Weekend Things ~ Before

I wish I'd gotten around to writing this post Monday or Tuesday, when I still felt the magic in the world. Maybe it's now more important than ever to find beauty in tiny things, in little moments. Or maybe it's stupid and self-indulgent. I don't really know, but back when tiny things mattered, here are a few from my weekend.

I did some exploring for mushrooms.





I brought my field guide and my camera into the woods.



But these specimens proved trickier than the ones I saw last week.







I even brought a few inside to try spore prints, in an admittedly haphazard way. And then I let them all go when they started to turn slimy, before I'd done the really hard work of keying out.



We didn't have much of a garden this year, being gone all summer, but C planted a few carrot seeds before we left and I harvested them Saturday. They were small, having never been thinned, and hairy, having been left in the ground too long, but they were beautiful (and tasty roasted).



I stole a little daylight knitting time. I'd started a project on tiny needles with fine-as-cobwebs yarn and wasn't getting too far in the evenings, in the dim light, in front of the TV. After a few minutes of knitting in a patch of sun, I was able to get into the rhythm of the pattern enough that I could knit all through 3 hours of Sunday night PBS-watching and am well on my way to an ultra-soft cashmere hat. I'm not sure if gray is my color, but I don't think I care.



Finally, I made a batch of cookies for a picnic at friends' Sunday. They're chocolate sables from The Standard Baking Company (if you have not been to The Standard on Commercial St. in Portland, drop everything and go there now). They're my absolute favorite cookie in the world, but even though I've had their cookbook for a couple of years now, this is the first time I baked them. They're a rich, chocolatey shortbread with a faintly sandy texture that I adore. And they weren't difficult to make, at all, although my dough logs (they're like an icebox cookie) were not exactly round, and the baking time was a little fussy (too long and they start to burn, though you can't tell because of the dark color; too short and they don't hold together).



Every time I took a bite of one of these cookies, I felt happy to be alive. I mean that, really and truly. Unfortunately, I finished the last of them Tuesday morning. I think I need to make another batch, stat.