St. Valentine's Day

Red hearts, pink hearts and flowers. I love red and pink and flowers so that may be part of the reason that this holiday seems so much like fun for me. Of course, the association of chocolate with the day is good too, although since it is Lent I resisted the temptation to make chocolate cookies and told myself I should keep on writing! Last year I made a Squidoo lens with information and links about St. Valentine, so here is the link

http://www.squidoo.com/saintvalentine

A favorite cookie recipe is linked there.

Of course, See's chocolates are always good. (The best actually.)

E-valentine's are also great fun now. They are more ephemeral than cards, but that is good. Throwing out pretty cards is so hard that I tend to accumulate them in shoeboxes and after twenty or thirty years of doing that the shelves that aren't full of books are full of boxes.

Twenty years ago I made a beautiful Valentine that was part calligraphy and water color and part sachet. The paper was sewn to another sheet of paper to make a pocket, filled with lavender and then sewn across the top. I still have a few of these and they are still pretty and still smell faintly of lavender. It is good to see that something that I made endures.

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, especially my sister, my niece, my friend in Indiana and everyone who may find this post.

Tempus Fugit, again

Here I sit on Saturday afternoon and discover that the last time I blogged was three days ago! Well, it has been a little busy around here for the last two days.

Thursday my first print order came. These people are good and are they fast! The next day the second batch arrived. I now have about 450 prints that I will turn into cards to sell to anyone who wants one. I am folding white Astroparche as fast as I can to glue them unto. They will be very pretty; I am very pleased and will package them so that they look professional as well. Lot's of work for these tired old arthritic and polio bones and muscles, but I would rather try than give up.

Cards were one item that I could not find when I first began shopping on the internet a number of years ago. I hope that I can find a niche. Everyone, please buy my cards! St. Joseph, please send me customers.

According to my email someone bought an item at my CafePress shop today. Hurray! These notices make my day and gladden my heart. Thank you to whomever you are who bought a St. Therese throw pillow today.

Another thing happened today that was exciting and filled my heart with gratitude--a new dryer was delivered to replace the old one that broke and could not be repaired. I can have clean sheets and clothes again. This came as the result of the kindness of my church. Otherwise, I would be doing without for a bit longer.

So I have much to be grateful for this eve of Sunday and will try to get some work done tonight.

Fall is coming

With less daylight in both the morning and the evening now and definitely chilly mornings it almost feels like Fall is early this year. Why not? All of the other seasons seemed to come early and we had an unusually cold winter, dry except for snow, which is so rare in the San Francisco Bay Area that it always makes the news--not just the weather report.

I wonder, are drought, or near drought years often colder than wetter winters? It would make sense, since much of our rain is tropical and the cloud layers themselves tend to warm the earth, like blankets.

The sunflowers are hurrying to bloom now. Even the trio that had been working to become the worlds tallest sunflowers are developing flower buds. Flower buds on a sunflower are almost a misnomer. They are huge. Everything about these flowers is oversize! I love to watch them turn to follow the sun and I also like the patterns their leaves make in shadows on my fence.

In the next few days, I will be printing cards from some of the photos of this summer's sunflowers.