Lifescapes

Miss-Matched Rainbow Mitts

Boy, did I have a job getting this simple picture loaded. My photo program crashed this morning, and I've had to learn to use another one that's installed on my computer. Grrrr....

Anyway, here you are, just for those of you who encouraged me to go for the rainbow. Two mommy mitts (finished except for weaving in the ends) and a little girl mitt, still on the needles. I'm guessing at the little girl size, hoping it will fit somebody named Becky who lives in Juneau, whose mommy is named Sheryl. Maybe I can get S. Claus to drop them down the chimney.

Now that the blog tour is over, I'll try to get back to more personal blogging. I hope you enjoyed the posts as much as I enjoyed doing them. Congratulations to the drawing winners (your names are posted here). The grand prize winner (drawn from the names of those who entered at least four drawings) will be posted on Monday, after all the holiday hoopla has died down. And there'll be a special surprise--a second grand prize, drawn from the names of those faithful friends and fans who entered ALL the drawings. So watch for that.

There's one more post you might be interested in reading, especially if you're an author who is considering doing a blog tour some time in the future. Dani Greer and I chatted about blog tours and live tours at her Blog Book Tours blog. And tomorrow or Friday, I'll try to get over the Pecan Springs Journal and post something about how the book is going.

In the meantime, Bill and I wish you a very wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

Reading note: If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice.--Master Eckhart

Candy mitts & more

Yum! Doesn't this look good enough to eat? Now, never mind the obvious little bobbles, and please overlook the crocheted embellishment where there was supposed to be a couple of garter stitch rounds. Just concentrate on the colors, which truly are yummy. The pattern (slightly modified) is from Knit Mittens by Robin Hansen--the cover pattern. I can't decide whether to do the second mitten in entirely different colors, or stay with what I've already done. What do you think?

Tomorrow's the official end of the blog tour, but there's still time to enter a few of the drawings (as of this moment, I mean), so hustle on over there and do it! One of the things I've learned on this tour is that computers and servers and networks don't always behave the way we expect them to. But the tour hosts and Peggy and I have persevered, and plugged on ahead, and just plain bullied our way through this, and it's almost over, thank goodness. Honestly, this has been nearly as much work as getting in the car and driving around from here to there! Except I get to sleep at home, which is pretty nice, and I don't have to eat on the road, and I can sit in my own favorite chair in the evening to knit candy mitts, so yeah, I like it.  Think I'll do it again, when the next China comes out.

Brrrr.... About 3 this afternoon, I looked out the window to see a flock of 30-some robins having lunch in the grass. Robins are migratory here, and they usually fly down with the first serious cold front--which was forecast for around 5 pm here in the Hill Country. Sure enough, about an hour after the robins, the wind picked up from the north, the leaves began to blow, and the cold front arrived, just in time for the dogs and me to have our evening walk in cool comfort. After yesterday's near-record 86 (honestly!), this was a delightful change. Warmest November on record, so far, I've heard. So what else is new? But last night I watched a TV show about running out of oil (the inevitable conclusion of our spendthrift ways) and felt very grateful this morning when I woke and the world was all in one piece and so was I. I was glad for such an extraordinarily ordinary day, writing and robins and a north wind and a breezy walk with the dogs.

Reading note. I am grateful for every such ordinary day, knowing that these will draw to a close somewhere beyond our seeing. I hope to go on picking vegetables, pulling bindweed out of the fields . . . enjoying the birds, the dogs, even our elderly cat, whose last season this likely will be....Going on is, after all the ultimate pleasure of our lives.--Maxine Kumin, Always Beginning

lovely while it lasted

The goldenrod has been gone for a couple of weeks, but while it lasted, the fields were painted with gold even more brightly than usual, because of the summer rains. The genus name of this remarkable plant, Solidago, means “to make whole”; it been used as a healing herb since ancient times. The goldenrod market perked up when the plant was discovered growing in great plenty in the American colonies. The colonists cut and dried it, baled it, and shipped it to England, where it was sold in the apothecary shops. Pricey: Two ounces of goldenrod might fetch a gold crown.

Bot for Native Americans, goldenrod was free. It was a staple medicine, and since some two dozen species grow across the continent, nearly every tribe was within arm’s reach of at least one. Called “sun medicine,” it was used to treat everything from wounds and fevers to rheumatism and toothache. It was also used as a charm, smoked like tobacco, woven into baskets, burned as an incense, and made into a dye.

And if that’s not enough to convince you of the significance of this golden plant, consider this: Learning that goldenrod sap contained a natural latex, Thomas Edison, that relentless inventor, selectively bred the plant to increase its latex yield. He then produced a resilient, long-lasting rubber that Henry Ford made into a set of tires for his own personal automobile. Edison was still experimenting with his rubber when he died in 1931. His research was turned over to the U.S. government, which apparently found it of little importance, even when rubber became almost impossible to get during World War II. Goldenrod rubber. Fancy that.

It's turned cooler this week, finally, the leaves are blowing off the trees, and the cypress are beginning to flame. When they're fully ablaze, I'll post a photo. Bill has been taking down trees for next year's woodpile (and the year after that), and we've finished the garden cleanup.

I've been gadding about virtually (via my blog tour--have you been along for the ride?) and actually: gave a talk to some 200 folks at the Georgetown Library yesterday. Fun for me and good news for the library (this was a benefit fundraiser) and the Hill Country Bookstore--Margarite sold lots of books. Afterward, Bill and I treated ourselves to our favorite Oriental food buffet, then came home to watch a movie (I knitted a mitten.) Little things, full of pleasure.

Reading note. What a wonderful life I've had.  I only wish I had realized it sooner.- Collette

a kink or two

Update, noon. Crystal fixed her post, so you can go directly there. Thanks, Crystal!

Blog tours (like everything else in the world) don't always work quite the way you think they're going to. Crystal ran into a bit of a problem with today's post. Until she gets it fixed, Peggy has put my post here. If you want to read about Beatrix Potter's doll's house, that's the place to go. And yes, you can enter the drawing there, too!

Speaking of drawings, we've already posted three winners from my visit to Poe's Deadly Daughters. Congratulations to Dortha H. of Gettysburg, PA; Kathy L. of Ignacio, CO; and Christine N. of Oshawa, ON Canada. Your books (with signed bookplates) are coming from New York by snails, so give them plenty of time. The drawing at Page 69 closes today at noon, so you may still be able to enter. For more details about posts and open drawings, go here.

On the lam

Not really. Virtually.

Today, I'm visiting Julia Buckley's blog, Mysterious Musings, so you can pop on over there and see what Julia and I are chatting about. However, we forgot to post the URL for the drawing page for Julia's blog. We'll get around to that, but in the meantime, if you want to enter her book drawing, you can go here and put in your name for one of the three copies of The Tale of Hawthorn House that we're giving away to Julia's readers.

For a full schedule of all the tour stops (lots of chances to win that book!), go here.

Special thanks to Traci and Gin, who wrote to tell me that Pleasant Hill Shaker Village in KY was approved in Tuesday's election for the sale of alcohol. I know, it sounds strange. But that village once operated a boarding house, brewed its own liquor, and sold it on the premises. Those Shakers were not entirely unWorldly. (This will only make sense to you if you happen to know that I'm writing a China Bayles mystery set in a fictional Kentucky Shaker village.)

More later.

Reading note. Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished--Lao Tzu

what wildness

That's all I can say at the end of a wild, wild week that took me to Lubbock, Dallas, home, Austin, and home again. Which is one heck of a lot of driving, even in Texas, with gas topping $3.89 for most of the trip. I blessed Nancy, our little low-mileage Honda Civic, although she disgraced herself by picking up a nail in her right rear tire in Goldthwaite (which claims to be the mistletoe capital of the world, and I don't doubt it). I hung around for an hour while the good guys at the Ford dealership fixed the tire. Funny thing (but not funny ha-ha): this was a virgin tire, a replacement for the one that picked up a nail in Muleshoe on Bill's last trip to New Mexico. Virgin no longer. Who's dropping all these nails on Texas roads?

In Lubbock on Tuesday, I talked to a goodly group of China's best friends at the Special Collections library. In Dallas on Wednesday, I got to spend the afternoon with my favorite high school English teacher, whom I hadn't seen for more decades than I care to tell you. On Thursday, I was one of several speakers at the Arboretum. Unfortunately, I followed the speaker who showed slides of Ted Turner's million-acre ranch, Cher's gilded Hollywood palace, and the airplanes John Travolta parks in his garden--and hence felt a little out of my league, talking about plain old rosemary and sage. Today in Austin, at the Texas Book Festival, I talked about What Wildness is This (more generally, about Western women writers) on a panel with Janis Stout and Elizabeth Crook. If you're thinking that I'm probably glad to be back home safe with nothing worse than a sore throat and a nail in Nancy's tire, I'd say you're right. Somebody get me a gin. And remind me, the next time I'm tempted to agree to drive 1200 miles for three events, to just. say. no.

But tomorrow (today, if you're reading this on Monday) I'm off again--virtually, this time, which is definitely a lot easier on the gas tank and tires. The blog tour schedule is here. I hope you're coming along, and that you'll enter every drawing. (Hey. You're just as likely as the next person to win that book.) So bring your coffee (or tea or gin or whatever) and come along. This blog tour is a new thing for me, and I'd just as soon not do it all by my lonesome.

More later, after I've finished the laundry and swept a few buckets of dog fur off the floor.

Reading note. Remember the Texas state motto: Too Much Is Not Enough, and Wretched Excess Is Even More Fun.--Molly Ivins