But for the Rain,

This coming Saturday, Kick (a.k.a. my mom) is participating in an open air market in Summerland, near Santa Barbara.

Kick's the queen of textiles.  She never misses a good deal and has been collecting for years.  Our annual trip to France is no exception.  She spies them from far away, sidles on up, does a 'hem and a haw' routine she's worked out with myself and my sister and darn it all if she doesn't walk away with some of the prettiest linens you've ever seen.  There's a tiny sample of goods on her Flickr site, just to whet the appetite. 


Kick at the woad forest, shrugging her shoulders at a field of blue. What else can we dye?


Kick and myself looking for the linens....


Kick sorts the linens in France.

No matter what she finds or where she finds it, the linens always come out looking like new.  I wore Kick's wedding dress on my big day, but before I did, we had to pull it out of a box that had been in the attic for 30 years.  Besides removing the sleeves and making some room in the busty area, mom knew it had to be cleaned.  We were bemoaning the fact that we were quoted around $300 to clean it.  To a woman who grew up on a farm, that seemed crazy!  Instead, Kick soaked the whole thing in the bathtub in her secret ingredient, laid it out on the grass for the chloroform, and dried it by the light of the moon.  It was the most beautiful site I'd ever seen...  She's magic like that.