School days

We had a (mostly) dry and easy drive over the mountains and arrived right before Nova and her friend Adelina got off the school bus. 

Big 2nd graders now!

 After school chocolate-pumpkin doughnut treats.  (Maya already ate hers.)

 Piano practice.

 

Amanda made a nice roast chicken dinner.  And tomorrow we celebrate Maya's birthday. Unfortunately the forecast is for rain, but we hope to have a party outdoors in the park.

Timeless ocean

After the Hurricane

Winslow Homer

The American artist Winslow Homer vacationed in Florida and the Caribbean in the 1880's.  He did an amazing series of watercolors showing strong men struggling with the sea and its creatures. And of course, the ever present threat of hurricanes.

Speaking of which, Hurricane Matthew is serious stuff headed right for Florida.  Rachel, we are all thinking of you! Take care. We're so relieved your home is somewhat inland from the coast. 

In Seattle, where people assume it is "always raining," our average annual rainfall is only about 36 inches.  To put it in perspective, Matthew dumped that much on poor Haiti in just a few hours. So it will be a real drenching for Florida, at the very least.

Tomorrow is a long driving day for us. It is raining here too, piddly amounts by comparison, but with the first snow in the high mountains.  I'll have new pictures of two cute little girls soon. We're really looking forward to seeing our family.
 

Revenge of the Knitting Doll

This old French knitter has been in the bottom of my sewing basket forever.  It's a funny little family heirloom, although most people wouldn't know what it does.  This one was handmade by my grandfather, or maybe brought over from Germany.  He taught us how to use it when we were kids.

I painstakingly turned out yards of French knit cord using balls of plain string. I don't think new yarn was wasted on kids in those days. I'm not sure what I did with all that knitted cord, but it was more about keeping little hands busy than the final product.

Anyway, the "Knitting Nancy" or "Knitting Doll" works the same way.  I found this cute vintage model for Nova and Maya a few years ago and saved it until they were old enough.  It's pretty easy to learn once you get started, and the only tricky part is setting up the first row of loops.

You can find anything on YouTube, and several videos later I still can't get the dang thing threaded.  I'm too embarrassed to take it down to our fancy local knitting store and ask for help.  But I'm not giving up.  The box clearly says "for children of all ages."  Ha.

Speaking of that, we're looking forward to seeing the girls this weekend.  We're driving over to the Methow Valley for a visit.  Maya is turning four.  Where does the time go?

The last roses

“Life is made up of a collection of moments that are not ours to keep. The pain we encounter throughout our days spent on this earth comes from the illusion that some moments can be held onto. Clinging to people and experiences that were never ours in the first place is what causes us to miss out on the beauty of the miracle that is the now. All of this is yours, yet none of it is. How could it be? Look around you. Everything is fleeting.

To love and let go, love and let go, love and let go...it's the single most important thing we can learn in this lifetime.”

Rachel Brathen

Techies Day

1,713 pound winner

Slow news Monday. Bertha is now halfway to the finish line. Local growers hauled their giants to the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle for the Giant Pumpkin weigh-off.  This guy will get scooped out, scorched inside and then filled with Elysian pumpkin beer for the Great Pumpkin Beer Festival next weekend.  A happy ending, I'd say.

We have two more trips coming up soon, but we're back to our normal routines this week. It's cool and rainy and feels like fall.  There's early dinner at home and a bit of TV in the evening.  In our case, something either pre-recorded by John, out of a red envelope, or on PBS.  And of course, tis the season for football on network TV. How about those Dawgs and Seahawks?

October 3 is "Techies Day." A big shout out to John and all his techie kind.  I can barely work the remote so having a live-in technology expert is high on my list of life gratitudes. Yes, he always has his nose stuck to some device or another, but there are advantages. I don't have to run to the Apple Store with every complaint.

And last night he Gerry-rigged my laptop to the TV downstairs so we could stream Poldark. He made it look easy! My clever little computer was perched on Nova and Maya's step stool while we watched that addictive series on the big TV.  Lots of drama, Cornish scenery and hair blowing in the wind.

Moment by moment

Autumn arrived

“My mind then wandered. I thought of this: I thought of how every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments—we hear a word that sticks in our mind—or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly—we share a hotel elevator with a bride in her veils, say, or a stranger gives us a piece of bread to feed to the mallard ducks in the lagoon; a small child starts a conversation with us in a Dairy Queen.

And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection—certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether; one we didn’t even know was going on inside us.

And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real—this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives.”

Douglas Coupland, Life After God