A COLOR Day

I was looking for this shade of green,
about this shade , more loden , at Goodwill
today to put in the hook rug I'm going to make.
Found a darker shade and several others
with my dear friend who will teach me
and my Charlotte Mason coop of 9-10 year
olds. Got this color....a great deep brown
men's coat to pull apart...a more muted
deep rosey kind of colored skirt with
some wonderful embroidery at the bottom
to make something else out of it....and a
plaid of deep browns and rusts...and a
rich country color that has more golden
in it than this.


We started the house painting before it
all rots! I had to pick the trim
color today. He mixed a darker
green with a lighter one to match our GREEN
roof. So many shades but I think we got it.


And in the midst of Goodwill , I found a
wonderful book to add to my Miss Read
collection. I read the first chapter as a snow
falls overnight on Thrush Green and everyone
wakes to it!

Not on a Tuesday

I am trying to set a date
for our Book Club to have a
dinner-discussion for Robert
Capon's The Supper of the Lamb.
Looking at March for the feasting.
My Bible Study is trying to meet
this week or next.
Both involve well-lived lives of women
to whom God has blessed me to know.
Friends for the Journey.
But I feel like this card that I bought
over Christmas at The Country Bookstore
in Southern Pines. I've also found these
cards in a small shop in Black Mountain.
You could hear me giggling back in the
card section.
Haven't put it in the mail to anyone ....
yet!

From Pondering Pool
http://www.ponderingpool.com/



_{©2001 Susan Mrosek. All rights reserved.}

You meet an author

You hear an author's voice in
her writing. That's what I've done
in Home Cooking and More Home
Cooking by Laurie Colwin.
Any of my friends will tell
you that what inspires me comes
into conversation. Laurie's books
about cooking at home and making
dinners simple and good have spilled
over into many of my friend's ears.
I just googled her name to find out
she had an early death. She just didn't
wake up one morning at the age of 48.
This from an article in the Washington
Post . She passed away in 1992.

Similarly, most of the writers she loved had been around for a while; indeed, her own most direct literary ancestor was Jane Austen, as is made charmingly clear by a brief passage from the title story of "The Lone Pilgrim":

"Oh, domesticity! The wonder of dinner plates and cream pitchers. You know your friends by their ornaments. You want everything. If Mrs. A. has her mama's old jelly mold, you want one too, and everything else that goes with it -- the family, the tradition, the years of having jelly molded in it. We domestic sensualists live in a state of longing, no matter how comfortable our own places are."

Family, marriage, chattels, tradition -- it is Austen to the core.

Now to find this last line: A Collection of
her letters is now in the works.

Laurie Colwin
1944-1992

Home Cooking

From my pile of library books:


More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin:

"If you meet someone who keeps ducks,
make that person into your best friend at
once. Duck eggs are ambrosial, they are
BIG , with dark orange yolks. Their shells
are rather powdery, and they are much
larger than even a jumbo egg. They taste
like eggs to the tenth power and are
definitely worth hunting for. "

"The quail egg is the gentle essence of egg.
They are also perfect for a child's lunch
box."





The next day after the short chapter
on The Egg and You, I made egg
salad sandwiches for my picnic lunch!
Just brown organic eggs. I keep thinking
about duck eggs!

Sacred Marriage

This book was recommended by
our pastor in his series on Marriage
this month:



"What if God designed Marriage
to make us Holy more than to
make us happy."

Yesterday I stopped at a new store
as I get to know Boone:
the Christian bookstore. I remembered
this book and bought it from a young
man. He said "THAT is a very good book."
Well, it was this one in the pile , next to
some Amy Carmichael books I bought too.
(this store had the best selection of Schaeffer
books I've seen outside a L'Abri Conference!)
He must have been in his early 20's.
Interesting comment from someone his age.
He turned his hand and there was a
wedding ring. A newlywed!
Then this morning, a Dad on one of my
students saw the book on the counter
and SAID the very same thing!
Two males in 24 hours. Must be good!

There and Back

Back from going up to Blowing
Rock ( Mitford) and Boone to take
my son back to college again! This time
there was snow on the ground
and the ponds were iced. Even
the waterfalls were frozen. It
seemed almost like Narnia here
in the South. There's something
very warm about the cold world.
It is what the poets write
and musicians in their songs.

To quote Linford Detweiler of
Over the Rhine in their Christmas
album called Snow Angels:

"And when we finally get back to the
farm a few days before Christmas
Eve, and it's just the two of us and the
dogs and the kitties, we'll pray we get
snowed in. And after the storm, when
all is still, the stars will wink at the
sleepy farm, and we'll hear the sound
of violins in our heads, and we'll burrow
down deep in our beds, and we'll breathe,
ourselves grinning full of Christmas:
Birth - Life - Death - Resurrection: WOW GOD."

These are a few of my favorite things

Brown paper
packages tied up with string
is how Julie Andrews sang it!
BUT in Northanger Abbey,
Catherine Morland's packages
were tied up with ribbons. She goes
shopping and comes out with boxes
tied up with colored ribbons. Emma
and I were awed by how fun that would
be to have our shopping wrapped up like
presents instead of in bags.





In reading over Masterpiece
Theater's wonderful site, I found this
about Felicity Jones who played Catherine:

. Jones will next appear in Brideshead Revisited alongside Emma Thompson.