RIP Freyja

Dear little kitty who liked laundry baskets, I'll miss you. Hopefully we'll trap and relocate that nasty raccoon. I hope there are lots of laundry baskets full of warm socks in kitty heaven.

Common Themes, Common Threads

Here are some new blogs I've found. The Laundry Narrative and The Thrifty Poet. Interestingly, the Laundry Narrative blogger doesn't describe laundry as one of the things she's interested in (on her profile) and Thrifty Poet doesn't have any poems on her blog, but they both seem to like clothes, one of them is a mom, and there is a lot of colorful musing going on. I can get behind that. Oh, and Thrifty Poet does list several very important books by poets on her list of books she wants to read. Donald Hall, Louise Bogan, and Eavan Boland -- which is how I found her blog in the first place.

Cassie Premo Steele actually has an entire post about Eavan Boland, and quotes a piece of her prose, one of my favorite bits.

“The more I lifted a child, conscious of nothing but the sweetness of a child’s skin, or the light behind an apple tree, or rain on the slates, the more language and poetry came to my assistance.” ---Eavan Boland

I'm eating my lunch at work and since I don't like to eat at the computer, I'm searching for something new about EB to read while I eat my lunch at my little round office table. I didn't get very far.

But, in other news, I have decided to diary again, and even to try PAD, if I can find the time. Oh, and write my thesis. Remember that?

I've been worried that I needed something 'new' for my thesis, some new spin, and I've been thinking that while so much scholarship about EB focuses on her as a poet, I could focus on her as a mother -- that the role of domestic imagery in her poems is not just political or feminist, but deeply personal. That while she write poems about being a fore-bearer for other women poets (and there is plenty of criticism about that), she's also a fore-bearer for mothers who want to write. She is a fore-mother. Not a forefather. No. It seems that Cassie Premo Steele agrees with me.

"This is why Eavan Boland’s writing is, for mother writers, revolutionary: she asserts that the selfish, interiorly focused mother can be a poet. Not just be a poet, but also somehow a good poet. And a good mother."

Maybe I'll making some progress after all. A photo for good luck.



Found at this new blog, Fiber Fantasies, when searching for a new photo of EB. What luck. So much richness.

Domestic Images Inside Out

Accidental Mysteries does it again. What could be more of a domestic image than this? Woman, high heel shoes, and bones. Strangely unsettling, but beautiful. Too bad her apron doesn't show. I bet a string of pearls would have shown up nicely.

Who Could Resist Super Yarn?

I noticed this company and these beautiful colored skeins in the Facebook adverts this morning. I guess those ads are good for something, then, even something beautiful.

Cascade Superwash Paint. A great name, too, for a lovely thing.

Thank you Apple Yarns of Bellingham WA.

I plan to blog every day, now, about the progress on my thesis. Not about knitting, but sort of about beauty and the work of women's hands.

Wish me luck.

Amazing Finds of the Week

A beautiful site. Just lying in wait. Something I've been waiting for. A beautiful sight.

The Domestic Soundscape is out of Oxford, and I haven't even begun to discover the depths of this woman's ideas and images. But who can argue with a hand knit Sonic Death Monkey?

And who knew there was a Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture?? I shouldn't be surprised that it's in the UK. Thanks for being out there for me to find.

Now back to my thesis (talk about a major distraction!).

Drastically Odor-Free Laundry & Ten Frugal Tips for the Laundry Room

I heard this gorgeous phrase, 'drastically odor-free laundry' on the radio today. Here's the story, from KQED's The California Report, if you want to listen to it yourself. All about Borax and Ronald Regan. Amazing. (The photos are from Wikipedia, thank goodness for them.)



And, if that weren't enough, I also found this website: Old Fashioned Homemaking, Traditional Values for Modern Homes. And this beautiful phrase: 'ten frugal tips for the laundry room' -- who wouldn't love that alliteration? And when I tried to copy a photo from the site, the site politely thanked me for not copying. A polite website, with pink roses, about laundry and home values. I can't decide if I should laugh or cry. What do you think?

We do need a photo, though, to give you the idea. So, here's a similar hat photo (click for attribution).

Patchwork Suit

This is delightful. Thanks for Accidental Mysteries for pointing out Joshua Lowenfels' wonderful collections.

I wonder how happy a person would feel wearing an outfit like this?