knew she'd been a musician and artist (my parents were folk musicians in the 60's… I was born in '65, my sister in '67). We discovered that she had been a weaver. This struck a chord with me as I had always been drawn to fibers and had no idea why. My sister shares our mother's love and talent for photography. I taught myself to knit as soon as I could. I really do knit every day, my hands crave it, my mind and spirit are recharged by it. If you're a knitter… you know exactly what I mean. I believe I am tapping into some genetic memory every time I pick up my needles and yarn to knit.

This October will be the second anniversary of Toni's passing away. We discovered she had cancer 3 years to the day we were reunited.

I won't go into much more detail because this story belongs to my sister as much as it belongs to me, and I mention it only to shed a little light on why it was so important for me to embark on, it seemed to me, the ultimate narcissistic task of taking pictures of my dogs, the paint choices on my very own kitchen wall, what was for dinner, and what I was knitting and post them online… I mean who really gives a shit if I finally finished my alpaca shawl and that after a long crappy day only the comfort of a simple roast chicken and mashed potatoes would make me feel loved? I can name three people who do. Today I realize the real reason I started blogging was to show Toni that I have a good life, I am happy, I have a wonderful husband, dogs and a cat I adore, and I am creating stuff all the time, that her decision did not destroy our lives… and I pray every day that it did not destroy hers.