handstories

still...

    "Nehama" for comfort.

    Thank you... for Dee's "honey bun" and the vision of Grace singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star..." and all of your kind gentle loving words.  How comforting to have this community to lean into. 

    Just so sad.  Yesterday morning, home alone and shuffling stools, chairs, broom, etc. around trying to make things look different instead of empty.  There may have been sobbing over the washing machine while putting her blankets in.  Moon was home in the afternoon and we had a Star Trek Voyager marathon to distract ourselves.

    This morning's walk was in heavy fog, but the sun is coming out now.

    And I do want to say that there were some really good things that happened over the last week.

 

    I gave that zoom presentation and it went swell.  The group was so welcoming and lovely.  I do mean to share more about this experience.

  

    This afternoon we'll take Moon back to school, and there will be dinner with Deb G., and the pink blossoms are still able to shimmer through the dark mornings.

goodbye

    We said goodbye to our dear sweet Twinkle yesterday.

    Some of you might remember this... Part one, Part two, Part three.

 

    Moon dug a spot under the Japanese Maple, under the window where she perched on pillows stacked on a stool so that she could watch the birds.  The moment she was buried it began to rain and several birds landed in the tree above us singing loudly.

    A grieving cloth.

    We took away all of her things, places, pillows, bed by the heat register, blankets everywhere, etc.  Now there is emptiness scattered throughout the house.

    Heartbroken.

Breathing room

    Still playing with the shiny new fabric.  Paired here with Deb and Tina's colors.

    These days the noisy jay fights for territory with these two.

    They sit outside my window yelling at the world, too.

    Twinkle also wrestles for space.

    Dentist appointment yesterday.  All kinds of too much.  (I talked about some of my teeth issues here.)  First the driving, something I rarely do these days.  Half an hour there, forty-five minutes back- some traffic lights were out from the wind, stop and go freeways, a few "PEOPLE!" exclamations were flung (and maybe a couple of other words).

    Approaching the dentist office, which is just off of a strip kind of a road, there were a couple of women crossing the street.  Women who make their livings walking the strip.  One was wearing a mask.  A new meaning for the term "safe sex".  The other woman made me do a double take.  She had no pants on.  A top, a jacket, and a thong.  She must have been cold in the wind.

    At the dentist- they all are very nice, but too many interactions, too many questions, "Do you want x-rays this time?"  "Fluoride?"  "Polishing?"...  I heard myself saying no to everything.  I just wanted out.  She did talk me into the x-rays, but I drew a line and refused to get the full panel one.  The regular x-ray led to discovering an issue, something needs replaced.  "Do I have to think about it today?"  No.  They didn't push.  They realized I had reached my limit.

    I was so glad to get home and stitch...breathe.  This piece, with its Threadcrumb moon, helped to center things again.

"Elsewhere"

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.

Ballets, & thankfully, no crashes

    There was extra time with a friend this weekend- so much work to feel safe, but such a gift.

    The animal dreams continue.  A rhino that needed help escaping, thankfully not a herd, stubbornness or crash of rhinos.   

    In waking life, driving by the countryside, out in the fields alongside the freeway, there were many bevies, whiteness's, drifts, lamentations, or ballets of swans.  The groups varied from a few to fifty or more.  I have never seen so many at once.  So very lovely.

    They may be done.

    Twinkle and I had a good long snuggle this morning.  I read in bed while she snored and drooled.

wavering

    December can be so full of memories, making for very quiet days.

    Nothing really interesting to share, just rows and rows, round and round, wiggling and unsteady lines of stitching on Blue's Christmas blanket.  Both boys' are quilted now and waiting for bindings.  

    I need to find that great old book of Janie's that will remind me how to make the bias strips easily.  Something about cutting a square on the diagonal and stitching it into a off-set tube...  It's here somewhere...

    Neither of us could ever remember how to do it from quilt to quilt without the book.  It involves getting the sewing machine out, which always seems like such a chore.  Janie didn't own a machine, so I would sew her tubes, too.  With how prolific she was at quilting, you'd think I'd remember how to do it.

    Making these long lines creates room for lots of wandering through time.  

cozy mornings

    I love Saturday mornings.  Slow Saturday mornings... sleeping in, K. making breakfast, while I sit by the front window stitching.  (It's one of the original windows to the house, 111 years old, made of that old wavy glass that, at the right angle, makes everything look wavy and watery.)  

    Moon wakes, helps with breakfast and spends some time petting Twinkle, and then K. calls us to the table for his bacon waffles (I have mine with pear-lemon marmalade).   Afterwards we all do our own thing for an hour (or more).  K. stays at the table reading the paper, Moon goes up to his room to do whatever it is he does up there, and I head back to the couch to stitch in the rest of the morning's light, with Twinkle curled up beside me (she loves to be under a blanket), and listening to podcasts (favorites these days are The Jealous Curator, On Being, and Design Matters, depending on the mood).

    This morning I was able to finish up these three story cloths.  They are in the shop.  I hope you all are having a peaceful weekend, too.

graced

    Twinkle is attached at the hip, ankle, lap, etc. these days.  I wonder what goes on in that furry brain of hers?

    A bookmark, ala Jude Hill's book mat style.

 

 

    A gift to go along with this book.  I've finished my copy (and YES, Deb, it's a keeper).  It's full of love, courage, forgiveness, grace, and being present when the universe calls on you.

    I think about having grace a lot, mostly about how I wish I had more of it.

    "Elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action" according to dictionary.com.

    In my twenties I worked with women who were forty-somethings, who were full of grace.  I longed for the day when I would be forty-something and filled with it, too.  Alas, when I finally got there, I realized grace had nothing to do with age, just who a person is, or is not.  Sigh.

    If you can only read one of the stories (but, really, read them all), make it "A Phone Call" by Auburn Sandstrom.  There is a moment in it that made my heart stop, and then it started again, overflowing from the deep goodness of it.

some moments in spring

    Two of my walking friends are very good gardeners, one has a master's in horticulture.  It's nice to go walking with them and listen to the flower stories.  

    K. and Moon left this morning for two nights.  I didn't quite push them out the door.  More and more, Twinkle and I enjoy a short spell of stillness.

staying open

    A friend picked this one up and was looking at it upside down.  She flipped it in all the directions and suddenly it was full of possibilities.

    It became about light, and being open to it.

    Reflecting, connecting, holding, and centering within it.

     Remembering Jude's long ago comment about "new eyes".

    A shop update is planned for tomorrow morning.  Twinkle permitting.