Lifescapes

Book review site relaunched

The big "secret" project I've been telling you about just went public!

We (Paula, Peggy, Linda, and I) have relaunched the Story Circle Book Review site, with a fresh new look and lots of new features. This is a site that Peggy and I put together for Story Circle five or six years ago. Paula took it over and expanded it to over 400 reviews, making it the largest women's book review site on the Internet. Now, we're expanding even further, with added categories for women's non-fiction and fiction (including mysteries, historical and mainstream novels, and Christian fiction), a new look, and lots of new features--and more on the way!

To handle this expansion, we're looking for reviewers to supplement our existing team of 20-plus reviewers. Reviewers may receive free advance reading copies and new books--and of course writing reviews is a great way to add to your portfolio of publications. We're featuring our most active reviewers by giving each one a webpage of her own, and will soon be launching an eletter with more opportunities to showcase our reviewers. Interested? You'll find all the info here. If you've just read a book that you've enjoyed and want to share, we'd like to read your review.

Also, stay tuned here for another big announcement, coming up in a few days--something I've been plotting for a couple of months is about to happen, finally!

Best intentions. I'm knitting the second sock in a mystery pair. You know about this, right? You knit the first sock in a pattern you were wild about at the time, but you fail to note the name/location of the pattern, and you can't find it when you start the second sock. I'm doing my best to duplicate it, but I'm afraid that this pair will end up on my personal feet (rather than those of the planned recipient), because the patterns don't quite match. When will I learn to not only keep the needles with the yarn and Sock #1, but also leave a trail of breadcrumbs to the PATTERN!! Oh, hiss, boo, and grrrr....

Reading note. If it is true, and I really believe that it is, that knitting is a soothing force in the world and that the liberal application of yarn can ease any day, then today would be a time when I tested it.

Autumn lovelies

This bristly beauty is blooming all across Meadow Knoll, turning the fields a brilliant purple. I know--it looks a lot like a thistle. In fact, the species that grows in California is called Coyote Thistle, which you will understand if you remember that the coyote is a trickster creature. But eryngo is actually a member of the parsley family. I'm not aware that this particular species (Eryngium leavenworthii) has had any medicinal uses. One of its cousins was widely used by the Plains Indians, though. Rattlesnake master or button snakeroot (Eryngium yuccifolium) was used as a sedative, and to treat veneral disease, snakebites, impotence, and intestinal parasites. It was also used in rattlesnake medicine dances. It's said that the medicine men chewed the root, blew on their hands, and could then handle the snakes (it put them to sleep?). I don't recommend that you try this, although the plant itself, in most of its species, would be a wonderful addition to your native plant garden. To see the species native to your state, check out this page.

We're not quite through with the pecan harvest, but Bill took time out to make a trip to Houston to see his mom and brother, and he's mowing today. We'll let the rest of the pecans (about 25% of the harvest) drop from the trees and rake them up. I wish you could see my hands (not). I wore latex gloves, but the tannin leached through the gloves and my hands are stained brown. And I have a couple of events coming up! In addition to the Lubbock event, I'll be at the Dallas Arboretum on November 1, but don't get too excited. I am an "also featured" speaker--although there are some celeb speakers that you would enjoy. Unfortunately, the tickets to the daylong event (if there are any left) are $245. It's a benefit for the Women's Garden, and I understand that the luncheon menu is out of this world. For such an upscale event, Bill suggests that I find a pair of white gloves to disguise my transgressions.

The weaving is going forward: I'm working on a sampler now, trying out some different yarns, just to see how they work. Thinking of some place mats with southwestern Indian motifs for the table in New Mexico. But that'll  have to wait until I have my quota of Christmas scarves finished.

And of course, the writing. In fact, the file is up on the computer (behind this blog) and I have to get to it right now, while the day is still young enough to accomplish something. I'll try to blog tomorrow over at the Pecan Springs Journal, where I'm blogging the book.

Oh, and stay tuned for two announcements: the "secret project" that Paula and Peggy and I have been working on (we were joined by Linda Wisniewski) will be launched this coming week; and I'll be announcing the dates/locations of my Cottage Tales Blog Tour, which takes place in November.

Reading note. For me, weaving is a solace, a retreat from computers and calculators and book galleys and business reports...I will weave to satisfy my soul, and if the results are nice enough to give as gifts or show in public or publish in this magazine (Handwoven), that will be a bonus. I will weave to satisfy my soul.--Linda Ligon, This is How I Go When I Go Like This

Pecan harvest

We're harvesting pecans this week. Bill gathers and I shuck (take off the green hulls). This is yesterday's loot--about 10% of the total harvest, Bill guesses. I haven't stopped to estimate the number of pecan pies represented here, but believe me, there will be plenty. Not to mention chopped pecans in fudge, cakes, and cole slaw (our favorite). Yum.

I am also weaving, but last night I had to stop and repair the warp brake on my loom (a Schacht rigid heddle), which meant taking the trestle stand apart at the bottom, while I watched the second in the Tom Selleck/Robert B. Parker series: Stone Cold. Super Selleck acting/looks/voice (love that voice), superb Parker dialogue. I'm giving myself an A++ for fixing the loom myself, and not asking Bill to do it. Here are my two latest scarves (can you tell that Christmas is coming coming coming?) I'm warping this evening for another scarf.

                                                                                                                                                                                    
















And I'm writing, too. I'm keep progress reports and book thoughts on the Pecan Springs Journal blog, so if you're interested in how Wormwood is coming along, check over there.

UPDATE (Thursday, Oct. 18): I've had to set the book aside for more work on the pecans. These are drying on the front porch--it's about 2/3 of the total crop. Each flat contains the yield from one pecan tree, most of which are very young, still. Total (when we're done): around 200 pounds, which will probably be about 100 pounds when the nuts have dried. Who knew.

Reading note. Perhaps if my mother hadn't laid me down for a nap on a chenille bedspread at age two, I wouldn't have become a weaver.--Linda Ligon, This is How I Go When I Go Like That

Jazzy blues

I was possessed by the urge to sit down at my loom last week, and this blue scarf, jazzed up with orange and reds, was the result. I warped the loom (a rigid heddle) on Thursday and spent Friday weaving--finished the scarf on Friday night, just about the time Bill got home from New Mexico. (Yes, that means that I didn't get any writing done on Friday. But I put in some good book-think time while I was weaving, and came up with a new plot twist I really like. Also, I watched Night Passage, Tom Selleck's version of the Robert Parker novel. Yum yum. I am definitely a Tom Selleck fan. If any of you see a resemblance between McQuaid and Selleck, you are dead on.)

The scarf is a bit of this and that. The weft is of different weights and blends, mostly wool but some acrylic. (A purist would sniff.) The warp is hand-dyed handspun, along with some commercially dyed wool yarn. Here's how it looked on the loom.                                                                                                                                                   

I warped it a different way than I used to (warped it directly on the loom, according to directions I found on the Internet), which is much quicker--or would have been, if I had bothered to read the directions closely. I didn't, so it wasn't. Next time, I'll pay more attention.

And there will be a next time. Soon. Like right away, actually, because I've just realized how close Christmas is, and how little time I have to finish making stuff. I've also got a huge stash of handspun, and this is a good way to use it up.

Now, which of my favorite guys gets this scarf? (No, not Tom Selleck.)

Reading note. Motivational speakers often pose the question, "If you were on your deathbed, would you look back and be sorry you didn't spend more time at the office?" The right answer is, of course, no--you'd be sorry you didn't spend more time with the people you love, or doing the work that will make the world a better place. I think maybe I'd be sorry I didn't weave and spin more, too. Because the more I do, the better everything else seems to fit together. The more I weave and spin, the more in touch I am with myself, the more meaning I find in my daily life. You know? --Linda Ligon, This is How I Go When I Go Like That

Tallgrass prairie

The tallgrass prairie dominated this part of Texas two centuries ago. Most of it is gone now, turned into suburban backyards and parking lots, with only a small amount held safe in prairie preserves. But we're lucky enough to have a tiny bit of mostly native prairie, about four acres, on our property. And this year, the grass is really, really, really tall. Bill is 6'1", and he's looking up at the tip of this bluestem, which makes that grass, oh, maybe 6'5". And that wasn't the only stalk that high--there was plenty more. So the next time you read that on the native prairies, the grass was as high as the horses' backs, believe it.

Actually, what Bill is looking at in this photo is a non-native bluestem, King Ranch (KR) bluestem, that was brought to Texas from China, by way of California. It's more aggressive and more drought-tolerant than the native turkeyfoot bluestem or the little bluestem and might eventually crowd them out. But for the moment, they're healthy and holding their own. There's even a big patch of yellow Indiangrass that I hadn't seen before. We've never mowed this pasture. When we bought it, seven years ago, it was the home of a pair of burros, who had eaten every scrap of grass down to the root. We could never have guessed it would make this kind of a comeback, especially given the droughts of 2003-2006. But we've already had something like 40" of rain this year (it's hard to tell, exactly, because the rain gauge only holds 6", and a couple of times during the July rains, it overflowed). I think we'll have to mow it now, though, or we'll have a fire hazard when the grass freezes back and dries out.

But in the meantime, I'm enjoying morning walks with the dogs. It's been foggy the past several mornings, and as we wade through the sea of constantly moving grasses, the only sounds are the cheerful chirps of the mockingbirds and the long calls of the mourning doves. A lovely way to start the day.

Reading note. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...we need silence to be able to touch souls.--Mother Teresa