Today in My Life.... December 19, 2015

Today is:  Saturday,  December 19, 2015

I woke up this morning:  hot and sweaty with one dog on my left side all snuggled up and the other at my feet all snuggled up.  It's not that I mind all that snuggling, but it sure does get hot regardless how cool it is in the room.. :)

I am hearing:  the click of the pill cutter as my sweet DH is cutting his pills in half to fill his week's worth of pills in his daily container.  Such a mundane thing... but brings to mind how thankful we should be that we can in fact afford the medications we need.

As I look out the window:  I see the brightness of the sun as it squiggles through the blinds and lights up the curtains in bright lines of happiness that the day is new and full of promise.

I am thinking: that December is not a really good time to have surgery..  :(   While I feel much, much better than before I am still not in such good shape that I can spend all day shopping or working on gifts... Christmas may come in January... who knows?   :)

The current book:  is another re-read of the Vince Flynn novel Consent to Kill.  I bought a new Vince Flynn book not long ago (can't think of the name of it right now) and as I read it I was appalled to find that it was definitely not written by him.. the quality of the writing was nowhere near what I was accustomed to and my first thought was of James Patterson and all his ghost writers. So I looked it up.  And felt a bit ashamed of myself when I found that Vince lost his battle with prostate cancer and his Mitch Rapp series was being continued by another writer.  While I do not find the books as good as the originals, I suspect that I will continue to read them.

I am thankful for:  the gift of life at this particular time in history.  Sometimes I think that this may someday be seen as another Dark Ages by the coming historians... We are nothing more than the same people who lived as serfs under kings and lords... working every day and giving away a portion of our earnings to the local lord (or government) for them to spend making love or war at their whim.. As far as I can see not much has changed since the days of Charlemagne.  We are still at war with the Muslims .. or at least with the radical Muslims who kill indiscriminately since.. to them.. anyone not a Muslim is an infidel... We still have diseases that have no cure.  We still have religious charlatans who dupe the masses into filling their coffers with money while they tell the masses that the most normal and natural things are SINful (I do hate that word)... Young men are sent off to fight in wars and come back filled with the terrors they cannot escape.. I can see very little difference in our lives than at other times in our history... EXCEPT.. today we have the ability to learn for ourselves.  Information is everywhere.  Learning to read is the norm.  We take it for granted.  We should not.

Plans:  not many.  I will sew a bit today.  I will work on nalbinding the fingerless glove that I've been working on for a bit... try to get things ready to be mailed on Monday.  Perhaps grocery shopping this afternoon.  But for the most part... no real plans.




Creatively:  not much has happened during the last couple of weeks.  Surgery on the 2nd pretty much stopped everything for a while and I am just now feeling almost up to my old self again.  I did finish the nalbound hat that I was working on.








Then I spent about 10 minutes dyeing this mystery wool.  No idea what I will do with it, but I'm sure something will come to mind.. :)










Well, my feet are cold and I think I'll just mosey on into the living room and put them up in front of the fire.   Haven't done any painting but may actually do that sometime later today.  :)

Have a lovely day..

Can You See This Happening Today?

"All the social functions were discontinued at the White House [during World War I], and Mrs. Wilson inaugurated meatless days, heatless days, Sunday gasless days meaning no Sunday pleasure drives and she spent many hours before her sewing machine making pajamas for the soldiers in the hospital wards, to be distributed by the Red Cross.

Conservation was the by word around the White House; eight sheep were soon gracing the lawns . . . many thousands of dollars were raised for the Red Cross through the auctioning of wool. Two pounds of wool were sold for each state when the sheep were fleeced of almost a hundred pounds of raw wool. "

White House Maid and Seamstress Lillian Rogers Parks
My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House, Fleet, 1961

I was pointed to this through a post on one of my Yahoo Groups..and I thought...

It seems that Al Gore's Global Warming and the War in Iraq have not caused many changes at the White House.. Al has not given up his jet flights to get from place to place... California wants control of all the people's home thermostats but no one has seen the leadership of the states or the federal government make changes. The many people knitting and sewing for our soldiers are led by individuals like you and me... If there are any of the "leadership" of this country doing so, I would love to hear about it...

Hmmm... times have changed....

Pincushions

I bought 4 or 5 little American Girls Short Stories books in an antique shop a couple of years ago and several were given to a granddaughter for Christmas that year. But a couple of them had been in a moist environment and had some mold on a few of the pages. These I kept and when Chuck was home I set about reading them to Allie. I had no idea they were such a gold mine of information!

In the 1700's pincushions were given as gifts. Is this one not lovely...and such lovely needlework... but... it's not needlework. I was shocked! The design is put on the pincushion using pins! Here's a little more information toward the bottom of the page. And here's another historical page saying that the pins were used for diapering the baby and as a result very few of these can be found today.