The Sounds of Awesome!

2 men, their voices, their instruments, their bands, and their fans.

Hershey, PA, Sunday, March 9, 2014

Paul Simon and Sting on tour

And maybe some shrieking, some dancing, and a backstage pass.

Thanks Amelia and Christine and Deb and Carlos and Sting and Mr. Simon.

Via iTouch

Auntie Nettie's Attic Merchandise 2013 - October

After a relatively quiet crafting period, I got four little blankies done in a very short period of time. It seems I can either craft, read, blog, have a social life, but I can't seem to do a combination of these things - unless I'm on a roadtrip and I can crochet while someone else is driving. Case in point, October's roadtrip to the Cape with Mom...

All of these are made of four (4) skeins of Plymouth Yarns, Dreambaby DK, acrylic and nylon.

In close-up

ANA 2013-26: Little Bitty Blankie, Pink Pastel (DK 0119)
(as of 9/15, no longer available,)

 ANA 2013-27: Little Bitty Blankie, Blueberry (DK 0136)

 ANA 2013-28: Little Bitty Blankie, White (DK 0100)
(as of 3/15, no longer available)

ANA 2013-29: Little Bitty Blankie, Cornflower (DK 0124)

Let me know if you want to give any of these a good home.

I seriously need to get selling stuff. The Attic is bursting again. I also have some commissions, so I need work on those soon. The clock is ticking on a delivery by a stork.

Happy Place: Where to hang my hat

Obviously I've been a bit behind on posting lately ...

It's been a bit hard to balance* everything, and I'm falling short of the mark.

Luckily, my darling dear friend Christine called late in the week with a spur of the moment remedy to keep up both from being so crabby. (Be free Mr. Crab - go back to the water!)

An overnight trip out to the North Fork of Long Island ... the very first day at the Orient Beach State Park was opened for the season. Aside from a Girls Scout jamboree and the gulls, we pretty much had the rocky, shell-y, Sandy-shorn and shaped beach to ourselves.

Thanks Christine. I needed to hang my hat up for a while and have a change of scenery and sensations.

*It's hard to take a self portrait while balancing on someone's former porch beam, hold a bag, hold your hat, hold your sweater closed, and take a photo in the wind.

Wandering through Windham, May 2012

I miss the opportunities to just get a car and wander, so when I had some daylight hours left one night during the quicky Connecticut roadtrip, I wandered the roads around Windham.

Here's the "frog bridge" at dusk, aka Thread City Crossing, named in honor of Willimantic's agricultural and manufacturing past.

Why with the frogs on the spools? Why not? Weirder things have been used to symbolize things..

Related to the Frog Bridge, the historical Monument on Windham Center green, and the former cotton and American Thread mills, now studios, businesses, etc.

Some of my favorite features from some of my favorite Victorians up in the hills of town. Check out the house on the right. It is one of the two houses in town that had curved windows. When I was growing up, it used painted a forest green with white trim. At night, when the lights were lit, you could see into the house, and see the woodwork and the stairs up to the upper stories. There's also a turret on that house. At Christmas time, the curved bay window used to be filled with Christmas trees and lights. So magical. But SO MUCH HOUSE.

Headed out of town, on the historical Windham Center green, listed on the National Register of Historic Places:

Love the lttle library, and the views of the Windham Inn, and the neighboring pink mansion and "white house."

Don't you just love this little sliver of a building? It's a room of its own.

On the back roads through North Windham:

This is the weirdest farm fields I've ever seen. Goats, sheep, donkeys, and colored CANNONBALLS? Missed the name of it, but it was something religious.

Forget a two-car garage. What about two-tractor parking?

Happenings at the Homestead, May 2012

Dear 'rents and/or potential buyers of ye olde homestead,

I checked in on the homeplace recently. Everything looks good on the outside. Nature is blooming away.

The curbside hedge roses are growing like crazy

as are most of the bushes. Look at the azaleas*.

We are really hedging our bets on the backyard shrubs though.
It looks like natural windows are forming.

The impact from Irene is still evident. The tree (on the lot next door) overlooking the compost area/garden has a 7 - 10 split going on. From the upstairs windows, you can the right into the neighbors' lots on the other side of the block.

Max's homage to Monet's gardens are still growing off the kitchen corner.

While we may not be occupying the house full-time,
we did have some temporary tenants on the back porch.

So lovely but, sadly, I don't think that the parent birdies will like where I relocated the nest ... Though I think they had abandoned it as soon as visitors started coming through the back door again.

Again, everything looks great. The lawn's mowed, but you may need to ask the landscapers to watch the bees under the garage eaves by the doors. There may be carpenter bees or other bee species building honeycombs under there.

That's it for now.

Love,

The Roaming Nettie

6/10/12 *Yes, mother. I know those aren't azaleas, but rhododendrons. This was a test to see if anyone is still reading this. Apparently you are. So I should be more careful.

Dam it: Wandering through Windham, May 2012

And after a little longer Blogging Break than I anticipated, prepare for the posting floodgates to open again .....

I unexpectedly needed to spend some time back in CT with a friend and her family at the end of last month. It was a sad visit, and one evening, after an afternoon of rituals, family, friends, and food, I found a few hours of sunlight left to burn. Loathe to return to an empty house quite yet, I turned myself and the car loose on the back roads of CT.

Like a homing beacon, I felt drawn to a place where my father and I had spent quality time together. (Of course, it wasn't until I just typed that did I realize why I felt the need to revisit this particular setting from my childhood. Our sub-consciousnesses are strange.)

My brother has blogged about how our father has passed down the love of being on the water. He used to take us canoeing out at the local dam, and later used to spend hours out there kayaking--solo, or with a family member. The dam and park were also areas where we spent time parked with dad trying to hash out adolescent angst, or out on foot, walking around the high dam walls over by the airport -- processing many an issue, or in one notable case, ending a long-term relationship.

Of course, it'd been decades since I'd been out at the actual dam, and I got lost the first time. Not so much lost, as misdirected/overshot/needing to reattempt the entry. I circled around the back roads, through misty afternoon showers, summer sunsets, and then found the correct route to where I wanted to go.

I must have looked pretty strange, climbing up the steep stairs in a somber funeral dress, but I had to go, exchange the air in my lungs, breathe in the mist, and look over the horizon for some perspective.

The pounding of the waters through the sluice gates, the rush of the rapids down the river, the birds singing in the aftermath of a summer shower, and a light breeze up on the dike? As soothing to my soul as the sight of the rolling green hills of "home."

Since it was a quiet evening, and barely anyone was around, I also took a moment to explore the grounds of a converted mill building. When I was growing up, it was abandoned and not nearly in as good shape as this. Can't you picture what a reading nook/work studio would be up there in the clock tower? (I picture big comfy couches, wooden library desks, baskets of yarn ...) I think the windows open/bevel, so you could get a cross breeze and feel the mist off the river.

Back in the car, I headed back up the road to the boat launch area. A storm had gone through earlier and sunset was drawing close, but that hadn't stopped some intrepid kayakers, local fishermen, or others drawn to the water. With all the years that have passed, it's hard to remember how intimidated we were paddling through that culvert to the other side of the lake. Of course, we were smaller, and not as comfortable on the water as we are now. Sitting lower in a kayak helps too.

So dam it all ... Thanks Pop. Thanks for the time, patience, love of water, driving lessons, water lessons, life lessons, and so so so much more than I can say. Please take care of yourself and keep wearing that safety equipment when you are out on Sand Hollow. I'm not ready to cross the breakwater and deal with the rapids that my friend and her family just had to. K? Thanks.