Monday, December 15, 2008

166: December List

Links to original photos:
1. pine with ice, 2. winter's return, 3. Untitled, 4. persimmon,
5. roasted tomatoes, 6. Untitled, 7. crochet coasters, 8. pecan pie,
9. baby wristwarmers, 10.sourdough, 11. Resolve to write, 12. 853


Outside, it's that kind of cold that pains you, the sharp stab, the feeling of a whole-body headache. Saturday, our yard was melty, soupy even in the dog slush, and by Sunday evening, everything was wavy clumps of ice, a slickness that has not yet dissipated.

This December, of cold nights and holiday wrapping, I keep turning to:

- The above flickr images, among others, of course, by some people with awfully good eyes.
- Additionally, Shari's ice cracks and frost series.
- Re-joining the Card Society by purchasing many of what will probably be next year's holiday cards. (Too good of a deal to pass up: $175 worth of purchases in her shop, which is, sadly, closing in two days, will give you a free one year membership to the card society, which normally costs $148. OK, ok, so it's not something a graduate student can technically afford, but I absolutely adore her work and have justified it by calling it next year's holiday cards. That, at least, has some ring of practicality to it.)
- Toni Morrison's A Mercy.
- This amazing capture of the riots in Greece.
- This year's holiday cards. (In the mail today!)
- Wool: blankets and sweaters and coats, mostly.
- Advance Reader's copies: working part time seasonal at a bookstore that has such an enormous stock of these is a bit precarious for someone who's attempting to purge a home of clutter...
- Chai. Mmm, how I love thee.
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
- Baking bread: Vermont Cheddar, Cranberry, Zucchini...
- Collecting the books of the professors in the program. A winter break project.
- Finishing old projects that have been dramatically and impressively neglected and procrastinated upon. Setting reasonable goals: one day at a time.
- The relief of pine's green in the landscape. Pinecones, swaths of pine boughs, the smell of evergreen in the air.
- The smell of citrus on my hands. Clementine peels on empty plates.

4 comments:

shari said...

thank you molly for your kind words. ;) i keep wanting to try that vermont cheddar bread. as for my reading, i'm trying out novellas these days. seems like all i can tackle.

shanon said...

That is a wonderful compilation of photographs. So homey and warm.

claire dibble said...

i really love this combination of images too. nicely balanced. good mood. are you using photoshop for this?

Molly said...

Sometimes I use photoshop, but not in this case. Big Huge Labs has a mosaic maker for Flickr, and that's what I'm using here.