Florida

Florida was so warm. It's easy to forget certain painful things, the way your memories of pleasure triumph over others. For example, the bottoms of my thighs sticking to leather couches and vinyl car seat cushions. Also, mosquitos biting my ankles until my feet fall asleep from lack of blood flow. 

Better things remain: thunder storms every humid afternoon, and walking barefoot around the block, looking for wild Quaker parrots, Anhingas with outstretched wing croaking a mating call across a marshy ditch, sitting on this porch. 

more photos here

Hasty Shout

Oh blog world how badly I have been ignoring your blinky cursor! Here are a few photos from 2012 that seemingly summarize my year. Something always is missing. Photographic documentation of smiles, bike rides, flower tricking and picking, and the ever present police sirens in the distance is a no-can-do but here I give it a go. 

House is still a house,

drilling serious gardening vessels,

A new leg friend,

Devo has a birthday and looks fly, 

visit Kathryn in Boulder,

Gardening vessels produce! 

Mom and Dad fly to Cali, wine tasting, beach, love,

Noah my baby friend living here for 4 months (parents included),

Zach Ran Wim visits Oakland and the San Francisco Conservatory,

Jane comes to Oakland and never wants to leave,

San Diego sunsets,

wine honeymoon with Lauren and Chicken,

Ending the year right with Treasure Island sunsets and all of my best friends.

Fireworks!!!! 

Soggy Saggitarian

At long last, winter is near! The gray days make the colors of little flowers and house sparrows pouncing on the deck pop out. I also peeped a flock of male robins in an orange leafed tree giving a good show to an onlooking female. It is awfully cold in this old building. The season is already biting. My Saggitarian heart is bursting! 

Despite the chills, the garden keeps blooming:

 

Rainbow Party mishap: a shoe stomped through a rotten drawer planter? The cabbage looks root bound.

Amaranth in three shades are still spotting and ready for an experimental harvest this week.

Alyssum and other teeny white flowers make a mini-meadow of this old sink. 

Soap!

Just a quick note to show you the soap I made from glycerin, melted, added herbs from the garden, flowers for show, lemon zest, essential oils, and thats it! 

Three Cowls

Fall is here! The nights are colder, my hands are frozen from bicycling, and knitting season is in full swing to keep this fingers warm enough to bend and squeeze. This year I am all about the cowls. They are a quick project with lots of options and are more practical for being on 2 wheels than a scarf (think: scarf tangling in the spokes!) The last thing I need is another crash this month. 

This first warm and fuzzy is a mixture of purple/maroon bucle yarn and regular black acrylic, the second two different skeins: one blue, one multi-colored, the third cowl from maroon and white acrylic (for mom). Little ends sticking out!