the winter passes

Just as there is a sense of reassurance for a child, laying against a parent's chest, to hear and feel the steady breathing and heartbeat, so there is a sense of comfort in celebrations of nature and her rhythmic movements. Tonight (10:48 pm PDT) marks another beginning, another essential shift in light versus darkness, one of only two times a year when there is an "equal" balance of daylight and nighttime. For those folks who look out their windows seeing piles and miles of snow, cheer up. Spring is officially "open for business".

heart to heart

Wishing you a pleasant day filled with peace and passion. Listening to this pleases me and reminds me how fortunate I am to have such a marvelous husband.

my true love gave to me

In the interest of creating a greener footprint on Mother Earth, achieving a more fit and strong body to contend with Father Time, and providing a pathway for mindfulness and purpose, I have been riding my bike more. But it's difficult to carry groceries, knitting, and packages. A backpack is cumbersome (and for me dangerous) with heavy items. My DH came through with the perfect solution. I have already used them for grocery shopping and package delivery to the post office.

I understand the partridge and pear tree are sold separately.

mama and papa love you

Loving, warm memories:

• It was raining the day you were born...you have always loved water.
• Shelves of rocks...amassed throughout your life...collected from river beds, hikes (usually at the beginning), ocean beaches, blasting sites, classes.
  
• An everlasting passion for books and reading.
• A singer, an actress, and an athlete.
• Zest for life, appetite for adventure.
• Steadfast and true...in friendships, in beliefs, in focus.

Happy birthday, my daughter!

half a century

Cinquante...funfzig...vijftig...fifty...


It doesn't matter what language it is written or spoken in, fifty is fifty. Yup, I've hit the half-century mark in my life.

I wonder where the time went? In my heart and in my actions, I am not this age my birth certificate professes me to be. I look in the mirror and sometimes wonder who it is that stares back at me. I am the teacher who plays basketball, hopscotch, and tether ball with her students (I didn't say I played with grace or played well...I just play). I am the mother who goes on roller coasters with her daughter or down water slides that push the shorts up the legs to the point of indecency (I don't go without an internal struggle...I don't like fast or high...but I go). I am the woman to whose house children come to play in the mud, make cookies, catch night crawlers in the garden, eat nasturtium flowers fresh off the plants, and draw master pieces with chalk on the sidewalk.

Happy birthday to me!

**Like the high school '70's look? I still shiver (and not in a good way) when I hear the words "leisure suit."

and the answer is (still) yes!

Today is our 29th anniversary of marriage. It still amazes me how much in love I am with my friend, my mate, my lover. He says I'm his "rock," but I think that we are each other's foundations.

an unveiling

The month of September has started out in a spectacular way with the arrival of several boxes over the past few days.

First, I must say a "wow" and most heart-felt thank you to my pal from KVVS, Cass. Can you just feel the softness? The deep rich color is fabulous. Pure joy at receiving this (Berroco Ultra Alpaca, color 6281):

And then came her box from Tennessee, exploding with the most delightful items (information pamphlets on the National Storytelling Festival and the Center, a pictorial map of Jonesborough, milk chocolate, playing cards with Great Smokey Mountains and Blue Ridge Mountains images, a national storytelling mug, "Storytellers Brew" coffee beans, wildflowers seed collection of the Blue Ridge Mountains, "Tennessee Fire" hot sauce, "Tennessee's Best" apple butter, Prairie Home Companion's Pretty Good Joke Book, an early American "Ring Knitter", and two magazines Blue Ridge Country (similar to Sunset in the West) and WNC: Mountain Living in Western North Carolina). I don't know how she knew that I love storytelling and incorporate these skills (not at the same level as those that attend the national festivals) in my teaching. The chocolate and coffee--divine. I can't wait to plant the seeds in my flower bed next spring. The hot sauce will be with dinner tonight, the apple butter for breakfast. The playing cards will be used regularly. Prairie Home Companion has been my weekly "me" time with the radio for over twenty years. The instructions for the ring knitter says it is the perfect size to make rope. I am so buying some hemp and giving it a try. The two magazines are brilliant. They are a magical way to see my pal's part of the country. There is an article in WNC about bluegrass music (one of my favorites). For years I have wanted to learn to play the fiddle. Between this article, and the post in a favorite blog-read of mine, I am going to have to seriously look into a fiddle with lessons! Again, thank you my virtual vacation pal. I treasure my items. This experience has shown me that Tennessee needs to be on my "to do" list of vacation spots.

Following those, two other boxes were dropped off. They had these, for my birthday (which is at the end of the month):

I can't wait to use them. No more begging my knitting pals to bring theirs to our nights-o'knitting.

Books for inspiration and expansion of my creative side:

I can hardly wait for cool weather. They are the perfect catalyst for a new project or two. Amazon is my friend.

constants and notables

Notable: I have been derelict in by duties blogging. Busy. Busy. Looking at a change for next fall makes me crazy. I have been chastised by friends and family...in a nice way but I get the point. Bear with me a couple more weeks.

Constant: There will always be enough zucchini for the family, neighborhood, co-workers, and beyond.

Notable: My daughter is amazing.

Constant: "Each particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them." That is Sir Isaac Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. Well, I do know for a fact that gravity works. The particles of matter in my knees and hands were very definitely attracted to other particles on a sidewalk in Chicago. There was force applied. The mass of concrete won the contact sport (me being the soft, squishy one of the two). Surprisingly nothing was majorly damaged (on me...who cares about the sidewalk that wasn't flat to begin with). There is not going to be a picture of this event. No one wants to see the bruise that extends from my right knee to my ankle, the cut toe that bled in a pool inside my sandal, or the scraped up palm.

Notable: The graduation was, well, like most graduations. No one can see well, the speeches are dry (for the most part), people bring infants who won't remember the event anyway but make it unpleasant for everyone around when crying commences (out of boredom and someone holding them all the time when they aren't used to being confined). I do understand that families want to be there...I commend them for the support they give. Maybe consider hiring a nanny or babysitter for the day to help so that you, too, can enjoy the celebration.

the beginning...a very good place to start

Today, Earth Day, I choose to begin my blog.

Watching the sun dance between the leaves of the wisteria this afternoon, listening to the mourning doves call their mates, smelling the freshness of the air following the rain, reminded me how fabulous our planet is, how delicate she is.

In starting this blog, I hope to add to the web of energy and life that binds us. This blog is, as the address says, a "woolgathering of yarn". Woolgathering: (noun) preoccupation, musing, reverie, wandering. Yarn: (noun) 1. tale, story, anecdote, narrative, reminiscence. 2. a long continuous length of interlocked fibers, for use in the production of (for me) knitting and weaving.

I do, as my family will attest, have a tendency to weave and wander in my stories, many times making them longer and more detailed than necessary (now at this point, those who know me well will be stopping to nod heads, roll eyes, and chuckle, maybe even scroll down the page to see how far this is going). I see an interconnectedness with all stories and life; I see the details as important.

With twists and loops, knitting creates a story using nature (wool, alpaca, mohair, silk, and qiviut **drool** --these are a few of my favorite things). The knitter lovingly touches, smells, and rubs against a cheek or between fingers, many hanks and skeins of yarn, looking for the right match of tactile sensation and color for a project. It's the foundation of the reverie of the project, the detail the needles will carry through for the coming hours, days, weeks (we won't mention those poor UFOs put on the dusty shelf in the far corner of the closet for months, abandoned, the storyline stopped, incomplete). All stewards of story have limits. The projects tell a story of love, of commitment, of strength, of travel.

The exceptional teacher takes the learning of reading and writing, of mathematics, of history, of science, and brings each to life for the child through experiential learning (experience and observation), not through drills. Learning through story, knowledge through building.

The title? Libellula -- "little book". It is the scientific name of the genus known as the dragonfly, conceived because the wings at rest remain partly open, resembling the leaves of a book-let. Blogs are a window, opened briefly, onto a piece of a person's inner-self.

I'll end my ramblings with a thought for the day, this Earth Day.

"In the end,
we will conserve only what we love,
we will love only what we understand,
we will understand only what we are taught."
--Baba Dioum