An Update on the Sock Project



Just starting the second sock of the second pair - establishing the habit.

I'm going to be one of those people who say, virtuously, "I just can't sit without doing something with my hands!"

Not only that, I plan to be a paragon of multi-tasking...

Have been listening to e-books while I knit in the evenings. I just finished C.S. Lewis's allegorical tale of the "Great Divorce" which he wrote in response to Blake's "Marriage between Heaven and Hell". Philosophically Lewis was trying to diffuse Blake's theory that all roads lead in the end to the same place, and that there was no advantage to choosing the high road over the low road. Interesting, but I'm not sure that Lewis is a shining light to today's society.

Now I am just beginning Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose". Both this book and "Wolf Willow" sat on our shelves for many years, but were victims of the Great Downsizing when we moved from the house we rattled around in and filled with the Great Accumulation that resulted from six children and sixty years of marriage.



I read both books a number of times, as well as Stegner's "Collected Stories", and look forward to knitting two, purling two while enjoying them both again.

When I scribbled down my own childhood memories I was mindful of the words Stegner used in the foreword to his Collected Stories concerning autobiography...

"I am not to be trusted with it. I hate the restrictiveness of facts. I can't control my impulse to rearrange, suppress, add, heighten, invent, and improve. Accuracy means less to me than suggestiveness; my memory is as much an inventer as a recorder."

Is this the mark of a great story-teller, and if so, what of truth????

Skywatch Friday

 

This year - a rare cloudless winter sky in the Similkameen.

January slipped in a preview of spring this past week, - I could have drowned myself with pleasure in the deepness of the blue, blue sky.

Most days this month have presented clouds and mist and drizzly rain - beautiful in their own way, but oh, how one eventually begins to yearn for sunshine!



For fascinating sky views world-wide visit Skywatch here.

ABC Wednesday

A is for Absent Minded!

The days slipped by and I got distracted, and now it is bedtime Wednesday evening, and I have just remembered about ABC Wednesday.

Oh dear.....

here to ABC Wednesday as they start a new round of the Alphabet.

And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

My dears,

I cannot let this gloomy day pass without telling you about yesterday.

It all started the night before, - towards midnight, when the little dog and I went out to attend to his business, we stepped outside into a nippy evening. The clouds had lifted, - only a few wisps clung to the mountaintops, and in the dark bowl above the stars were cold and brilliant.

I lingered a few moments, looking for the winter constellations, and dared to dream 'sunshine in the morning!'

Yes, yes, yes!!! The morning dawned with nary a cloud in the sky.

Slowly the blue of the sky deepened, - the snow along the ridges glistened, and the faintest hint of spring came tickling Old Man Winter's fancy, just for a few golden hours. The branches of the neighbour's peach trees took on an orangey glow as the sap responded to the sunshine.



The morning grass was frosted and white, but as the day wore on there were bright green patches, speaking of earthworms stirring underneath.





All day the blue sky continued to delight the winter-weary.



And there were SHADOWS - imagine, shadows....... Here is the red rose climber that was so badly injured last winter, reflecting itself against the wall.



I poked around in the Hellebores and found lovely crimson stubs, pushing their way through the rain soaked ground.

Towards sunset a few clouds began to gather, and when we woke this morning the mist was back and it was raining.



But yesterday lives on in my Journal of Gratitude.

I hope that where you are a little peek at spring comes to lift your spirits.

Hildred