Domestic Obsessions

Well, it's January 1, 2012. Yup.

I always like New Year's. I always like making new year's resolutions.

I made a New Year's dinner of bison roast from Myra, yorkshire puddings, and potatoes with carrots and parsnips....and then an apple pie, which was very much fun for me to make. I had made a pie once before, but it was sugar-free and with a whole wheat crust...not quite the same.

Tonight was my first time making a real apple pie by myself. It was just a recipe from allrecipes.com, and turned out a tad on the sweet side, but the crust turned out good (I used the crisco recipe from the box). Not as good as gramma's, but fun to do. It's weird how you don't put any liquid in, but it ends up getting all juicy just from the mix of sugar and apples bubbling. One of my favourite things about making the pie is my memories of gramma's pies. I remember helping her peel and cut up apples, crimping edges, and cutting holes and designs in the pie. It's something I want to keep doing.

I got some crochet hooks for Xmas, too. And I LOVE it! It's so much faster than knitting. I can't wait to start a real project, as on the drive home I just practiced my stitches, making an unusable flap....anyone know any super-easy patterns?

Maybe it's the comfort of it, but I am finding myself drawn to things like being in my kitchen, cooking things up, making the house smell good. Or of sitting, calmly, with my knitting, and tea. There is certainly something inviting, some very, very sweet element to feeling cozy, content, and using my hands to make things. It's like a pause, a time to stop fretting about past and future, and time to be grateful for all that I have. I wrote this poem once, which kinds of sums up how I feel right now:

yes.

in the clearing

in the morning

is where i find myself

never you mind,

she says, her hands dusted with flour

and tanned from the sun

never you mind where you came from,

'cause today is the only thing that you know

and you're in it

and that is all.