. . . and here we are at Monday again. I spent yesterday doing housework, taking a walk, making meatballs, reading Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One, and beginning a new sewing project. On Saturday, after my workshop, I, with much diffidence, bought material to make a shirt. But I'm still not satisfied with my handstitching skills, so before I take that plunge, I've decided to make second scrap apron. In the afternoon I started stitching together small pieces to make a larger piece. I have plenty of the same kind of material for this apron (unlike the previous one), but I don't have whole cloth, just strips of varying widths and lengths. The job will require some design ingenuity.

Meanwhile, Tom bought plane tickets so we can fly to Chicago next month, and he revealed that he's figured out a way to fit a dedicated spice cabinet into the kitchen, and he's started hanging art on the walls, all of which made me more cheerful about scouring bathrooms and mopping floors.

Today, the usual: essay class, school residency, some Frost Place work, maybe some poem revision. Tonight Tom and I are going into town to watch Rififi, a French heist movie from the 1950s.

I'm still feeling pretty cheerful about Saturday's Longfellow House workshop; I'm still feeling odd but good about last week's conversation about my papers.