You and your apricot apricity have transported me, and I look up from my computer for the first time since settling so cozily into your light and see three, now four, now five (!) apricot-breasted robins have dropped by to dine on some grubs that must be surfacing on a warming afternoon after days of arctic cold, snow still in the shade. I must believe they have come as playmates with your words and warm winter sun. Always a joy to read you. Thank you!
Hello dear Renée, thank you for sharing your own few moments of apricity with me, I am imagining those five little apricot breasted cherubs acting out their likely habitual scenes to distract you from your own. It is a warming thought indeed on this sharp frosted evening when I too am seated in front of my screen, icy fingers tap-tapping thoughts and notes and words into replies...
I do hope the warmth stayed a while, that perhaps a few more messages of the warm feathered type came by!
With love and blessings to you for a beautiful weekend xx
I don't think I will ever forget this word either, I thought of you while writing this knowing how you love these winter months so.. 💛much love to you xx
Beautiful, Susie. I love the images here—the soft grey merle wool being knitted and worn and lost and re-patterned and imagined for the mouse. What a warm and tender delight.
I should have perhaps added that most of my clothes fall under one of those categories,worn, recycled, reinvented... all loved regardless though! Thank you so much for being here Holly with your own warm and tender heart. x
Oh Susie, the stunningly beautiful and evocative imagery of your words. You are a masterful noticer, “inky black tree etched horizon, winter light infused with a honey coloured glow pouring over tree tops”, “vagabond winds tenderising tension and last sunbeams dissolving into tired bone”, “time-tended memories carefully heart-wrapped”, the tears are in my heart. Grey hand knitted fingerless gloves, moments from my own memory, lumpy and with uneven holes between some fingers, only fingerless as finishing the fingered ends was beyond my childhood patience. I must knit myself some, I wonder if Mum still has the pattern, if I could recall the stitches….
And mousey 🐁 oh how she needs the gloves. I am always enchanted by your words Susie, this middle winter, how grateful I am that we are friends. Sending love 💛
Bless you dear Emily, this beautiful word Apricity has tangled every warm image possible through these winter months into my imagination so splendidly I almost don't want to let it go... even this week, when the temperatures have been colder than we've known for many years, all I have seen, felt and heard has been tinted with apricot warmth, and now, I don't want to even try to untangle the knots - they are so tightly and beautifully holding my attention to all that I may have missed. I will not forget this word next year, or indeed any other year to come.
Alas, for my tiny friend, (who, as I feared has invited her entire family, including second and third cousins one and twice removed to share in the warm spots in my kitchen) gloves may be delayed... finding fine thread and tiny needles to knit with is proving quite impossible!
I send you love back my beautiful friend - and always my thanks for being here 💛xx
Oh please share a pic of those tiniest of mouse mittens if you ever make them! 😂😂😂
We have mice scratching for warmth on interior walls too, and I think of you every time they start scribbling notes on their next great novel. (Listen closely, this is exactly what it sounds like! At least this helps me forgive them for all the noise and instead wonder about their prose.)
Dearest Kimberly, this post would not have happened, wouldn't have even been a blurry thought in my head had it not been for you - so many thanks for not only the whimsy of such an inspirational word but for revealing the true warmth of these winter days so often hidden!
My little friend has called her family, if I creep very quietly through the house in the mornings I hear them chattering and scampering on the wooden kitchen floor, they scatter as I enter all bar one who waits in expectation... 🧦🧦🧦🧦
As soon as I find needles tiny enough and gossamer wool you will be the first to know! 😉
Lots of winter warmth in your honey-coloured words.
We had such a strange week last week with very, very cold temperatures and snow. And then, puff, it's all gone - a temperature rise of 22 degrees from the lowest temp on Sat morning of -12C to the what felt extremely warm, in comparison, 10C today. Absolutely bonkers! But I want the snow and the gorgeous light back!!
Many thanks Lynn - we have had crazy highs and lows in temperatures here too, it seems to become more abstract every year! Over Christmas holidays there were days that felt like spring, 17c one afternoon, I was working in just a T-shirt... and then not 24 hours later -5 c! This morning was -8 c which we haven't known for years!
“They are a rare foray into past love affairs; unforgettable moments of the days of this life.”
The memories of clothing past. The vintage and the ancient calling to you from the very top of your home. Whispering their stories , enticing you up. I can think of several hidden in the nooks and crannies that have not seen the light of days, counted in years. Can we call them elders of the closet ? Could you please knit me an entire story from your attic?
Wabi Sabi, now there is a word I could put to good use, though I know I will purposely say Wasabi.
I often wondered what type of trees you have in France. I have my favorites for many reasons, some for their bark or unusual sculpted branches. But the Birch tree excels above all others, its bark and autumnal rainbows of warm spectral colors. Even past their own long lifetimes, many still hold vigil in the forest. And now act as trail cairns . While I do love learning new words;
“through bracken turned to polished, copper lace…”
Truthfully , I am glad the English language does not have a word that could be used instead of the descriptive beauty of your quote. And this one too,
“…stop a while and listen to late evening light tinted by apricot, humming in the silvery bark.” In the wintered mountains, we call it Alpenglow, ‘fire light’, just before or after the sun sinks behind the snow covered mountains. Casting gorgeous threads of light through the forest or lighting up an entire mountainside. In shades of your apricot or like the beautiful name given to your daughter, a deep apricot Rose.
Please ma’am, knit me a pair and maybe a nose warmer too? Mouse booties might cut down on that tapping noise, just a thought. Now I’m going to picture little mice wearing winter wardrobes like little short haired dogs escorted by their humans on a cold winter day. I admit to sewing a certain dog custom booties for winter travel , but that is the extent of my animal wardrobe creations. Yes, a cycle of breaths and a call for an encore at day’s end , but as you know by know, I would shout , Encore! at the end of winter.
“The orange crushed velvet catsuit ? 🫣🐈
(I most definitely do not have anything like that in the old closet )
Dear Lor, I don't like to admit this, even to myself unless in a whisper, I am a terrible hoarder! Every item in my attic has a story woven into its fabric. Souvenirs of a life lived and past, a memoir of a family embroidered in often threadbare stitches. Not only could we call them the elders of the attic, in some cases they are the ancestors of many even older attics. Yes, this is how bad I am but 🤫
This hill I call my own, despite it having none and many other owners - can anyone ever really own land for surely we are simply guardians - is blessed with many wooded paths. Trees here tend to find their home, the gnarly and ancient sweet chestnut, oak, and walnut on the south facing slopes, beech on the north. Silver birch seem less fussy, they stand in all their shimmering myriad colours wherever the land will accept them, like you, they enchant me and never more so than in winter when bracken, withered into its coppery winter forms sets light to their silver grey trunks. Alpenglow you say it is called where you are? A description, not only delighting the senses but fitting entirely!
As suspected my tiny friend has invited her family, they have invited theirs also, I am now pondering the possibility of knitting machine, though such a fine thread necessary for tiny mouse shoes would undoubtedly be a costly affair, perhaps a woollen carpet might be a simpler solution to scampering feet? I am giving the ever increasing number of mouse feet much thought... to be continued!
Oh my oh my, the orange velvet catsuit - my most impulsive and outrageous buy ever, worn only the once by me but borrowed by countless envious friends over forty years - could probably tell more stories than every other item hanging beside it!
Love floating back to you on a lenticular cloud photo and fizzy update! ☁️xx
Thank you Jo, It took all my courage to wear it the first time, (it cost a bloody fortune too!) and I have a feeling if I put it on now, I'd look a little like a pile of grated carrot - not a good look! No I'll stick to my jeans and baggy jumpers and old DM's... also not a good look but definitely inconspicuous!
I think that little mouse has called for reinforcements..; this morning there were three staring up at me with little pleading eyes and I just know they're all going to have different sized paws! 😉xx
What a coincidence, I also discovered the word Apricity last week. Clothes from the past bring back wonderful memories, I have a few of my own and others. Your mouse friend is in need of gloves and a chapeau, perhaps a scarf? Love and kisses sweet Susie 😘💞
Hey sweetie, clothes are so evocative aren't they, Ive so many I simply can't part with, though I know I should! We've spoken of this before though... you would be horrified at the state of my attic!
Yes, maybe a little scarf, but as I said in a comment below, if I make one, I would feel duty bound to make two dozen more for all her friends too! 😳
Love right back to you, enjoy your bed-autiful snow! ♥️xx
Racing home to beat the receding light. Yes. At my latitude that’s around 15:00ish these days, but that reflected, refracted light from snow covered landscapes, reliant on the moon’s generosity, is a kind of silver blue apricity that still warms the heart.
I know. At the darkest point it's 14:30, with sunrise at 08:50ish. Although I spent time up North North (the top of Norway in midwinter) where the sun didn't really rise at all, just kinda rolled along the horizon like an exhausted teenager, before deciding to get some more kip.
But there is an otherworldy beauty to it, almost like a netherworld where spirits and ghosts wander, where there is no weight to anything, where everything is a shimmering facade of mist and memories, a reflection of the real world.
Or if the sun blasts through it's blinding and blue and white and everything is sharper and more real under the blanket of snow that forms a soft, gentle wholeness to the landscape.
I guess the thing is that the cycles of the seasons mean the impermeability of each expression of the world makes them all the more beautiful. During winter I can hardly image the summer can ever return and in summer the winter is surely forever banished. I do love these cycles and changes.
Anyway, it's me that should be thanking you Susie, for offering such a wonderful place to hang about and enjoy the flow of thought and words you so generously offer. You're a fine host indeed :)
Hi Jan, I thought the cold weather needed something to warm us, something tender and soft and inviting... it was -8c here this morning, it took me 30 mins to defrost the barn doors from their rails just to get the car out!
I hope its a little less cold in your beautiful forest. xx
Ohhhh. Apricot apricity, memories woven into clothing, and soft grey merle gloves. This Midwinter is shaping up to be quite a dream. Thank you, Susie, for your kind, generous shout-out. 🙌💚
No thanks necessary Julie, I am really looking forward to tomorrow and the beginning of your story. You have such an immense capability to capture and enchant the reader with your prose and plots... I can't wait!
Dear Susie,
You and your apricot apricity have transported me, and I look up from my computer for the first time since settling so cozily into your light and see three, now four, now five (!) apricot-breasted robins have dropped by to dine on some grubs that must be surfacing on a warming afternoon after days of arctic cold, snow still in the shade. I must believe they have come as playmates with your words and warm winter sun. Always a joy to read you. Thank you!
Hello dear Renée, thank you for sharing your own few moments of apricity with me, I am imagining those five little apricot breasted cherubs acting out their likely habitual scenes to distract you from your own. It is a warming thought indeed on this sharp frosted evening when I too am seated in front of my screen, icy fingers tap-tapping thoughts and notes and words into replies...
I do hope the warmth stayed a while, that perhaps a few more messages of the warm feathered type came by!
With love and blessings to you for a beautiful weekend xx
I simply love your apricity founds Susie, as well as the beautiful photos you made!
I had never heard of the word apricity before but now I know I’ll never forget it!
I do love the quiet winter months, when there’s time to recover and recharge, and observe the little signs of Spring to come. 🌱❄️
All is well here, it was a very busy 2024 but things are much quieter now! ☺️
Happy New Days to you lovely❣️xx
I hope your days remain gentle then lovely... at least until the excitement of spring warrants being more lively! 💚xx
Thank you JoAnna, how are you ? Happy New Days!
I don't think I will ever forget this word either, I thought of you while writing this knowing how you love these winter months so.. 💛much love to you xx
Beautiful, Susie. I love the images here—the soft grey merle wool being knitted and worn and lost and re-patterned and imagined for the mouse. What a warm and tender delight.
I should have perhaps added that most of my clothes fall under one of those categories,worn, recycled, reinvented... all loved regardless though! Thank you so much for being here Holly with your own warm and tender heart. x
Those seem the perfect categories for clothes. :)
It’s truly a pleasure to be here.
Oh Susie, the stunningly beautiful and evocative imagery of your words. You are a masterful noticer, “inky black tree etched horizon, winter light infused with a honey coloured glow pouring over tree tops”, “vagabond winds tenderising tension and last sunbeams dissolving into tired bone”, “time-tended memories carefully heart-wrapped”, the tears are in my heart. Grey hand knitted fingerless gloves, moments from my own memory, lumpy and with uneven holes between some fingers, only fingerless as finishing the fingered ends was beyond my childhood patience. I must knit myself some, I wonder if Mum still has the pattern, if I could recall the stitches….
And mousey 🐁 oh how she needs the gloves. I am always enchanted by your words Susie, this middle winter, how grateful I am that we are friends. Sending love 💛
Bless you dear Emily, this beautiful word Apricity has tangled every warm image possible through these winter months into my imagination so splendidly I almost don't want to let it go... even this week, when the temperatures have been colder than we've known for many years, all I have seen, felt and heard has been tinted with apricot warmth, and now, I don't want to even try to untangle the knots - they are so tightly and beautifully holding my attention to all that I may have missed. I will not forget this word next year, or indeed any other year to come.
Alas, for my tiny friend, (who, as I feared has invited her entire family, including second and third cousins one and twice removed to share in the warm spots in my kitchen) gloves may be delayed... finding fine thread and tiny needles to knit with is proving quite impossible!
I send you love back my beautiful friend - and always my thanks for being here 💛xx
Oh please share a pic of those tiniest of mouse mittens if you ever make them! 😂😂😂
We have mice scratching for warmth on interior walls too, and I think of you every time they start scribbling notes on their next great novel. (Listen closely, this is exactly what it sounds like! At least this helps me forgive them for all the noise and instead wonder about their prose.)
Your apricity discoveries are mouth-watering!
Dearest Kimberly, this post would not have happened, wouldn't have even been a blurry thought in my head had it not been for you - so many thanks for not only the whimsy of such an inspirational word but for revealing the true warmth of these winter days so often hidden!
My little friend has called her family, if I creep very quietly through the house in the mornings I hear them chattering and scampering on the wooden kitchen floor, they scatter as I enter all bar one who waits in expectation... 🧦🧦🧦🧦
As soon as I find needles tiny enough and gossamer wool you will be the first to know! 😉
xx
Lots of winter warmth in your honey-coloured words.
We had such a strange week last week with very, very cold temperatures and snow. And then, puff, it's all gone - a temperature rise of 22 degrees from the lowest temp on Sat morning of -12C to the what felt extremely warm, in comparison, 10C today. Absolutely bonkers! But I want the snow and the gorgeous light back!!
Many thanks Lynn - we have had crazy highs and lows in temperatures here too, it seems to become more abstract every year! Over Christmas holidays there were days that felt like spring, 17c one afternoon, I was working in just a T-shirt... and then not 24 hours later -5 c! This morning was -8 c which we haven't known for years!
Its definitely surcoat and bikini weather...!!
That clothing combination makes the mind boggle, lol
“They are a rare foray into past love affairs; unforgettable moments of the days of this life.”
The memories of clothing past. The vintage and the ancient calling to you from the very top of your home. Whispering their stories , enticing you up. I can think of several hidden in the nooks and crannies that have not seen the light of days, counted in years. Can we call them elders of the closet ? Could you please knit me an entire story from your attic?
Wabi Sabi, now there is a word I could put to good use, though I know I will purposely say Wasabi.
I often wondered what type of trees you have in France. I have my favorites for many reasons, some for their bark or unusual sculpted branches. But the Birch tree excels above all others, its bark and autumnal rainbows of warm spectral colors. Even past their own long lifetimes, many still hold vigil in the forest. And now act as trail cairns . While I do love learning new words;
“through bracken turned to polished, copper lace…”
Truthfully , I am glad the English language does not have a word that could be used instead of the descriptive beauty of your quote. And this one too,
“…stop a while and listen to late evening light tinted by apricot, humming in the silvery bark.” In the wintered mountains, we call it Alpenglow, ‘fire light’, just before or after the sun sinks behind the snow covered mountains. Casting gorgeous threads of light through the forest or lighting up an entire mountainside. In shades of your apricot or like the beautiful name given to your daughter, a deep apricot Rose.
Please ma’am, knit me a pair and maybe a nose warmer too? Mouse booties might cut down on that tapping noise, just a thought. Now I’m going to picture little mice wearing winter wardrobes like little short haired dogs escorted by their humans on a cold winter day. I admit to sewing a certain dog custom booties for winter travel , but that is the extent of my animal wardrobe creations. Yes, a cycle of breaths and a call for an encore at day’s end , but as you know by know, I would shout , Encore! at the end of winter.
“The orange crushed velvet catsuit ? 🫣🐈
(I most definitely do not have anything like that in the old closet )
Love to you, delivered in
“snow drop hope”
Dear Lor, I don't like to admit this, even to myself unless in a whisper, I am a terrible hoarder! Every item in my attic has a story woven into its fabric. Souvenirs of a life lived and past, a memoir of a family embroidered in often threadbare stitches. Not only could we call them the elders of the attic, in some cases they are the ancestors of many even older attics. Yes, this is how bad I am but 🤫
This hill I call my own, despite it having none and many other owners - can anyone ever really own land for surely we are simply guardians - is blessed with many wooded paths. Trees here tend to find their home, the gnarly and ancient sweet chestnut, oak, and walnut on the south facing slopes, beech on the north. Silver birch seem less fussy, they stand in all their shimmering myriad colours wherever the land will accept them, like you, they enchant me and never more so than in winter when bracken, withered into its coppery winter forms sets light to their silver grey trunks. Alpenglow you say it is called where you are? A description, not only delighting the senses but fitting entirely!
As suspected my tiny friend has invited her family, they have invited theirs also, I am now pondering the possibility of knitting machine, though such a fine thread necessary for tiny mouse shoes would undoubtedly be a costly affair, perhaps a woollen carpet might be a simpler solution to scampering feet? I am giving the ever increasing number of mouse feet much thought... to be continued!
Oh my oh my, the orange velvet catsuit - my most impulsive and outrageous buy ever, worn only the once by me but borrowed by countless envious friends over forty years - could probably tell more stories than every other item hanging beside it!
Love floating back to you on a lenticular cloud photo and fizzy update! ☁️xx
Such a warming post Susie.💛
Love your wardrobe. Wear it again! Especially the orange crushed velvet catsuit!
Love that a little mouse is considered for some hand knitted mittens!
Love it all. Thank you! xx
Thank you Jo, It took all my courage to wear it the first time, (it cost a bloody fortune too!) and I have a feeling if I put it on now, I'd look a little like a pile of grated carrot - not a good look! No I'll stick to my jeans and baggy jumpers and old DM's... also not a good look but definitely inconspicuous!
I think that little mouse has called for reinforcements..; this morning there were three staring up at me with little pleading eyes and I just know they're all going to have different sized paws! 😉xx
I doubt you'd look like a pile of grated carrot Susie! Perhaps though, you can bring it to NZ for me to buy off you on your next trip over....
Oh goodness those little mice! ❤️
What a coincidence, I also discovered the word Apricity last week. Clothes from the past bring back wonderful memories, I have a few of my own and others. Your mouse friend is in need of gloves and a chapeau, perhaps a scarf? Love and kisses sweet Susie 😘💞
Hey sweetie, clothes are so evocative aren't they, Ive so many I simply can't part with, though I know I should! We've spoken of this before though... you would be horrified at the state of my attic!
Yes, maybe a little scarf, but as I said in a comment below, if I make one, I would feel duty bound to make two dozen more for all her friends too! 😳
Love right back to you, enjoy your bed-autiful snow! ♥️xx
Had only made it to the first photo before an audible “Dude — this is awesome!” escaped my lips
Thank you Eric, consider me hugely complimented! 😊
Racing home to beat the receding light. Yes. At my latitude that’s around 15:00ish these days, but that reflected, refracted light from snow covered landscapes, reliant on the moon’s generosity, is a kind of silver blue apricity that still warms the heart.
Thanks Susie, another great read
15h00...! I have a feeling I would have many speeding tickets were I to live in Sweden!
I can imagine the heartwarming sight of moonlight on snow though, the luminosity of the landscape must be something almost otherworldly?
I so appreciate you being here Jonathan - thank you my friend.
I know. At the darkest point it's 14:30, with sunrise at 08:50ish. Although I spent time up North North (the top of Norway in midwinter) where the sun didn't really rise at all, just kinda rolled along the horizon like an exhausted teenager, before deciding to get some more kip.
But there is an otherworldy beauty to it, almost like a netherworld where spirits and ghosts wander, where there is no weight to anything, where everything is a shimmering facade of mist and memories, a reflection of the real world.
Or if the sun blasts through it's blinding and blue and white and everything is sharper and more real under the blanket of snow that forms a soft, gentle wholeness to the landscape.
I guess the thing is that the cycles of the seasons mean the impermeability of each expression of the world makes them all the more beautiful. During winter I can hardly image the summer can ever return and in summer the winter is surely forever banished. I do love these cycles and changes.
Anyway, it's me that should be thanking you Susie, for offering such a wonderful place to hang about and enjoy the flow of thought and words you so generously offer. You're a fine host indeed :)
Apricity, love it! And the attic picture deserves a frame, such beauty.
Huge thanks Elske, Happy New year to you lovely! I wish you happy and healthy days in your new home! xx
That tiny friend needs some mittens Susie!
Yup, Looks this way, but probably so do her two dozen friends!
so much tenderness - thank you x
Hi Jan, I thought the cold weather needed something to warm us, something tender and soft and inviting... it was -8c here this morning, it took me 30 mins to defrost the barn doors from their rails just to get the car out!
I hope its a little less cold in your beautiful forest. xx
Ohhhh. Apricot apricity, memories woven into clothing, and soft grey merle gloves. This Midwinter is shaping up to be quite a dream. Thank you, Susie, for your kind, generous shout-out. 🙌💚
No thanks necessary Julie, I am really looking forward to tomorrow and the beginning of your story. You have such an immense capability to capture and enchant the reader with your prose and plots... I can't wait!