Thursday Tanka of the Birds

You were here. You’re gone,
Tiny cold feet tucked into
Warm feathers, flying
Out of winter. Tomorrow
Or the next day: tropical.

Another snowy warm wordless Wednesday…

Will This Work, Part 4 – Amazing.

I’m amazed, anyway.

Last fall, mostly out of curiosity and also because I got really tired of the seams in my socks chewing into my toes (handmade socks don’t generally have those seams across the top of your foot), I decided to see if I really could knit a pair of socks.

At first, I wasn’t sure the cuff was big enough to let my entire foot through. (Fortunately, knitting  st  r   e   t   c  h es.)

Then I came to the part where the sock needed to make a right-angle turn, because that’s what feet do. The directions made no sense, no matter how many times I read them. Knit a heel flap? What’s that? Turn the heel? Turn it into what? It was all obviously impossible. But I was halfway done, so I might as well just keep going, row by row, doing what the directions told me to…and all of a sudden

I had a sock! And a while later, I had a pair of socks. And they’re so very very comfortable that I might just wear them every day if they weren’t the kind of wool you have to handwash and let dry lying flat (which takes a couple of days).

I wanna make some more socks!

Friday’s Haiku – February 21, 2014

Hope

I saw a willow
Yesterday: yellow-green, not
Brown, against the snow.

Warm Wordless Friday – Cattails

Thursday Haiku of the Snow, February 13 2014

More snow keeps falling
White out of gray sky over
Gray world. Snow, and snow.

(We’ve had a foot of snow* in the past 24 hours, and we’ve been promised another three or four inches by tomorrow morning. And then more on Saturday.)

* For metric people – a foot is a bit less than a third of a meter. Three or four inches? About 7.5 to 10 cm.

Warm wordless Wednesday, before Thursday’s noreaster starts

Travel theme: Yellow

Yes, “yellow” is Ailsa’s travel theme of the week. Here we go –

Here we are in the depths (which aren’t all that deep) of Lincoln Caverns, a small cave in western Pennsylvania. When the lights are turned off, the caves are black. Totally black. But with light, you find that the rocks are largely various shades of yellow. And brown.

A butterfly garden in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. This butterfly is only slightly yellow – more nearly cream, really – but those flowers? Now, that’s yellow.

And yellow doesn’t get much yellower than these daylilies.

Neighbors

Some folks seen in my area…

Friday Fictioneers – Prepared

Friday Fictioneers time again. Don’t miss all the other Fictioneers’ stories!

Prepared

All the kids knew that house was haunted. You’d be safe if you took a magic light inside. Otherwise the ghosts would get you. And if I didn’t go inside, Brian would get me.

So I took all the money I had to the flea market. “Any magic lights?” I asked the woman at the table.

“Magic?” She laughed. “Oh, that old house. You kids still tell that story?”

“It’s a dare,” I mumbled.

“Well, one of them’s magic. But I can’t tell you which one.”

I pulled out my money. “I’ll buy the whole tablefull.”

Now I have the magic light, if I can carry them all. Hope the story’s true.