read and red

The red socks are finished! They are screaming to belong to a friend whose face kept popping up during the whole sock knitting process. I'm sure they will be hers one day. This happens sometimes. I may think the socks are for me but I'm mistaken. I'll give them to her when she gets back from Florida in two weeks and faces northern New Mexico winter again. It's a long way to spring.

I just read something else about red. When female subjects in a study (what was the subject?) were shown pictures of men, they inevitably chose, as most sexy, the ones wearing red shirts. Sometimes it was even the same guy except for the shirt. Go know.

Today I emptied boxes and shelves of UFOs and stash and confidently arranged future projects in plastic bags with patterns and notes (OMG I'm so organized). I plan to finish one per month.  I even spent a few hours working on editing projects (OMG) and rereading Joan Anderson's The Second Journey in preparation for giving it to someone for whom it will resonate. I've read all of Anderson's books and except for the very first one A Year by the Sea I find them to be a combination of platitudes and good advice for women who have neglected to nurture themselves, have reached a certain age and are at a crossroad slightly lost. She has an impressive following and conducts weekend workshops for women. What I like best about the writing is her ability to evoke place. Whether it's Cape Cod or an island in the Hebrides, she takes me there.

For readers who do not live in the southwest, here's a photo of the twice-daily marauder who walks across our land and occasionally pounces upon mice (hooray!). He appeared at dusk tonight amidst a cacophony of barking dogs.

It is a large slender coyote. Often difficult to make out in the dry grasses and weeds. Coyotes have the chameleon-like ability to blend almost totally into the landscape. This makes them stealthy hunters. When they run, they become nearly invisible blurs streaking across fields (they're fast). The only way I notice their presence is because my dog Spike and my neighbor's dog Harry Potter (he has a lightening-bolt-shaped white spot on his black body) bark furiously. The coyote is hardly disturbed by their hysteria - they can sense real threats and the dogs are smart enough to keep their distance. They are amazing wild animals whose numbers are being reduced around here by humans who encroach upon their territory and consider them pests and a threat to dogs and cats. Calves, too, but there is little of that left right here and it takes a pack of coyotes to take one of them down. This one had a mate a few weeks ago, but one day, driving into town, I saw it's body splayed out on the roadside. It looked like it had been shot. Now this one hunts alone.

time for yarns of red
airing on windy clotheslines
becoming sunset