Dear Mom,
When the kids get too rowdy, you just have to turn on the heated floors.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
The antidote to the Nuisance Snow:

Let the sun shine in, let the sun shine in





Have fun picking up aunt Karen. Tell her I say hi.
Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Today's studio day turned into a work on the computer for Noemi day, and then I made spicy peanut soba noodles for a pot-luck we went to tonight. Now I am suffering from Post Socializing Stress Disorder, where I think about all the loserish things I said to the visiting artist. Sometimes this "leaving the house" concept that people talk about isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Here is the new necklace in the works to go with the new vine earrings you saw the other day. I am deciding if it should go on a chain, whether the chain should be silver or gold, or maybe on ribbon or silk or something. Maybe leather.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
You know what the newscasters out here call the daily snow that doesn't accumulate much?
Nuisance Snow.
Ron thinks that's a misnomer, as it's not much of a problem if it isn't accumulating.




Took a walk through the woods today and work a lot in the studio. Now I'm pretty tired. Not much else to report, except the Nuisance Snow has started up again.

Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
As I was working on oxiding this batch of new earrings, Ron was making pizzas, and I was watching the tv over the countertop. Ron was wearing his sneaking shoes, apparently, because he snuck up on me like a freaking ninja and when he went to kiss my ear he scared the living daylights out of me. I yelled super super loud, and then realized that he had actually scared the breath out of me and it took me like a minute to be able to breathe again. My eyes started to run, and my nose started to run, and my face started to tingle. It was the weirdest thing I've ever experienced. Good thing I didn't need to go to the bathroom. Poor Ron felt terrible, because he truly didn't mean to sneak up on me from the shadows. He was only trying to be nice, and when I could get the words out, I was crying "YOU ALMOST KILLED ME!"
Good God, if it isn't the birthdays sneaking up to age you, it's the husband.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,












Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,




After days and days of snow, we had a couple minutes of sun this morning. All those white spots that look like digital noise in the photo are actually sparkles of sun off the snowflakes that are still in the air. Janet had mentioned to me once about the way the moon always reflects off the ocean, making a silver pathway from you to it, no matter where you are standing, and this morning that's what the snow looked like. A path of glitter.

Last night Ron and I were one of the teams teaching at the Drawing and Painting marathon. From 6 pm to 2 am, students work on one continuous painting on a huge piece of paper, and hourly a team of two comes in and gives the kids their parameters and inspiration for the hour. Ron and I were there from 10-11pm, so their paintings were well underway, and the kids were only starting to burn out. Ron showed microscopic images, I read a passage about atoms from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, and the kids were supposed to think about what tiny things could be making up the elements they already had in their art. I was nervous--how could I walk around and help kids with painting and drawing? but Ron was right--there was no "teaching"; just letting the kids run with it. And to give you an idea of the diversity of what people were making the kids think about, the woman that came in for the hour after us played the violin and told them to think about space. And to top it off, she doesn't know how to play the violin. It was fun, and I was glad they thought of inviting me.

Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
I finished the endpaper mitts a week or so ago, and thought you'd like to see them. Pardon the one-hand-only shots, the other hand had the camera. I realized I read the chart wrong--on the second chart you're supposed to read each row once from right to left, then back from left to right. Whoops. I have plenty of yarn to make more, so I think I'll try again, this time with the suggested cast-on, and proper chart reading.

I had thought they were going to be too tight, but they're perfect.






Love, Ruth

Dear Mom,
Sometimes things look out at you from the dark.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Nadine and a girl from Brooklyn who's applying to grad school here stayed over last night. This morning we had coffee and I served cereal because we realized there wasn't enough time for them to eat at the diner before Victoria's first meeting, so we chatted and they took off. I went in to Alfred today for lunch at Nana's, the japanese lunch place, because I wanted to take advantage of hanging out with Nadine and I'm trying to spread my birthday out a little bit while I can. Nice lunch with friends, and then an opening this afternoon in one of the student galleries, and then back to my studio to work until dinner. Pretty fun day, all-in-all, although more productive in the quality department rather than the quantity kind, but that's okay. Watched tv with Ron and looked through knitting magazines for an interesting but not too challenging pattern to work on during Stitch n Bitch. That's about it for today.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
This is a quickie, as I am running out to go bowling with Nadine and some other people from school. I should probably take off some of the 497 layers I have on from working in the studio.




Love, Ruth

Dear Mom,
Thank you for having me today, 32 years ago. Today was a fine day, nothing too dreadful to do, nothing too mind-blowing. Spent a little time with friends and loved ones, and talked to people on the phone. Ate out again (I know! Two nights in a row!), this time at Cafe Za in Alfred. I opened my presents this morning; thank you for the yarn tote and the money that went in to the New Digital Camera envelope. I am now deciding whether I was a super-portable, sub-compact camera to have on me all the time, or if I want to keep saving for an archival digital printer. Anyway, thanks. Our Christmas presents from Jennifer and Mike showed up today, so we got to open a lot of small presents from them, and that was nice. Once the wind and snow stopped blowing, Ron and I went out to the studio to see what he made for me, which was another worktable, this one designed for my anvils and rolling mill. It's actually too high for the anvils, but it'll be fine for now, and eventually I'll get something shorter and more ergonomic. It's a nice table, square and sturdy. Well, I am going to go back in the other room and finish watching the movie we started this afternoon.

This way forward, into a new year, better than ever before.





All my love to you and Dad,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
We are getting ready to go out to dinner at the sorta fancy Italian place in Wellsville with Dan and Corey. They even made reservations and got a babysitter for Claire, so it's a real, live double date! Hopefully they have food there I can eat. Today was snowy snowy, and I spent the day organizing things up in the Fiber Loft. Ron built me a bookcase a week or so ago, and I've been organizing yarn into ziploc bags so I can see what I've got. Doing pretty well. It's a cool fort-like space, up there in the warm peak of the roof, with the wind blowing outside and the furries keeping me company while they sleep.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Sunrise, sunset.
Sunrise, sunset.






Ron decided we should take Tucker for a walk at our old stomping grounds, Philips Creek.




It was not the easiest walk, to say the least. We have done it when the snow is up to our thighs, but this time a lot of the streams weren't fully frozen over. Man, were we wet and muddy by the time we were done. And as Ron put so eloquently, "I don't remember this taking so long." Oh yeah, we were on the long trail. But it does feel good to detox all the old air out of your body.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
This morning the sun peeked up, then I swear, decided to go right back down. Lucky for us it made an appearance later on in the day for a nice orange sunset. The site where I upload my images doesn't want to do its job in any sort of efficient manner, so I am giving you an old picture. Time for bed.




Love, Ruth

Dear Mom,
You know what your friend Janet did? She sent me a suprise, just for being me. WHO DOES THAT, I ASK YOU?




Wasn't that nice of her?
We also exchanged emails with pictures of rainbows (well, truthfully, she sent me a card with a photo of a rainbow over the ocean, and I sent back a rainbow over the studio) and she told me that in South Africa they had many rainbows, and if it was sunny and raining at the same time it was called a Monkey's Wedding and you could make a wish. Today it was snowy and sunny all day. Sometimes the light reflected off the falling snow, making it look like I was inside a snow globe filled with silver glitter. Then it cleared up, the sun went down, and now it's night. It seems like it happened in a matter of seconds.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
I'm watching the Golden Globes right now. It always gets me kinda choked up to see people so happy to be acknowledged for their projects. We watched Million Dollar Baby last night, and Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman were really really good. It was a good movie; sometimes movies lose something when you wait to see it, after seeing so much press and hub-bub about it. But it was good, good enough for me to have a bit of a crush on Clint Eastwood now. Ha! I didn't expect that, let me tell you. Anyway, it's about time for Jack's dinner + insulin. More tomorrow.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Today wasn't nearly as bad as yesterday, although I had a headache so I indulged in a nap this afternoon. The weather is still really rainy. Last Sunday when the weather was nice and we walked all through the woods, I found a bunch of bones, this skull and three vertebre. We were all the way done the hill by the stream, and I hadn't brought a bag, so I had to carry the camera, all the bones and my out-of-shape butt all the way back up the hill to home. The bones were really clean, but not dry, so by the time I realized the stink I had been smelling was the bones, I was already committed to bringing them home. I stunk all day. Oh well. I still think it was worth it.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Today is thickly grey and I am having the drearies. Not for any good reason, just am.






Maybe tomorrow will be better.
Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Where do the days go? (Well, your day went cleaning, but mine sure didn't.) Isn't that funny how people clean to procrastinate? I know people who do that, but I don't think I've ever once done it. I can find PLENTY of other things that need to get done first. Although I am pretty good at throwing a load of laundry in, but I can assure you, it probably won't get folded right away. But at least stuff is clean.

I sent a box of jewelry to a store in Seattle today, so think good consumer thoughts for me. I've only been in that store for a couple months, and have sold almost everything I've given her, but now that Christmas is over it could be a different story for a while. This isn't normally the best time for selling jewelry. Anyway, it is always kind of painful to get the box of work organized, but then always feels really good once the forms are complete and the box is dropped off.

We are supposed to have guests at some point this weekend (Denise and her son Adam are in town). Guess I'll have to clean up my stuff after all.





Love,
Ruth

p.s. MOM! I just found a typo on Jeopardy! I didn't have the correct question, but I do know that Chairman Mao is not spelled Chariman Mao. That's a first!

Dear Mom,




Still more phone calls made today, and more calls waiting to happen before all the issues get ironed out. On top of those emotions, I've been starting to update my jewelry catalog. Nothing brings this girl down faster than close-up and super detailed photographs of her face. Man. It was not a good look, but luckily with a little photoshop I look presentable. And if all the celebrities get to do it, then it's fair for me to clone out all my pores too.





Love
Ruth

Dear Mom,
You know what happens when your friends who were planning to visit tell you that they may not come if there isn't snow? It snows.




Now that the snow has stopped, and the wind has picked up, there are swirls of snow blowing across the yard. The view out the window looks just like Eunny Jang's Anemoi mittens. I knew I loved that design. The Endpaper mitts are coming along. The first one is done, and just needs its ends woven in, and I just started the increases on the second one, so it's almost half done. Now that it's winter, they will come in handy. Knit faster! Knit faster!
Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
A tree for Saint Sebastian.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Although it looks like rain, it's actually sideways snow. The weather is giving winter a try.




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
More beauty.















Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,

More winter green.





Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
I still have a headache. Partly from stress, partly from the weather (say thanks to dad for me). Everything is grey and quiet today.




Like looking through vellum.

We got more wood on New Year's Day, and it all got stacked in the nice weather.




I kept getting distracted by the patterns left by bugs.




Even with all that are tones of tan and grey, the slate outside the hidden part of the house was harboring a surprise.





I have continued to make the phone calls, a task which has turned out to be more work than I had anticipated. I think it's starting to work out though--one call resulted in us saving $800 a year. Can you believe it?

I can think of many things you could put in the buck shed. I think my top two picks would be to fill it with puppies, or get an alpaca. I know you can't knit with alpaca, but I sure can, and maybe it would be a good time for me to learn how to use my spinning wheel that's in your basement. And then you get the fuzzy camelid kisses, and I get the camelid fuzz. Sounds dreamy to me.

Love, ruth

That damn resolution:

Dear Mom,
No more procrastination.

You know all those things that I was psyching myself into finally doing now that it's a new year? Well, I've started doing them, and I HATE NOT PROCRASTINATING.

But aren't these the sort of things that when you finally do them, you feel a lot better? And if you don't, you still get to give yourself some sort of present, because you have to make the awful phone calls because your husband won't, even though it's his fault it all has to be done in the first place? And yet, my reward might end up being Cleaning the House, because that's getting out of control. DAMN YOU, 2007!




Love,
Ruth

WIPs

Dear Mom,
I thought you would like to see how the projects are going. These are the start of the socks in the trekking yarn I told you about over Christmas.





These are the endpaper mitts with the yarn you bought me. I wanted to get a shot without the "seam" showing, but the way it's divided on my needles prevented that. Oh well. Last night I started the increases as the mitt moves up your hand. I've been knitting with the main color in my right hand, and the contrast color in my left, and it's AWESOME. No tangles, whatsoever.





Last night the full moon was on 100 watts and shone in our bedroom all night like a light was on. I have never seen it so bright at night before.

Love,
Ruth

and, Begin!

dear mom,
merry christmas, a little late. here is a present that requires no storage space, no wall space, no dusting. this new blog is a way for me to show you what is happening here at turtle hill. a little letter, every day.

love ruth