Perfection of Moment

Last Saturday.
Granddaughter Sophia spent the night Friday and we were out early Saturday shopping at the Terre Haute Farmer's Market. Early birds get the berries. We came home with homemade doggie treats for Clover, some fantastic raspberries, mulberries, zucchini bread, chocolate bread, fresh basil and zucchini.

Sophia and I had the most wonderful breakfast on the back porch with yogurt and our berries and the two kinds of sweet bread. The air was cool and the sun was golden streamers through the leaves. Clover was trotting around the yard, checking on us every once in a while.

And I sat there and felt, in the whole of the moment, an existential joy and peace. And it was precious and full. Unmitigated by grief and sorrow. Such a great gift....

Grandfather's poetry

Just a quick note to link to the second entry in my little flood saga over on my decluttering blog.


This is a picture of two things I am incredibly thrilled to have saved: a picture of my grandfather as a young man (I swear he resembles John Lennon a bit!) and a small book of his poetry, all brief 4-line pieces.

Here's one:

Elusive Truth

Long I thought that truth
Lay hid in far-off places,
But found it close at home--
Writ on little children's faces.
--George T. Harbeson


I never knew my grandfather - he died a decade or so before I was born. My mother adored him and at the last of her life it was "Daddy" she called for over and over.

He was a writer and a farmer - of flowers! At the turn of the the century, he had a bookstore in New York. This book was undoubtedly printed up on the little press they used to have - he and my mother made numerous little booklets of her poetry (I hope I run across some of them in the things that we saved.) And it must have been done by my mother after his death because there is a memorial poem by her at the end:

To George T. Harbeson

They say that you are dead,
But we two are never far apart,
For the words that you have said
Are singing in my heart.
-- His daughter

Flooding, Felted Bitz, a Hat

We had 7 inches of rain here in Terre Haute, so I'm dealing with tasks related to that. If you've a mind to read about it, I'm writing it up on my decluttering blog, A Chair is a Closet.

I've just gotten over two weeks of a cold that moved into bronchitis. During that time, my creative urge was to felt little things, which one day will become something. Something in what I think of as my 'Think Happy Thoughts' series....who knows? Maybe these little bitz and pieces are just meant to be that:
and finally, I finished another hat.

Here it is being modeled by granddaughter Raven (not quite finished at that time, still some ends to weave in.)

I've been thinking of it as the Skep Hat, but I want to name it something like:
Bees Making Honey in the Golden Sun -- the color and shape began to remind me of a bee skep early on, and as I worked, the bullions and bits of novelty yarn certainly seemed like busy bees to me.
It's mostly Malabrigo in the Sunset colorway. The brim is Uma, and the novelty yarns are Baroque and...oh my goodness...this is such an amazing synchronicity that I am just realizing as I type this.... Filatura di Crosa's MELISSA!!!

Melissa means honey bee.... there are all sorts of derivatives of this word for bee-related things. I knew that. Yet I didn't even consciously realize it until now.

This hat had some magic for me before, but it is definitely just tingling with it now!

On that delicious note, I'll end this today.

Namaste,
'Zann