Innocence

Today was the best sort of running day - warm, sunny, lightly breezy, and best of all, fragrant with spring. Through the fields where the warm earth cushions my feet, down to the creek bottom where pairs of geese glide serenely to and fro between ecstatic choirs of frogs. My favorite, though, is the green of the barely-new leaves, a miracle of painfully intense purity like new love and baby skin. It lasts only a few glorious days, before settling into multihued maturity, sobered by dust and insects and the tasks of bearing fruit. And like mature love and growing children, the foliage will be beautiful in a different way, but always there is that tiny pang of loss.

Junior Knits by Debbie Bliss arrived yesterday (along with one or two or.... um three others - did I mention I'm on a bit of a book buying bender?)

Perhaps ill advisedly, I elected to give my children some say in what I make for them next. "I want the purple one" said my daughter. "I want the blue one" said my son. End of story. "What about the darling Guernsey hoodie that I've been dying to knit for years?" "But it's white." "I can knit it in purple." "But I want the purple one." And so on. There's nothing wrong with the sweaters they chose, I was just hoping they'd explore their options, perhaps opt for something a little more challenging for me. Well, here they are.