Sparks and I are both dreaming about the Pacific Northwest. I added a Portland weather gadget to iGoogle, and it tells me that right now, in the early Portland morning, it is 60 degrees. The daily high will top out somewhere in the upper 70s. Gak. I die.

I’ve fallen into dreams about living there. I imagine a little two-storey cottage in the suburbs, with a little fenced-in yard. We don’t have to worry about rabbits or deer. We don’t have to worry about plants collapsing from heat or lack of water. Maintenance is a snap. I fill the fenced-in yard with pink and white flowers: hydrangeas, hostas, peonies, geraniums, foxglove, and climbing roses. We have teak adirondack chairs and a bench swing, weathered gray and starting to grow lichen. We have a wet stone walkway. And inside the house, there is lots of dark wood, lots of glass, lots of peacock blue and poison green. There are terrariums and Haekel prints. There is mercury glass and paperweights. It’s a small house.

Sparks makes a living from his tube amp hobby. I make lovingly crafted stationery with my vintage letterpress and paper marbling setup.

I wear tweed skirts and blouses and sweater cardigans every day. I wear czech glass jewelry. I wear retro pumps and ride my bicycle. It’s never too, too hot or too, too cold.

Sigh.

That, plus our penchant for back-to-the-earth food TV like River Cottage and the Hairy Bikers Food Tour of Britain, has led me to pay more attention to the food in my subsequent readings of the Little House books (and I think there have been two). I began to notice that Farmer Boy is enjoyable largely because of the descriptions of Almanzo’s dinners and breakfasts and snacks… and that Laura’s stories describe a meager and monotonous diet.

The last time I read through the Little House books, my copy of Farmer Boy finally fell apart. I received a boxed set of paperback editions of these books as a birthday present twenty-five years ago and have read them all at least once a year since, so it was no surprise that the books were old and tattered. My darling Sparks, who pays attention to these things, bought me a beautiful hard copy of Farmer Boy for Christmas, and I am happily burying myself in it right now. I have decided that, though Little House in the Big Woods is a competitor (because I like the books that explain how and when things were done), Farmer Boy is my favorite… and that is because, unlike the books about Laura, which are simplified and sanitized re-tellings of her own childhood, Farmer Boy is a fantasy. A fantasy about feather beds and stability and warm clothes and food, food, food, food, food–quantities of it, qualities of it, and many many different kinds of it. Did the Wilder family really have ham, baked beans, bread, butter, cheese, pickles, preserves, potatoes, turnips, carrots, AND three kinds of pie for supper every evening, then promptly settle down to unlimited quantities of popcorn, cider, and apples? Probably no, but it’s so nice to read about.

Sparks, who is a clever boy and knows me well, also bought me a copy of The Little House Cookbook, which attempts to create recipes for the food mentioned in Laura’s books that are achievable in a modern kitchen. That, too, is a great read (and I plowed through it before I started Farmer Boy, which is why I’m writing this post on January 1 instead of December 25). All of my questions about salt-rising bread and saleratus are answered there. In fact, because the Pioneer Food post is consistently the most-read post on Snapdragons every single day, I think my blog traffic would suffer should I mention there that, oh, there’s a book that answers all these questions, mystery solved

In other reading news, I got a WiFi Kindle for Christmas and promptly downloaded everything free I could find by Forster, Burnett, Montgomery, Austen and Graham Greene. There’s a wealth of free stuff out there… it’s fantastic.

For myself, maybe it would be like…

1. Rooms and furniture
2. Cupboards and drawers
3. Attics and outbuildings
4. Unexpected repairs
5. Unexpected upgrades
6. Heavy cleaning
7. Light cleaning
8. Eating and washing up
9. Dust and laundry
10. A daily routine
11. Holiday cheer
12. Sorting through the nonsense

Could you write a whole novel about getting a household under control? I think I could. I don’t know how interesting it would be to anyone else, though. Wait, isn’t this what my blog Snapdragons is about?

I love the cists, especially the one with intact skeletons… and ESPECIALLY that one that had a 1400-year-old plait of hair still with the body. They were right, it’s somehow much more intimate than the bones.

I love the roundhouse foundations, and the wheelhouse foundations. I love to read about just how advanced the Iron Age peoples were, without the Romans. I get my nose out of joint when the Britons are compared unfavorably to the Roman invaders. Grrrrrr.

These people plowed fields and planted crops.
They fished.
They raised sheep and goats and cattle.
They processed wool, spun it into fine yarn, and woven exceptionally beautiful cloth from it (beautiful woolen textiles are one of the most beautiful things in the world, to me).
They made beautiful bronze and enamel objects, covered in gorgeous knotwork and zooforms (knotwork is one of the most beautiful kinds of ornamentation, to me).
They built huge earthworks, to turn hills and crags into impenetrable forts.
They also built huge stoneworks. They built dry stone walls for the house foundations and also as walls for animal pens and forts. They built brochs and duns (look ‘em up on Wikipedia) (beautiful dry stoneworks are one of the most beautiful things in the world, to me).
They didn’t build barrows, but they lived with them.
They created some of the giant chalk drawings.
They had a writing system.
They had coinage.
They had trade with the continent.
They had ships that could cross the channels.
They occasionally became Bog Bodies.

Autumn
Howard’s End
Brambly Hedge
Tasha Tudor’s lifestyle books

Winter
A Little Princess
The Story of Holly and Ivy (Christmas)

Spring
The Secret Garden
The Wind in the Willows

Summer
The Story Girl
The Golden Road

Thus, it probably comes as no particular surprise that the charm and allure of Britain’s medieval past was lost on me for a long time. Then I discovered the Iron Age and bog bodies, which still fascinate me. Then I had some fun dabbling in Saxon costuming. Then I read Lord of the Rings and Beowulf, and “got” the allure of the Saxon mead-halls and chivalry.

And then, last night, we watched the Time Team special about Dover Castle and its interior restoration. And oooooh, the beauty and the drama of all those hangings, all those embroidered tapestries, the painted furniture, the gold and silver-work. Suddenly, I’m beginning to feel some love for the Norman.

You can see some video of the restored rooms in Dover Castle here. Click the Great Tower link, and then the Virtual Tour link. It’s pretty fabulous.

None of the houses are meant for year-round occupation, so they aren’t insulated. Inside you can see the studs of the walls, and between the studs, boards. You can see the ceiling trestles. Maybe you can see through cracks in the floor. The cottage is full of french doors that let you rush out onto the wide double-decker porches, full of transoms that connect the rooms, full of wooden slat shutters for pretend-privacy. This isn’t a house that holds you tight and shelters you, it’s a summer house that leaves you as delightfully exposed to the elements as your light summer underwear. It is a house for people who are craving sunshine and air.

Inside, the walls are painted creamy white, the walls are painted soft sage green, the walls are painted cheerful yellow. Inside is wicker and iron furniture with cushions that won’t be damaged by the cold, unoccupied months. Inside are ceiling fans, always gently turning, turning, turning. Inside are tinny fairy lights and laughter, punched-tin pie safes, blue canning jars full of precious summer produce, and worn quilts made in the Orange Slice pattern, the Wedding Ring pattern, appliqued with flowers–quilts that someone patient and quiet sewed her quiet patience into a long, long time ago. Inside, a claw-foot tub is nestled under a steep eave, in a room with an old nail for a latch.

Outside are the huge porches, ten feet or twelve deep. They have floors and ceilings painted in soft aquarium shades, aqua, faded turquoise, celadon. They have more wicker and iron furniture with more impervious cushions. They give a sense of optional enclosure with the wrong-side of the white gingerbread, with columns, and with (rusty) ceiling fans and (bug-filled) light fixtures. On these porches ladies languidly wilt in the afternoon, and mint juleps and lemonade are served on the hour. Young people in wet swimming costumes rush through these porches, but the adults live their summers there, sipping cold drinks and talking to other summer residents passing by.

The houses have lots of visitors, relatives and friends who finally managed to make it all the way up here, and who are taking a day-trip to this island and a hike along this part of the distant woods and an afternoon excursion into town to buy fudge and tchotchkes. Perhaps the visitors say they wish that they could have a darling summer cottage just the same. Perhaps they’re really glad they can just visit. Or perhaps they really wish they had the time.

I’m checking in so that I can publish some info about two items that isn’t on the Vera Bradley website.

First, the Knot Just A Clutch is great. It is much larger than I expected, and certainly has the capacity of the Maggie purse, if not more. There would have been no problem fitting a full-size wallet into it, along with sunglasses, keys, and lipstick. The strap is not removable (it can just be tucked inside the purse, when you want to carry it as a clutch) and seems shorter than 35″. When I wear it over my shoulder, the purse is at ribcage-level, just right to clutch it against me in a crowd.

Second, the redesigned Hanging Organizer has won me over. Previously I had complained that the top pocket is no longer see-through. What they aren’t telling you is that it contains a lot of smaller pockets, which will be great for sorting out makeup. With the zipper undone, this pocket will probably gape open a little bit, providing visual access to the contents.

And that new, deep bottom pocket? Total love. It’s lined in waterproof material.

I also bought three Bali Gold napkins off of eBay. I am going to sew them up into simple drawstring bags, to use for shoes and lingerie.

My old Riviera Blue Weekender bag sold, and went out in the mail today. I will admit… it hurt my heart a little to let it go. It’s so adorable. Unfortunately, it really is very small, and I always had to pack other bags. My new Large Duffel looks super roomy; I think it will hold a whole week’s worth of clothes and toiletries, and a spare pair of shoes to boot.

I have put all my old stuff up on eBay (and happily, the new-with-tags stuff I blogged about last week has already sold). This trousseau is all I need. Putting my money where my mouth was, in the end I bought:

Large Duffel: the workhorse for road trips
Large Cosmetic: big, waterproof, and well-priced
Hanging Organizer: love love love
Knot Just A Clutch: pretty, lightweight, with a shoulder strap
Clip Zip ID: to go in the clutch, with ID and cash
Large Backpack: as a carry-on, as an “entertainment” bag while riding in the car, has a handy clear ID slot under the flap. Love!