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"

New toys and thoughts

    There have been a lot of comings and goings, but finally back home.

    The workshop was good.  Christine is wonderful and generous with sharing her wealth of know-how, inspiration, materials, and ideas.  There was lots of playing, especially with trying out printing ideas.  Aiming for a new layer on the cloth, I experimented with this clever little press, gelli plate printing, indigo, and cyanotype.

    I really enjoyed exploring this liquid cyanotype process.  An area is painted with the mixture and then exposed to sunlight.

    There were experiments with overlapping layers, wet and dry fabric, and using various objects to create shapes.

    And then collaging things together...

    There are still some questions and ideas to try, and I'm looking forward to diving further.

Floating & Flow

    This was started in the few quiet moments of last weekend, in between hours of this...

    Blue Angels.  They roar over our house for four days- two of them practicing, and then two days of shows for Seattle's Seafair every August.  One of the silver linings of the pandemic was the event being cancelled for two years, but they came back.  They can be seen out of any window in the house.  Sometimes so low that you can make out the writing on the sides.  The house shakes, my brain shakes, the cat runs.

    We went to the co-op to escape.  The display of currants beside apples and strawberries was beautiful.

"An Exuberance"

    Fresh indigo dyed silk on Tina's midnight purple above Deb's fiery cloth.  It felt like a party.

    And this one, started yesterday.  Often it all comes down to what scraps are scattered closest.  It began with the pink arc.  I was thinking rainbow, but then went looking for a moon.  This is one of Jude's, beneath a starry gift also from her... and then the two small scraps by Deb and Maiwa were within reach...

    Sometimes everything finds each other, reaches out and connects in ways that feel outside of me, a kind of floating into place.

Hoping

"Holding Hope"

Contentment

    That tiny Deb scrap on the bottom left was the dangling bit left over from the house in the last post, it perfectly.  Sometimes it's all about making the bases- putting cloth together, those seams with Jude's glue stitches.  It got this far and then wandered away...

    Not a lot of focus this week, distracted, tired from the crazy dreams/nightmares.  Trying to keep a menagerie of creatures in a basket while trying to find my way home, but ending up lost in a mall...

    Sometimes making Jude's thread beads with Deb's threads can happily fill a day.

    I wake up not being sure of anything and ok with that. 

    Last night's... Taking a nap with groceries while Moon had a Harry Potter party in the next room and a neighbor was trying to wake me up so that he could read me a poem that he'd written.

    After going to the grocery store this morning and forgetting the very first thing on the list, I called the neighbors to see if they had the missing chickpeas?  They did!  (When I went over to get them, I shared the dream and offered to listen to any poems he might write.  He had a good laugh over the idea.

    There was a different house and roof here, and other stars, too.  After a couple of hours of stitching, it just wasn't right.  So, it was all pulled out and replaced with some of Tina's deep purple and topped with Deb's dream cloth.  The top left corner was sun-printed with seed beads. Stars, dots and sparkles are still going...

    Sometimes I have no idea what's going on or where things are going.  It's really nice to be at ease with that...most of the time.

Stories with a Stranger

    With an eyelet from Deb's dyeing under a blue moon by Tina, I started a new home cloth.

    I had a fun phone conversation yesterday.  There is a credit card that I never use, that K. wants us to start using.  The problem is that because I never use it, I had never changed the incorrect name on it.  I told K. that I would need to go to the store it was issued through.  A store that we rarely go to now. 

    "No you don't, just call the 800 number on the back of it."

So, yesterday I finally called.  After a couple of tries to choose the right number, to get to the right department, a pleasant southern woman answered, "Hello, my name is S.  How are you doing today?"

    "Good.  How are you?"

    "Fine.  Thank you for asking!  Let me verify some information...  What is the name as it appears on the card?"

    Answered.

    "Here's a security question... What is your favorite pet?"

    "My favorite pet?  I've only had cats..."

    No.

    A specific cat?  "Twinkle? Jenny?  Jake?  Mittens?  Midnight?..."

    No.  No.  No.  No.  "It starts with a B..."

    "A 'B'?!?"  Bird?  Bat?  Buffalo???

 

    "Oh, wait a minute!  I clicked on the wrong name..."

    "Was it my husband's?  K....?"

    "Yes, sorry about that..."

    "Did he say Buffy?!?"

    "Yes."

    "Oh, Buffy...poor old thing!  She's dead."

    "Oh, I'm sorry!"

    "No, she's long gone and was a crazy dog that he had back in high school.  A few weeks after K. left for college, his mother called me up in hysterics, saying that K's dad had accidently backed the car up over Buffy.  When he went to try to help her, she bit him and died.  His mom called me because she was afraid that she would start laughing if she called K.  She couldn't stand Buffy.  That was fall of 1980..."

    "Oh, my!" said S. and then had a revelation of her own, "1980, that was the year that my dad came out..."

    "We have some stories to share!" I said.  She agreed.  We went on for a minute, and then she remembered she had a job to do... 

    Clearly, I had verified who both K and I were, so she moved on to another kind of question, but still one that I wasn't sure of the answer to.  "Is it ______?"  Clearly it wasn't.  "Maybe I should just tell you what my question is?  Maybe none of this matters?  How do I change the name on my card?"

    "You need to go to the store where it was issued."

    "I knew it!  I was right!  K. said I needed to call you, but I was right!"

    "Of course, you were!"

    The whole conversation was very fast, only a few minutes, but we were both laughing hard by the end. 

    This piece was fun, too.

"She Remembered Her Song"

Last week & today

    Yesterday I stitched a star.  The first in a week.

    When I got home last Monday, there was a lot of laundry and picking up to do.  Chores had been ignored by all of us for the last few weeks.  We all kind of threw in the towel and just got through...  I didn't stitch at all for a couple of days.  There was putzing, tidying, show watching... dinners were cooked.

    After a couple of days of nothing, I continued quilting on the woven blanket.  It was on the end of the couch, right where I left it.

    Each night I would fall asleep thinking, "Tomorrow I'll get back to making pieces, blogging, instagram, get focused, get going..."  And then another day of just quilting would happen.

    Friday I went up to the bookroom.  The room where you can't see the books because of all of the stuff that all of us have thrown into it over the last decade or so.  Using Moon's bedroom as a staging area, I pulled out a couple of boxes, started sorting, got overwhelmed, went back downstairs and went back to quilting.

    "You have until Monday," I told myself.

    On Saturday, K said that his sister wanted to borrow something, did I know where it was?  We dug around in the bookroom piles...nope.  Which could only mean that it was in the basement.  Sigh.  It's in about the same state as the bookroom, plus twenty years.  (There was a big clean out some years ago, but still... this nest is anything but empty.)  I headed down. 

      And I've gone down for an hour or two each day since.  The thing was found!  The car trunk is full of donations... with many more trunk loads to go, but it's a start.  Photos and question marks are sent to the boys, piles are left in the living room for K to decide about when he gets home, and "Donate!" has been the reply most of the time.  We are all ready to let go.

    And this morning, a blue pen was used.  It was sitting there, I reached for it, but then thought, no, it's always the black pen, size S.  An unwritten rule.  A pause happened, and then a realization that I made the rules, and could change them, or just break them.  A small thing, but still not so easy for this OCD soul.

    There are more pieces to these stories, but I'm still not focused, my thoughts are scattered all over the place, or gone altogether, but I'm good.

    And today this piece was finished.

    It's about making one's own magic.

Week before last

    Monday and Tuesday I drove to Whidbey Island to attend and assist Christine Mauersberger's "Meditative Stitching" workshop.  

    Two peaceful quiet stitching days listening to Christine's insights with lovely women.

    Tuesday's sunrise seen on the ferry. 

    I probably drove more last week than I have in the last year put together.  I have such anxiety about driving, especially now that I do it so infrequently, but it was good to rediscover that I'm capable-ish.

    One day at home, spent packing myself and Moon.  Thursday we drove him up to Bellingham.  Because of COVID restrictions and his being SO READY to start this new chapter, the three of us made three trips with his boxes to the third floor dorm room, and I barely had time to even get misty-eyed during the quick goodbye hugs, in the rush to get us out of there in his thirty allowed slotted minutes.  (Deb, I did wave across town to you!)

    And then I drove back to the island, returning home on Monday night.

    My work table during the four days of Christine's "Binding Time" workshop.  More lovely women, and much more active.  Indigo pots, cyanotype, stitching, gelli plate printing, collaging, and more!  (Including dyeing some thread in my tea (above).)

    There's not much call for sequins in my life, but I do love them.  It was great to have time to play, to work and share with other makers, and to spend time hanging out with Christine during prep, clean up, etc.

    There was a crazy wind storm one day.  The kind of wind that tries to move your car off of the road.  Power was out for some of the island that evening, including the place where I stayed.  Leftovers were wrapped in foil and heated up on the barbeque, and I was in bed at 7:45 due to the dark and cold.

    The clouds were incredible.

    The workshops were held in this spacious building.

    Each day was a new story in the sky.

    There's more to say, but this is a start... hope you are all well.

Weaving self

    There was a day in the drear of August, at a loss of what to do with myself (or in spite of), that I went looking for old projects.  Looking for something that could be continued without much thought or effort.  Many half-starts were found, including three made of six, nine or twelve inch square pieces.  Another with random pieces patchworked together, a few with appliqued creatures, and strips of hills from this pattern, begun more than a decade ago.  Just looking at the stack of starts and stops made me weary.  Was there a way to mishmash them into one?  Just to get a useful blanket if nothing else?  Without math or planning?

    The rotary cutter was grabbed.  Much of it was cut into three inch strips.  A strip quilt was in mind.  In the aftermath, looking at the pile of long and short lengths, I knew that I didn't want to spend hours sewing long lines on long strips, so I put them in a box, put the lid on, and shelved it all.

    A week later, I woke up and thought of weaving- a possibility.  I was remembering Jude's workshop years ago, and that day she mentioned weaving on Instagram- a sign.  I spent the day re-reading and re-watching her Cloth to Cloth workshop- a path.  

    And begin, again...

    It seemed to fall together so easily. 

    The weaving will continue in and lengthen out of the white cloth.

    I can't tell you how good it felt.  Forget to eat-stretch-call people back-or start dinner good.

    I remembered the joy of those early days in this community, Jude's generous sharing, the excitement of learning a new way to be with cloth, getting to know many of you, the photo of Grace up on the ladder stitching into her huge cloth weaving for her daughter, finding my own way with cloth while holding hands in this circle... it was filling.

    It's so good to feel the glow of autumn again.

 

    Not a lot of stitching over the last days.  A little mending and plenty of wondering about all kinds of things, with some anxieties added into the mix.

    I started digging through the studio shelves.  Filled three bags- garbage, recycling and donations.  A small dent.

    Found a few piles of quilt starts, including some that I have no memory of.  Wondering if I can just close my eyes and stitch the odds and ends together?  Make them into blankets of some sort?  Useful, if nothing else.

    One very long night with a mosquito circling around my head.  Even under the quilt I could hear its whining.  There wasn't much sleep the next night either.  In fact, I was having a really good dream, movie star included.  Just as it was about to get good, I told him I was too tired, that I couldn't keep my eyes open, and fell asleep in dreamland, only to wake up in real life even more exhausted.  Drat.

 

    Looking for something to do, that would require no thoughts, I pulled out the spinning wheel.  So much dust.  Honestly, why I forget how much I love to spin, I don't know.

    The glow of yellow skies from the wild fires came back for a couple of days.  We're lucky that the air quality has stayed good.

    Last night there were two brief rain showers.  I ran outside to stand in it.  Hoping for real rain on Friday.

    Today- wave work.  Not how I usually go about starting a piece.  Rarely plan so much out at the beginning.  It's also a little bigger (9x6") than the usual 4" squares.  Not sure where it's going from here...