Deep breath.
A picnic on the back porch.
Strawberry Jam.
I read on the porch for 2 hours.
There was sunshine and rain.
The fig is bigger.
Roses were picked to make rose water.
I watched the hummingbird stretch its body out, its tail feathers were illuminated by the light.
The indigo vat is still working.
I copied Wendell Berry’s poem “How to be a Poet” into a journal.
I've been keeping a basket of paper scraps, pens, pencils, paints, glue and a sketchbook on the table.
This is something I've done before and then usually get distracted at some point.
I wonder how long it will continue this time?
Sometimes I write notes from things that I am listening to. This morning, Feedback Friday with Zak Foster inspired a note.
A couple weeks ago, it was Ada Limon on The Ezra Klein Show. (During that conversation I discovered The Slowdown where Ada Limon reads and discusses a poem each week day.)
"Poetry has the breath built into it because of its line breaks, its stanza breaks, its caesuras. Any part of its prosody is really telling you, as the reader or the listener, when to pause, when to break. And it actually has a moment in which you are supposed to breathe." Ada Limon
Question, where else to we put spaces for breaks, to breathe?
I've been spending a lot of time sorting and reorganizing.
Use it up, give it away, and decide what I really want.
How I want to spend my time.
What do I enjoy the most?
One thing I know I love...color.
This is the dresser I have by my bed.
The drawers were a bit of a mish-mash of things.
Now one drawer is full of journal materials.
Another full of thread, needles, a few scraps of fabric.
The rest projects that I can pull out and work on for a little bit and then put away easily...insomnia projects.
Similar decisions are being made in the garden.
What can I care for, what will thrive on it's own?
Very excited to find the fig is alive.
Random fact, or maybe not so random... when there is light chickens lay eggs. For chickens to lay eggs in the middle of winter they need artificial light if they live where the day is short.
The local chickens are laying without additional light now.
I got these at the farmer's market yesterday.
They reminded me of something I had in my stash...
She has a name and the beginnings of a hair-do.
A new hair-do can do a lot for a person.
Her name is Primrose.
They are hardy and cheerful.
There is of course the primrose path...
but that's another story.
Today's digital collage.
3 layers/2 filters.
My mother first gave me a camera to take photos with when I was around nine. If I remember right it only used black and white film.
This is a copy of a photo that I took around that time, looking up into the canopy of a redwood tree. I remember having to be so careful with film. How different it is now with digital.
How many possibilities there are to tell a story...
This morning
I spent an hour or so down on the beach.
I went to walk but also to recenter myself.
Not sure that was accomplished.
(I also stood right at the water's edge and said to the sea "Liz says hello.")
I sat on a bench for awhile.
I have to confess to a fascination about what people talk about.... Today conversations included switching bank accounts to one with a higher interest rate, someone's child, someone following up with a complaint, a book they really enjoyed, how dogs will follow their nose...
The funniest was when I heard someone say, "uh-oh." I looked up to see a jogger pick up her little dog as a man on a hoover board went by. She called out, "He's not okay with hoover boards yet!" The dog started barking and all three of us connected with a smile.
For my staycation week I decided to sign up for an art class being presented this week and next.
This is still very much in progress.
I am embracing the beginner mindset.
Somewhere on there it says, "Don't ask why."
Sometimes I do that too much.
I can see some connections with this project to what I am doing with my Peace and Plenty blanket. I have been thinking of as something to doodle on for awhile...adding words, shapes and lines as they occur to me.
As a kind of journal.
And then there is this.
Inspired by Nancy, I took this picture a couple weeks ago on my way home...
I used to take a lot of pictures of my commute when I went by bus and foot.
A large part of me misses this kind of commuting.
It's more connected to community and location.
This week is my staycation.
I am spring cleaning.
Trying to clear spaces.
I will be devoting some of each day to making as well...
Today: stitching on a piece of fabric sent to me many years ago by Jude.
It's time.
Over a foot.
There has been snow on the ground for a week now. It's warming but first there will be more snow, rain, snow, wind, snow, rain, freezing...
The garden will be changed when the snow is all gone.
The rosemary had blossoms on it last week.
Coffee filters ready to cut and then spin into yarn.
Wintering by Katherine May recently finished but not since I will go back and reread. It's a beautiful book.
I don't think we ever really "finish" books.
The Overstory by Richard Powers started as a library book, purchased because I had to turn it back in before being able to read more than the first few pages. I am about a 1/4 of the way in. Thanks Dee for giving me a nudge to make it next. There are sentences, passages that I keep rereading.
Ursula K. Le Guin's collection of essays (a collection of blog posts), No Time to Spare, is my current nonfiction choice. I've been diving in and out of it for quite awhile.
White fabric, to sew with and to dye with. Possibilities.
From my journal this morning:
End of year. Thinking about unfinished. Thinking about books unfinished. Thinking about projects unfinished. Thinking about me…unfinished. The New Year is a construct made by humans, a date, a measure. It doesn’t really mean anything to time passing. It’s a way we (humans) try to impose control and organization.
To be continued...
Directions can be found here.
Drying coffee filters on the window so that I can try making coffee filter yarn.
Soon.
I've made about 30 of them.
Next week they will be filled with chocolate and branches and will sail away.
I have added what we called jelly fish and are now called jellies to my Peace and Plenty blanket.
I really have two memories of them from childhood, dead blobs on the beach that needed to be avoided and tiny little white ones with something like an "x" on them. We would see around the docks, maybe baby moon jellies?
That and it wasn't good when they were on the fishing lines...jellies can sting.
Some day I am going to go and watch the Jellies