handstories

So many feelings

 

"Moon Memories"

    Sunday's smokey sunset.  Glad the air is clear again.

    K. is getting about unaided, feeling pretty good, off all the meds except Tylenol, sleep is improving, and can put on his own cursed compression socks!

    Detail of "So Many Things," a piece that was started almost two years ago.  I've thrown myself back into stitching this week.  It feels good to be stitching for hours again.

    Moon is packing up for his sophomore year of college.  A tutoring job in the math department is waiting for him.  As is an apartment with friends. The plan is to stay until their degrees are done, including summers.  He says he's probably never going to live here again, and so he's putting his life into boxes that will move to the basement or go with him.

    I'm having a whole variety of mom feelings, all over the spectrum.  The last few days have been challenging.  Two more to go.  Neither of us is great with change.  I've seen growth on both of our parts.  I really am trying to trust that it's all good, or at least good enough.  If nothing else, the room will get a long overdue cleaning.

    The "Samar" tree token, the name means 'evening conversations'.

    Detail of "Magic Sky".

    I'm craving the ocean again.  Time to stitch some sea.

Swell

    Cape Cod was lovely.  Hours and hours, and days and days, spent doing very little.

    We stayed in a cabin on a small island, accessible by a one lane road with a small wooden bridge.  Comings and goings had to coordinate with high tide, which would cover the road in a few feet of water.  There was a miscalculation on the first day and we had three unexpected hours on the mainland side.  That didn't happen again!

    So many beautiful beaches.

    Way too many photos of waves were taken, trying to capture the lines, rolls and feel.

    There were a couple of days spent on one beach, whole days of staring at the sea.

    Seals played close to shore (the blurry black spot in the center).

    I feel rested.

    An unexpected lodging option discovered on one of our many beach walks.

    Just before this sunset, this is the spot where I took a dip in the ocean, head under the water and everything.  I can still taste how salty it was.

    (In real life, there was a swimsuit!)

    The bit of stitching that happened on the trip was finished up yesterday.

October days & nights

    It's been a blustery autumn day here, a wish I could take a nap kind of a day.  Instead it was a day of packing and repacking, wondering what might be needed for a week on the other side of the country, tying up some loose ends before leaving tomorrow, and a little bit of stitching of a wild sky on some of Tina's dyed cloth, with a bit of Deb's thread twinkling in the swirls.  

    A quiet anniversary this weekend- a nice Italian dinner, a ferry ride, and an afternoon on an island.  Thirty-eighth.  Quiet is good these days.

    The dream last night, a crazy adventure with a friend, so long it felt like a book- silk shirt mending, magazine proposals, old people swimming near floating dead birds, a poem writing, beetles, June bugs and a single bee, mannequin mimicking, stitching the word "wonder" on waxed canvas... on and on it went.  I woke up exhausted at 4:30 am and have been awake(ish) since.  Perhaps it's my body's way of practicing for tomorrow's 5am departure for the airport?

    Wishing us all sweet dreams and happy trails...

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.

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...

Come what may

    This log cabin happened while spending a couple of hours in a hospital waiting area.  (K was having a routine procedure that he needed driven home from.)  There were a handful of us waiting, with an occasional hospital workers stopping by to eat at the tables near the window.  One woman made several laps past me, slower and slower.  I don't know if she was stretching or trying to see what I was doing?  Not feeling social (it was early), I didn't make eye contact to find out.  

    This was the moment when I noticed that the last piece had been stitched onto the to the wrong other side.  It happens.   I thought about moving it, so that it could be an extension to the sky, a place for more stars.  Too much trouble, just work with it.  It needed a quiet something to fill in some of the space.  Scraps of colors other than blue would pull the eye too much. 

    So, more blues, a little different, with a bit of variation- texture, pattern, and stars after all.

    I like making a base with no idea of what might come.

pink skies and silver rain

    Out our window, a week ago at sunset.

    At the same time, across town, K. saw a double rainbow.

    It was a very nice Christmas day.  One of our (my) traditions, is that I go into the living room first, and take a photo of Blue and Moon as they come into the room and see the tree with the filled stockings and gifts below.  Not to be undone by distance, with Blue zooming on the computer, Moon carried Blue on screen in, and I got my photo.  For the next hour, he "sat" next to the tree and we opened gifts, made jokes, and took a group selfie with one of us holding the computer facing the camera.  Technology was the very best gift this year.

    These are the Wise Guys, my favorite childhood ornaments (except for the beautiful glittery glass balls that my brother has).  If you look closely, there is a single silvery strand draped above and over the top right guy.  I took it off of Mom's tree one year.  She called it "rain" and our childhood trees were dripping with it.

    You see what I mean.  My brother and me, 1967. 

    K. was quite concerned when he first saw my family's tree style.  Lucky for him, this single strand of tinsel is enough for me.

    Mom doesn't do a tree anymore, and passed the angel topper on to me.  I remember shopping for it with Mom and Aunt J.  Mom pointed it out on the top shelf, Aunt J., being taller, reached for it and I held it in front of me as I sat in the shopping cart, asking if I thought it was pretty?  I did.  Mom doesn't believe I remember this, because I was only two, but I do.

    This is Christmas Night, after the photo above.  I'm four.  I remember what led to this, too. 

    I had brought my new doll, dollhouse and their boxes into my bedroom.  Crawling into bed with the new doll and the old one (so that she wouldn't feel replaced), I looked at the dollhouse on the floor...  (Here's where I'm going to tell you one of the strange things about me... I have always personified things.  I don't know what this means or says about me, but there it is.)  So, on that night, looking at the dollhouse on the floor, I worried that I was hurting its feelings by not bringing it to bed with me, too.  So, I got up and brought it into the bed, and then returned for the boxes, because how sad for them to be empty and alone on the floor...

A prayer to the Sky Spirits

    Thank you.

    Thank you.

        Thank you.
 
    Please...

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.

journeys

    Business first... These story cloths will be going into the shop tomorrow (Wednesday, August 19th).  

    There has been a lot of staring at these photos, and a wanting and trying to write about how things are at this moment.  Strong feelings of happiness, and sadness, and deep wishing.  The word "clinging" gathered itself and rose to the top.

    I found this when I cleared my shelves in the school basement seven years ago.  Where did it come from?  Floating amongst 23 years of teaching- books, supplies, plans, projects, props, backdrops, etc., and one little boat.  It came home with me, and sits here on the windowsill above the studio table.  It was beyond time to leave that job, some of you might remember.  As awful as that ending was, so many great things came from sailing into the unknown.

    Not long after leaving, this matchbox art was found in a shop.  The message inside might seem sad, but I love it.

    It tells me stories of longing, faraway lands and treasure, and whenever I read the words, "It took me too long to start",  "But, I did." is always tagged on in my mind. 

"Sharing Light"