Halfway through May

And nothing much to show for it. What a month this has been. The intention was to continue plugging my way through the knee-wall closets, draw every day and, oh, I don't know - lose 10 lbs and contribute to world peace.  The reality is that I have been spinning my wheels, avoiding the drawing pads, (congenital chicken-itis disease), and pretending that I'm not stressing over End Of  Fiscal Year Issues. It comes hard on the heels of Personal Income Tax Wallet Robbery, with nary a moment to catch my financial breath. Anyone who is in charge of a government budget knows the strain of having to spend all your money but not one penny more or There Will Be Consequences. This year there is a new head on the local governmental shoulders and it is riding herd on us Cum Diligentia. He understands what shifty ground we are standing on and he is very patient, but he's also set the bar high. We will not go into the last month of the fiscal year with sloppy budgets. So - unlike my cluttery knee-wall closets - this area of my life will be in good order. Hmmm. Wonder if I can hire him to ride herd on my closet project.
Other angst causing things have contributed to my un-glamorous and un-blogged-about month but some very nice things have filled up the hours as well. My Mother's Day weekend was incredibly sweet. It began with a 90th birthday celebration of a dear friend at the elegant Tides Inn in White Stone.  Stuffed with both crab and birthday cake I didn't feel like making dinner so ThePrince and I just snacked on cheese and crackers up in our exotic, newly air conditioned bedroom. That was so much fun we did the same thing on Saturday, only with even more party food - crudites and shelled walnuts and wine, of course. There was wine both days.

We love lounging upstairs, especially because it feels like we're' in a tree house.
The evening blew in with rain somewhere, creating vivid shadow images in the forest top.  Eventually we were lured outside to watch the last of the daylight dip beneath the cloud banks, illuminated by golden sunrays. It was utter bliss.

Mother's Day itself was another warm one and I was off to visit Mama. Honest and true? I never have felt quite right about Mother's Day. I've always loved giving my own mama attention on that day and remember wheedling and nagging my dad about him doing something special for her. I also remember him saying huffily "She's not MY mother" but we knew he was teasing. Most of the time. But at the same time I always felt creeped out about expecting my own loved ones to make a fuss over me on Mother's Day - sort of like asking for a present. Just - um - well - ick.  Or maybe I just like to keep Mother's Day for me and my mama in a greedy sort of way or maybe it's so I can pretend I'm not turning into an old lady. Who knows? I know this. I was mighty glad I got a card from TheDarlings. But I love anything to do with them.

Here I am showing Mama how to make a selfie. We had 2 beautiful hours together looking at old photos and reading old letters and newspaper articles she'd saved over the decades. And you Richmond folks - how do you like that painting of the railroad bridge over the James! Viewed from the south side of the river. I mean - my mama is just SO cool.

The Cousins J had 4/5ths of their progeny graduating from something this spring so they held a party at my sister's house on Sunday too. I thought I'd be clever and take I64 out to P's place but I didn't have a map so I didn't realize just how far north it would take me. Next time I'll take the 288 exit and then go on west on Rt. 6. It was sweet to see all the graduates, hug all the cousins and siblings and then crank up the Oldies Radio 107.3 to tool on home through the beautiful green Virginia countryside.  Not to be too smug about things, but honestly - there is nowhere on earth so beautiful as Virginia in May. Absolutely Nowhere. Here's proof:



After that tribute - there's really not much more to report except the cool thing I stumbled upon at the last intersection before I got home.Yes. Right at the corner of Lloyds Road and Highway 17 - at Champlain - where MsMac's old store used to be. Purnel Reynolds and his wife were cooking take-away dinners!!!! Now - TheQueen does not cook on Sunday night. Someone can make popcorn or there can be snacking in the kitchen, but there will not be any cooked meals flowing from the royal fingers. What a treat to find potato salad and snaps and bbq chicken or fried fish for sale so close to home it was still hot when I got there. $6.50 each! He says he's going to be doing this twice a month on weekends. I just love it when somebody else cooks my dinner! Treat yourself.

So that's how May is going - here - at TheCastle. 

And Play

I have been practicing my drawing every day - but all werk and no play makes a wouldbe artist drift away. So I am also playing with fairies. Deep in my secret quiet soul there are some fairy tales a'borning and I want to do my own illustrations. So it's not just play but ...what might I call it? Plerk? After all, I am a Virgo.

And here are some more playful shots of TheQueen and her retinue playing.

The Thing About Practice

If you were a musician you would know what I mean by scales. Not the balancing ones of justice or the dividing ones in the kitchen but the diatonic ones from C to C up 3 octaves and back down again. Some are harder than others but the point is to teach your muscles what doing it right feels like. 

I am sure, and have even read, that it's the same with art - and I am determined to do this every day till my hand knows what it's supposed to do when my eye sees a shape. The thing about practicing is that, as long as it's something you want to do - it's not work - it's play. I am reminded of a conversation I had with a friend when I had a large elaborate garden. We were walking down the paths and he asked me how many hours I worked in the garden every week. 

"Oh - about 2 hours" I told him and he gave me a disgusted look and said no more. But that look haunted me for months till one day I realized that I think of work as "werk" ... that stuff you don't want to do, but have to. The next time I saw A I told him "You know - I do only werk in the garden 2 hours a week but I PLAY in the garden another 18."

So. I am actually playing - but it's play with a purpose. I want to learn the muscle memory to make the shapes I want to make - so that I can draw the pictures I want to draw. 

Tra La It's May - Resolution Time

YOU must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow ’ll be the happiest time of all the glad new-year,—
Of all the glad new-year, mother, the maddest, merriest day;
For I ’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I ’m to be Queen o’ the May.

                                                             Alfred, Lord Tennyson


Only I don't plan on dying at the end like this girl in the poem did. I plan on dancing o'er the fields. Or at least watching the wheat dolphins gambol through the wheat on sunshiny afternoons, walking with my dogs.

If it ever stops raining.

The month of April felt exactly like you'd expect a month with, not one, but TWO!!!, eclipses. It was stretched, busy, strange, complicated and demanding. I am ready for a sweet soft sunshiny May and today, at least, the weather dot com guys say it will stop raining. That's good enough for me.

In April I resolved to clean out at least one knee wall closet and tidy up the Heap-0-Clutter in the corner of the guest room. I accomplished the minimum if one counts beginning to tidy up the H-0-C. It is better. It is not done but it is better.  And now that the room has AC (we still can't get over the idea of air conditioning at TheCastle) I can continue to plug away at that corner. Perhaps I shall be in a position to sit at a desk and write my Christmas cards come this December. Is this the glimmering of a goal?

So what will be May's resolution? Ah well. My inner artist has been clamoring for attention this winter - and in fact, I've been drawing a good bit recently. But that inner artist (mostly my wild child right brain) has been longing for the structure of real art practice (mostly my school marm left brain)    And so, for May, I plan to put in one hour of drawing practice a day. 30 minutes of drawing technique and 30 minutes of whatever I'm in the mood for. It can be More Technique or something more free form.

In another life I was a performing violinist and I know that scales and exercises are the foundation for all the concertos. I am sure that technique practice plays the same role for paintings that those scales do. Those to brains need to get together, pool their talents, and make some progress.

Yes. Of course there will be pictures.

April's New Year's Resolution

April at last. At last. Spring spring spring. So happy it's not winter any more.

Mind now, Spring is taking her own sweet time. The poplar tree has yet to unfurl the tiniest leaf - so it's not officially spring. Maybe today it will be. Surely by the end of this weekend that harbinger tree will have it's mist of gold clouding it's branches.  But 3 days without having to wear a coat is spring enough for me.

We're back from a Birthday Visit with LD and PD in South Carolina. It was a perfect trip - easy driving, no bad traffic, and of course - mountains of happy love from the moment we got there till the moment we drove off. The young darlings took us to the most magical place: Forty Acre Rock 

It's really 14 acres - but what a place - surrounded by several thousand forested acres that we trekked through - complete with caves and waterfalls!

And of course - there's no trip to South Carolina without hunting down Haile landmarks. Here I am, looking like a bobble head ...Lord - that man just can not take a good photo of me.

Here's the Birthday Boy himself - with his second cake. 

I took knitting and actually got a few rows done on my Fiona Ellis sweater but the knitting mojo just hasn't been there this winter. (not much else has either) I did get in some practice sketching though and am getting more confident about putting pencil to paper.

 But I know you all came here to read about my April Resolution, right? It took me a while to decide just what I wanted it to be but then fate - in the guise of an HVAC crew stepped in and made the decision for me. The Guys With Tools are here putting in a Mitsubishi Ductless Heat Pump system here at TheCastle. Here is Unit 1 and though it does feel big - and does feel different - honestly, that wall is so cluttered already - it hardly matters, now. Does it? And warm in winter, cool in summer does have to come at a cost. One aesthetic will just have to move over to accommodate another.

As for the Resolution? Well - first the back story. On the second floor there is a 4 foot knee wall, accessible by 6 cabinet doors. Perfect spaces to cram STUFF and over the years I have done some serious cramming. And for more years than I like to admit I have started my New Years Resolution list with Clean Out The Knee Wall Closets. Three of them have been done. Three are disasters. The Guys With Tools had to get into one of the disaster areas and now all of that stuff is dumped on the guest bed - so no. Nobody is invited to spend the night till I get that put away. So April's resolution will be to restore order to at least one gutted knee wall closet and also the other disaster area that must be shifted in the spare room. That spot where I have dumped yarn bins, family photos, Unfinished Knitting Projects, and who knows what else. The Guys With Tools have to get behind that mess too so, duh. Right. Resolutions by default - but I will be so glad when they're accomplished, so relieved and so proud, that I plan to reward myself with a desk to put in that corner of the room and make it my home office.

And then I will follow Juno's example and crash on the sofa.

March Mission Accomplished

My New Year's Resolution for March was to create a Christmas Card mailing list. It's the kind of mindless fun sort of job I enjoy - but it's really so mindless it was hard to make myself sit down and actually create it. Then suddenly I realized it was almost April and I hadn't begun. And so. Sunday morning I sat down with the huge stack of old cards, envelopes, and the crusty Rolodex and began to type.

 VOILA! 

I haven't decided what I want to do for April - though we have HVAC guys coming early next month to put in a ductless heat pump. Four Mitsubishi Hyper-Heat Ductless Units, in fact. Here's what they look like.

 

So it might behoove me to clean out the corner in the spare room that is heaped with yarn bins, fiber tubs, laundry baskets full of family photos, a spinning wheel, a chair and several bags of unfinished knitting projects. That might be my April Resolution - or better yet - putting it all back in useful and accessible order might be the real resolution.  Sigh. Sounds like werk to me. 

A more fun resolution might be 

So now it's discourse between head and heart - or conscious and subconscious - or Left Brain and Right Brain. Either way - I will probably do at least some of both. And with that TheQueen will bid March adieu with this fascinating photo of the sun's reflection in a pool of water.  Juno is intrigued. Or is it Callie?

Happy New Year and Knitting Too

Time for those New Year's Resolutions.

Huh? What's that? It's March? Well? So? Who says you can't make resolutions as the world is beginning to emerge from the misery that was the past 2 months? Heck. It was all TheQueen could do to put on shoes and go to work every day. There wasn't anything left to help her Make Plans for Better Times.



But that was then and this is now. This morning I woke up with this old Lovin' Spoonfull song playing in my head. Something about the light, the angle of the sun, the sounds outdoors, seems to have magically opened up the cobwebby windows in my head and I can see clearly enough to actually make plans. But in thinking about those plans it dawned on me that, this year, at least, I don't want to plan too far forward. Perhaps it's because, to quote Susan Miller from AstrologyZone, "Mars has been tearing through my earned income sector since December 7, and it seems I've needed to spend it as fast as it has been coming in." No duh after a heart attack at Christmas just in time to wipe out the deductible of 2013 and suck up the 2014 allotment. And things Financial don't look any better in April when: "Next month, we will have two very hard eclipses, April 15 and 29. The one that will affect you more will be the one April 15, and it will affect the source of your income." Ouch!

Oh well. C'est la vie - et c'est l'argent. Guess I won't buy any frivolous stuff for a while. Thank goodness I don't need any new clothes, either. Mental note to self "Do Not Look At Elann dot Com's March Specials".

Anyway - back to the New Year's Resolutions and planning ahead and all that stuff. It dawned on me that I don't really feel like tracking down and tackling any Big Things this year. What I have is a whole bunch of little tidying up things that need to be done, in no particular order.  So for the rest of this Has To Get Better year, I plan to tackle one small tidying-up chore a month. One irritating bit of sloppiness in my life will be eliminated.  One corner of messiness will be made into a retreat of serene and pleasurable organization. 

And No. I'm not assigning all 10 of them right now. I will pick one each month - the one who's completion would make me happiest right now. And Right Now that chore is to update the address book. We have a hideous rolo-dex that ThePrince wants to keep but I'm going to take that, the bag of Christmas cards with envelopes, and the drawer stuffed with Other Correspondence, and create my very own database. Yes. Yes. I know how to do this. I even think it's fun - it's such a Virgo thing to enjoy - like filling out forms. Just thinking about being able to print address labels for Christmas Cards makes me happy. 

Creativity? Where is the creativity in TheCastle? Well - there actually has been some and there's quite a lot more up ahead because, in fact, some of my Other Messy Corners involve Drawing and Knitting, Prayer and Writing. In the darkest days of late January I picked up a copy of Knitters Magazine and fell deeply in love with Fiona Ellis' pink cabled sweater. (Shush. Do NOT ask me about my oatmeal Aran sweater. We aren't ready to talk about that yet.)

You can see it on the web page - with the number 58 beside it - that's the page number where you'll find it in the magazine. I love and admire Ms. Ellis SO much. I feel blessed to have taken a class from her and have longed to knit at least one of her designs ... which is a rare desire for TheQueen, who tends to only knit stuff she's made up herself. Of course, with finances hijacked by Mars and, even in the wretched month of January, the budding desire to tidy up the clutter in TheCastle, I didn't want to buy any new yarn. Diving into the stash, though, I found a bag of, now discontinued, Louisa Harding Jasmine - in this pretty coral color. It's a blend of cotton, bamboo, silk and polyester and there is probably only enough to knit this sweater with short sleeves - but it knits to gauge and will make the best warm weather sweater to throw on in chilly air conditioned offices come this summer. 

In an effort to cheer up his deeply depressed queen, ThePrince has been reading Tolkien out loud and this has proved to be a wonderful project to knit while listening. I almost never knit flat pieces but I'm following the directions on this project. Slow going,  a little sloppy with guttered purl rows, but I'm okay with it and definitely not in any hurry. Here is what I've done so far.

And here's where I'm going to end up. (back view) I'm just about ready to start the decreases and to knit that little flourish of a cable at the top.

There has also been drawing - for pencils and pens have called out to me in a sad lament. Well - they did a few weeks ago and I responded.  Though creaky - my hands are starting to feel more confident with each day's practice. Yes. Lots of faerie stuff - and we can just pretend it's inspired by Tolkien. If there is more to say later - it will be said. 

Mostly it's just fun. 

So. That's the state of things here in TheCastle. TheQueen is moving forward into 2014 at last, with a lighter heart and sunnier outlook than the cold drear of January would have predicted. It is now Tomorrow - and we are all At Tara.