I was more than blessed with a stable home–fed and clothed materially, emotionally, and spiritually. Before the Instagram photos, we learned the value of what is now old school home economics–home cooked meals, handmade clothes, canned fruit, frozen sweet corn, harvested firewood. These things had an economic value to our family budget, but I now realize the value of these tasks as good work and vehicle of beauty for a fuller life.

These pages in the Home section record attempts, successes and failures in making Home and creative living. This part of me lives daily in my kitchen and culinary experiments, but also through fiber arts, various forms of crafting, photography, design and dabbling of all sort and sunder.

I never developed a love of counted cross-stitch, but as a ten-year-old, I designed my own little cross-stitch of the Swedish proverb: “Borta bra men hemma bäst” — Away is good; home is best. This proverb continues as a theme for me. The T.S. Eliot quotes the About page ring truer each year of my life. What we know as home only grows deeper and more real when return and know it again as the first time.