Oh, nothing is so beautiful as spring --

The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush



The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush



With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.



There is nothing so beautiful as Spring.
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins (oft quoted, still true)

hair!

i forgot all about this in the excitement: the boy's very first haircut! no, it's not exactly short, but still, what a benchmark. and there's no way we could say goodbye to those curls (and i fear his daddy would do something drastic if i ever had the temerity...!).

pile o' random {plantings}

today we picked flowers



planted harmonicas



caught rhinos


(pardon my lack of expression, it's hard to balance a thorn on your nose and take your own picture, the boy was uncharacteristically camera-shy, even though he totally started the game)

and visited old and amazing headstones, like this one from the very beginning of the 20th century (boy howdy, that was a long time ago now). there were a few of these 'trees' for the woodsmen of the world, and i so wonder who they were.



i wish i had better pictures of them, perhaps another day. i always come home and see the picture that i wish i'd taken -- the trick now is seeing it in the moment. every one of these, in a way, represents that very challenge.

pile o' random {colors}

we walked in the sun today and the colors were all over, and off, the charts. for those of you in the frozen parts of this world.











that last one because i couldn't resist. don't you feel so much warmer now?

baluchon

photographing thoroughbreds is a lot like photographing small children with their fidgeting and liberal adherence to requests. so it is that the only pictures that i like of our photoshoot with my mom's horse have him cut off at the knee (poor guy) so you don't get to really admire how impossibly long his legs are. but there you are, at least he's finally made it onto this site, and what a dapper guy he is.



he is an Irish Thoroughbred, direct descendent of Man O' War and War Admiral (for those who haven't spent their lives obsessed with these things, those guys are legendary), and in color he's a lovely chestnut. he's carried many riders (most notably me mum) to many blue ribbons by flying over very tall fences and dancing fluidly about a dressage ring, and he's a perfect lap pony as well to hear my mom tell it. his withers (that bump where his neck meets his back) stands at a regal 17 hands high -- which in human terms puts that bony protrusion just over the top of my 5' 7.75" head. and when you're riding him, well. it's a ways down there to the ground.



but he's a perfect gentleman for all his size, and a very hale old man, still jumping at 23 years of age. his registered name is Baluchon (which means 'bundle' in French), but everyone calls him Sean, which harkens back much more strongly to his Irish roots.

January 31, 2010

today we did this (and more, but it's late, my friends, and you'll have to wait):





these are some of my most recent handspun yarns, all finished and ready for the shop. from left to right: "juniper jubilee" (targhee wool); "rumpelstiltskin" (wool and silk); "io" (wool, alpaca,silk); and "bremen town" (wool....cormo? and yes Alex, that is what your new yarn is named). raspberry bushes in the background, daffodils and strawberries at his feet. it is seriously that warm here, folks, there are buds blooming in Laurelhurst Park. i hope that February doesn't turn all cruel on the little dears.



then we took the train out to my mom's house!



and i'll leave you with her splendid view of Mt. Hood. i also took some pictures of her amazingly tall thoroughbred, but he's such a handsome fellow and i'm pretty ambivalent about the pictures so i'm going to sit with them for a few days...

blues

so much for posting more regularly. but we had a sunset after a rainstorm, and it was enough to drag my camera out of the bag, though of course all i really wanted to take pictures of was the boy.







he's turning into such a little dude, it cracks me up. more from our walk here. in other news, this is the new building that's gone up down the street. i call it the Hive (make it sound sinister), and it pretty much epitomizes where i never want to live.



and a bonus shot taken by my friend Spencer, who is still busy crossing the globe, making the world a better place one plant (or turtle) at a time. this little guy was stuck in a net, and he set it free. true story.