Month: September 2007

1. I went to the fair on Wednesday but only had the camera on my cell phone, which did not accurately capture the excellence of a goat I met in the goat barn. She was such a good, smart goat that I asked Mr. Isbell if he thought his parents would let her live in their backyard. He pointed out that she would eat the vegetable garden.

2. Something I just learned: A group of penguins is usually referred to as a colony of penguins. When they are breeding, their colony turns into a rookery or a peguinery . When they are floating out at sea, they are then a raft of penguins. When they are on land they are a waddle of penguins.

3. The Great Basin Fiber Arts Fair is going on this weekend. It’s at Wheeler Farm, so not only will there be the regular farm animals, there will be fiber animals and spinning wheels and yarn (oh my). PLUS, the Society for Creative Anachronism (“from the Medieval Times”) will be there! Don’t miss it!

4. Here’s a quote from the country home site I posted last Friday, about what happens when you plant sugar maples (“be not discouraged”): We have seen the maple tree no taller than a walking-staff, become, in fifteen years, so large as to afford sap and sugar. Be not discouraged by looking forward, and say it will be a long time before you can have any benefit by sugar. You must remember the timber is growing every year, and wait with patience, and be assured the other part will not fail.

Actually, that’s good advice for most things: “Wait with patience, and be assured the other part will not fail” (even if the other part is goat ownership).

(Morning glory. I wish I could find fabric that color.)

I think I posted earlier in the year about quail, and how they live all around my house, and how there was a bachelor quail I had named Buster Brown. (I think. I really need to get a search bar on the blog, and remove the link to J. Crew since we broke up, and un-install Google Analytics because I don’t think anyone at my old job where the account was based cares about how much blog traffic I get.) Anyway, there are quail around my house, but I don’t think Buster Brown is much of a bachelor:
In fact, he may be a polygamist quail, because this picture only got about half of them. We scared each other when I came around the corner (I think the “sportsman” term is flushing the covey?) but they came back around the door after I went in and I got a picture. I like quail. And quail plural marriage.

(I was going to call it “Fast And Easy Edition” but decided that wasn’t the best connotation for a dress that could be worn by a girl in a Bruce Lee movie.)
Anyway. Not only was this project fast and easy, it was really, really, cheap (ha!)–the pattern was a vintage one my mother had and the fabric was a gift. I even had a zipper on hand, so total project cost was a spool of thread. I sewed it up in about four hours, too, which is making good time.
Here’s a better shot of the print. The fabric is vintage, too, and I think in its past life it was drapery. But that just means it has a good weight and, well, drape to it.

You’ve probably heard this, but Ms. L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, died Friday at the age of 88. There’s a New York Times obituary that’s very good, which contains this quote:

“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

1. Go to the State Fair, where you’ll see many blue-ribbon-winning dresses, hint hint hint.

2. I have all sorts of crafty deadlines coming up (an event-specific dress and two gifts)in the next two weeks. Good thing I have a period-costume BBC miniseries to watch.

3. Five great reasons to buy a Hummer

4. Here’s a site that tells you all about planning, building, and maintaining a home in the country (aka RANCH HOUSE), often through period writing. There’s even home plans. www.backroadhome.com

5. Have some pie this weekend! Think of how disappointed the kitty will be if there is no pie!

The power went out at my house at 8:30 last night, which meant I couldn’t continue to sew or watch Camelot. Before I accepted my forced bedtime I ate some cheese and crackers by candlelight and squinted out some M.F.K. Fisher, which I thought was appropriate. This is from How To Cook a Wolf, her book about trying to eat and live well in emergencies (written for World War II, of course):

“…in a time of peril and unspoken fear [cheese] is an anesthetic and can make your guests, your own self, feel slightly stimulated by its unmistakable flavor and more than a little reassured to know that it still exists. “

Indeed. Cheese in times of peril or power outage is very nice.

…for some physical activity. My traveling companion and I hiked up to the tram at Snowbird, like I had done last year with my father. I remember last year being easier, but this was still excellent.

Someone marveled at the age of the canteen:
Someone else was too tired to look into the camera at the top:
And someone at Snowbird really should have put this sign at the BOTTOM of the trail:
And alphorns make anything better: