"I know . . "

We’ve been away from home a week.

Up till now it has gone pretty well. Today the trance was broken. It was shower day, but she refused to shower, then she agreed but did not.

Short of starting a ruckus I backed off and let it go.

We had planned on going to church this morning, but I think we will stay here and watch church on TV. That will take some persuading but I think I can pull it off.

All of this reminds me that change is not good for her.

Arline (daughter) and I were gone the other day, when we came back, Miriam was sitting in a lawn chair, purposely not looking at us.

I went over to talk to her and she was genuinely unhappy. “I figured out what you are going to do with me!” She exclaimed.

“Really.” I said, knowing that we had not even talked about any change.

“What are we going to do with you?”

“You are going to move me up here.” We did think of that a few years ago, but it is not an on table discussion point now. 


So, when I assured her that we would live a long while in our own home, she was so grateful, she smiled her sad puppy smile and hugged me like I had saved her life.

It ain’t always fun.

candy store

Today I was the kid in the candy store.

Daughter 1 has been a serious fiber artists for years, beginning in high school, and before, when she learned to sew her own clothes.

Any way for a lot of years she has been very serious about quilting. I don’t know a lot of quilters, but from what I gather, she is more typical than not. Her fabric shelves groan under the weight of her "palette."

She showed me her cache. Boxes of neatly ironed and folded fabric pieces, mostly cottons, separated by colors. She gave me instructions to go through and when I found one I thought would make a good book cover, to cut off enough for a book or two.

So I did, and did and did.

I was intoxicated by all of these choices of wonderful fabrics. One series I was especially fond of, and she told me I should be, because they were the most expensive in her collection!

Then I mentioned that I planned to go to 2nd hand stores and find some worn leather clothing to use for book covers.

Her eyes lit up. She sent me on an errand to find a plastic tote. It was full of leather pieces. Pieces from coats and pants she found here and there. She had made a series of stick horses years ago and had used this leather for those horses.

Now she has moved on and I became the owner of that box of leather. She even had a skirt and coat made of Ultra-suede. Ahh the queen of imitation leathers. That piece will cover a LOT of books.

And she taught me how to dye leather with Kool Aid to get a larger variety of colors.

But she had one request: she wants a book made a half page size (5 ½ by 8 ½) with leather spine cover and a beautiful embossed paper on the cover. With pleasure I will make that book!

There are a lot of things that get an artist to thinking and creating but having a supply of new materials is high on the list.

I think I might come down with “fiber diabetes.”

fall camping

My family have always been campers.

Sometimes it was recreation, but it the old times, it was a necessity. My mom and her family (mom was about 12 at the time) spent the winter in the idaho mountains in a pair of tents. Imagine the amount of firewood they went through.

We lived in a tent while we built our house some years ago. The girls were teens!

But now we camp for recreation.

Last weekend was our final camp trip of the year, though we will sleep in our tear for another week. (We area daughter visiting, and the tear is our bedroom!)

Fall in the mountain west has warm days and cold nights. Temps often dip close to freezing.

Last weekend we camped with our 2nd daughter's family. We were not at great elevation, but it was cold at night. The campground was in a narrow box canyon. The sun came up at 10:30 and went down about 4. Without the sun it was cool to cold.

Miriam used to take care of so many of the details of any adventure, and now that I do, I forget some things some times. I make lists and try to remember, but there is a lot she used to do that I did not fully appreciate.

So we took our tear drop, with the big comforter on the bed, but no extra blankets. (I try to always have two extras). It was just cold enough at night that I always was on the edge of being fairly uncomfortable.

The 3rd night, granddaughter Brianna (who is a dear soul) found us an extra blanket and it was so wonderful.

It is amazing how important some of the little things can be.

campfire cake

Sunday was our son-in-law’s birthday.

Cliff is 45. Wow. Anyway his older daughter Brianna and I conspired to make him one of my upside down cakes.

I had the stuff with me. Brown sugar, walnuts, butter, cake mix with oil and eggs, the whole thing. So I put it together with a bit of help from Bri.

This time daughter had a big bed of coals in the fire pit so we decided to use that, besides I had put the charcoal briquettes some where and did not find them until later.

So we put the dutch oven in the coals. I took a little shovel I had and put some coals on the top. It looked good.

Every 5 minutes I would rotate the lid one direction ⅓ turn and the oven the other way to keep the heat even. The box said to bake it 30 minutes I thought, so had one of the boys set his wrist watch for a timer.

I remembered being told to be careful opening the oven door while a cake is baking, so I skipped that and stayed with the timer.

At the 25 minute mark I peeked inside.

It was an awesome sight. It was uniformly baked on all sides.

It was as black as soot, and stayed black for the first ⅜ of an inch every direction.

We cut it in 8 pieces and picked out the good parts in the center.

Later we did it again and this time used those briquettes and did a lot of peeking, and it turned out wonderful.

I am learning and I am living. I hope the former is on a shorter curve than the latter!