Black Magic and Imperial Affliction

Two of my closest friends helped me celebrate my belated birthday yesterday. We used to get together every week to gab, but now it's more like once a month or every six weeks. Ah, well. Busy, busy people, I guess. Yesterday, however, we kicked back, made the moistest chocolate cake EVER (thanks to Alicia at Mayfly for making the Black Magic cake for her three-year-old and blogging about it). We watched a decently sentimental movie and coated our hands in wax. Before the wax (duh), I knitted instead of partaking in popcorn. I'm up to Cobblestone's armpits in blue wool now.


The photo that made it to the blog, Lisa.

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I've posted more to my etsy shop. Two little needle cases and two quilt basting spoons. Huh?

I often pin baste, and a notched basting spoon comes in handy. But I took really cruddy pics, unstuitable at least for etsy's preview thumbnails. Here's a better preview:


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Like the blogging groundhog I am, I've been keeping my virtual self underground. So I missed the Third Annual (Silent) Poetry Reading in honor of the Feast of St. Brigid/Groundhog Day. I came up from my hole long enough to see the long shadow of others' poetry selections drop into my blog subscriptions.

Well, I've usually got some sort of poem or literary quote going on in the Poets' Corner, in the right hand column of this blog, so there's always a poetry reading going on in this happenin' spot. But to play "me too," I will feature one here that showed up in the Poets' Corner several months back. It is apropo to Groundhog Day, and winter light, and how I've been feeling as I approach the first anniversary of a death.

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

--Emily Dickinson