Links!

First, a bit more on saris. Check out this YouTube video made by an Indian-American, encouraging non-Indians to wear saris. Especially interesting were the comments; all the ones I read that were posted by Indians said that they were pleased when they saw non-Indians wearing saris, because they took it as a compliment to their culture. Cool!

I have some Texan relatives. They tend to tell stories about blowing things up. This story I found involves chainsaws AND dynamite. Enjoy, folks.

Amy at Splendor in the Ordinary is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers. Check out some of the amazing stuff she's posted just in the last week or so: a post on celebrating Trinity Sunday as a family (this Sunday, folks!), then there's this one on a spur-of-the-moment nature study of pill bugs, and then this tour de force, wherein she explains the theme of her blog, and speaks beautifully of the church year, family life and the rhythm of the seasons.

Here is a post about the liturgical color of Ordinary Time: green. Fr. Blake notes:
It is therefore a sign the Kingdom of God, all those references to growing shoots, trees, vines in the Gospels, to its quiet unnoticed growth, it is also the sign of fucundity and and of life.
I also appreciate his short addendum on why bishops wear amethests. Is it irreverant to enjoy it as a hundreds-of-years-old running joke? Christians have great senses of humor, I'm telling ya.

And this is not nearly all of the reason why we are leaving the Episcopal Church, but it is part of it.

not that we're supposed to spend tons of time on our hair and clothes . . .

. . . after all, St. Peter's pretty clear about that.

But you do have to wear clothes. (A little girl at my church once made this very clear to me. "Good morning," I said to her, when I met her on the church steps. She looked at me very solemnly, and returned my greeting by saying: "We MUST wear clothes." "Yes," I agreed, "we must." Her dad, standing behind her, explained, "She wanted to wear a swimsuit to church today. We explained that she couldn't." "Ah," I said.) And you do have to keep your hair out of your face.

Anyway, there's a lady at my church who wears salwar kameez every now and then, and looks stunning in them. I complimented her on the bright red one recently, and she explained that she finds them on eBay. Well, I had a bit of discretionary money, so I looked on eBay, and found some, but was then very distracted by the saris. Ooooh, saris.

So I ordered a couple of cotton saris. I already have a very fancy silk one, which I've never worn, since I didn't have a shirt to go with it. Discovered in my eBay searches that most saris "come with blouse" which means that on the end of the long sari is a panel of fabric that you're supposed to cut off and sew into a blouse yourself. Found out my lovely silk sari did indeed have such a panel, and even had a sticker on it that said, "comes with blouse". Yep. So I cut off the panel, and I'm planning on sewing it up sometime after I finish my sister's birthday dress. (Um, I'm sewing my sister a Jane Austen-style dress for her birthday. There's a ball she wants to go to.)

Anyway, I ordered a couple of cotton saris. I figure if they work well in India, they'll probably be perfect summer-weather-wear in SoCal. And since I am so very white, I'll just wear a tank-top under them till I manage to make the requisite blouses. I hope no one is offended at a non-Indian wearing saris - they're just so beautiful, and seem so very sensible. I'm going with imitation being the sincerest form of flattery on this one.

I told my husband, "Instead of being the homeschool mom who wears jumpers, I'm gonna be the homeschool mom who wears saris."


So that's the clothes. Now, the hair. After chopping my hair off last summer, in desperation over heat and twinfants, it's finally long enough to braid again (yay!). I love braids, because I can do them once, in the morning, and then my hair stays put all day long. Plus, pretty! I like braiding my hair in a crown, and I can do a modified version of that at this point, so I'm happy. It's easy to tie a scarf over too, if I want to.

But what I'm really waiting for is hair long enough to do this:


Wow. Check out the rest of her videos too. I love it!

Okay, so there's the vanity post for, I hope, the year. Braids and saris. That's my plan for beating the heat this summer.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell