handstories

Vacation

    Mornings, days, even evenings have such a routine right now.  Rarely is any day different than the one before.  Wake up, shower, start oatmeal, closed eyes drawing, stir oatmeal, paint drawing, tea kettle whistle blows to be poured, stir oatmeal, finish painting, eat oatmeal, and then, aside from a lunch break, stitch for much of the day, an occasional chore, make dinner, etc... repeat.  They are fine days for the most part.

    Today, awake before dawn, the drawing came first, with eyes open.  After painting and oatmeal, I left the studio, announcing, "I'm taking the day off."

    Curling up with the cat in the front room, I watched TV, and knit on a plain sock for hours.

    After lunch, there was a little stitching in a book I made, on a page where I had wiped the extra paint off of the brush this morning. 

    It was a very nice day of playing, and playing hooky from myself.  Time to make dinner...

Can I hear me now?

 

    There was probably more time spent on the phone this week than in the last six months put together.  Several calls with friends and family.  Mostly ok to good.  Verbal skills are definitely going downhill with all of this isolation.

    The words that were exchanged are blurred together, much of the information forgotten, only the gist of feelings exchanged remain.  Details that used to matter so much now slip like silk.

    I feel like myself with cloth, and safe.  Possibilities fill the spaces of not knowing, instead of anxiety and imagined incriminations.  When it doesn't work, it's ok.  There's a knowing that things can change, be layered on, or be chalked up to being an experiment or experience, not a waste.  It's all time with cloth.

    It's swell to be in this relationship with cloth.  I'm still work at getting to this kind of kindredness and kindness with myself.

    I am getting better at listening.

Greening

    Sometimes a color calls.  Green and gold make me think of Dad, and just now I'm seeing that the roses bring his mom, Rosee, into the story, too.

    Yesterday I spent a bunch of time at the computer store.  It was stressful feeling as if I only understood every other sentence, and couldn't retain any of them.  Finally, I thought to take notes.  Things are in it, and it no longer types in a cryptic language.  Now the shift button doesn't work, meaning no punctuation or capital letters, which means most passwords can't be put in.  So... a new computer is needed, and an adaptor, and another backup box, and an appointment in another town to have this old one downloaded for transferring.  Honestly, I was ready to walk away from everything.  Things grow more and more complicated, or I'm becoming more and more simple.

    Instead of making the appointment, I got lost in this tree.  Maybe I'll call next week.  One step at a time.

    "Breathing in Green" and liking how this can mean different things.

There & here

    It was a very nice anniversary, thank you again for all of the sweet wishes.

    We took a drive up to Bellingham for a lunch of our favorite peanut soup and to spend a little time in the trees (and in memory lane) along Chuckanut Drive.  There was an added treat of stopping by Deb's to wave to her and Lola over her gate!

    It is truly an autumn-blanket-on-the-lap-tea-in-the-afternoon kind of day here. 

    This piece has turned itself around and around in my head and hands.  Carrying home, going home, being home...it's all of it.

    I do think things from the last few days are about being content.

    And those loops of thread are heading back to their natural state.

Thirty-seven

    How I busied myself during an online meeting yesterday... and without any planning or counting at all, I think there are 37 loops here.

    And today is our 37th anniversary!  Back then, I never imagined being on this earth this long, let alone having such a good guy to be here with.  A sky full of lucky stars twinkles over us.

    There's a walk in the woods being thought about for this afternoon, and maybe some talk about which stars to follow next...

Trees & daydreams

    Tina's beautiful dyeing makes a great stormy twilight sky.

    This gave me an idea last night.

    Sometimes every day seems exactly the same, not in a bad way necessarily, but you never know what might change.  Even the smallest thing can matter.

    There are new story cloths in the shop today- lots of trees and daydreams.  

October

    Sometimes I have a sense of the shapes while drawing with my eyes closed each morning.  This bear felt like a surprise gift to myself.

    The tree tokens keep coming.  There was a moment of imagining one hundred of them all together.  It's not likely to happen, but who knows?

    All of the tiniest scraps have a place to land.

    I love October.  Always have.  Just waking up knowing it was here brought new energy.  Two boxes of stuff from the past were even brought up from the basement and gone through.  Most of the contents can go now.  Funny how a few years has made a big difference in what matters.  This stained glass was made in high school, I think I was 15.  I remember picking through the pieces, looking for the blues (it really has been a life long love affair), and being in excited disbelief that we were going to get to make something so real.  This I'm keeping.

a marmalade of memories

    FYI- I had turned off the comments on my last post, was feeling overwhelmed by technology and feelings.  I just wanted to say how my heart was full, of sadness about Michelle and gladness for this community.

    I made marmalade, because the peaches all ripened at once.  Peach and orange.  It's been more than a decade.  A recipe from an old friend, created in 1991.  I wonder where she is now?

    Pieces are finally being finished.  There's a small stack here waiting to go into the shop, once I figure out how to do all of my self-imposed crazy systems without my computer.  It's more than I want to think about.

    Once Janie and I made this marmalade together.  1993?  A hot August day in her light and airy kitchen.  We had fun.  I miss her.

    More small trees.  They're meeting some need inside of me.  Not quite sure what that is?  Maybe it's about being doable, and that small can hold enough.  At least enough for a moment.

    After a couple of weeks, my computer turned on without the yelling moaning beeping sound.  It's not out of the woods yet, it only types a weird symbolic language that gets me nowhere, but the photos and files appear to still be on it.  So, ok.

    Yesterday I finally called the support place.  It's always a mission to get through to a real person... (FYI- one way to get off hold quickly is to put bread in the toaster and make a run for the bathroom.)  A nice guy.  He listened to the details, asked if it was a glass of water, or was it really wine?  "Nope.  Water.  Wine came after the spill."

    He was encouraging about my files and scheduled an in-store appointment for next week.  At the end, he clapped for my sense of humor, said I was a delight to talk to (not something I hear often), and admired my c'est la vie attitude about the news that it's most likely the end of the line for my computer.  "Of course it is, it's 2020."

    

  As "delightful" as it all was, the call exhausted me.  Afterwards, the toast was re-toasted, tea was made, old photos of the boys were misted over, and then time was spent listening and re-listening to the phone message I saved from my dad four years ago.  It was just after his wife died, two years before he did.

    "Hi honey, just me.  Sorry I missed your call.  I was out loading the rig.  S. and I are going up elk hunting here for a week, and taking off in the morning.  I'm just Designated Driver.  He's doing the hunting.  I can't get around at all anymore.  Anyway, other than that it's... it's going one day at a time.  It gets a little better with time.  That's all I can say, honey.  Love ya.  Talk at ya later.  Bye."

    It's not the bright peachy orange I remember.  Cooked too fast and too long, I think.  Still, it tastes good.

Holding

    This is an illustration by A. Scott Banfill from the picture book Whisper from the Woods written by Victoria Wirth.  It tells the story of the cycle of life of trees, how the forest tends and cares for each other.

    "In winter, asleep they'd stand, hand reached hand, roots gently touched underground."

    This book has been in my thoughts while stitching trees lately, especially this latest piece.  Since hearing about Michelle, even more.  Thinking about this community- how we enrich, tend and care for each other, how we hold each other, even though most of us have never met.  What this circle means... it changed my life...there aren't deep enough words.

    Holding love for Michelle's light and spirit, and for all of you.

At the root of things

    It was a dark and stormy morning... and very cozy.

    I think I will make a few more of these.

    The idea for this, and the one started below, came in that space between awake and dreams last night.  I was thinking about all of these trees, their roots, and an old thought of wondering how we can make our own roots. 

    I thought about the first time I met with a good therapist. (There were two visits with a really bad one a few months before, but I don't count him.)  She asked me to come back with a drawing of my family tree that included colors or symbols marking various disfunctions- alcoholism, mental illnesses, abusive, gamblers, etc...  It took a couple of tries to make it big enough to include everything.   At the next appointment, I handed over a large, very marked up, and very colorful piece of paper to her, saying, "No wonder I'm here!"  It was eye opening to see it all at once!

    There's still a ways to go with this one, in stitch and thoughts.