Saga of the Dressed-Up Wool

I never know whether I should thank my father for the obsessive-compulsive gene he passed on to me, or if I should volunteer for gene replacement study, but sometimes obsessive determination is a wonderful characteristic to have.

I have been crocheting a lot lately (all right, compulsively).  The problem I have is I want to use beautiful yarn that is not hair-pullingly difficult to work with.  A little lumpy, but not horribly so.  Beads would be nice.  Add to that list of requirements that I should not have allergic reactions to the content.  Here, I am afraid that wool drops off the radar. But wool is so forgiving, so embracing!

*Sigh*  The truth is this:  I am in the process of crocheting the wool out of the studio.  It has to go.  But I would like to give it a nice send-off.  This is how the Saga Of The Dressed-Up Wool began. . .

On a trip to Asheville several weeks ago, I found a skein of yarn that was made of lengths (18 inches) of rather commonplace yarns knotted together.  Unlike some others of this cobbled-together yarn I have seen that was put together with outrageous fibers of multiple (and very incompatible) weights, these commonplace lengths looked as if they could be crocheted easily.  The knots would be decorative.  The weight of the yarn was a worsted one, so there was the consistency I always look for.  I also discovered that the yarn was made by a Mom and her two children, so I plunked over the $25.00 for the skein immediately (cottage industries need to be nurtured).

The skein stayed in my mind as we went on to other things in Asheville, and after a while I realized I was actively working on improving the yarn with all these mental gymnastics!  At Purl's, on Wall Street, Elizabeth so kindly gave me all the "trimmings" from the store's ball-winding station.  They are always so interesting, and there are lengths that can be used for embroidery or felting or . . . As we approached our car, it suddenly hit me that the yarn I wanted could be made by hand but it would not have to be spun, as I have no aspirations to be a spinner at this late stage of my life.  The half-bag of trimmings, some beads--- I suddenly had latched onto a way to create an interesting yarn!

Between Saturday and Sunday, I worked for about twelve hours on this project.  To describe the process, you must grant me a certain willing suspension of disbelief (Coleridge, I think).  After knotting some of the interesting yarns from the bag of trimmings from Purl's onto some hand-spun yarn, I hand-sewed seed beads, buttons, small chips of stone and quartz, other beads and trims, to a staggering 15 yards of wool yarn.  Wool?  you are asking with a puzzled look.  Yes, wool.  Wool because it does have that "forgiving" quality I mentioned, and because it can hide the carrier thread for all these gizmos I was hanging onto the yarn.  I was careful not to flap the yarn around and send up sprays of wool particles to sent my allergies on the alert again, but I did take Monday completely off to let things settle a bit both in the studio and in my imagination.

The result of this slave-labor effort is an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous yarn.  Well, to me it is a drop-dead gorgeous yarn.  It began as the yarn in the first photo up top.  These are some of the results:

If this does not make your mouth water, maybe you are reading the wrong blog.  I digress.  Forgive me.

On Monday, while I was recuperating from the yarn decorating frenzy, I did some serious thinking about what I'd done in the studio over the weekend.  This same technique would work well with the wool cord I'd made earlier, wouldn't it?  And think of the objects I could add to the list for embellishment:

• sweater-wool felted shapes
• leather shapes
• embroidered shapes
• crocheted (with small, tight yarn) shapes
• vintage trims and lace snippets
• old game pieces
• sequins
• bracelet charms
• alphabet beads
• vintage jewelry pieces

I could make that felted cord meant originally for a simple neckpiece into a marvel of ostentation . . . Yes, another project, which will also be totally unexplainable to my friends, but immensely interesting to me.  So, thank you, Daddy, for the obsessive-compulsive gene.  I would be in the throes of a really dull retirement without it.

Allergies on the Rise

9:00 a.m.:There has been too much crocheting going on in the studio (and the sunroom, where the sofa is so comfy).  From my (silly) decision to crochet all of the wool out of the studio, there are two bags of finished work waiting to be wrapped for gift-giving during The Holidays.  My body, however, systematically resists an over-dose of wool, and is now in full armor.

My first reaction was to wait until the weather changes and the autumn finally comes (which may not be until early December, at the rate of the temperatures here in the Atlanta area), but that could be a long, long time in coming.  What to do with my hands, how to stay sane until then?

I was really feeling sorry for myself this morning when I read Diana Trout's blog, here, and suddenly realized she offered a solution to the wool /idle hands crisis:  WATERCOLORS!  I put them away two months ago when I embarked on the crocheting safari, but today is to be one of perestroika!  The blue box of paints and clutch of brushes will make there appearance on the drafting table.

She has a lovely plastic pallet for mixing and storing, which is more organized than my usual habit of using a ceramic plate.  Hmmm . . . .  I wonder if watercolors will work on fabric that has been soaked in bubble jet solution?

Time to move out to the laboratory.

More to come!

Note:  6:50 p.m.:  All the while I was painting, mixing blues that drew me into the most enchanting oceans, or greens from grass too lush to dream of cutting— well, all that time, I was thinking about fabric for quilting.  Maybe the watercolors were the path to something else?

Thank you, Diana.  I have several pages of background for my sketchbook, and a postcard with a purple sun and yellow sky.  Not a bad day!

Oh, and my sinuses are improved.

Playing With Wool

Once upon a time I made a felted cord (the musician in me resists typing "chord") and embroidered it, then made two felted and embroidered endings for it, adding some loopy knitting tapes to cap things off:

This cord was felted with roving, and a long piece of crewel wool was the center of it-- just in case the cord wanted to thin out and become many pieces.  I love the result, and combine it with a scarf and another felted neckpiece I found in Asheville (center of All Things Civilized) to wear with a blue wool jacket from Fall thru early spring.

Since that time, I have often thought about the process and how to vary it, how I might create another neckpiece that would be more interesting without slipping over the line into gaudiness, and this past week I began to work in earnest on the project.

First, I crocheted a cord of a lovely pale green and lavender heather wool, but ran out of the 3-ply yarn and found nothing with which to continue it, so at 30 inches, I set it aside and rumaged through the yarn to find a continuation.  No such luck.  Anything else I could find was not the right size, and was certainly much too soft.

Then I remembered a cone of ink bottle green Harrisville wool yarn meant for weaving.  Knitting and crochet threads have been fluffed and fulled after spinning, which is what makes them so appealing in a yarn store.  Yarns spun for weaving are left tight and unwashed so they are used first to weave piece then to full (wash or wet and agitate the yarn) the woven piece.  The fulling process is like a mini felting process, and it closes up the small spaces between the yarn in the cloth.

I started a second cord with the weaving yarn.  This Harrisville wool was a two ply, thin yarn, somewhere between a size 5 and 8 perle cotton, so the crochet was fraught with moments of searching for the correct swear word to express that particular situation.  After about ten or twelve inches, I realized that I could use that irregularity to my advantage, and I began to deliberately vary the thickness of the cord.  81 inches later, I was satisfied that I had enough cord to work with.

In this picture you see the cord and some of the irregularities I mentioned.

I decided to see what would happen if I began adding wool roving and wool stitching to the cord before it was felted.  Wow!!!  This was almost sinfully delightful, stuffing parts of the cord, wrapping other sections, needle felting the roving into the crocheted body, threading an especially large tapestry needle and stitching odd, random threads over the roving and around the crochet . . .  I should make dozens of these cords for my mental health!!!  Any frustrations I may have felt over the real or imaginary conflicts in my life were resolved with the work on the cord:

Gaudy?  I couldn't have cared if this cord ended up as a drapery tie-back in a bordello,  and I could have gone on for weeks this way except for the realization that as much fun as this was, the real fun would begin after the cord was felted and ready for embellishment.  I put the two pieces of cord in a mixing bowl and poured boiling water over them and stirred for a few moments.  The smell of wet animals filled the kitchen . . .  I wrinkled my nose and stirred some more.  Some of the blue dye released (probably from the roving), but when I drained the hot water off and changed to ice water, the color set.  A second bath of boiling water was clear, and after some more stirring the wool was ready for the washing machine.

Here I should explain that I cannot felt wool by hand any more because my palms are no longer flat, thank you Mr. Arthritis.  These days, I depend upon the washer for any felting that may happen around here.

Charles was glad to donate his yard-work clothes to the cause— denim is the best thing I have found to use with wool in the washer.  Denim is high-density, tightly-woven, and unless you are dealing with designer jeans, they have a pretty hard surface.  This is the perfect substitute for hands in agitating wool.

Into the wash.  I checked once to make sure things were not tangled, and the cord was shrinking nicely.  Maybe too nicely.

Out of the washing machine, the 81" cord now measured 76 inches!  And the pitiful pale green 30" cord came in at a whopping 32 inches!  The only explanation I could think of was that the pale greencord was beautifully uniform, but almost twice as fat as the second, longer cord.  In the shrinking process, the cord became thinner, but grew two inches longer, the way children enter puberty as chubby little buttons and come out tall and willowy . . . ???

Into the dryer.  Listening to the drum bang the clothes around, I wondered if the original 81inches of crocheted cord was going to be long enough to work with after all this processing!

The final measurements:  the 81" cord that shrank to 76"  now measures 68" long.  And little shrimp cord of 30" that grew to 32" is now 31" short.  I will set little shrimp aside and think of something for it to become, but not now.  The stitching and embellishing of the long cord begins this afternoon!

Simplicity

I have been rediscovering an old friend, the straight stitch.  This renewal of interest springs from a real desire to simplify everything in my life.  Despite my love of creating stitch samplers with variations on every sort of stitch, including some I have to dig out of Grace Christie's book of almost-forgotten embroidery stitches, the simplicity of the straight stitch is both appealing and useful (Morris comes to mind here:  "beautiful and useful").

And this most recent urge to simplify was re-kindled by the subliminal at work:  a dream.  Occasionally I have a dream of an old cottage somewhere amongst trees and shadows and filtered sunlight.  The inside is pared down to the bone, and I move through the minimalist rooms and enjoy the beauty of old paint, floorboards that are patched and wonderfully imperfect, deep moldings at floors and ceiling.  The walls, singularly unadorned, are interesting in their own right, as they are painted imperfectly.

In the pale bedroom of this cottage is a bed, a low pine bookcase beside it, and a lamp.  One narrow dresser (it is a sort of blue-green and the paint is chipped) stands against a wall.  No rug covers the floor, and only a sheer white curtain hangs at the window.  There is an old quilt on the bed, faded to muted tones of blue and pink and green with a touch of yellow in flowers (I have lain against the quilt and studied it in my dreams!).  This is the room I remember in most detail, as if I go to sleep looking for a quiet place to sleep . . . ?

The dream is recurring, and each time I see a little more of the cottage.  It is so absolutely simple—it may be perfectly simple.  I wish I could live like that but I seem to have a penchant for gathering things (interesting or not) as I move along.  Everywhere I sit or lie to rest, there is a stack of books or magazines nearby.  Mug mats protect the covers of books and table tops.  Towels never hang straight in any bathroom I pass through.  Kitchens overflow with stacks of china (so that I am always prepared to feed hoards of guests) and even though there are only two of us here, my dishwasher is full every evening, sometimes even before lunch!  Messy, by definition, is me.

After this cottage comes to me in a dream, the straight stitch begins tugging at me.  I lie half-awake and think about the plainness and beauty of this stitch.  With it I can build lines, shapes, fill the shapes, create the illusion of movement and direction, layer them to create texture . . . All this with the simple in-and-out of the needle and thread through the fabric.  Choosing a color really defines the line.  Choosing the weight and type of thread defines the importance of the line.  Choosing a direction begins the unfolding of the idea.  Another form of simplicity.

I know I will never have such a beautiful, bare-bones cottage as the one I have dreamt about for years, and I also know I will continue to dream of it because it is such a clean and desirable space for my cluttered heart to grab a moment of respite.  Cultivating the straight stitch might be a way to cultivate the culture of minimalism.  And that could be a step toward simplifying myself.

Curling Bethy's Hair

What a morning!  Bethy wanted curls today, and as I had nothing else planned, we opened the Friendly Corner Beauty Parlour.  First I washed her hair, which started out in the bathtub but moved to the shower before it was over.  Then dried it and began rolling it up with my heat curlers (very old set, but they work!).  About 2/3 of the way through the rolling process, she began to sniffle.  The sniffles are the beginning of a meltdown.  It seems that she wanted the curls to appear without any work, and I had to explain to her that beauty is not a freebie.  She was so sure the Princesses in the story books got their curls without any effort at all, and I had to disabuse her of that notion.  What a terrible job for a grandmother!

By the time I had finished with the rollers, she was only on half-sniffle, so we passed the time waiting for her hair to dry completely and the curlers to do their magic by taking pictures.  There was much giggling, and I suddenly was not 63 years old anymore, and my best friend and I were in our tiny bathroom craning for space in the medicine-cabinet mirror as we tried out new hair styles-- that would have been in the 1960s!

Then, the comb-out.  I think the curlers worked rather well, wouldn't you agree?

She primped and preened in front of the mirror, then turned suddenly to me and I grabbed the camera.  Where did she learn these moves?

The child was five in April.  Honestly!  I don't think I learned to poke my arm out that way until I was about thirty!  But, of course, I still can't use an i-phone, though she says she'll help me when I get my own.

Friends

We travelled to Knoxville yesterday for the monthly Freestyle Meeting, this one at Margi's house.  Jill and I were  in charge of the food, and we planned a tea for our friends.  I made sandwiches (egg salad, carrot-ginger, and pickled okra pinwheels), and Jill brought smoked salmon with cucumber.  I made the scones, and Jill made the teacake (chocolate!) and shortbread and little pastry cups of lemon curd (homemade) with raspberries and cream.  Jill also brought her mother's teacups, a dozen of variously patterned cups and saucers that looked as if they had come straight from an elaborately carved Victorian cupboard.

Margi's house is such a neat place— a log cabin by the lake.  She has furnished it with pieces she has collected, lovely old oak for the most part, and as she is a weaver, some of her work is there.

But the nicest part of the day was not the food or china or setting, but the ten of us gathered under the beams of the living room.  We all have a common interest in some form of fiber, and during Show 'N Tell we share our latest creations to the admiring oohs and aahs of the group.  How talented each of us is, but in our own way.  The inspiration flies back and forth as ideas are laid out and expanded.  I always come home and immediately set to work on some project or another.  This time I think I will take up the crocheted scarves that I had set aside when the weather got so unbearably hot and sticky— Christmas will be here before I even realize it!  I will post photos when I get them a little farther along the way.

I think that special nurturing ability to inspire one another to try new things is one of the most admirable qualities of the friends I have.

Look at how things have grown!

I am always amazed when things that I have planted actually grow to be mature plants.  My green thumb can sometimes have some darker overtones to it.  This is the May-June photo of part of the upper right terrace:

And this is yesterday's photo:

The red plant in the center is a new color of Rudbeckia, much nicer (to me) than the orange-yellow. And the chartreuse dangling plant is Creeping Jenny.  It is not called "creeping" for no reason— it has the growth habit of a small, simpering kudzu vine.

But taken together, it's a sort of magic, isn't it?

And in the fountain, there is a little visitor:

He looks quite happy here, doesn't he?

First Fruits

The blueberries, tomatoes, and strawberries have been ripening, and Charles harvested them for us.

Snacks a-plenty!

The asparagus have passed their season, and we now see only the occasional fern coming up.  Next spring they should begin to show themselves just before the perennials make an entrance.  This should make an interesting texture.  And good food, too!

Charles' Swing

Charles wanted a swing, has wanted a swing for a long time.  We found a builder at a market in Woodstock, one who offered a six-foot wide seat-- big enough for two grandparents and two Adorables!  Last week we were able to pick up the pieces to be assembled.  Jordan was called into duty for the assembly job.

And eventually a somewhat level place was made for it.  We may have to pour footings for it, one end is a bit high off the ground and while I don't plan to look at the sky through my toes while swinging, I always fear the worst with the children, who test everything!

So, now we can sit quietly in this very over-sized swing and enjoy the garden from the upper level.  Hmmm . . . . still looks nice!

Watching The Rain

One wet day during awesome, earth-splattering deluges of rain, the Adorables were glued to the window in the sun room, taking in the spectacle.  They were most interested in the little fountain as it filled up and began to spill over.  While Ethan is wracked with sorrow over the condition of the fountain, Bethy is never too busy to pose for the camera!

Of Tea And Teapots

I have loved and collected tea pots since I was a child.  Really.  And boxes, particularly old wooden ones that originally housed candy or stationary.  But is is about tea pots and my love of the world of serving tea that I write today.

The idea of a cup of hot tea can be quite calming even before the kettle boils and the tea begins steeping.  The first thing my husband does each morning is to make me a cup of tea ("Happy Wife, Happy Life").  Charles will agree that it took some time to get the brewing time exactly right, but now he does it so well that I can't start my day without a cup of tea from him!  Dark black English breakfast tea by Twinings.

Once the day is set in motion, other teas will do— Assam, Darjeeling, Oolong, and a variety of green teas.  I make those cups myself.  To the Assam and Darjeeling I will add milk and honey and take a mug into the studio as a companion to the morning.

But in the dead of winter, when there is nothing but grey on the ground and in the sky, I sit with a beautiful teacup and saucer, sipping cup after cup of steaming amber liquid from one or another teapot from my collection.  I don't really have teapots that Lloyd's of London needs to insure, but I have my Grandmother Allen's Rockingham teapot,

along with a child's blue willow pot, and teapots to match almost all my sets of china (which are legion).  I even have three little village tea sets.  My dear friend and former sister-in-law, Cindi, gave me a pink and blue village set, and we immediately sat down and had mint tea in it.  We spent a delightful afternoon with that tea set, and it has always been on display in my home.  These village sets are worth a chapter on their own-- another post, I think.

Teapots call to me when I walk into an antique shop, and I answer automatically.  Sometimes I find a teapot with a matching sugar and creamer, though having the three pieces is not a criteria.  When we visited our friends Mary Kate and Bonnie in Monterey, Massachusetts a few years ago we naturally made the rounds of the antique shops.  I walked through the door of one shop and knew immediately that a teapot waited for me.  I moved slowly around the room filled with lovely objects, waiting for the teapot to reveal itself.  Mid-way down one wall the most gleaming piece of porcelain I have ever seen was waiting for me (you don't believe that?  Neither did Charles).  Despite its age, it looked as if it had never held steeping tea.  It is beautifully wafer-thin, and as I studied it I realized how difficult it would be for me to pour scalding water into it.  Even knowing that, I motioned to the shop owner and waited as she lifted it from its glass shelf.  It still holds my imagination, this beautifully shaped pot of classic, graceful proportions.

The creamer is delightful-- a small clutch of herbs is the perfect complement:

Another special gift was from my beautiful and witty friend, Gloria.  Shaped like a conch shell lying on one side, it is a perfect representation of Gloria's irrepressible humor, and I cannot pass by it without thinking of her.

Then there are the rice-patterned china tea pots.  This beautifully translucent porcelain has tiny rice-grain carvings cut into the piece before it is glazed.  The glaze then collects in the holes, and when it is fired, the tiny holes fill with glaze and allow the light to come through.  Lifting a rice-grained teapot is like lifting a vessel of blue and white light.

I am not the least bit snobbish in my collecting.  I enjoy inexpensive creamware and heavy stoneware, and these tea pots (small-ish and lovely to cradle in your hand) mix well with any sort of setting.

This one is a reproduction of an antique piece.  It is truly a work of art:

Fitz and Floyd created a beautiful circular pattern with this grey-and blue:

Another circular pot is an over-the-top beauty (thank you, Cindi!!!) that always gets a second glance from guests:

And these are my kitchen workhorses, used to steep pitchers of Southern table wine, "Sweet Tea":

This next tea pot falls into the category of "fun" pots.  Look at the sun detail on the yellow piece— I cannot keep from smiling when I use it (and from the chips, it has been used a good bit)!

I think, however, that Judy Brater, of Knoxville, has made the most interesting of my "fun" pots.  This one came to me through an accident of time and place.  One week when I was teaching at the Folk School, a woman walked up to me as I was filling my over-sized mug with hot water for yet another cuppa and announced, "You have my mug."  It took some back and forth and much laughter to realize that "her mug" was one she had made, and one I carried with me every time I left the house!  I told her I wished so often that she made teapots, and she said that she occasionally did, and that she had taken one recently to the Arrowmont School Gift Shop in Gatlinburg.  We were living in Knoxville at that time, so I whipped out my cell phone and called Charles.  This pot was waiting for me when I got home that next weekend (many thanks, dear husband)!

Blue and White always look pert and ready for steeping dark leaves:

These are Hall's pieces, from their Silhouette pattern.  It is, technically, a coffee pot, with a cumbersome drip apparatus that sits over the large open top, but the shape is so traditionally teapot-like that I use it that way (think summertime and iced tea on the porch/patio).  My Irish grandmother had this china.  It was a Jewel Tea collection that was sold off the back of the travelling Jewel Tea truck in the '30s and '40s.  There is even a small platter for scones and tidbits!

And both of Charles' grandmothers had Jewel Tea's Autumn Leaf pattern.  He inherited some of their pieces, which was the beginning of his collecting bug.  This is one of his Autumn Leaf Teapots:

Here is Bethy's chintz tea set, a gift from Granddad when she was only weeks old!  We use this child's set in learning the motions and manners of pouring and serving tea.  One day she can take it home with her— but first we will let Ethan grow up a little and not be so prone to break things.  I keep it in the dining room cupboard, and when she is by herself with me, she asks if we can "play tea" with it.  She very painstakingly helps to lift it from its shelf, including the little embroidered doily it sits on, then goes to the linen chest of drawers and chooses napkins for us to use (do I need to add that her choices are usually in the pink line?).

The little silver spoons, which fit this tiny set so well, are actually the miniature spoons you use with salt dips (of course I had them!):

We are using the smallest of the Portmeirion teapots to practice pouring tea (and water) into her new butterfly-patterned demitasse cups.  She will graduate from the one-cup pot to the two-cup, then to the largest of the pots.

In the basement closet are Christmas teapots, two matching the Cuthbertson Christmas China, and others that are just delightful without being a match for anything other than the spirit of the season.  I will share these with you later in the year. There is even what I call the "Thanksgiving teapot" packed away, and some small pumpkin-shaped ones!  What is a season without a special pot for celebrating?

I am a shameless collector, and there are a few teapots I still crave, though I could never, in good conscience, pay the hundreds of dollars they cost.  Royal Copenhagen's Full Lace pattern is one, and on a quiet day when nothing presses, I will look it up on line and stare at the computer screen the way a teenager stares at a picture of her first love!  Another long-distance love affair is with Belleek's famous basket weave pattern teapot with tiny shamrocks scattered sparingly near the handle.  I will confess to being weak-kneed when I find one in a shop (always new; evidently people never let these teapots out of their hands!).

So, now you are a party to one of my greatest weaknesses:  a love of all things tea-ish, for the ritual of tea with friends or family, and for the beautiful serving pieces that make the simple act of drinking a cup of tea a special event.  I hope Bethy will share that love as she grows older (especially with her British roots), and that the collection will pass to her one day.  She may not want everything I've amassed, but that's quite all right.  Remembering tea with Granmma will be enough for me.

Asparagus Fern

Charles was weeding the garden after the heavy rains of a couple of days ago (everything grew three inches overnight!), when I saw that he had cut away all the Asparagus Fern.  I was able to stop him on his way up the hill to the compost bin, and filled a large pottery pitcher with the feathery wands.  They are too soft for words!

Charles' "Man Shed"

Too much clutter in the back yard, Charles decided, and too far to walk for tools for digging and carrying and mulching.  So, the back of the Studio is becoming a tool shed for him, complete with a metal roof.  Poor oak leaf hydrangeas, enduring the building right up to the edge of their bed!  I will offer them an extra sip of hydrangea feed as a small solace for their inconvenience.

More posts of the progress of the "man shed" to come.

Another Embroidered Grid

I have been playing with the idea of grids again.  They are actually great fun to embroider— especially if they are not perfectly aligned.  Actually, much of life falls into that same category of non-perfection being more interesting than the excruciatingly perfect.  This is one I did on a doodle cloth that has been floating around the studio for some time.  You can see the blue spots on it from my spraying a bit of dye on it months ago.

After this grid was done, I immediately began to think of ways to improve the next one.  There are so many possibilities when breaking down space into small segments.

Adorables Sleep-Over

Yes, finally it happened— after almost a month of dry weather, last evening brought rain and thunder and lightning with high winds, and the Adorables, who are both frightened at the sound of thunder, spent the night with us!  Ethan, now three and a half, got up just after I'd gone to bed, and needed to be held for more than an hour.  He asked questions about thunder, lightning, where the thunder lived, what Mr. Thunder's house was like . . . .

Finally, I had to crawl into his bed with him to get him to sleep even a little bit.  This was no small trick, since his bed is the air mattress on the floor of one of the bedrooms!

The puzzle is how Bethy managed to sleep through all the booming and bright flashes of light.  She is usually quite sensitive to the thunder.  Not that I am complaining.  What would I have done with two little ones awake and scared in the middle of the night?  Charles, an indulgent grandparent, is a grump when his sleep is disturbed.  No help there!

About 3:30 a.m. I managed to crawl out of Ethan's bed.  It took almost a half hour to do this.  I have never been so happy to fall into my own bed!  Then, just before 6:30, Ethan was up.  He called for "CHUCK!!!" at the top of his voice, then walked into our room and looked me right in the eye and said he wanted me UP.  NOW.  I heard Charles chuckle beside me.  Bethy added to the swelling ranks of the bedroom.  "All right.." I looked at Charles.  "But when Grandma gets up, e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y gets up."

But the fun did not stop there.  There was the bath after breakfast.  I managed to find bubble bath and Johnson's Baby Shampoo for The Event, unrolled the bath mat, and when the tub was full of children and soapy cloths, I turned on the bath jets.  There was laughter, mounds of bubbles, splashed water— there has never been so much action in my bath!

To clean their hair was the problem, as I cannot bend over a tub for more than a minute.  In the end, I simply put them in the shower and I, fully clothed, sat down on the bench and used the hand-held spray to wash and clean the soap out of their hair.  When we got out it was hard to understand how I could be the wettest of the three.

Their mom, Julie, will come and have lunch with us, and when she leaves, this house will be sooooo quiet!  Too quiet!

Help In The Garden

Every gardener needs a little assistance once in a while.  Bethy and Ethan were helping me to water the containers this afternoon.  What they lack in ability they more than make up for in enthusiasm!

It's been a long time since I saw flowers taller than I.  I wonder what Ethan was thinking?  Look at the calculating way he is studying the stalks.  When his dad saw the photograph, he suggested Ethan was thinking of "climbing the beanstalk."  Unfortunately, he might be spot on!

The English American

I have just finished reading Alison Larkin's semi-autobiographic story of an American baby who is given up for adoption to a British couple.  At age 28 she decides to make contact with her biological parents, and the adventure of a lifetime begins.  It was a good read, funny, poignant, informative . . .

Good summer reading!