Angels for the living-room mantel, since it is September. I have a reason for a devotion to the angels --- well, lots of them, really, dating from way back, decades before I was a Catholic. In college, a friend and I had an angelic encounter, which we still talk about to each other, mostly to re-check that it really happened and we both knew about it at the time. Interestingly, we were both Methodists then, and we're both Catholics now, so clearly there was some design involved, of which that seems to have been a part but probably not the whole of the pattern, which I doubt was ever really meant to be all about us. But I also talk to guardian angels a lot, and am grateful that they've brought my son in a dangerous job, especially, through various near scrapes this summer.
Anyway: angels. There they are.
The whole mantelpiece in morning lamplight:
One more sample of some of the more substantial religious goods which we have acquired from my husband's friend: this Bavarian oven tile (from the old-style tile ovens which served to heat the house as well as for cooking):
We have two of these. We have a big stack of icons written on porcelain. We have a German carved-wood crucifix. We have a number of Christmas and Epiphany plates --- I am going to have to have a Twelfth Night party this year. It's an unbelievable haul of things, which makes me glad I'm not a minimalist. I'll have to find places for them, and what I don't find places for will be people's Christmas presents this year.
Teaching myself to write hendecasyllabics, I came across this poem, which is helping me get the meter in my ear so that I can at least roughly replicate it with some consistency.
Our plan today is to go up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, drive, maybe find some good walks, then end up in Blowing Rock. I'll take Dora for a long walk beforehand, since she is not invited and will have to spend her afternoon in the crate, poor girl.
Wearing, on Day 5 of my 7x7 challenge (which at least is a really fast challenge!):
Basically an exact rerun of Day 1: my Wool& Camellia dress, redyed from lapis to royal blue, with Xero Colorado sandals. I'll probably throw my emerald cotton cardigan in my daypack for an extra layer for the evening, but I'm also taking raingear and maybe an extra piece of outerwear, just in case. I don't expect it to be that chilly, but as the season turns in the high country, you never quite know what the weather's going to do. Anyway, outerwear isn't included in this outfit challenge, so I feel free to cheat a little as necessary.
UPDATE: Well, now it's pouring, so I think the plan is just to go to Hickory and bum around and have dinner at the brew pub there (in the old train station --- it's a lot of fun, really good food, excellent beers). Our weekend has basically been a tour of local Oktoberfest beers. The neighborhood pub has an Oktoberfest in cans right now --- it'll be on tap starting the 17th, when they're hosting an Oktoberfest celebration, which is absolutely on our calendar.
Still wearing Camellia, definitely taking raingear, probably going to go ahead and put the cardigan on, too. I'm a tiny bit damp still after my walk with Dora, in a break between real downpours, when it was simply raining.