Sunday, September 16, 2012

Lazy Sunday and sewing Saturday

I think this is the first day I have not went to town in a long time... just wandered around the property and the house. It feels good, lazy almost. There have been a few whole hours I have not pried myself out of the chair while playing Minecraft.

Esme has played outside in the sand, watched a movie and rebuilt her Smurf kingdom in her bedroom. We made paper crowns and flags and she had a 'horse race' that involved many imaginary characters including 'Johnny Test' and his dad, so someone else could win a prize besides her. I did medical attention on her stuffed horse and a stuffed kitty that both had tears in them. I wandered and harvested in the garden. The Tennessee Greasy Bean has finally begun to put on small purple beans.

Esme's good ideas: The other night I was binding on Esme's quilt some more and she asked me why I was making my 'rar' noise. Honestly, sometimes I do that as an audible sigh and she perked her ears up at this one, as it was loud. I told her it was taking a long time to do the project, and my needle kept hitting a cut I had gotten on my finger earlier in the day. She came over and looked at the cut and watched me sewing for a moment. She dove into my sewing box and I tried to stop her - but she said she was looking for my thumb - to put it on my thumb so the needle would not hurt it. Yes, she remembered I had a thimble that was supposed to protect against hitting your finger with the needle.. and I found it after her surprising suggestion. She waited until I put it on, then satisfied she had fixed the problem, she went back to giving Daddy backseat driver directions on his Minecraft game. She wanted him to put up a sign to tell the Zombies to go away - so they would read the sign and go back to their Zombie houses with their mom and dad Zombies and not bite us in our house. **he did put up a sign that said 'keep out', just because it was a good idea**

Turned around the sewing tables while Esme napped and we watched 'Hunger Games.' Later, when Esme was outside I pushed myself to rethread the machine and made a red six gore skirt for myself out of some remnant fabric in the bags Sharon gave me. It is high waisted and still mid-calf length and has a deep pocket on one side and a zipper up the other side. It will be better than the yellow one for winter warmth. I started a sleeveless shirt as well. It needs buttonholes and armhole binding and then a bottom hem and it will be done.

Winter To Do:
Replace the insulation on the windows through the house.
Plant vetch in the west field
Finish Esme's quilt
Make slippers
Esme's hanger rod for her clothes

Note: As I am walking back from the mailbox, my nearly five year old daughter running to her grandmother's house up the hill... and the wide open September sky surrounding me... I feel one of those moments. I feel I am very far away from the nine year old girl sitting on top of her swingset in 1980s Minnesota. Yet I feel her - and at the same time that wide sky, approaching winter as those thoughts are on my mind today, reminds me of that same feeling. I would climb up into the 'rafters' of that swingset and sit there as a child and stare at the sky and the trees around me, 'talk to the wind' and feel this 'vastness' of time - imagining an older me from the future looking back at myself like a time travelling adventure - I imagined I saw them and spoke to them and asked what they had done. I could almost swear one of them had dark brown hair and said I would have a daughter and her name would start with E, but I couldn't think of any good 'E' names at the time... so it couldn't have been true, plus my hair would never get brown - it was blonde, so that couldn't be true, either. I was a bored and imaginative child...not able to leave the yard and nowhere else to go. I daydreamed a lot and maybe got 'something right.' At times now, as I age, I 'feel' that daydreaming time back then - and almsot step back to it, think about what I have done since then, and think forward to other times that will be looking back on --right now--. Just now, I could feel the little girl asking and almost feel some older me remembering, like something tracing a finger in sand within your mind... As I stared at the open sky towards the lake and thought about putting the vetch on the field for winter - about how hard and cold this winter might be - of the years ahead that I will think the same things, perhaps on that same walk. And tomorrow it will be all bustle again and before I know it, that time will have passed and I will be thinking about now.

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