handstories

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.

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.

Coupeville & Christine

    Things are so strange right now.  The virus... How much to worry?  Events being cancelled, going to three stores before finding toilet paper (we were down to our last roll), Moon says a third of the school is staying home, K.'s office has told everyone to work from home for the next two weeks... Where is the line between panic and reckless?

    Meanwhile, I took myself on a short retreat.

    Traveling companions- pincushion complete with guardian girl, Velma's bear, Jude's star, a piece of smoky quartz (I don't know what it does for me, but it feels good in my hand), and the "ease" cloth.

    A whole two days to myself looking at the water and trees, listening and watching the many birds, and stitching and stitching in a cozy comfy room.

    I watched the neighbors frolic during breakfast.

    For lunch there was a walk into town, a table by the window overlooking the water, and eating in a restaurant alone for the first time ever.  Yes, ever.

    And more stitching, knitting and a little painting into the twilight.

    The next morning, and why this getaway happened, there was Christine Mauersberger's  "Stitching a Small Story" workshop.  Christine is a wonderful teacher- inspiring, generous and she creates a warm rich environment to work in with wonderful kindred folk.  I especially love her prompts and how she shares her own process.  It was really good to step out of my own "boxes" and stretch my abstract muscles.  Everything informs and enriches everything.  Also, what a gift it was to be able to see and hold so much of her beautiful artwork.

    "Yesterday in Coupeville" in progress.

    The water, trees, birds...  What a good piece of time.

    There was even a hot pink sunset (pinker than it looks here).

    This photo, with its glowing moons of light, is just how it all felt and was.

the strength of fragility

    I've been slowly listening to the Mary Oliver interview on On Being, backing up and re-playing parts, with a growing love for her strength and ability to focus on joy.

    This morning, listening and stitching, I heard her poem "Fourth Sign of the Zodiac" for the first time.  It was just after choosing the thread to echo and continue the few floating blue petals in the orange middle ring cloth around the sun.  How she saw and knew things most of us miss...

    This is part four...

4.
Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat,
all the fragile blue flowers in bloom
in the shrubs in the yard next door had
tumbled from the shrubs and lay
wrinkled and fading in the grass. But
this morning the shrubs were full of
the blue flowers again. There wasn’t
a single one on the grass. How, I
wondered, did they roll back up to
the branches, that fiercely wanting,
as we all do, just a little more
life.

– from Blue Horses by Mary Oliver, published by Penguin Press, 2014.

love can mend

    When Mo sent out an invitation to join in the making of her installation "I Dream of a World Where Love is the Answer," I had visions of a little boat on a calm sea under twinkling starlight, all being peacefully stitched on lovely summer days.

    Well, none of that happened.

   Giving up on the idea of making it with a peaceful spirit, it was dipped into the fading indigo vat.  After washing it, I started to iron it, and before I realized what was happening, there were holes melted into it.  At first there was panic, but then Mo's phrase "our beautiful broken world" came to mind, and it began to take shape.

   An earth of scraps and stitch was made. followed by a golden moon with the warm sun below, a few patches of deep space and starlight, and a scattering of stars across it all.

    And while making, there was thinking, confusion, and a wondering if... maybe this is how it really is.  This work and struggle for peace, healing the earth, trying to find a way through-  It doesn't usually happen because everything is a calm and hunky-dory garden of sweet peas and roses.  The ripped and rough places show us what's really going on, and call to us for mending.  For most of us, we do what we can with what we have.  Piecing together whatever kind of inner scraps we might have within.  And just maybe, all of the frayed worn bits can be brought together and worked into a kind of wholeness again.

    With a heart full of gratitude for Mo's vision and spirit, I'm sending wishes and prayers for, and into, the bigness of the Universe and our own small wished for cosmoses within it... May they all be patched and held together with our threads of hope and love. 

sun & stars

    It rained early this morning.  Hard and loud, it woke me, a glorious downpour.  Didn't even care that the car windows were cracked a few inches (fortunately K. did and went out to close them at 5am).  Everything seems bright and clean.

    More gifts have melted into a Sun for Mo's pennant.

    And now for some stars.  I've been itching to get to this point.

an ocean of moments

    We're home.  It was a very good trip.  I found two agates...remembering us kids tagging after mom across rocky beaches in her quest for them.  Constantly asking her how much longer until we could go to the sandy beach?

    A rainbow of petals met us on the first day.  Guessing they were remnants of some celebration.  I hope it was a happy one.

    Some seaside stitching.

    And salt water painting with handmade watercolors from here (extra fondness for the pan of  "spark" which adds a magical shimmer)

    There was wonderful ocean time- wading, walking, watching, and even some beach bike riding.  Also, a sweet small train ride between two beach towns, along the coast, bay and trees.  While on it, we saw a blue heron take flight, and pelicans diving in the water and flying.

    We also saw the edge of the camp lake where K. and I were outdoor school counselors in the fall of 1979 (he was a senior and I was a junior in high school).  Where we first held hands while on our first beach walk together.

    Speaking of hand holding, while soaking in the sea, when I asked a certain sixteen year old for a hug, he offered his hand instead.  Don't tell him, but his was a much better offer!  It lasted while strolling, wave watching and listening to his latest insights about life...

    The smoke from the distant wild fires was at the shore too, so no stars and there were other-worldly sunsets, but still, the beautiful powerful waves... 

    ...where my soul feels at home.

a full heart

    I went a little all over the place with this one.  Layers and layers, bursting with blooms, stars, stitches, and lots of Deb's rainbowed threads (I just can't call them "dirty" as she does). 

    The sun was out today, it's still cold, but bright, so I was able to really stitch,  there was a walk with a friend, and I didn't get lost taking Moon to his baseball workout on the other side of town.  He's making us bacon waffles for dinner soon, and tonight K. comes home after a week away.  Things feel lighter today.

sunshine on a stormy day

    In the middle square, because boats seem to be the center I keep coming back to- holding, bringing, going, through, being.

    Yesterday afternoon the sky grew so dark and filled with wind and rain.  Moon and I watched the lights flicker, heard sirens and all kinds of sounds for a couple of hours.  There was one really big slow crack  a block away. . . 

    In the middle of it all, the mailman blew up the walkway, wrestling the wind as he tried to sort out our letters.  I went out to help hold things, and he handed over some glowing sunshine!

    It was Els' beautiful Solstice cloth. . . I love all of the different stitches, textures and fabrics that she put into it.  A bright cheery bit of light in the middle of a dark day.  Thank you so very much for your generous sharing, Els!

stars, sun & moon

    A couple of new spots on the "Child Cloth".  A boat filled with stars, with room for plenty more.

    A sun to keep Jude's star company, made from Deb's eclipse dyed cloth and threads.