The Thing I No Longer Fear

When Clutch died, I lost my other four legs into the local nursing home.
I've already written here about the surprisingly wonderful experience of taking Mr. Congeniality here into the dementia and skilled nursing units. I no longer fear the demented elderly--in fact, within weeks of getting Molly, I registered her for the Therapy Dog International Test at the end of July. We've been working hard together so that she can earn her red kerchief, trot through those big wooden doors, and make a senior's empty eyes flash with love.

And do it without knocking over three walkers trying to nab a Milk Dud that rolled under the chair two weeks ago.

I ached for my contact with the residents but really didn't want to just wander around the halls there. Because Life works this way if you keep your eyes open, the nursing home magically put out a request for a volunteer to help with ...ta da...art activities!!

I signed on, thinking ok, I would be of service where needed until Molly got her certification. Because Life works this way if you keep your heart open, over the past two months, I have fallen in love.

Again. 

This time, with about a dozen folks who come through the workshop as part of an Adult Day Care program.

They live in their homes with caregivers, they live in the homes of their children. Some still proudly flash hot pink nails and jewelery and ask why waste time with an upcoming Tea Party when everyone would rather have cocktails...

 

 Others sit quietly, grateful for yet another reminder to put the glue on the vase and then the paper.

Still others sit in another world. Or so you think, until its time to go and you hear,"its just that some days are not happy ones," from one who has had 93 years to learn the difference.

At first, I rolled my inner eyes at what seemed like juvenile projects. These are our parents and grandparents, not our children.  But the paints, the construction paper and pipe cleaners, and the ribbon attached to paper plate hats are just tools for maintaining--or recovering for maybe just one hour--engagement with the world. 

And they are just the prop I need for fulfilling the urge coming from somewhere deep within me ...the urge to teach myself to be with the elderly wherever they are at the moment.

With Mrs. M, when she is talking about how to make tomato sauce or how to outwit bossy daughters who feel they have the right to dress their mothers.  With Mrs. J, when she rolls her eyes and spits one husband was more than enough for me, thank you very much or with Mrs B, as she applauds a very fine mate because "he came home every Friday night sober and with a paycheck."

Or holding hands with Mr. C, who can only manage to spend the hour fighting back tears because I miss my children. Even if he cannot remember who they are.

Lest you keep confusing me with Mother Theresa, know that I never actually feel like going there. Wednesdays are my only truly free day and I run through all my excuses so I can stay at home and loosen the rein on my spirit. But  I inevitably wind up dragging my butt into the car because I just can't bear the thought that I might miss something...

...something like the day we were making hats like these for the upcoming Tea Party. 

The chatter had melted away into convivial concentration.  Out of the silence, a paper plate went on a tuft of gray hair and a small voice started singing in a faulty soprano:

"On the ave-e-nue....on  Fifth Ave-e-nue.."

And the others joined in.

"In your Easter bonnet,
With all the frills upon it
You'll be the grandest lady
In the Easter Parade."

I couldn't give this up, ever. I will just have to teach Molly how to work a glue stick.

Off the Wall, Part One

The sewing projects that I started about this time last year are at last off my design wall. I feel very satisfied about Pinball, which will be my contribution to Kaffe and Liza's 2016 quilt book and that I introduced here.

Satisfied schmatisfied, I am downright ecstatic about it! And I want to try this concept again for myself, unencumbered by the fabric choices dictated by the marketing gods. (I believe you art folks call that "working in a series.")  It has always been something floating on the horizon of what interests me, the idea of staying contained within one design form and exploring how much further I can use it to express myself.

The felted wool birds (no link: my blog is littered with them) have also just taken flight off the wall.  I thought they would like it here:

 

But they seem to prefer it here.

 

Guess they're like all the other birds in the neighborhood, suckers for Himself's latest contribution to aviary public housing. The open house has been going on for a few weeks but it appears that a nice young finch couple has moved in to the yellow center hall colonial over the weekend.

I am stitching the last bits down on the outside border with an old woven Kaffe Fassett plaid fabric that I earned by cleaning out Liza's studio.  The pattern includes 96 wool berries on the outside border. Mine are currently very happy lolling about in a ever-so-juicy basket by Patricia Spangler...

...and they will stay there as I finish my creative visualization exercise. Specifically, I am visualizing me, stitching down wool berries with wool thread, onto a heavy wool blanket draped across my lap as temperature begins to climb into the 90s....

My last project, the One Block Wonder for the wedding couple, is also off the wall and on its way to the machine quilter. It simply is not my style and the less said (or shown), the better.

Oh, right, as if I could stick with saying less about anything.

Its just that I learned a valuable lesson: while the notion of making a gift may be heartfelt (and it was) the gift itself must also be part of the maker's creative heart as much as her hand (it wasn't).

Anyway, three projects that kept me company for the past year are now winding their ways out of my life. I am happy to once again be starting a dating relationship with this:

We're taking it very slow, since neither of us wants to repeat our the mistakes of our past.

Which brings me to Off the Wall, Part Two. Its about the other walls in my house and why I want my kids to get off of them.  But it is now Friday night, Shabbat descends and I am going to go to synagogue, sit in the front row with E, admire Rabbi Diana's dancing eyes and lime shoes...

and feel satisfied and grateful for it all.

Shabbat Shalom.

Into One's Own

For months, I've been thinking about Grace's musings about "coming into one's own." One's own what?

Sorry to say that after months of rigorous intellectual questions, the answer looks something like this.

My "own" was a silhouette of me...fully formed but not at all clear to me. And always just out of reach.

 Like Peter Pan and his shadow, I was always out of step with this silhouette. For decades, I shaped my self mostly by the noise I made bumping up against other people or other places, like a hard metal ball sprung loose inside a pinball machine. I sure could make the scoreboard light up but I could never grab hold of the girl in the silhouette.

And then, as I ticked toward 60, the frenzy seemed to die down almost biologically. It settled into a slow, persistent inner rumbling instead of mad chaos directed outward. And the rumbling had a strong magnetic pull. First, it took me into the kindler, gentler stitching world of Spirit Cloth...which lead me to discover all of you.  And that took me back into creating, back into my garden, back into my faith.

Back into deep and trusting relationships with a few trusted friends, one beloved man, and various boxer duos. 

 

All of which lead me in turn to discover, uncover, recover my self.

 

And I was able, at last, not only to grab hold of my silhouette, but to step into her.

Into my Own.

My Dog Star

Remember this? A relief of Clutchie's paws in the snow the day before he died.

Remember how it turned into this?

On Sunday, I buried Clutchie's ashes under the bush where he used to rest with his pink ball after fetching it just one too many times in the summer sun. I put the ashes on top of his Therapy Dog ID card and then covered them with his ball, so that just the handle with his collar tied on sticks out of the dirt.  I did it tearfully.

And then yesterday, his cloth became this.

And I am smiling inside.

A Field Trip for You and Some Oil for Me

As I come out of hibernation from Winter Camp, my ability to write freely seems to have rusted shut. My brain, it turns out, is like the Tin Man, squeaking for some oil. So permit me to lubricate my cortical gears a bit with the easiest of exercises: taking you on a field trip to Chicago.

I went to primarily to nuzzle Thing One and to wander through The International Quilt Festival 2015.  But I saw much more.

These are lwa (LUH-WAH) from the Field Museum's current exhibit on Haitian Vodou (and yes, I am spelling it properly.) They are representations of specific spirits, complete with their own specific powers.

This lady lwa is my favorite, possibly because we have the same anatomical feature(s).

The Field Museum also had a majestic exhibit on The Vikings.Which, I might add, is actually a verb, not a noun. (As in,"the various tribes of Norse people went on "vikings," which was a way to replenish their supply of slaves and other stuff.") Not surprisingly, they kept doors and boxes locked shut (probably in anticipation of other tribes viking through) and keys are a dominant feature of the archaelogic finds.

 They also hung a lot of their goods on their belts...probably for the same reason.

I spent four hours at the Quilt Show, which opened with flocks of redware dancing in the air like so many kites.

The various exhibits featured both the old and the new. I was particularly enchanted (and awed) by the tiny perfections of the stitchers who came before...

But some of today's appliquers also had me at "by hand??!??" .

We went to a taping of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, and, since Thing One is a hotshot in the Chicago restaurant business, we had no shortage of very cool meals. She recently opened a tikki bar (what one always thinks of when one thinks "Chicago in winter," yes?) and I found myself beset by a panoply of drinks that sprouted parasols, orchids, and other wildlife.

After three nights of staying up past 9 pm, I flew home in exhaustion to the waiting arms--and paws--of my family.The cups in Pennsylvania just have coffee in them. And that's fine with me.

Placeholder

I was about as energetic as a slab of beef in a slow cooker for most of the winter and didn't post much because I couldn't think deeply.  Now I have plenty to say and can't touch down for all the activity whirling around me. Wedding quilts, book quilts, my little Dog Star cloth of Clutch...travelling plans (mine)and wedding plans (kid)... a class on the Psalms at rabbi school and a teaching I am going to do on Passover both at my synagogue and for my unlucky guests at our seder table...and then of course, should it ever stop snowing for long enough, get the yard clean and the Garden birthed.

I really do have something Big to say, a lot of thinking these past few weeks on Grace's post about the notion of "coming into one's own." What this means to me.  As soon as my heart rate slows down, I'll be back to this placeholder of a topic.

Meanwhile, to fulfill Julie P's last request (not coming out right but you know what I mean), feast your eyes on our little Molly. She is sweet and bouncy and looks at the camera like she's a teenage actress posing for paparazzi all her life:

Excitement

I am like a little kid getting a new puppy.

Oh wait.

I AM getting a new puppy!

 Dog, actually. A four-year-old lady boxer, currently named Pixie.  It means making a three-hour trek to the north shore of Long Island (hiya Jude) and then three hours back...putting me right through metropolitan NYC at rush hour on a Friday evening. It means upsetting the calm and routine that has settled in our home (now that Clutch isn't throwing his considerable weight around, Billy gets nice juicy marrow bones and as far as he is concerned, that's a fair trade).  It means having twice the slobber, hair, and muddy paw prints everywhere.

Why am I doing this?

For the same reason I do most things that make no sense. Because I have to.

Tweets

No, not those. I can't do anything in 140 characters.

But I can do a lot with 30 characters. These 30 in particular:

 

I still have the vines and 97 circles of the border left, as well as sewing on tiny buttons in each of their eyes, once the quilting is done. But it doesn't feel the same. I am strangely homesick for the process of bringing these little critters to life in all their frippery. Its strange not to be embroidering hair on something.

Billy, come.

Moving On

We're all trying to walk around the big hole in our home.

Billy depended on Clutch to noodge me with a big paw in my napping face to get dinner, to alert him that something yummy could drop on the kitchen floor any second, to signal that new arrivals knew the secret handshake and could enter into the house.  He definitely benefited from the Vulcan Mind Meld, doggie-style.

Now he has to think for himself and it isn't easy for him.

He is much more attuned to me now---I hid behind a tree on our walk in the woods yesterday and for the first time, he actually dropped his mouthful of deer poop to run back to find me. He sprawls on my lap every evening now, which complicates my ability to finish my last three birds (I think I embroidered the last beak to his tail.)

Himself nursed himself by immediately latching on to petfinder.com to look for a new dog. That happened so quickly that I am no longer worried about his well-being upon my demise... as long as someone develops wifefinder.com.

Me? I made sure all my applications with the boxer rescue groups are up-to-date and then moved my thoughts back into the present.  I took photos of Clutch's pawprint in the snow and used Picasa to get a high-contrast image...

 that I converted to cloth...

...and then to the beginnings of a story.

I originally thought I would continue the paws as just thread outlines but decided that I would eventually want to look at something that made me smile--a story of Clutchie, not of grief. And so I will somehow give him back his ball.

Rough idea

Meanwhile, back at the Kaffe Fassett ranch, I have a quilt to design and sew.

Here's the scoop.

Every year, Kaffe and Liza create a new book that is full of quilts using the latest Kaffe Fassett Collective Fabrics.  My coworkers have always contributed a design, but they are well-established and experienced quilters.

When I started working at Glorious Color about 7 years ago, I was a quilting novice. I had made several quilts, sewing together my choice of fabrics but always for an existing pattern.  And with mismatched seams, bumps in my patches, and squares that rarely had four sides. But working with Liza and my coworkers is like being in Quilt College. Under their gentle tutelage, I slowly learned. And I slowly began to contribute. First, by updating older quilts of Kaffe's with newer fabric...and then, by creating my own designs.  These are all available as kits in the online shop.

One of my quilts, Jumping Jupiter, was originally designed for the shop. It snuck into the last book (Quilts in Morocco) because of a late no-show from someone else. This time around, Liza actually invited me to create for the 2016 book when she invited the grown-ups.

Eeek.

Yep, it is a challenge on all fronts. First, second, and third, I have to get over myself, but that's an ongoing challenge, isn't it?

Fourth is the brutal reality of fabric merchandising. The book will not be available until September 2016.  But, by then, the manufacturer will have discontinued many of the fabrics that are currently available now. Which means we would be designing quilts that will not be possible to make. And we don't know which ones will bite the dust, either. The solution? Our designs must only include 1)fabrics that are not yet commercially available (ha ha, I have samples and you don't) and will therefore be around next year and 2) "classic" fabrics that will be around permanently, or however long permanent is in the world of retailing.

Fifth, we must be mindful of waste: no sense including just one four-inch square of a fabric when the quilter will have to buy 1/4 yard minimum.

Sixth, we must create a quilt that can be recreated by following meticulous instructions. Customers who buy books of patterns do not want improvisation. That is, you have to say "cut a 2 1/2 circle," not "cut a circle that looks right to you."

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, enjoy the play. Lucky for me, Kaffe and Liza want no limits on our creativity within the constraints outlined above. They want beautiful quilts that make the fabric glow. Beautiful quilts that will look mouth-watering as they are photographed tucked into the tiny Mediterranean villages of Cinque Terre, Italy.  (Got that? The quilts go to Italy. The quilters stay in Pennsylvania.) And beautiful quilts that the designers themselves love working on.

So here is where I am. Not surprisingly, I want lots of color.  With bouncing circles. Here's the base so far:

These are 4 inch squares that will be stitched into 3.5 inch squares

And here's my first pass at auditioning the rough circles, which will be hemmed (by hand) down to 2.5 inches and then  sewn down (by hand).

I may fill every square, I may create other kind of effect. I just better get moving because there are 289 of these babies to sew down.

Not to mention a big pink ball for a big-hearted dog.

Good Dog

Clutchie died in his sleep last night,

curled up on his couch.

After a good day of playing ball.

Found Objects Find a Home

Himself played hookey on Friday and we set off for an overnight field trip to upstate New York, to take a one-day studio workshop in found object assemblage with Saugerties artist Fay Wood.

Fay and her husband Skip met us at the door of their wonderful old white clapboard house. I mean studio. I mean house.  It was both: a large, winding exploratorium of Fay's sculptures, paintings, and assemblage that made it hard to tell where house stopped and studio began. Every nook spilled over with promise.

Our instructions were to come with a general concept in mind and specific materials in hand. Himself brought four objects: an antique beehive smoker, an weathered worm tin that loops on to a belt (for fishermen or folks who want to accessorize with night crawlers), a rusted industrial light shade and, of course, a set of dentures.

Yep, pretty much what he packs on all our trips.

I brought 33,995 pieces of ghost town glass,rusty metal shards, headless china animals,plastic toys coated in sea brine, weathered sticks in odd shapes, and old mattress ticking I ripped from a miner's cabin in Montana. And many other essentials a girl just cannot do without.

Fay is a perfect art teacher because she knew how to work with our very different needs.  Himself has a fine sense of design, facility with tools, and the confidence to explore them both without vomiting. He loves technical tips from experienced artists and Fay had many valuable pearls from her decades of experience trying to figure out how to join one surface to another.

She also laughed at his jokes.

Me, well, I haven't a clue what I am doing with design or with tools and my insecurities are to my creative process as a bad shrimp is to digestion. Fay seemed to sense this and gave me suggestions that echoed my own intuition and kept me on course. I felt her pulling me out of myself and into the work and at the same time, gently helping me edit myself when my passion for a particular object didn't jive with the piece as it was materializing.

Plus she didn't yell at me for forgetting to close the lid on the glue.

We learned so much about working with specific materials, but its the bigger principles that really intrigue me. That's because they really apply to almost everything we create.

1. Everything starts with a base. And it must be stable.
2. What you add to the base should add texture or contribute to the story. Ideally, both. If it doesn't, does it really belong?  And it must be stable.
3. Make everything look intentional, whether or not you intended it as part of the design or it happened because the drill slipped. And it must be stable.
4. Accept nothing less than excellence in how tightly you piece everything together. And it must be stable. 

You can see more pix of us working over at Fay's blog. (Be sure you scroll down far enough to read the part about "two very well designed and thought out pieces...") Here's some close-ups of his completed piece...

And mine...

My exploration of the mining ghost town, The Works, still needs something hanging from the top of this side.

I think.

Or is that a bad shrimp I am tasting?