finding joy in the small things when the world seems to be falling apart

it's been a lot lately. the land of my birth is busily being dismantled by a tyrannical minority, against the will of around 70% of the population. and it feels like there's nothing that can be done about it. apparently we weren't paying proper attention for the past 50 years. or we weren't willing to do something about it because we didn't really believe they would be that backwards or that evil. but they are. and then some. and it's very disheartening. i find it very difficult to listen to it. mostly, i feel shame. being american is embarrassing again. i remember when obama was elected, i rejoiced that i wouldn't have to hide my passport while i was in an airport line anymore, but alas, i need to hide it more than ever. or finally get that other passport. it's definitely time.

i find myself looking for around me at the little things to be able to find some joy, despite how disheartening and humiliating it all is. things like the baby chickens our chickens hatched out and which two hens are very dutifully tending (though only one of the hens is in this photo).

or our very cute, but very fraidy indian running ducks, who stay, as husband puts it, in an organized clump and have the cutest penguin-like walk.

or the four-leaf clover i spotted as i sat in the garden the other day.

or the daily walks i've been taking during most of june to keep a new back problem at bay and to spend some time in my body as well as my head while listening to the cozy daisy dalrymple mysteries. 

or enjoying a really good cup of coffee in my favorite handmade ceramic mug. and the fact that my peonies are blooming.

it helps me feel less helpless. i can have an effect on things. i can pull those weeds in the garden and tend to the plants, i can feed the kitties and spend time with them in a favorite corner of the garden. i can do interesting work with interesting people. i can look forward to my child coming home in a week or so. i can put new sheets on the bed and snuggle into them at night. i can take a long walk. i can have long, deep conversations with husband. i can invite friends over and enjoy spending time with them.  i can sit in the chair i recovered with handwoven fabric and have the privilege of working from home and making a good living. and i can vote. for now, voting matters and is something concrete that i can and will do. it's clearer now than ever that it's important, so let's remember this horrible time and get our asses to the polls come november. our lives and the freedom to live them on equal footing with all those old white men might very well depend on it. 

daily delights - february 18

 

i have to try pretty hard these days to look for the bright spots in all this isolation. i am weary of working from home. i almost want to throw up, thinking of having yet another teams meeting. my back is tired from sitting too much. and while i love my joggers (they're not sweatpants), i want to put on real clothes, do my makeup and fix my hair and i want to leave the house. more than just to pick up packages at the back door of the local shoe store, where they've begun to surreptitiously sell shoes (i can't blame them) as well as dispense packages. i want to stop feeling mildly irritated at those idiotic people who wear that pointless clear chin mask that just sends all their covid droplets up into their own faces before disseminating them to the rest of us in the grocery store. i want to drive to the office, listening to podcasts while i drink my latte from the travel cup i made it in for the drive. i want to see my colleagues and laugh and have casual conversations that don't take place online. all of this sounds like it was pretty hard to find today's delight and it was. but i found it. one fat, creamy ball of burrata, a perfect avocado and a perfectly ripe, sweet papaya, sprinkled with a dash from my last precious container of everything but the bagel - i don't know whether it was a late breakfast or an early lunch (i ate it around 10:30), but i do know that it was delicious, decadent and yes, delightful. it's the little things. sometimes we have to look for them, but they're always there. and this too shall pass. and then i'll likely miss these days of sweatpants and an artfully placed scarf.

daily delight - february 16

 

a ceramicist from the area posted some valentine pieces in her instagram stories on sunday and i found this little yellow cup with her signature polka dots totally charming, so i snatched it up. she's also an american in denmark and i met her briefly and bought another piece from her at an event called upcomers a couple of years ago. the little plant in that other piece is still going strong. this arrived today and i immediately made coffee in it. these days, it's a bit rough going, all this working from home. i'm very weary of endless teams meetings. we all are, i know it's not only me. so grabbing these small moments of delight feels like a lifeline. 

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this article is also delightful. and hopeful.

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and i also really felt hopeful when i listened to hillary clinton's interview with amanda gorman.

grab all the moments of delight you can.

making your own sunshine

this picture was in my head the other day. i even had to break into a new box of cloud cuckoo palace in order to make that sunshine on a stick when i couldn't locate the original one we'd built, or even the bits of it. it was a cloudy grey day and the notion of creating your own sunshine just popped into my head. and who better to do it than batman? what's funny is that aside from some shots of the yeti skiing that i took last winter, it rarely happens that i envision a shot in my head and want to create it. 

that notion of making your own sunshine seems a powerful one, these grey, dark, dreary days of winter. we haven't even had proper winter yet, it's been mild and rainy, tho' they promise snow tomorrow and over the weekend. i'll believe it when i see it. and in the meantime, i'm looking for spots of sunshine in my days. a day with less coughing than the day before. fun new projects at work that enable me to work with old (and super creative) friends. getting to geek out about ships again. finding a box of beautiful mixed mushrooms at the green market right when i wanted to make a mushroom tart. a solitary glass of wine enjoyed in a vibrant atmosphere. the pulse of the city. a short bike ride in the cold, clear air. the weight of a cat on the quilt at my feet. husband making my favorite comfort meal (ham, creamy spinach and potatoes) for when i came home. little rays of metaphorical sunshine. just when i needed them most.

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seattle art museum collects lego for ai weiwei.

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super interesting digitalization project at the ny public library.

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the nytimes' annual list of 52 places to go in 2016.

skåne is on the list.

(that's the bit of sweden just across the bridge from denmark.)

you might say we've been there, done that.

tho' at the moment, they're checking and double-checking passports on the way in.

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what kind of asshole dreams of killing a mountain lion?

oh, apparently one from my hometown.

yes, more guns please.

not.

#definitelynotastud

#ithinkimayhatefacebook

little treats

a new one of cathy cullis' beautiful brooches - these faces speak to me of all the voices in our heads. they do it in a good way, sort of embracing the madness and making it beautiful and wrapping it all into a coherent whole. i'm in a navy blue period clothing-wise (i think everything has to match my glasses), so a little splash of red is welcome.

chanel nail polish is always an affordable luxury. especially if you get it onboard a ship in the duty free. i got the two dark, rich colors of autumn, a beautiful deep green and a luscious dark brown.

salted chocolate caramels from my friend shelly of #stuckinplastic fame - a welcome surprise in the mail.

and another beautiful cathy cullis brooch - if one is good, two is better, right? and finally, the scarf i ordered ages ago from skinny la minx showed up. i think i said this before, but i do wonder where it was hiding all these months. where does lost mail go?

and my most recent addition? a fine little ceramic cat brooch. you can never have too many brooches. or cats.

100 happy days :: day 77

new bedding. fresh and spring-like.

monday loves

candles in the windowsill on a grey and rainy day.
a book that reminds me of the importance of being deep.

new pages in an old art journal.
writing in library books.
cozy new socks.

a fresh to-do list.

and a fresh week in which to accomplish it.

an abundance of raspberries from the garden.

the new j. peterman owner's manual.

unexpected sources of reason.
and some not so unexpected, but amusing nonetheless, mostly for the swearing.

happy monday, one and all.

friday how i love thee...

let me count the ways:

~ friday evenings are my favorite meal of the week. i always make bread and a variety of yummy things to put on bread. some of our favorites are here.

~ there's nearly always time to sneak in half an hour for a cup of special coffee and a bit of reading. (today it was hazelnut-cinnamon and murakami).

~ the luxury of the entire weekend stretching ahead.

~ and putting the week behind you, behind you.

~ a glass of wine while cooking dinner.

happy weekend one and all, it's time to go bake the bread.

in which she rants about a bunch of annoying little things

if you're not in the mood for a rant, just look at the pretty sunrise and don't read any farther

i know i've been in an extraordinarily exuberant good mood of late and that it's probably getting on everyone's nerves, here in the dark, cold, grey depths of january. so lest you think it's all sunshine and roses in my life and moreover in my brain, i give you a few annoying things i've been thinking about...

~ WHAT is up with not using the word seamstress? all of the politically-correct supposedly hip sewing sites are referring to women who sew as sewists. why do this when seamstress is already a perfectly good word...laden with history and without negative connotation as far as my native speaker's ear can hear. i don't want to be referred to a sewist. pretentious gits.

~ why do the weirdest things stick in your mind at some stupid moment? case in point: the other day, we had guests and i was boiling water to make both coffee and tea. i made the coffee first and then needed to fill the kettle up for there to be enough water for the teapot. normal me would just top off the kettle from the tap and put it back on. but no, because there's a real brit standing there watching, some obscure warning i once read that you should only make tea by starting off with fresh, cold tap water in the kettle kicks into my head. and to the amazement of everyone watching, i poured out all that hot water and started over. and the brit wasn't even going to DRINK the tea, he was going to drink coffee!! bah!

~ i adore craft books and especially the sewing/quilting ones. today, for her birthday, sabin received the visually gorgeous sewing bits & pieces: 35 projects using fabric scraps by sandi henderson from my mom (mom likes to support our sewing habit). the book is lush and beautiful and thankfully sabin had to go to school, so i could sit down with it. the bright fabrics are just my idea of heaven, but then i got to the picnic quilt. it's a beautiful scalloped design. so far, not annoying, but here it comes...it's described as the most laid-back quilt that you can put together in an afternoon - intricately-cut scallop pieces, which you must cut with a scissors, not a rotary wheel and have to iron into a CURVE by making a special cardboard template and wrapping it in aluminum foil. and even then, you're not done, as you have to carefully lay it all out. one illustration even shows a good dozen pins holding one scallop in place. this is not an easy quilt, lady. so why say so? just to show off? because you're so much better than us? bah.

~ i'll probably be in trouble with the entire modern quilting community now for saying that...but seriously, people, someone's got to start saying something. we want need books that have good directions and good advice, and don't talk to down to us, not just pretty photos and showing off how skilled the quilter sewist seamstress writing it is.

~ you cannot use the kettle and the iron in this house at the same time. and even if you turn only one of them on, the lights visibly dim.

~ i hate my kitchen. the door under the sink, which you open frequently, since the trash is there, has a problem with the latch and will not shut properly. the kitchen is pepto-bismol pink and although i bought paint to cover that up, even husband (who has loads of energy and loves to paint) thinks it's not worth the energy to do that painting. and don't even get me started about the stove. one of those ridiculous glass-topped numbers. the only advantage of which is ease of wiping up. otherwise, whoever invented that shit should be taken out back and shot, along with the asshole who bought this one.

~ what the hell are those little "& nspb " things that get inserted into the HTML if you move a block of text from one spot to another? all they do is mess up your spacing!

~ my new obsession with kit lane's fabulous little felted creatures causes me to sit on her etsy shop and hit refresh. and sadly, it's still empty. :-(

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i hope that reassured everyone that i haven't become some ridiculous sap on the verge of homeschooling my now 10-year-old child...i must say that now i'm feeling much better and i'm headed back to the sewing machine.

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and on a totally un-ranty note, please check out the house tour of our wonderful old house over on rearranged design!