handstories

Trying to get somewhere

    Ideas are coming, words are not.  There is something about my stories.  There is something about everyone's stories.  And something about wished for stories.  They take hours that seem like minutes.

   

    In between, I'm stitching moons.  Resting places.

    Worked and worked on this one, until there wasn't anywhere left to go.  I appreciated the time and idea, but it wasn't how I thought it would go.  Folks on Instagram really liked it.  Sometimes I think that I don't know anything and can't see what's true at all.

Braiding Connections

    "And Still... the Moon"

    The flying dream was a great one.  It was actually more like swimming in the sky.  Keeping my arms close to my body and wiggling like a fish, a mermaid, the movements lifting me towards the stars...

    A morning at my friends' hanging out with him while she took the cat to the vet (the cat is having health issues too).  Again, parking is an issue in their neighborhood, so I pulled up to the building, she and the cat left in my car, and I headed into the condo.  Neither he nor I are morning people, nor had we ever really spent any length of time alone together, so the plan was for us to have our coffee and tea quietly in separate rooms. 

    When I brought him his coffee, he was sitting in a comfortable chair in their bedroom listening to music.  "Here you go.  I'll just be stitching in the living room.  Just let me know if you need anything- more coffee, company, whatever."

    "Yeah, there's a book that I'm listening to that I want to get back to...  My sister told me about it, Braiding..."

    "...Sweetgrass?"

    "You know it?"

    "Yes, I've been hearing about it for years.  I've checked it out of the library several times but haven't actually opened it.  Are you liking it?"

    "Have a seat!"

    "Let me get my tea..."

    He shared about the book, and we wove in and out of topics- connection, and community, how the last weeks have been for him, them, what might come...  Two hours later, she returned, the time had flown by.

    "Robin"

    Coming home, I sat down to stitch, after going to the library website, checking out, and opening the audiobook of Braiding Sweetgrass.  What an amazing, beautiful, spirit filling book, and listening to the author, Robin Wall Kimmerer read it with her soothing rich voice is an added gift.  I'm halfway through.  It's the perfect thing to listen to while stitching.  I can't believe it took me this long to get to this book, but then again, sometimes things happen at just the right time in our lives.  I imagine that I will listen to it again and again, each time remembering a lovely morning conversation with coffee, tea, and connectionsing.

Never a Dull Moment

    Deb's cloth made for an earthy hill on blackberry-ish purples by Tina, with a small scrap of the starry cloth K. gifted me for Christmas twenty-five years ago in anticipation of baby Blue.

    There was a bit more boat mending in the wind and the cold under a daylight moon.

    In an effort to maybe, just maybe, get this quilt done in time, I keep it on my lap while stitching for the shop.  Whenever there is a bit of thread left in the needle, it goes into the quilt.  Sometimes it's only a few stitches, but that keeps things interesting.

    Speaking of interesting... There was an evening at my friend's condo this weekend.  They live near a hospital and a couple of nursing homes, so sirens are common.  But suddenly there was siren after siren...

    We looked out the window to see that the street was full the length of two blocks and around the corner of her building.

    Across the street an old, abandoned house.

    We spent the next hours watching out their windows.  The hours were also spent with fond and fearful memories of my dad's decades as a fire fighter. 

    The house is still standing, without some of the roof and floors.

    "It's never a dull moment around here!" I commented.  We laughed at the crazy their world seems to be full of these days.  Over there again last night, we talked about how pretty the fire actually was, especially at one point when snow was falling.  We thought it could be their Christmas card... "Our world is on fire, and still beautiful... Merry Christmas!"  We laughed some more.  Laughter is such good medicine.

    And so is stitching! (More of Deb and Tina's dyeworks.)

Six of One

    There was a day of halves this week, the day before yesterday...

    It started with half a night's sleep from worrying that I wouldn't wake up in time to go help my friends early in the morning. 

    Halfway to their place, it began to snow.  Parking near their condo is a challenge.  Found a place a block away.  Got halfway down the alley towards their building and realized I forgot something...twice.

 

    Once there, it was snowing harder.  Plans were abandoned.  So, I headed back home.  Taking advantage of the snowfall and throwing in a few half-truths, I canceled an unwelcomed dentist appointment for the afternoon.  The snow stopped soon after, and half of it melted away by the time of the appointment, I didn't call back.

 

    Stitched half a piece, did half of the laundry, watched half of a movie, and then halfway through the day, took half of the friends' stuff that was filling up half of our living room down to the basement, took a half an hour nap.

K came home, asked why I'd only taken care of putting half of the bread into the freezer, leaving the other loaf on the counter?  Made a half-hearted mediocre at best dinner.

 

    At half-past seven, half-way through a show, the power went out, with an ETA of 2am for repairs, half of the night.  Realizing that the leftover half of dinner was still on the counter, and not wanting to open the fridge, the container was put on the porch in the 36-degree weather.  Giving up on the day, I was in bed at 7:44. 

 

    Half an hour later, half asleep, the power came back on.  I got up, washed half of the dishes, and we watched the other half of the show.  As if nothing had happened.

Reshaping

(There are all kinds of wonky things going on with photos, comments, and spacing right now.  Crossing my fingers that I found a workaround with this post...)

    

    "Holding Memories"

    Yesterday I was thinking about how my stitching is about creating possibilities.  That stories can come together to make new places.  

    Recently, when asked if they liked me, I was told that I'm "a mixed bag".  My first reaction was sad and hurt.  Then came the thoughts, "Who says that?!" and finally, "Well, who isn't?"  Realizing that every experience is a learning adventure, I decided to be grateful to know more... about others and myself.

    "Mystique" Tree Token

    I think my stitching is about believing in the possibilities of and for stories.

    "Time, love, and work.  That's all you have.  And, hopefully, a few trips to Italy."- Maira Kalman

    Maira Kalman is a favorite soul of mine.  There were hours of listening to (gobbling up) old podcast interviews with her this week (again).  She's funny, charming, wise, and so talented.  I found out that someone I know knows someone who knows her.  Even though I will most likely never meet her, just the idea that she's only a few degrees of separation away makes me giddy.

    Nights have taken on a strange pattern.  Waking around 4 am from intense dreams (a sky full of pink moons, starlit gardens, terrifying shadowy corners...), and then drifting off again around 5 am for an hour or two more of dead to the world sleep.  The morning paintings have become reflections.

    Also, I've started playing in this "seeded notebook" made a while back.

    Really, life can be rearranged and reconnected in so many ways.

Working at Playing

    One of the things that I noticed at the workshop is how hard it can be for me to do things in a different way.  Sometimes it's because I can't think of a new way.  I want to practice playing.

    Nancy's fortune teller is helping.  Repeating the back-and-forth movements takes me back to fourth grade recesses, seeing how fast we could whip through the ritual, how tiny we could make them, trying to force friends to choose certain colors, numbers, fortunes...  (I keep picking #4 because I love seeing her searching bird.)

    Other toys on the table- Jude's beast who wanders through rearranging hills, the Venetian paperweight for peering out of the window, and the smokey quartz that likes to catch the light, or just be held.

    Recently, there was a spontaneous trip to the water.  I wanted to tell the driver, "But wait!  I need to stop at the house for stitching, book, knitting, pencil... anything to keep my hands and head busy, to not "waste" time just sitting!" 

    There was no detour to the house.  I told myself it would be ok, and that I wouldn't crawl out of my skin.  And it was.  And I didn't.  A few lovely hours were spent watching the waves, my mind drifting and floating along with them.

 

    Yesterday I loved putting these cloths from Deb L. and Maiwa's together.  Soft, thin, blue and brown.  This morning, wishing for the arcs to show up better in the lower half, I started adding echoes in white stitches.  The dark day was making it hard to follow the lines.

    Seeing that the lines were clear as day (not this day) on the backside, I flipped it over and stitched from the back, noticing that I had to give myself a short pep talk, "It's just thread.  If it doesn't work you can pull it out."  It was weird, such a simple thing, and I pull out plenty of stitches all of the time.  There wasn't even anything complicated about it, just a plain running stitch.  Once I let go of whatever my crazy is, it was fun to let go of knowing what was happening on the other side.

    Loosening.  I'm going to ponder and practice the idea of it. 

"Thoughts of Light"

So many feelings

 

"Moon Memories"

    Sunday's smokey sunset.  Glad the air is clear again.

    K. is getting about unaided, feeling pretty good, off all the meds except Tylenol, sleep is improving, and can put on his own cursed compression socks!

    Detail of "So Many Things," a piece that was started almost two years ago.  I've thrown myself back into stitching this week.  It feels good to be stitching for hours again.

    Moon is packing up for his sophomore year of college.  A tutoring job in the math department is waiting for him.  As is an apartment with friends. The plan is to stay until their degrees are done, including summers.  He says he's probably never going to live here again, and so he's putting his life into boxes that will move to the basement or go with him.

    I'm having a whole variety of mom feelings, all over the spectrum.  The last few days have been challenging.  Two more to go.  Neither of us is great with change.  I've seen growth on both of our parts.  I really am trying to trust that it's all good, or at least good enough.  If nothing else, the room will get a long overdue cleaning.

    The "Samar" tree token, the name means 'evening conversations'.

    Detail of "Magic Sky".

    I'm craving the ocean again.  Time to stitch some sea.

Contented in Through

"Through"

    While naming pieces for today's update, "through" kept coming up.  So many things feel like "getting through" right now, not in a bad way, just things going on, and remembering my mother-in-law's idea that "through is a place".  I guess we are always in through.  (This through started with a dreamy piece of Deb's cloth and was framed in Tina's twilight purple.)

    In anticipation of K's surgery on Monday (the biggest through), and of his being home for weeks, I wove and pinned the next section of the quilt.  Did it have a name?  If so, it's gone now.  

    I'm guessing that there will be less time and focus for making pieces for the shop.  Quilting will be a comforting no-thinking required thing to do.

    Not the best photo, but a sense of where it's at now.

    And a blurry hot pink photo of the current socks on the needles in the bright sunlight.  I often knit a few rows after breakfast to wake up my hands and head.  These are eye-openers!  Someone I know has been wearing a lot of hot pink and fuchsia lately.

    Bear close-up for Barbara.

    "Razia" meaning "contented".  Wishing the same for us all.

Floating & Flow

    This was started in the few quiet moments of last weekend, in between hours of this...

    Blue Angels.  They roar over our house for four days- two of them practicing, and then two days of shows for Seattle's Seafair every August.  One of the silver linings of the pandemic was the event being cancelled for two years, but they came back.  They can be seen out of any window in the house.  Sometimes so low that you can make out the writing on the sides.  The house shakes, my brain shakes, the cat runs.

    We went to the co-op to escape.  The display of currants beside apples and strawberries was beautiful.

"An Exuberance"

    Fresh indigo dyed silk on Tina's midnight purple above Deb's fiery cloth.  It felt like a party.

    And this one, started yesterday.  Often it all comes down to what scraps are scattered closest.  It began with the pink arc.  I was thinking rainbow, but then went looking for a moon.  This is one of Jude's, beneath a starry gift also from her... and then the two small scraps by Deb and Maiwa were within reach...

    Sometimes everything finds each other, reaches out and connects in ways that feel outside of me, a kind of floating into place.

Many kinds of stories

"Maybe a Lot of Things"

    I'm liking these longer cloths lately.  Space for more layers of the story, but not overwhelming.

    We went to Oregon for the weekend.  To visit family.  I spent most of the days with my mom.  Her days are so different now, without her husband, or the need to care for him.  There is so much time in a day when life suddenly empties of all you know. 

    We spent some time driving through my hometown (she lives in the city next-door now).  We stopped by to visit her best friend, who still lives next door to the house that I grew up in from age five until 18, when I left home.  The photo above is how it looks now.  It feels too wide open and lifeless to me.  My bedroom was there at the top.  I used to crawl out onto the roof on summer evenings.

    This is how it was... (photo taken as it was being sold when I was 24).  Blue (Mom's choice), the split log fence Mom built to keep us and the neighbor kids from riding our bikes over the corner, and the two big trees on either side of the corner.  A lot happened in that house.  Seeing it makes me want to weep from many kinds of sadness.

    When all of the leaves were picked off, the indigo stems were put into water.  Look at all of the new leaves!  They continue to grow above the stitching table among small stories- the ship in a bottle (it appeared when I was cleaning off my shelves to leave my teaching job), a bluebird from Blue, a clay "piece of mind" made by Moon when I told him I wish I had "peace of mind". 

    In the works, with a moon from Jude.  What goes under the arch, I'm not sure yet? It feels like a place where stories might meet.