handstories

still...

    "Nehama" for comfort.

    Thank you... for Dee's "honey bun" and the vision of Grace singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star..." and all of your kind gentle loving words.  How comforting to have this community to lean into. 

    Just so sad.  Yesterday morning, home alone and shuffling stools, chairs, broom, etc. around trying to make things look different instead of empty.  There may have been sobbing over the washing machine while putting her blankets in.  Moon was home in the afternoon and we had a Star Trek Voyager marathon to distract ourselves.

    This morning's walk was in heavy fog, but the sun is coming out now.

    And I do want to say that there were some really good things that happened over the last week.

 

    I gave that zoom presentation and it went swell.  The group was so welcoming and lovely.  I do mean to share more about this experience.

  

    This afternoon we'll take Moon back to school, and there will be dinner with Deb G., and the pink blossoms are still able to shimmer through the dark mornings.

Joy

    We strolled through the local botanical gardens for our anniversary afternoon. 

   A place we've gone often.  A place with memories of good and rocky times, alone and with the boys.  K likes the dahlias, for me it's the water features and wispy meadow like spots.  An old timer made a cheesy jokey compliment to me.  Something my dad would have done.  It made me roll my eyes and smile.

    "Asra" meaning "nighttime journey".

    Speaking of journeys... I'm off for the next bunch of days to attend/assist another workshop with Christine Mauersberger.  I'm looking forward to days of making and soaking in inspiration, to sitting still, spending time thinking and wondering, gathering some thoughts and sense of where I am and might want to go.  It's a tall order for a few days, but a soul can dream.

Seeing the waves...

    More seas...  I'm resting in them, I think.  A way of keeping going, no matter the to-do list, anxieties.  Things are fine, just still more of a tossed salad rather than a smooth soup.  K started back half-time today, that will help both of us.  Stir crazy does not look good on him.  Nor does my constant, "Are you leaving the house sometime soon?"  We both need routine.

    It's our 39th anniversary today.  We're both glad about that.

    There were four years of off and on before we got married.  There was a time during my senior year of high school when he would come home from college every other weekend.  During which he would break up or get back together with me, depending on what he had done the last time.  Over and over.  Two girlfriends wrote to him, asking him to end it for good, because being around me during the aftermath of these visits was making them crazy.

    We all made it through that year, and then I went to Alaska for the summer, and new drama began...  but that's another story.

    Sorry about all of the loose threads on this photo.  Didn't have my glasses on.  

Not a vacation

    Had planned to take the week off from shop making. Moon was starting his summer job. After a couple of weeks, I was going to have the house to myself during the days. I was going to work on personal projects- weaving the other side of that quilt, start an indigo vat, work on gifts, catch up on blogs, clear some of the cloth chaos...

    Monday was lovely but felt pretty tired by evening.

    Tuesday morning.  I don’t remember much else about Tuesday or Wednesday.  There is a cloth by Jude hanging over the bed in the studio room.  Every so often I would reach above my head and touch the cloth and stitches, there's blue velvet in it, a comfort.

    There was a dream that Grace called.  Facetimed. Her image became a hologram, 3-D and life size. Reaching out, expecting my hand to pass through her arm, I was able to grab hold, and suddenly she was there!  “We can all be together!” I said, “The whole Circle!”

    A wonderful dream. 

Thursday's Instagram post...

Sickbed post (Day 3):

1. Cozy knees (the only cloth I’ve been near).

2. Sad lonely workspace.

3. Sickbed post (literally, ha ha).

 

Grateful for a bed in my stitching room, best quarantine view in the house (outside, not my messiness inside.)  Husband went down today, Moon is double masked & hiding in his room, holding onto hope. Very glad we are all boosted.  Feeling a smidge better this eve. Might try sitting up tomorrow… maybe lift a needle… 

 

    Friday, I sat up the whole day (in bed).  Stitched a few squares with Tina’s dyed cloths.  K is already feeling better. Just a bad cold for him. His double boosting worked, I think.  Amazingly, Moon is still the last man standing. 

    “Recovery” painted at dusk last night.  Exhausted, but so much better.  Hope everyone is well out there.  Time for a nap, oxo.

Dream Days

"Sip of Dreams"

    Many swell happenings over the last few days...  Friday- to Bellingham for Moon's a cappella concert.  It was great to hear him sing, watch him have a great time, be so happy.  And then the treat of meeting up with Deb for dinner.

    After that, a night in Vancouver, B.C. in a room with a city view (across the street from the Coliseum-ish library), strolling Granville Island (Maiwa's!), a delicious Italian dinner...  It's been so long since we've gone somewhere, just the two of us.  It was a very nice time.

    On the way home, there was an extra dose of Deb time!  Tea in her cozy sweet house with two of the friendliest cats you'll ever meet (Widget wasn't interested in socializing).  

    Her GOOD Enough quilt is even more wonderful in person (as is she!).

    Today I potted up her gift of indigo plants, with hopes for their survival under my blue thumb.

    Sunday night I dreamt in cloth.  The memory became the morning painting.  By afternoon, the image was fading, but not the incredible feeling.  A cloth began...
 
    I didn't refer back to the painting at all and was surprised this afternoon to see the differences.  The tree had completely slipped away.  Dream to paper, paper to cloth, maybe I'll complete the circle and keep going, back and forth, forward and back, in and out of the dream.

Here

    Deb and Tina's cloths melting together with one of the indigo moons from last summer's vat.  A new thing with the rings, instead of just stitching.  Trying to make them more of the story, their own stories, too.  A bit fiddly, but still enjoyable, especially playing with bias possibilities and limits.

    These rings of color and light make me think of a rainbow. Dismantled and reconstructed at the same time.

    There was rain yesterday, all day, the kind that makes you think "monsoon season".  We didn't mind.  We worked quietly at our own things.  Quiet except for the Stellar Jay that yelled outside the window most of the afternoon.  Complaining about the rain, I think.

    Two of the rings are from new cloths.  It's been a long time since I was in a fabric store.  It was kind of like a visit to a candy shop- beautiful and overwhelming.  I bought a few fat quarters, which may have been chosen partly for their selvedge messages.  I used to be excited by the color dots on the edges, but now there are whole thoughts!

"Here We Are"

Choices

"Rooted in Magic"

    I mean to be here more, really, I do.  The days are spent making, by evening my eyes are too tired for screens, and/or K. is using the computer.  I love these days of stitching.  So lucky to be able to do work that I love.

    The morning paintings are happening again.  I think that I lost my way with routines in the last weeks.  They help.

    The singing group has started meeting in person again, masked, spread out some.  One of our songs is "Storm Comin'," a favorite of mine.

    

"Glittering"

    When I was new to the group (15 years ago?), at some point the woman next to me turned to me and said, "You're not singing the right notes."

    I shrugged my shoulders and said, "It's not a choice."

    At our first gathering a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that she was sitting in front of me.  At the next sessions, I noticed that she moved up a few rows.  Ha!

    I love it when Deb Lacativa's cloths have seams to pick apart.  They feel like bonus surprises- secret extra places of color.  This was probably a sheet.  I put stitches into the holes left behind as a way of holding the story of before.

"Showered in Light"

    Tina dyes up beautiful soft rainbows of cloth.  They are often just the right setting for a story.

    Spring has sprung.

    And THIS took my breath away (be sure to click on the right arrow to get to the video and make sure that you have the sound on (bottom right corner).  Can you imagine being in the presence of such an ocean of amazing?!?

Songs from Home

    There's something about home that I'm still working on...

    Maybe it's an effort to count my blessings. 

    It may have started with the washer workouts and trying to see the bright side of things.  (The plumbers will come again on Friday, with their jackhammer, mud, etc.  I've just thrown my hands up in the air about all of it- the mess, the money, the men trudging through.)  We have a house.  We are ok.

    There were hyacinth bulbs in jars at the grocery store for only a few dollars.  Still, it seemed like a splurge... not needed, just wanted.

    I'm enjoying it so much!

    The scent is heady, a constant gift, and a trace of memory too, but I can't quite place it.

    Very slowly, only a few pages a day, I'm reading Katherine May's The Electricity of Every Living Thing.  So far, I love it and it's hard, comforting and too close to home.  Last week, there were these sentences:  

    "... Everybody has a song like this.  A song that is a map, a compass: a song that sets you straight again.  Learn it, and it will take you home."

    This feels like what I'm trying to get to, what much of my stitching, stories, inner work are about.  The words, or even whole coherent thoughts about it aren't formed yet, but I'm a few steps closer.

    In the meantime, this may have gone a bit far, but it felt like a party!

"The Shindig of Home"

Choosing

    Putting one piece with another, more proof that everything is all part of the same story.

    Last summer a friend, an old neighbor, who I miss having across the street almost every day, dropped off this blue garden sphere.  I love it.  It shimmers in the moonlight and glows in the sunshine.

    Generally, I'm the first one to point out all of the possible problems that might happen in a situation, making me seem gloom and doom-ish to some.  (I like to think of it as being prepared.)  But really, deep down, I do think that things generally can work out with enough thought and care. 

    K's new job was a financial adjustment.  Absolutely manageable, but not the more carefree comfort that his corporate position had provided.  (Have I said what his job is?  Just in case- it's at a foodbank warehouse.  Where truckloads of donations are sent, sorted, repacked, and then local foodbanks come to gather goods to take back to their communities.  He coordinates volunteers, organizes, etc., and drives a forklift (I can't tell you how much he enjoyed learning to do this!))  Not long after he started working there, in an effort to reduce waste, they opened up an area stocked with expiring and excess goods for employees to take home.  It's been great!  Eggs, milk, organic produce, things that we've never tried (the red curry soup above for one).  You never know what might be there... anything from ricotta to the occasional bunch of roses...  

    There have been so many unexpected gifts from this life shift.

    The Christmas cactus has a bud of hope.

"She Chose Starlight"

Gifts

    One of my favorite ways of composing is to just dig around in the table chaos, grabbing a few scraps and puzzling them together.  The best part is having no idea of what is next.

    Last Saturday was my booster shot.  I expected the sore arm and the slightly carsick feeling that were experienced with the first two vaccinations.  Felt fine all-day Sunday, until the evening.  Suddenly tired and underarm lymph nodes, in the vaccinated arm, felt sore.  Weird.  Went to bed early.  Monday- exhausted, nauseous, and nodes hurt.  A three-hour nap in the afternoon, up for soup, and back to bed for twelve more.  Tossing, turning, fever, uncomfortable because of the armpit.  A gradual lessening of symptoms over the next two days, until today.  I finally feel normal again.  Just weird, but I'm grateful to have gone through it if it means not experiencing worse from whatever the virus du jour is.

    There was the tiniest ladybug on the inside of the kitchen window.

    Twinkle has recently taken to interrupting her morning snooze for a visit.  Each day she comes in where I'm working, plays hard to get just out of reach for a minute, and then lets herself be picked up.  She snuggles in my lap for a while, insisting on petting between stitches.  It's nice, although it's been added to the list of signs/worries that she's getting old (13 years).

    Some beautiful sunsets have happened on our corner lately.

    A gift from Tina, holding Jude's star, Velma's soapstone bear, and the smokey quartz that I love.