Fragile

 Color is back, even just since the weekend, when I took these photos, the grass has greened, the leaves are hourly opening further, and the rhubarb jumps.  Fiddle heads have been spotted, and just today I noticed columbine.  It's good to see the earth growing, life happening.  It's good.  It's healing.  Because human-wise, this spring has been a weird one, there have been so many deaths in our little town, and not the natural kind either, but the kind that make you question and cry out and bleed deep inside and see the world as only hideous and cruel.   Which it is.  But it is also full of love, and kindness, and springs, and birds that sing at 9:30 at night, and kids that hug your leg and ask you to take them with you.

 So the change that these events have done in me, was not the change I thought was meant when ever I'd hear "these things change you".  Because, I think I've realized that people don't change.  They grow, they mature, their perspectives and opinions and minds change, but we stay the same, we are still who we were before.  Maybe just a bit more gentle, a bit more fragile around certain subjects, and a bit more confident in certain things.  I feel different, because I see things differently.  It's a bit like getting a new pair of glasses, or even more accurately trying contacts for the first time.  Where the light seems different, clearer, and more delicate, and you have peripheral vision that you've never had before.  Yes.  It's a lot like that.

So this new found fragility has me a bit shaky, sensitive, but with a deep and searching need for beauty, and meaning.  So I've been reading, and reading, knitting with rich color, watching the sky as I can, and let myself dream, and ask questions, and search in unconventional places.

Such as this jaw-dropping blog, so many flowers, it's good for the soul.

Read The Book of Lights by Chiam Potok, as well as Davita's Harp.  Both so beautiful, both so hard, both books that must be re-read.

"He had brushed a hand across the sky and felt, felt, the touch of the stars.  But the bitch and her pups has disappeared.  How easily broken was this brittle world.  You did not need bombs to break it.  It seemed to break itself."
-The Book of Lights by Chiam Potok

This is all for now,

Love, Clara

first hike of the year, and my cooper backpack

 Yesterday. Clear sky.  Hour long drive.  Van full, with four new friends, three old friends, and three dogs.  Lots of water.  Temperature in the seventies.  Rocks to climb on.  A new made-by-me backpack.  And hiking boots that feel so good to put back on. Yes, this is a great way to welcome back summer.

So now you finally get to see my Cooper backpack.  I finished it months ago, I've just been slow, as usual, about getting project pictures.  All of the fabric was different odds and ends I've been hording from my stash, so all I had to buy for it was the hardware.  The pattern was great, super easy to follow, with clear instructions.  The only issue I remember having was installing the jiffy-rivets.  That was a pain.  But the result is nice, I must admit.

There we have it.  Spring is here, being warm is back, and it couldn't feel much better than this.