Happy Holidays and Have a Wonderful New Year!

Thank you all so much for your wonderful comments on the Solstice Stone giveaway. I have to admit that I have visited my own site a lot lately just to re-read all of your lovely sentiments. I wish that I could send out a Solstice Stone to every single one of you, but my hands have only so much time left in this crafting year. Cassi is the winner of this stone, but I will be holding more giveaways in the new year, so please stay tuned.

I will be signing off for the holidays and won't be back until early January. I wish you and your families a wonderful, warm holiday season and a tremendous start to a promising new decade. I feel hopeful, and much of that hope comes from the people that I have been crafting with and from creative craftbloggers like you.

I started blogging to feel a part of a community of like-minded parents and crafters, and I've gotten so much more. Most of all I've gained confidence that living a creative life and weaving its components into family and work life is not only possible, but necessary for us all to thrive as individuals and as a society.

That may sound extreme, but I want to live in a world in which I know where and how my food is produced, a world in which individuals can make and fix things with their own hands, a world stripped of excess and waste and focused on the fundamentals, a world in which children are encouraged to dream and craft and invent and explore, a world in essence that we make ourselves. You are all doing that, and I laud you and urge you to keep creating and exploring.

With much hope,
Pat

Solstice Giveaway

Solstice Stone

Working with wool and stones has a healing effect for me. I've spent the last few weeks in the evenings embroidering felted stones. (Check out my Flickr page for more photos of what I'm calling the Crewel Stones.) This handwork helps me work out the normal, everyday stresses that otherwise would build up into big anxiety for me. My mind flows to different places, mulls over a problem from my day without needing to solve it, while my hands are solving their own design problems.

I use thrifted crewel wool in a random assortment of colors, and the colors I have on hand guide my designs. The shape of the rocks and the loft of the felted wool inspire the stitches. Katherine Shaughnessy's The New Crewel: Exquisite Designs in Contemporary Embroidery has helped me explore some new-to-me stitches, and I've approached each stone as a sort of mini-sampler.

The matryoshka stones have been especially healing to create. They were inspired in large part by SnippetyGibbet's lovely handmade matryoshka cards, available at her new Etsy shop. I chanced upon The Art of the Russian Matryoshka, by Rett Ertl and Rick Hibberd, at the library, and was tickled to learn that the matryoshka were likely insipired by the import of Japanese nesting dolls to the city of Sergiev Posad in 1899. The book is beautifully photographed and shows artisans making the nesting dolls at every stage in the process.

While sewing late into the quiet night, my mind often turns to how much I have learned from reading craft blogs and having my own blog. I've gotten lots of inspiration and expanded my repertoire of techniques, and I've also learned to approach each project I take on as an excellent opportunity to solve problems, both creative and practical.

An integral part of this process is you: my friends, my readers, my co-conspirators in craft obssession. As a thank you to all of the kind, generous, and inspiring readers of Zen Crafting, I'd like to offer a little Solstice Giveaway. Please leave a comment by noon (Eastern Standard Time) on December 21, and I will select a winner from among them to receive the red Solstice Stone shown at the top of the page.

Happy Solstice, and have a wonderful holiday season and New Year.

Tree Glyphs

The deciduous trees are decisive in autumn.
They cut off the flow of sap to leaves
And shed them.
The trees release their flapping flags, their green finery,
and offer their skeletal selves, like an open palm,
To the wind, ice, and snow.




A late November rain, viscous and on the verge of ice,
Clings to naked branches.
The drops yield slowly to my touch,
But pierced, finally trail down my glove in a mercury-like trail.
The trees must wait, breathless, to see if a sudden fall in temperature
will crystallize those drops into deadly ice,
Its weight dragging down and snapping twigs,
Or worse, arm-like branches that crack the silence of a winter night.




Would that I had the strength, the fortitude of thick bark and a sleeping cambium,
To bare myself in winter, offer myself up to the rawness and risk of it.



But though the trees and I speak a different language,
when I read their signs—
a dead leaf laced by time,
an open, heart-like seedpod,
a lichen-covered stick—
I see a common grammar:
Hope.

Tabletop Trees

The most successful crafting I do with my youngest is usually spontaneous, using the materials we have on hand. He is an energetic preschooler, and his attention is, shall we say, very fluid and comes in short, intense bursts before he drifts off to another activity. This morning we were molding a Santa and elves out of play dough when we started talking about what should go on his holiday nature table. (The Waldorf tradition of keeping a seasonal nature table is one of my favorite aspects of my son's school. We look forward to seeing the new items on the table at school each week.)

My son took the doughy Santa and put it on his kid-sized play table, which he had pushed next to our nature table/antique Japanese tansu. Then he asked for a tree for his table, like the one I had made the previous day, and this is what he assembled, largely on his own.

The materials we used: small terra cotta pot (any other heavy-ish, sturdy container will do), medium-sized rocks for weighting the bottom of the pot, small branches, and smaller rocks and sea glass added as decorative filler on top (any number of natural materials could be used decoratively on top: undyed fleece to look like snow, chestnuts, hickory nuts, acorn tops, etc.).

First he gathered some medium-sized stones from our nature table that we have been collecting and put them in the bottom of the pot to weight it down.

My son loves doing yardwork, and a few weeks ago he helped me drag many branches from the tall hickory tree that had fallen in our back yard. (He tagged after the guys who helped us clear the biggest branches and trunk, and he now wants to be a "tree guy" when he grows up.) We have a few of the branches still on our deck from the large "trees" we assembled for last weekend's Waldorf Elves' Holiday Faire, and he happily went outside and used garden shears to snip off about a dozen small branches. He advises using as many branches as you can.

I held the branches for my son and placed the smaller stones around them to hold them in place. Then we counted out pieces of sea glass as we put them as the top, decorative layer of the pot. Fifteen minutes of easy effort, and he was done! Now he has a beautiful centerpiece for his nature table, which we will be decorating with handmade ornaments from our advent calendar.

I'll try to share the evolving tree as it gets decorated. I have visions of birds nesting in the branches and mushrooms, elves, and other fey creatures taking root amongst the rocks.

Crafting with a Crowd

Crafting for me is usually a quiet, meditative activity. But for the past few weeks I have experienced crafting as an inspiring, community-building group activity. Parents at my son's Waldorf school got together to transform an old gymnasium into a magical Elves' Holiday Faire.

A group of moms dyed silks in a rainbow of colors that rippled on the line on a sunny November day. We oohed as ahhed as each silk emerged from its colorful bath, shimmery and vibrant. We exclaimed as our overdyeing experiments created teals and purples and plums and pinks. These natural colors were echoed in the sheets that draped wooden frames to create cozy crafting "rooms" at the Faire.


Students and parents together folded paper into the nesting tiers of origami trees (tutorial here) and lanterns (tutorial here) for table decor. We folded hundreds of simple paper stars and hung them in strands from branches. The kids also worked over several weeks to make other decorations, too, including multi-tiered God's eyes on long branches.

We also assembled branches from a downed hickory tree to make a mini-forest of trees in the gym, decorating them with twinkly lights and paper ornaments.

(Unfortunately I was too busy enjoying the faire to take any pictures! I'll leave it to your imagination.)

It was exhausting work, but so fulfilling to see children absorbing the magic of the transformed space. It came alive with music, laughter, and the joyful sounds of play.

Creating Spaces

Last week I flew to Portland, Oregon, where I spent a long weekend enjoying the very walkable downtown area. The city is a crazy quilt of vintage and modern, old brick buildings next to modern skyscrapers, with the whole urban, industrial sprawl running along the beautiful and broad Columbia River.

There was something about the severe spatial displacement of traveling across the country from my cozy nest of a home in an East Coast town to the big city in the Pacific Northwest that made me hyperaware of all the unique spaces that these city dwellers have created.



Some of these spaces spoke of grim survival. A pile of leaves under a bridge and a sleeping bag tight against a brick building under an awning protected homeless people from the constant rain. Three shopping carts loaded with scavenged possessions carved out a square patch of private sidewalk. At the same time, stately old buildings had been eviscerated and turned into parking garages, sad remnants of rosier economic times when it made more financial and moral sense to house people rather than just their cars.



Other spaces evoked a sense of mindful practice in the midst of busy city life. I spent a lovely hour or so soaking up the quiet at the Blossoming Lotus, a vegan cafe housed in a yoga studio. I felt revitalized after my time in the space, and I imagine that this type of space represents spiritual survival for urbanites.

Just down the street, a beautiful, light-filled space created a platform to honor craft as art. The Museum of Contemporary Craft opened up a space for multiple conversations--between artists and theorists, and conversations about the crafts themselves. I was thrilled to make my way through the exhibits and see how craft is being taken seriously and examined from a critical perspective. I don't think I've ever had the chance to talk about craft in such a deep way as I did when I spoke with a museum docent. We chatted about the specific works presented in the exhibits, and our conversation touched on the influence of the Bauhaus on contemporary craft and the connections between artist and student, which were spatially mapped out in a ceramics exhibit. I also experienced the work of Jiseon Lee Isbara, a textile artist whose silk and paper fiber work rendered our multitasking lives as quilt-like art.

Another amazing space brought entire landscapes together into a block-sized enclosed garden. As I wandered from space to space within the Portland Chinese Classical Garden, I experienced a sense of order, symmetry, and peace that was a welcome antitode to the crowded city streets. Each window and door created a frame for a particular tree or shrub, inviting viewers to experience each plant as it changes with the seasons.

I left Portland with a feeling that I had woken up--that this vital, energetic, intensely creative, and complex city had jolted me into an awareness of all the living that goes on behind the facades of buildings. It made me think about how very basic our needs are--for food, shelter, and human companionship--and yet how we still strive to create more complex spaces that feed our spiritual and creative needs.

I'd love to hear about the specific places that help you thrive spiritually and creatively.

Focus on Autumn

A little meditation on autumn, in pictures. No words today.

More Adventures in Bookmaking

Fall is a fruitful time for me creatively. Over the last two autumns, when I was deeply immersed in reading craft blogs, I worried that all of the ideas and images popping into my head weren't my own but were inspired directly from things I'd seen online. But this year I've cut way back on my evening blog reading (ah, I do miss you all!!) to be able to be more present with my family, and those ideas keep coming. Half, or more, won't ever blossom, or might not bear fruit in the way I intended, but it's good to know that the seeds of inspiration remain.

The idea for the "Harvest" journal above came to me piecemeal, initially as a fertile "what if" of the kind that Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth uses. What if I made a book cover out of fabric? I was way too impatient to look for an online tutorial to do it the "right" way, so I just winged it. (Apologies to the professional bookbinders among you; I already have ideas for how to improve Harvest 2.0.)

The cover is upcycled from a vintage tablecloth that I believe belonged to my husband's grandmother. She and her husband ran an apple orchard and farm in Wisconsin, and my mother-in-law grew up there. I was fortunate to visit the farm once or twice before it was sold, and the apples were amazing in their varying hues and subtle flavors--I had never known that there were so many varieties of apples. So the imagery has special significance for me, and the tablecloth itself, after decades of use through four generations, was too stained and holey to be used on the table any more.

The sort-of haiku on the cover is what makes me happiest about the book. It came to me as I was rocking my preschooler, who has been having a rough patch at school lately. I love how the first six words are punchy single syllables that can be used as either a noun or a verb, depending on the context. On the back is printed "tart," and all that evokes (!).

Best of all was that I could finally use the freezer-paper stencil technique that Maya showed me how to do (see her tips here). I downloaded a font that looks like the lettering from a produce bag to make the stencil. The cutting took a while, but it was very meditative. I think I've finally made peace with the fact that I need "reading" glasses, a very strong light, and new, sharp blades to do precise cutting work. I guess I'm lucky that my husband finds the studious librarian look attractive.

I used some personalized linen/cotton stationery that I found at a junk shop for the pages, and the stationery has quite a poignant connection for me as well. I didn't do more than glance at the printing when I bought the box of stationery; I just knew that I liked the richness of the paper and wanted to use it for a book I was making for Smoothpebble. When I got home, I realized that the stationery had an address for a house that is on the street right behind mine, the street that begins my regular walk, in fact. It's a 50s Modern house, low and streamlined and sided with dark cedar. I did a little Web research and learned a bit about the family who lived there. Now when I walk past the house I imagine the lives lived in that house and what it must have been like in the 50s, when Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, lived in our neighborhood. All this just from the chance discovery of an almost-full box of personalized stationery.

I wanted to stencil apple-red lines on the paper so that I can use the journal for my notes and writing, but in the end I opted for the quicker method of printing them out on my computer. I won't have the tactile pleasure of writing on stenciled lines, but the rest of the experience of using my own little book should be a joy. I bound all of the pages, in one big signature (the flaw to fix next time), with a stitch-in-the-ditch method that I'm sure has a better name.

My blog assistant, who opted out of preschool today, helped me find some red things to pose the journal with, including his own shirt and maya*made's stenciled elephant.

Adventures in Bookmaking

First off, a question of metaphor. Why is it that the things you love doing can literally make you sick? Opening old books and breathing in their history at the October Friends of the Library book sale. Collecting fallen leaves. Walking sodden mushroom trails. Admiring the concentric circles of a newly mown hay bale. Savoring a bowl of hot oatmeal (with cow's milk) on a crisp morning. I love these fall activities, but they inspire an inflammatory response in my body. Somehow I have to figure out a way to help my body go along with what my heart needs.

OK, pity party is now over.

This fall I have been making books. A year or so ago I bought a beautiful bookmaking kit from painter/printmaker/book maker/all-around swell gal Erin Zamrzla (aka Etsy seller Erinzam). (Check out this gallery of her work at Poppytalk Handmade.)

My work schedule was crazy last year, so the kit got put away and was lost for a while. In a partial clean-up of my office this summer, I finally found the kit again, and put it together with the awls I bought from Books By Hand.

Erinzam's kit teaches simple Japanese stab-binding techniques, and it's a very gentle introduction to the meditative art of constructing a book. (I love the equation of paper + sewing = construction.) The kit included papers that Erin had cut from an old DIY manual, which opened my eyes to the myriad sources of found paper around me. I would show you the small book I made from the kit, but my son immediately took off with it and loved it up and added his own designs. It's now being re-flattened under a tall stack of heavy textbooks.

For the simple book above, I used indigo Japanese chiyogami for the front and back covers (note how beautifully the chrysanthemum-like flowers coordinate with Resurrection Fern's crocheted covered stone!) and unwaxed, unbleached linen thread, also from Books By Hand, for the binding. The inside pages are stationery from a 1987 Venice Simplon Orient Express trip, a find at the Friends of the Library book sale. I have some ideas for what I want to fill it with, and they make me silly-happy just thinking about them.

I can't conclude my adventures in novice bookmaking without a few more links in this already linky post to my inspirations: poet/walking buddy/maker extrordinaire Quince and Quire, who is on hiatus from her own bookmaking adventures, and paper cutter/photographer/maker extrordinaire Smoothpebble, who is a book maker and inspirer. Like Erin, they are all-around swell gals. Not to be too hokey, but the love of books binds us--as well as so many of my blogging friends--together.

Morning Light, Autumn

I wish I could send this morning's light to you, my friends. Wrap it up in a big, airy, gauze poof of a package and mail it near and far.

This morning, as I was driving my son to his little school in the hollow, I noticed the light. Going southeast on the neighborhood road that becomes country road after the four-way stop, right before the turn onto the winding road that crosses the creek, the browning rows of corn swayed in the fall breeze. They are the foreground of a series of stacked-up vistas right at that hilltop spot. A tall, thick row of deciduous trees stakes the middle ground in the midst of fields. Behind them, a distant glimpse of farms in a gentle cup of a valley shone in a patch of sun and rolled up to another curve of dark trees. And above them all, low gray clouds diffused the light, made the shadows of trees hover above the asphalt as if they were about to float away. It was a still light, expectant. Harbinger of storm, it promised both life-giving rain to the stubborn wildflowers that are holding fast to the vestiges of summer and wind-rattling death to branches still hung with leaves. It was eclipse light, the hush of reverence before the sun disappears briefly, leaving only the weak rays at the edge of the star to diffuse outward through the ether to hang suspended above us like a fine mist.

Oh, at that moment how I wished Mary Ann Wakely could be there with her paint and easels to capture it on canvas for me!

Later, on my morning walk, I woke a fuzzy bumble bee drowsing on a goldenrod stalk. He was so still that I thought he had died eating his last, sweet meal. But a flicker of a leg told me that the cold morning was a time of rest. As I watched, he vibrated his wings experimentally, starting up his internal heater. He stayed still, waiting either for the sun to emerge from the gray clouds and warm him or for the drops of rain to fall, I don’t know which.

A perfect fall morning.

Flower Mandalas and Other Fall Activities

It's harvest festival time here in the northern hemisphere, and each weekend is filled with more festivals than we can attend. This past weekend we enjoyed a sunny day at the arboretum while we strolled through the booths of an international festival dedicated to plants. This festival is very child-focused, so we did a week's worth of enrichment activities in one afternoon. The activities were a perfect mix of botanical lore and the cultural uses of various plants.

If you're looking for some ideas to celebrate plants and the harvest with your children, here's a list of the activities we enjoyed. They are all doable, most with very few supplies.

We ate pomegranate seeds and listened to the story of Demeter and Persephone and learned why we have seasons. This would make a lovely after-dinner ritual. (This is the beautifully illustrated version of the story we heard. It's by Kris Waldherr.)

We saw a tea ceremony and made origami cranes. Here's a tutorial for folding the cranes.

We sampled Tibetan butter tea for the first time. Here's a recipe.

We walked on "coconut stilts," a game kids play in Singapore. It would be challenging but fun to figure out how to scrape out a coconut.

We "painted" chocolate Day of the Dead skulls with icing and ate them--they were much tastier than the "raw" chocolate we ground with a stone mortar and pestle. You can use these skeleton candy molds. (We made sugar skeletons with these one year and decorated them, but they weren't edible. I think using chocolate is a much better idea.)

We drew mehndi patterns on silk with fabric markers (here are some gorgeous patterns and their meanings), got mehndi tattoos, and helped make vibrant flower mandalas. The mandala was drawn on a large cardboard circle, and the children filled in the shapes with flower petals. (See a whole gallery of flower mandalas here.)

My youngest enjoyed playing in a baby pool filled with black beans. You could do this with rice as well.

Enjoy the season, wherever you may be!