And I Quote

Well, if one had to choose any month to skip entirely, February 2014 would do. To quote the incredible Captain Awkward upon re-entry,
"HI IT IS NICE TO SEE YOU ALL I MISSED YOU AND HOPE YOU ARE OK"
Wendy Brandes posted about puffer coats today and was so awesome as to include my old favourite - I've spent ages and ages encased in this one or that one and I do I love them all but I am so tired of winter right now I can hardly bear to look at them. Oops, didn't take long for the whining to start, see what I have spared you during all this time away. As for words to be emphasized by air quotes, I think WendyB's swear rings would fit just right.

vintage hat: Steiger's Importers, Netty Vintage
air quote mittens: Kate Spade, ebay
floral-quilted puffer coat with giant pointy collar: Mexx, retail c. 2002
green batwing sweater and necklace with finger-trap dingle-dangles: worn together here
The good news is that I'm in time to participate in Gracey's Literary Stylings at Fashion for Giants! The book my outfit references is The Punctuation Field by my very dear friend Elizabeth Zetlin. Liz - poet, artist, singer, gardener, film-maker, powerful witness / advocate for environment and social justice and arts, innovative thinker and wise woman who lives too far away from me. She was the inaugural Poet Laureate of Owen Sound and, for 9 years, Artistic Director of the annual Words Aloud festival.

The Punctuation Field captures Liz's brilliance, sly humour, and depth commitment to multi-modal explorations of a concept. It documents her several-year process of transforming the abandoned rocky hayfield outside her writing studio into a living "punctuation field" earthworks with arrangements of symbols and marks initially cut into the grass then grown standing out of the earth using drought-resistant plantings. The physical, emotional, and mindful engagements with nature are followed by poems addressing "The Usual Suspects" and marks "New, Used, and Invented" - playful, emphatic, affectionate, weighty, unexpected, mysterious. Liz's entrance into so many of these works are evocative of dance:
"& My buxom pretzel, twisted gift / of conjunction & connection, bum ..." "* You used to have seven arms, / seven tear drops shooting from the centre ..." ": O double pinhead / dagger of colonization ..."
Beyond clever, always sure-footed, Liz leads us through and out with exquisite rhythm. Among my favourites are the dingbats, her waltzing tilde, and short prose piece "Grammar Lessons."

I am right down to the last hour to take my accent circonflexe / chapeau like so ô to Style Crone for Hat Attack. It came with a great lovely piece of veil and I must wear it again soon to share other angles and details. I've tucked the rest of the moaning about what's kept me away - so grim! so bleak! - below the jump like a grown-up, but there are also chickens, kitty, and skating to liven things up. Hope to be back to outfits before too long - thanks for reading! See you at Patti's Not Dead Yet Style for Visible Monday.


Digging my way to the chickens has been one factor consuming my blogging and commenting time:

The snow has stayed and stayed, paths often re-drifting-in every day. There will be more outfits - eventually.

Heidi Hunter the Turkey Lurkey and Arlie preen and old Glo leans nose-to-tail with Big Hen

Thank you for the kind messages and checkings-in during my long break, as well as all the good thoughts for our Henny. It was hard to say goodbye to our best girl, the last of the red hens, who was tended gently by her old friend Gloria and the flock to the very last.

Gloria herself took ill shortly afterwards and thought about giving up too, but after a really tough two weeks of special care is back to rights. During the extended deep freeze, we worried a lot over the balance between using heat lamps at night and risking stress / illness vs. frostbitten combs. The past few nights were finally, finally as "warm" as -10C / 14F.

Gloria and Arlie bravely check out the WALL OF LAVA at the door of the coop
while Betty Lou, Heidi, and Dracarys are all
NOOOO you guys, LAVA! LAVA!!!
Our road has been impassable and closed by the County for several weeks now due to flooding and ice boulders:

We'll usually have some water over the road at this one spot for a few days, but this situation is very unusual. What's more bizarre is to have flooding on both sides of our house, which has effectively created a moat. Beary's truck has been able to make it through the "small puddle" but I've had to park at one neighbour's or the other's and trudge across open fields during minus-stoopid windchills to get to work and home. Uphill both ways like in pioneer times.

We only got one skating day because it kept snowing and snowing, but on the plus side, it coincided with everyone gathering for Beary's birthday. Beasley the cat has grown a lot. He's become quite a wild man, and was the star of the event - hunting hockey pucks, galloping across the ice and enjoying a cuddle for a perimeter skate. Gliding along with The Bease in one arm and a mug of hot apple cider in the other almost made up for February. Almost.

my brother and Beaser on ice

When not hacking away at ice and snow (or as the hens call it, LAVA), we're doing as The Artist Formerly Known as Bease demonstrates above - practicing for when we'll be found frozen in our Ötzi postures.

Beary and Beasley, ready for spring.