handstories

Crux

    Walnut ink painted onto cloths dyed with fresh indigo and in that turquoise wash.

 

 

    A moment from yesterday. Rainbow in my blue room (on a wall that could use repainting, just like the rest of the house), Story quilt, and the bedpost of the childhood bed. I should say childhoods...Moon’s, Blue’s, nephews, brother’s, mine, and Dad‘s in the foster home that he grew up in. 

    I’ve been thinking about the soul this week, what it is, how to stay in the space of it.  I was told that it’s a place of who we are, all we are, all we might be.  That all the things that we think and believe about ourselves are just thoughts, reactions, responses, and often judgements. So, I’m spending moments trying to step outside of thinking, and observe the What and Why.

    During the first attempt, I remembered watching Dad at his mom's wake as he struggled to grasp timelines and his past.  Suddenly, I could see the small boy of who he had been, who didn't know what had happened to his world or where his parents had gone.  It was the first true understanding of the why he was the way he was, and the beginning of feeling some compassion and forgiveness for him.

 

 

    I’m also trying to understand walnut ink.  It was dried, ironed, wetted, and then smooshed with a couple of indigo leaves and salt.

 

    What a beautiful green it was.

 

    After drying and rinsing, the rings were barely visible.

 

    And begin again.  I don't know anything about this ink.  It is from a workshop a few years ago.  Maybe I need to make my own?  Either I will figure this out or just keep the ink away from water.

    A Table Story...  Years ago, at a craft fair, M., a friend, bought the bear necklace.  I loved it too, but there was only one.  Recently, M. gave it to me.  She lives on my worktable.  Her occasional adventures are photographed and texted to M.  Yesterday she and the "Story" doll (made by Cathy Cullis years ago) celebrated the finishing of this piece under a sunny scrap of Deb's cloth with party favors of a jay feather and a piece of a tumbleweed from a road trip with M.

    It's funny how elements of stories that have been looked at over and over can suddenly take on new meanings.  That memory of Dad, after all of these years, seems to have opened a door to some understanding and compassion for me too.

"Soul Work"

    I'm keeping this one.

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.

Watching

    The ninth moon cabin block.  The green cloth was bought on the day Moon was born, with pauses to lean on fabric bolts during contractions.  (They had been going on for days, so I wasn't worried, but my friend was!)

     Working with bigger pieces of cloth has a soothing calming effect.  Last night there was a really long seam to fix on one side of a sheet.  I went to bed relaxed.

    I lost my wallet.  Again.  Second time in two years.  I don't know how or where.  Between home, ferry rides and M's house.  I'm almost positive it was in my bag, didn't use it, but it's gone.  Maybe it's here in the house still.  I don't know.  I've cleaned, called, retraced, even looked in gutters and grass where K dropped me off for the ferry.  Just gone.  I loved that wallet.  Glittery.  $10.00 at the Goodwill.  Perfect.  Sigh.

    Pinks and corals have moved into my work lately.  

    There was a conversation this week.  The other person didn't get it.  I didn't get that they didn't get it.  They felt exactly the same way about me.  It was like a deeply scratched record, sliding back and repeating, over and over.  Finally, I just had to let go, skip over the injury, and move forward, and appreciate what music I could hear, but I feel scraped and worn thin.

    This piece helped.  Chaos and rhythm together. "In Cacophony & Love, They Flew On".  It's just how things feel.  All of the stitches had to do with connecting, one piece of cloth to another or a continuing of one into another- birds bodies completed (it's interesting how a few stitches suggest a bird shape to the eye), flight patterns combined with moon rings, polka-dots scattering beyond, Deb's dyed speckles floating further.  Except the stars, those are for me. 

    (Many threads and that bottom strip from Deb with a ThreadCrumbs moon.  It will be in the shop with a few other pieces and a handful of tokens on Friday, 9am.)

    Thankfully, Twinkle keeps watch.

More flowers

    Hill as home.  Stitch as song.

    Isn't this cloth dyed by Tina a glorious color?  Fuchsia, magenta, cerise?  And Deb's thread pulling all of the colors together?

    The last two mornings drawings have been of something on my table, still not looking at the paper.   I haven't forgotten that I said I would share more about this painting practice, but I'm still gathering/finding words about it. 

    Actually, I've been very frustrated about words this week, that I can't seem to pull them into the shape of what I want to say.   It takes so much work to get to the root of things, at least about myself. 

    "They Returned in Song & Starlight"

    There was a moment of seeing something clearly the other day.  Two friends asked about finding a way/time to celebrate my birthday.  I did my usual, "Oh, that's nice, I don't know, we'll see...."  Later, after seeing my horoscope for the week, "Your desire to make sure no one is left out or lonely...." , and I thought to myself, isn't that the truth that I do that, and then thought, isn't it the truth that I don't do that for myself, and how hard I work to not take up space or want, to not be seen as all of those words that I sometimes still believe about myself.

    I've probably circled around this topic here before, but this time I reached back out to my friends and said, "Yes."

    Sometimes, after stretching and trying something new, it's really comforting to sail back home in, and to, a comfortable spot.

Being home

    This happened after a little reading about the Hundertwasserhaus.  It's weird and I want to keep going with it.  Wherever that might be.  No idea yet.  It's about home- a place to be in, and the home that is within.  I suppose much of what I make is.

    There has been a lot of self questioning in the last weeks... What I make and why?  Wondering if there's a next to step into?  And what it might be?

    Can comfortable become uncomfortable?  (The "do not repeat" painting actually has nothing at all to do with what I'm talking about...probably.)

    In the meantime, there are moon cabin squares slowly being made.  Another place to live...inside and out.

 

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.

balancing things

    Yesterday brought news for us, not unexpected, but still, it has tilted things.

    At the same moment a beautiful email came, from a soul who does such good in the world, creating space for healing.  It was a reminder that in the big view of things we are ok.

    The rest of the day was spent stitching, finishing up pieces, thinking about the many possibilities for how things might go. 

    There was a new start, too, and a recognition of that moment at the very beginning of a cloth, when I don't know what will happen, and of how much I love the wide openness of that.

      Gratefulness for Jude's moons, star and scraps, Deb's cloths and threads, Tina's cloth, and so much for the centering circle of this community, oxo.

some story of Story

    It was finished on Saturday.

    Most of yesterday was spent curled up in it- reading, knitting, petting the cat, napping, and finally sleeping under it.

    I know it's not a complicated or fancy blanket, but I made it for me, from my stories and those I love, and it makes me so happy.

    There are lots and lots of places where the stitches run into, cross, or weave to and away from each other in odd inconsistent ways. Unplanned.   

    I don't mind.  I kind of like the meeting places of selves from different days and moments.

    My crazy wonky stitches make me happy.  Sometimes they were lines of getting through, carrying on or finding purpose, and other times- like a laugh of "I'm here!  Having a good time, making marks of myself!" 

   It was started in October 2018, because someone told me to make myself a quilt.  I rolled my eyes at her, but a week later stitched the first few squares.  In a blog post I wrote, "Maybe a very slow quilt, a square here and there, of cloths that are gifts, memories, and loved.  A way to hold them, and eventually they might hold me back.  We'll see."

    It's a good blanket.  (And there are a few stories about this old bed to tell on another day.)

another Tuesday

    Eighty-nine squares to go.  I paused on this one for a while.  Indigo, walnut and tea, I think.

    A couple of squares begun.  This one with one of Jude's stars, it had floated to the top of the basket.

    This strange thing happened yesterday in response to Jude's post about wrinkles.  Not quite sure what's happening.  It felt like birthing something, maybe myself, but looks like a rock garden, too.  Maybe my mind is a rock garden?  Now I'm remembering childhood stops at a rock garden and museum- an attraction the family would stop at on the way to visit cousins.

    The book of loved things continues, but at a slower pace.  Some pages take longer, like this one of a retired favorite mug.  It was the perfect mug- size, image, handle...sadly, the glaze has worn off on the inside making it unsafe to drink from.

    Just a bit of Rosee...

    "Every night after work, Stew and all the girls in the beauty shop and I went riding before bed time.  It got so hot that summer that the whole bunch of us took a blanket and went out and slept in the pines.  It was a lot of fun.  The summer of 36 came along..."