A Room of My Own ~ For Reals this Time

Before we built our house, I had a dream of a little room just for me where I could read, write, knit, sew, make art, and do yoga. But we didn't put a room like that into our house, and if we had it would have become a bedroom for one of our kids when we jumped from one two three in one fell swoop.

Over the years, I've tried to carve out a little bit of space for me here and there: a corner of the living room, (which I've frequently reorganized and rededicated to writing and other pursuits, and corners of my bedroom, where I kept my sewing machine and one writing desk or another.

A gallery of these various corners:

Looking at these little writing spaces lined up like this, they seem so sweet and cozy, which they were in their own way (at least when I had them all tidied up and in photo-worthy condition), and they served me well. I wrote my zines and my blog in these spaces, I did my masters degree and my master naturalist program. I wrote my book! (Technically, I wrote my book mostly on the couch, but the desks are necessary for holding all the supplies and materials for the writing.) But there's no denying it was crowded and cluttered, and the more I added to my repertoire--illustrating and researching and juggling multiple projects--the more crowded and cluttered it all got. I never gave up on that dream of a Room of My Own.

So when Z and E went off to college last month, I wasted no time in moving into the room that had been M's when he was small, and then all three boys' room after the twins were born and then just the twins' room after M moved to the basement and then just Z's, after Z moved E to the basement.

There's room for a futon/guest bed, my dollhouse, my sewing machine, a table on which to make art, bookshelves, and, most importantly, a desk at which to write. I can move from one project to another without having to move all my books out of the way to make room for my laptop, or put away the art supplies in order to sew, or set aside the notebook and laptop in order to have room to paint. I can even leave my yoga mat set up, which is a good way to ensure I actually do yoga.

It gets tons of natural daylight, especially in the morning (which makes it a challenge to photograph). It is also very, very purple (the color E, Z, and I compromised on when we repainted the room a few years ago--one of them wanted black and the other hot pink), and I'm not likely to have the energy to repaint it anytime soon. On the bright side, this mosaic shelf I made from pieces of broken Fiesta ware that have amassed over the years looks fab on the purple wall. I'll be adding more orange accents to offset all that purple.

The closet is also a bit of a mess, with all of Z's stuff tucked away inside, as well as a number of children's toys (the wooden barn and blocks and things I can't part with) and books. I'll be sorting through the books this winter moving my fabric and yarn up from the basement and into the dresser. But, I'm in no rush to get to all that. I'm just enjoying having room in which to spread out and work and think. Virginia Woolf was right!

Let Creativity In

Today I hit "send" on my book proposal, transferring my hopes and dreams into the hands of my preferred publisher for my book (or at least knocking the ball into their court). It's a project I've been pecking away at all summer, with interruptions for more fun things—like sailing, kayaking, traveling to DC, spending time with my kids, and hosting my parents for two weeks of all the good things Maine has to offer. This week I finally got down to it and got it done. It helped that my fitness device broke, so I no longer get hourly reminders to move. Turns out I can spend long hours glued to my office (a.k.a. the couch) when no one tells me to get up, even during the most gorgeous fall weather.

Writing the proposal itself was an odd experience, considering I have an actual manuscript in hand that I'd have happily have sent along instead. It forced me to think not in terms of narrative but rather sales. How can I sell this idea to the publisher, and how will I sell the actual book? Which I suppose was a useful exercise, but I'm sure glad it's over.

I checked my inbox repeatedly after sending the email (kind of like waiting by the phone for that certain boy to call), just in case my cover letter so wowed the acquisitions editor she didn't even bother to read on. I got over that quick—it could be weeks or months before I hear back, if I do at all—and turned my attention to other projects.

I could have started formatting the proposal to fit the requirements of the next publisher in line (because of course they all want something different), but that seems a little too defeatist. Besides, I'm ready for a change. As soon as that mental space was freed up, ideas began tumbling in—amorphous, disjointed ideas, but ideas nonetheless. And fiction ideas, a well that's been dry for a while, which is a very exciting development, as long as I can stay focused and not get distracted by too much fall fun—and if my replacement fitness device doesn't show up too soon.

This post went out last week to subscribers of my newsletter, along with some bonus material. You can subscribe here.

Trying New Things

The 100 Day Project is a worldwide collective art project in which participants do something creative every day for 100 days and post about it on Instagram. There are no rules and what you do is completely up to you. I first heard about it sometime last year, after reading The Crossroads of Should and Must (the author, Elle Luna, is one of the organizers), but I didn't join in because I was getting ready for our big trip.

This year the project began on April 4, the exact same day I finished The Artist's Way, which was too much of a coincidence to pass up. I spent some time mulling over what kind of creative project I would want to work on every day for 100 days. I considered nature journaling, a poem-a-day, a flash fiction a day, sketchbook, and watercolor. The writing ideas didn't inspire me—I've been writing every day for a very long while and I've done a poem-a-day twice before for National Poetry Writing Month—I've also nature journaled (nearly) every day for a whole year before. I wanted to do something new and challenging and watercolor painting drew my interest more than anything else: I've always wanted to learn, but have never had the patience. This would be my chance: If I can't figure it out in 100 days (that's like 3.25 months!!), then I never will.

Still, after coming to that decision, I still had some resistance, mainly to do with the mess and the hassle of getting out paints, setting up, cleaning up. I resolved this by buying a super cheap watercolor set with lots of colors. I know it's generally preferable to use high-quality art supplies when learning, but these $5 paints helped me overcome the mess and setup issues and also made it okay to make a mess and "waste" paint, which a $75 set would tie me up in knots about.

So far it's been fun and I've learned a bit. It's also really hard. It requires patience and an understanding of how the paint behaves. I'm still in the stage of trying to control the paint. I have not graduated to the level of working with the paint to create the effects I desire. I alternate between lessons I found on some random website and just playing around with the paint. I prefer the playing around to the lessons, but I am beginning to understand why piano teachers make you learn scales before you can play songs—a solid foundation is helpful.

The picture above is in the playing around category. It's my second attempt. The first ended up a muddy mess. (When I turned the page to start again, E said, "Don't be a quitter, Mom." I showed him that I finished the first painting, but I wanted to do it again to make it better. Later he said I should get a job as a book illustrator. "I've seen some drawings in books that are way worse than yours. Or maybe you can be a butterfly painter." Aww, kids.)

Forty days in, I've hit a bit of a lull. Or maybe it's a plateau. I feel less compelled to do a painting every day (and I even missed a day this weekend!). It may be time to mix things up, get out the tube paints (or at least the slightly higher-quality travel watercolors), take a real lesson, or establish some sort of goal or theme.

Have you tried something new lately, started a new hobby, or set a creative goal for yourself?

You can see more on Instagram @andrea.lani and #100daysofandrealearningtopaint

Also see #the100dayproject and check out all the cool, crazy, and creative things people are doing.

January Reads

Having a single post to cover all I read in 2016 was a bit overwhelming—both to write and, I'm sure, to read. So I've decided instead to do a monthly recap of books I've read, and share a little about each book.



I started the year with a speed-read of Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk for my Naturalist Book Group, which was fairly easy to do because it's an enjoyable, page-turning read. You've probably already read (or read about) it, but for a quick rundown, it's about the author training a goshawk after the death of her father. The hawk, Mabel, in part helps her work through her grief but also enables her to push away the companionship of other humans which is what she really needs to fully recover. I was fascinated by Macdonald's relationship with Mabel; it seemed much more complex and interesting than the relationship one would have with a "pet." Near the end of the book, Macdonald dips into this idea of a nationalist identity wrapped up with a certain type of landscape in Great Britain, which is a mind-blowing concept and worthy of a book of its own, especially in these days of out-of-control nationalism around the world.

Macdonald intertwines with her own story that of TH White, whose book The Goshawk chronicles his own (failed) attempt to train the same kind of bird. We happened to have a copy of it, which I'd bought for Z because he at one point wanted to be a falconer (but he never read it because the language was too dry, lofty, and old-fashioned for a 10-year old, but not so Helen Macdonald, who read it when she was eight). Macdonald makes out The Goshawk to be a very dark tale, but I did not find it so. It's true she had much more access to information about TH White's sad life from his biographies and personal letters and papers, but very little of his alcoholism and other self-destructive behaviors, his repressed homosexuality, or his traumatic childhood comes out on the pages of The Goshawk. In fact it's rather amusing, in that dry, British way. And his writing about the natural world can border on rhapsodic (in what at least one of my grad school mentors would have called "purple prose" but which I love).

Last year I started the habit of reading one or two poems each morning as a way of getting more poetry into my life, and because I think poetry is better appreciated in small doses, rather than plowing through a whole book at a time. With many detours and setbacks, I finally finished The Selected Works of Edna Saint Vincent Millay, which I had bought after a visit to The Millay Colony about 15 years ago. Poor Edna was a maudlin woman—she had an unholy fascination with death (perhaps everyone back then, when life was so uncertain). But I did enjoy a few of her verses and I'm glad I finally read (and finished) it.

After Christmas, I picked up a bargain-basement copy of the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. About halfway through my second viewing of the miniseries, I pulled my ratty old copy off the shelf to reread, taking comfort in Jane Austen's world where virtue is always rewarded, bad behavior punished, and everyone gets what they deserve. Why isn't real life like that? Needing further cocooning, I read Sense and Sensibility as soon as I finished P and P.

Finally, I am "doing" The Artist's Way in tandem with one of my writing group buddies. The book is like a 12-step program for recovering from "blocked creativity." Over the course of twelve weeks, the book provides exercises that are meant to help reconnect with your artistic drive and get past whatever is holding you back. This involves daily "morning pages" or three pages of free-hand writing about anything (or nothing), weekly "artist dates," and multitudes of tasks that range from organizing personal space, going and doing things, or writing to or about a variety of people and things. So far I've found that it gives me a whole lot of ways to get out of actual writing. But it also has made the day-to-day a bit more enjoyable in small ways (stickers on the morning pages! a trip to the store for office supplies! going to the art museum for no good reason! being silly, playing games, nurturing myself!). One of this week's exercises is reading deprivation. I'm supposed to not read for a whole week! The fist day I had to finish up the last few pages of Sense and Sensibility, and I had tons of editing work to do, so I didn't do well that day, but I allowed myself only two news round-up articles and enough of another article to write a letter to my senator, otherwise I stayed away from news and Facebook. Yesterday the same, and I found that not constantly taking in news about the imminent demise of democracy and life as we know it is much more conducive to happiness. Ignorance IS bliss! This morning, after a stressful event, I found myself bingeing on bad news the way I might on junk food had their been any around. I've found it a strange feeling to have an odd free moment or hour throughout the day and to not reach for a book, magazine, or my phone. I might even finish my endless knitting project if this goes on. Anyway, February's reading list might be a bit shorter due to the reading vacation.

What are you reading these days?

Wild Wednesday ~ New Nature Books

I've been loving teaching my nature journaling and nature writing workshops over the last few months. I've always hesitated to teach, because I thought teachers needed to be these extroverted, really energetic, bouncy types (which I am most assuredly not), but it's turned out to be very fun, challenging, and rewarding. So I'm glad that the volunteer requirements of the Master Naturalist program forced me into it. On top of the inherent pleasures of the "job," an added bonus is that it gives me an excuse to buy new books, and these four little beauties landed in my mailbox last month.

Into the Field is a handy little guide, designed for classroom teachers to incorporate nature journaling and nature writing and place-based learning into their curricula, but I've found it helpful for my workshops as well. I had originally gotten it through the library, but ran out of time to finish it before it was due back and decided it would be nice to have a copy of my own.

I don't remember where I ran across Letters From Eden--I think when I was browsing for something else online--but it sounded like a perfect book for me: essays and drawings of the natural world around one calendar year. I haven't had a chance to start reading it yet, but I adore these sketches that are scattered throughout the text.

The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady is a classic nature journal example that I've been meaning to get a copy of for a long time. I finally went ahead and ordered it to use as an example for my students of what they should NOT expect their journals to look like. I've found people get so worked up about their drawings being "good" that they are afraid to get started. I think they have an image of this book (or something similar) in their heads and don't want to go through the steps of making messy, less-than-perfect drawings in order to see what's in the natural world (and, hopefully, learn to draw better). I'm not sure if showing them this book will help or make things worse!

Again, I don't know how I ran across the Law's Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling, but I preordered it on a whim last fall and I am so glad I did.

It's so thorough and full of information about observing the natural world as well as advanced drawing techniques that I've never run across in my smattering of art classes.

Not to mention his drawings are utterly gorgeous! I want to apprentice myself to this book, and spend the next several months (or years, more likely) going through each page and exercise.

New Year, New Me, Part 2 ~ The Books

I like to think I disdain self-help books, but whenever I hit a sticky patch in life, I find myself turning to books for answers (note the grocery sack full of books on managing early childhood that I just donated to a local family resource center). Maybe it's just the cheesy self-help books I don't care for--the ones that promise financial and romantic miracles if only one follows these 13 easy steps. Or maybe I should just get over myself and admit that I'm a willing victim of the self-help industry.

In any case, starting this year with a strong sense that something's got to change in my life, I picked up three books to help me calibrate my compass in the direction I want to travel.

The first one I read was the Crossroads of Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion, by Elle Luna. I ran across the essay by the same name a couple of months ago and promptly asked Santa for the book. The basic idea of the book is that there are two pressures in our lives--Should, which comes from expectations mostly imposed externally (or our responses to expectations we think the outside world has of us), and Must, which is what our soul clamors for--our passion, our creativity. Moms have a lot of shoulds vying for our time (like last night, when I Should have--and did--spent three hours at my kid's high school for parent-teacher conferences and a how-to-prepare-for-college presentation). Sometimes I think our Must gets buried so deeply we don't even know it's there anymore. This book was a fun and inspiring reminder of how to get back in touch with that passion. I noticed that in the book Luna doesn't mention the six-week trip to Bali she took after quitting her job, which is a big focus of the essay. Maybe someone suggested that such a drastic (and costly) life change was not accessible to most people and they would just hate and resent her if she talked to much about it. Instead, she offers small steps for finding your Must (if you don't know what it is) and making room for it in your life without drastic change.

Speaking of people who got to disappear into Bali for an extended period of time, the next book I read was Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert. I was a little skeptical going into this one, for no good reason, but I love, love, loved it. It's really inspiring without in any way diminishing the hard work aspect of creativity. Basically, it's about falling in love with your creative work, letting your work love you back, working really hard and diligently, being open to inspiration, being serious in your work but not taking yourself too seriously, and skipping all the angst, drama, and self-abuse that creative people often seem to court. She also writes about what to do if you don't have a creative passion already--which is, simply, to follow your curiosity. Following her own curiosity in the garden led her to write The Signature of All Things. The book is not about writing specifically, or exclusively--Gilbert has an expansive definition of creativity and makes an effort to encompass a range of creative pursuits from cake-baking to figure-skating--but because she is a writer, and her personal anecdotes come from the writing realm, I felt especially connected. As soon as I finished reading it, I wanted to read it again, to pick out the bits of advice I want to remember.

Neither of the above books has one iota of scientific research backing up the author's claims of how best to live a creative life. The next book, on the other hand, has 18 pages of notes. The author of Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, Gretchen Rubin, was a lawyer-turned-biographer before she landed in the self-help book realm with The Happiness Project, so of course her books are meticulously researched. I have to admit, I didn't really like The Happiness Project--the whole time I read it, I kept thinking, "Of course you're happy! You're being paid to write a book about making yourself happy!" I started reading the follow-up--Happier at Home--last year, but didn't get very far. But I like the premise of Better than Before--that change in our lives comes from change in our habits--and though I've only read the first chapter so far, I'm excited to see where she goes with it.

What inspiring books have you read lately?

Painting

I had so much fun at the paint night at my friend Helene's art gallery, that I decided to repeat the project at home with the boys.

And by a happy coincidence, the craft store was having a sale on canvases, so I bought a pack of eight.

Helene had given us a very particular set of steps--from which we were allowed to deviate at will--which gave us the opportunity to try a variety of art techniques, play with color, and work with perspective.

As it turned out, E and Z weren't much interested in following directions (not an isolated incident) and ended up making their own paintings.

But M got really, really into the project, and was particular about following the directions.

He kept at it long after the rest of us moved on to other things (pointing a fan on his picture between layers to avoid the smeared paint the rest of us put up with). I love his results.

I joined in and painted along. I think I could go on recreating this same painting forever. M wants to paint again this weekend...I'll have to come up with another set of instructions.

With the finished artwork, I refreshed the wall in the living room, where our last painting projects had hung.

Now Reading

Right now I can't get enough Beth Kephart. I loved her essay "The Line is White and it is Narrow" in Slate's Mothers Who Think collection so much, so I don't know why it's taken me years and years since I read that to pick up one of her books.

It all started with her recently published memoir craft book, Handling the Truth, which I picked up from the book table at residency in January. I was reading that one night in the library and it reminded me that I had been meaning to read A Slant of Sun for a long time, so I went to look for that book, only the library I was at didn't have it. Instead they had Seeing Past Z, which is a collection of essays--meditations, almost--on books and reading and writing with her child. I know that doesn't sound like enough to sustain a full length book, but really it was and Kephart's voice is so lovely, so endearing and honest and earnest, that you just want to sit and read whatever she has to say on anything. And it also reminded me of some essays on reading to and with children that I've been mulling over for some time. 

I have a huge stack of books in the hall at the top of our stairs, many of which I haven't read yet, and I've been trying to put my shoulder to the plow to get through them (my plan is one a week--alternating fiction and nonfiction--last week I read Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, which was divine), but I was overcome with the urge to order A Slant of Sun from the library and have been eating it up all week--it's about Kephart's journey through raising a child with Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified. And again, it's her voice, her lovely descriptions of space and scene and weather, that make you want to never put it down. I also love how much adoration of her child comes across on the page, yet I don't find it "sentimental" (then again, I'm not a man prone to using that word as an insult in the literary realm).

As you can see in the corner of the picture, M is now reading the Jurassic Park books, which I guess means he's officially a grownup (shh, don't tell him that). After I finished reading Harry Potter to E and Z (finally!), we read The Enormous Egg, and then How to Train Your Dragon. Z took the latter to bed with him and finished it on his own when we were 3/4 of the way through. We started on the second book, but he, and then E, stole it and read it on their own. Now Z is laboring through The Lord of the Rings (can you believe that this is the child who could barely read a Dr. Seuss book a year-and-a-half ago??) and E just switched from all Big Nate all the time to National Geographic kids (back issues of the magazine and an old Almanac). I'm afraid I won't be reading them bedtime stories for that much longer. I'm not quite ready for that.

Doing Hard Things

I was reading something recently (I can't remember what it was--a book? a magazine? a blog post?) in which a mother told her child whenever (he? she? they?) struggled with something, "You can do hard things."

A few months ago, when I first picked up a crochet hook, to try to make little rock cozies, having only ever crocheted a hat, it was hard.

I had always thought of crochet as knitting's easy kid sister, but I found not only my yarn twisting up in tangles, but my brain, too. Knitting I understood--you put a row of loops on a needle, as wide as you want your finished product, and add loops to the loops until it is as long as you want your finished product. You can increase or decrease, join to make a round, but it's easy to see that what's below the needles is what you've already finished, and the blank space above the needles is what you have left to do. It's all very, ahem, linear. Also, I grew up in the home of a knitter, and though I didn't teach myself to knit until after I'd moved away, I had seen sweaters and socks and hats and mittens grow on knitting needles my whole life.

Meanwhile crochet (at least what I was trying to do with it) went around in a circle, and there was no needle marking clearly, this is where I am, that down there is where I have been, up there is where I need to go. And the directions were confusing (why did single crochet involve two steps, double crochet three, triple crochet four? Eventually I figured out that the first step was just creating a loop, not actually making a stitch). I started and discarded. Started and discarded. The whole time, I felt my dendrites growing, my synapses snapping, my myelin sheaths thickening. I figured out hook gauges (the number goes up as the size goes down) and yarn gauges (ditto). I finally found the right sized hook (it had to be bought in a package of ten) to go with the right sized thread (#12 perle cotton). I tried different sets of directions that explained things differently (and more clearly, for my brain).

I tried and tried again, and finally figured it out (I still have to look things up--like half a double crochet--and I can't just wing it, making up my own pattern as I go along, but then again I can't do that with knitting, either).

I think I've successfully staved off at least a year or two of Alzheimer's disease with the mental effort I put into it (take that, Sudoku!). And now, when my kids struggle with something that is challenging--drawing or spelling or piano or baseball--I can tell them honestly, "You can do hard things. And it will feel so good when you do."

(More stones here, here, here, and here)

The Next BIG Thing

My cyber-friend, the lovely Katherine Barret, Literary Mama editor and columnist and amazing international mama (Nova Scotia via South Africa), tagged me to write about my next BIG thing. I didn't pause at the New Year to take stock of the last year or set goals for the next, so I'm going to use this BIG thing meme to do just that, at least in the writing department.

First, I want to start with an "I did it" list, in the tradition Lisa Romeo. Working on my MFA for the last year has been a BIG thing for me: monthly reading and writing deadlines, workshops endured and presentations attended. Last year I wrote 331 pages (yes, I have a spreadsheet); 163 of those were new fiction (the rest being revisions, annotations and essays). I never would have believed myself capable of such productivity, so I just want to say "yea!" for that!

Now, this year's BIG things:

1) I've just started my third semester project, for which I'm writing a long craft/literary theory essay on fiction, poetry and nonfiction by women who write about the themes of motherhood and nature in the same work. I've been really excited about this project and have been amassing books for a while. I've torn through three of them already.

2) For my fourth, and last, semester, I'll be taking those 163 pages of fiction, picking out which merit further work, revising them and fitting them together into a cohesive unit for my thesis. I attended a presentation on linked short stories during residency and ever since I've been reveling in all the ways I could link my stories. I'm especially excited to get to work on the two pieces I workshopped this residency. I have so many ideas regarding setting, character and point-of-view after all of the discussions I can't wait to put them onto the page. 

After that, I've got ideas for an anthology and will get to work sending out the short stories in my thesis, but that's the next, next big thing. 

Now, to tell you about their next BIG things, I'm tagging:

Mariah at Lone Star Ma

Jenna at Stirrings and Stories

Rachel at The Slow-Cooked Sentence

Kristen at Motherese

Getting My Bearings

I finished up residency last week, hitting the ground running, diving straight back into work and trying to figure out what's for dinner. I had an amazing time and the boys survived just fine without me, but it's a little jarring going from a steady diet of intellectual stimulation, creative inspiration and intelligent conversation to a house where the new hobby is indoor jump-roping and the main topic of discussion is flatulence. (I recommend to any creative person to find a way to get a week or ten days completely freed of both regular work and domestic concerns like cooking and cleaning, grocery shopping and lunch-making, driving and daycare).

I remember, back sometime in November––or maybe even October––looking forward to this pastweekend, it being the only one free of obligations and events in sight. I tried to keep it that way, only leaving home to shuffle M from one friend's house to another's and a trip to borrow my friend Edna's washing machine (more on that below). I spent much of the weekend on the sofa, with this as my view––the clean, blissfully Christmas-free living room:

     

I was joined much of the time by Z, who was laid low by one of those mysterious fevers he gets about once every year and E, who spent hours reading Calvin and Hobbes, despite the many big, hard words and my own dubiousness about his ability to understand the comics.

I feel like I've passed some sort of milestone in my ability to work amid the chaos of house and home. I remember typing with one hand with either baby E or Z in the other arm and M standing next to me saying, "Can I type? When can I type?" But I lost that ability to concentrate with their distractions somewhere along the way (probably when E and Z where in the destructive toddler years) and have only recently made a concerted effort to work in their midst on a regular basis. I'm not sure I could crank out fiction under such circumstances, but my current project is of a different nature and, for now, it's working and I'm thrilled.

I did, however, throw everyone outside at least once a day, and even got out there myself a couple of times. We walked down the river, to the place where it's wide and winding, with grassy hummocks and big old willow trees and fir trees shaped like Colorado blue spruce. I find it terrifying to walk on the river the first time each winter, but C went ahead with a big stick, testing the ice, and we didn't go through.

We followed these tracks for a long way, wondering if perhaps a lone coyote followed our same path, in reverse.

I took a break from both words and wilds and finished piecing the squares for M's quilt (that I started two years ago). After many months of not-very-visible progress and many more of nothing at all, it's nice to reach a milestone and see that it's going to be something. I have many more steps to go, including making three more squares, because I planned wrong, and putting little stars over all the corners where the squares meet. Then I need to decide if I'll piece borders of just give up and use plain fabric so that it's done before M goes off to college.

And, I finished up the mittens I had started for my (ex-step-)mother-in-law for Christmas, just in time for a lunch date tomorrow. They took longer than necessary because I kept knitting the left mitten as a right mitten, and had to rip it out three times. I still don't think I got the thumbs right, but they'll have to do. I had to take them to my friend Edna's house for felting, because we have a front-loading washer, and Edna has a top-loader plus an unlimited supply of extremely hot wood-heated water to boot.

Like all weekends, especially three-day ones, it felt just too short. When I got to the end, I couldn't help thinking of all the things I should have done with the kids––play games, do art projects, acknowledge Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the inauguration in some way. I guess that'll have to go on next weekend's list...

What have you been up to?

Three-Day Weekend

Have I ever told you how much I love three-day weekends? If not, let me say it now: I LOVE three-day weekends. And this past one (thanks, Veterans!) was especially nice, because we had intended to go to Boston for all of it, but when I finally got around to looking into hotels, I found the entire city had a big "No Vacancy" sign hanging on it. Some big conventions or something. So we had before us an entire three-day weekend free of plans and obligations, like three blank sheets of paper waiting to be filled with whatever took our fancy.

We played some Monopoly.

Built some blocks.


Made a volcano.

Planted some garlic.

Cooked a bunch of all those lovely greens (I made a stir-fry with broccoli leaves––since the broccoli plant isn't interested in flowering––roasted red peppers, carrots––also from the garden––garlic and tofu with a toasted sesame oil-ginger dressing; C made "priest-chokers" with a ton of Kale).

Hiked with new old friends, or old new friends, or friends we've known a long time and who have been practically our neighbors for more than two years and with whom we've just lately started to spend time. Funny how it is that maintaining friendships requires so much more intention as adults, not just popping into someone's dorm room. But it's always worth the effort, don't you think?

Started a Christmas project.

Did some "woodworking" (yes the latest in my ongoing infatuation with unfinished furniture; more on this piece soon!).

Wrote some stories. Okay, only E and Z and M wrote stories. They all are super into writing right now, and I'm very cautious about wanting to nurture this interest without stamping it out (because, you know, moms ruin everything).

I, on the other hand, wrote nothing. I kept convincing myself that all this other activity was

recharging the well, priming the pump and all that. But now here I sit with the blank screen starting back at me and still I got nothin'. And I've got this great big Complete Short Stories of Eudora Welty staring at me (six hundred pages!) and I've barely made a dent. So I should probably go do something about all that.

I hope you had a wonderful weekend too!

Photoplay: Vertically Challenged

I've been slowly working my way through a couple of landscape photography books a friend of mine lent me and in one of them the author challenges the readers to look through your photos and see how many are in vertical format versus horizontal, and, if you find that you favor one format over the other, to try to take more in the less-common orientation. I didn't even have to look through my photos to know how many vertical shots I have. The answer is zero, or pretty close. Ever since I started blogging, at least, I've pretty much only taken horizontal photos because it is so annoying the way the text wraps around the vertical ones. Instead of finding a workaround in Blogger, I've just completely given up on vertical pictures. To correct this deficiency (and also because vertical pictures help balance the photo collages I've started making), over the last couple of weeks, I've challenged myself to take more vertical pictures:

And it's been fun. (It was also fun to make Maine look like it's Big Sky country).

Do you have a tendency to prefer taking photos one way over the other? What kind of challenges have you presented yourself in your creative life lately?