handstories

Last week & today

    Yesterday I stitched a star.  The first in a week.

    When I got home last Monday, there was a lot of laundry and picking up to do.  Chores had been ignored by all of us for the last few weeks.  We all kind of threw in the towel and just got through...  I didn't stitch at all for a couple of days.  There was putzing, tidying, show watching... dinners were cooked.

    After a couple of days of nothing, I continued quilting on the woven blanket.  It was on the end of the couch, right where I left it.

    Each night I would fall asleep thinking, "Tomorrow I'll get back to making pieces, blogging, instagram, get focused, get going..."  And then another day of just quilting would happen.

    Friday I went up to the bookroom.  The room where you can't see the books because of all of the stuff that all of us have thrown into it over the last decade or so.  Using Moon's bedroom as a staging area, I pulled out a couple of boxes, started sorting, got overwhelmed, went back downstairs and went back to quilting.

    "You have until Monday," I told myself.

    On Saturday, K said that his sister wanted to borrow something, did I know where it was?  We dug around in the bookroom piles...nope.  Which could only mean that it was in the basement.  Sigh.  It's in about the same state as the bookroom, plus twenty years.  (There was a big clean out some years ago, but still... this nest is anything but empty.)  I headed down. 

      And I've gone down for an hour or two each day since.  The thing was found!  The car trunk is full of donations... with many more trunk loads to go, but it's a start.  Photos and question marks are sent to the boys, piles are left in the living room for K to decide about when he gets home, and "Donate!" has been the reply most of the time.  We are all ready to let go.

    And this morning, a blue pen was used.  It was sitting there, I reached for it, but then thought, no, it's always the black pen, size S.  An unwritten rule.  A pause happened, and then a realization that I made the rules, and could change them, or just break them.  A small thing, but still not so easy for this OCD soul.

    There are more pieces to these stories, but I'm still not focused, my thoughts are scattered all over the place, or gone altogether, but I'm good.

    And today this piece was finished.

    It's about making one's own magic.

still Tuesday (I think)

    The pen was found, so pages are being labeled.  Now I'm wondering if I should mess with it more by adding bits of the stories of each thing?

    The start of today's page, Deb's thread.

    Another book, the first one I made, is open next to me as a place to test paints, practice writing, doodle (this one was one of Carla Sonheim's one-liner exercises).

    This morning I stood looking at the mailbox, trying to remember, "Did anyone get the mail yesterday?  Or was yesterday Sunday?  What day IS it?"  While trying to answer my own questions, it finally occurred to me to just open the mailbox and see. 

    The studio table is overflowing.  Things are precariously balanced atop each other- paints, books with painting that needs to dry, thread, cloth, to-do lists, pens, brushes, snacks...  

    This is how things go in our corner of the world.  (FYI- no one had emptied the mailbox yesterday.)

    Two-hundred-eighty squares (69%) finished, 128 to go.

    There was some spinning this week.  A little each day.  It's been SO long, so long that there were spider webs all over it.  It feels good to be at it again.

    And a piece was almost finished.  It's about all of this- how things might be, and maybe, just hopefully maybe, how things really are at the root of it all.

Rosee part 5:

    "I forgot to tell you about moving Tablespoon to the Dude Ranch in the pine hills. I got lonesome for him and his daily bath.

    Back in the summer of '34 when everything burned up in the drought, all the other horses had sore backs so Bill Hatch asked if he could use Tablespoon to ride circle. When they got back he was all a foam of sweat and they were afraid I’d give them hell for overriding him, so they sneaked him down to the pond and scrubbed him down clean before they turned him out where I might see him.

    Every time they turned him out in that pasture after that he’d go to the pond and climb in and give himself a bath.  Also he’d round up all the other horses and drive them into the corral till they finally had to put him in another pasture all by himself.  Anyway I drove to the ranch and rode him 13 miles to Ostendorfs and put him in their barn.  Emmett (her brother) came after me and took me home for the night. 

    Next morning, I came and got him and rode him about half way to the Dude Ranch.  I was standing by the road looking at him and he was looking at me as though he thought I was crazy, wondering how I could possibly get back on with my sore bottom and sore legs, when Empty came driving gaily along in the car. He leered out of the window at me, “I thought I’d find you just about here walking. How would you like to drive the car and I’ll ride him the rest of the way.“  I dearly loved him that minute."

goings & comings

    During a quiet peaceful day alone with stitching yesterday, this story of home showed up.  It's about leaving, staying, being there, and wanting to know that are all are possible.

    Come evening, some things fell apart.  It was 9:00pm, and I needed a break.  Some wine had already happened, so driving was not an option.  I got on a bus.  

    I texted a friend, who lives on my bus line.  She was downtown at a concert, not home.  So I kept riding.  Half an hour later, across town, I got off and walked to the stop heading home.

    A moment after boarding, the friend texted that her date was leaving the concert early, if I could get to the theater, she'd try to get me in.  The bus app said a different bus was needed. Fortunately, the next stop was also for the right bus.  It was also on a dark lonely street at the edge of downtown.  When I got on the next bus, the app wouldn't work.

    I asked driver where to get off?  "You're on the wrong bus."  What to do?  He threw out all kinds of ideas.  I said that I just needed to get near 9th and then I could walk.  "Too far, wouldn't want you to do that..."  He was clearly thinking it was too sketchy of an area.  I got off near 9th, with him pointing out that the stop I should go to was just across the street.  I called out my thanks, and went the other way, down 9th.

    The theater was only six blocks away.  They were dark blocks, with a few folks sleeping in doorways, quiet and peaceful.  My friend met me outside, and attempted to bring me in.  The usher, an older no-nonsense woman, gave me the "I know what you're up to" eye, while I returned her gaze with "I'm a tired and desperate woman" eyes, and she let me go by...

    And that's how, an hour after leaving home, I was listening to Jason Mraz sing about the sun shining, not giving up, and all of the good things he wished for each of us.  It was so nice.  I cried through them all, out of weariness, and joy for the moment.  Afterwards, K. came, and drove me home.

mapping story

    I like this scrap of cloth at the top of the photo very much (thank you, Jude).  So, not ready for it to be gone...cloth inspired cloth.  All day I stitched on it, almost non-stop.

    It was great to work from start to finish in a day.  There was wide open time because my foot needed resting.  The evening before there was a misstep on our old deck- a quick turn, and then my foot went straight through an old board, with the rest of me crashing to the ground, curled up in a heap, crying, and cursing (which Moon says he's very sorry to have missed).  Honestly, it was quite dramatic, I texted my sister afterwards.  She said it sounded epic.  We wondered who would play me in the movie?  Good grief, I just don't bounce like I used to.

    Ice, arnica and propping up made a difference.  Still scraped and bruised, but the swelling is down, and it was a great excuse for spending the day mapping a sky.

around some worlds on a rainy day

    Circles, spheres, new worlds- they're cropping up everywhere (ha, crop circles are other worldly).  I may be making myself dizzy, but I'm having a terrific twirling time with them.

    Moons, planets, bubbles . . . something about them floats and contains.  Maybe it's a way of organizing?  Now I'm thinking of the years of making mind maps while creating curriculum plans for other teachers at my old job.  I loved that kind of thinking.  Starting with a center theme, and how the ideas would branch, ripple and flow out . . .

    I want these to vibrate with energy and light.  

    There are still some stars to hang in this sky.

when I'm 53 . . .

    I will spend tomorrow, the first day of fifty-three, stitching, spinning, reading the new issue of Taproot, maybe watch a movie, and then eat pasta and chantilly cake with my guys, and, hopefully, take a bath in a tub that, hopefully, someone has scrubbed for me.

    And, sometime in the following 364 days, I hope to knit another blue sweater, submit an entry in a local art show, get a new tattoo, find a watercolor class to take, legally change my name to Hazel (more about that another day), and work on being braver.

    "Slowly growing into myself" 

mapping mulling

    It's been pouring.  All last night, all day today, and still.  I was able to get some stitches added to this page, before the darkness won.

    Thinking on the intersections of longitudes, latitudes, rhumb lines, and wind roses that were found in some maritime map books from the library.  Also, considering the shapes lines in our own lives create as they cross each other.

plotting self

    Noticing that many of the stitched rambles on "uncertainty" are map like markings- constellation, inuksuk, and now this town-like gridded place.

    "Uncertainty" was begun with a questioning, a wondering of where I would wander next?  I think my subconscious was trying to work out a path.

    But, over the last few days, a new idea is coming into focus.  Perhaps maps, at least this personal collection of blueprints, are not a design of which way to go, but rather, markings of where we have been, or even more true in this case, of where I am.

inuksuk thoughts

    Digging out the tiny scraps at the bottom of the thread bag, I thought I would scatter them on "uncertainty".

    But they wanted to stay together.

    The pieces stacked atop each other, reminding me of inuksuk*. 

    I like the idea of stacking stones as a marker, a guide, and the the solid balance they represent visually.

    *"An inuksuk is a stone landmark or cairn built by humans, used by the Inuit, Inupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic region of North America. These structures are found from Alaska to Greenland. . . The inuksuk may have been used for navigation, as a point of reference, a marker for travel routes,..."

-excerpts taken from Wikipedia here.

nature's plans

    Emerging things.

    Inspiration from the pages of a recent indulgence.

    Pondering the mix of the words "organic" and "pattern".