handstories

stitching self

    This is the last painting that I started at the workshop...still pulling my thoughts together.

    The floating figure is based on a poppet/doll started a few years ago.  A kind of self-portrait.

    Things are out of sorts right now.  Today is a day off, alone, and most of the morning was spent shuffling projects, taking a stitch here and there.  Finally, I pulled her into my lap and have been adding waves to wrap around her tree-ring heart.

    The rest of the day might be spent inside of a new found fairytale retelling, Sea Witch.

list ticked

    The list is all checked off, at least enough of it.  Enough that I can leave for the weekend.  Everything's packed, including the beginning of a new piece for myself, about childhood and holding onto what was good.  

    I'm off to a workshop through Sunday, a self-indulgent splurge that I've been looking forward to since last spring.  This experience is so out of my comfort box, and right up my alley all at the same time.  

    More about the workshop (and the spoon) soon...

    Wishing everyone a happy and kind weekend!

seas of blue

    The four tops/backs/sides of the two boys' quilts were dyed a faded blue in that botched indigo vat.

    Not all that was dreamed of, but good and blue enough.  Moon's is in progress, there's a moon shape quilted in the center-ish.  Now the stitches are circling round and round it.  Stitching through layers required finding a thimble.  

    It's coming with us to the Oregon beach tomorrow.  Four days at the ocean!  I can't wait to see the sea!  To put my feet in, stare at, smell, listen to it...  Maybe I'll dip some cloth into it?  And maybe, away from the city lights and hazy smoky sky, maybe there will be stars?!

    Wishing you all wonder filled skies this week!

enough

    And suddenly it's autumn weather, even a light misting rain this morning.  So happy to put socks on.

    It's been a kind of a topsy-turvy week, often not even knowing what day of the week it is.  The Blue Angels are practicing over and rattling the neighborhood right now, so this must be Thursday.  Yesterday, while draping cloth to dry, I looked up to see who was chattering in the tree, only to have a shower of squirrel pee land on my head and face.  Last night Blue told of his plans to be in the Macy Parade at Thanksgiving, and to spend January in Prague.  I'm not even sure which way is up right now?!

    Continuing to wrestle with the indigo vat, trying to force something out of it, putting the cloths back into it each day and overnight, poking it with a stick now and then, deeper down in the dying blue.  It's wet in the photo above, dripping the last round of effort, in the mist.  Expecting that it will be much lighter once washed, but calling it a done deal...blue enough.

 

    This cloth keeps landing in my lap.  Many of the squares are stitched with some kind of circle.  A symbol of wholeness and centering for me.  Loving how they hold and contain space, and give a sense of infinity at the same time.  I've been trying to meditate this week, just a little bit each day.  I'm terrible at it, and don't know if it's doing a thing for me.  Within ten minutes jumbled thoughts zip in and out, and all over the place... hanging a painting, spiders, tape, tuna fish sandwiches, scary dolls, phthalo turquoise, and deepest desires.  It is restful, and the fleeting moments of focus usually come back to the idea of wholeness...what it might mean, feel like...whole enough.

odd, but not . . .

    In it is everything else, or maybe just everything?  Three, three threes, thirteen, stones, mapping, off-kilter balancing, some star dots, and story.  And looking at it here, I'm finding more- straight and not, simple and not, woven intersections, a moonrise or sunset on the horizon, or snowflakes falling on a snowfolk, criss-cross applesauce... ha, it really could be anything.

    There was thinking, sketching and the making of lists while figuring out this square, but none of it was really used.  In the end I just picked up the soap sliver (what I use to draw on cloth), and this came out.  A new, but old, form of symbolic self-talk.  

    I was never very good with languages.  (Ask my first German professor who, in his first year of teaching, I made doubt his chosen profession . . . there was a happy ending, I passed, he went on to successfully teach for years, and I was a bridesmaid in his wedding, but that's another story...)

    Anyhow, I'm very happy with this.  It feels like me.

brimming

    Under a blue moon's glow.

    It should be held close.  Gazed at so hard you can see yourself in it.  Wandering the woods.  Deep in the silence and the cool stillness, with the soft sounds of quiet life.

    I wish I were smaller.

she sang a song of birds and starlight

    Things I didn't imagine are happening with this piece.  

    I shared it with two new friends yesterday.

    That was not like me.

    I let a stranger have a quick glimpse of it today.

    Really not like me. 

    It is keeping me centered right now.

    It is so full of story.    

    I am in love with this cloth.

home & sky

    A hilltop home and a tree have been added to the "Child Cloth".  I'm looking for ways to put personal symbols into this cloth.  Things that have given strength, hope and dreams.  I think I keep saying the same thoughts and wishes over and over about this piece.  Hopefully, that is weaving them deeply into it.

    The fires in Washington are growing.  Last night the moon was pink, and barely visible by the time I went to bed.  This morning there is an eerie yellow haze outside, and everything is covered in ash.  Sending thoughts to those in the midst of it all.

    Home, hill and tree are all from Deb's cloth and threads.

some new stories

     The hill/mountain shape has been showing up a lot lately.  In cloth, doodles, and painting.  What do they mean?  There's a harmony to them, a place for balancing things.  Edges of unknown, with mysteries beyond.  Thinking of childhood stories, Besty and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, and fairy tales with magical creatures who live in hidden openings of hillside caves, or where the hero must get over a rise, or three, sometimes through peaks of fire and ice.  

    Around kindergarten age, we lived in the countryside, on a hill.  There was a rise in front of our house where I learned to ride the purple bike (after landing in the blackberry bushes on the side), and had a dream that was so real that I'm still not sure it didn't happen . . .

    A big group of us, all children, were running down the hill, in the middle of the gravel road.  We were running so fast and free, laughing, arms waving, that suddenly my feet lifted off the ground and I was carried by the momentum of the rush of our feet and delight . . . floating, flying, in the middle of friends, to the bottom of our hill.  

    I can still remember that feeling, of being carried by wind and joy.

 

    "Anything can happen on a pink hill", "Rainbow's memory" and "The sky twinkled rainbows & petals" are in the shop today.  

    I hope your day is filled with memories of flight and laughter.

waving and wanting

 

    I could use a bottle of sea in my pocket.  One that if I put my eye or ear to the opening, waves could be seen, and the sound of their crashing and easing into the sand would be caught.  I'm tired, mostly because it's that time of year, and I'm ready for a break (as are the children!)  Some of it's because next year is unknown, which is nothing new in this position, but I've asked for a change, which is not how I do things.  

    Lines from a Stevie Smith poem keep running through my head,     

            "…I was much too far out all my life   

                And not waving but drowning."

 

     Over the last few years I have learned to trust more.  Trust that things will work out, go as they should, be ok . . . in cloth, work, life.

    Now I'm working on the idea of wanting.  I'm not one for making plans for myself.  Daydreams and wishing now and then, but nothing clear or focused.  I'm very good at wanting for others and fighting to make it happen for them, but not for me.

    Some of it is from the trusting, because things do generally work out, one way or another, so, no need to worry, but a piece of it is from not feeling deserving.  Who am I to ask for something?  There are years of therapy and explorations of self and childhood that help it all to make sense, but still, how do you learn to think in different ways?

    So, all to say, I'm very uncomfortable and quite jammed up, but I'm not drowning.  I am learning how to wave- to the universe and myself.