handstories

The sea and the sea and the sea...

    A long while away to the Oregon Coast.  With Mom and my two sisters.

    For Mom, who turned eighty.

  

    I thought of Deb and her clouds on this eve.

    There was only a little stitching.  Lots of walking on the beach.

    Even more wave watching.

    Great views and weather.  Better each day and the sunsets more beautiful each night.

    "When She Dreamed"

    I started this piece there but got stuck.  Thought about taking it apart.  Fortunately, decided to deal with it when I got home.  A personal piece to add to the few other faces made a year ago, after last year's ocean trip for Mom. (The others can be found by clicking on the "Her Stories" category below.)

    There was so much to think about on this trip.  Some things were said that surprised and silenced.  It's fascinating how the same and different we all are.  How we hold, hide, or hide from our truths.

    This one is about making our own skies.

In the pink all around

    I was happy just looking at these cloths together for a while.  Jude's moon and Deb's pinks.  I have often wondered about curator or artist in my making.  Thinking about it more, there is an artistry in gathering, and I love putting cloths together, combining their stories into one.

    Blue's autumn views from his new apartment in Santiago, that he shares with his new roommate from the UK, near the apartment of his new girlfriend from South Africa (Now we really wonder when we'll see him again!).

    It's great to hear him sound so happy and much more settled and self-assured as he begins his second year in Chile.  We've both grown up so much.

    Dearest friend is on an adventure in France and sending fun photos of flowers, cafes, the countryside, and sewing pins in a castle gift shop.

    Another spring evening.

    We only had cloudy skies for the eclipse.  I watched the news instead.  They shared beautiful footage as it happened across the continent- Mexico, Texas, Indiana, Cleveland, Niagara Falls, and finally, Maine.  Watching the excitement of the people and the beauty of the diamonds, beads, and pink flares had me in tears.  What it must have been like to be there!  Three of our neighbors went to watch in Texas and Indiana.  It will be great to hear their sun and moon stories when they get back.

Blue & yellow and a Blue story

    One morning, I woke up wanting to weave, remembering the fun of being in Jude's Cloth 2 Cloth workshop, everyone weaving together... 

    One of the reasons that I find myself blogging less, is feeling like I have nothing to say.  My life is so quiet now.  There are no interesting stories like there were in my teaching days.  

    Getting lost in the details is a happy place.

    “She Wove Her Sky in Starlight”

    The sun was still coming up when I went for a walk one morning.  Sometimes I stop for the views for a long while and have to remind myself that the goal is to be moving.

    The top yellow fabric led to the rest of this golden cloth.  With pieces from Deb, Jude, and Blandina.  It's still in the works...

    Yesterday, a two-hour phone call with Blue.  It was so swell.  He has grown so much during his adventure in Chile.  Gaining self-awareness, confidence, friends from all over the world, and stories galore. 

    So, I will borrow and share a Blue story...  Recently, his old sneakers finally gave out.  A Chilean friend took him shopping.  When he told the salesman his size, he shook his head with doubt.  Blue is tall and has BIG feet, size 13-14, much bigger the average Chilean shopper.  They went to the stockroom, and they all searched together, looking for anything close.  Just as they were about to give up, they found one pair of sneakers in size 12.5.  They were comfortable enough.  Blue was so happy to have them, and said it felt like a miracle.

    Fast forward to last week:  A group of them went south of Santiago to a friend of a friend's family cabin.  Surrounded by mountains, forests, and lakes, they had a wonderful week of hiking, kayaking, etc...  On their last day, thanks to a friend of a friend, etc... they were taken on a tour bus around the area.  One stop was at a fancy hotel/restaurant where they were treated to a delicious meal.  "You would have loved it, Mom!  It was like a fairy tale... something Snow White would have found in the woods.  You felt like you were inside of a magical tree."

    The next morning, packing up to leave, he couldn't find his new shoes.  He remembered switching them out for his flipflops on the bus the day before.  They were still on that bus.  One friend said he looked like someone had died.

    He flipflopped to the bus stop, mourning his precious shoes.  As they boarded the bus for the ten-hour ride back, the driver asked, "Does anyone here have big feet?"  Blue called out, "Yes!"  The driver pulled out a bag with his shoes!  They had been found on the other bus.  Folks wondered if a basketball player had left them?  Somehow, they had found their way to this driver, Tio Rico (who everyone called "Uncle").  Blue gushed his thanks and shared his shoe search story with him.  Tio Rico laughed and laughed, and at each stop along the way, he would call for Blue to tell the story of "The Miracles of the Giant Shoes"!

    Blue and Tio Rico, and the Giant Shoes!

The Coast

    Stitched last week on the Oregon Coast with my mom and sister (who I usually join on the east coast).

    We had perfect weather, wonderful views, lots of walks, memories, laughs, and food.

    The house was on the beach, a dream place for all three of us.

    It was the first time in decades that it was just the three of us for any length of time.  Fascinating to observe and be a part of new dynamics.

    It seems that the neighborhood heard that I was coming.

    There was a night that boats scattered near the shore (and an egret, I think).  We made up all kinds of stories of what they might be up to before deciding they were fishing boats.  (The stories were much more interesting.)

    One day we drove up to the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  Growing up, the family would stop there now and then.  We enjoyed watching the cheese makers pulling giant wires through the cheese, seeing the curds and whey, all through a large window over their work area.  Afterwards, there would be sample cheese squares on toothpicks.

    Now it is a huge building with large windows, displays, etc. looking down through rows of windows onto modern machines that hide much of the process.  There were sealed samples to take, a LARGE eating area featuring cheese sandwiches and many kinds of ice cream, with a huge gift shop nearby, and a cheese truck to pose for a photo op in.  A kind of a cheese Disneyland.  It was interesting and a fun stop, but the quaintness and charm were missing.

    I did love seeing that one of their symbols is the silhouette of the Morning Star.

    "1854-  Tillamook's farmers had butter and milk to sell- but hauling it over rough mountain roads took so long, that it would spoil.  The fastest route to Portland is by water, so they built Oregon's first official ship- the Morning Star- to carry their dairy goods to market."

    Home now to a short heat wave, but there's hopefully a storm brewing tonight.

    But I keep thinking of the ocean.

    And thinking about all of the different kinds of light.

Dream Days

"Sip of Dreams"

    Many swell happenings over the last few days...  Friday- to Bellingham for Moon's a cappella concert.  It was great to hear him sing, watch him have a great time, be so happy.  And then the treat of meeting up with Deb for dinner.

    After that, a night in Vancouver, B.C. in a room with a city view (across the street from the Coliseum-ish library), strolling Granville Island (Maiwa's!), a delicious Italian dinner...  It's been so long since we've gone somewhere, just the two of us.  It was a very nice time.

    On the way home, there was an extra dose of Deb time!  Tea in her cozy sweet house with two of the friendliest cats you'll ever meet (Widget wasn't interested in socializing).  

    Her GOOD Enough quilt is even more wonderful in person (as is she!).

    Today I potted up her gift of indigo plants, with hopes for their survival under my blue thumb.

    Sunday night I dreamt in cloth.  The memory became the morning painting.  By afternoon, the image was fading, but not the incredible feeling.  A cloth began...
 
    I didn't refer back to the painting at all and was surprised this afternoon to see the differences.  The tree had completely slipped away.  Dream to paper, paper to cloth, maybe I'll complete the circle and keep going, back and forth, forward and back, in and out of the dream.

Heading into Winter

"Hope"

    The days whirl by.

    A friend and I headed over the pass.  What a surprise to see snow.  My head hasn't caught up with the season.

    The other side, central Washington, the Columbia River.

    I love this river.  Growing up, we drove an hour's ride along the Gorge where it divides Oregon and Washington every month or two.  Sometimes stopping at Bonneville Dam, the fish hatchery, and/or Multnomah Falls, eventually, crossing the Bridge of the Gods to the Washington side, to visit our dear Great Aunt Peggy, the entire family's favorite relative.

"Sea Songs"

    Stitching as much as I can... because it fills me in many ways.

    There was a bunch of tiring time spent with screens and words the last couple of weeks- figuring out shop things.  Business thinking is NOT my cup of tea, it sucks energy and civilized behavior out of me (ask K.).  All I want to do is stitch, but I suppose it's good to stretch my brain with unfamiliar thinking.  Of course, I have spent much more time and energy avoiding some of these things over the last months than the actual deciding and dealing with actually took.  Fingers crossed that all the ducks, cows and hedgehogs are in a row now.

"Ayana"

    (These pieces and a few others will be in the shop tomorrow, November 12th.)

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.

Far & Near

    (Apologies for yet another marathon post.  Someday I'll get back to posting regularly and briefly.)

    Thinking about hills, again.  A lifetime of thoughts and memories of them.  Using Deb's threads to wind a story through... The front hill is from her dye pot, too.  The sky is from a class a long while back.

    This week I've been missing people, groups of people, faces.  I try to smile at people with my eyes, hoping that they know that it's an effort towards connection.

    Continuing on Cameron's block using Susan Fletcher Conway's tutorial here for stars.  They're not easy for me, requiring really good light and focus, but I wanted larger filled-in stars.  They're kind of wonky, but hopefully, with a few steps back, they will shine together.  There will be 26 of them, one for each year of his life.  

    Hands representing his, holding the names of his three young boys.  Grateful for Tina's gift of a rainbow of cloth to choose from for the hearts, and wishing that I had Liz's writing-with-thread skills.

    Another day trip with and to my friend's sweet house.  She's received both of her vaccinations, which added even more ease to our time together.

    The views from the ferry were amazing that morning.  The mountains seemed so big and close.  About fifteen minutes after this photo was taken, we were crossing this bridge.

    I gave her my most recently knitted socks and she put them on straight away.  Happily they fit.

    It was a beautiful day, including a stop at a nursery.  She studied various plants, knowing exactly what she wanted to look at (and the scientific names of everything).  I pointed out the fritillaria, "You had some in your yard when you lived across the street."  She was surprised that I remembered the name.  The word fritillaria is a fun one, making it easy to recall, not to mention that the checkerboard flowers are unforgettable and magical.

    It's a marvel how a four inch container can hold a whole complex beautiful world.  This is just the feeling I want to stitch into my little story squares.

    Sitting in the sunlight stitching moonlight and starlight was delightful.

    It was approaching dusk, so the lights were lit this time.  Still want to come back at night to see them really glow.