What I'm Loving Right Now

I've framed this photo, taken in Mobile, Alabama, where I was born and lived the first five years of my life. I did not like this guy for the longest time.














Elvis-Andy-Bebop is in the house. He is five months old now, and has grown almost fully into his standard poodle size and is the happiest being I know -- happy-happy-happy! Let me eat your ears! Let me chew your cell phone! O, wow, glasses! A watch! Oh-Oh-Oh, Jim will roll around on the floor with me! In his gig suit! Hey, buttons! What do you mean, bedtime?






We've been on a new-cookie hunt this season. This is my favorite new recipe, from Smitten Kitchen. Chocolate brownie roll-out cookies -- to die for.











We've had several gatherings at our house this season -- I love the family we have created here in Atlanta. Here are some of the people who gathered at our house to make the cookies and play the music, tell the stories, and celebrate with us -- family, community, kinship, connection... it's what I write about as well.






In the midst of the holiday hoopla, THIS BOOK arrived in the mail this week. It's the Japanese edition of EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS. Don't you adore Declaration's poofy dress? I love this cover, and I have a story to tell you about the translator of this book, and how we got to know one another, and about the sometimes-hilarious questions I fielded in helping her make a quirky, American southern novel into a resonant story for Japanese readers. Stay tuned.











Get ready to fall in love... here is a clementine candle.... made by moi. Took me five minutes. It burned for three hours. It smells luscious, and makes me happy, and you can make one or a billion, too. Here are the directions, at Apartment Therapy. Hannah found this and forwarded it to me on email with the subject line: "Clearly, we need to do this." We did.

I used canola oil instead of my expensive olive oil, and substituted a tangerine I had on hand. I plan to use these as luminaries on my Christmas dinner table.


I'm loving my novel right now, too. Mornings are the best time to get up early, in the dark, before the house stirs, and sit with this story. That's what I'm doing. Inch by inch, row by row, just like my shawl... I'm making this story grow.

Casting On Again

Here is the knitting project I'm working on now. It will be a shawl, knitted in two 30-inch rectangles, then sewn together at right angles.

I haven't had a knitting project on my needles for such a long time. When daughter Hannah and I went out for our annual day-long holiday shopping day (complete with brunch), we wandered into our favorite knitting store, and I came out with this wool/silk blend, and a pattern written by the shop owner for me on the back of an envelope:

Using size 11 needles, cast on 54 stitches (I cast on 62), and knit in the stockinette stitch (knit one row, purl one row) until you've got about 30", then cast off and repeat. Sew both rectangles together at right angles.


This is a pattern I seem to be following with my novel right now. I have cast on characters and plot lines and tension and mystery and color and setting. The first rectangle is finished. The second is only a few rows from being done. And then I must tie both rectangles together -- I think I will fringe them -- and then, oh please-please-please may I have a whole, complete, beautiful, strong novel.

I am so close I can taste it. And every morning as I sit down to write, I feel as if I am casting on again. Casting on the entire story, draping it around my shoulders, like the shawl I am making, racing for the finish with the fringe flying out behind me.

This is the finish I thought I would arrive at a month ago, of course. But the sudden loss of an editor, coupled with fall travels and holidays on its heels, put such a dent in my rhythm and work pattern... not to mention I have now an entirely new voice in this novel... the voice of my new editor.

I think we will work together just fine. He is new to me, and not. I've been working with him all along, but in the big-picture way. Now we are rolling up our sleeves and working together on the nitty-gritty, and getting used to one another and our differing patterns and nuances and ways of seeing. It's a lot of work. And it's good work.

I was thrown off my game for a while, but I am back in the groove again now. I am so close to done I can taste it.

Meanwhile, I make split pea soup -- this is what's going in the soup -- carrots, celery, onion, salt/pepper, garlic, and a healthy wallop of marjoram. Meanwhile, I listen to the rain batter the roof. Meanwhile, I wonder when I will have time to put up the tree, decorate same, and begin our Christmas season.

But maybe we have already begun. We have had our shopping day. We have fine, steady rain -- such a gift. We have plenty of healthy, hearty food -- I even made cornbread. And we are all warm and dry and able to work, to tell our stories, to help one another through the days ahead. Each day we cast on the day's responsibilities, and each day we knit through them.

I'm good with that. That's just about everything.

Everything Tries To Be Round

Kindergarteners break my heart.

So do 8th-graders.

My work this week ranged from grades K through 8 and included their teachers. I am privileged -- I know I am -- to do the work that I do. I learn so much... I wish I had words tonight to convey this, but I am too tired, coming home, finally... coming home and tumbling into my own welcoming, wonderful, warm bed. Oooo, look at all those adjectives. Well-placed, every one.

Tomorrow, I go back to work finishing the new novel -- I'll send you updates this week -- and I will delight in the fact that it's almost done, it is!

Because the Christmas season is upon us, I'm thinking about Black Elk today, the famous Medicine Man of the Oglala Lakota Sioux. Black Elk was a cousin of Crazy Horse. He participated in the Battle of Little Big Horn (at age 12!), and he was injured at Wounded Knee.

Why would I think about him at Christmas? Because, years ago, in the days when I actually sent out Christmas cards, I bought some cards with a snowman on the front and a saying of Black Elk on the inside. I bought them because the saying was so unusual, and it struck me as so insightful. Here it is:

"The world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round."

What?

I talk about circles ad nauseum in schools; I tell students about beginnings, middles, and ends. I tell them that their very breaths are circles never to be repeated. Then we take breaths together, in that yoga-of-writing pose. I am convinced that not only are stories circles, so are we. So are the seasons, the years, the moments, the everything. What goes around comes around, and this thought, this belief, sustains me. Everything tries to be round.

I bought these odd Christmas cards years ago because I sensed they said something important, although I couldn't, for the life of me, put words around it and explain it to anyone. Today I'm only a bit more advanced toward understanding the saying on these cards, but I have to say that I'm much more convinced that it is oh-so-true.

The world always works in circles and everything tries to be round. Including Kindergarteners and 8th-graders.

Exactly.