handstories

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…

A joke with a small side of weary

Pine Needle

    (Get it?  Please laugh.)

    Finished shirt.  It's ok.  Deb has given me some good tips for the next one...

    I'm sensing a theme in the recent paintings.  Noticing that a lot of my "self portraits" are screaming.  I suppose you could imagine they're singing, but I know the truth.

    A strange moon in the works...

Jumping all over the place

    Yesterday's wish for a boat...  Actually, it was a wish to be in a boat, in the middle of the sea...alone.

    There are seventy days until Moon goes to college.  Being a summer birthday, we waited a year to put him into kindergarten.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  He'll be nineteen in a couple of weeks, and is more than ready to move on to the next phase of his life, as he constantly reminds us... sigh.  While we're going to miss him (and I think he'll miss us too, even if he doesn't know it!), we are all ready to love each other from some distance! 

    This parting is going to be so much easier than Blue's (some of you may remember my mama drama- part one and part two).  Being second, and going to school only an hour and a half away should make for a much less dramatic transition.  Finger's crossed.

    Jump!  (I have a cousin who writes "Jump!" whenever changing topics without a segue.)

    Inspired by Deb's lovely dress, I pulled out my copy of  The Act of Sewing, consulted Deb (many thanks!), and have almost finished a version of the shirt.

    Weirdly, I love making bias tape (first photo), but really dislike hemming.

    Jump!

    There will be new pieces in the shop tomorrow morning.  A few longer moon cloths, two tokens, a tree and one peaceful boat (without me in it). 

When we speak of moons

    Friday morning, a cloth of gifts that felt full from the start.  (Thank you Jude, Deb, Deb and Tina.) That hill, from the get go, felt moon-ish to me- color, shape, and connecting with the pink moon above.  I've compared hills to cakes.  So cakes can be moons, too.  Maybe everything can be a moon?  And a cake?  Maybe everything is everything?

    This was my daily painting first thing that morning.   I hadn't connected them until just now. 

    And then, in the afternoon, a dear friend on a road trip, sent this from Utah...

    Everything is connected.  I'm pretty sure of that.

    I had thought that this was done, but after looking at this photo... no.  More balance was needed in the lines around the hill- a wider arch, and a wanting to carry the lightness of the hill color beyond.  Also, that top "circle" filled with golden stars and dots... not right.  (It's so hard and tedious to pick out those dots, especially when they're double stitched, tweezers help.)

    Yes.

    And YES.

    I seem to be disappearing or is it fading?  From here and other places, too.  Jude says that she can't comment here.  Wondering if there are others?  And what to do?

    Keep looking for moons, I guess...

Haze

    Even colors seemed too hot to look at for the last few days.  I appreciated the coolness of this Threadcrumb moon.

    Saturday 102°, Sunday 104°, Monday 108°

    Sunday and Monday set record highs for Seattle.  Since 1896, there have only been three other days that have been 100° or over in Seattle.  Last week, when I first saw the forecast, I may have cried.  Today is blessedly only 84° (3:00 pm), so far.  Perspective changes things.

    It's an old house without air conditioning.  We did the open/close/cover dance with the windows and doors.  Scattering and moving fans as needed.  On Sunday I pulled out the old wading pool (congratulating myself on being a packrat).  Lunch was IN the pool.

    Family down in Oregon had it worse.  Mom said it was 117° at one point yesterday.  My brother lives in the next town.  Neither of them have air conditioning either.

    A spray bottle of cold water and mint leaves became my new best friend, traveling everywhere in the house with me.

    Only a few stitches happened during the weekend.  Early.  Before my fingers were too sweaty.

    There was salad after salad.  We had washed, chopped, made of all of the ingredients before the wave- lettuce, tomatoes, mint, nuts, corn cut from the cob, shredded chicken, dressing, etc... putting them in containers to pull out for meals, everyone serving themselves buffet style.  Anything to lessen movements and heat.

    By Monday it was too hot to even go outside (except to hand our poor mail woman a cup of ice water, with appreciation and an apology for our hill), so I filled the tub instead.  I probably stood in it at least once every thirty minutes.  K. laughed when he passed by and saw me brushing my teeth while wading.  Happily the toilet is positioned right next to it, so I was able to sit for a spell with a book now and then.

    Moon and I had a short tub party.

    "Moonfall"

    Today I am grateful for 84 and being able to hold a needle again.

Skies & water

    After stitching myself into a mental corner on a a couple of pieces yesterday, I thought a straight-forward tree might help to shake things loose.  Using Deb's moody cloth for the sky should have been a hot pink flag of what was to come.

    I have an idea for a quilt.  Something simple that I can work on in the evenings, not requiring sharp eyes, because I don't have enough projects half-started.

    Remembering the rivers and lakes that we grew up swimming in.  Remembering Dad tossing me off the fishing boat into the lake to "teach" me how.  Remembering frantic dog paddling and screaming at him to pull me out.  He didn't.  I swam.  Bike riding was the same story, at the top of a small hill on a gravel road with a ditch to one side and blackberry bushes on the other.  It was his way.  Sink or swim, or crash into blackberries, as the case may be.

    There was a very frustrated crow outside the bedroom window early this morning.  It cawed itself hoarse and finally gave up.  By then I was wide awake.  Blue spots represented the croaky caws in this morning's painting.

    And then this happened...

A kindness of things in June

    Things are good.  We've had a very welcomed turn-around after, like so many others, a kind of tough year.

    A year ago this month, K's workplace of fifteen years laid off a third of the employees, him included.  As the company struggled due to COVID, we saw it coming, but still... There was a good severance, so there was time to figure things out, but there were big worries.  I knew that we would be alright (most of the time), but also that it might require a some big changes.  And insurance... don't get me started about insurance.  So we muddled through the year, taking turns telling the other that all would be fine. 

    I turned to stitching with even more focus, because it was something to do, and something that I could do.  K. started volunteering regularly at the foodbank warehouse where he has occasionally volunteered over the years.  He has always enjoyed his time there, and loves doing good for others.  I threw out the idea that I thought that this was his new calling, that everything was working together to make a new life for him.

    Winter was a hard time of worry, but there was a day in January when I told him, "It will all be ok in June."

    "June!  That's so far away!" K said.

    But June was in my head, "June.  Some things have to happen, work out, but they will, in June."

    In April he was offered a temporary position, through June, without benefits.  Without describing all of the eggs in our basket, taking the job was a leap of faith (I talked a little about it here).  K questioned my "knowing".

    "It's not June yet, it'll be ok," I assured.

    He was offered a permanent position the first week of June, with benefits.  After thirty years in the corporate world, he's enjoying the work, with good people, doing good.  He's right where he should be.

    A few days later, walking in the arboretum, there were five ravens, loud and close!  Blurry photos...

    A group of ravens is called an "unkindness," I don't think so.  I had great awe and joy in seeing them.  A sign of things being bigger than imagined.

      There is such relief!  Unexpectedly, after hearing the news, my stitching slowed to almost a stand still.  Everything did.  I've spent the last couple of weeks aimless, not doing much of anything, just resting body, mind and soul.

    There was graduation this week.  Beneath the Space Needle, Moon and more than four hundred others.  It was the first time that the class was all together in over a year.  It was a great celebration!  (If you've got your binoculars (we did), he's on the far side, see that all purple row in the middle?  He's in the middle of the row behind it, to the right of the student in white.)

    And now, summertime...and easing back into things, starting with mini moons...

    Wishing us all many moons of ease.

Many many moons & blessings

    It's all about moons lately... the moon and my Moon.

    Our Moon is wrapping up his senior year of high school.  Each day is a "Last Something-or-Other" it seems.  Tomorrow is his last in-person class in the school building, then a few more days of on-line, a couple of on-line AP tests, and an abbreviated distanced outdoor ceremony next week.

    This week has been all about the ending of his time with the theater group.  They have meant the world to him.  Finding this group his sophomore year finally gave him a place he felt he belonged.  It was the same for me forty years ago.

    Eleven years ago as Poseidon for an ancient Greece study...

    Last week as King Triton in "The Little Mermaid" school musical.  It's the same crown! (with the addition of shells).

    They did a wonderful job of creating this on-line musical.  Filming in their homes, parks, and a few at a time masked on stage.  I don't know how the editors put it all together?  My heart swelled every time he sang.

    I try not to talk about the fact that his mother has been saying "theater" to him most of his life.  This boy who loved costumes from the get-go, who loved all of the plays and dress up days of elementary school, and who chose the catcher position for baseball because it had the most involved uniform.  Of course, it took a girl to get him to finally audition.

    He's looking forward to the fall auditions at college.  I'm looking forward to seeing him in a musical in-person.

    I'm sorry that I've been absent, and have missed feeling connected... I'm hopeful that things will settle down and back into a routine soon.  There are more good things going on.  I'll share next time.

      This is "Winifred"- a name meaning blessed, joy and peace.  Such a good name!  She will be in the shop update on Tuesday.

    Wishing you all blessings, joy and peace.

Beauty in a bit of storm

    I've been off the last few days.  Wandering aimless through the house, putzing, unfocussed, trying to stitch, but not liking anything that came out of my needle.  One piece was even thrown across the room with a "There's no hope for you!"

    Today was so dark- windy and raining.  Stormy weather often shakes things up for me.  I forced myself to sit down and try, "Make a boat."  It almost always works to help me find my way back home.

    In the middle of working on it, the old windows were rattling from the wind.  The blanket over my lap wasn't enough.  My feet fumbled around under the table in search of slippers.  There's been no need for them in the mostly nice weather we've had over the last weeks.  In fact, the last time I used them was while visiting my ferry-ride-away friend's house.  The visit when my wallet went missing.  I finally gave up on finding it two days ago... after several calls to the ferry lost & found, going there in person, searching the shrubs around the dock, and asking my friend to search between the cushions and in her long gravel driveway... On Monday I ordered a replacement driver's license, saying to K., "You know it will turn up now."

    Anyhow, one slipper was way under the table.  Reaching for it with my toe, I pulled it closer and slipped a foot in.  There was something in it.  My beloved $10 glittery designer wallet.  When I dropped it into the tote bag it must have fallen into the slipper.  Upon arriving home the slippers were tossed under the table, and the next day when I realized the wallet was missing, the fact that the slippers had been in the bag was completely forgotten.

    "She Needed Some Stars" with an indigo silk sail dyed by Deb G., and rainbow stars & deep sea by Deb L.

The promised painting post

    I don't consider myself a painter, and I love to paint.  First thing each morning, I sit down to my table, close my eyes and make marks within the square that was taped off the night before (a 3 1/2" square ruler is used as a guide).  It started one morning in September, I was wanting to paint, but not knowing what.  I enjoyed it so much that I've done it every day since, for 259 days.

    I try not to think, to pick up the pencil and just go.  The lines show up in all kinds of shapes- abstract, a response to the bird songs outside, something that's on my mind or table top, etc. The great thing is that there are no expectations or fails with blind drawings.  After the penciling, I jot down the first few words that come.  I don't always know what they mean.

    It's traced with a black pen.  The meditative feeling of this is centering.  Tracing from right to left slows me down, and helps to keep on the pencil line.  Sometimes the pencil is erased.

    And then the watercolors. These have accumulated over a few years.  With tiny magnets on the bottom, they're kept in an old colored pencil tin.  Most of these are from Ruby Mountain.  I especially love her Ruby's Grey, Pinkest Pink, silvery Spark, and clearly my thing for blue is showing.

    Sometimes I focus on one color (today it was different greens), or I might choose one each from the three primary colors- a blue, yellow and red (usually it's a pink), sometimes adding a gray.  I really enjoy mixing them to create the other colors, and experimenting with different combinations.  

    The first months' paintings were mixed in with other notes, journaling, what-nots, and done on both sides of the page.  A friend saw this and insisted I only use one side, without other scribblings around them.  It's been good to have cleaned up my act around this.

    All of the parts of this ritual are filling some need- drawing with freedom, thinking about color, the gestures of painting and tracing.  It's become a kind of emotional journal, a way to contemplate some of my connections with certain lines, shapes and colors, and a way to try new things with zero risk.  Also, this tiny stretch with a different medium, before a day of stitching, seems to loosen and wake things up.  It's interesting to notice how painting informs the stitching, and visa-versa. And, when all else fails, no matter what happens with the rest of the day, something has been made.

    I hope that this has answered all of the questions, please let me know if there are any other painting process wonderings!