Changing of the blankets.

I've been sleeping under an electric blanket, which no longer works. I carried it along in Nov. to Ohio for a visit to my son's family, knowing I'd be sleeping in the basement. It worked great, but when I got home it wouldn't heat up (which took a couple of days for me to figure out!)

So I've kept the bedroom warmer this winter, and used a second covering at times. But now it's definitely summer, so I threw the sweet blue blanket in the wash and pulled out an old friend. For the last 10 years I had a queen size bed, but it wouldn't fit into this bedroom in this apartment when I moved here 3 years ago. So I purchased a twin size. I wish I'd at least gone for a double, because I'd gladly exchange some floor space for more bed comfort!

I spent many hours knitting this lightweight blanket. I made one for several other relations way back when. I haven't been using this for many years. The reason had to do with my last cat's claws catching in it all the time. So it's been packed away all this time, and since the cat died about 2 years ago, I guess I could try it again.

 And, no, I didn't have a pattern, but kind of made it up as I went along! It was fun.

But strangely enough, it wasn't warm enough for me after 2 night...so I've put the nice clean blue blanket back on the bed. Perhaps I'll put this knit one on top when winter comes!

Today's quote:
“To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else’s hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that ‘I’m only human’ does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.”
Casandra Brene' Brown

promises to myself

Froth of red stitches
a huge pile of knitting
which I've changed from a string
into a presence
which will be a present
for Christmas for someone special

Right now I have to keep it away from
clawing cats who love the scarf
in the way of a mouse
that they believe to be hiding
within its strands.

One will pounce for the pull
of the thread as I weave it
into the fabric I'm creating
but I quickly hide it so she
can't eat at it.  I love forming
something from the simplicity
of a beautiful skein.

Mohair, a goat wool, which
is blended with nylon and
wool and then dyed a deep
glorious pinkish red.
I'm pretty sure it's a red on the pink side
rather than orange or blue. 
But I don't trust my eyes any more
there may be cataracts that switch
red away from its true hues.
Cabmium, or Alizeran Crimson,
colors spell-check has never learned. 
The tubes of water colors are boxed up
and waiting until I again feel that
creative urge to swish a brush around on
gorgeous paper with texture in itself.

Reading Sena Jeter Naslund's
"The Fountain of St. James' Square or
Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman"...
I've become focused upon wordsmithing
and exploration of visual experiencing.
She does this to me each time I read her books.
Her brother used to sit behind me in
Choir in Tampa before he moved
back to Birmingham, and he wrote a book also.
But she is the artist. When I discoverd her novel, "Ahab's Wife,"
a window opened in my life house.

Another author who did that for me was Joe Coomer.
... a quick search of my
favorite books can't locate the one I know I own.
That's the second book I'm sure I own that is not available
upon first search.  Mmm, the many tubs of stuff that stack
along the walls and closet floor are inviting me to
look within their bellies full of treasures.

But then I will be stuck with knowing all the things
I have but don't chose to play with.  To just close the
lids again and maybe remember for a while where the
glue or the pastels are, but soon to be consumed by
a daily practice of looking at the events on this screen.

Yes the computer, the internet, all the dramas that have been
written and acted and recorded and made available for me.
Stories of fictional people, or documentaries of real ones.  History
through films, or through the myriad details of ancestry DOT com.

And taking photos of my life, or the one I might be having if I
weren't busy writing about it here on blogs...and going to the studio
because they are people, and there is clay, and there is a
relationship I have with them both.

So this little soliloquy is now over.