Saturday, February 5, 2011

The Snowy Winter Reading Pile!

Welcome to the snowiest winter yet! Blue Hill is gorgeous in white, just gorgeous.

I have the most luscious stack of books to delve into. I just picked up Ellen Booraem's latest at Blue Hill Books (they often have autographed copies of books by local authors). I loved the Unnamables. I also picked up Gonville, a memoir by Peter Birkenhead, I am giving to a friend. Next on the list to read, though, is Obsessive Genius, the Inner World of Marie Curie, so I'm ready for the Brooksville reading group.

I've been taking a Colloquy, Maine Painters, with William Irvine, but it was a January happening and now it's February so I have a pocket of time. (This painting is one of his, Dancing Sea.) Well, I had a pocket of time--now I have these books and plans to see films and the latest play at the Opera House, Dying City. The class about painters who loved Maine was great--Marsden Hartley, Winslow Homer, and William Thon, to name just a few of my favorites. So many artists catch the incredible beauty and light of the coast.

I did find time to take a cooking class--in potstickers!
I thought they would make a fun offering during the hors d'oeuvres hour. All winter long I'm collecting recipes and ideas. Come May I'm bursting for the main inn building to open up again so we can start serving guests pancakes and cookies and savory nibbles. This time of year we deliver muffins and sweet breads and cookies and chocolates but it's not quite the same as the cookie tray in the parlor and then the table of hors d'oeuvres before dinner.

I'm starting to wonder if Blue Hill is the greeting card capitol of the world--the Barnacle has a great line of handmade cards as well as Maine-based cut out cards (the lobster trap is perfect!), and New Cargoes has lots of cards by Maine artists, and Fairwinds Florist has a very sophisticated line of cards that are perfect for my friends as well as Maine art gift cards and Blue Hill Books carries perfect cards to add to the book which they will giftwrap for you. The Blue Hill Inn has always offered to stamp and mail correspondence for guests, whether our postcards or others. I only just realized how perfectly this amenity fits into Blue Hill as a whole!

And if all of that weren't excitement enough, the Packers won! I am from Wisconsin, after all.

I hope your February has just the right the ratio of snow to hot chocolate, delicious reading and scrumptious outings. If not, come see us and we will adjust as necessary!