a simple yarn

Robert Downey, Jr.  Good Hollywood comeback.
Lance Armstrong.  Brave cycling comeback.
Britney Spears.  Amazingly enough, successful music comeback.

But not all comebacks are good.  Like trying to resurrect my lovely little blog from Dublin days.  I confess I’m not feeling the love nor the inspiration.  Shoulda left it on a high note and made an elegant exit.  Ah no, I have to trip and stumble, bumbling in and out of blogdom.  Graceful, I am not.

But I guess I had to make sure that the we’d done everything  before pulling the plug.  Limiting myself to 50 words…what was I thinking?  Recent photos…pegging the scale on the crap-o-meter!  It all seemed gimmicky, kinda like patterned leggings or the entire fashion decade of the 80s.  Feeling a bit silly and anticlimactic, it’s good though, to end on yet another high point.

You see, Norma came to town, bringing with her red scarves for the Orphan Foundation of America.  Along with Lynn and Tracey, we trotted along to Mount Vernon for a bit of touring and red scarf photo ops.

Apologies, Dishing-The-Gossip-Diversion Ahead:
If you think Norma is a bit of a whirlwind in her blog, she’s a veritable cyclone in person…in the good sense of whirl-wind-i-ness, mind you.

(Okay, her face isn’t that dark.  Another crappy photo, intermixed with periods of ‘cam-nesia,’ where I forget to pull it out altogether. )

Needless to say, it was a lovely excursion, full of laughter and over all too soon.

Kinda like this post.

And this blog.

This is the end.

I really mean it this time.

Thanks for reading it over the years.

Gonna go now.

Time to hit ‘publish’.

As Barbie said at the end of Toy Story 2…

Buh by…

Bye by…

By-by…

Goodbye…

(Still can’t seem to manage a graceful exit.)

Trying to fit family-of-four-communication-hub into pre-purchased bulletin-cum-dry erase board isn’t working.  Alex likes his new chalkboard.  Hmm…I’ve still got paint…

Customized with…

With Mount Vernon blacksmith-made hook…

With a handy used-to-be-curtain-hook chalk holder…

Love it!

Young sons and cream walls do not good bedfellows make.

But a ‘brick’ wall, chalkboard paint and a little graffiti might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.  About $35 of supplies and a drearily rainy afternoon made for a satisfying day’s worth of work.

PS, graffiti is challenging art!

How ecologically virtuous I feel when rescuing half-burned candles intended for the mansion’s rubbish bin.

Then each evening, how gladdened I am to light the lanterns outside my own little cottage, radiating a warm and welcome glow for those who pass by.

This should not be.

Amidst the musky decay which naturally comes at the end of creation’s life cycle, this welcome aberration, giving the house a hint of spring-time-yet-to-come fragrance and a cheery countenance during the dark days of autumn.

*common lilac

Autumnal leaves are sporting scarlet blushes, why shouldn’t I?  Knit for winter work wear in Irish Kilcarra:

XO Cardigan from Folk Vests, by Cheryl Oberle.  Modified for Os only, as I didn’t want to be a walking Tic-Tac-Toe board.

Sunflower Tam from Knitting Nature, by Nora Gaughan.

I am hurtling along this autumn, as if strapped to a luge, careening downhill at the speed of light.  Must slow down.

Image courtesy of clatterymachinery.wordpress.com

It’s not even Christmas yet!  (Though it might be as green and red adorn shop shelves)  What’ll happen in a month?  Better start digging in my heels…

It is much less difficult to age in 5-year increments.  Easier to remember, counting by 5s.  Today I am 45 for the third time.  And I will be so until I hit 50.

If current communication is twittered down to 140 characters, could I manage to blog in a meaningful way?  Hm, I sense a challenge coming on…

The kindness of others around the world has given me the impetus to do a bit of a postscript blogpost…

I don’t speak French or German or Portuguese, but that obstacle hasn’t prevented my one-off knitting pattern from being translated into other languages.  Many thanks to other knitters around the world, for now this simple little pattern is multi-lingual.  You can find the various links posted below…

Original ENGLISH language Tudora, as published by http://knitty.com.

You can find FRENCH Tudora here.  Many thanks to Canadian knitter Carole D’s efforts in making the translation and to Helene for posting the instructions on her blog.

To request a GERMAN translation of Tudora click here.  Thanks to Strumpfbina for her work!

The PORTUGUESE Tudora translation can be found here.  My appreciation to Renata for it!

‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…’   Ecclesiastes 3:1

I confess…I love living in a climate that has specifically changing seasons.  I can’t imagine myself in a place where it is constant…static…not dynamic.  Even the thought of living in a tropical island paradise, where every day brings sunshine and perfect temperatures, might pale over time without the occasional greyness and rain for variety.

To have the fresh newness of spring expand into hot summer days which are then rewarded with cool autumn breezes ushering in cold winter snows is a cycle that I celebrate…yep, even while I’m slogging through the muck.  Mostly because I know that at the end of the dead winter dormancy, there will be a pristine spring to start the cycle all over again.  It’s that change—that active circle, which fascinates me.  I realize, though, there are other life cycles where the circle is fully drawn and completed.

Today marks the third anniversary of this space.
What a gift to celebrate life’s seasons and cycles with you!
But for me, if I were to be honest, the circle is fully drawn and complete.
It’s time to put this away so a new and different season of life can begin and grow and develop.
As with the intricacies of this Celtic spiral, another circle might unexpectedly form, drawing new and twisting lines.
Like springtime, it might bloom again after an extended season of dormancy.
But I agree with King Solomon that there is a time for everything.
Rather than fading away into disinterested obscurity, the time for this blog has come to a close.

It’s with great satisfaction and extreme gratitude that I mark your involvement over the years.
The story is told…this simple yarn has been spun for now…all that remains is to conclude with a very sincere and heartfelt—
Thank You.

What a great time it’s been rambling through the archives these last few weeks…

But, much like viewing an old family slide show or flipping through scrapbooks and albums, most of it might lull you into a foggy stupor.  Yeah, apologies for that.  Here’s the last category…

Of all the things I’ve tossed into the ‘kitchen sink,’ one of the most memorable was learning that I had won an Irish Blog Award. Totally unexpected.  So very much appreciated.  It just doesn’t get any better than that…

Except perhaps when I see sights like this.

Two children in total cooperation without a bickering complaint on their tongues.  Wow, that’s an award I’d like to keep…and it doesn’t require dusting!    Think I might need to plaster this on the refrigerator, you know, just as a subtle reminder…