this thing happened today

There was laundry to be done. A terrific quantity of laundry. The proverbial mountain thereof.
But the lint sock (thingy) was completely past its useful life and in desperate need of replacing.
With loads of children busy all around the house doing very important and productive things- including a sweet little sickish one (contributing tremendously to the aforementioned dirty laundry) there was no good sense in going to the store to replace that lint sock (thingy).
So I used one of my stockings.
But not just any stocking. One of the glamourous, luxurious, decadent (read: expensive) thigh-high stockings that I wore only once ever: on my wedding day.
Look, I was never going to wear them again. I haven't in almost ten years.
This is a banner day. A significant, milestone, ebenezer day.
I loved my wedding. I still adore my husband. I cherish all of the laundry-producing littles.
So I say- nothing but the best for their lint.
I am laundress, hear me roar!

Molasses and Ginger Cookies

We wanted good cookies.

Well, okay, that's sort of an understatement: we wanted PERFECT cookies.

Soft and chewy in the middle, crispish and cruncherly on the edges. Butterly, spicy, sweetish, a little smooch of salt.

And we were SUCCESSFUL!

So here you are my friends:

2 sticks of butter (soft but not melty)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 + 1/2 cup white sugar

(could do one cup of each instead)

1 cup (plus a little extra for good measure) molasses

2 eggs

mix this stuff all together really well in a big beautiful bowl

also:

4 cups flour

1+ 1/2 tsp baking SODA

2 tsp (+) ground ginger (go ahead, throw in a little more: you like it!)

2 tsp (+) saigon cinnamon (oh, sure, any old cinnamon will do!)

some cloves (1/4- 1 tsp depending on your taste)

some nutmeg (1/4 ish tsp)

some allspice (1/2 ish tsp)

1/2 - 1 tsp salt

mix this all up together

+++

add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients

So, for our cookies we rolled up balls of dough about the size of golf balls and dredged them in sugar. Plop them just like that onto baking sheets and bake at 350 for 9-11 minutes

When they come out they look a little puffish but get nice and flatty and crackly after a minute or two.

This recipe makes about a hundred-thousand cookies, but its easy enough to halve it (2 eggs! perfect!)

The most-beautiful-cookies-in-the-WORLD!

If spicy snapperly cookies aren't your favorite to eat they make a grand pirate-patch, as you can clearly see.

OH! This all happened so FAST!

Hello, Boy.

This little friend is one of a series that I'm perpetually working on.

His little body is cut from a drawing and the head is painted in watercolor and ink.

All on a map.

In real life he measures about 2 inches by 3 inches.

Good Morning.

King Me (or) I Glower

I wonder if everything I paint or draw is some form of self-portraiture.

Oh, yeah. This one's definitely me.

Anyhow. I'd really like to say some things. I'd love if someone listened.

Have been awfully self-conscious since reading this excerpt from Ginger Pye; like I'm doing something wrong by referring to myself in the first person.

But I'm me: I'm "I".

How could this possibly apply to a journal? Even if it is for public consumption.

So sorry to Jerry and Rachel.

catalogue

This was my really strange and awkward attempt to catalog some of my library. My library! Ha!

Anyhow, it was sort of successful and I also discovered that I didn't know where I'd misplaced a favorite book "Like Water for Chocolate" by Laura Esquivel.

Shortly after putting out an APB for the missing tome I received an amused phonecall from my sister:

"You let me borrow that book, like, last week"

"oh."

well, phew.

Accomplishment!

My husband's birthday and my best-friend's-husband's birthday fall on the very same day.

This year there was a challenge: keeping two secrets!

My friend commissioned a handmade jacket for her man and my children planned a surprise party for their father.

It was a wild week.

I was very quiet!

And working hard.

See here: my beloved, wearing Francisco's jacket.

+ + +

The jacket is made of wool.

(I so badly wanted to wash and dry the wool hot to shrink and felt it up...will certainly do that for the next project!)

Oh, yes! That lining is made from hand dyed, screen printed cotton.

Coloring

I found myself yesterday with much more to do than could ever be accomplished.

SO I pitched everything and stood amongst the mountains of laundry dyeing fabric.