meteorological autumn

Scavenging a fallen nest.

The view from here in the haze of summer.

Cosmos at the edge of the meadow.

GOODBYE SUMMER!

I survived you, but I have scars on my spirit from your intensity.

Hello September!

You are the harbinger of the loveliest season of the year!

This morning I woke up under a quilt (!)

I meditated with this.

I ate oats with blueberries.

And I spent the day over dye pots. Marigolds, Hopi black sunflower seeds, Indigo too.

I sharpened a pencil and sniffed the new point. It smelled like the first day of first grade. :-)

Joyous days are ahead… I am determined to craft them with my hope and renewed energy. Maybe you’ll come along?

We went to the joyous wedding of two remarkable young people this weekend. One of the cars in the parking lot had a bumper sticker that read “Hope is HIP”. That may be my new inspiration…

(Thanks to tqoe, Martha, Kim and Paula for your chatty comments on my last post. They made me smile. I’m sorry I did not give them the attention they deserved. I have been fried. I’ll send each of you some snail mail…Kim, email me your snail mail address? I think I have the others)

sneak peek Thursday

creating circles with a string and pencil…

#sewandsowlife (sewing supplies and garden beds)

wilma. my muse.

sashiko thread crosses and homegrown, hand dyed indigo on linen.

Meh. It’s my annual mid-August slump. Just get to autumn already, will ya Mother Nature?

In the meantime…I’ve been in the zone in my sewing studio. The submission date for this piece is tomorrow. I’m a girl who likes to skid right into a deadline. Here’s the call to artists. I had an inspiration as soon as I read the theme of the show, “stronger together”. I can’t wait to tell you about it!

What have you been up to this August, dearest readers? Drop a note in the comments so we can all feel like we’re sipping iced tea and chatting together…

finish it up friday

After blogging for 12 years, Amanda Jean signed off in January 2019. Amanda has left her blog, crazy mom quilts online as a resource for all of us who miss her creativity. Her posts were/are filled with ideas, tips and encouragement. Amanda hosted quilt-alongs, inspiring me to make this quilt (altho it took me a decade to finally get it onto our bed!) One of my favorite features on Amanda’s blog was Finish it up Friday, where she invited her readers to leave a link in the comments, showing something they had finished. (Many quilters have what we affectionately call “UFO’s” or “unfinished objects” and are happy to celebrate when they are completed!)

So, today I share with you my latest finish, an improv quilt stitched almost entirely from my scrap stash. I even used a spool of variegated thread that was languishing on the spool rack. The only things I bought new for the project were the terra cotta solid colored Kona cotton and the batting, which I found on sale. It’s a crib size quilt, which most likely will be tucked into the trunk of a DCFS worker, ready to comfort a child in a time of great need. Or it may be draped over a crib in a women’s shelter somewhere in Vermont. Sometimes it is good to remember that there are such wonderful people out in the world, doing tough work…people like the social workers, the teachers, the peacemakers… Marge Piercy’s poem To Be of Use often reminds me of the heavy lifters who put their heads down and push forward, again and again.

The heat and humidity here has finally broken and we’ve had a bit of rain. This was the view when I woke up, and the thermometer read 56 degrees. I got tears of gratitude in my eyes. I know a few of my readers are waiting for some relief too. I hope it comes soon. xo

Several of our nights have been disturbed by cat and mouse games, a sure sign that cooler days are ahead. Country homes, no matter how tightly sealed, have uninvited house guests now and then, finding their way into a cozy spot to spend the winter. Our trusty Corazón makes sure to keep things in check.

So friends, as some of the news in the world seems not quite so grim, I hope you have had a chance to exhale a bit and find some spaciousness in your days.

Hope you have a lovely weekend dearest readers, with some quiet time to read, or sew, or paint, or garden or do whatever brings you joy.

xo

quiet Wednesday

pin basting the donation quilt.

gretta and lindsey helped me pick this lovely terra cotta kona solid at a shop out in ann arbor.

it plays nicely with all six improv blocks.

my treasured 1971 roger tory peterson still gets the job done.

black krim and green zebra tomatoes and bell peppers from the hoop house.

grandma in residence

On the wall behind us…Cai Gua-Qiang: Cuyahoga River Lightning: drawing for the Cleveland Museum of Art. On loan. Read about it here. (A-MA-ZING.)

Hello friends! I have navigated our interstate highway system once again and I remain fascinated by how we are able to get from here to there. (There are flaws, I know, but there are joys to be had along the way.) The drifts of black-eyed-Susans and Queen Anne’s lace in the ditches along the pavement…the undulating rows of the vineyards along the Great Lakes…the barns, fading and groaning under the weight of years…the giant windmills, catching energy as they rotate amidst the farmland…the rising mist at dawn, as I pull down the visor to avoid the glare of the summertime rising sun… the road cuts, spilling all sorts of rock formations for all to see…and reminders of the people of the First Nations, challenging the status quo with billboards along the way. And the quiet. Hours alone in a car with so much time to think and reflect and plan. Ahhhhh…

My days in the Midwest were filled with visits with all four children, their partners and all four (!) grandchildren. There were playgrounds and errands and chores and iced lattes and strolling and laundry and changing diapers and burping and laughing and reading kids’ books and great food and…well, you get the idea…

Oh, and meeting tiny Freya and sniffing the back of her neck (eau de newborn) and snuggling her on my shoulder.

I was so lucky to have time with everyone at once and also, some in single family units.

When Ben, Gretta and Maggie invited me to meet them at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, I was delighted! We met up to see the Watershed exhibit and it blew my mind more than once. From their website: Watershed brings recent work from fifteen contemporary artists to UMMA for an exhibition that immerses visitors in the interconnected histories, present lives, and imagined futures of the Great Lakes region.

The museum provided an excellent workbook for families to use as they moved through the exhibit. You can find a copy here (excellent museum work!) In the photo (above), Maggie and I were considering our reactions to some of the things we saw while walking through the gallery. It’s hard to describe how lovely it was to have Maggie tucked up next to me, to share our thoughts and to watch her draw in her booklet.

Two of the artists used cyanotypes to create their works. Meghann Riepenhoff’s work responded to the chemicals dumped into the confluence of the Genessee River and Lake Ontario by Kodak. You can check out her amazing work here.

Along with the workbook for families, the museum offered small cyanotype kits to families. I can’t wait to see what Maggie does with hers! I came home and dug out an old package I had stashed in my studio and tried my hand at making a print this morning (above.) Clearly, the paper is old and it’s not a sunny day here in Vermont, so the results were not great…but I had fun.

Coincidentally (don’t you love coincidences?) my friend Anne recently sent me some snail mail written on a card made by one of her students. You can find Nina’s gorgeous botanical cyanotypes here.

There’s so much more to share, but I will save some for another day.

I hope you have been well, dearest readers, as summer pushes its way through August. We are hoping for more rain here in Vermont, and cooler days, perhaps you are too.

xo

pausing

Can you see it? The harsh sunlight and the swelter edging around the yard? This is my least favorite time of year, and even though it’s perfect for line drying laundry, it’s not so good for my British/Nordic cooling system.

My sweet Wilma is a kindred spirit, she goes belly up on the windowsill, catching a breeze where she can.

Yes, the gardens are going gangbusters, thanks to a recent drenching rain, but I still feel parched. I hydrate like a marathon runner, even tho I’m in slow motion. I toss and turn under just a sheet at night, depending on the ceiling fan to stir the air. I do not bring my best self to the work of the day when I’m slogged down in mid-July and the whole month of August. It has ever been thus.

So I am on to greener pastures. I’m packing up my little blue Subaru and I am heading west, to be grandma in residence for Freya, with a dash of Theo, Flora and Magpie thrown in. Hoping this distraction will get me through a few weeks of summer…

I’ll be taking a pause from blogging for a bit, just sinking down into the lovely days of bearing witness to a new family growing their way into their future. And watching as cousins and aunts and uncles find their place in our expanding family. It feels like a sacred opportunity and I’ll walk into it softly and with gratitude.

I’ll see you back here in Vermont in a bit. In the meantime, be gentle with yourselves, friends. xo

p.s. I’ve been trying to respond to your comments on the post where you left them…

p.p.s. If you have any tips for embracing the “dog days of summer”, let me know in the comments! :-)

in the midst of July

Hannah and Loren’s baby girl was delivered safely on Tuesday afternoon. Little Freya is a cherub and much cherished. She joins the growing posse of our beloved grandchildren, and I won’t hesitate to use the word blessed.

Once we finished with Zoom meetings that evening, Batman and I popped open a small bottle of Prosecco and toasted to the new and shining light that has entered the world.

Our veggie gardens are parched, requiring us to water them once in a while, which is concerning, because our home depends on well water. The sun gold tomatoes are just coming in down in the hoop house and I close my eyes when I pop them in my mouth. It’s the quintessential taste of summer for me.

The improv kids’ quilt is coming together. It will be donated once it’s done, via our quilt guild. Do you have any thoughts on what solid color might be nice to use as the in-between lattice strips? (Does that count for “crowd sourcing?”).

I’m using scraps from a cape I made for Maggie a few years ago. It’s a super fun novelty print that I’ll use in other projects down the road. I just can’t throw the scraps away!!!

This is how I work. Messy as heck.

How about you?

Are you a tidy project person or a jump into the deep end person?

Yesterday Batman and I spent some time in Middlebury, VT checking out a new shop opened by a dear someone we’ve known for ages, (one of Gretta’s best friends from high school). You can read about the shop opening here. I love that Beth had a vision, and despite the pandemic, found a way to open Sparrow Art Supply and Gallery. Beth is building community with art supplies and local art. Magic.

After saying “hi” to Beth and shopping a bit, we wandered around downtown Midddlebury. We walked across a pedestrian bridge to get this great view of the falls. The trees were filled with rollicking cedar waxwings who must have been catching bugs disturbed by the churning water. Maybe there were a dozen of them, chattering and flitting, flying very close to us.

Babies, sewing with scraps, eating tomatoes from the hoop house, wandering with no big agenda…these are the things bringing me joy and comfort these days. And of course, a maple creemee on the way home, at one of the best creemee stands in Vermont.

Maybe you wandered with me here, friends, and maybe you had a chance to catch your breath. I sure do hope so.

xo

a tattoo, a motto and creating an oasis

A design for this tattoo had been rolling around in my head for years. (See my first tattoo, here.) I knew I wanted to get something like this for my 65th birthday and due to COVID I finally got it last week, more than a year later.

This tattoo really feels like a portable resumé of my life, filled with so much meaning…some of which is too dear and close to my heart to share. But I can tell you that I have spent most of my life in partnership with needles and thread. (The metaphors for mending the world seem endless these days). As I sat down with Pat at Black Meadow Gallery and Tattoo, I realized that rather than have a thread with a knot at the end I really wanted to include a square knot, one of the strongest knots around. If you tug on a square knot it just gets tighter and stronger.

I’m still getting used to catching the tattoo out of the corner of my eye, and I smile every time I see it.

And this, dearest ones is a motto I am keeping front and center these days. As my brood of grand children grows, I’m reminded of the passage of time, of shifts in the generations. I am certainly not feeling like I’m getting to the end of things…but there is more behind me than in front of me. Of that I am aware. So, Rilke’s words bring me comfort.

And as for creating an oasis…I thought I’d bring you a smorgasbord of things that have brought me relief, distraction and comfort in the last few weeks…

BOOKS

Our book group just read The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams. It’s a gem, and I recommend it to you. I did not realize it was historical fiction until I was well into it, and I recommend reading all the goodies at the end of the novel, too.

I got two books through our inter-library loan program. Frances Palmer’s Life in the Studio has been recommended to me by several friends. The photos alone are an inspiration, and the text just adds to the pleasure of the book.

I learned of the second book via my dear, dear friend Dolo. Written in the 1990’s by historian Howard Zinn, the title is You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train. Eerily timely, it’s a refreshing read on the role of hope in the world.

Do you know of Libro.com? It’s a free app where you can purchase audio books from independent booksellers. In fact, you can help support your favorite indie bookseller with your purchases. This July, Libro.com is giving away two free downloadable audiobooks, and the link can be found here. The two books have me intrigued…Let’s Talk About Hard Things by Anna Sale and High Conflict, Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out by Amanda Ripley.

CONNECTING WITH KINDRED SPIRITS

I’ve been making a point of setting dates for phone conversations with “old” friends. Not Zoom calls, or Facetime, just old fashioned phone calls. Hearing the voices of dear friends and giving and getting updates has been profoundly gratifying.

I went to an in-person gathering of our quilt guild this morning and it was just a delight. We were careful about being socially distanced, some wore masks, but we were all together, much like my book group meeting on Friday.

We’ve been gobbling up the Montpelier Farmers’ Market each Saturday, wandering from stall to stall, basket in hand, chatting with farmers and crafts folk and bakers. Such fun to see the same folks week after week and begin to have the kind of connections that have been so missed these last few years.

REASSURING WORDS

Another resource shared by several friends are words from Mary Pipher, whose Raising Ophelia is a gem of a parenting book. Her opinion piece in a recent issue of the NYTimes titled How I Build a Good Day When I’m Full of Despair at the World is worth a read (or two).

The first Gen Z candidates are running for Congress—and running against compromise, a story on NPR a few weeks ago, will bring hope to your heart.

Do you know of Insight Timer? Another phone app, it’s free, with an option to upgrade. I often use the free mediations to start my day. I am very fond of this one right now. It’s just 6 minutes long, and it really sets a nice tone for the day.

IN THE GARDEN

Be sure to check out my friend Anne’s blog. She invited her readers to submit photos and she took us on a grand tour of 12 gardens! Check out the variety here.

Batman and I have been rehabbing overgrown flower beds, weeding the veggies, spreading new mulch on the paths between the raised beds and chipping more branches downed by the winter winds and trimmed with Batman’s clippers. Getting into the dirt while the sun kisses our shoulders and the breezes discourage the bugs…being a team, still after all these years…an oasis, for sure.

I really am a list maker. Are you? Here’s my list of the fun things ahead for the week (vs the ordinary, keeping up with commitments things)

• piece a promised quilt top to help our guild reach its goal of 22 donated quilts in 2022.

• catch up on snail mail

• FaceTime with Maggie

How about you? Where are you finding hope? What’s on your fun “to do” list?

Sending buckets of love and hope and joy and comfort to each of you, dearest readers. xo

walk with me

On Wednesday Batman and I consolidated a bunch of errands (to save on gasoline and time) and trekked out into the world, taking I-89 south. We were determined to pack some pleasure into our day and so we found this neat, off the radar spot to take a short hike. The trail loops out onto an esker, dipping up and down in elevation through gorgeous pine groves. The trail goes out onto a steep drop-off where the esker created a finger of land jutting out into the Connecticut River. Our steps were cushioned by layers of pine needles and the ferns rustled in the gentle breeze.

It was a good place to shed some tension and reset my attitude. Lots of deep breaths, sighs and stretches helped.

Maybe you have found a place to wander, relax your shoulders, exhale, readjust? They are precious places these days, because we are all carrying so much in our spirits and hearts.

Did you watch as Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in yesterday? I was teary. I am so grateful that Judge Jackson is willing to serve on the court, but because it’s so broken, I hold thoughts of her close to my heart. She is wading into very rough waters and I wish her strength, support and protection.

Sending you courage, dearest ones, as we navigate the changes that are swirling around us.

xo

P.S. Today I did something I’ve been thinking of doing for years and it was deeply satisfying. More later.

solace for today

light and dark have played together since the beginning of time.

decay and newness can be held at the same time.

grief, anger, frustration…they can lead us to action and change.

this is something that may be easier to embrace in the days ahead.

for now…find some beauty and sit in her midst.

please do not forget to let your own light shine.

keep thoughts of faithful friends close to your heart.

remember to look up.

nourish and hydrate.

the sun will come up tomorrow, no matter what.

dearest ones, it has been a day. know that i am here, holding space for all of us to just breathe. xo