Tiny flowers everywhere. It's the time when everything is tentative and delicate. In a few months, I won't notice the flowers, really. Everything will be riotous and rampant. I'll be dragging the lurching hose around the yard so the whole thing doesn't frizzle to a crisp. (I say to Andy, back when it wasn't raining, "Hey, why don't you ask for one of those really cool automatic hose-winder-upper things for Father's Day?" He says, "Oh. Okay. Will you get me one of those hose-winder-uppers for Father's Day?" Me: "Absolutely. I mean, since that's what you really want!" Clever Mommy.) But for now, Mama Nature waters it all for me. My plants unfold their wonders, cautious and chilled. I dodge cold raindrops to witness. The unfurling never ceases to fill me with spring fever. And it is a fever, isn't it? You start to feel quite shaky: Let me get into the woods.
If it hadn't been raining, though, and I hadn't stayed home, I wouldn't have been knitting my Cricket, which is coming along nicely and which, I must say, I have thoroughly, utterly enjoyed. Why. I don't know. Everything about it has pleased me. The pattern is sweet. The yarn (leftover bunny-kit yarn) feels good and has a little bite to it, a little spring bite, so the stitches feel defined and reflect the light in a very chalky kind of way that I love (I don't like shiny yarns anymore). The whole thing feels utterly and completely handknit. Do you know what I mean? In other words, you can see the variation in the tension of the stitches, little bloops and frets, places where you put it down and came back to it, places where you stopped and had to keep someone from crawling into the fireplace (always toward the fireplace), places where you fell asleep in the middle of a row, places where you started dreaming about cabins and cocoa. I like yarns that record these things. I don't want them too smooth or so soft that all the bumps and blunders disappear. I want my hand in there somewhere. So she'll know, when she wears it, that my hands are there.
Now, this dress. This dress. Never have I wanted a mommy-and-me outfit more. LOVE. I used this pattern. And this fabric (in Gerbera Turquoise). Quick and easy. Made in a morning. There will be more.
And for some reason, because it feels like fall, I guess, I just want to eat mushrooms. If you take some leftover grilled chicken with rosemary and lemon (thanks to Andy — I have no idea how he does it but I can ask), and you chop up a couple of Portabella mushrooms and saute them in ghee (funniest sentence of the week: Andy: "Are we seriously out of ghee?", which just about made me fall off the couch laughing because — he knows what ghee is? and he's amazed we're out of it??? [which we weren't, which somehow made it even funnier, because we don't have milk or eggs, but we have ghee]), then pour about 1/2 cup of white wine over all of it and let it bubble down to a glaze, then add some salt and pepper and cream and Parmesan cheese and let that bubble down just a bit, then add some al dente spaghetti and get it good and coated, you, too, can have something yummy in your tummy. And yeah, I say things like that now.
