bee creative

present

Present as in a gift, to give. 

Present as in this very moment, this place. 

I had to pause on my trip through the alphabet for awhile because I really didn't feel very present...

Mostly I've been working on the blanket for my coworkers baby. 

She is due any day now. 

It's made things extra busy at work. 

Tonight I took the ends that I've collected from the blanket and carded them into some roving.

And then I spun it into yarn.

This had me thinking about practice...practice as in to do something with the intent of getting better at something and practice as something that you do. 

I don't particularly care if I get better at spinning yarn with a drop spindle.  I can make consistent yarn when it is my goal but really, I love the bumpy lumpy texture. The parts where I spin it tight and it loops over on itself. 

I spin in a way where I am very present and paying attention to what I am doing.  Spinning consistent yarn, at least for me, is about muscle memory and paying less attention to what I am doing.

Using up scraps as I go is something I want to get into the practice of doing, rather than storing them for future projects.

And then I took the yarn and knit it on to the end of a strip I started for the Field Note blanket. 

It was such a pleasure...

perspective

Revisiting "putter."

It was a slow day after a busy week.

The cats wanted lots of cuddles (purr).

There are things to preserve...pears from the garden and local prunes.  It was the best crop yet on the prune tree (about 20) but that's not enough to fill up the dehydrator and I love dried prunes.  They have so much more flavor than what can be purchased at the store. 

I am thinking about things that are precious, things we want to preserve... About how seasons come and go but it's never quite the same.  Some things age and new things come about; we change. 

Today everything is filtered through smoke from wildfires. 

Perspective.

Two pigments.

On the left is what I think is a piece of cement.  I picked it up on the beach.

On the right, soil from California.  Soil that fed redwood trees. From a place where I played as a child.

Pigments are so much about place for me.  And place is one of the most important things that I care about.  Local and global.  That we are part of both.  Thinking about soil as earth. Earth as soil and earth as planet.

Products...things that have been made. 

Paper and twine.

The little purple dot is pigment too...from the corn husk that I was twining.

I think I will probably make some ink from some of the corn husks. 

More play.

The twine was made to bind the top of a basket together. I might, with the next batch of paper, try placing other twine into the pulp to see if it will hold in a different way.

P.S.  I really can't write the word "precious" without thinking of The Hobbit... a whole other perspective.

3 views and a bit more, day five

Cabbage + Potatoes + cheddar cheese + mustard sauce.  I made a batch of mustard and decided to clean the pot by making a sauce for some leftovers.

Worth experimenting a bit more.

 

day one, who knows

A weekend spent with family, Mom and Dad, both brothers.

These were taken through the car window, while moving. 

We took the long way, sometimes the best way.

Maybe usually the best way.

I have a thought...100 days of moving dots around.

on the table

Mostly it's been a stormy  weekend.  Early Saturday morning there was a gust of wind measured at 63 MPH. 

During this week's On Being interview with Christiana Figueres, Krista Tippett says,

"When I was growing up, when you were growing up, the weather was a matter of small talk. The weather and the seasons had a predictability that was a rhythm of our lives, and how quickly that has shifted, and we just kind of — It’s so interesting to me and a little bit terrifying how we so quickly move into accepting that there’s fire season."

I was stitching the edges of a cloud patch while I listened to this. 

It is the wind season, the season of power outages and floods.

The cloud patch is now attached to my blanket that I call "Peace and Plenty." It's the name of the quilt square that is on the upper right hand side. 

(There was another cloud close to this spot, it has been temporarily been removed.)

Somewhere on the blog I know I have shared about this blanket (it's mostly 2 layers so not a quilt) but I want to share again.

It started as a memory blanket for my grandfather.  The chambray fabric in the Peace and Plenty squares are from my grandfather's work shirts, the ones he wore gardening. 

Originally the plan was to have a whole quilt of the squares but I needed a blanket and started stitching everything that was handy together and they just seemed to fit. 

I've been adding patches to it for awhile now and suspect that eventually it will be more patches than not.

It is becoming a story quilt, every patch and mend making the story more clear to me. 

I am thinking about choice, and trust, and love...and other things too. 

 

 

what might hold us up

Yesterday I updated my CPR/first aid card, went to the beach and then the farmer's market.

At the beach, I picked up one clam shell, one oyster shell and a piece of brick. I noticed the way that some of the old posts are breaking down; looked at the mix of broken clam and mussel shells, the rocks, glass, and brick. 

Wondered about the things I couldn't see...not just the physical but also stories and history.

Thinking about erosion. 

I listened to the On Being podcast with Baratunde Thurston for a second time and read the transcript.  During the "On Being" conversation he talks about "citizen" as a verb and describes it with four principles: to show up, invest in relationships, to understand power and all the different ways we have it and to value the collective. 

It seems so timely with everything that I am thinking about. 

I've started listening to some of the episodes of his podcast "How to Citizen."  I know that I will be listening to more.  One thing that I love is that the episodes include suggestions for reflection and action...participation!

It's hard to push past (edited, what I mean here is to think of anything else other than...) what is happening in our world right now, on so many fronts.  Some of the instructions given during the CPR/first aid class: stop for a moment and slow down, assess the situation, start over when you have to.

I am holding this thought close, the one that has been in my side bar for years and is one of my touchstones:

"It's not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It's about healing the world that touches you, that's around you." Rachel Naomi Reman

 

One thing I can do right now...

The two pots yesterday.  The pot with the mullein has been simmered for a few hours. The willow has just been soaking but I will heat the water soon and see if the fabric will absorb more color.  The fabric was soaked in a mordant.

Thinking about the act of absorbing.

There is enough fabric to make a top, both pieces are leftover from other projects.  I will probably over-dye with indigo to make a green.

Both of these plants (although maybe not this specific willow) are sometimes considered invasive.  Both have traditional healing qualities, color to share and their own natural beauty.

Thinking about the definition of ruderal again...

plants that grow where the ground has been disturbed.

 

 

 

organizing

After a couple hours in the garden this morning, I returned to a project I've set aside for a long time...sorting papers.  All kinds of papers. Old doodles, notes, letters, pages I've torn out of magazines, photos and more.   

Below are pictures of baby me and one of my great-grandmothers.

I've started collecting some of the photos in a metal box I found  at my grandparents when I was in California.  It seemed perfect for a project of some sort...

The originals probably shouldn't be kept in the box as the organizers aren't acid free.  It's probably best to make copies of anything that is an original.  Maybe one or two copies for each person or place. 

And then I went back out into the garden to water and weed.

I didn't think there were going to be any figs this year, but there are!  One is about the size of a quarter and there are about 10 little nubs like this that I am pretty sure are baby figs.

Hooray! 

stars

Still thinking about why we make things...

This is a quilt my mom and I made for my grandparents 50th Anniversary, over 20 years ago. 

Make a wish...

color is one of my favorite things

No sewing today...I spent about 4 hours in the garden weeding and puttering.

I pried off some gum from the cherry tree. It's soaking in water now and then I will filter it.

And I made some pigments.

I have a tea plant (camellia sinensis) that I harvested some leaves from last fall and soaked in water.  It was for another project that got away from me.  Today I realized I had about 1/4 of a cup of very concentrated pigment. 

The brown is the tea, the green rose petal and the black iron/oak gall. 

I also made paint with some of the ochre/clay that I brought back from California.

This is a special one for me. In an email I sent recently to someone I wrote, “It is a truly wonderful and magical thing to be able to hold on to a memory or a connection to place through pigments….”

 

fieldnote: blueberries

Do the first taste best?