Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.
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| Like The Queen Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content. |
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2 Comments:
Lovely! And I thought you were the model!! What do I know? She's wearing sunglasses....I just thought you'd let your hair grow out some... Very, very nice! Well worth all the effort! Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Wednesday, June 30, 2010 Knitting content - almost an FOHere it is, in almost all it's splendor - the Egyptian Collared cap sleeve tank top - modeled by L's daughter and looking MUCH prettier on her than it does on me. Oh to get those 20 years back again - and lose those 20 lbs.!!  I like the drape in the back too.
I'll be back and edit this with More Thoughts soon - but I wanted to show off a little today. 2 Comments:
Or, is it a really fun place to work because you're the boss, dear Bess?
Bess, Someone was talking about the new craft store at Fiber Guild last Monday. Perhaps this weekend I'll get a trip through Warsaw.
By Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Tuesday, June 22, 2010 Crazy BusyAs you all know I live in a vacation area and summer is my busy time. It's go go go all day long, especially this week, when we start up our special programs for children to keep them reading all summer long. Over the past few years this has coincided with our little town's summer festival and this year I was helping with that, as MC of the beauty pageants for just about every category of cute little child and pretty young girl you could imagine. This is small town america and every girl got a crown or a ribbon or flowers. I know there are folk who hate beauty pageants but my own condemnation is reserved for the kind of thing where mothers doll their daughters up like prostitutes and tell them to shake their booty. There is another sort of pageant that isn't too different from playing dress up - where girls put on their prettiest dresses and come show their grandma and - call me shallow - but a cute child in a pretty dress will always melt my heart. I am a true babyslut. I think they are all the prettiest. Since half of them have been through my story hour program for toddlers, they were very comfortable with me and 100% of the parents were sweethearts, though I hold out my own first place ribbon for the daddy who brought his 2 year old up on stage with balloons for all the little ones and spent the next 10 minutes leaping to the top of the tent to bring them back down, after wee hands had let them go. Talk about a melt your heart moment. Think Lake Woe-begone and you'll have an idea of what Saturday morning was like. Of course I had to take in the fair afterwards and since the weather was the ubiqutous hundred degrees in the shade that the town council must order up every year for this street fair, I was utterly wiped out on Sunday. Did nothing but eat watermelon and blueberries and drag myself from one shady spot to another. It is Hot Hot Hot here in Virginia 2010 and if we make a corn crop it will be due to genetic experimentation to make a strain that grows without water. We haven't had rain in 10 days and each of those 10 days has kissed the 100 degree mark. Even wire grass is crisping beneath this relentless sunshine. Barely back on my feet again Monday morning I had to jump in with the final preparations for the kick-off program for our summer reading club. We always start the program with a magic show, if we can find a good magician and yesterday's was a real treat. He not only managed to use books from our collection in his program, but also let slip how good he thought the collection was - an unexpected little compliment that topped off a stellar program with a capacity crowd. You know you're doing something right when you forget to put the advertisement in the local paper but still get a sell out audience. Today it's all about pirates and the audience is 6-10 year olds. There will be stories and a pirate song and a pirate craft and a treasure hunt in the library that requires reading and using the catalog. And there will be a treasure chest waiting for them when they get back to the meeting room. Tomorrow is the wee ones' story hour that goes on year around. And by golly, after that I am going to crash. At least - I plan to crash on Friday with a Spa Day in Williamsburg with my girlfriend. We are big Colonial Williamsburg fans anyway but we've been talking about doing a day at the Williamsburg Inn's Spa for almost a year now and, by golly, THIS is the week to do one. This is the package we're going for - the June Vacation for a Day. Wicked expenditure of $$ but I've been saving for it since October. It's already bought and paid for - woo woo! Oh - yes. and some of my staff and I are doing a self conducted drawing class on Monday's at noon. I work in a really really fun place. Oh. I am the boss in a really really fun place. KNITTING? you say? Of course I am knitting - though that cotton top, with only a few rounds to go till FO status, has really worn out my thumb. I will reserve cotton knitting solely for lace from now on. And I can't wait to start knitting socks, since I have several new, and newly discovered skeins of sock yarn. But the Big News is a new STORE that has opened up in Warsaw. Hear that Jayne? It's called Espe D's (no web site yet) and it's tag line is "For all your crafting needs". And the owner, Hope Jackson, dropped by the library yesterday and asked if I'd be interested in teaching knitting. Woo Woo. The answer is Yes. And there will be a picture of the Egyptian Tank Top in the next few days. Thanks to anyone out there who is reading this - because you are true friends to this wicked bad blogger. And there are Lots of Photos of the street fair on my FB page. posted by Bess | 7:13 AM 0 Comments:Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Saturday, June 12, 2010 35 Years Ago TodayI have always loved stories so it was the greatest disappointment in my young life when I started school and found I couldn't read. This was before anybody diagnosed learning disabilities in an exploding baby boomer world where good little girls who paid attention and answered questions in class were promoted anyway because there wasn't room in one class of 49 children to add another. With hope and a prayer I was promoted for 2 years while my wise kind mother coached my reading through endless horrible afternoons of School in Summer. Then suddenly, at about 8, all the neurons made the necessary new pathways in my brain and I could read. I went from not reading at all to chapter books, bypassing the easy picture books completely. And the first book I read was Laura Ingalls Wilder's LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS. I am sure if the first real book I had read was MELISSA GOES TO THE MOON I would have become a rocket scientist but instead I spent most of my childhood fantasy life wishing I, too, had been a little pioneer girl. I read those books. I wrote fan mail to the author, (who, alas, had died the year before) and I made up games about riding my covered wagon across prairies, taking my dolls and animals along with me. And I wished wished wished I'd been born in 1852 instead of 1952. I met BD in college - he had had a country upbringing and the stories he told of his adventures and freedom, and the confidence he carries with him to this day, that he gained from knowing his environment was a safe place, only cemented my belief that In The Country Is Better ... for me, at least. After a few years of city living one of us confessed to the other that we wanted to run away and live in our own little house in the big woods. And so we did. With no jobs waiting for us and no rural skills (though he always spoke so confidently about things that I believed he knew ALL about doing EVERYTHING. ) we picked a spot in rural Virginia, along the river, near where his mother had grown up. We camped in the woods for 2 months in the WWII buddy tent my father in law landed on Normandy Beach with. With hand tools and a campfire we built a cabin and cooked our meals. We had such adventures to rival Laura Ingalls Wilder herself; though there were no hostile Indians there were two escaped bank robbers "last seen walking north along Highway 17" which was scary enough to thrill the most fantasy filled mind. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights. We lost about 50 lbs between us that summer, since frequently the rain put out the cooking fire before the food was cooked and we sat in our car then, smoking cigarettes and working crossword puzzles. But slowly and surely BD built us a wee little round cabin and I learned how to bake bread in a dutch oven over a campfire. And by September we had a floor, walls and a roof AND an old wood burning cookstove he'd found in Bertha Hayes' old cow shed and brought home to me in triumph. Though I come from many many MANY generations of city dwellers, I've never once regretted the move to the country. One year later we had our darling son. Three years later I was hired by the library board to type catalog cards. 35 years later we are here in our cozy home on the banks of the river with dogs at our feet and lives that enrich us and, we hope, our community. I would love to go back and live it again, but I hardly think there's a thing I would change. Here's a photo of us, half-way through finishing that little house - with cousin Peter in between us.  and a few more  
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