One Earth

Today we visited a friend who just recently opened a natural food store in Montpelier, VA and did a little (not so little) wholesale order. All I can say is what a neat place! It's here, on the first floor of this beautiful old farmhouse. As you walk in it smells wonderful, it's light and has beautiful floors and rooms. She's just getting started, but already has tons of great inventory from books to food, health aids and gadgets, you could spend alot of time looking. She's also building up a great assortment of natural items for kids. Wooden toys, special dolls, play clothes racks with clothespins and handmade aprons. It's a wonderful space and I'm so happy to be able to have some of my things included in her wares.


Unfortunately I was in a bit of a rush this afternoon and wasn't able to shop, but I need to go back and give her some more price tags and can really have a look around. Allie can attest, the apples at least are wonderful! I'm looking for some of her powdered Kefir (didn't know it came in that form), fermented (non-alcoholic, that doesn't seem possible) teas and also an education -- how to use my recent purchase, Restoring Your Digestive Health (remember that book?).


If you're in the area check her out and help a mother of FOUR, with FIVE cows, several dogs and who knows how many chickens get her shop off the ground and flying. The name is "One Earth Natural Marketplace" in Montpelier, VA and more information can be found on her website here.


Meanwhile, this mama better get knitting! The Goochland Farmers Market opens in just a few weeks and I need to seriously work on my stash. That also means a trip to the yarn store and you know how much I just hate that. Kidding of course!

Somebody stop me

Rainy days

I remembered the pattern somehow, finished the second white bootie and then made a hat to match. They're up in the shop, and then I had to get going on some green ones...and some pink...and....the day's not over yet.

We stayed home today, dreary weather, expensive gas and nowhere we really needed to go. A good friend also gave me a wonderful book, Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry by Katrina Kenison which solidified the decision to stay home. This exerpt sums up our afternoon:

"We can't reclaim those spacious hours, any more than we can turn back the hands of time and return to that more innocent age. But the lessons taught by the solitude and imposed leisure of childhood are still imprinted on our soul. As children we learned the pleasure of our own company, how to be happy where we were with what we had, how to fill and empty afternoon."


So Allie spent some time making hearts and spaceships, with ET still at the forefront of her imagination.




And baking, a personal favorite. Chocolate chip cookies, with half chocolate chips and half chopped up chocolate bars swiped from Easter baskets.




Baseball is once again cancelled, the fields have been so waterlogged here. I have one disappointed little Dodger at home! Lauren meanwhile draws and writes in her journal, today it's filled with all things Spring. Birds, flowers, trees, bugs, dogs, the list goes on and on.


it will clear up...it will get warm...the sun will come out...maybe tomorrow?

On the 39th try

I end up with a bootie that looks suspiciously similar to one I created a while back, only I made it in an entirely different fashion. The previous one was crocheted from the toe up in a conical fashion and then divided for the heel, back, etc. This one began like the oval crocheted rug in my mud room. Then, I went up the sides and decreased around the toe portion and when it looked right, made the strap and little embellishment on the toe. I love it. No, it didn't really take me that many tries, but Kevin says it felt like that many. Now I hope I can make one to match, and then a coordinating hat. By 11:00 last night I wasn't in the mood to write the pattern.

My favorite thing is that it reminds me of a bird's nest with robin eggs in it. A favorite color combination of mine. I'll also remember this as the bootie I made while watching "ET" with the family (the movie, not the evening program). The kids were affected by the movie to say the least, and had more questions than I imagined they would. I'm amazed at how good that movie still is after so many years.

I worked at the hospital today and as much as I regret leaving the family on a weekend day, I'm always thankful that I can have that experience. Every time I go I'm overwhelmingly reminded of the things we do to harm our bodies. From drugs and alcohol and their related health consequences or catastrophic accidents, to smoking, poor diet and inactivity, it's a scared straight public service announcement on repeat. I've seen so many lives cut short or changed forever, and sometimes of more profound effect, the helpless suffering of family members.

But in the midst of the pain, I usually find more than one angel. Today it was an elderly African American gentleman with the darkest skin and the whitest contrasting beard, and the bluest eyes. As I write that I'm thinking, wait, is that possible? But I'm pretty sure his eyes were blue. I just couldn't stop looking at them. His skin was beautifully wrinkled and his voice soft. As he told me he regretted his decision to agree to his leg amputation, the only thing I could think was that I was thankful he was still here and that we had the time to talk.

Got it all turned around

What I mean is, I'm back to normal today. Thank goodness, yesterday was about all of me I could stand!

Yesterday afternoon I started fiddling around with ideas again. I'm not sure why some days I need to make up something new, and why other days I just can't stop making hats, headbands, jewelry, and stuff I've already made before. Whatever the reason, here's where it got me.

Unfinished, in the idea stage, a string market bag:





I want to make the bottom looser and the whole thing bigger and less "tulip" shaped. Also the handles are still floating around in my head. I think this time I want them to be short.

Then, this bootie popped into my head last night while watching T.V. expecting to see a new episode of "The Office" and found out I have to wait one more week. Don't really know where I'm going with this one, but I love the two-toned color idea.











You can see I'm not finished. I find booties especially challenging in the "make them so they stay on" department. So there's some work to be done. I also won't look at a pattern, so there's much time spent driving myself crazy trying to figure it all out. A wing and a prayer is how some of my most favorite items have evolved and if I can just hang on long enough, the process usually pays off.


Meanwhile, today Allie and I travelled around looking for new and interesting ways I can display my things this summer at the market. I like to use old things to get some height out of my table, like an old, old apple crate and an old square suitcase. I also use a bundle of old tobacco sticks that came out of Kevin's great grandparents tobacco barn. I tie them together and splay them out in all directions and put a hat atop of each one. (I'll take some pictures)


I also use bulb shaped vases, turn them upside down and put larger hats on them. That's just what I found for a whole $2 one place we went. As a bonus, the shop owner was snipping off transplants from her "mother" plant and we came home with 4 of those.


As I surprise treat, I'm at the library (hence the plethora of pictures) in the quiet by myself. Allie is unexpectedly helping Kevin with lawnmower repair. I don't think I've ever really said how much I LOVE the library. It's free! Free high-speed internet, free books, magazines, free place for the kids to play, etc. I know I've payed for it in part with taxes, but who really thinks about it that way? The ladies are so nice, they'll help you find anything, or spend a half hour helping the kids find every pirate and ballerina book in the whole place. I also love finding the old books about knitting, crochet, embroidery, home decorating, the ones that Barnes and Noble doesn't have. I found the best embroidery book I've ever come across with more techniques than I knew were possible.


Today I'm coming home with a country decorating book, with the foreward written by Ralph Lauren in the 80's, that oughta be good. I promised Allie I'd look for cook books, and for Kevin some catfishing books. I'll probably enlist a librarian for some help. Goes much quicker that way! Tonight I finally can regroup with my knitting friends for some much needed girl time. I missed the last three get-togethers and am looking forward to getting back to normal. Don't know how much knitting will get done, we'll be looking at all 400 pictures from my friend's recent trip to England. What are friends for?

Think I'll go back to bed

It's never a good thing when your 4 year old tells you she thinks you ought to go home and go back to bed. This, on the way to preschool, after I apologized to her for being so grumpy. I knew it was going to be a rough day when I went for the big bowl of ice cream covered in chocolate syrup at 9:30 last night. Eating that late never bodes well for me the next day and sure enough I woke up with a terrible headache. The kind where the two sides of my head feel like they belong to two different bodies. I nearly fell this morning as I got out of bed because of the stabbing pain in my left ankle as it gave way--this has been going on since January. (What is going on?) And it's been downhill since then.

So to make it all better I'm hitting the hard stuff:





That's gotta be at least 3,000 calories right there, but who's counting? No coffee this morning, that's hot chocolate from Wawa, pure goodness in a cup. It's sits on the little table by the computer that catches odds and ends. You see the shards of my daughter's tea set that I've been supposed to be gluing together for a month now. That'll have to wait.

Of course this all happens on the day when Allie is in school through lunch and I have hours of solitude to conquer the mile long list of errands I'd planned for myself. At least I tackled the priorities: mail package, fill car up with gas and buy horribly unhealthy breakfast.

For those of you who are wondering, no, I'm not pregnant and no, I'm not a drinker and just hungover. Just lucky I suppose, I really can go back to bed.

It's a good day for...

Dreams and crochet. I'll explain later, if you have the time to read.

My setup with Betsey looking on:




I'm making headbands and belts, trying to build up the inventory for market season. I hope to be able to go to the Charlottesville Market one day in April before the Goochland Market opens in May. Here's one of the finished belts, I'm putting it in the shop later tonight.





Back to the part about dreams. In my daily blog reading jen lemen's post yesterday really resonated with me. She speaks of the internal struggle between "responsibility vs. dreams" and "my head vs. my heart", and the great divide "masquerading as common sense". That last part is so brilliantly put.I often think my dreams are still in the future, yet unattained, but today I was able to remember and realize that I AM living my dream. I'm living the dream today that I had a few years ago. In a few years I hope to be living the dreams I have today. Too often I think because I'm not making as much of a salary as I would if I was working full-time in PT that somehow my dream hasn't come true. As far as I know dreams and money really don't have anything to do with one another.


Other dreams have come true as well, and they are marriage and family, both of which are happy, healthy (physically, emotionally, spiritually), and loving. These are big, ongoing dreams that aren't always easy to come by, but here I am living them as well. Again, no money involved.