Fountain!

The saga of my fountain is a story fraught with ups and downs, finger-nail-biting moments . . .

The "new" house came with a lovely water feature, a small three-bowl fountain in the back yard on the lower terrace, just outside the studio, and framed by the large window in the bathroom.  It was love at first sight with me.  Charles, however, saw it with other than rose-colored glasses.  He remembered ten years of the swimming pool in Smyrna.  Hard to believe, I know, but this small little pool with innocent cherubs cast into it became part of his hatred of all things water.  The fountain was set in a small pool, so he had to get down onto the ground to clear the pump in the autumn.  And it had to be drained and closed in the winter, just like the pool.  But, somehow, I was never able to completely grasp Charles' connection between a 20' x 40' swimming pool and a small verdis green fountain.

Then, last winter, the unspeakable happened:  the ground froze and heaved the fountain to one side.  Charles had tied it up so well, however, that it did not fall, and we didn't really realize what had happened until the next spring.  I thought it only needed to be re-set in its little pool, but that was not to be.  I was broken-hearted.  Charles gave an Apache war whoop and all but danced around the scene of desolation.  He had it disassembled and out of the ground before lunch.  It was with great effort that I kept him from sledging it and carrying the pieces off to the county dump-- I reminded him he would have to pay to do that, and things immediately settled down.

Because I believe that all serviceable things have a life and that the life of this lovely fountain was not yet ended, I called my friend Jill and asked if she and Joe would like a fountain for their yard.  She said yes, and I was so happy.  Joe spends all his spare time working in their yard, and it is simply the most splendid garden spot in the Knoxville area.  The back yard drops away, and he has done a remarkable job with stone there, even creating a sheltered place for a fish pond.  It is hard to carry on a conversation sensibly, there is so much distracting beauty there.

I digress.

Joe put the fountain in, and Jill and he are happy with it.  A nice ending, yes?

This left me, however, without a fountain of my own.  Discussing this with Charles has been difficult; it has been a brier patch in our existence since last spring.  Charles had one problem as the result of the passed-along fountain:  a 54" diameter hole, 2' deep, in the back yard.  It began to fill up with water when it rained, and we were afraid one of the grandchildren would fall in it.  So we planted a dogwood tree there, circling it with stone and planting dwarf zinnias within the circle.  It is lovely.

But the fountain?

Well, the fountain problem is now solved (no; I have not murdered and buried Charles on the property).  After some months of looking at small back-yard fountains, we found one that does not require a grown man to crawl about on all fours to attend it.  We were particularly attracted to this one because it is a large, low bowl on a wide base, one that will not tip and that will be a pleasant place for our two Adorables to play.   A more traditional fountain is tall, and Ethan is short enough that he would grasp the rim of the bowl and try to pull himself up--which would only have disastrous results.  I have a small bowl of beautiful green sea-glass and glass droplets that they can toss in and fish out to their hearts' content.

Now, we have a small wait-- the area for the fountain has not been finished, yet.  Two sides of the lower terrace of the back yard are mulched with layers of (from bottom to top) medium-sized stone dyed red, red mulch (that has faded to grey), and fragmented pine straw.  This brown disaster has been a thorn in my side since we purchased the otherwise quite nice house.  Warren, the young college student who does our yard for us, said he would lay stone there for us, and when the flagstones are down, the fountain will come next.  We will be able to enjoy the fountain from the sun room, and the Adorables will be able to play there in plain sight of anxious eyes.

Don't you love it when a plan comes together?

The Might Of The Laptop!

Unbelievable!  Here I am in the living room posting to my blog, just like a real 21st Century person.  I feel I have shed my medieval garb, and have gone from flowing robes and braided coif to mini skirt and punk hair, all in a single morning.

Charles so kindly purchased, and Jordan so kindly spent hours in setting up this marvelous link with the world.  I feel a little as if I have just been invited to drive a powerful new Porsche, and the engine is throbbing with impatience as I crawl down the driveway and creep onto the street, not quite sure of how to shift into low gear . . .

There are "Universal Symbol" keys aligned along the top row, and I have to smile at the misnomer.  Universal to whom?  Fortunately, if I push one key and it does strange things, I can push the key a second time and it un-stranges everything.  And the tracker pad replaces a mouse, but by swiping with one, two, or three fingers, you can scroll or enlarge or squeeze the image size.  Mercy!  Has Apple ever had such an awed and ancient user?

Now, to think of a way to get to the studio with the laptop, a cup of tea, a small basket of threads, my long grabber tool, and manage the walker, too.  The rain makes it tricky.

Wish me luck as I leap into this new world.  Charles and Jordan may have created a white-haired monster.  What if I insist on being given an i-phone for my birthday?  I keep seeing young people swiping their i-phones to get information from them, and I'm practicing my swiping as we speak.  Ah, such grace is possible here . . .

Books

It has not been a particularly active week.  A trip to the doctor was the Big Event.  You see, just before they left for England with their mum, the Adorables gave me a small gift: a virus!  I have been unable to speak for a week, now. This morning I woke up able to make a few small noises, which seems to be the harbinger of healing.  As the simple act of speaking left my throat raw and swollen, it has been unusually quiet here.  Charles has had enough of a rest, however.  When I'm 100%, I'll talk his ear off, and he'll revert to not using his hearing aid and reading uninterruptedly in the living room!  He has been something of a saint about cooking and fixing me innumerable cups of tea, however.  Thank you, dear.

I have been digging into Agatha Christie during this enforced sit-and-wait-out-the-virus business.  Miss Marple and Inspector Poirot never fail to keep the pages turning.  If I see another crossword puzzle, though, I may start to speak gibberish and have to be carted off to a quiet place with padded walls.  There have also been some newer books in my stack.  I'll make a list of these,  some you might like to read yourself.  Note:  I avoid offensive language, gratuitous sex, and forensically graphic reading, so the list may be a bit bland for many tastes.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.  Mary Ann Shaffer.  It is very moving, a look at WWII on the island of Guernsey, off the English coast.  It is one of the few newer books that actually moved me to tears.

 The Writing Circle.  Corinne Demas.  This is a type of writing that is a bit like Anita Shreeve's style, less action and more psychological drama.  Compelling, thought-provoking.

The Postmistress.  Sarah Blake.  Another WWII book that moves between a small town on the Massachusetts coast and the War in Europe as seen through the eyes of a young war correspondent (a woman) based in London.  A letter is entrusted to her . . . can't tell you the details!  This was also very good, absorbing reading.

The Thirteenth Tale.  Diane Setterfield.  I read this last year, or the year before, but it was good enough for a re-read.  Mystery, scandal, creaky old English mansion . . .

I read several of Rosamunde Pilcher's novels, particularly The Shell Seekers.  I cannot stop re-reading this book.  There are others, of course, such as September, Winter's Solstice, and Coming Home.  All have characters who settle in your heart as you progress through their stories.  None like Penelope Keeling, though, of The Shell Seekers.

I am thinking about going through the Ellis Peters series, Brother Cadfael, which I re-visit every decade of so.  All twenty of them, read like a continuous long story, are as lovely both as history as well as who-done-its.  Life in Shrewsbury Abbey can be awfully eyebrow raising!

So, there.  Books for thinking about.  And a caution:  Avoid all school-age children if you can possible manage such a thing!

Making It Work

I bought Tim Gunn's new book, the 18 golden rules book.  This inspired me to go into the studio and pick up a piece that I had enjoyed creating, but somehow got bogged down in the process and never could seem to finish.  I read his section on "Make It Work" very closely, and I was ready to go.  For a few moments, it seemed possible that I might just rescue this old idea.  But, two hours later, and amid a pile of clipped threads and a slit in the fabric from too energetically removing an appliqued piece, I have to concede that there are some things that, when the towel has been tossed in, might better be left in the "Evermore Unfinished" box.

Jan and Jean stress this same concept in their classes at Callaway.  Although the piece might not finish as the image you began with, don't throw all  those work hours away, but think of some way to keep going with it.  Improvise.  Take the risk.  And I've done that several times quite successfully.  There are some things, however, that, when they're down, picking them up months and months later with the idea of continuing the work might not be the best use of our time.  Rather than struggle on with this idea, I think I'll simply wad it up and wrap a ball around it.

Now, THAT'S Making It Work!!!

Test Driving the Walker

Charles, who must be out and about every day (it's a genetic trait; I should write about the adventures of his father and grandfather some time), proffered a trip to a bookstore and lunch at Sweet Tomato(e).  So, here I am, ready for the big outing.  I still haven't figured out how to attach a tote to the walker and make it look attractive.  That will be next week's little project.  And I probably need to do something about the crocs.  Tim Gunn calls them "hooves."

The book store, a lovely gently-read shop, had a nice selection of Agatha Christies, so I bought several for reading in the next months.  I am stockpiling good books against the more stationary times to come.

At lunch, would you believe there was another lady with a walker?  Hers was the race track model, quite unlike my more modest one.  But she had such a great attitude about her own mobility that I don't feel so badly for myself, now.  After all, I am out and about, the day is a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10, and there is always the studio for playing.

The Walker and I

I never thought I would use a walker.  Walkers are practically a fashion accessory of elderly women.  Today, however, when I could not stagger through the house and keep my balance even with my cane, I thought I'd give the walker a little whirl.  Just try it out.  See if it was really a wonderful option . . . .

Guess what?  It IS wonderful.  I actually walk in a straight line, now, and maybe a bit faster than the old cane-dependent Nancy.  Best of all, I don't list to one side like a ship taking on water, so I feel better.

Oh, well.  I guess my newest fashion accessory is Charles' walker.  Maybe I could crochet a little scarf for it, or knit booties . . .

B as in . . .

Ball.  The most basic of shapes, a circle, becomes a 3-D sphere, and from that, a child's plaything. As Morris entreated us to have only beautiful and useful things in our homes, no rubber balls for me! I have been working on these fiber balls in odd moments-- winding yarn for the centers, or using roving and felting them, or bundling up scraps of thread and fiber and shaping them into rough balls.  No limits here! I even crocheted over one of wrapped yarn in Bethany's favorite color, purple/magenta, and while she sorted buttons on the studio floor one day, I added beads (pink and purple) in a loopy ring around it. She loves anything that is pink or purple, making the color of prime importance, while the object itself is quite secondary.

Making the balls keeps my hands busy when I'm doing something mindless, like watching "Lark Rise to Candleford," or one of the Agatha Christie Mysteries. Even wrapping with fabric strips can be part of the TV experience because tearing the strips is not exactly brain surgery. And Bethy has discovered the empowerment of ripping a piece of fabric into strips. She makes it into a rich, tough-girl action that I watch without laughing, a hard thing to pull off sometimes because she makes little noises that might be the groans of athletes in training!

Right now the balls are gathered in an oversized yellow-ware bowl in the studio, but they are destined for my grandmothers' wooden biscuit bowl on a table in the house. Do you remember days when a kitchen cabinet had a shelf for a large, oval, flattish wooden bowl that had a little flour sprinkled over the inside and a sifter sitting in it? It would be taken out every morning and on Sunday afternoons and more flour added from a canister, with buttermilk, baking soda and baking powder and that inevitable daub of lard. . . . homemade biscuits, the central feature in the Southern heart-attack breakfast and Sunday Afternoon Dinner!

It is as if I have a wonderful collection in progress that I can add to forever. Think of all the different ways there must be to make interesting surfaces for spheres! Scraps of fabric sewn on in patchwork fashion, odd threads wadded and tacked in place, beaded patterns, and . . .

Birds is another B-category word.  Red Birds.  Or blue-green many-feathered birds.  Birds concerned with their breakfast, or maybe high-fliers practicing the morning aria, heady with the feel of wind and sun ruffling their feathers as they swoop through a summer day.  They queue up for breakfast at the feeder, or wait with some impatience on the edge of the petunia pot for their turn at the bird bath.  In the morning, they are quite vocal in their disdain for waiting, and occasionally one will try to hurry a bather.  When the bathing bird is large, like the oriels or the thrushes, a flap of the wing sends the wren back to his place on the side lines.  Such audacity-- like little Romans in their bath!

And boats.  Especially sail boats.  Van Gogh’s paintings of the sea and of boats is particularly interesting to me because of the texture in his work.  This little boat sails on an ocean of layered buttonhole stitches.  Seed stitches create the sky, and a flood in the Smyrna studio many years ago leached the color from the seed stitches to give some additional color to the sky (such is the fate of many a basement studio!).

And there are bees and bugs and bikes and blueberries . . . . a rather pleasant letter to start the day!

Date Is Set

Hip Surgery is scheduled for October 25, Monday. I discovered, today, that surgery has a lot of strings attached, that I will see my doctor for a physical, anesthesiologists, and cardiac people. . . At the appointment this morning, Charles asked questions and my eyes began to glaze over. TMI!!! I wanted to shout. Don't tell me anything more! I do not want to be a well-informed patient. That would give me all the information I needed to lie awake nights between now and October 25th and worry. And worry.

The house closing in Knoxville yesterday went quickly. It was a cordial sale.

Now we are starting on the kitchen. I don't have a drawer that will begin to hold my silverware. And useless base cabinets with narrow doors that don't let you get in there to find anything. Drawers-- is it possible to have too many drawers? I don't think so. It will be nice to see the boxes stacked in the basement and in a corner of the sun room opened up and things put in their proper drawers.

A as in . . .

. . . Alphabet. Alphabets have a history with embroiderers, lovely, perfectly-stitched letters that march across aging linen that is usually even weave, or very close to being evenly woven. Today many embroiderers take great pride in reproducing historic samplers. I am always an appreciative audience of these works, having tried for many years to cross-stitch an alphabet of my own and never able to do this because I belatedly discovered I have a double astigmatism! This minor bit of handicapping condition is probably the reason I clung to free-style embroidery. After a while, I even began to apply this free-style approach to alphabets. Mine were never perfectly-stitched letters that marched demurely across the fabric. Instead, they tumbled and sprawled and generally tugged at their enclosing spaces until they developed their own wills in the matter of the face they would show to the world.

My favorite source of alphabetical inspiration comes from ancient illuminated manuscripts. Images come to mind of cowled monks bent to their work in the cold, high-ceilinged scriptoriums of monastic dwellings. In my imagination they are placing mythical creatures in the over-sized initial letters of Latin words of the sacred texts they are copying. Despite the rigid discipline of monastic life, what humor they must have had to produce such delightful work! The calligraphy of the rest of the page is perfectly formed, but in the development of those ornate letters, discipline was set aside for the sheer joy of drawing and painting from their own fertile imaginations. In these minutely detailed letters executed on vellum, secular and sacred worlds come together quite beautifully.

Several years ago I embroidered an alphabet for my grandchildren. As I see Bethy in the early stages of learning her letters, however, I am not sure my off-beat style is a "good" influence on her. Maybe later on, when both she and her brother can appreciate their rough-and-ready nature, we will be able to laugh over them. True humor comes from knowing the rules well enough to break them with some sophistication.



And lest I be accused of not remembering the basics of A-B-C-ism, I include the unavoidable image of the letter "A:"

Moving Day (again)

How can moving from one place to another take so long, be so arduous? Maybe, because this Event has gone on for two years, now, it seems much more a big hairy monster than it really is. I feel as if I've been in battle with a Large Blob with several heads and more feet and tails than I can count, and when I free myself from teeth in one place, the claws have me in another. Moving is an overwhelming experience when a cane is your constant companion.

Cynthia, Ryan, and Lynn came Friday morning to our rescue and got the last of the furniture on the truck, and shortly after we arrived home, our young yard man and his assistant (Warren and Josh) came to work on the lawn and, instead, emptied the truck. Moving that loom was a job and a half! But, now there is an opportunity to have a loom set up and actually working, since this one is basically together, just need to attach the treadles and a back beam (I'm being overly-simplistic here). There is a minor problem with hanging the harnesses that I need to overcome, and cleaning it will be a full day's work. Poor thing has been neglected all the time we were in the Raccoon Valley area. My family has been alerted to the fact that we're back to scarves and table runners for all Christmases, Birthdays, and charity sales for the next few years. After that, I will have (hopefully) consumed all materials in the huge yarn cabinet and will be free to purchase new weaving yarns or to retire, permanently.

The house, of course, is suffering from the newest wave of boxes and furniture. Life is too unpredictable to rid oneself of those chairs and tables that give comfort, however, so I am committed to living with everything for the next six months or so before I call Good Will for pick-up service.

Next week we will take out the last odds and ends, clean the bathrooms, and on Thursday will leave the house for the last time. I am too tired to think of that as either good or bad at present.