Another Bread FAIL

Wheat bread just does not cooperate with me.  I blame it on the electric mixer.  My mother in law gave us a 1970s electric stand mixer that she bought at a garage sale.  It was not adequate.  The sticky wheat dough traveled up the mixing utensils and tried to escape from the bowl a number of times before Ollie and I gave up that idea.  Of course, using man-logic, Oliver had to push this new power tool to the max and tried mixing the dough full force until he would admit defeat.

I will trust in my own two trusty hands in the future.  My hands do so many great things for me.  They make me beautiful shawls and hats, nifty yarns, delicious edibles, keyboarding letters, and most recently beautiful mountain folk music.  I've started practicing a song called "In the Willow Gardens" which is played in waltz time.  It sounds so delicate and lovely despite the lyrics being about a young man who poisons his lover.  I think it's my favorite that I've learned yet.

I finished my Holden shawl just in time for Easter last weekend.  I keep reading articles about women aspiring to Biblical womanhood.  Some may take this as old fashioned, sexist or degrading.  I think the Proverbs 31 woman has great strength, responsibility and joy.  The proverb speaks in depth about such a woman's capable arms and hands:

"She selects wool and flax

and works with eager hands"13

"She considers a field and buys it;

out of her earnings she plants a vineyard" 16

"In her hand she holds the distaff

and grasps the spindle with her fingers" 19

"She opens her arms to the poor

and extends her hands to the needy" 20

Perhaps the best line of all:

"She is clothed with strength and dignity;

she can laugh at the days to come." 25

All too often these days the tasks of feeding and providing for one's family seem to be regarded as trivial and basically unimportant.  I think there has to be something special about a person using their capable hands to create homemade, homegrown, hearty foods and specially created handmade clothing and other items.  It seems so much more special to do things this way rather than merely earning money to buy generic store bought made-in-a-sweatshop things or waxy buckets of greasy chicken.

So many people work and work and work so they can buy things and things and things.   I swear I will try to do things differently.  Living an "old-fashioned", compassionate, simple way in which people are the greatest treasures in life.  Where the simple, loving actions made by dexterous hands can be esteemed and respected.