handstories

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"

Blackberries & Sunlight

"Blackberry Moon" 

    "Purple Rain" was hummed quite a few times while making this one.  (Substituting the word "moon", of course.)  I haven't considered myself a purple person for a long while now, but I do love blackberry, to eat or eye.  More and more lavender tones have moseyed into recent stitching.  Much of the credit goes to the allure of Deb's and Tina's dyeing.  

    A recent car knitting moment, when I looked down and realized I was blackberry and plum from top to bottom.  Grandma Blanche loved purple.  Trimmed her trailer in it, chose a purple nightgown to be buried in, and then there's the lavender marble headstone at her grave...

    It was a beautiful sunny weekend.  Shiny things were pulled closer and closer to play with the light and catch their reflections.  I must have mesmerized myself, because I dozed off mid-stitch at one point. 

"Convergence of Home & Sky"

No rhythm, but still...

    Flow and time are sporadic and come in patches.  I feel like a crazy quilt.

    But there was a trip to M's house across the water.  Leaving the city and all of the things behind for a day.

    Soon it felt like another world.

    (Except for one moment...  There are signs everywhere stating that masks are required inside the ferry, you may be outside on deck or in your car without one.  Also, multiple announcements are made stating this, and that masks are available if needed.  The man sitting across from me did not have one on.  We moved to another part of the boat.  A while later the man was walking throughout the ferry, still without a mask.  We watched him pass one of the pursers, who was walking towards us. 

    Yes, I am a rule follower.  Yes, I think everyone else should be too.  Yes, I am a bit high strung these days, with things feeling somewhat out of control.  Yes, I may have been desperate to control something, anything.  Yes, I called out to the man, "You need a mask!"  Yes, I was ignored.  Yes, I called out to the purser who was sauntering by, doing nothing about the unmasked violator, "That man needs a mask!"  His eyes smiled, seemingly thinking I was just admiring his epaulettes.  I waved him over, "Excuse me!  That man isn't wearing a mask."  He then patronizingly began to explain to me that there was nothing he could do, other than offering a mask and a reminder of the requirement.  "Well, did you?"  I was met with a questioning confused look.  "Did you offer him a mask and a reminder of the rule?"  Silence.  "Do you have a mask to offer him?"  (I probably should add exclamation points to my last three statements to convey the tone I was using.)

    "Uh, yes, I can go find one..." and he quickly scurried away.

    "Sorry if that was too much," I said to M.

    "Nope.  It was just you being you.  Let's go down to the car."

    The rest of the day was wonderful.

    She gardened.  My height and long arms came in handy for dead heading the sunflowers threatening with their weight to break the stalk before the rest could finish blooming.

    Inspired by beautiful gifts (Deb, Jude, Tina), I stitched for the first time in days.

    It felt so good to notice beauty everywhere.

    We wandered through a flea market.  So many pretties and memories.  We found sets of our childhood dishes sitting right beside each other in one display.  A very good day.

    Autumn has arrived.  Bright glowing days and crisp air.  There are things to look forward to soon.

"Imagining Beyond"

Watching

    The ninth moon cabin block.  The green cloth was bought on the day Moon was born, with pauses to lean on fabric bolts during contractions.  (They had been going on for days, so I wasn't worried, but my friend was!)

     Working with bigger pieces of cloth has a soothing calming effect.  Last night there was a really long seam to fix on one side of a sheet.  I went to bed relaxed.

    I lost my wallet.  Again.  Second time in two years.  I don't know how or where.  Between home, ferry rides and M's house.  I'm almost positive it was in my bag, didn't use it, but it's gone.  Maybe it's here in the house still.  I don't know.  I've cleaned, called, retraced, even looked in gutters and grass where K dropped me off for the ferry.  Just gone.  I loved that wallet.  Glittery.  $10.00 at the Goodwill.  Perfect.  Sigh.

    Pinks and corals have moved into my work lately.  

    There was a conversation this week.  The other person didn't get it.  I didn't get that they didn't get it.  They felt exactly the same way about me.  It was like a deeply scratched record, sliding back and repeating, over and over.  Finally, I just had to let go, skip over the injury, and move forward, and appreciate what music I could hear, but I feel scraped and worn thin.

    This piece helped.  Chaos and rhythm together. "In Cacophony & Love, They Flew On".  It's just how things feel.  All of the stitches had to do with connecting, one piece of cloth to another or a continuing of one into another- birds bodies completed (it's interesting how a few stitches suggest a bird shape to the eye), flight patterns combined with moon rings, polka-dots scattering beyond, Deb's dyed speckles floating further.  Except the stars, those are for me. 

    (Many threads and that bottom strip from Deb with a ThreadCrumbs moon.  It will be in the shop with a few other pieces and a handful of tokens on Friday, 9am.)

    Thankfully, Twinkle keeps watch.

Lessons Learned

    I had no idea of how this experiment might go, just a lot of wondering.

    At times it was really good, a way of stretching and pushing myself.

    There were uncomfortable moments... all of these bare trunks, naked and waiting for their turn.

    At this point I realized how much I enjoy my usual method of letting the story of each piece evolve while being with it, having one idea lead to the next in the flow of making.  Working in this way slowed things down.  By stitching on so many at once, completing one part at a time (all of the grounds, then the skies, trunks, etc.), it was hard to remember ideas that had come earlier.  It felt a bit like speed dating- just as you're getting to know someone, it's time to move on to the next person, and when they come back around, you can't even recall their name and need to spend time getting reacquainted.

    At the same time, it was a way to notice that there are so many possible stories, that each could go in many directions, and to try to find ways to do things differently, to see something new.

    Even though I doubt that I will do this again, I'm glad I tried it.  It was a really good think.  By approaching things from a different angle, I was able to observe things about my own process, what works best for me, and some of the why's.

    And now there is a forest of friends...

evolutions

    Starting with a small stack of blue, what I thought would be a sea was pieced together.  A pink sky was imagined (there is something going on between pink and me lately...).  When the blues were stitched, suddenly they were sky like.  Ok, a green ground.  The green basket was pulled out.  Digging until something spoke to me... the map printed fabric, the earth, yep.  From there the pinks came together into a sun with reaching rays and blue stitches orbiting.

    Those rings of blue are related to a bunch of recent things...

    Spirals have been on my mind again, triggered by Jude's edge stitching, and reinforced when this piece turned up in that box wander last week.

 

 

    It's an interpretation of 13 year-old Moon's "hand" drawn galaxy, from five years ago.

    And then a necklace was seen.  I wish I had a photo of it.  At first I thought it was a cool spiral, not perfect, with lines crossing each other.  With a closer view, I saw that it was actually several separate silver pieces- circle, oval, and lopsided roundish rings, all of them hanging together from a thin chain, lines overlapping, sliding ever-so-slightly into new forms with each movement.  

    It's fascinating to me that the placement of lines can create the illusion of a different shape.  Concentric or overlapping rings seem a spiral, straight lines crossing each other at a center point feel round.

    The stars were added without thinking, and then questioned when I remembered that it was a Sun, not a moon.  Should the stars come out?  (Ha, thinking about how we say that the stars come out at night, meaning the complete opposite.)  The stars were left, because they are always there, even when we can't see them, but mostly because I like them.  And why should the moon be missing?  Why not?  The moon came out, too.

    Everything is and holds everything these days.

noticing stories

    The last squares were quilted yesterday, with stars filling more of those gaps created by my wandering lines of stitching.  I am both glad and sad about that.  Today I started the binding.  I've come up with a different idea of how to do it.  I can see it in my mind.  I hope it works, I hope it wears ok.  We'll see.

    Some starts were made...

    The book goes slower and slower, but still, it's going.

    This page has two things I love- the windows that led to us buying this house, and the blue walls I waited thirty years for.

    The other day I said that I felt story-less.  I know that I'm not, but they're sure hard to grab ahold of these days.  

    But then, I was noticing the few irises that grow under the cherry tree next to the sidewalk.  I remembered how much Grandma loved them and gladiolas, and fuchsias and sweet peas... she just loved all flowers.  Once her birthday was celebrated with cakes baked into flowerpots, each decorated with different frosting flowers, all displayed in a plant stand.

    And irises grew wild on the hill behind the first college I went to.  The hill K. and I climbed after he started to propose to me in the basement of my dorm, next to the pool table.  I could see where he was heading, and said, "You are NOT going to ask me anything important in front of a pool table are you?"

    So we walked up the hill, to a tree, which I made him climb.  Up in its branches, looking down the hill, at the school, town and the Columbia River below, we made our plans.  It was February, long before the irises bloomed, but they were there.

unexpected wandering

    A friend was going to Portland this weekend, and there was a spur of the moment decision to join her.  She had booked a swell waterfront room, where I enjoyed the river view in a sweet rose covered and pink piped chair, while she went off on her plans.

    It was good for stitching, too.

    We strolled by the river, and around the city a bit... appreciating the walkability, great old architecture and quirkiness of the place.  I took her to Mill Ends Park, which claims to be the smallest park in the world.

    Many cute animal statues that cavort in the fountains along one street were patted and posed with, and we smiled at the happy doughnuts painted on the garbage cans.

    There was also a discovery of a carefully curated upscale GoodWill store, where I just may have bought a glittery wallet, and just outside was parked this very cheery bicycle.

    We laughed much of the trip, mostly at our own quirkiness, including the disoriented feeling that came over me, over and over... a sudden unsureness of where I was, or why?  Not a bad sensation, just wandering in the unknown maybe?

an enchanted evening

    The Cotton Building in Port Townsend was a beautiful space, and the rain stopped in time.

    So pleased to have had my little squares next to the wonderful work of Tininha and Tracy.

        Tininha's weavings are as joyful and passionate as she is.

    Tracy's patchwork brings to mind the wonder and fascinating stories of her life.

    I loved how children were drawn to the textiles.

    My favorite moment came near the end, looking around the room...  Seeing K. (who is such a good guy, and who was my rock around this whole thing- supporting, encouraging, enduring a few meltdowns, and knowing how to do the credit card thingamajig!).  Across the way were my three oldest and dearest friends laughing and talking together (their support and help, before, during and after, went above and beyond, and held me together).  There had been reconnecting with people, meetings for the first time in real life, friends, and friends of friends, and such kind and generous thoughts shared... I realized how rich my life really is, that all of these folks are a part of my world, including those of you who come here and have given such heartfelt cheering-on and support, that I'm able to spend time doing something I truly love...  The night was, and my life is, so full of goodness.

    It really was a lovely evening.   

some nitty-gritties

    Framing.

    Labeling.

    Wrapping.

    It seems that things are getting done for the show on Saturday.  

    Some parts are fun - stamping titles, and wrapping notecard sets with old pattern paper.  Which brought back fond memories of watching Mom lay out the makings for a new dress on the dining room table, explaining what that black bias arrow was, and how tucking the pins through the pattern and fabric twice held it much more securely.

    Much of this process has been good.  I'm learning some things about myself.  The momentary panic attacks seem to have subsided.  Thinking through the details is right up my micro-manager alley.  And I've even done some hard things- including asking for help.  Twice!  Something that is very difficult, and rarely done over here, and both friends said, "Yes"!  One is coming with me a day early, and driving!  The other is stopping over here the night before, just to reassure me that everything's all ok- the plan, the display, the pricing, what I'm wearing... Me.

    Yup, it's all going to be ok.