Beginning to think Christmas

This week held one delightful day of putzing, time to dally around the house, cooking, cleaning a bit, straightening up, and arranging autumnal adornments.  I love those days of easy freedom; believe me, the luxury of doing that at my leisure is certainly not lost on me.

Even though fall is just now in full swing, I have been thinking a bit about Christmas.  I have two gifts already knit, folded up and stashed in my knitting closet, awaiting blocking.  I also have a few gifts bought and tucked away in cubbies and chests. In addition, one knitting gift is on the needles and one sewing gift was begun Saturday during my second quilting class.  I am learning how to use triangles!

I like making things to give to people I love and care about.  I think on those faces and those people during the making, and that for me is the best part of gifting.

The older I grow and the longer I live the less having and getting stuff appeals to me.  For the most part, I think in our country we have more than enough to use, manage, and organize, so heaps of presents under the tree is not what I aspire to create.  Truly, the story and reality of the incarnation, the intentional gathering together of the people I love, the family traditions, the quiet beauty of the season, and the passage of time each successive Christmas marks are the things I cherish.  May it be thus for all of us this year...

Cleaning

Twenty something years ago as teacher with three children to grow and a big old (circa 1815) house to clean and keep in order, I pleaded with my husband to consider adding the expense of a biweekly house cleaning service to our budget.  He agreed, and for well over two decades, from September to June, I have not really thought a lot about keeping the kitchen floor mopped or the bathrooms scrubbed; it has just "magically"  happened.  Last week we cancelled our cleaning ladies because of a week spent in North Carolina, so that means, this week I am doing the cleaning.  Thus far, I have conquered the top two floors of our house.  I have scoured the tub, sucked cobwebs from ceiling cracks, dusted vases, washed plants, gotten down on my hands and knees to wipe the bathroom and kitchen floors, and even moved furniture to confront dust bunnies hiding behind.  

Cleaning more deeply than we pay others to do for us, I am surprised that it feels kinda right.  My mother was a meticulous housekeeper and cleaner.  So is my sister-in-law.  I never got that gene nor obtained it by osmosis.  But at almost 60, I finally think I know what clean and orderly looks like, and I have a semblance of how to get there. Now that I have the time to actually do it, it feels as if I am getting reacquainted with my home...day-by-day and room-by-room.

When it became known that I intended to retire, I received advice from other retirees.  Mostly it was to go away in September when the busses roll, and not to commit to anything for a full year.  With probably a certain sense of hubris, I started off retirement ignoring the first suggestion, coming to regret it as September waned.  As I neared retirement, I scanned our church newsletter and volunteer opportunities mentioned in other newsletter, planning the groups I might join and the causes I might champion when I was freed from the bells of school.  I even made promises and started off September scribbling things to do into my calendar....

Now well into October, I am starting to see this retirement thing a bit differently and beginning to understand the wisdom of the year hiatus from commitments.  Maybe it is decades of bells and rigid schedules of where I am to be and who I am to be with, but  I really am not ready to solidly commit to much other than my yoga class and a few mornings of working out.  Getting my body in shape and my house in order is helping oddly to reshape a shifted universe. I will work on the soul and spirit after some more time passes....

My mother (gone 11 years and I still miss her so..), sitting at our kitchen table in our old house in Huntsville (in front of those curtains I once sewed).  Yes..I know, posting this photo (and probably writing this post) is total self indulgence.  

While Making Curtains

Monday night at a charity dinner, a table mate posed the question I am asked frequently of late, “So, what are you doing with all your time?” 

That answer came easily: "I am making curtains.”

My little black sewing machine has been humming this week, stitching window coverings for our sweet baby Jamie’s nursery.  The last curtains I recall sewing were for Barbara’s kitchen in her newlywed apartment in the historic Bellefonte Laundry building. Those same versatile curtains now hang in Alexander’s bedroom.

I remember making curtains for our first home on Lyndhurst Road in York.  We remodeled the kitchen of the 1922 red-brick, semi-detached, two-story house in a tree-lined section of East York, not so dissimilar to where we live now. A stay-at-home mom with three young children and a need to make our one paycheck stretch for the entire month, I did a lot of things to save money.  I learned to can and freeze fruit and vegetables from the amazingly prolific postage-stamp-size garden in our back yard and from the abundant pick-it-yourself York County farm opportunities 

 I baked bread, participated in a great network of hand-me-down clothes swaps for my children, and clipped coupons.  I painted walls, refinished furniture, and learned to hang wallpaper.  I cut my children’s hair. I stitched Halloween costumes and Christmas outfits and I made as many Christmas presents as I could conjure to make. There was a strong economic reason that The Living More With Less Cookbook was well used in our home.

That same financial reality was oh-so-clear when Barbara and I were pricing blinds for the baby’s room.  The tally of the cost to cover the windows and shutter a closet was a bit staggering.  “I could make you curtains for so much less, “ I confessed, adding “and I have the time to do it.”

The most difficult part was selecting fabric from afar but with the magic of the internet, we finally found a print (David Walker’s “All Over Dinos” ) in ample yardage at a price that didn’t break the bank.  Even though sewing rod curtains is pretty straightforward and simple, I found great general directions here.

With three valances made, the closet curtains complete, only two sets of half curtains remain to be sewn before the batch is ready for delivery, and I get to hold my newest, now smiling, grandson.  It will be a pleasure to see these red curtains hanging in his room. 

 While guiding yards and yards of fabric through the sewing machine's feed, I pondered this circularity of  life “before work”and “after work.” Years of employment and saving provide us with a financial security we didn’t have during those lean times of establishing our home and raising our children.  And yet now, amidst considerations of sustainability, leaving a smaller footprint, and living green, it seems important to rethink the amount of things we buy and to reconsider the types of the things we do.  Our nation, in particular, has developed (Really? Are we?) into a portion of this globe consuming a vast percentage of its resources.  And I, along with so many others, question our moral responsibility as a stewards of this world, a world God has created to be enjoyed by all His children. If we are to live lives reflecting God's glory and intention, we who have so much should seek to live with less, so those who need it most have enough.

P.S.  And here are the new curtain in the baby's room, along with Nana and Jamie, napping.  Bliss.

Autumn

Autumn nudges her way into September.

We had a house full of family this past weekend, and the flavors of the weekend were testament to the newly arrived season.  While our son and his dad checked out the new football seats in Beaver Stadium and cheered Penn State onto a victory, my brother, sister-in-law and I strolled through the Arboretum at Penn State, reveling in Fall's bounty displayed there.

At home, my table reflected that changing season, with apples, pie, and these blueberry scones appearing on the menu.

But really, the very best thing that happened this month was seeing  my husband receive a well deserved honor, the Penn State Outreach Pioneer Award, only the third bestowed.  Pretty cool, I think!

Paying Attention

Last week, it rained and rained and rained...every day for over a week...

Constant grey skies and gloom pushed us into our houses and the threat and reality of flooding for friends and family in Pennsylvania added gravitas to each weather report.  At dusk one evening, returning home from an errand, I glanced down the side path and noticed the hostas were blooming.  In the midst of days of clouds and lack of sun, these plants sent up shots and blossomed.  And I hadn't even noticed until they were in their full glory.  Obviously, I wasn't paying attention.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about paying attention.

My daughter referred me to a writer, Lisa Russ Spaar who observed in her interview printed in the online Image Journal that her "current project is always to pay attention."  My yoga teacher yesterday, after instructing us to pay attention to our breathing, commented that "paying attention leads to transformation."  And transformation right now is what I am seeking, as I shift from one stage of life to another.

It occured to me that my old ways of organizing my life, my weekly agenda, my clipboard, my desk, my bulletin board, my computer, were either obsolete or ineffective for a life of retirement.  So therefore, how do I make visible sense of what I am doing and who I am right now?

I decided to return to a discipline that served me well before a computer superseded.  I started a writer's notebook/journal...again.  I want a place to write, collect, muse, wonder, question, observe and organize the dailiness of my life. 

    

Before we began to write online, I had my students keep spiral-bound notebooks they decorated with images and words holding meaning for them. Housed in an old filing cabinet in our basement is a stack of writer's notebooks I kept right along with my students.  Their covers are filled with a few photos of family, images clipped from magazines, and quotes excerpted because they spoke to me.  Since I have been piecing and sewing lately, I decided to make a cover for the composition book I now use; then I proceeded to make a few more.  A patchwork cover for the book helping me piece together life right now seems fitting.

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, "What you look hard at seems to look hard at you."  I intend to try to look harder, ponder longer, breath deeper, move farther from the screen, sit up straight, read more slowly, and push my thinking in new and different directions.  And hopefully, transformation will begin.

Socking It

I've been making socks lately.  After modeling some socks I made my son this past Spring, my husband told me he would like some as well (he doesn't often request a knitted item).  So he got some for his birthday in August, maroon ones knit from the top down, using this yarn and pretty much knit right under his nose while we watched television at night.  I used the Iowa Crew/Cruise Socks pattern, a well used pattern, from Cottage Creations. I love all their patterns which are so easy to use and fun to read.

Then came Alexis' birthday.  I made her these with this yarn, knitting from the toe up.  I fashioned the cuff with a broken basket-weave stitch to make it a bit more interesting to knit.

And before I put away the #2 double points, I decided to use a ball of sock yarn I had in my stash to make myself a new pair of socks for the upcoming sock-wearing season.  I love the self-striping pattern of this yarn.  Sock knitting is out of my system and off the needles for a while!  

Practicing

When Alexander was here this summer, we helped him learn how to ride his two wheeler without training wheels.  That blessed event took three days of falls, wobbles, false starts, frustration, and tears before success occurred.  It was hard to watch. Each day, Alex would say to me, "I want to practice riding my bike," and each day we would go out on the sidewalk, review the guidelines of successful bike riding, and go at it.  Finally, that magical moment occurred when Alex and the bike took off without my fingers stabilizing the seat.  And oh, the thrill and the joy of it all, not only for Alex but for his proud Nana and Grandad too.

I've been thinking a lot about practicing lately.

Knitting has taught me that getting better necessitates doing it over and over and over again.  So it only made sense that after making my first baby quilt, I needed another quilting project. I am not yet confident enough to branch out into new patterns so I decided to make the same pattern, London Crossroads, and scale it down into a table runner.  Practice ensued.

First came cutting.

Believe it or not cutting, for me, has not been as easy at it seems.  Using a quilting ruler and rotary cutter are skills that require a certain vigilance.  I learned the hard way when I reversed my ruler away from the 1/2 inch side, and I cut a whole set of 2 inch strips, rather than 2 1/2 and 3 inch strips rather than 3 1/2.  Back to the fabric store with the adage, "Measure twice, cut once" (in my father's voice) resounding in my mind.

I worked on even seam stitching. In my first quilting class, our instructor had us practice stitching 1/4 inch seams before we began piecing our quilts.  At that time I didn't fully appreciate the necessity for exactness in seam width, but that became  utterly clear when we began putting our blocks together and matching points.  

Quilting is so exact and each piece of it contributes to the whole.  Even pressing has rules which guide setting the seam and the way the seam is pressed.  All of this requires concentrated thought, since for me the art of quilting is far from automatic.

 I layered the backing, batting, and pieced top and then pinned the sandwich all together. And now I start quilting, trying to remember how to bring my thread to the top and very carefully "stitching in the ditch" to quilt this piece.  I deliberately reread instructions and slowly proceed.

My life right now imitates the practice I attempt. 

Yesterday, I held conversation with a young woman who followed up her did-I-work question with a what-do-you-do query.  I paused, seeking words to define what "retired" means for my life.  I told her that I was still learning how to be retired.  It feels like spending more time with family, intensifying volunteer time at church and with Strawberry Fields.  Reading more, exercising more, pausing more, and breathing more slowly and deeply.  I stammered a bit, then changed the subject. I really don't know yet fully how to do this, because, you see, I am still practicing.