Light reading

Jane Austen did needlework - just sayin'. I was thinking about this while deciding what to write about today, when all I've been doing lately is writing, and rereading Emma. 

Also, simultaneously, reading Little Dorrit! If you're only going to read one Dickens in your life, I recommend it, or otherwise Bleak House which is much greater in literary riches than one might guess from the title.

Things are very lush and green around here, as one might expect in June (how is it already June??), both indoors, in the form of the plant I've kept alive the longest, and its cutting, from when it got too big for its original pot...

and outdoors, in the form of a weed tree in our neighbour's yard that will probably knock our fence over if we let it get any more weight onto our side. 

I hate to trim this guy every year, because the birds and squirrels love running around on the branches in there, but I remind myself they also love running across the top of the fence.

Meanwhile, I'm writing a new manuscript while letting the last one cool its heels before another revision.

And not knitting, because I have only so much arm capacity still and am trying to focus my energies on typing and building some muscle, as one keeps hearing is essential for anybody over, like, twenty. 

I comfort myself with the thought that Jane Austen managed to write and do needlework too, though it wouldn't surprise me if her needleworkings were most energetic in the realm of Cool-Lookin Clothes which isn't such a pressure for me now as it was when I was, like, twenty. I must also temper the comfort with the knowledge that I am not Jane Austen.

Nonetheless, I'm confident I will get back there some day! Not to twenty, but to needleworkings and maybe even Cool-Lookin Clothes too. For now I hope you're here for my and whatever nonsense I decide is worth sharing, because if you're here for the crafty bits you may be disappointed and that would make me very sad. I do hate to disappoint!

In the absence of visually creative work I've been leaning into healthy breakfast tray art, using one of the Emma Bridgewater tray-shaped plates I picked up when we vacationed in England a few years ago. 

The trays are still sold, but in tin, if you want one too - mine are melamine, and my fave breakfast one is covered in images of chickens, slowly revealed as I work my way through greens, nuts, and fruit, in that order. Apparently dates are quite good for you and as it's Saturday, I included some today... normally I have them with tea in the mid-afternoon, paired with pecans, in lieu of cookies. I can recommend this treat as highly as I did the two Dickens titles above.  

I hope you've got a lovely weekend lined up? and that you get to do all the creative things you'd like to, over the course of the week. With luck we'll be having those things in tandem till I see you here again next Saturday. Thanks so much for spending this scrap of time with me!