The Little Sister had a birthday on April 20. I always feel old when she does that. Yes, I snatched the chocolate striped thing that is missing from one glob of icing.   

  It’s tulip time in Oregon. Maybe it’s my Dutch ancestry, but I love tulips.           Grandma always had them and so did Mom.           The Little Sister and I saw them in the famous Kuchenhoff garden in Holland. I’ve even got a few growing in my front flower bed.  Today, I borrowed a couple of vases full from the advertising department. Pinks. And yellows.    The light was just right at the window near my desk. Here are the results.    

Take a good look at this sock toe. By the time you read these words, it will be unraveled and wound back around the skein. The Little Sister brought this yummy bamboo yarn back from a weekend at the beach and gave it to me for my birthday. I tried three times — honest I did — to get some socks going, but the yarn is just too slippery for the fiddley making of socks. Hmmm, what shall I use it for instead? Love the ocean colors. Love the softness (who knew bamboo could be this soft?). I’ll put aside for a while and see what knitting ideas float into my head on the next tide.

Eydie brought her last doll to work — a little show-and-tell for women of a certain age, if you will. We were smitten by the pristine condition of the bride doll, with her sweet little face, cupid’s bow mouth and her open-and-shut eyes. The doll, Eydie said, was probably her last, a gift when she was nine or ten years old. Already considering herself too old for dolls, Eydie kept the sweet bride doll tucked away from sunlight and dust and grimmy little hands. Now, she delights a generation of grandmother-aged women who are reminded of the girls they used to be.

It’s camellia season in Oregon – and especially in my back yard. When I bought this house nine years ago, it came with dozens of very mature camellia plants. Each spring, they put on a dazzling show – pinks, whites, reds, hot fuchsia and candy-cane stripes. But, about the time the blossoms are in their full glory, it rains. This is Oregon, after all, and it rains here. It’s a fact of life. So what happens to to the camellias? They turn into soggy brown blobs. These photos were taken before the latest shower.

Well, it isn’t me who’s got the buttons. That’s for sure. But my artist friend Sylvia Miller  does and loaned me a whole bag full of jars brimming with old buttons. I was looking for buttons for making a bracelet at a monthly craft group I go to. Clarkie at Bodacious Beads in Hillsboro taught us one night to make bead bracelets, so I sorted through Sylvia’s bead cache for something suitable and found some lovely round jade green buttons with appropriate shanks.  (I’ll show those to you if I ever finish the bracelet.) Aside from the fact working with beads is way harder than I thought, I found it astonishing how many different buttons there are and how the styles have changed over the years. I wanted to photograph some of Sylvia’s buttons before I gave them back to her, so are here are some vintage buttons in the late winter sunlight. Thanks, Sylvia.

 It’s not about the socks. That’s what I tell people who wonder whether I’ve lost my mind knitting sock after sock after sock. This strange malady is actually what helps keep me going through thick and thin. I first started knitting socks almost two years ago and haven’t knit much else since. That first sock was kind of wonky looking and never did get a mate, but after I found Wendy on the Internet and taught myself the provisional cast-on, I’ve been knitting like crazy. I use Wendy’s toe-up sock pattern and don’t even have to think about it any more. It isn’t that I couldn’t got out and just buy socks when I need them, like a normal person, I could. In fact, I have a drawer full of socks just waiting to be worn. I have socks for nearly any occasion that my feet might encounter. But it all about the knitting. With thin yarn and tiny needles, I love knitting around and around and around. It’s become a meditation for me. It’s a quiet rhythmic place that calms and soothes me. I love the yarn wrapped around my fingers and seeing the fabric grow as I add stitch after stitch. No, it really isn’t about the socks at all. It’s about the knitting. All about the knitting. These socks in the shadows, with one still a work in progress, were for my boys.

   This lovely ornamental kale caught my eye between rainstorms recently. I like the beads of water standing on the tips of its leaves. 

We’ve been lucky in Oregon this year with a beautiful, colorful fall. I just love the red and yellow leaves and can’t get enough of photographing them. One morning I walked out the door and  the entire front yard was covered with leaves. 

There’s a huge tulip tree that dumps tons of leaves every year and I try to get the raked before the rain. Wet leaves are way harder to rake than dry ones. I got out there last weekend and found myself in good company — all my neighbors were out there too. I missed raking in 2006 because of a tragedy in my family. (Maybe someday I’ll write about it.) My wonderful friend Beth came with two friends and the got all my leaves ready for the city leaf pick-up. This year, the job was all mine, even though Beth said she’d do it again. 
     

Sometimes the magic works and I don’t even know about it.
I love thrifting. Rummaging around in stuff somebody else didn’t want is lots of fun, especially when it costs pennies to bring home a treasure or two.
The magic occured the other day when I got home with a stash and delightfully discovered that nearly everything went together — as in color and feel.

This scrap of blue-and-lavender-sprigged cotton goes just perfectly with the plaid cup from Portugal and the old-fashioned teabag holder. To top it off, the bronze silk ribbon just picks up the bronze color in the plaid and the branch in the teabag holder, which offers, by the way, to “Let me hold the bag.”
Of course not everything was blue and lavendar and bronze.
There was the set of four perfectly pristine red-and-white gingham napkins carefully cross-stitched with red blooms and grass-green leaves and stemps. They looked so pretty in the October sun that I poured steaming coffee into an old red-rimmed Pyrex cup and enjoyed the moment.