february musings

Hello friends!

Just a quick bit of housekeeping…I pledge to reply to any comments made on a post within a day or two. I’ll write a reply just under the comment itself. I do appreciate when you reach out!

Last weekend we got 14” of fresh snow (on top of a few inches already on the ground). Yesterday we woke to howling wind and pelting rain and dripping eaves. By the time I drove down to town at 9, the sun was shining and our dirt road was getting muddy. Later in the afternoon it was snowing again. So goes a winter day in Vermont.

There is so much to love about the winter here.

As I drove along the ridge on my way to town on Saturday I was startled and delighted when a flock of snow buntings rose from the field and swooped overhead. It was the first time I had seen them this winter and they lift my spirits each time I spot them. I appreciate the resilience of these tiny birds as they make their way up and down their migratory routes.

Batman gears up and ventures out to do tree pruning this time of year. He cut back the heirloom lilacs this week. He hauled all the branches down to the burn pile and we look forward to a little bonfire before the safety of the snow cover melts into the meadow. It’s hard to imagine the scent of blooming lilacs drifting through the open windows right now, but those days will come.

corazón and wilma and a wine cork and crumpled brown paper in a box. such a cute pod.

The full moon is coming up on Wednesday and there’s a village a bit south of us hosting a snowshoe trek at night. Guided by moonlight, participants plan to trek across fields and forest. I may suggest to Batman that we take a foray out into our meadow.

The Vermont Department of Transportation asked school kids in Vermont for suggestions of names for their fleet of snow plows. Check out their clever answers here.

My friend Anne’s post a few weeks ago inspired me to check out some of her book recommendations. Our small, rural library did not have any of the books I was hoping for and so I used the interlibrary loan service. Less than a week after I made my requests, two books (from two different libraries) were waiting for me on a shelf outside the door. As our democracy teeters on the edge of who-knows-what, I am delighted that our public library system stands strong. At our library you can borrow snowshoes, museum passes, you can participate in Monday Night Knitting Group (which has gone virtual again) and buy donated potted plants in the springtime (a fundraiser sourced from local gardens).

Friends, how are you feeling about living so much of life online? It’s a love/dislike relationship for me! Due to Covid, dreadful road conditions and nasty wind chill factors, so many things remain online here in Vermont. Various committees I serve on do our work via Zoom and our Vermont Modern Quilt Guild meetings remain online. This morning Batman and I went to Italy (virtually) with some of our favorite farmers market vendors. Check out their offering here. I had put together a sewing project for four year old granddaughter Maggie and sent it to her in the mail. This afternoon we stitched a very simple foursquare patch (above). She has requested a pink pig “stuffy” project for next time. With yellow and brown straw. I am so on it!

Plants keep things festive around here…one of the many babies grown from a clipping from my grandmother’s Christmas cactus is blooming late, micro greens grow on the windowsill. Pots of forced daffodils, narcissus, hyacinths and amaryllis stand bright on table and countertops. THE VEGETABLE SEEDS HAVE ARRIVED, and are tucked away for late May planting. Finding that brown package in the mailbox out by the road is sure to put a grin on Batman’s face.

I have a bunch of sewing projects underway, but it will be a while before I can share some of them with you. Another collaborative quilt, which I’m very excited about is working its way through multiple steps in multiple households. In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy seeing some quilts, stitched by Grace Rother. Grace’s quilts tell stories too, and she makes them with repurposed and scrap fabrics. Grace also writes a blog that is so fun, just check out the menu on her website.

And one last thing (if you are indeed, still reading…) lest you think it’s all fluff around here, check out the interview Krista Tippett did with Trabian Shorters, a visionary who describes Asset Framing as a way to flip our mindset from one of deficit to one that helps us flourish.

I do so appreciate your popping by sewandsowlife. I hope you have found some sanctuary here as we roll on through these odd times.

xo

me

a giveaway winner, some quilts and an unexpected trip

About the giveaway…I had a few folks contact me via e-mail and had eight comments left on the blog post. I did a random drawing of names and Carolyn will find the drawstring pouch and balsam sachet in her mailbox soon. (I must confess, though, that after double checking my notes, I found that the sachet was actually dyed with avocado skins and pits, so it’s not really super local. Ooops.) Thanks to all of you who left sweet comments (I have responded to them in the previous post)…I will being doing more giveaways in the future, so you may have another chance…

A dinosaur quilt for Maggie.

I found this very cute dinosaur fabric panel in the fall and knew it needed to be sewn into something for Maggie. Like most kids her age, Dinos are a big source of fascination. I pulled all the other fabrics out of my cupboards and put together a very simple quilt. Now that Maggie is no longer in Brooklyn, her subway days have turned into travel in her family’s car, complete with car seat. I made this quilt to snug around her on chilly winter mornings.

The back of the quilt also came from my fabric stash, so no trips to the fabric store were required for this gift. I thought they were kind of wild and reminded me of prehistoric jungles.

This was a super quick and fun quilt to put together and it was such fun to see Maggie open it while she was visiting us here in Vermont in December. Making it was yet another way to put my love into something that will be with her in the days and months ahead.

This quilt had a long and winding journey on its way into being.

Much like our Hannah and her Lauren, G and J had to postpone their wedding and then eventually, celebrate their vows in a tiny family ceremony. The daughter of very dear friends of ours, G is part of our “family by choice”. My design ideas went through several permutations until inspiration hit. Before I left Instagram, I followed G’s feed, filled with gorgeous photos of the National Parks she and her fiancé had visited over the past few years.

I dug deep into my fabric scraps and pulled anything that reminded me of the woods, the beach, the desert, and of course a bit of homegrown, hand dyed indigo sky…

The natural color solid used for the “negative space” is Kona’s “parchment”, an homage to G and J’s yellow Labrador who I suspect might enjoy the quilt, too.

The fabric with the little rust colored berries was a gift from the bride’s mother years ago, and I was delighted to include a few bits of that, for sentimental reasons.

The birch fabric finds its way in so many of my pieces. It’s sort of an emblem of dreams come true for me. It really needed to find its way into this quilt!

One of the things I love most about quilts is that they can tell stories. This one documents some of the true intergenerational aspects of deep and reliable friendship. It hints at adventures had and at adventures ahead. It’s being used in a living room on the other side of the country, but our bit of earth is reflected in it as well of all of those beautiful National Parks. And this quilt was sewn with love and hope. The frosting on the cake? G and J’s baby girl is due this spring, on my birthday. How exquisite is that?

Looking east, from Green Harbor as the sun set behind us.

Looking south, Green Harbor, MA,

Duxbury Beach, MA early yesterday morning, looking for snowy owls. No owls spotted, but a bracing walk, for sure!

In a total spur of the moment rescue, I drove to MA and back in a day on Friday to fetch my Mumsie from the path of the blizzard. She stayed here with us for a few days and after we dropped her back off at her house, we went on down to the South Shore to stay overnight with my brother and sister-in-law. They live a block from the beach and their neighborhood was slammed by the blizzard. Power has been restored, their boiler repaired and their street is now passable. WHEW! Good walks, a fine dinner, and a fun movie were unexpected perks from our rescue dash. We love living here in Vermont, but…wow…we love to visit Doug and Ra at their place!

And now all five of our immediate family’s households ( in VT, MI, OH) are under a winter storm warning…

Hope you are safe and snug, friends. I love that you are all in far flung places, but feel so close via this wacky thing called the internet. xo

links and a giveaway

Can you see the little fingerprints left on the window by Flora and Maggie when they were visiting over the holidays? I cannot bear to wash the evidence of their curiosity from the window. They watched the snowfall and birds from their perch here in the living room.

FRIENDS! The news headlines are going berserk! Covid! The stock market! Military aggressions! LET’S JUST TAKE A PAUSE FROM ALL OF IT! I invite you to carve out a bit of time to wander around some of the internet with me, to take a few moments away from the fray…

1. Did you hear the interview Terry Gross of Fresh Air did with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson? He made his directorial debut with the documentary Summer of Soul. You can listen to the interview here. Batman and I listened while driving to Detroit for Hannah and Loren’s wedding in September. We made a mental note to watch it.

2. We finally watched the documentary last week, as one way to mark Martin Luther King Jr Day. The documentary was put together using recently discovered film shot during the summer of 1969 (the same summer that Woodstock happened.) I was 13 at the time and I was taken back to those days when my awareness of the wider world was exploding. The assassination of MLK Jr had happened just a year before the festival and it was still a fresh wound. But in its aftermath, the energy, pride and solidarity caught on film was contagious. This documentary is a masterwork and I cannot recommend it highly enough…but perhaps you are way ahead of me and have already viewed it. :-)

3. We recently ordered some hemp-fiber growing mats and some terra cotta seed spouters from Lee Valley Tools. I have no affiliation with the company, I’ve just been delighted with these products. Best of all, their tag line is “Time to hibermake”. HIBERMAKE! I love that made up word (maybe because we have almost daily snow and are in the deep freeze here in Vermont…-15 anyone?)

Micro greens growing on the windowsill, as we avoid going to the store as much as possible…

Each week we bring new pots of bulbs up from the root cellar...this week it’s hyacinths and daffodils, set onto the kitchen island and living room windowsill.

4. Another fun place to explore is the blog of artist Hannah Nunn in the UK. She recently wrote about mosses and I found myself wanting to wander in the woods with her near Hebden Bridge, a place I long to visit. Hannah had recently read Gathering Moss, by Robin Wall Kimmerer (who also wrote the lovely Braiding Sweetgrass.)

5. I also stumbled upon an absolutely magical artist who photographs birds and animals in the wild, but with props to delight! David M Bird’s website is enchanting, especially the videos that document how he does his work.

This saucy red squirrel tunneled from the bird feeder over to the window where Corazón and Wilma sit to watch the action. It sits and chitter chats at the cats who chitter right back and swish their tails in excitement. The dear birds and tiny rodents are ferociously hungry as they try to retain calories in this deep freeze!

Besides all of these fun distractions, I have had my nose tucked into Jen Hewett’s book This Long Thread, Women of Color on Craft, Community, and Connection. I was able to participate in Jen’s virtual book tour event via Gather Here, and am glad to have a copy in my hands (ordered from Gather Here).

A drawstring bag and balsam sachet, made here in Vermont at our bit of earth. The casing for the drawstring bag was dyed with birch bark, as was the balsam sachet.

The wee button on the sachet was fashioned from birchbark fallen from a tree out in the woods.

Back in January 2009 I launched my blog sewandsowlife on the Blogger platform. Just over a year ago I migrated over here to Squarespace. I have rambled for years about gardening, sewing, cooking, moving to Vermont and everything in between. I also found some fun blogs to follow myself, and I’ve “met” some fine friends. As Instagram gained popularity, the blog world diminished. My friend Anne and I are both hoping for a comeback for blogs.

I’m so grateful to have you as followers, dearest ones. Your patience with my musings and kind comments are heartwarming. I’d love to mark the anniversary of my blog with a giveaway. If you would like to have a chance at finding the drawstring bag and balsam sachet in your mailbox, please leave a comment below or send me an email at <sewandsowlife@gmail.com>. I regret that due to current circumstances in the world (and the inclusion of balsam needles), I can only offer to send a package to the contiguous United States.

Let me know if you would like a chance at winning the giveaway by next next Tuesday, at noon EST, February 1st. I’ll post sometime on Wednesday, letting you now who the winner is. I’ll tell you about those quilts I mentioned a while back, too.

Be strong, friends, and do what you can each day to spread hope and light.

xo

curating

One thing I have grown more sure of as I age through the years, is that there are two kinds of situations in life…those that we have control over and those that we do not. Learning to discern the difference is an ongoing process, but I am getting better and better at it.

Take for instance where we find ourselves as we step into 2022. HOLY SMOKES! Where do I even start?

I had been churning the idea of ditching Amazon and Instagram (and its “META world”) around in my head and heart for months. There are more reasons for this than you probably have the patience for today. What it boiled down to for me is the immoral amassing of wealth of J.B. and M.Z. (Make yourself a pot of tea and sit down with a piece of paper and make a list of all the good that could be done in the world with that kind of money!) I feel so much better now that I am no longer entangled in what had felt to me like a moral dilemma…spending time and money where it no longer had integrity for me. I took control of the situation, because I could.

I’m looking for ways to take back more control. Like continuing to reject the 24/7 cycle of news. Like making intentional choices about what I read. Like practicing the art of saying “no” and saying “yes” to things with honesty and firmness.

I’ve come to think about all of this as “curating” my life…deciding what is most important and then honoring that. I look forward to moving into the uncertainty of 2022 while concentrating on what I can control and setting aside what I cannot.

We spent New Year’s weekend working on a puzzle of Gee’s Bend quilts, by Galison puzzles. It was a really great puzzle to work on!

The beginning of 2022 seems to be really subdued, doesn’t it? How can we not guard our hope and excitement as we stare down more uncertainty?

Yet there are folks who are stepping into 2022 with inspired ideas and intentions.

Like my friend Kim, who has stayed in touch with a group of friends from her elementary school days. Despite years and miles and life circumstances, they remain close in spirit. They have a tradition of making lists of things they want to do in the upcoming year. Since this is 2022, their lists include 22 things that they want to do or experience or try. They offer one another some accountability, and celebrate as folks accomplish things on their lists.

Other people choose a “word of the year”, a word that brings them back to center throughout the year.

Some folks make two lists, one with the heading “more of” and the other “less of” in the upcoming year.

I have a friend who shared that she has a fresh new journal and she began writing in it with a prompt, “things that make me feel like my most authentic self”. Imagine walking into 2022 with that question in mind!

I’m so curious! How do you, dearest readers, navigate the beginning of a new year? I invite you to share your thoughts below, in the comments section of this post.

Forcing bulbs to bloom indoors in the middle of winter continues to be one of our traditions for honoring the light in the darkness.

As I shared my planned departure from Instagram, I let folks know they could keep in touch with me via email, snail mail or here, by checking out my blog. If any of you have found your way to sewandsowlife here on my website, welcome! If you would like to know when I write a new post, just leave me a note on the “contact us” page and I will add you to my email list. I will never share the info you give to me with anyone else. Pinky promise. Also, please feel free to unsubscribe at any time. You have control of what comes into your in box!!!

One of my favorite images of rural winters…stubs left after the corn harvest, lined up in undulating patterns, waiting to be plowed under when the soil softens in the spring.

Corita Kent believed that “doing and making are acts of hope”. Her words inspire me nearly every day. A wedding quilt, a car quilt and a baby doll quilt are next up in my blogging queue, but they will need to wait for another day.

Until then, dearest readers…stay well, flex your hope muscle and carry on. I am right here with you.

xo

stepping across the threshold

burning a bayberry candle to mark the transition into the new year..

Thank you science. Double vaccinated, boosted and tested, we had a gathering here on the hill, with most of our crew hunkered in. Having missed so much in 2020 and 2021, we were grateful for this bubble in time.

A sleigh ride with Bob and Leif… (photo by Lindsey)

And now we are “pulling up the drawbridge” again, as Lindsey wrote a few days ago, for the foreseeable future. It’s a strange and challenging time we are navigating, friends.

Know that I am with you in spirit as we take a deep collective breath and step into 2022.

xo

KLR

greetings!

dearest friends,

sometimes life takes us on unexpected twists and turns and we do the best we can to stay afloat. sorry i’ve been away so long. sharing this magical photo to let you know i’m still here and missing you.

may the light of this season bring you hope and delight. be gentle with yourselves and your people as we continue to navigate these challenging times.

so much love,

me

sew and sow life in action...hand dyed fabric from the gardens

july 4,2021 at our bit of earth, madder in the garden

october 15, 2021 madder root harvest (3 years in the ground)

october 20, 2021 madder root rinsed, chopped and on the scale

october 23, 2021 (left, madder root dye on cotton) (right, madder root on raw silk) out of the dye pot and into the rinse pail.

top two fabrics, cotton fabric manipulated with shibori techniques, middle two fabrics, cotton, bottom two fabrics, raw silk.

madder root dye on vintage linens. (mordanted with soy milk).

swatches in my dye journal.

my portable meditation/healing project. hand dyed solids. along with my trusty needle case and thread cutters.

nine patch square #1 of nine. (madder root dye and yellow onion skin dye).

my growing collection of hand dyes.

indigo, tansy, marigold, birch catkins, yellow onion skins, (non native avocado pits and skins), madder…

When I first started my blog over on the blogspot platform years and years ago, I thought long and hard about what to name it. My daughter-in-law Dawn came up with “sew and sow life” and I remain forever grateful to her. She really caught the essence of what we’d be up to before we even manifested our dreams.

Batman is my partner in all of this, gardening with enthusiasm, and encouraging my journey with fabric and needle.

To plant, nurture, harvest and dye.. in this spot in Vermont that we lovingly call our “bit of earth”* is deeply, deeply satisfying. This work connects my heart, my hands and my spirit. In these bizarre times, what more can a person ask for? To be rooted in a sense of place that nurtures how we walk in the world…just, amen to that!

If there is curiosity about the “how to’s” of natural dyeing maybe I’ll put together a page of resources…It’s a long process, requiring patience and a curtain letting go of control as each dyer works in partnership with Mother Nature. But that’s part of the magic.

ALSO, THANK YOU FOR YOUR VERY THOUGHTFUL COMMENTS ON MY LAST POST, FRIENDS. THEY WARM MY HEART. xo

* “a bit of earth”, taken from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. This version has especially lovely illustrations.

on exhibit

my piece, “an invitation”, hanging at the white river craft center in randolph vermont.

When smoke from the fires out west blew in to our valley here at “a bit of earth” and obscured our view across the valley I felt heartsick. That same week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its “code red” report and my despair grew.

For a few years I had an idea percolating and when the Clara Martin Center for Community Mental Health Services put out a call to artists and writers I knew I had to get busy.

This is the artists’ statement I submitted with my photos…

Name of piece, “An invitation”

A tattered Earth flag, a Paul Hawken quote sent to me by my youngest daughter and my despair around events of the summer of 2021 have converged in my sewing studio. “An invitation” has allowed me to process much of the anxiety and grief I have held in my heart lately.

Our 24/7 news cycle will eat us alive if we give it our full attention. It takes discipline to keep things in perspective, and to find antidotes to the constant stream of gloom and doom. So, I have gone in search of hope and strength to guide me through my days.

I am finding hope and strength in a diverse menu of resources…spending time outdoors, in my studio, in conversation with friends and family (both far and near), listening to podcasts, reading, meditation, movement…each of us will have our own list.

Maria Popova has written, “Cynicism is a hardening, a calcification of the soul. Hope is a stretching of its ligaments, a limber reach for something greater.”

Maria’s quote, along with Paul Hawken’s, have buoyed me through this most challenging summer.

The tattered flag has been prodding my imagination for over a year. In February 2020, I wrote to activist Paul Hawken to ask for permission to use his quote in an art piece. He graciously allowed me to quote him. Prompted by Clara Martin’s Call to Artists/Writers, I pulled out a collection of plastic packaging I had stashed away and began clipping flowers to “plant” in the “dirt” of the torn flag. I used safety pins to help “mend” the flag. My husband Peter helped me to manipulate the handwritten quote sent along by my daughter Gretta Reed (a Middle School science teacher and badass environmentalist). The quilted flag hangs on a section of birch branch, scavenged from our yard up on Braintree Hill.

My hope is that viewers of my piece will be drawn in to Paul Hawken’s “invitation to build, innovate, and effect change, a pathway that awakens creativity, compassion, and genius”.

detail of embroidered plastic flowers

more detail

if only we could hold our broken world together with safety pins…

the quote that brings me back to hope, over and over again. with gratitude to paul hawken

On Monday I wandered around the White River Craft Center where the exhibit is hanging through November 14, 2021. I was captivated by all the different pieces that I saw. Poems, watercolors, sculpture, drawings…there are so many ways that we process our feelings! I remain grateful to the good work that the Clara Martin Center does in our community.

a wedding quilt for hannah and loren

Beginnings…planned and drafted on the three season porch here in Vermont…July 5th.

Our Hannah and her Loren had downsized and postponed their wedding. Life in a pandemic, right? Lindsey and I decided something very special needed to be stitched up to help celebrate their love…

So, when we were out in Detroit in June, helping Gretta, Ben and Maggie move out of Brooklyn, Lindsey and I snuck off for an afternoon of fabric shopping. We have collaborated on quilts before, so we were excited to undertake what we dubbed “TOP SECRET September Project”. It took us a little bit of time to get our mojo going and I’m sure we entertained the staff at the shop with our attempt at consensus building, going to and fro with bolts of fabric tucked under our arms. Once we decided on a color scheme, we got very excited about the project.

Lindsey took the fabric home and over a week or so she cut out all the squares while Flora was napping. We had some fun working out the arrangement of things…

Here we are, via FaceTime, with Lindsey in her sewing room in Detroit, auditioning an arrangement of squares on her design wall while I scowl in Vermont, not sure I am happy with things. (It takes a lot of fiddling to get things just right).

We’re getting closer in this picture…

Once we decided that things were just right, Lindsey sent the squares to me via the USPS. I set them out on my design wall in Vermont and began the fun of creating the lattice work that held the squares together (the cobalt blue).

This is how things began to come together…

In the meantime, Lindsey also cut a bunch of squares of a light colored, solid fabric and mailed them to immediate family only, along with some fabric pens. We asked folks to write a blessing, or wish or some other lovely message for Hannah and Loren on the blank square and return them to Lindsey via snail mail.

The squares came back filled with the sweetest wishes!

Lindsey sewed them all together into the backing.

Lindsey also cut strips for the binding for the quilt. Here they are, carefully organized on a drying rack in her sewing room.

Then she sewed them together and pressed them in half…

…and rolled the binding up, in preparation for the amazing quilter we hired for the job…it’s nearly a queen sized quilt and there’s no way Lindsey and I were interested in wrangling that!

Meanwhile in Vermont, Wilma was “helping” with the project by snoozing on the quilt top even while it was under the needle on the sewing machine…

An up close shot of the quilting!

Once I finished piecing the quilt top, it went back to Lindsey in Detroit, via the USPS. She dropped the finished backing, the top and the binding off at the quilter’s. Amy’s turnaround time was amazing.

When Lindsey, Scott and Flora came to stay with us in Vermont in August, Lindsey had the unfinished quilt tucked into her Subaru.

Working on hand sewing the binding to the quilt…

Lindsey and I took over the three season porch and spent spare moments during their visit, chatting over the quilt and stitching love and hope into the binding as we went. (Amy had sewn the binding to the front of the quilt by machine, Lindsey and I turned it around to the back and stitched it by hand.) Those were such sweet moments with my oldest daughter, as we held thoughts of Hannah and her Loren close to our hearts. It was really an honor to do that inter-generational stitching together.

The quilt!

The quilt back, with the bride and groom. xo

I come from a long line of sewists, and now two of my girls are carrying on the tradition. Somehow in these days of turmoil, I find comfort and sanctuary in holding a needle and thread in my hand. And I feel connected to the women who came before me and those who are now bringing that tradition into the future.

And what a gift it was to share all this far flung love and connection and hope with the bride and groom!!!

And I have so much respect for Lindsey, who worked all this magic with a wee one under her care much of the time!

xoxoxox

equinox intentions

wild rose hips, gathered from the yard and bundled at the front door.

Well friends, it’s been awhile, eh?

The equinox reminds me of balance…the settling of day and night into equal parts. And so I check to see if I’m in balance, too. Remembering intentions, accomplishments, gaps, falters…it’s a lovely time of year to do an accounting of things.

batman made crabapple jelly again this year, and i think this was his best batch yet.

There has been a lot going on around here, as we get things ready for winter, before the snow flies. Batman brush hogged the meadow, he pulled 120 pounds of potatoes from the garden (some will go to the food shelf down in town), other crops are curing and drying, I’ve done some dyeing and the houseplants out on the porch need to come in to the house.

flora and maggie, being cousins. xo

flora and I, holding hands in the backseat of lindsey’s car.

And of course, there is much to catch you up on with family gatherings…

batman made this flower box and we took it in the back of the pickup to detroit, where it added a vermont touch to hannah and loren’s tiny wedding.

It is my INTENTION to post more often here. There will be…

• the story of a wedding quilt

• another quilt hung in an exhibition

• some dye adventures

• my grandmother’s apple crisp recipe

corazón and wilma, keeping an eye on the road, waiting for the ups guy

I’m looking forward to getting back into a rhythm of showing up here, and to hearing about how you, dearest readers, are faring these days. I will try to respond to your comments in a timely fashion, right where you posted yours.

Sending strength, hope and best wishes your way. xo