I had this idea about a certain cat with a ball of yarn from a piece of fabric that I’ve used to make potholders before.
I wanted to combine that gray cat and pink ball of yarn with some of the flour sack fabric that I have. They just seemed to want to be together.
But it was slow going today.
It really didn’t start to sing until I was talking to my friend Jackie on the phone and playing around with the fabric on my work table. Because I was talking I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing. It was the thinking or overthinking that got me into trouble.
So it took a while to sort out, but I feel like I have it now. Tomorrow, when I get into my studio, I’ll be ready for that gray cat with the pink ball of yarn.
By the time I got done mucking out the barn this morning the sheep all had a fine lace of snow on their backs.
Socks, Lori, Issachar and Suzy with Kim, Merricat and Constance behind them.
But it’s been snowing all day and even though they spent most of the day in the barn, by this afternoon all the sheep and the donkeys were carrying a crust of snow.
Zip is a comfortable in the snow as Zinnia is. He was nosing around the hen house but the hens weren’t coming out. By the afternoon I was watching him out my studio window as he hunted in the few inches of snow that had fallen.
Lulu and Socks
When I got back from a walk in the woods, the animals had eaten all the hay and most of them were back in the barn. Just the younger sheep, Merricat, Constance and Robin were nibbling around the feeders and eating the snow.
I spend the morning packing up Potholders and Zip Notecards for tomorrow’s mail.
I have plans for a new potholder, but I won’t be working on them until tomorrow. And I also want to get started on my Spirit Owl quilt this week. I’ve been thinking about it long enough, it’s calling to be made.
Now the sun is high on the hill across the road.
This time of day it streams through the window near my blogging chair in the corner of the living room. It lights up my snail bowl and I am forever distracted by the refracted light and glowing shells of the snails.
Is it Fanny or Lulu letting out long agonized brays? Fate, who is laying at my feet, has been emitting a short whine every few minutes. I look at the clock on the top of my computer screen but don’t really have to.
The animals know when it’s time to eat.
By the time I get back the rays from the sun will be stretching over the top of the hill, the snail tank will revert to its even gray light.
And I will take a deep breath from the bottom of my belly, giving the day over to night.
My three ramshorn snails seem very content in their new home. It’s not big, but it has what they need, clean water, a rock, and a couple of plants and a snail food every few days.
One of the ways I know they are content is that they are mating.
Ramshorn snail are hermaphrodite. When they mate both snails are fertilized and both snails lay eggs. I’ve been keeping a close watch on the snail eggs which are laid in clusters and look like a little, long lump of yellow jello. I’ve found them on the leaves of the plants, the rock and on the side of the bowl.
Ramshorn snails are excellent at procreating in the right conditions. And it seems my little snail bowl is just that.
But I don’t want more snails. The three I have are just enough and if a cluster of snails hatched, my bowl would be overrun. Then I’d have to figure out what to do with all the baby snails.
So I’ve been scraping the snail eggs off the leaves and rock when I find them.
Yesterday I spotted a cluster of eggs on the shell of one of the snails. I couldn’t’ help but think that maybe the snails laid them there intentionally. Since all their eggs keep disappearing, isn’t it safer to carry the eggs around rather them leave the alone on some rock or leaf?
I did feel a little bad scraping the eggs off the snail shell. But not bad enough not to do it.
And for all I know the snails might be happy not to have a bunch of baby snails crowding them out of their snail bowl.
You can see the eggs on the top of the snail in the bottom left corner. I wasn’t able to see them with my naked eye. It was only when I took a picture that I saw them.
The Zip Notecards are 4 1/4″x 5 1/2″. They come in a pack of six with three different images. They are $25 + $5 shipping. You can buy them here.
The Zip Notecards have arrived. Yesterday Jon and I spent the afternoon folding them and putting them into packages.
Each pack as two of each of the Zip Photos. Zip in the Snow, Zip on the Chair and Zip in the Hen House. Jon took two of the photos and I took one of them, so it’s a real collaboration.
Brad at A&M Printers did a great job of reproducing the photographs. And now they are in my Etsy Shop and ready to be sold.
Each note card is 4 1/4″x 5 1/2″. There are six cards in each pack, two of each image. Each pack of cards is $25 + $5 shipping for one or more. You can buy them in my Etsy Shop, just click here.
Jon folding the Zip notecards while I put them in the plastic sleeves with envelopes.Zip in the snowZip in the Hen HouseZip on the chair
That nibbled on bone is like one long bead. I’ve had it for a few years and finally found just the right place for it. Now it’s a part of my Blue Bailing Twine that hangs from the gate post.
I try to wait for the warmer days to tie the Bailing Twine on the post. So far the really cold days have been had lots of warm days between. So I can easily keep up with cutting the twine from the bales and tying it on the post.
The orange twine is from last years hay. I feed that to the animals on the warmer days and this years hay on the colder ones.
Merricat and Robin, with Lulu and Fanny behind them.
Suddenly there was sun. Let’s go out to the back pasture, I said to Jon, I bet the sheep and donkeys will follow us.
The mud was frozen, the wind blowing and the sky was a cloudy blue. First the twins, Asher and Issachar then Fanny and Lulu joined us. By the time we left all the sheep were grazing the dry winter grasses.
Now an hour later, the ground is covered in an icy layer of snow. A snow squall blew through with dropping temperatures and warnings on the iPhone.
Just enough snow and cold to keep the animals from grazing.
“From the time she moved up into the wing, Thea began to live a double life. During the day when the hours were full of tasks, she was one of the Kronborg children, but at night she was a different person. Her self confidence “that sturdy little companion,” assured her that “she had an appointment to meet the rest of herself sometime, somewhere. It was moving to meet her and she was moving to meet it.” The Song Of The Lark By Willa Cather
I’m reading the new biography of Willa Cather, Chasing Bright Medusas, A Life of Willa Cather by Benjamin Taylor. I never read Cather’s story, The Song of the Lark, but seeing this passage from it in Taylor’s book makes me want to.
I know that feeling she writes about, of feeling like two different people. Of wanting more than what was expected of me. Of somehow knowing that even though I was shy and insecure, that someplace inside of me I had a spark, a strength that I would someday be able to access.
As I went through life I would meet people who I admired and thought to myself, someday… someday when I’m older, I will be able to be who I really am.
And like Thea, when she was in the environment she grew up in, she couldn’t be her true self.
I wasn’t as aware of my own self confidence as Thea was, although I can remember having a vague awareness of it, glimpsing it at certain moments in my life.
Making that appointment with myself had taken a lifetime.
It’s a journey that began when I was very young, but picked up speed when I was in my early forties. It was then I realized I had arrived at my “full moon” and if I didn’t make the changes in my life soon, I would lose my chance.
My “unfulfilled moon” would start to wain.
As frightened as I was to make those changes, it was even more scary not to make them.
It has been years of spiraling movement, never a straight line, with lots of support and love from Jon and my friends, and with professional help. Always with the idea of that “appointment….sometime, somewhere.”
And now that I’m just few weeks away from being 60 years old I finally feel like I have kept that appointment. That I have met the rest of myself.
Not that it ends there. I know there are always more changes to come. But I feel like at least now I can face whatever comes with my whole self.
My Winter Marsh Potholders for sale in my Etsy Shop.
It seems so long ago that I pieced together these Potholders. It’s only been a week, but my Winter Night Potholders, with all those dark blues, overshadowed them.
They were popular and sold quickly, but these are my quieter Potholders.
Not so dramatic, they are made from the colors the I see outside my studio window. The colors of the tall grasses, woody wildflowers stalks and bushy trees that are in the marsh this time of year.
The two Potholders with the red spirals are called Red Root. Those little red spirals made me think of the energy of the first chakra. The Red Chakra, grounded in the earth.
And the opposite of that are my Falling Snow Potholders. Light as air and as gentle as a single snowflake.
All these potholders are for sale. They are $25 each + $5 shipping. You can buy them in my Etsy Shop. Just Click here.
