Haiku from the sewing room

Woe is the quilter
with wonky quarter-inch seams
unsew, unsew, un...

...quilt guild show and tell
vulnerability looms
church ladies do judge.

Early Arrival

Temperatures here in northern Indiana are averaging in the 20s, nearly twenty degrees  below normal. This little lamb must be a little puzzled. I saw him yesterday, the first one spotted this season. His Mama stamped her a feet a few times. She didn't like her baby having his picture taken.

Biscuits and Birds

Abandoned cabin in Ramsey Canyon, AZ 

Seeking a respite from one of the midwestʼs especially brutal winters a few years ago, we high-tailed it to Arizona. The Grand Canyon. Petrified Forest. Flagstaff. The ancient Anasazi site called Wupatki. Kingman. Quartzsite. Bisbee. Tombstone. Tucson. 

After settling in Tucson and quickly going broke at the annual fossil, mineral, bead, and gem shows, we met friends for the traditional pilgrimage to Pinnacle Peak for barbecue. Some things are just so corny you have to do it. Wear a tie and theyʼll cut it off and nail it on the beams, adding to their collection of severed ties of especially bad design. Driving to our friendsʼ home after stuffing ourselves, minus our thrift shop neckties, we all settled in the back yard to await the evening visit of the roadrunner. 

The next morning we headed out early, destination Ramsey Canyon, a Nature Conservancy site. It is a secluded gorge about an hour and a half south of Tucson. Forested with pine, fir, and maple intermingled along the steep slopes, sycamore grow on the floor of the valley where their demanding roots are assured of water access. All these trees are not far from arid desert plants. An intimate little canyon, during the bare-branch season the limbs extend as arms and hands into blue sky-soil. 

Home of up to fourteen species of hummingbirds, Ramsey Canyon is known as “The Hummingbird Capital of the United States.” While we didnʼt see any hummers the day we visited, I did spy my dream retreat, a tiny, tired, dilapidated shack melding with the trees and underbrush just a short distance off the main path. I have no explanation for my recurring affinity to little ramshackle buildings like this. The porch sags. The roof sags. The spirit of the abandoned old homestead sags. Itʼs inevitable when I see a secluded orphan like this I feel the urge to nurture it back to life. My immediate instinct is to go inside, sweep it out, fire up the trusty old cookstove I imagine waiting for me, scrub the rickety work table, and bake biscuits. Yes, biscuits. Not biscuits and gravy. I see just plain baking powder biscuits piled high on a white ironstone platter, served with fresh sweet butter and your choice of homemade raspberry jam or honey from the hives out back near the spring-fed creek. 

If you donʼt mind, set the table on the porch while I get a fresh batch of biscuits in the oven. I'll fill the feeders and get the binoculars, too. Then we can sit outside and count hummers until dark. You may sit in that big oak rocker with the cushion, if you like. Itʼs most comfortable for extended porch sitting and hummingbird viewing. Be very still and you may hear their tiny engines before you see them dart into view. Biscuits are ready. Help yourself while they're hot. More coffee? If you get chilly, pull that quilt off the back of the rocker and cover up.

Another Christmas Past

Already two weeks into January, the holidays are definitely over. I'm writing to pack them away for another year.

It's hard to get excited about major Christmas decorating without kids who believe in Santa Claus living in the house anymore, yet I still put up the big monster eight foot tall artificial tree again for just hubby and me. Oldies who refuse to grow up completely, we enjoy the thousand cheerful lights on those long December evenings, and also plug in the tree in the morning to brighten the start of the day for the neighborhood children walking down the lane to the school bus stop.

It's such an emotional time, the holidays. Getting out, and into, the boxes of decorations takes strength. It takes physical strength hauling the tree and a dozen big boxes up from the basement, climbing up and down the ladder to position lights, baubles, and tinsel. Yes, I really put shimmering silver strands on the plastic branches. But, the hardest part is the emotional strength I muster up to delve into the memories of decades of Christmases.

As I open the boxes, handmade ornaments and the hands who made them come to mind. Vignettes of my life appear. I tear up thinking of our first baby dressed in his little football sleeper and laid under the Christmas tree, our own miracle. Hubby's parents and mine are all gone. Grandparents gone a long time ago. Families are smaller for one reason or another. The year Santa barely got the Sears harvest gold toy refrigerator and stove put together before the kids came galloping down the stairs, and the year he forgot Guns of Navarone playset, which this year sold on eBay for $250.00. Our daughter in her flannel nightgown tearing around the kitchen table in her new clamp-on roller skates. The fresh turkey that smelled like it had been dead a year when I took it out of the bag to cook for dinner. Oh, the fowl was foul that year!

So, as I sit at my computer, hot tea and good music keeping me company, I wrap up the 2012 holidays, stash them in my heart-vault bulging with memories, wish you well, and go back to work on quilts for each of our grown children for Christmas 2013. I have a few blocks done already. The pattern? Tree of Life.

2/20 update: All 32 blocks are done and ready to be joined. Then add borders and off to            
                   longarm quilter to work her magic. Next up? Same quilt, slightly different
                   colors for the leaves.

truancy

I've been a blogging truant for most of 2012, but promise something new to wind up this year.

First New Year's Resolution? I will blog at least once a week in 2013. I will blog at least once a week in 2013!

Today is Poem In Your Pocket Day

In the spirit of #pocketpoem on twitter, I share this.

Defining Success

Each day I write a little something, believing one day

a wordsmith's bullet will hit the target. It isn’t easy,

resurrecting dormant vocabulary and proper punctuation,

diagramming feelings into prose and poetry;

however, I shamelessly aim for heartfelt truth

and fire off simple rounds. If the only upshot

my writing accomplishes is to cause the reader

(yes, you!) to realize you have much to say,

then, my posted ponderings become successful

when you set pen to paper, fingertips to keyboard,
and shoot your words into the bulls-eye.

Cathy Safiran

March 25, 2012

First Impression

Being a lover of winter, snow, and fairy tales, I was immediately intrigued when I learned of Eowyn Ivey’s first novel, The Snow Child, set in Alaska. Newlyweds in 1966, hubby and I bought the books Homesteading in Alaska, and How to Get Out of the Rat Race and Live on $500 a Year. That never happened. Still dreamers, Alaska is on our bucket list.

The Snow Child is a delight to hold. The paper is lightly textured and feels like cotton. An impish mysterious small figure peeks from behind the paper-white bark of a stark tree. A red fox peeks from behind another tree and watches the child. The dark night holds a sliver of the moon- or is it an eclipse? Perhaps an eye? I’m only on page forty, so I’m eager to discover everything that will be revealed in the story.

I inspected this book carefully before beginning to read. First edition 2012. The paper feels gentle. The type is the perfect size for bedtime reading by tired eyes. There is a handmade quality to this edition. The edge of the book is not surgically sliced at a hard ninety degree angle. The pages are slightly angled, almost divided in sections, like the sewn signatures of a hand made book. The cover beneath the dust jacket is white as snow and the end papers are dark-night blue. Lovely. A mother who always swaddled her babies, I feel Eowyn Ivey’s story is revered by the designers of her book and her publisher Little, Brown and Company by the way The Snow Child is presented. I know I am in for a treat!

Swaddled in bed last night beneath a wool blanket and down throw, our house as still as Jack and Mabel's homesteader cabin, I began reading The Snow Child and slipped with them into their world near the Wolverine River in Alaska. I read slowly, pondering Eowyn Ivey’s phrases, sentences, and skill as a writer. And, tonight, when I read from The Snow Child, I hope to again fall asleep with a tear on my cheek that sparkles as one of Alaska’s snowflakes.

Cathy Safiran

February 5, 2012