Color Study

An English Gentleman

I worked up a batch of clever tweed mustaches for the girls to choose from to wear during their first week of classes! Being a teenager is difficult (as I can barely recall), rife with conflicting urges. On one hand, you strive to assert your identity among peers and authority figures while simultaneously dodging any attention being tossed in your direction. I figured sporting this little bit of fuzz on your lip could be helpful in such times, lending an air of distinction at the same time it offers a kind of camouflage. Another way to look at it is this: if you are indeed going to be drawing attention to your awkward, geeky, teen-aged self, you might as well have fun with it. Laugh unto yourself before others have a chance to laugh unto you...or something like that.

I'll be talking about all of my own disguise and preemptive laughter business with my therapist later this week...and I'll be making the crochet pattern for "An English Gentleman" available in a future blog and on ravelry in plenty of time for Halloween!

Bird Fair

My sister dreams of cages filled with parrotlets and fancy finches. I, too, am fascinated by the colors and calls of these caged birds. But I am partial to the scalloped flight path taken by a goldfinch as it crosses an open meadow and the distant calls of shy cranes beyond the pond.

As a girl, I looked forward to the song of feisty wrens as they squared off territory in our yard. The wild cherry tree seemed to be the prime spot, but there were bird baths, high-hanging houses and spruce branches enough for many, many birds, and my summer days were perennially marked by a cadence of bird song...noisy morning choruses, high-pitched protests from featherless, hungry chicks, and the twilight lullaby that settled with the roosting birds on the wooded hill behind our house.

I was fascinated by the grackle that would strut among the quack grass that was dotted with thistles in our sun-parched front yard. At a glance, the big birds appeared dull and black, but in the afternoon light, their feathers were magical...a dark, mysteriously shifting spectrum.

Along with not being able to see stars at night, songbirds are one of the things I miss most now that I live in a big city. Oh, I'm cordial enough with pigeons I meet and I've developed a tolerance (at best) for the lakeside gulls. Luckily, like the neighborhood park's geese, I am able to migrate north.