Sock It to Me

In a previous post, I said that I would never knit another Aran.  I don’t know why Arans irritate me so, but they do.  The last Aran I knitted, for myself, was my fourth, and I have cursed over every single one of them.  (Three were for my husband.  I figured it was about time I [...]

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From Hope to Joy

The quote for the day from my Franklin Planner is from Samuel Johnson:  “He that labors in any great or laudable undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope, and afterwards rewarded by joy.” For an Orthodox Christian, the divide between this life and eternity isn’t all that great.  Of course we can’t see them (though [...]

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The Wise Use of Time

For nearly twenty years now, I have kept track of my life with one of those time-management systems (Franklin-Covey, to be exact).  I like being able to track how I spent my days, and there are other components to this system, such as tracking money, auto servicing, and projects, that I haven’t found anywhere else.  [...]

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The Song of God

What follows is lifted entirely from the blog of an Orthodox Priest (Orthodox Church in America.  And that’s Capital O, as in “Russian Orthodox,” or “Greek Orthodox”).  Father Stephen Freeman has, by now, over a thousand followers of his blog, Glory to God for All Things.  He writes about God, about theology, and about God’s [...]

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Knowledge Makes a Bloody Entrance

On Tuesday, responding to a NaNoBloMo prompt, I wrote about my eighth-grade teacher.  Which is what you get for being too literal:  Like most people (I hope – I’d hate to think I was that dense), I was thinking in terms of schoolteachers.  In fact, there were two teachers who made the single biggest impact [...]

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Knitting Bones

I think I’ve always had knitting in my bones.  It’s the only reason I can think of for the fact that essentially, I taught myself how to knit. Living in Germany was a great help in that regard.  When I was living there, I think every woman in the entire country knitted.  You’d see them [...]

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It Was the Worst of Times, It Was the Best of Times

A couple of Sundays ago, my husband and I were chatting with the wife of a now-retired priest, and reminiscing about our early married life in Germany.  My husband was talking about the cold-water flat we lived in, describing how we used to move the space heater from one room to another in order to warm up [...]

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He Who Can, Does…

NaBloPoMo prompt:  “Tell us about your first teacher who was important to you.” The most important teacher in my life, Peter Bochow, used to say:  “He who can, does.  He who can’t, teaches.  He who can’t teach, teaches teachers.”  As he was, at the time, engaged in teaching teachers, this was a shot at himself, [...]

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Plays with Booze

NaBloPoMo prompt:  ”Tell us about some of your first toys.”  Oh, dear.  You may be forgiven for not believing this one. I actually did have a toy, a stuffed elephant (Dumbo was very big when I was a child).  And I have photographs of me grinning prettily, clutching Dumbo, which does nothing to explain why I [...]

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In the Beginning

NaBloPoMo prompt from January 6:  “Do you wish the start of the year was in a different season?  Which one?”  Better late than never, I suppose.  (Note that the grammatical error “was” is a quote from NaBloPoMo.  In case anyone from that organization happens to see this blog, the act of wishing takes the subjunctive [...]

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