Last week I pulled Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night off my shelves and began to reread it.  It's been so long since I read it that I can't remember whodunit.  Last time I read it for the mystery; I came back to it this time for the love story.  But what I am reading is neither mystery nor love story-- I am reading instead the story of a woman who is trying to reconcile brains and heart  her words).  This theme runs through the book overtly: in conversations between Harriet (the Oxford alumna cum novelist) and the females dons in her college-- and in Harriet's musings; and covertly, in the portrayals of all the women in the book. 

One passage that struck me particularly is a conversation between Harriet and a fellow alumna, a talented scholar, who had married a farmer and left the academic life.  She describes herself as a razor used as a plough, and now has found herself too dull to be a razor any more.  There is a striking passage as well about the farmer's wife's thoughts about the nobility of farming, and Harriet's response: "I'm quite prepared to admit that... A ploughshare is a nobler object than a razor.  But if your natural talent is for barbering, wouldn't it be better to be a barber, and a good barber-- and use the profits (if you like) to speed the plough?  However grand the job may be , is it your job?"

It fits my melancholy mood regarding my work (not to mention my time on the CSA).  For many years, I have been torn between my work as a physician and my calling as a wife and mother.  They are both calls, both gifts, both noble duties.  I wonder sometimes if I am the razor, used as a plough-- or a plough who tried to be a razor. 

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Even SweetP loves her bike helmet.  It reminds me of the verse in Proverbs, "Teach a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

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I don't want to debate the merits of homemade playdough v. store-bought.  I do both, but when all that's left in my house is this:

and I have neither the time nor the inclination to run to the store (where I'd spend way more than the $4 I'd spend on playdough), here is how I make it:

Play Dough

Bring 1 cup water, 1 tbsp oil and the food coloring of your choice to a boil.

Add in 1/2 cup salt and stir for 1 minute.  Then add 1 tbsp cream of tartar and 1 cup flour.  Mix well over low heat until it firms up, then put the lump on a plate and knead it until smooth and cool enough for your children to handle.

This is a very forgiving recipe-- you can actually add the ingredients in any order, but I find the color comes out better when I do it this way.  Also, I used kosher salt one day and ended up with large grains still in the dough.  So maybe use iodized (small grain) salt.

Just for fun, let's pan out from the play dough photo to show you what the kitchen really looked like...

But wait-- there's more:

Now you know what I'll be working on while the kids play with play dough. 

Blessings to you today!

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We've had a crazy pace this autumn, and our busy days have been punctuated by bursts of snow.  This weekend is the second big storm we've had-- enough again to snowshoe, and build snowmen.  While we haven't been very sick, like many we know, we have had a long string of colds and stomach flu.  It's a good day to lay low.  Peace to you today!

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Just as I was feeling like we've been accomplishing "nothing" in school, we came to the end of a few of the books we've been reading for quite awhile!

May we recommend The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Tirzah by Lucille Travis.  These are both historical fiction for the ancient period, The Golden Goblet set in ancient Egypt, and Tirzah being a child on the Exodus.

We also finishsed the fifth in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series, Coot Club and started right in on Pigeon Post, number 6.

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Okay, I know many of you love Facebook.

And I've tried, I really have.  But Facebook and I... we'll, we just don't understand each other.

As an example of our incompatibility, I offer this recent true story:

Several weeks ago I tried again to make Facebook my own.  I sat down with my cup of tea and worked on updating my profile.  I thought I'd add some photos and connect my profile to my husband's-- stuff many of you do without even a second thought.

So I click on Married, and it gave me the option to link to any of my friends, and I type S-A-- and there, Sam pops up.  Hooray.  I think I'm clicking on Sam.  I hit save, and it suddenly says I'm now married to my friend Sandra, and Facebook will just have to confirm this with Sandra...

Eek.  So I try to unclick Sandra, to no avail.  It turns out I have change my marital status to Single in order to fix the error... and then I went back through the whole thing again to marry Sam.  And then it told all my friends that I had changed my marital status to single, and then back to married.

Hence, a flurry of concerned calls to the house to ask what had happened here.

Well.

Facebook is not my friend.

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Stacy has had a great series of posts on Picture study lately-- be sure to check them out.

We did Klimt in September and have been doing Escher in October.  The kids have enjoyed his optical illusions, but we've also examined his delight in proportion and perspective.  My favorite is Three Worlds, one I hadn't seen before this week-- a very autumnal picture.  Here is O, rendering "Ascending and Descending".

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Here it is, at last... the very purple sweater for my girl.

She keeps trying to wear it over a T-shirt, but it is a wee bit itchy.

"It's kind-of itchy," she says.

I'm thinking, It took me three months to knit that thing, you'd better enjoy it. 

"Wear a turtleneck," I say.

Last week I went to the Yarn Shoppe and picked up some super-soft alpaca.  All alpaca, all the time, now.

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This is SweetP's favorite game right now.  She build beds and cribs (and crib-tents!) for the little lego people-- all called Bob-- and tucks them in under my dishtowels and napkins.  Then she sings them good-night, "Nah-nah, Bob.  Nah-nah, Bob..."

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