bee creative

60 minutes: listening

Sometimes I listen to podcasts while working on a project, like when I am trying to make yarn with coffee filters.

(Not going well, need the cats to take a nap.)

Other times, like this morning, I listen after waking up very early and am just not ready to start doing something.

"On Being" remains a favorite and funnily enough this week's interview was with an author, Oliver Burkeman, who has written about time management.

One of my favorite parts

"Every new, extraordinary thing that a small child does is the end of the time before that time. But it occurs in everything, all through the day and all through one’s work, all through everything, that to do anything is to forgo all sorts of other things. And this isn’t some recipe for making the pain go away, but I experience a sort of amazing drop of my shoulders and all the rest of that whenever I can recall that this is just built in. This is like, how it is."

Another podcast I've found recently and have been really enjoying is "The Ezra Klein Show."  I've listened to several episodes from the archives now and am thinking about much of what I listened to.  One interview was with Richard Powers, author of The Overstory.  I am about half way through the book and am loving it.  A favorite passage,

"It feels good, like a root must feel, when it finds, after centuries, another root to pleach to underground.  There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things."

Last week's walk through the park.

Always time well spent.

not finished

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...

 

holding on

"Autumn poses the question we all have to live with: How to hold on to the things we love even though we know that we and they are dying.  How to see the world as it is, yet find light within that truth." Autumn Light by Pico Iyer

I am on page 34 and keep wanting to find a pencil, to underline, to make notes.

(I like this book. Lots of interesting things to follow up on here.)

I used to do this a lot, underline and make notes, that is. 

Why did I stop?

Almost dry, silk and cotton dyed with carrot tops and red cabbage. 

May be fugitive (not last).

Fugitive, on the run.

 

"Holding on by a thread."

Melodramatic?

Only sometimes.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and comments on the last post, much to think about.

#81 reflect

Deep contentment. This is the third week that I’ve gone to walk on the trail along the bay . I was able to claim a space down at the very end of the dock, in one of the corners. There was a fairly good breeze coming from the south. When I closed my eyes I could imagine being out on the boat during the summer…childhood memories.

 

Reading chapters in Wild Comfort brought back other memories. The chapter about burning garbage on the beach in Alaska made me think of my own family history. About the garbage that would come up in the trawl when we were dragging for shrimp in the San Juan Islands, once a refrigerator. And yes, dragging isn’t the best environmental choice. Sometimes we do the best we can with the information we have, with the opportunities that are available.

 

Another one of my memories is of going into an abandoned small village that had been built around a cannery in SE Alaska. It was as if the people who were living there just walked away and left. A ghost town. I wonder what happened to those things? Are they still there? Has it been buried or burned? Was it loaded up and taken away? Or did someone dump it out in deep water?

I am guilty of having more than needed (don’t ask about how many coffee cups I have!). I think a lot about consumption, sustainability, resiliency. About what I would want or need if I lived in a tiny house.

In the midst of a long term goal of organizing belongings, I am still trying to let go of things or transform things into more useful things. To take responsibility for what I have.

I found a project from several years back, sitting in a pile waiting.

It knows what it wants to be now.

It wants to be smaller and useful.

#80 comfort

Reading:

Preparing:

(in the dehydrator)

Making:

Imagining:

 

 

#64 here I am (setting an intention)

Thinking about the rhythms we create in our lives.

Absolutely committing to daily posts is beyond me right now. The pattern of them appeals to me, the structure and predictability. But between work, allergies, the heat, the lack of rain, a daily post just isn’t something I have been able to accomplish at the moment. 

I am going to continue to try though, it keeps me focused on spending a bit of time each day doing some kind of making.

And the making keeps me focused on holding a vision of the world that I want to make real. In another place I was able to say today that I believe we take care of what we wonder about, what we look closer at. 

One of the books I am currently reading.  Thank you Nancy.

The company I keep when I read.

Other books I pulled out as threads that are connected, at least in my mind.

And some notes that I've taken...

Traces of where I have been.

#52 try things

A few more new things for the wardrobe. Two more versions of the top from The Act of Sewing by Sonya Philip.  These were both made from the top pattern.

Fabric: Cotton voile

Construction notes: Ruching on the shoulders with elastic. It gathers up the fabric to create a ruffle. 

Thoughts: Supper comfortable to wear on a hot day. I added the ruching as an afterthought.  It made the shirt fit better.

 

Fabric: Cotton knit

Construction Notes:  Cut two of the back pattern pieces to have a shallower neckline, otherwise the neck opening can be too big.  

Thoughts: A knit fabric drapes well and is flattering.

Notes to self:  Remember to use clothes pins when hanging this shirt to dry.

 

#51 tell a story

 

Do we create our own story with the things we make?

Storyteller as a personality type.

Thinking about the story a wooden spoon, homemade apricot jam and a dress might tell.

Fabric: rayon

Pattern: Top and skirt from The Act of Sewing by Sonya Philip. I overlapped the two patterns to make a dress. 

It swirls in the breeze. 

I can't help but think of a dance.

#49 always have something to read

I have three bookshelves

and stacks of books

and boxes full of books...

I never read just one book at a time, and rarely read one book from start to finish without reading another book in between. 

Checking out books from the library causes me to buy more books than I probably would if I didn't check out books.

I reread books frequently too.  Sometimes just chapters or sections, other times the whole book. 

This selection (for Nancy so she can look closer) is made up of books that I reread often, books that are in the process of being read, ones that I am thinking about or that I want to read sooner rather than later. 

 

#38 read something

I've reached the point that after a book has been checked out from the library three times and I am not done, it's probably time to buy the book. 

That's what happened with the book Range by David Epstein. It's not a hard book to read but rather has to do with my reading habits.  When it comes to non-fiction I often jump around a lot.  This can be a problem when there is a due date.

(Redoing an inspiration board.)

Epstein discusses in the book why overspecialization is not a good thing and the need to generalize and collaborate. It's something I find very validating....

(Redoing the sewing/? room.)