handstories

Weekend

    There is too much that I want to hold onto here, for remembering.  To put it all in one post is just too much.  So, I do nothing.  Time slips, but still, I want to try.  I don't know why.  Anyhow, I'm going to try.  Smaller bites. 

    Starting at the beginning of this week, but in reverse...

    The cloth beginning above was stitched on Sunday, on the way home from a fun weekend in Bellingham.  Stuck in traffic (thank you, Taylor Swift), I pulled out the handful of scraps that had been grabbed off the table on the way out of the house Saturday morning and puzzled them together.  (Not too shabby for not wearing reading glasses, because it was too bright not to wear sunglasses.)  Having to find a way to make random fabrics work together is a fun exercise now and then.  Haven't touched it since.

    Before the freeway crawl, there was a wonderful relaxing morning on Deb's porch (after petting two of the friendliest cats in the world).  There was talking and talking, looking at all of her explorations with pigments, and giving her eggshells a crush.  That porch is the best science lab that I've ever been to!

    The day before was spent with Moon and his girlfriend (I.), in honor of his twenty-first birthday!  (They are still in Bellingham, taking summer classes, and Moon is working on an internship researching space ethics.)  He had asked us to come a while ago, to join him in a round of bar hopping.  I couldn't believe he wanted to spend this particular birthday with his parents.  "That's wonderful and weird!"  I told him.

    "I know!" he said.

    We lunched, book shopped, walked along the waterfront, took a nap, strolled through campus, dined, and then decided to miniature golf at the college hangout across the street from his apartment.  The plan was to golf before saying goodbye to I. (who won't be legal for a few months).

    After the game (I got the only hole-in-one and won!), he decided to have his first drink there, so I. could be there.  He ordered a sampler flight of local beers and experienced his first carding.  We talked, took photos, and Moon went over to the game shelf and found Sorry, a family favorite.  We all sipped, played (he won), and had a swell time.  At which point he announced that it had been a good birthday, he was tired, and he was calling it a day.

    Such a reasonable boy man!

    Back to the present...  Propped up on the watering can, to support the heavy drooping branch, with the blue potted plant placed to protect it from folks walking by and badly flung newspapers... I had just about given up hope, but today...

    Hooray!

Small things can shift things

    There are so many things with needles in them.  It's dangerous to reach around on my table.

    There are lots of ways to say "I'm working" without really getting anywhere.  This was a half-start of sorting out the thread nest.  I showed a photo of the basket of tangles and knots to a friend.  "How did that happen?!" she asked.  After explaining how I work, and that there are three other baskets of chaos, she just stared wide-eyed at me.  "Do you need more corks?" she asked. 

    "Fortunately or unfortunately, no," I replied.

    I've been experimenting with cyanotypes the last two days.  Playing really is good for the spirit.

    This boot (can you see that it's a boot?), with its cactus began in the late 70's.  My uncle came home after four years of being stationed in Germany with the Army.  Grandma took his boot and planted the cactus in it.  Proclaiming that it would keep him from ever being able to leave again, she put it next to her trailer steps.  I always enjoyed seeing it when visiting her, so when she died, I took it.

    It has been at the foot of our front steps growing and multiplying for the last thirty-plus years.  The toe of the boot is pretty much gone, it's rooted through its rotting sole into the grass, and a few sprouts have escaped the boot all together.  It just goes along with no interference from me.

    But THEN, two weeks ago, overnight... that growth/branch/arm on the upper left.  Nothing like this has ever happened in all of its forty-something years.

    Each day it reaches a little further, stretching thinner.  

    SOMETHING is going to happen.

    Small things can make for such a difference in the days.

From within the Bermuda Triangle of Technology

    It started here, with the wonky photos last week.  There was an attempt to post on Instagram. The photos showed up as black squares.  Worked around that.  Dishwasher died.  After it leaked over the kitchen floor.  Working around that with handwashing, which I mostly don't mind.  (K. does the silverware.  I hate the silverware.)  On Monday there were more Instagram issues (for many of us).  And Typepad, this blog's platform, went completely down.  For days.  It seems to be back-ish, photos and spacing still wonky and with photos that come and go.  It feels like everything might be fading away...

    But yesterday... Yesterday, I took a bus and a ferry to join two dear souls for a day- Velma and Catherine.

    Lunch, dinner, hanging out, and time at Bloedel Reserve.  A place that I love.  With folks that I adore.

    We walked and talked among the trees, moss and ferns.  The two of them know so much.

    Such a good day.

    If not for technology, chances are I wouldn't know either of them.

    Today our internet was out for much of the day.  It appears to be working. For the moment.

“Hope in the Darkness”

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.

Week in Review ***

(*** Friends of ours eat all of their leftovers on the weekends, they call it "Week in Review".)

"Circles Held Her"

    Unexpectedly, the houses are still coming.  I want to learn some photo collage skills, to create a village of these stories of home for myself.

    The evening birds seem much more contented than the morning ones.  More songlike, rather than desperate "Let's get going!" tweets.  Remembering the mornings of hungry little ones and the rush to get everyone everything and out the door on time.

    LOTS of Jude's thread beads happening.

    Sometimes I end up feeling dotty from them.  Deb's thread and cloth must have had the same dye recipe, and Tina's yellow framing cloth is the icing on the cake.

    I've been listening to books from the library while I stitch these days.  Finished a lovely middle reader Caribbean fairy-sea-tale yesterday, A Comb of Wishes, and am now partway into Cloud Cuckoo Land.  What a change in required concentration level!

    A boat stitched while thinking of dearest friend who is out at sea for the next couple of weeks.  She leads a life of adventure with new experiences and people at every turn- a glittering existence.  In my quiet lamp lit corner, I sometimes wonder how we found and held onto each other over the last twenty plus years?

    Walking through Seattle in springtime, it's hard to remember to watch where you're going.  I'm often tripping over the sidewalk cracks or getting dizzy from craning my neck to the sky and tree tops.

    On Earth Day, someone on Instagram posted their visit to Walden's Pond.  I was there 24 years ago last January with K., visiting my sister, and six months pregnant with Blue.  The pond was frozen over.  I stepped out onto the ice so that I could say that I was on Walden's Pond.  K and my sister's guy stood on shore shouting at me to, "Bring the baby back on land!"

"Itzel" Mayan for "rainbow".

    Wishing you all a colorful week of glittery things.

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?!?

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"

Tree dreams

    Today's trees made while remembering lots of camping trips- good and not-so-much.

    It's been too many years since we last camped.  One of those not-so-much trips led the boys veto the idea over and over afterwards.  In their defense, it was a really bad trip.  Hot, too hot for a campfire, too hot to cook, huge horseflies, mosquitoes, etc...  There were tears and tantrums from a few of us, until we finally gave up and took our sweaty-dirty-camping-clothed selves to the somewhat fancy restaurant at the Lodge down the road, and paid way too much for a mediocre meal in air conditioning.

    I'm looking forward to camping again, once it's just the two of us.

    There may be way too many Big Plans floating around in my head for the just-the-two-of-us days to come, but a soul can dream of trees…

Silver the moon

    This base was stitched a while ago and rediscovered in the mediocre clean-up of Wednesday.  One of Deb's threads seemed to match the steel-like feeling.  I loved making those +++ marks, watching the threads change in the indigo and walnut dyed cloth.

    The last days have been busy and full.  Mostly good things- drying clothes out in the sunshine (including the cotton sheets that I can't wait to sleep in tonight), making a delicious dinner out of leftovers (or what a friend calls, "Week in Review," and a day trip to my friend's house across the water.

    There were riots of colors in her yard.  It was the hottest day yet this year, near 80.  My legs saw the sun for the first time.  I hope that no one was blinded by them.  She gardened.  I helped a tiny bit, but mostly moved in and out of the shade while stitching and writing.

    I wrote memories of Myrtle.  A girl I knew in third and fourth grades.  She been on my mind all week.  There's still a bit more of her story to write down.

    Mt. Rainier during the ferry ride home.

    Today I feel like I have a sun-hangover.

    I love having the windows open again- fresh air, the clear sounds of birds and the smell of flowers.

    On Friday K. came home with raspberries and blueberries.  For the first time in a very long time, I had the feeling that everything is really going to be ok... relief.

Blue & potatoes

    Before the boat it looked quite desert-like with its soft colors dyed by Tina, Deb and Laura.  There was quite a long ponder as to what might be in the wide open pink space?  At first, a boat washed ashore onto dry land.  Fortunately, the sea rolled in, silk from Richard that I dyed in indigo.  

    It's been good and fun to dip into new color combinations lately, but I do find that after each wading there is a craving for the familiar comfort of blue.  

    And now for the nature portion of our show...

    The birthday "card" from Blue arrived.  Yes, a real potato.  It came inside of a mailer labeled "The Best Gift Ever".  Inside was a shiny gold box holding the spud, with a message from him written on the other side.  This is so my family.  I texted him, "You're so weird!  And I'm so glad!" 

    He has always had a thing for potatoes.  You can't imagine how happy he was to discover blue potatoes, there was a potato costume for Halloween at age nine, and in high school his email address included the words "bluepotato".

    A sprig that K brought home from a walk.  The smell is delicious.

    Speaking of delicious... stitching into this silky moon gift from Jude... sigh... like melting.  A very soft thin cloth.  This one has so many tiny stitches, some to include the whole rainbow spectrum, others not needed for design or stability, but because I just didn't want to stop.