Silent Sunday

More Halloween decorated houses in my neighborhood!

Happy Halloween!

All Hallows

All Hallows
  
Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
Sleep in their blue yoke,
The fields having been
Picked clean, the sheaves
Bound evenly and piled at the roadside
Among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
Of harvest or pestilence
And the wife leaning out the window
With her hand extended, as in payment,
And the seeds
Distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

Louise Gluck

Another Library

I'm making slow progress on my library list. I did go to a new one the other day - the Del Paso Heights branch. I have 11 more to go still. It's a small branch so it was easy to look through all the books. I ended up with a couple of mysteries, a book of poems and a decorative beading book. The beading book has instructions for making beaded lampshades. I think they look really neat and I'd love to make one. I'm afraid that my cats would be very fond of it though!

The first picture is, obviously, the library. The second is just leaves on the ground in the parking lot. I love all the leaves on the ground. I have a bowl of them in my kitchen that I've picked up when I walk and I also have a few on my desk at work.

Bead Journal Project

Registration for the 4th Bead Journal Project will begin on November 8th! The Bead Journal Project is a year long project where participants create a monthly journal page using a whichever techniques they chose so long as beading is included. This is the second year I've been involved and I love it. I am admittedly somewhat behind this year . . . that's ok though! It isn't about how fast you do your projects or keeping up with someone else or comparing your work to other beaders. It's about personal growth through what you are creating, sometimes about working out problems by dumping out a bunch of beads and starting to put them on fabric, sometimes about just plain fun.

I have a separate blog where my daughter and I post pictures of our work. It's called One More Stitch if you're interested. The title actually came from a t-shirt I saw for sale about cross-stitching. A woman is stitching in her pajama's and saying "just one more stitch." Our blog was originally started to post stitching stuff but now both of us are mainly beading. Anyway. . . back to the bjp!

I found the BJP in the first year it started through my wanderings around the Internet. I visited different blogs admiring the work beaders were doing and kept thinking it looked like fun. Prior to that the only beading I'd ever done was small Mill Hill ornament kits. I've been doing embroidery, quilting and sewing for as long as I can remember but never beading. Anyway, I sent an email to Robin Atkins, who is the originator of the project, and asked about joining. She explained that they'd probably be doing it a second year and I could sign-up to join then. I am not a joiner nor am I a person who writes emails to total strangers. But I was so fascinated by this idea that my desire to participate overcame my initial shyness. There's something about working with beads that I find soothing and creative. And fun! During the first year (second of the project but my first year) my daughter was admiring all the beading and decided to join this year. It's been a lot of fun seeing her projects and comparing ideas.

You don't have to have any experience or particular skills. It's pretty easy (at my age with a good lamp and magnifying glasses) to put a bead on a needle. And don't feel you have to be "creative." I didn't think I was creative enough to come up with anything original but I have and I've learned a lot in the process. If you have even the slightest interest, just a small thought that maybe it'd be fun, then JOIN!

Below is one of my projects from the first year I participated. I was doing a piece each month based on a poem. This one wasn't exactly a poem - it's from The Cat Who Walked By Himself by Rudyard Kipling:

He will kill mice, and he will be kind to babies when he is in the house, just as long as they do not pull his tail too hard. But when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.

How about a poem?

You Might Consider

how my long life of losing men
could create a new international sport.

Men lost in the desert, men missing
in action from doorways and all-night diners;

men making the most of fire
escapes, service stairs, the emergency aisle

of airplanes like United. Men
para-sailing after spaceship encounters.

I am accomplished in the world
of the see-you-later wave

as his pick-up truck disappears
traveling to the next espresso stand.

Something in the curve of my collar,
the blue of my blouse sets them running.

They know they are in the hands of a master.
But when the coffee’s on, the pumpernickel

toasted just right, I have to let them know;
I’m actually ready for them to go.

by Susan Rich

October 25, 1934

Today is my Dad's birthday. As you can probably figure from the post title, he's 76 years old. This is one of my favorite pictures, I was 1-1/2  and he was 24. There are many people I like, many I admire and would like to emulate, a few I trust and a few I respect. The people that fall into all those categories can be counted on one hand and my father would be the first one.

He's a person who does and says what he believes to be right and it makes no difference if you're a stranger, friend, boss or relative. He doesn't tailor his words to what he believes you want to hear. For better or worse, not a trait I inherited from him!

He's also incredibly intelligent. I know a lot of people probably think their father is a genius, but I'm not alone in thinking mine is. When he was in the army they gave intelligence tests and he scored higher than anyone else ever had. I found this quote once and saved it because it reminded me of him: He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities. ~Robertson Davies

He does, without obvious effort, what most of us can't even imagine. He was a computer analyst before he retired. I don't remember his exact title but he wrote programs and fixed them. He worked for IBM when they first developed the SAGE computer, a gigantic thing that was less efficient than an iphone is now probably! He literally has forgotten more than most people know about computers.

Aside from being intellectually amazing, I think he's an incredibly tough person. I don't mean in a tough-guy manner (although he grew up in Oakland & he and his brothers were probably the 1940's gang to avoid). He survived raising four children, the death of a grandchild, the death of his wife of 43 years, the death of a partner of 10 years and all the stuff that goes with just living. Yet he's still hanging in there and still going out and dealing with life. I think that's pretty amazing.

He isn't perfect and I guarantee you it isn't easy being his daughter sometimes. Logical and rational are probably in the top two words you'd use to describe him. I don't know that they are even in the top 100 for me! But I'm proud to be his daughter and I hope there are a lot more birthdays left! The song below always makes me cry. My life has indeed been "a poor attempt to imitate the man."  I haven't come close but I think it's an effort worth continuing.

Silent Sunday

This is what it looks like outside today. I love it!