How Is Everyone?

Amazing that I haven’t written since February. I mean, really, anyone can take a look through and see that I’m not particularly consistent, but…just…wow. I won’t bother making excuses, but I will say that I have done a fair bit of knitting and crochet. Soon I will finish my new top, and I’m super excited about that.

I hope the day finds you all well. And I would really love hear from anyone who is prepping for NaNoWriMo this November. Their site has just been reset and there are a few new features that look really fun.

I have added my novel title and cover to the site, and started planning. I haven’t made it to an outline yet, but I’ve started some character building and world building.

16 Days

…the countdown has begun. 🙂

Fridays With Frost

“Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.” 
― Robert Frost

In A Vale

When I was young, we dwelt in a vale 
By a misty fen that rang all night, 
And thus it was the maidens pale 
I knew so well, whose garments trail 
Across the reeds to a window light. 
The fen had every kind of bloom, 
And for every kind there was a face, 
And a voice that has sounded in my room 
Across the sill from the outer gloom. 
Each came singly unto her place, 
But all came every night with the mist; 
And often they brought so much to say 
Of things of moment to which, they wist, 
One so lonely was fain to list, 
That the stars were almost faded away 
Before the last went, heavy with dew, 
Back to the place from which she came- 
Where the bird was before it flew, 
Where the flower was before it grew, 
Where bird and flower were one and the same. 
And thus it is I know so well 
Why the flower has odor, the bird has song. 
You have only to ask me, and I can tell. 
No, not vainly there did I dwell, 
Nor vainly listen all the night long. 

Robert Frost

Neglect or Abuse?

I’m not sure if I am abusing my blog privileges or if I’m merely neglectful.

It’s funny that I started a blog in order to help me manage those intermittent and overwhelming urges to write, but then rarely even make an appearance here. There’s the Fridays with Frost posts: I do enjoy doing that (when I can remember that its Friday), but hardly original. I’m not entirely sure when I got so completely distracted or whatever it is.

I suppose that the least I can do at this point is show off share the projects that I completed during the holidays.

The cabled wristlets and headbands that I made for my youngest step-daughter.

The hat and mittens that I made for my grandson.

Pattern links are as follows (these are all on Ravelry and may require login):

Cable Headband
Wrist Warmers
Minion Hat

The mittens were a basic knit mitten and embellished by me, based on what I learned from the hat pattern.

So that’s one of the many things that I’ve been up to lately, more sharing to come later.

Fridays With Frost

Today, I worked from 7:00 am until 9:00 pm. So today’s installment follows and then I am off to bed. Have a lovely weekend all!!!

In White

A dented spider like a snow drop white
On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of lifeless satin cloth –
Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight? –
Portent in little, assorted death and blight
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth? –
The beady spider, the flower like a froth,
And the moth carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The blue prunella every child’s delight.
What brought the kindred spider to that height?
(Make we no thesis of the miller’s plight.)
What but design of darkness and of night?
Design, design! Do I use the word aright? 

Robert Frost

Fridays With Frost

Ah, Friday, how I have missed you.

Tonight I sit with a drink by my side, my knitting at the ready, a movie picked out, and my house all to myself. For some that would be depressing, but for me, its a perfect Friday night. 🙂

…and now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Into My Own

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew–
Only more sure of all I thought was true. 

Robert Frost

Fridays With Frost

Hannibal

Was there even a cause too lost,
Ever a cause that was lost too long,
Or that showed with the lapse of time too vain
For the generous tears of youth and song? 

Robert Frost

Fridays With Frost

Good-bye, and Keep Cold

This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark 
And cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I don’t want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,
I don’t want it dreamily nibbled for browse
By deer, and I don’t want it budded by grouse.
(If certain it wouldn’t be idle to call
I’d summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall
And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)
I don’t want it stirred by the heat of the sun.
(We made it secure against being, I hope,
By setting it out on a northerly slope.)
No orchard’s the worse for the wintriest storm; 
But one thing about it, it mustn’t get warm.
“How often already you’ve had to be told,
Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.
Dread fifty above more than fifty below.”
I have to be gone for a season or so.
My business awhile is with different trees,
Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,
And such as is done to their wood with an axe–
Maples and birches and tamaracks.
I wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard’s arboreal plight
When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.
But something has to be left to God. 

Robert Frost

Fridays with Frost

Going For Water

The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran;
Not loth to have excuse to go,
Because the autumn eve was fair
(Though chill), because the fields were ours,
And by the brook our woods were there.

We ran as if to meet the moon
That slowly dawned behind the trees,
The barren boughs without the leaves,
Without the birds, without the breeze.

But once within the wood, we paused
Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new
With laughter when she found us soon.

Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look,
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.

A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade. 

Robert Frost

Fridays with Frost

Going For Water

The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran;
Not loth to have excuse to go,
Because the autumn eve was fair
(Though chill), because the fields were ours,
And by the brook our woods were there.

We ran as if to meet the moon
That slowly dawned behind the trees,
The barren boughs without the leaves,
Without the birds, without the breeze.

But once within the wood, we paused
Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new
With laughter when she found us soon.

Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look,
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.

A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade. 

Robert Frost

Fridays with Frost

Although I usually favor to share some Frost’s lesser celebrated pieces, I thought I’d break out an old favorite this week. In honor of the Holiday season, I give you:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost