:coming soon: spring of 2020:

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Today, the air has the bite of fall. 

I am sure, so early in the season, we will still get a few more hot, sunny Cali days, but fall is here. The grapes have been picked in the vineyard. The leaves on the vines and the lilacs are starting to turn varying shades of gold and red. My son has managed to eat two pear trees worth of harvest almost entirely by himself. We discovered the “weird” apple tree is actually a Shin Li asian pear (the juice just drips off your chin as you eat!) The kids have begun a new school year. 

So much is going on around here. 

Which is why it made perfect sense to sign myself up for even more. 

Come the new year, I will be starting my Master’s of Library and Information Science. 

Oh, boy.

This is a decision I have hemmed and hawed over since college. It has never been the right time. Family have shot it down. I was newly married. I just had a baby. I just had a second baby. I just started a business. We moved around too much. So many different reasons and excuses for not doing it. 

And then two months ago I sent my application in and got accepted. 

I still half can’t believe it. I am both super excited and terrified. It has been twenty years since I was in any kind of formal schooling: grades, assignments, readings, research papers, exams. AH!!!

This just feels right. In a way none of my former paths have. It’s not just a love of books. It’s a love of knowledge. It’s a love of helping people. It’s a love of the freedom books can give. 

So I am going to take this fall to really enjoy myself: read, knit, spin, write, finish all those projects around the house I’ve been saying I’ll get to. I know I’m not going to have a lot of time to do so once school starts. 

I. Can’t. Wait. 

:2019 word of the year:

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I felt it appropriate to use my first post of the year to announce my Word of the Year. Last year my word was Create, and boy did it create things in our lives. We bought a house, became homesteaders, put down roots for the first time in six years, and started to create the life we have been dreaming of for more than sixteen years!

This year my word is:

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We never really expected to settle in California. To tell the truth this property kinda blindsided us. But now, now is the time when we need to get real about it. We will soon be seeing our first year on the homestead, and we want to this property to be the homestead we always dreamed of. So far, it has been mostly about clean up and getting to know the land. I’ve been writing down a wishlist of what I want to see here: a potage, fix all the fencing, keep cleaning up the lower half of the property, build a guest cabin in the back…Lots of ideas. Going forward, I want to make sure I take action to get things going. There is a LOT I don’t know. I spend time reading and watching YouTube videos to gather ideas on things which may work for us.

So, going forward, I am approaching each day with intention. This is not going to be a quick or necessarily easy path. I just need to keep focused on what I want and move forward with that intention in mind.

:12/30:

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This past week we have hunkered down and avoided going outside if at all possible.

Yes, I am getting a bit of cabin fever, but at lease I am hunkered down in my own home.

My heart is just hurting for all my fellow Californians who have lost their homes, loved ones, workplaces, businesses, pets, and lives to the fires.

I have avoided going to the news sites to read anything or see any video about the fires. The one time I did so was to be greeted by the grizzly image of a dead deer.

However, I have broken my social media ban to check on people I know. I have quietly gone on Instagram and Twitter to make sure they are OK. Unfortunately, some of those people have lost everything.

Around the homestead, we have let any outside work go undone. We can rake leaves and pick up chestnuts later. The garden won’t suffer any for being mulched a couple of weeks after we had planned. Our lungs are much more important to us. The only real outside time we spent was doctoring one of our chickens. Chewy got attacked by some sort of canine, but Helios and Sol, our roosters fended the predator off and herded the all the girls back to the barn.

I am taking the time to knit like crazy on D’s Chicane sweater. I bought the yarn for him back when B was a few weeks old, so it’s….thirteen years past due. Thanks to the smoke, I have only half a sleeve left, and then I can wet block all the pieces and sew it together.Then it’s just a matter of sewing on the zipper. It can’t be that hard, right?

I’m also taking advantage of the enforced seclusion to put together a curriculum of sorts. No, not for the kids. This one is for me. I went into the garage and dug through our still-packed book boxes to get all the homesteading books I have bought over the years. There are many! Most of them I have read or leafed through, but this winter I am really going to study them.

This is exactly what I need to get me through my long cold winter days: knitting, books and a warm cuppa coffee/tea/apple cider/mulled wine….mmmmm, mulled wine. A kitten sleeping on my lap doesn’t hurt.

 

:11/30:

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I want…

…to grow things.

…to knit with a kitten on my lap.

…to wear wool socks.

…to sew a dress.

…to draw my own herbal grimoire.

…to drink wine as the moon rises through the trees.

…to sit around a bonfire in the cold of winter with friends and family, roasting s’mores.

…to read a new book with rain pattering against the windows.

…to watch the original Dark Crystal, and hope the new series doesn’t ruin it all.

…to make every ornament for the tree next month.

…to curl up with my love in a cold, dark house under warm, thick blankets.

:10/30:

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Hiding from the Camp Fire smoke has proved to be productive. On Friday I was able to pick up another cabinet (also free!), this time with a bookcase hutch. It proved to be perfect for organizing my modest yarn stash and crafting books. It was also the impetus I needed to get my spinning fiber and equipment put away in the other cabinet I have out in the living room. The best part was I got to get out the sewing machine I bought years ago and never use. I keep telling myself I’m going to learn to sew. It hasn’t happened yet. Now that the sewing machine isn’t taped up in a box I may actually do it.

:9/30:

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My heart breaks for the people of Paradise, CA.

Here we are dealing with the smoke from that fire. Those in the valley have it worse. I don’t even want to imagine what the people in Chico are dealing with. My family have been calling and texting to check on us. I have to assure them I am fine. California is as big as three other states put together, so these fires are not near us.

Still, my heart breaks.

:8/30:

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At the beginning of the year I chose a word to be my focus: CREATE.

I wasn’t sure quite what I wanted to create. Was is a book? knitting projects? this blog? new habits? new hobbies?

Truth be told I am still not quite sure, but at the same time I am more certain.

I do not have specifics of what I want to create. I just want to be creating.

I think I spent most of my life not thinking of myself as a creative. I drew, but I was no artist. I knit, but I was no maker. I wrote, but I was no  writer.

I wanted to be all of those things, but how to chose? My interests would flit from one thing to another. I would get obsessed with a project, finish it, and decide I wanted to do something completely different next. Round and round my mind would go, never really focusing, never really settling.

Maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s just maturity (which is not necessarily tied to age), but I now feel like that’s perfectly OK. Who says a writer can’t be a musician (Stephen King) or an actor can’t be photographer (Viggo Mortensen) or a knitter can’t be an artist (Sina) or a writer can’t be a knitter (Penny Reid)?

I mean, could you imagine telling Da Vinci to stick to just one medium?

So why should I expect that of myself?

Why should I try to pigeonhole myself?

I am not doing this as some career shift (though it would be nice to find a way to make an income from my creating.) I’m doing this because something in the very heart of me demands I let it out, in all it’s various expressions.

 

:7/30:

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A super busy day today, most of it spent chauffeuring the kids. Now I’m taking the time to work on my journal. I’m doing my first urban sketch of Uncommon Threads, the local yarn store near one where they have an activity. I get a blissful couple of hours, hanging out with other knitters and drooling over the new shipments. Here’s the unfinished page:

I’ve figured out that I am not going to make it to the end of the month in my current Bullet Journal, so I went ahead and set up my Traveler’s Company notebook. I can at least start the art journal there before the calendars get put into use.

:6/30:

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: fall is my favorite season.

There is just something about the colors and the crispness of the air and the the still warm sun that lifts my spirits.

Even before I found knitting again, I have always lived for fall.

We moved to Miami from Philadelphia when I was in fifth grade, and the loss of the seasons made me hide from the sun and the brutal heat. SoFLo has a never-ending summer that took me years to become used to.

Where we live now is at just enough elevation to feel the change of season slightly love than the valley.

It is glorious.

I love the fall.

:5/30:

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Good morning lovely people!

This morning I was so excited to get up and play with the watercolor set I got myself. It is the Sakura Koi Pocket Field Sketch Box. I’ve heard it recommended by quite a few planners, art journal keepers and artists on YouTube. The best part was using a 50% off coupon. This one is the 24 color set and it looks to have more than enough to keep me going.

I’ve been using my Tombow markers, but this is something I wanted to learn how to use, especially since it gives me a greater range of color saturation and dilution. I only have three of the Tombow sets and it does limit my color choices.

I took a little time this morning swatching all the colors on some Fariano dot grid paper I have.

Yes, ‘Lanta spends her morning napping in my lap while I do my planning and journaling.

Today is one of my favorite types of days. I get to spend the whole day at home, just working on the property and the house.

I really am a homebody. I swear, if it weren’t for the kids activities, I would only leave to go grocery shop once a week.

We are still in the thick of harvesting chestnuts and cleaning up the fall leaves. The trees are only half through shedding and the it is a daily job keeping up with it. To top it off, the wind has really kicked up over the past week.

What we need now is some rain. There is currently a 17 acre fire burning on the other side of the range from where we live. Even a heavy fog would be welcome at this point.

What about you guys, have you had a good fall? Have you started something new? or is the approaching holiday season the only thing you are gearing up for? Please post to the comments. I’d love to hear how others are spending their fall.