Thoughts of the day.

days of winter

Published on February 21, 2022March 31, 2025 by Jen4 Comments

Lemon loaves, coffee, and longing for something new and exciting, but I stay in the tried and true. I sit and knit and ponder too much, however I do try to break with walks, genuine attempts to better myself. I’m moody a lot these days, but I suspect its the state of the world, not necessarily within myself. Not a drop of rain here since early January (maybe? I can’t remember) and for the whole month of February, its been mostly sunny clear skies, you could say even relatively warm, languishing as the winter days flirt with a sort of springtime mirage, new baby leaves about to burst out of the branches, and the fruit trees are all covered in blossoms, in spite of it being just a bit too early. Where did our winter go, it seemed to have gotten hidden away after the new year. Well, I’m still hopeful, today the temperature dropped considerably, and although the sky is clear blue, there is a chance of rain forecast. I am just bearing down and knitting my way through it all.

Last night just about when I was getting ready to cook dinner, I discovered Jeff nearly forty feet up a fir tree, in his climbing gear, a swashbuckling forest musketeer with a saw in his scabbard, cutting dead limbs away. He’s so hopeful for the trees that are still hanging on, wanting to groom them up and cut away the lifelessness left in the wake of the wildfire. But such a crazy dare-devil I live with, he gets me so freaked out!

But then just to remind me how everything really is quite okay, this afternoon I find Juno napping near a sun beam that was illuminating my spinning wheel . . .

Such a manic tail-chasing puppy, she is just a few weeks from her 1st birthday. I can’t believe it, the time just slips away as if I’ve been in a coma . . . Juno Pup is soon to be One!

♥ ♥ ♥

In closing, I want to share this totally inspiring musician who has a technique I’ve never seen nor heard, what the artist calls “bells harmonic”, isn’t it just enchanting?

Winter Solstice

Published on December 21, 2021December 23, 2021 by Jen6 Comments

This morning at first light I took my camera out to photograph a few for the post, but when I tried to upload them, nothing happened, so borrowing photos from the archives . . .

Transition into winter excites me, when inwardly I build anew. This morning my thoughts drift back to a dreamscape I had more than a decade ago, a vivid dream that I was sitting, nested in an ethereal kind of place, on a snowy crag, an unreal pillar of rock jutting up into the stratosphere. I was comfortable and warm, in a place of incessant night yet with illuminating snow below and snowflakes softly blowing around me and as if I were brought up into an existentialist heavenly place, and I was unafraid of the elements. This dreamscape is ever present in my spiritualistic sense of myself, and although the dream was long ago the memory of it is etched in my conscience, at times reminding me to hold steadfast as I make my way through transition, unafraid, into new unknowns.

Today being the Winter Solstice the shortest and darkest day in the northern hemisphere, I ponder still that ethereal place in the highest of heights, and the creative territory ahead, landing me again in my wintery thoughts. I feel so calm this morning early as the rain begins again, softly hitting the roof, washing my worries away. So it is with a rain-fulfilled contented sigh that I feel a close of the year, while everything beds down for a nice winter nap. Happy Solstice to Everyone!

i love autumn

Published on November 9, 2020February 12, 2025 by Jen12 Comments

Just past the colorwork yoke of yet another Sol Inca sweater. This one will be the second Autumn Sweater for nieces, then they’ll be completed and will wait patiently for some day in December. Without the usual gift knitting this year, I believe I will sail on through the holiday weeks ahead without a single distraction, and sink my teeth further into two new ideas. Beyond that I am not certain, but am entertaining the thought of more tweed chronicle experiments, foraging for dye pots, and happily continuing on in my reclusive ways.

I am beyond super pleased at the election results and can imagine there will be a lot of good changes in the new year, which eases my complicated mental state, and calms me like a balm. And along my walks recently, I am reminded of the contentment I so often find in nature, out in Autumn, and soon just may find myself in an uproariously good mood. Oh, and not having much to speak of in the way of rain yet, yesterday we had a random heavy hail storm which burst into the day, downpoured for fifteen minutes, then left in a hurry. I love Autumn!

Quietude

Published on October 7, 2020October 7, 2020 by Jen5 Comments

I have got a new thing I’m letting fly on the needles, in rustic alluring Icelandic Lettlopi yarn. I am going back to a design idea from several years ago, with yarn I happen to have had about eight balls of in my stash, that I bought about two years ago when we were living in the tiny house, but I just can’t remember what I got it for. Those days are very foggy in my memory. A bit of an anniversary has come and passed too; we have been living back home in our rebuilt house, for one year now, and as Jeff slowly finishes detail carpentry, each week that goes by we are closer to bringing together the raw edges of the rip across our lives from three years ago. I have now unpacked from a long last week of standing by ready to evacuate from Glass Fire, and trying to let things settle in again. Now cooler temperatures and increasing wetness is forecast “soon”, and I feel the Autumnal weather shifting a little bit, just enough that I feel a kind of relaxation taking over me, finally. And so in need because it has been a stressful summer of wildfire in California, and I need to shake it off, to tap into the abundance of quietude, striving to find the fulcrum point in my life of productivity and commit to that balance, letting all else slip away.

I’m now off for a walk with this lovely yarn and yarn body I’ve got going.

Out in Autumn (late).

Published on December 10, 2019May 24, 2024 by Jen9 Comments

Walking along a foggy path in the late afternoon, in late Autumn, I observe the season expiring after the heavy rain last week. Everything seems to be falling to the ground, exhausted. Soon there will be new grass popping up.

The last of the gold leaves wave in the breeze, as if to say “I’m tired, and it is time to go”, and the vines surely have given all their energy growing grapes for 2019 Harvest, and will wait bare until pruning time in late winter, leaving the trellises standing like soldiers in a winter field.

The stinging needles on the star thistle rot and become harmless, muted into the dull brown grass.

The fog surely lays burden to the spider webs, and even though nature is bedding down, the creatures are stirring.

The oaks are shedding leaves and covering the ground, another layer of compost for the soil, two years after the wildfire is nothing less than a treasure.

Yet some of what was dormant is now waking up, becoming lush, verdant, alive, as is the story of the moss.

So near to the solstice, I believe this little foggy outing has put me in the mood for more walking and writing, for it is at these times when I most intensely feel my existence. Rituals of coffee and chores, punctuated with knitting, walks, short naps, and contemplative writing, are my comfort as I get older. Peaceful and nearly silent my days tumble over one another, seemingly inconsequential, but if only to witness my landscape as it goes through the seasons. And I am happy it is so.