Let's see... I think I might be a candle, maybe a pillar candle with a couple wicks. Light, gentle light in the darkness. Not trying to light the whole room, but able to light it's section. It flickers so it's always moving and different, it waxes and wanes. There is warmth to it's tone, when you look closely it's made of different layers and colors.
I might want to be the moon, I've had an affinity for the moon for a long time now, or the sun, strong and constant. But I think I might be a candle.
we all like a present, right?
A surprise that shows another person knows who you are and puts action into feeling by giving you something you'd like.
Say thank you! Be grateful for that connection, right?
What about the spontaneous gift brought home from work or travels? Your mate was thinking about you while away and shows it.
Tell me about a time when you found .a perfect gift for someone, or when you received a wonderful gift.
I think some of the best gifts I've been given are small. Oh I like the big gestures too like the 10 year anniversary ring, but when we lived in Baltimore dh would bring home silly pens with glitter, or lanyards of rainbow colors from trade shows, or come in with a surprise bouquet of flowers on Friday nights.
When we courted, dh lived far away and I'd come home to a bouquet of lisianthus, purple ones, by the door. I discovered them while visiting him in MA so he sent some to remind me of our time together.
now I might wake up to find dh has put a special app on the computer or finished the taxes, or when I can't stand on nerve pinched toes he makes dinner. What a gift.
When I am cantankerous because of anxiety he quietly stays by my side.
When I am stressed Milo comes and stands by my chair, leaning against me.
Such a gift.
Tell me about a special gift you've given or received or both, you know I like to listen!
ps. saw this on the writer's almanac today
"It's the birthday of the man who invented the game Scrabble. Alfred M. Butts was
born in Poughkeepsie, New York (1899). He was an architect, but during
the Depression he was out of a job and decided he'd invent an adult
game. He classified games into three groups — chance, skill, and a
combination of both — and decided that the last was the most promising.
He said the hardest part of developing the game was assigning point
values for letters. He went methodically through the dictionary and
several popular newspapers and counted by hand the frequency of letter
usage. He had trouble selling the game to major board game companies,
but a friend of his decided to produce it on an assembly line, and it
became a great success. He enjoyed playing Scrabble with his wife, who
was a good opponent. He said, "Nina knows more words and spells better
than I, but my architectural training helps me to plan better."
Happy Easter... I wonder if people will be hiding eggs under the current snow we woke to?
Life is sideways right now, and people seem to be waiting to breathe.
Wait a few weeks, it will go back to normal!
Only that's not how it works... facts are facts...life matters...
for instance on a trivial note, this is not what I think of as Spring-like Easter weather
snow? How will the Easter bunny bring me a basket of squeaky balls?
since it is Easter Sunday, I thought I'd admit to something.
I purchased these beautiful egg cups from an antique dealer last summer, thinking I'd make them into pin cushions for myself and two friends as Christmas gifts.
As you can see they are still waiting for the transformation!
While DH was at work yesterday, I went into scraps and stash to pull out fabrics to do a tiny spring quilt-let for the Family room easel. This is as far as I got, but the days have less meaning than they used to, the seasons aren't like the ones I grew up with, so who cares?
I found this blurb on the Writer's Almanac and didn't know about it... just because we don't know something doesn't invalidate it, by the way. Facts have a way of shaking up old ideas, right? Just because two cultures merge a little, doesn't invalidate either one too. We are all products of those who came before us, and our current desire to seek truth and to grow
"The word "Easter" and most of the secular celebrations of the holiday
come from pagan traditions. Anglo Saxons worshipped Eostre, the goddess
of springtime and the return of the sun after the long winter. According
to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the
winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a
bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny.
Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so
scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other
decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century. "
I always wondered why a bunny dealt in eggs... and why we combined the miracle of Jesus ascending back into Heaven with a rabbit. People seek to believe in greatness and they seek to make sense of life as well.
We all want and need meaning in our lives to make them worth living.
I have turned to sewing most of my life. Granny set me up at the treadle machine from her mother when my legs were long enough. I sewed doll clothes and quilts, hand embroidered table cloths, made pot holders, hand crewel- embroidered my bell bottoms for high school.
ready to roll!!!
I am having a lot of trouble sewing right now.
tumbling blocks ready to be hand sewn
There is constant worry as this virus wants to reproduce and spread and I watch neighbors still partying around me. It feels like an impending sentence. I bank back and forth on walks like a roomba instead of going zen.
I spent valuable sewing moments making the necessary masks this week, and I will not show them.
UFO's, itemized waiting to be finished
I also sorted supplies which in my mind, gives life order.
I had one finish this week, the tiny table runner in blue scraps. I spent a crazy amount of efforts free motion quilting feathers that wouldn't show,
isn't the back pretty??
and put a pretty metallic blue around the edge that normally I would not use on a binding as it's too pretty.
Hey, life's uncertain use the pretty fabric first, eat the good chocolate, watch the silliest tv shows.
ready to sew when you are!
Mostly I paint and watch lessons online. For when my real life starts back if it ever does. I feel lost like I'm squandering time. Then I read words that say be gentle with yourself.
welcome to Paint Party Friday.
Painting has provided a vacation from anxiety this week. I am so grateful.
All of the paintings and drawings this week came from lessons in Sketchbook Revival. It is free, momentary, and worth more to me than gold. It got me painting again last year.
I approach each lesson by turning to a new sketchook page, and drawing the teacher, dating the page, and being open to learning. There have been lessons I thought would teach me nothing like "working with clay" since that's not my medium of choice and I don't have any. But...
each teacher has taught me life lessons and the "clay teacher led me to self discovery and a way of relating to the process I hadn't thought of.
Some times the ones I look forward to because of the title of the lesson are not very helpful but I watch them all, slowly two lessons a day, and invest myself in learning.
Drawing and capturing a face is a wonderful way to start the session for me... I've captured so many faces to draw from in future!
Sometimes I share the page with two speakers, if there isn't a lot of art or notes
many of the lessons involve self exploration this time. The woman on the right had us start with a phrase or saying, then interpret it in collage, draw a line across the page and write on one side how the words resonate in truth for you, on the other how they do not.
This woman from HI made me cross by starting out saying you MUST have a real flower petal for this exercise. I live in snowy foothills of CO and there is a health crisis going on causing us to stay inside. I don't have a flower and could do this exercise from a photo but she was adamant and said it several times. I don't let this kind of talk stop me, I make do. I'm a quilter, we make art from bits and pieces! I can't say I learned a lot from her approach, the yellow one on the left was from her instruction, the pink one on the right from my memory of hybiscus. I took away her careful looking at an object, and layering of colors. Always something to learn
Oh and I like how her portrait looked like her!
gosh, I usually draw women! Drawing a man was challenging and fun, the same really. I so liked this man's style. He said to show up, draw and paint and grow, and not worry about the finished product all the time. Doing creative work leads to more and better creative work! Brilliant!
He had us dot the page at random with an ink pen, 100 times. Count them out! Then look for something in the pattern, and start connecting your dots. I saw a little dog! Okay it's pretty abstract but I saw it, and made it and kind of like it. I also love his portrait!
speaking of portraits, this teacher had us use our non dominant hand to sketch a portrait from her words. Now draw eyes, now nose, etc I have less control over my left hand, so I draw softer lines, with lots of wavery sketchy lines. She wanted us to go on to paint them but I was stunned at how much I liked this face. If I'd drawn from life she wouldn't have been so interesting. I love her features so much and could never improve on her.
I learned not to go back to correct, it usually messes it up and causes a little bit of magic to fade. I learned how much character is in a nose to mouth ratio, that a perfectly symetrical nose isn't the prettiest. I always liked character in my friend's faces!
Funny thing is I intensely dislike the portrait I made of the teacher this time! I went back, tried to correct it, looked at her closer, where did I go wrong??
I never captured her image, she was much prettier than this.
What makes a drawing look like the person vs harsher? What angle of hair crossing the face makes someone's portrait look hard vs how soft they look in life? What random mark under an eye causes someone to look older?
Lips and teeth make an enormous difference.
She had quite thin lips but my painting makes her look skeletal.
Seeing VS looking
I've done more lessons but I'll share those next Friday.
I signed up with one teacher, to receive her wisdom by email. She put out a call last weekend for a world wide prayer, across the globe all at the same moment, for us to pray for healing.
She gave us this drawing to color in as we thought about what we'd pray...
I love the image and clipped it over the calendar image I don't care for this month. Both DH and I prayed at the appointed time, sending our energy out to each other and God, to the collective.
I prayed for physical healing from the current health crisis, not just an incovenience as some believe, but also for people to wake up and see we're here for more than making money.
Money is important to survival but money can't be made if we don't survive
Welcome to this week's list of likes. I'm gonna come up with something... let's see
I talked to a long time friend who lives in FL this week. She is an artist but her passion is fostering kittens. She Recovered this old chair with stuffed toys, see her cat lying in the seat? they're all stitched down!
see why I love her so much?
we had another snow/ice storm last week, and we noticed this frozen spiderweb on a bush
frozen spiderweb
I like that dh can work from home two days a week now. He's quietly sequestered in a closed home office, but he's here and I'm not alone.
I have learned so much on sketchbook revival this week. I can put down my anxiety usually for the time it takes to paint a lesson. More about those tomorrow, but the teachers are very emotion based this time, and several are leading us through self awareness and self expression while learning techniques. Not what I expected to learn, so much better.
Amber sent this out to color before the prayer time
One teacher, Amber K. Bonicci gave an extra free course which I signed up for, and she sends out lovely emails like the one saying there was a world wide prayer going on last Saturday night all of us praying at the same moment, for world wide healing.
I like mood enhancers like Lindt truffles on the counter in a pretty cup
We are cooking all the time now, and made a good dish last night, no pics. Turkey tenderloins, simmered in a sauce of mango dressing, olive oil, minced garlic and minced ginger, and cooking sherry. It was so good on brown rice, and yes we were very lucky to find rice this time at the store.
we wondered why there are shortages when people are eating out less frequently. DH read that businesses that supply restaurants package food in enormous sizes and they aren't set up to package all of that in smaller packages yet.
You know I love a cow... OMG this one wants to come inside and be a lap cow
I like the classes I took on Blueprint this week
There was one on using precuts by Angela Pingle and disappearing blocks
One on embroidery I loved, actually basics, then beyond the basics with Myra Wood
A quilting class on WordPlay by Sarah Felke (that was just okay)
They are free (as advertising) right now, but you can't access the patterns or handouts
come on already, I'm dressed and waiting to walk!!
Milo's Moments
Hi y'all, are your human/s faces looking weird now? When we go for a walk their faces are behind fabric... is it because my mama likes to sew or is this happening to your humans?
Guess what I can count.
Yep "one treat two treat three treat" "Mama gives me three treats in a row on walks!"
Milo: Heyyyyyy where are my other two treats?
Mama: Milo I gave you one treat and that other dog one treat, isn't that fair? This time?"
Milo: "no you give me one- treat two- treat three- treat"
Mama:"okay then here is treat two"
Milo: "Um, Mama, now that's one- treat, so I gets two more"
Mama: " you already had one!"
Milo: "it starts over after you give one to some other dog." long-suffering sigh...
Mama: this is officially the worst version of "who's on first? no, who's on second" ever
one of my very favorite songs.... and concepts. Home. What does home mean to you?
Home did not mean safety growing up. It did not mean belonging or joy, but I saw it could mean those things when I watched TV. I saw it in friend's homes and families. I read it in books.
When I moved out, I became responsible for all financial responsibilities and decisions about my future. I was able to say that's how it's done in THIS house!
I began to build traditions. I collected things that made me happy and brought light into my life.
Having a pretty home to me was not decorating the whole place like a designer would, it was showing collections, it was pretty pillows and artwork, it was cheerful curtains and kitsch and comfort.
I feel like other people, like on Pinterest, have all matching items. I want a sense of space, and to see things that remind me of people I like. We recently put some pretty curtains on a bedroom window that is bright through the blinds. The curtains are a pretty shade of pink with black floral patterns, very subtle but they make the room feel small now! One little change made the whole room feel different.
I have been reluctant to hang artwork, even quilts in this house. I like the calm wall color that goes thruout the house. But. I have lots of pretty pictures too, and some pretty quilts. I hung our V-day quilt on the stairway wall and love it.
I may be sliding into decorating a bit.
How do you decorate your home? Formally with planned colors or with eclectic mixes of sentiment like I do? How does it effect you? Does your home look like you?
