Another Passing

In my life I have been fortunate to have a core group of friends whom I have known since I was twelve or thirteen years old.  Mike, Rick, Bruce, Rich, all of us with the common ground of Eby's Pines in Bristol, Indiana, and the roller skating rink where we met.  We skated together, laughed together, hung out together.  We built a litany of memories, catch-phrases, habits and stories.  Bruce was the eldest of us, and had completed his military service before I met him.  Rick, Mike, and Rich all went off to the Navy and Marine Corps in time, but they all returned to our little area when their enlistments were ended.
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There were marriages and divorces among the group, relationships made and broken, children born, parents lost.  Each time a new person cycled into the group, we all tried to welcome them with best wishes for our friends, and I'd like to think that we've remained friendly with any who have left...with one exception.  One of the guys began dating a young woman who was...ummm...'different'.  We all treated her as best we could, but there came an evening when he told the group that he'd broken up with her.  I remember the laughter that grew as one of us said, "I never really liked her, anyway," and another said, "Well, neither did I...", and another, "I was only polite to her because I thought everyone else liked her," and every one of us agreed.  The look on the guy's face as the admissions were made was priceless...and then he said, "Well, I only dated her for so long because I thought YOU GUYS all liked her!", and we dissolved into hysterical laughter.  That's real friendship!

As we went along, new friends came in and out of our little circle.  Dawn, Diane, Dara, Kenny, a few others, the Redmons, Bardos, Baileys, the Miller 'kids', and more, but the core of my group was always Mike, Rick, Bruce, Rich, Becky and then Tom and Michelle, who became as essential as the original bunch.  For awhile, several of us had MGs: Bruce and Tom each had MGBs, Mike and I had Midgets, Rick had a Morris, and we spent many hours driving, picnicking, and of course, working on the damned things, because there is always something wrong with an MG.

We had periods where we all practically lived in one another's pockets, constantly together or planning the next gathering, and too-long times, sometimes whole years, when we did not see or hear from one another at all.  The time always came, though, when we'd begin to pine for our friends, and we would make some phone calls, get together, and every time it was as if we'd been apart for only a few minutes, and we wondered how we'd managed without one another. 

Rick was the first to move away, just a couple of hours but still too far to make regular contact. Tom and Kenny moved to Florida, and I thought that my heart would break.   Mike was next, again just an hour or so, but still too far.  Bruce had very bad knees that forced him into early retirement, and then began having heart troubles that kept him at home much of the time.  Michelle went to Germany for three years.  Rich had a motorcycle accident, and spent several months healing, finances grew difficult, my sister was diagnosed with brain cancer, our son began having serious problems with his life and marriages, I found myself reeling from the deaths of my sister and two very dear friends in a fairly short time (Tom was one of those), and I pulled away, into myself, and shut out much of the outside world...including my friends.  We all grew apart once again.

One of the things that bothers me is that there are few pictures of these dear friends together.  We were all so very busy just living, being together, running our lives...and I don't think any of us thought to bring along a camera.  Tom was a photographer, as was Bruce, but cameras were rarely present when we were together.  I so wish that I had thought to capture the images of us as we were, as we are, as we have been.  I carry them in my heart, but it would be comforting to have something to hold, to be able to see those dear friends, to rest a hand aside the photo of a face that is now heartbreakingly absent, to remember the glory of our youth and the poignant beauty of our aging selves.

The last time we saw Bruce, he told us that his heart was so badly damaged that he had been put on the waiting list for a transplant.  Last Friday, his time ran out.  His heart just could not wait any longer and he passed on in the company of his sister and with none of his friends nearby.  We had let him slip from our lives these past few years, and it will be a long time before I can forgive myself for that.  He must have thought that we just did not care any more.

I am telling you today: do not waste time.  Life is short.  Love one another.  Stay in touch.  This is the singular most important thing that I have to say.  

We will miss Bruce terribly.  To those of you who remain, know that I love you all and that you are very, very precious to me.  



Good Morning!



 Well, hello there!

It's been awhile, eh?  My very slow dialup Internet has not allowed me access to updating my blog most of the summer. I'm at the library this afternoon, spending a rare weekday off sucking up some of their free WiFi. :)

It's been an interesting summer.  June and July were terribly hot and dry, August was very nice, with finally plenty of rain.  There have been reunions and dinners with friends and family, some health issues, some time spent with kids and grandkids, lots of days spent working at my little shop.

Oh, and there has been work finished on the house!  Nearly all of the hardwood flooring has been installed and finished, with more to come soon. It is turning out beautifully.

I've written many posts in my head, but they've all been forgotten now, I fear.  Here are a few of the things you've missed:



Ripe blackberries in the marsh



 

A perfect summer sky


 

A day with Robby



Toaster demolition

I was making some toast one evening, when the old toaster went POP! and tiny faerie lights began to twinkle in its darkest depths.  I thought maybe that was a bad thing for a toaster to do, so I immediately unplugged it and carried it out to the porch.  On Robby's next visit, he asked if he could take it apart...and so he did.  The grin you see here was what I got when I asked him what he thought his mom would do if he did that to her GOOD toaster?

Look at him...he is all legs and knobby joints, and he is growing so quickly I hardly know what to do. 

Flamingo Socks from the Big Bag O' Sock Yarn.  These are for me!  Many tiny balls of yarn were untangled from the great mass to make these.

Flamingo Socks





"Cinch Socks"

Cinch Socks Knit for the 2012 "Tour de Sock" and going to a friend as a gift.

I don't know when I'll be back here again. It will all depend on my dialup.  Until then, tot ziens!

 Mmmmmmm.....corn.
I love corn. I'm not crazy about summer's heat, but fresh sweet corn in season is like a gift from Heaven, as far as I'm concerned.  When I was a child growing up on the farm, my dad would plant one or two long rows of sweet corn in the middle of one of his commercial cornfields, and when the corn was ripe it was an orgy of culinary delight.  We would eat fresh-from-the-field corn on the cob several evenings a week, and Mom would try to freeze enough to last the family through the coming year.
We would drive the car out into the cornfield and begin walking the row, looking for the ripest ears. I seem to remember that we husked the corn right there in the field, throwing the husks on the ground to be ploughed back into the soil to enrich it for coming years, but I might be wrong about that.  I know that we would fill the car with corn: the trunk would be packed as well as the floor in the front and back seats, and I would ride home with a pile of golden goodness between my feet.
Back at home, Mom would set the big kettle to boil on the stove and dig out the corn cutter, a device that would remove the kernels from the cob in short order, as well as a bit of finger if she wasn't careful!  We kids would carry in the ears and pile them in great heaps that covered the kitchen table, and then we'd sit removing corn silks (did you know that every silken thread is connected to a kernel, and that if the pollen from the corn tassel does not touch the silk, the kernel won't develop?).
Once the ears were clean, they were plopped into the kettle to be blanched.   The pale butter yellow of the kernels bloomed into a rich gold.  Steam and the scent of cooking corn filled the house.  After a brief bath in the boiling water, the ears were pulled out and plunged into a sink full of cold, cold well water to halt the cooking process and then stacked on the counter to await their turn at the cutter.  Mom worked quickly to cut off the kernels and pack them into freezer boxes, then marked the containers with the contents and date and stacked them to await their long, cold rest.
When I was little, the chest freezer in our basement was always filled with meat, vegetables and fruit from our farm or from nearby orchards.  When the freezer was too full, we took the food into a locker plant in town, where we would rent a drawer to store the excess.  I never got to see the storage units, and I'm sorry now.  I'm sure they were nothing like the very cold dresser drawer that I imagined as a child!
It was such a long time ago, but I remember it so clearly and with great love.  The smell of the cornfield, the hot summer sun, the occasional sting of a corn leaf as it cut my skin.  The sound of the husks being pulled from the ears and of the cutter removing the kernels from the cobs.  My mother working so very hard to feed her husband and four children, wiping the sweat from her face, singing, chattering away as she worked. Our fingers stealing a bit of sweet, fresh-cut goodness and popping it into our mouths.  
Supper, during canning season, was often bologna sandwiches and potato chips eaten in the living room in front of the TV.  We rarely had bologna sandwiches for supper and we NEVER ate in the living room, but on those evenings, Mom was too exhausted and the kitchen was too hot for our usual farm supper.
There is a local family who grow the BEST sweet corn every summer.  Thursday evening, I stopped at their farm just as they were bringing fresh-picked ears in from the field. $4.50 for fifteen ears of sweet deliciousness!  A friend once told me that the BEST way to eat sweet corn is to take a small table, a large pot of water, a camp stove, butter and salt out to the vegetable garden.  Light the stove, bring the water to a boil and then walk into the corn rows, pick an ear, husk it, silk it, boil it and eat it, standing beside the garden.  I agree, but as I do not have a vegetable garden this year, I'll buy my corn from the Stears family, and eat as much as I can hold for as long as the season lasts.


Reunion time
 
 Robby and me in the lake at my family reunion. 

 
And now, a brief moment of whining.  I don't usually do this, I don't air my entire life online, don't live my disappointments on Facebook, but I'm just wishing.
I wish that I could have a brief period of only GOOD news, that my son could begin making some SMART decisions, that my grandkids could have safe, stable, loving lives every single day, that things could go smoothly JUST ONCE.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know 'we cannot control the wind, we can only adjust our sails' but couldn't we have just a bit of smooth sailing?  I know there are lots of folks much worse off, that I've had a fairly easy life, but....I'm tired.
sigh...
I'm ok.  I don't need hugs or prayers or good thoughts. There is nothing that anyone can do to help, I just need a bit of peace, a short period of calm, a time of rest.  A good night's sleep would help.
It's been hot and dry here, the grass in the yard is mostly brown and dormant, and we've set record-high temperatures; over 100F for several days in June and July already.  This picture was taken at 9:00 in the evening.  Rain finally came this past week, bringing cooler temps with it.  I fear that it will be too late to save some of the dry-land crops, where the corn stalks stand brown along the edges of the fields, wrapped in tightly-furled leaves.

And I close with a summer song...I do like winter best, but I love this song!

It's been awhile...

Nothing very profound to read here today.  I've written a lot of blog posts in my head while driving to and from work.  Posts about the music I'm playing on the drive, and about the obstacles I encounter along the way, and things like that.  I haven't gotten around to actually writing and posting them. I have, however, been doing a lot of knitting.

I finished these:

Finished socks early June

When we visited Tutto, the Opal sock yarn factory and store in Germany, my friend Michelle and I both bought sock yarn.  The blue-and-yellow socks are from Opal's Vincent Van Gogh collection, in the Cafe Terrasse am Abend color. It is amazing to me how evocative of the original painting they were able to make this yarn!

 I knit matching socks for both of us, using the pattern da' Treehouse by members of one of my Ravelry groups.  Mine have bumblebee buttons, Michelle's have coconut-shell buttons from my sister's sewing stash.  Cherryl loved sewing traditional style Hawaiian shirts, and the real ones always use that type of buttons.

Becky's da' Treehouse socks

Michelle's da' Treehouse socks

Denise's socks

These are for our friend Denise Johnson. Patons Kroy Socks yarn, simple rib.  Part of my promised pay-it-forward knitting from last year.  One more pair of socks and one more hat to go, then I have to begin this year's promised knitting.

Saint-Michel

These are for Michelle's daughter, Amanda.  Yarn is hand-dyed from The Dyepot, and was in my sister's yarn stash.  The pattern is Saint-Michel by Debbie O'Neill, from the Ravelry Tour de Sock group.  This was the Stage One pattern.  Oddly, the purple did not raise blisters on my fingers... (it's an inside joke)

Fields of Flowers

This pair is Fields of Flowers by Sarah Bordelon, and was the Stage 2 pattern.  Yarn was from the Big Bag O' Yarn that was given to me by Felix Zwerger at Tutto.  It was all in short pieces anywhere from two feet to several yards long. 

 

Stardust

This pattern is Stardust by Adrienne Fong, for Stage 3.  Yarn is Trekking XXL.  There are gold-lined crystal and silver-lined translucent blue beads knitted into the lace pattern.

I've begun the Stage 4 socks.  The pattern is Brave by Sarah Bordelon, and I'm using Opal again, this time in a lovely raspberry-sherbet rose color.

Robby completed Kindergarten and is now a big first-grader!  His mom invited me to come to the ceremony at his school.  

The Graduate!

Just me...

"He said, 'Bill, I believe this is killing me,'
As the smile ran away from his face..."
from Piano Man by Billy Joel


These lines have been running through my head since I awoke from a short but sound sleep a little while ago. I don't know exactly why.  I am missing dear friends and lost loved ones very badly tonight, I think.  I wonder if they know that they lie so heavily on my heart?
Ah, well, it will all be ok... :-)


I have this, though, to make me smile, and it makes me smile so wonderfully!

"Snake"

On Facebook, I captioned this:
'This is my grandson, "Snake."  He's with the band...and he thinks your granddaughter is HOT!'


And so.  I am still upright and above ground. There has been some much-needed rain.  The grass that looked so brown in this picture just a few days ago will already be greening up and ready to mow again soon.  The Climbing Blaze roses at the bakery behind my little shop are glorious in their first blossoming of the season.  The earliest of my summer flowers are out, spiderwort and lovely yellow lilies and the orange and red and pink lilies will be blooming soon.  It is, here, the most beautiful part of the summer, early June with warm days and cool nights.  
Life is good.

Lonely Socks

I have put together all of my lonely single socks and the yarn (in most cases) that I need to complete them for Ravelympics, beginning at the end of July.  These are nearly all sample socks that I knit for patterns that I designed for publication: Do the Math, City Hearts, Country Hearts, Kansas Sunflower, Indiana Leta's and Susanna's Amish Quilt Socks, Big Yellow Taxi, Crocodile Rock, Alabama Gulf Shores, North Carolina Great Smokey Mountains, Haley's Roses are all my own patterns.  For all of the state socks, there are at least two different colorways to finish, as they had already been designed and knit before Crystal Palace Yarns picked up the 50 Socks for 50 States book for publication, and they wanted the samples all re-knit in their yarns.  The Indiana socks will be a real trial, as there are THREE different colorways, two different weights of yarn, and two sizes of single socks to finish...plus they have six colors of yarn in each sock so all those ends to work in when they're done!
With Laura Andersson there are Norwegian Lace, Heather and Mist, and Treebeard.  Those were all her designs that I test-knit. 
There is the Reindeer Stocking that I tested for Cathy Hannigan, and Selbu Star and a cabled 'Death by Socks' pattern, from a couple of old Yahoo sock knitting groups.
There's a miscellaneous 'plain vanilla' pair that were started to stave off boredom and never finished.
There is an unfinished shawl in lace weight yarn, too, from my sister's stash. She'd begun it before cancer took away her ability to read.
It will be good to get at least a few of these done. In most cases I still have all the yarn I need, and in some, the needles are still in the unfinished socks.  For others, I will have to find out what I did with some of the yarn...it was pulled out to finish other projects, I fear.  At least one pair will have to be entirely ripped out, as I made a very big mistake in reading the pattern.

This is my yarn for "Tour de Sock" another Ravelry group. I put it on the swift and wound the hank into two balls Wednesday evening, then rewound them tonight to loosen them up a bit so as not to stretch the yarn.  I've finished about 3/4 of an inch of the top ribbing.  This is my first Tour de Sock.  It's a charitable knitalong to help benefit Doctors Without Borders.  The deadline for the first stage is next Friday, I think...we knit along with the various stages of the Tour de France bicycle race.  My team of five busy women is called: 

"Team 'What Finish Line???'  We're not sure where we're going, but we're making good time!"

None of us plan to win, but just to challenge ourselves.


Happy June to you all!

Choices...
I've been struggling with what to blog lately.  Everything has either felt far too personal to blog, or much too mundane.  I haven't finished any knitting, although I have several projects on the needles.  I haven't been anywhere special nor done anything very interesting.  I guess it's time for Random Thoughts.
The weather has been beautiful, sunny, warm.  
The marsh is in full green glory and things are growing so fast one must almost jump back to keep from getting knocked over. :)  
On Sunday, I picked fresh spearmint from plants we put in around the stream last summer, and dropped it into the pitcher of iced tea I was steeping. Yum!
We planted thirty-five red raspberry bushes that were given me by my cousin and his wife. Most are showing signs of growth, so we should have plenty of raspberries in the future, maybe even as early as this fall!
A flock of Canada geese visited the house this morning, coming almost to the back deck before they saw me and waddled away. There must have been at least twenty-five adults and goslings.  They spend a great deal of time in the millpond next door, but I don't often see them in the yard here.
So far this year, I've seen wild turkeys, chipmunks (we have one who can climb the four-foot-tall half-inch steel post and jump into the bird feeder, where he stuffs his cheeks full of seeds), deer, and geese in the yard.  I had to stop mowing two times Monday and wait for female snapping turtles to cross in front of me. They'd been laying their eggs.  Turtles move exceeding slowly.  I could have picked them up and moved them along, but they were snappers, after all, and I cherish my fingers.
Goldfinches, bright yellow in their summer plumage, grosbeaks, red-headed woodpeckers, cardinals, blue jays, robins, and hawks number among the birds who flit about the yard and visit the bird feeder.  I haven't seen any hummingbirds yet, but the feeder is ready to be filled and hung outside the back door for them.  I saw a mink on the little bridge across the stream!  

The Lonely Socks Club

I have this basket full of single socks.  These are samples that I knit for some of the various patterns that I designed for publication.  On Ravelry, they are celebrating the 'Ravelympics', with participants challenging themselves to complete knitting goals during the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London.  My goal, as a member of Sock Madness 6, is to knit as many of the matching socks as possible between the opening and closing ceremonies.  I put aside the yarns that I used for all of these when I designed them, so all I have to do now is put the yarn and the socks together, find copies of the patterns, and be ready for opening day!
I should be forbidden to ever trim my own bangs when they get long.  I look like the little Dutch boy on the paint cans.  Yikes.
My friend, Michelle, is now home for good and taking her terminal leave before officially retiring from the Navy. Thank you, Shelly, for your twenty-six years of service, and welcome home to the next segment of your life!
Off to work now.

Back to the Farm
I went this afternoon to visit my father at his home.  It was the first time I had been in the house since we moved the last load of our belongings out of it nearly four years ago. It was the first time I had been in the house since he and his wife moved into it, some time after we moved out.
Those of you who know me well and who know the story of the past few years will understand the meaning of that previous paragraph.  The visit went much as I thought it would.  
And that, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I have to say about that.

A motorcycle ride, a visit to a distillery, and a hat for a friend

The still room

We recently made a trip on the bike to the annual Tennessee Lunch Run at Fall Creek Falls State Park.  It was, as always, wonderful to see old friends and meet new ones. Along the way, the group with which we were riding made a stop at Woodford Reserve Distillery to see how bourbon is made.  I am not a major consumer of bourbon, but I found the buildings and the processes involved in its production very interesting.  You can click on the name of the distillery above to visit their Web site.


The buildings are all limestone, every stone hand-laid by Scottish and Irish artisans who were brought to America by the distillery owners for just that purpose.  The walls of the buildings are two feet thick, allowing the bourbon to stay at a fairly constant temperature and, the tour guide informed us, to assure that its flavor is the very best.

Steve (a.k.a. "Polecat") admires the large copper stills

I had just a camera phone in my pocket for our tour, and wish I could go back with a really good camera and a UV filter to better capture the warm beauty of the stone buildings, the oak barrels, and the copper stills.  It was a lovely, calm, and quiet place and I enjoyed the visit immensely.

Bourbon ages in barrels for at least four years

Beautiful stone walls

A barrel hoist

The barrel run allows the barrels to be rolled on a track from building to building

The scent of aging bourbon filled the air in this building.  Our guide called the fragrance "the Angels' Share", as it is considered the refinery's gift to the angels for watching over the process.  A refinery fire is a dreadful thing, indeed, and the angels must be vigilant to prevent its occurrence. 

Another view of the barrel run, and the weighing station

New oaken barrels await their contents

By state regulation, barrels may only be used one time in the bourbon-aging process.  They must be toasted and charred on the inside before filling.  After the contents are emptied, the barrels are sold for other uses, but can never be used again to make bourbon.  Woodford Reserve owns and operates their own cooperage to produce the barrels used to age their products.

Emptying the aged bourbon from the barrels so that it can be filtered, mixed, and bottled

Mill stone as wall decoration

Such craftsmanship!

After touring the grounds, we returned to the refinery gift shop where we tasted the bourbon produced at Woodford Reserve.  Several of our traveling companions purchased bottles of bourbon, but I contented myself with some bourbon-flavored caramels and praline pecans.

The trip was wonderful, as all trips are where every participant arrives home again, safe and sound.  We had fair weather for the ride there, and good company along the way. The return ride was pretty miserable though, with cold temperatures and extremely high head winds all the way from Tennessee to home.

One of my chat-room friends from North Carolina teased me until I promised to knit him a hat in Harley-Davidson colors.  The yarn was a new one to me, Berroco Vintage in red-orange and black.  It was lovely and soft to knit up into this Jacques Cousteau Hat. I had hoped to have it finished in time to deliver it at the lunch run, but had to mail it to Ken after we returned home. He has pronounced it fit to wear. : )

Diesel-Dawg's new hat

This was just pretty cool...

A couple from New York was in my shop yesterday.  They were completing their purchases and we were chatting when her cell phone beeped, alerting her to a new email message.  Their son works for National Geographic, she told me, and he was standing in front of the White House when the Space Shuttle Discovery flew over, piggybacked on its transporting 747 en route to its new home at the Smithsonian.  What a marvelous image!  Thank you, ma'am, for emailing the picture to me so that I could share it here.  

_______________________

Our great-nephew was removed from life-support yesterday.  Through his generosity and thoughtfulness in signing the donor box on his driver's license, he will make a positive change in the lives of perhaps as many as seventy-five people.  I hope that he will also make a change in the lives of the family and friends he leaves behind, healing hurts, sorrows, and petty disagreements, and bringing us all closer in his passing.  I hope as well that everyone will forget their differences and celebrate every minute of the too-short life that he lived. 

The following message was posted by Jared's father on Facebook

Status update

By Dave Yoder

Overwhelming= Understatement!

As I sit here this morning trying to take in all that you have posted for my son Jared Nathaniel Yoder and our family I am just in awe! Ive tried to "like" all that has been posted on my wall and dont mean any disrespect to anyone if I missed yours. To try and sit here and to tell each and everyone "thank you" for all your thoughts and prayers from this past week would take me several days. Just know if you prayed a prayer, if you posted kind thoughts for Jared and our family they didn't go unnoticed. Your support for Jared and our family this past week was by far greater than anything I have ever witnessed before in my life. To those of you that copied my updates this week and posted them to your walls' please do so with this as well so that I can thank everyone that posted for Jared. I am a humbled man with few words to say at this time. God Bless You and Thank You All!

Jared Nathaniel Yoder
10/5/89 - 4/17/12
ALWAYS JARED STRONG!!!!

For Jared... 

We still hope and pray for a miracle

 For A Dancer

 by Jackson Browne

Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down
I don't remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must have thought you'd always be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you're nowhere to be found

I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song I can hear playing right in my ear
That I can't sing
I can't help listening
And I can't help feeling stupid standing 'round
Crying as they ease you down
'cause I know that you'd rather we were dancing
Dancing our sorrow away
(right on dancing)
No matter what fate chooses to play
(there's nothing you can do about it anyway)

Just do the steps that you've been shown
By everyone you've ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own
No matter how close to yours
Another's steps have grown
In the end there is one dance you'll do alone

Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around
(the world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive

But you'll never know

____________________________________________________________________________

If you must leave us, then Godspeed, Jared.  We can't go with you on this journey, but we will be here for those you leave behind. 

We love you. 

 It didn't take long...

Sheets drying on the clothesline

for the sheets to get dry today!  It was a brisk and breezy perfect spring day. I prefer to dry my bedding outdoors on the clothesline whenever possible, even in winter when they freeze stiff and I have to bring them in to thaw.  I love the fragrance that they bring in with them.  Good 100%-cotton sheets dried outdoors and I have my own little touch of Heaven. :)

Kamikaze bird

 This yellow-bellied sapsucker tried to commit suicide-by-picture-window last week.  It happens here with some frequency, but this is a really LARGE bird and he made quite a SPLAT!!! when he hit the window.  I think I may have said a really bad word...

Beautiful plumage

His plumage was quite lovely, bright yellow on the edges of his feathers and on his underbelly.  He was so stunned, he let Rich pick him up and extend his wing for this picture, but you really can't see how beautiful he was.

We left him resting in the grass to gather himself.  He had flown away within thirty minutes. 

I'm BATMAN!

More happy toes

 I love my hand-knit socks! These are my latest, the Cascading Leaves pattern.

  Inch by inch, step by step...the house gets closer to being finished.  This is the beautiful hardwood floor in the upstairs landing.  The wood is a mixture of oak, maple, ash, poplar.  We left it unstained and Rich finished it with three coats of gloss polyurethane and one coat of satin poly.  It is glorious!
That cabinet at the end of the hall will have doors on it and will hold all of my sewing supplies.  I brought home an old store counter from my shop and it will sit in front of the cabinet.  My sewing machine will be up here, and maybe my treadmill.  I need to get the treadmill into the house! It has been stored in the barn, and I am ready to start walking. There is really no good place to walk along our road, the shoulder is uneven and the traffic moves quite quickly. I like to walk on a treadmill, looking out of the window and listening to a book-on-CD as I walk. I need to get more active.  The weight does not go away as quickly as I'd like, and it's time to get healthier.

Natural gems

 These are a clam shell and a wild-goose egg that were found in the woods across the road from the house.  

A very good egg!

I punctured the ends of the egg and blew out the contents.  I had hoped to take it to a Pysanky class that was being offered at the township library, but I was too late and had missed the class by the time the egg was discovered.  
On being a grandparent...
I have mentioned the German singer, Reinhard Mey, in previous posts. More than anything else, his music makes me wish that I were fluent in German, as my Google and Bing translations are just barely sufficient to show me how much I am missing in his lyrics.  I had planned to buy some of his recordings while I was visiting his country, but I spent too much money on yarn and had to come home without them.

"Es ist wie mit dem Fahrradfahren, manche Dinge verlernt man einfach nie ;-)"

He has recently become a grandfather and posted this image on his newsletter, of taking a walk with his son and pushing his new grandson in a stroller.  The caption translates roughly as "Like riding a bicycle, there are some things that one never forgets how to do." It is such an endearing image of being a grandparent, and a perfect image of a stroll in a German city, with its broad sidewalks and tree-lined avenues.  I loved my time in Germany and France.  I felt immediately 'home' there, as I never have before, I think.  
He also posted this German lullabye for anyone to download.

The title is "Die Blümelein, sie schlafen"

Die Blümelein, sie schlafen
schon längst im Mondenschein.
Sie nicken mit den Köpfen auf ihren Stengelein.
Es rütteln sich der Blütenbaum,
er säuselt wie im Traum.
Schlafe, schlafe, schlaf du, mein Kindelein!

2. Die Vögelein, sie sangen
so süß im Sonnenschein.
Sie sind zur Ruh’ gegangen
in ihre Nestchen klein.
Das Heimchen in dem Ährengrund,
es tut allein sich kund.
Schlafe, schlafe, schlafe du, mein Kindelein!

3. Sandmännchen kommt geschlichen
und guckt durchs Fensterlein,
ob irgend noch ein Liebchen
nicht mag zu Bette sein.
Und wo es nur ein Kindchen fand,
streut es ins Aug’ ihm Sand.
Schlafe, schlafe, schlaf du, mein Kindelein!


and here is my very poor Internet translation of the lyrics that I found for this instrumental piece.  Some of my brothers-in-law may remember some Deutsch from their Amish childhood. Perhaps one of you might help me with my German?


The little flowers are sleeping



The little flowers are sleeping 
long ago in the moonlight. 
They nod their heads on their little stems. 
Shake the flowering tree, 
he whispers like a dream. 
Sleep, sleep, you sleep, my little child! 
 

The birds, they sang so sweetly in the sunshine

They have gone to rest
small in their nest.
The crickets in the cornfield,
make themselves heard.
Sleep, sleep, you sleep, my little child!

The sandman comes creeping
and looks through the window,
to see if any little sweetheart
may not be in bed.
And where there was a wakeful child,
scatters his sand into its eye.
Sleep, sleep, you sleep, my little child! 


The latest update on Jared was not encouraging. Keep his family in your hearts.