Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.
[Sam Keen]

Ah, I drink in each July day so I can recall some of its light and warmth next December when my snow shovel becomes a fixture on my front porch. I’m not being entirely lazy—just a bit slower. I’m preparing patterns for fall knitting classes, working on a proposal for teaching an online class about the technical side of blogging, trying to figure out how to actually write up the thirty patterns I’ve designed . . . . I’m also doing my day work.

If I run out of stuff to do, I can always mow and weed.

Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.
[Oscar Wilde]

Rachel Misegades, my mama, made audio recordings of her childhood memories. A friend of mine transcribed the stories and digitized the audio files for me. I also have many old photographs. The one above was taken in the 1920s—Mama astride her pony, Lady.

I have launched a weblog just for Mama’s Stories. I’ll put both the transcribed version and the audio version on the blog along with a photo. Here is an example of one of her little stories:

I was born September the 7th, 1906, at Cherryvale, Kansas. My father was fireman for the steam boilers in a brick yard about two or three miles south of the city. A little village grew up around the brick yard called Corbin City. But we soon moved closer to town on 10 acres and had several cows, a team of horses, pigs, chickens and a huge garden. My grandfather, my mother’s father, lived with us and he had to have a garden. One morning, as my father came from work, he asked me to put my hand down in his overcoat pocket. I did that and felt something warm and fuzzy. He brought it out of the pocket and it was a yellow kitty. There were some kitties at the brick yard and he noticed that this one looked so hungry, and was in need of TLC, so he brought it home to me. I had a book that was The Three Kittens, and one of the kittens was yellow and named Mouser so of course that became my kitty’s name. Well we had Mouser sixteen years before he died.

The following is an MP3 audio file of Mama telling the same story as quoted above:
[Audio http://www.atimetoknit.com/mama/Story_1.mp3%5D

This month’s assignment in my writing circle was to write about what place we would be if we were a place. Here’s what I submitted:

If I were a place, I’d be the earthy smell that blows through the screen when spring warms the Indiana soil. I’d be the cool feel of the linoleum as I nap the afternoon away on Grandma’s floor during a scorching Kansas summer. Hollyhocks nod on the other side of the screen door and grasshoppers fiddle their songs in the dry weeds. I’d be the mist that plays with the Spanish moss in a Charleston garden or obscures the valley in the Smoky mountains. I’d be a sunrise in the Oklahoma hills, the sunset on the Wabash where it widens around New Harmony. All the places I’ve lived and loved blend together when I try to pick one place from the rest.

It just dawned on me that I don’t need to imagine what place I’d be because I am a place. I’m the place my nomadic children call home. Home isn’t this house or even this city or state. Home is me as in, “Mama, I’m coming home.” I’d never thought of that before.

Summer afternoon — summer afternoon;
to me those have always been
the two most beautiful words
in the English language.
[Henry James]

I love summer. What you see in the photo is a summer-winter romance. Instead of a younger man, I traded for a summer car. I haven’t figured out what I’ll do when there is a foot of snow in my driveway but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Meanwhile, I wish I could give you a ride with the top down in this breezy, blue and green world. This is a Saturn Sky and it is only by chance that it matches my outfit. I may be a bit flaky, but I’m not that extreme.

Meanwhile, I’ve been knitting and knitting with a bit of gainful employment on the side. Check out Andrea Wong’s new blog. She offers a free baby bootie pattern that she just designed. Really cute.

What are little boys, made of?
Frogs and snails,
And puppy dog tails,
That’s what little boys, are made of.

These little boys are my grandsons. Lower left is seven-and-a-half year old Joshua reading instructions on my computer screen. Clockwise is four-and-a-half month old Michael. He is Josh’s brother and has had a haircut since his last photo on my blog. Next is three year old Owain who lives in Wales. Lower right is Cole with Grandma. Cole is six weeks old. Aren’t I richly blessed?