handstories

story cloth

    The weather dropped more than ten degrees today.  Hallelujah.  In celebration there was the putting on of layers (I don't generally love clothes, but I do love the feeling of being wrapped in them).  There was also some slowing down to finish the stitching of this cloth.   

    The sea is from the cloth K. gave me for Christmas when we were expecting Blue, to make a quilt for him.  I still love it twenty years later.  I love those birds, too.  I think their cloth may be even older.  They've flown on so many things- the turning 40-42 quilt, baby blankets, many of these little squares, and more.  The beads are leftover from teaching Pre-K with Janie, and a few classrooms after that.  The children would string them, along with tiny shrinky-dinks of their drawings, onto curled and twisted silver wire to wrap around small jars as candle holders- Solstice gifts for their families.

        Before these cloths even begin, they are already full of story. "Where everything meets"

productive days

    This little birdy was yelling up a storm outside the kitchen window.

    It was probably out of joy and surprise that I was cleaning out.

    Really Cleaning O-U-T.

    We probably have enough birthday candles for the next year, for every house on the block.

    A friend was called to watch as boxes of recycling, garbage and donations were taken out.

    Quilts were washed and dried in the sunshine (with hope of the need to use them soon).

    And a little bit of stitching.

hodgepodge . . .

    The start of something new.  Something to clear the mind, slow straight-ish stitches on a happy rainbow of squares.  

    Blue is happily settled back at school, K. and Moon had a fun time away, and I thoroughly enjoyed the two days alone.  The only time I talked out loud, aside from a few murmurings with the cat, was one phone call with my sister.  Stayed up too late as always, followed by too much tea to make up for it, but slept so soundly last night,finally . . . not a single nightmare.  Maybe it's because the coolness of Fall is drifting through the window at night?  I love autumn, always have.

    The first thing Moon talked about upon arriving back home was of a spider encounter that I wasn't there to deal with.  Some of you might remember my boys' attitudes about bugs here.  Well, nothing has changed over the last two years.  On Friday he refused to help me with a spider I was trying to catch and put outside (it was big, the size of a drinking glass opening!).  

    "What are you going to do when you don't live with me anymore?!" I asked him.  

    "Get myself a tough girlfriend, pronto!" he replied.

finishing in the morning light

"Feeling"

    More and more I really don't like to drive, especially at night, but taking Blue to the airport last night, a different way than usual to avoid traffic, there we were on a big on-ramp to the freeway.  It was a long curve, up high, and I was so nervous.  It was just like one I'd been on in a dream.  With glaring lights below, and the fear of going off over the dark edge.  

    "This is just like a nightmare I had!" I exclaimed to Blue.  

    He talked me down, saying it was all fine, and fun, and that the lights were cool, and he was right.  

    Moon and K. left last night for a campout this weekend.  So, this has been a quiet morning of knitting, painting, and a few texts back and forth with Blue as he made his way across the country, and feeling fine.  

    And remembering . . .

    When Blue was a month shy of two, realizing he hadn't nursed for a couple days, I asked him about it.  "All done nursing," he said, "Big boy now."  I must have looked sad, because he brought me a plastic toy horse, "Here, Mama, horse nurse!"

    There is such a sweetness in him.  

bittersweet

    Yesterday came with the news that our dentist's receptionist (who has been there longer than the thirty years we've been going) is leaving.  Right now our next-door neighbors (who we love and will dearly miss) are loading up a moving van to travel far away.  (The man just knocked on the door, I answered pleading, "Don't go!")  

    Blue leaves at midnight tonight . . . until Christmas.

    I have been knitting, stitching, painting as fast as I can this week.  Trying to distract myself.

     Blue carved his first initial into the tree (Blue is his middle name).  It's right outside the kitchen window.

    I have not been helping myself by staring at this old photo from when he was six months-ish.  Looking here I see the words "September," "hold" and family".  (I also see "stuck" and "end," but I'm trying to ignore them.)

    He was such a happy baby.  

    It's been a good, hard, relaxing, and exasperating summer.  I thought it would be easier to say goodbye this year, but I am often at a loss when it comes to parenting teenagers, mostly the letting go part.  

    Someone told me to practice being sweet today, something I am not by nature.  I am managing semi-sweet this afternoon.

    There is something very pretty and magical about knitted stitches.

twirling in twilight thoughts

    Today I quietly rocked myself in cloth.  

    The moon is from a dip in indigo a couple of weeks ago.  I've lost track of where the silky green sea came from?  (Things get jumbled, I'm sorry.)  A barn in Idaho once housed that old purple gingham.  The rose fabric is an old favorite, and the tulle sail twirled in a ball room more than a hundred years ago.  I hope it holds happy memories of floating across the dance floor.
"Gently Twilighting"

moon & bad haiku

    Not a lot of words, here or at home.  The writing homework did not get done, instead I stared out the window for an hour, because there is nothing to say.  Blue leaves on Friday to return for his sophomore year far away in Ohio.  Moon starts high school in two weeks.  Time is passing.

    Here are some old words:

    Once in a college poetry class, told to write a haiku, I wrote:

        In a spider's eye

        the big of man and moon

        is not so pretty

    Ten years earlier, in sixth grade, the first time I was made to write a haiku (which at the time I thought was crazy, because I had been writing page-long, wordy, pre-teen angst filled ballads, and could not possibly limit myself to seventeen words), I wrote:

        Five in the first line

        Seven in the second, please

        Five in the last line

    Mrs. Young was not pleased, but I made a fuss until she put it on the wall next to those more acceptable creations written by the rest of the class.        "Moondala"

bluing

    A craving for blue washed through yesterday.

   All of these fabrics were dipped in the indigo bucket recently, except for the silver threaded sail, it is a scrap of a cloth gift from Jude.  

    The coolness of this piece is soothing post-eclipse.  Two hours later, the sunlight is still piercing outside.  The moon covered 93% of the sun here in Seattle.  We enjoyed the view with our neighbors, with glasses, pin hole and cereal box viewers we all had plenty of turns to be in awe of it all.  

grounding

    A piece of smoky quartz, bought a few years back, a stone I'm drawn to.  Years ago, there were smoky quartz earrings that were worn non-stop, until one was lost in Venice.  This chunk sits on the window sill next to me, catching the light, or on hard days, in my pocket (It's not quite comfortable there, but its lumpy sharpness brings grounding thoughts to mind.).

    I worked on this for hours yesterday, and a couple this morning.  So much was done, but looking at the big picture it changes so slowly.  All kinds of things are seeming stuck, but I'm taking it as a sign that I need to be more still.

    The sea is finished.

    And the garden it waters is almost planted.  

shaping a sea

    The water on the "Child Cloth" is being built backwards, starting with the piece outlined in darker blue in the center, then the strip in front, adding behind both of them to the right, and finally to the left, all in the wrong order, requiring un-stitching, fiddling and shoving in with a needle.  Can't even tell you what happened or why.  It's just how it went, going forward seemed easier than backing up.  I could be at this for a long while.  Fortunately, it's all old silk and able to stretch and twist.

    There is a lot going on, much I mean to share, but the tired self is winning.  The last couple of days have been packed- a workshop (with a room of artists committed to making a difference with children, led by this amazing man), writing and painting classes, and I even dragged myself to swim class last night.  The nights are full, too, of nightmares.  Stories of misunderstandings, lost suitcases when my plane is about to board, and many many murderers to maneuver carefully around, all churning through my head every night for the last month or so.  I wake up exhausted with a pounding heart.  I have no idea what it's all about, hopefully, it will work itself through and out soon.

    Thinking of how Wendy welcomes each child into her therapy studio, the washing of their feet and the entering.  Listening to her describe it all is like a flowing poem.