when will spring arive?!!

i miss the days of wearing sandals but that is what i love about chicago, you have another beautiful season to look forward to. meanwhile i enjoy the cozy evenings at home keeping warm.



i really am having trouble with my self-portrait project. it is extremely challenging trying to take a picture of yourself everyday especially when you are not feeling photogenic, which is everyday to me! but i will continue to do so. i'm sure i will like the results at the end of the year.

thread blossoms

grab some coffee & head on over to my new etsy shop. i'm selling my mom's crochet hats & sweaters. there pretty, see for yourself.
browse ---> thread blossoms!

drink the universe

i feel like dancing!
don't you love it when happy moods
creep up unexpectedly.


"Unknowingly,
we plow the dust of stars,
blown about us by the wind,
and drink the universe
in a glass of rain."

Ihab Hassan
American Author and Literary Theorist

deep caves

VII by Wendell Berry

I would not have been a poet
except that I have been in love
alive in this mortal world,
or an essayist except that I
have been bewildered and afraid,
or a storyteller had I not heard
stories passing to me through the air,
or a writer at all except
I have been wakeful at night
and words have come to me
out of their deep caves
needing to be remembered.
But on the days I am lucky
or blessed, I am silent.
I go into the one body
that two make in making marriage
that for all our trying, all
our deaf-and-dumb of speech,
has no tongue. Or I give myself
to gravity, light, and air
and am carried back
to solitary work in fields
and woods, where my hands
rest upon a world unnamed,
complete, unanswerable, and final
as our daily bread and meat.
The way of love leads all ways
to life beyond words, silent
and secret. To serve that triumph
I have done all the rest.

("VII" from the poem "1994" by Wendell Berry,
from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997)

my camera and i

photograph by Mary Palaskonis

my camera and i are going to get to know each other better this year.
i'm participating in 2 projects, both involving taking a picture
a day. one is a self-portrait a day (which is proving to be difficult!!
but forcing me to get creative!) and one picture of whatever catches
my eye. already there is trouble as my nikon is very heavy. so my
solution is my smaller canon during the week. we'll see.
but there you have it. my new best friend. and this whole
experience is making me cheery. looking forward to the challenges.
(and i really hope i do it all 365 days) i think i will.

something about the new year that opens the world to so many
opportunities & when hope is more visible then other days.