U is for Urn-Burial, Uxorious, and Underhill

Steatopygous female figure
I’m catching up on my Encyclopedia of Me entries:  it’s time for “U.”
Urn-Burial is a section of the title of an extended essay by Sir Thomas Browne:  Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial, or a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns Lately Found in Norfolk (1658), which takes the occasion of an archaelogical discovery to consider the nature of [...]

Read Full Post »

Owls and Orreries

The barn owl (Tyto Alba) is my favorite bird.  The owl was sacred to bright-eyed Athena, and its name in Greek, Υλαυ´ξ, glaux, also refers to the brightness of its eyes.  Although there are many debased images of owls–remember those terrifying and ubiquitous macramé things with the frayed and fluffed acrylic yarn surrounding wooden bead eyes?–they retain [...]

Read Full Post »

L’Amour, L’Amour . . .

Little Sunshine and Tuxedo Boy and I decorated these cupcakes last night at 10:00 p.m.–we’re making the most of the few days of summer vacation left to us by staying up late making delicious treats, watching ”The Women,” and doing our Bollywood dance tape together . . .
Tonight, though, we’re going to go whole hog:  we’re watching [...]

Read Full Post »

My Back Yard

I know this is a giant picture, but I wanted you to see how beautiful it is here at harvest time.  Summer is drawing in . . . university classes started today, and the kids are back to school next week.  The weather has turned chilly and damp, although it’s bound to heat up again [...]

Read Full Post »

Blackberry Cobbler

This is blackberry cobbler, made with our own blackberries picked by Tuxedo Boy and Papa this morning in a light summer rain. The topping is drop biscuit dough (regular biscuit dough with extra milk) with a little turbinado sugar sprinkled over the top.  Some of us poured cream over it. It was indescribably delicious. I wish you’d been here.
(More [...]

Read Full Post »

I’m in love with this image:  the funky hairdo, the apron, the giant fish apparently nailed to the wall in preparation for the demonstration . . . I do wonder why her dining room is filled with Pick Up Sticks (that’s Spillikins for my transAtlantic reader).  Nevertheless, it’s perfect for today’s conversation, which is about [...]

Read Full Post »

Bag Madness

Yet another bag; Little Sunshine is bemused by this outpouring of baggery.  I also made, but failed to photograph, a fully reversible furoshiki style lunchbag for niece Supergirl, who moves out of her parents’ home and into her college dorm room tomorrow.  Tomorrow!  Poor Hoe and husband Handy Andy have that whipped dog look that goes with [...]

Read Full Post »

Another Craft Casualty . . .

So here’s my new lampshade, as inspired by St. Martha.  Yes, I saw the fabulous paper-lined lampshades in the March edition of MSL and decided I needed to do that, too.  The table lamp next to Joan’s spot on the couch had a battered, dirty, and disreputable pleated shade that I’d hated in a vague, [...]

Read Full Post »

The Aloha bag

The Aloha bag  Originally uploaded by melynda.huskey Here’s my latest bag–made with a wonderful aloha print which I have had kicking around for at least eight years, waiting for just the right project. Little Sunshine has claimed it as her own, and it suits her.
I’ll just call your attention to the yoyo with self-covered button [...]

Read Full Post »

Inscape, Implacable, and Ironing

Inscape is a marvelous word, uniting as it does Victorian poetry and late medieval neo-Platonism, two things I love.  Inscape is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ word for a unique quality of particularity which dwells in every created object.  Every thing–person, blade of grass, cupcake–has its own inscape, which expresses some element of the Transcendant which could not be expressed by [...]

Read Full Post »