zencrafting

A Lowering Sky

2012-02-02T06:00:00.000-05:00

I took a walk at the arboretum today, under alowering sky. It’s been over a year since I’ve been there, and I’m not sure whyI’ve neglected it, and myself. It’s a place that fills up my soul with thepoetry of the trees and leaves and branches and blossoms.

The arboretum is a beautifully carved bowl, avestige of an old farm. It’s a manufactured landscape in the best sense of theword. Master gardeners have shaped the vistas with an understanding of what theeye will appreciate through the seasons.

The arboretum has been designed by human hand,but nature still holds sway. There is accidental poetry to be found all around:in the crinkled leaf staked by a red stem, in the tendrils of a vine curledtightly around a branch, in the tired branches of an old willow, in the sensuouscurve of the bulb of a skunk cabbage.

Emotions sometimes overwhelm me when I walk inthe arboretum and notice little details. I was so excited to see the firstskunk cabbages that have emerged in the soggy ground under the huge old treeamong the moss and dried leaves. I felt giddy, like seeing an old friend in anold haunt. I felt happy that I remembered the first time I had seen them, happyto remember the friend I walked with when I saw them in the marsh, happy toremember the sense of accomplishment I felt after researching and writing apoem about the plants.

The skunk cabbage and I share a history; we have formed aconnection. What a feeling of rightness it was to see those skunk cabbagescoming up again in the same place, at about the same time as previous winters(maybe a little early?). They have cycled through the seasons and are emerging,just as I feel I have been doing lately. They are a reminder to pay attention, tonotice not one but several skunk cabbages in various stages of emergence stillpartially hidden under the brown leaves.

After my walk, as I was driving home, my bodyfelt heavy and light at the same time. My face felt a heavy numbness from the wind,a heaviness that felt peaceful, like I had worked just hard enough to deserve arest. My limbs felt similarly heavy and peaceful, but there was a stirring oflightness around my chest and shoulders, a happy fluttering of my heart and alifting of my shoulders, as if little wings or skittering leaves had attachedthemselves to my shoulders and were helping to lift them up, boost my spirits,lift them of a heavy burden.

Two-Word Wednesday

2012-02-01T10:01:00.001-05:00

Skunk Cabbage

Painting Pages

2012-01-30T16:55:00.003-05:00

I just finished Sarah Ahearn Bellemare's Painted Pages, a how-to book that offers a number of tips to jump-start the creative process. I first saw Sarah's collage paintings at a friend's house and later at a local gallery. My daughter was privileged to take a summer art camp class with her as well. The artists's paintings have a distinctive style and palette, incorporating found images and photographs, maps and other ephemera, and text. (See Sarah's Flickr sets for lots of collage inspiration. Her work is also featured in the upcoming Enormous Tiny Art "eleven" show.)

Painted Pages takes the reader into Sarah's studio, where we get an inspiring glimpse into her process. In one chapter, Sarah shows how a visit to a roadside stand inspires a painting. The Polaroid photos she took of the flowers are incorporated into a sketchbook collage, which then becomes the preliminary sketch for a painting.

I love Sarah's idea of approaching each sketchbook page as a mixed-media collage/journal. In Sarah's sketchbook journals, she takes a particular photograph or piece of text and free-associates, adding related colors, words, quick sketches, a complementary palette, and patterns and textures from her impressive collection of ephemera. This form of journaling seems like an effective, free-form (and fun) way to keep track of events big and small and tuck them away for later use.

During a recent journaling session, I tried out a number of her practical suggestions to get some ideas flowing. I cleaned off my work space and used the scraps and clipped magazine pages I found. I put wet media on the right and dry on the left to help me keep my work area clean (a definite problem for me). I wore an apron and kept a wet cloth and dry cloth close at hand to keep the paint and glue off my clothes and my fingers. Less mess makes the creative process more fun for me.

I used many of the techniques from the book, and the collage that emerged is a random collection of images and ideas that have been on my mind lately. It's a sketch, of sorts, of a moment in time. I like the possibility of it as well, that the collage can be a springboard for some future work. Sarah suggested focusing on smaller areas of the collage that resonate in some way, and it's interesting how those little pieces suggest something different when seen in isolation.

I'm jazzed about using a mixed-media sketchbook/journal on a more regular basis. My collages may not become paintings, but I can imagine using this technique to break through writer's block or process some of life's daily stresses.

Have you tried a new-to-you technique that's helped ease you out of a creative rut?

Bookworm Month

2012-01-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

*This post is dedicated to my daughter, who is curious andwidely read and drops the appropriate literary quote when necessary, e.g.“Well, remember Mommy, 'Life is an X-rated soap opera,' T.S. Garp.” My daughter, who is sobusy with school and rowing and friends that it seems like we never have enoughtime to talk about the important stuff, e.g. books. And who, most importantly,alerts me when the supplies of dark chocolate in the house are growingdangerously low.

I just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.I got it a few years ago, started reading it, and put it down. The tone wasoff-putting. Somehow, at the time, the very virtuosity of the language evokedso much distance between me and the main character that I just didn’t make alove connection with the book. Perhaps 9/11 was also too recent an event towrap my head around its novelization.

Luckily for me, another January has rolled around, the monthI read, when curling up on the couch with a blanket and a book is about all Icare to do. (I usually ask for books for Christmas, and my generous family andSanta usually come through. Then I chomp through them like the frustrated bookwormthat I am.)

I’m so glad I came back to the book and was open to receivingit. The events and themes the author tackles—9/11, World War II, the Holocaust,Hiroshima, loss, grief, family, childhood, love, aging—are sweeping andenormous. Yet they are brought down to the level of ordinary life in thisnovel. They are rendered incredibly closely through the eyes of a child, OskarSchell, who is struggling to make sense of losing his father on 9/11. Hisattempts to think his way through his loss are moving in their fruitlessness. Sois his discovery of a key, and his search for the lock that it will open. Hehopes the key is a final clue left by his father. As he looks for the lock,Oskar makes the human connections that ultimately help him figure out a way tokeep moving forward through life. He finds a way to emotionally connect withothers to get through impossible grief.

It’s interesting that Foer shows us 9/11 through the eyes ofa child who likely has Asperger’s. I think it might not be too far-fetched tosay that Oskar’s viewpoint is much like how we ourselves have reacted and triedto deal with this enormous tragedy. We focus on the facts we can report andquantify. The time at which the first plane hit. The temperature at which themetal frame of the building melted. The number of people killed. Those are the factsthat we cling to, in our emotional numbness, the things we can process.

In Oskar, I think Foer accurately captures a child tryingdesperately to make sense of the crazy, messed-up world. As I was reading I wasreminded of the images that popped into my head in thathalf-waking/half-dreaming state right before sleep that I had when I was a kid.In those vivid images, I played with perspective, seeing the world as if I werespinning on a merry-go-round. In other images I was tiny, the size of a mouse,standing in the street staring up at the mountain of a curb in front of mybabysitter’s house. The view telescoped even further, so that the world seemedto be receding away from me at a scary rate. In the face of events like 9/11,maybe we are still that child, small in relation to the world and overwhelmedand confused by its scale and speed.

I was also quite moved by the characters’ troubled grapplingwith words. For various characters, the spoken word (emotion?) contains muchpower and the written word (intellect?) ultimately fails to convey meaning.

For Oskar’s grandmother and grandfather, their shared traumaduring World War II leads to the failure of true communication and theconsequent severing of the human connections that words are meant to create.

Oskar’s grandfather loses his ability to speak after heloses his family, his first love, and their unborn child during the bombing of Dresden. The writtenword—“Yes” tattooed on one hand, “No” on the other, and his notebooks ofwritten responses—is inadequate and fails him. He ultimately cannot respond tothe love his wife offers him or the hope (and potential tragedy) that theirchild represents.
Oskar’s grandmother lives her life, has her child and raiseshim alone. Yet as she types her life story, the pages remain blank. They bothwrite letters that are never received by the intended recipient.

On 9/11, as he is trapped in the World Trade Center, Oskar’sfather leaves a message on the answering machine, a call that Oskar is tooparalyzed by fear to receive.

When Oskar turns on the hearing aid of his octogenarianneighbor, the man is able to hear for the first time in decades. He is able to leave his home and open himself to a new love.

This struggle with words is something I deal with every day.I love them, the sound of them in various languages and accents and dialects;the joyful energy of their utterances and the sweet relief when my words arefully heard. I love reading them, love their tangled roots andinterconnections. Love to play one off another, in sound and rhythm andmeaning.

But I have trouble remembering words and uttering them withconfidence, most acutely when I am speaking in front of a large group. I guessthat’s why I like this blog, and why I keep coming back to it despite beingpulled in other directions. In a blog post, I feel like I can put wordstogether to form a coherent whole, something I feel frustrated about when I’mspeaking. It helps me give a shape to emotions that can often overwhelm me.It’s a record that I’ve lived my life and processed it. It’s an attempt toshare my life with others.

Extremely Loud andIncredibly Close resonated with me in so many ways. For me, it is both thekey and the box it opens. It is the world we live in, the people we struggle tolove, the grief we grapple with. It’s that reaching out, however we can, to connectwith each other.

Circles

2012-01-26T14:49:00.001-05:00

Time is a circle. It loops back on itself endlessly.

As I travel on its curved line, at times it seems to speedup like a racecar whipping through a turn, other times apparently slowing on astraightaway but really going ever faster in an endless loop around the track.

January is a discrete point on the circle. January is therawness of chapped lips and dry skin, tender cheeks reddened by the wind.January is the mourning veil of snow and ice and dead leaves over earth. It isthe great grief, the loss of the light. January is the frozen sap in the maple,the slowed-down life in leaf and blood.

January surprises me every year with its grayness, itsslowness, its lifelessness. It surprises me that my body slows down, thatwinter seeps into my bones.

It should not surprise me, I know. I've been around thiscircle enough times to know, to anticipate its specific gravity. Long enough toknow not to fight it but to sync up with (down into?) its slowed rhythm. To allow myself to sinkinto the couch with a blanket and a good book. To make endless batches of warmcookies to heat the house and warm the tummy. To let the kids pour a dozen, twodozen, tiny marshmallows from the package until the tiny circles of hot cocoaare filled in with white.

From this January vantage point on the circle, that shapeseems to be all around me. Embroidered circles on a wet-felted piece hangingin my sewing-room window. An empty embroidery hoop, waiting to be filled.Circles of coiled, felted wool sweater scraps crammed together into acoaster/pin holder. Circles of turquoise in a nest of type. Swirls of Betz White's felted wool cupcake pincushions I made for Christmas. A sweet circle of blogging friends and neighbor friends to visit. And a circle of women writers I am eager to rejoin.

Finished projects, future projects, circles of promise. Theyremind me that this torpor I am feeling is just a brief, albeit recurring, stopon this sometimes crazy loop of life.

Wordless Wednesday: Signs

2012-01-25T13:25:00.002-05:00

Housedreaming, in color

2012-01-24T10:54:00.000-05:00

My mind is a box of crayons. An old cigar box, the paper peeling off one corner. The crayons are old, from different sets. Some have lost their paper wrapping, naked and nameless. Others are broken bits, but still useful. The crayons have jostled each other, bumped their snub noses against the sides of the box, leaving a rainbow smudge, like a tub ring, around the inside of the box.

Too often I shut that box. (And not just shut it, but place it in a high cabinet, doors closed, inaccessible.) But today it is open. My hand sifts through the color, fingers the gray crayon to capture the leaden winter sky, the depth of the cold lake I see from a distance, my own gray heart. I pause and let it fall back into the box. It's not the color I need today.

Push aside the paper-wrapped sticks of color, searching. Ah, pumpkin. The sheen of fall. Coral, a heart beating in time to ocean tides. Glossy electric blue, the living room walls my brother painted. Lilac and green, the embellishment on a delicate valentine of a starched linen handkerchief.

I think I will color the world today.

Cookie Time

2012-01-20T11:14:00.004-05:00

Buckwheat Flying Apron Biscuits

I have to admit something. You know how I mentioned that we follow a primarily plant-based diet as a family? The stress is on the "primarily." There's that other part of our diet that's indulgent and allows in some animal products.

We've been on a cookie bender since the holidays, with no sign of a let up. Before Christmas, my daughter made a batch of Tex-Mex polvorones, pecan shortbread cookies crisped with butter and dredged in powdered sugar. These were staples of my mother's holiday baking, and what a proud mama I was when my daughter decided to keep that tradition going.

Polvorones (Pecan Sandies)

Gingerbread cookies made up the main activity on several December play dates. My boys and their friends decorated three batches of gingerbread cookies and made Not Martha's wee gingerbread houses.

(Just a reminder to myself for next Christmas baking season: Megan's advice to chill the dough both before rolling it out and after cutting the house shapes made the cooked shapes precise and build-ready. And I think the perfect crisp gingerbread recipe can be found on the back cover of Jim Aylesworth's Gingerbread Man. Extra bonus: we sat down in the warm kitchen while the cookies baked and enjoyed the hypnotic repetition of the text and the vintage-looking illustrations by Barbara McClintock.)

And for those of you keeping track, those polvorones are made with butter--from a cow--and the gingerbread also, along with one farm-fresh egg--from a chicken. Decidedly non-plant-based, though technically still vegetarian.

And to combat the chill outside in January, we have heated up the stove and made batches of vegan chocolate chip cookies (which were gobbled up after the middle school orchestra concert last night; my husband says that most kids will eat ANYTHING involving chocolate) and peanut butter cookies. And that's just this week.

So how do I justify these little indulgences? The house heats up nicely and fills with that lovely toasty-sweet aroma that wraps around us and buffers us from the winter chill. The kids take a break from the Wii and the TV and the computer and actually converse with me and each other. They spill juicy details about their day. Those add up to a pretty hefty spiritual payoff to me, all for the cost of a cookie.

The kids have even tried my gluten-free, vegan (GFV) cookie experiments. Last weekend I was well into whipping up the Flying Apron's GFV Buckwheat Biscuit recipe (yes, buckwheat is gluten-free!) before I realized that the biscuits weren't savory but sweet, as in English biscuits (what we Yanks would call cookies). My version turned out looking a little like hockey pucks, but they have the texture of a shortbread cookie (which is a texture I have found hard to achieve with gluten-free flours) and remind me of that distinctive sweet crunch of a graham cracker. They go nicely with a cup of hot tea.

Before my blood sugar and waistband get me off this cookie-based diet, I plan to try a decadent-sounding gluten-free peanut butter cookie recipe sent by my friend Jillian. These GFV cookie recipes from the Gluten-Free Goddess may be worth the calories.

If you decide to indulge as well, let me know, and we can have a virtual January tea-and-cookie klatch to chase away the winter blahs. I'd love to discuss how you balance that tricky divide between healthy eating and indulgence. And maybe you can give me a little advice about the biggest question I faced over the holidays: how do you honor beloved food traditions and adhere to a healthy diet? (Frankly, sticking to the gluten-free, vegan diet over the holidays made me a little nuts, and others as well!)

Ithaca Waldorf School Elves' Faire, 12/11

2012-01-18T08:29:00.001-05:00

A Tex-Mex Winter Feast

2012-01-16T20:05:00.004-05:00

Tofu Guisada

November and December were mild in upstate New York, with little snow. January has decidedly ushered in winter. We've had single-digit temperatures for several days in a row over the last few weeks. It started snowing on Friday morning--the kids were so excited walking to school, stopping frequently to pack snowballs to throw--and it snowed pretty steadily for two days. We have a nice few inches on the ground, and the trees have a more solid presence now that they are outlined in white.

Oh, but I am feeling the cold, with the temperatures dipping into the single digits overnight and the chill persisting well into the mornings.

I'm seeking comfort in food: soups and stews and noodles and anything warm and rib-sticking. I'm finding special comfort in preparing the Mexican dishes that my mother and aunts and grandmothers made when I was a kid. I still associate the smells of toasted cumin seeds and garlic, ground in a molcajete, and carmelizing onions and peppers with family and welcome: with the warm kitchens that my grandmothers cooked in and emerged from to greet us when we visited during the holidays.

The problem is that these dishes are traditionally made with meat, cheese, and lard, and my family switched to a primarily plant-based diet last year.

Thankfully, I'm finding that, with a few substitutions, the Tex-Mex dishes from my childhood adapt pretty well to a plant-based (and gluten-free, for me) diet.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite dishes to have for a special dinner was carne guisada, which I have seen translated as braised beef tips. It's essentially a dish that uses an inexpensive cut of meat, which becomes magically tender as it bubbles away in a cumin-spiced gravy. My mother would sometimes make this dish with venison, cutting the meat into small cubes and browning them in sizzling Crisco. I would eat my portion and then sop up the gravy with a tortilla "spoon."

Here's a gluten-free, vegan version of my childhood favorite, made with organic tofu from our local Ithaca Soy. The spices are the same familiar ones that remind me of home. (Edited to add: Please note that I don't use precise measurements when I cook, so the quantities are approximate. You can use more or less spice according to your taste and liquid to the desired thickness of the gravy.)

Tofu Guisada

1/2 onion, diced very small
1 small bell pepper, diced very small
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 TBSP olive oil OR 1/2 cup vegetable stock
1 package firm tofu, drained and cubed
1 TBSP cumin powder
1 TBSP red chile powder
salt and pepper to taste
2 TBSP brown rice flour
2 TBSP Bragg Liquid Aminos*
1 TBSP toasted sesame oil
~1 cup vegetable broth
(Edited to add: *Bragg Liquid Aminos is a non-GMO, wheat-free, low-sodium alternative to soy sauce. It adds a nice "umami" flavor to a vegetarian dish.)

Saute the onions, bell pepper, and minced garlic in either the olive oil or the vegetable broth until carmelized, on medium-high heat. Add the cubed tofu to the vegetables and brown. Add the spices. And the brown rice flour and stir until browned. Add the Bragg liquid aminos and toasted sesame oil and mix well. Add the vegetable broth a little at a time. Cook on high heat until the gravy bubbles, and then turn to low, cooking about 5-10 minutes, until the tofu absorbs the flavors.

You can serve the tofu guisada on a bed of mixed greens, garnished with bean sprouts and grated carrot for extra crunch, and guacamole on the side. It's also good wrapped in homemade flour tortillas, which my kids call "Mommy-tillas," or corn tortillas.

It makes me happy that I can introduce my children to the flavors of my childhood. I hope that they'll be able to continue the tradition with their own families.

Mommy-tillas

Suspension

2011-10-26T13:04:00.001-04:00

On Sunday I hiked up the gorge downtown to enjoy the fall colors. It was sunny, with no breeze. Beside the bridge, little yellow leaves drifted to the creek below, their changing silhouettes distinct aginst the arch of blue sky outlined by the girders.

I enjoyed the unhurried fall of the leaves, their moment of hanging aloft, without attachment. I counted those seconds of suspension before the leaves fluttered to the ground. As they fell, the leaves, untethered, seemed to breathe out all that had come before--the spring birth, the summer of sailing on the swells of warm breezes, the autumn display of their true colors, their final days of catching the slanting rays of autumn sun and collecting fat raindrops.

As they fell to the creek and were caught by the current, they hung suspended on the water, carried along by the rightness of what--or whatever--was to come.

I hope you are enjoying your fall, this brief bridge between summer and winter.

Color bursts before fading

2011-10-16T18:03:00.001-04:00

Every year I forget the colors.

The long, green summer feels like it will last forever. The brief, gray weeks of September and early October numb my senses.

It's the breeze that awakens the memory. The leaves shiver in a sudden strong gust, clatter against each other in a decisive manner.

The gray curtain lifts briefly, the weak sun revealing the lemon-tart yellow of the twin trees across the street. A night of rain and strong wind, and we wake up to a ragged blanket of tan, yellow, red, and light purple covering the driveway and the forest path.

Thank you, fall, for the visual wake-up call.

Home Is . . .

2011-08-29T11:50:00.001-04:00

. . . where my pictures sit, framed and waiting to be hung.

. . . where a linen cat and silk rabbit perch on bookshelf ends.

. . . where the books rise up in staggered piles.

. . . where the sunlight lights up a trapezoid of yellow on the wall.

Home is . . .

. . . a dry place to wait out the storm.

. . . a place where gratitude swells.

"This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" by Talking Heads

Truth and Its "Magical Dimension"

2011-08-26T11:57:00.001-04:00

"Reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying."
— Isabel Allende (Eva Luna)

Over lunch with my writer friend Zee early this week, we talked about truth and fiction and the limits of memory. How it's possible to write memoir with perfect veracity and yet still lie.

A couple of years ago I wrote a story about a trip to the beach I took with my family. I was struggling with the conclusion, worried that I didn't remember whether it was my mom or dad who waded out to the sandbar to collect sand dollars. The details I remembered and wrote down evoked the experience well for me, but my memory lapse forced me to fictionalize the conclusion. It was a true reflection of my parents and me at the time, even if it wasn't a literal version of events.

I value truth-telling, but I think there are a number of narrative ways to accomplish it.

After all, no two people experience reality the same way, and our own senses imcompletely take in what's going on around us. My own carefree experience of that beach trip and the magic of finding dozens of sand dollars differs from that of my mother, who bore the responsibilities of packing up all of our food and camping gear and keeping the tent clean and feeding our family of five.

And there is of course the weakness of my own memories in recalling events from the past in all their technicolor detail. Journaling helps with this, though I have to confess that I am an inconsistent recorder of daily events and observed details.

For me, taking my camera along and focusing it on something I might not otherwise pay attention to opens up a whole new level of awareness of a hike or other experience. By looking at the photo below, I can remember that moss-covered drum of a stump and the kernel of a story about who might be gathering around it on a moonless light, and for what magical purposes it might serve.

That's why I like Isabel Allende's take on reality, that of going beyond the surface truth to tease out the mystery and magic in the mundane. It transforms life, as we live it and recall it, into poetry and essential truth.

Coming Home

2011-08-25T09:54:00.000-04:00

My family and I have just moved back to our home in upstate New York after a year's sabbatical. We have been welcomed by cool temperatures and blue skies like the Sky Blue in the Crayola box. Sweet breezes blow through the opened windows, and I find myself pausing by them to take long, deep breaths of the fresh air.

Our trees are in full leaf, and I see a curtain of greenery when I look out the window. Our backyard, neglected for a year, is growing a crop of chest-high weeds that the neighborhood wildlife are enjoying. On Tuesday I spied a young doe, her legs curled under her, nestled in the tall grass while five turkeys pecked for seeds around her.

Moving--and transitions in general--stirs things up for me, in ways good and bad. It makes me question the idea of home, of permanence, of belonging. In so many ways--in time, in space, in emotional connections--I am far from my own home: the place where I grew up and where many of my friends and my extended family remain.

Yet this old house in a Northeastern college town to which my family has returned is home now. My family has settled into its cozy nooks, tuned their ears to footsteps on creaky stairs. My older kids have trudged up the hill to school for six years, checking the hole at the base of the tree next door for the snake that once made its home there. They have learned to ride their bikes and navigate the steep roads. My youngest was born here, took his first steps and formed his first words here. He'll be starting his own journey up that hill for kindergarten soon.

And me? The transplant? I guess I've put down my own roots here as well as I've seen my little saplings grow and thrive. It's been a slow process of adaptation to a cold climate. Of navigating social nuances that seem foreign to me sometimes.

In my year away I have realized that maybe I've leafed out a bit myself, formed some new branches that have reached out to connect with the big blue sky here. My new old home. It's good to be back.

A Forest of the Heart

2011-08-24T13:40:00.000-04:00

"The city is most fortunate in possessing this park containing part of the deep, romantic, wooded ravine called Balch Canyon. Few people know and love this beautiful sample of the magnificent timber which formerly covered all the hills and ravines in the city. Aside from the luxuriance of the woodland vegetation there is the added charm of seclusion to a degree rarely found in a public park." John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Report of the Park Board, Portland, Oregon, 1903

On the last day of a hectic visit to Portland, Oregon, my husband, daughter, and I enjoyed a short hike in an unexpected oasis of an urban park. Just west of downtown, a hilly neighborhood street of close-built homes dead-ends at Macleay Park. Donated to the city in 1897, the wooded trail forms part of the 5,100-acre Forest Park, which ranks as the U.S.'s largest forested natural area within a city.

We walked (and skipped and dawdled and photographed) along the park's dirt trail, which winds along a creek and beneath a leafy canopy of old- and second-growth trees. Sunlight filtered down the steep slope of the ravine, backlighting a spiderweb strung between fern fronds and cottonwood fluff littering the creek. Green was all around us. Sycamore leaves waved fanlike above the trail. Clumps of moss clung like cloth patches to rough bark; lichen added a green patina to wooden railings. My daughter noticed a slime trail and discovered slugs the size of fat cigars resting on leaves in the undergrowth.

It was one of those perfect, soul-soothing walks, a much-needed rest after a very busy summer. I have been taking out little memories of that walk over the last few weeks. The moments of peace gathered in those green woods have helped me get through packing and moving back to our home after a year-long sabbatical.

I hope that you are all enjoying the last bit of summer. I'd love to hear how yours was, and if you managed to find a place of the heart that inspired you as that little moment in Macleay Park did for me.

Alpaca Who?

2011-05-12T06:05:00.000-04:00

Alpaca up the blog for a while.

I did something bad to my shoulder on Sunday, and I'm trying to give it lots of TLC--ice packs, NSAIDS, and rest. I thought I could sneak in a little blog post yesterday and some blog visits this morning, but the shoulder is starting to tighten up again.

Which means I'll be resting my "mouse" hand that connects to said shoulder and reading Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

I look forward to blog visits and email catchup once I return.

Everything's Green Again

2011-05-03T08:05:00.000-04:00

Without my noticing, the tight leaf buds have completely unfurled. The whole neighborhood is green again. The colorful clouds of flowering trees have passed, replaced by full green canopies with a carpet of fallen blossoms beneath them. The laggard dogwoods are still in bloom, but fading. The azaleas, Southern charmers, started blooming last week. Their intense reds and pinks vibrate with the energy of the summer that will soon be upon us.

A happy chorus of birds and the early morning light helps me greet the day a little earlier. The busy-ness of spring activities helps me fall into bed early and drop into immediate sleep.

I'm feeling a little scattered, like the fallen blossoms. And though the green is welcome, it is also making me feel a little lost.

Yesterday I took a hike in an unfamiliar park, and I got completely turned around. Beside the asphalt path was a mulched trail through the wet woods, which I followed. The broad leaves of skunk cabbage were growing next to fiddleheads about to unfurl. I was enjoying the green in an unconscious way while I listened intently on my iPod to the talking heads dissect the news of Osama Bin Laden's death.

Without paying much attention, I followed several forks in the path until I realized that I couldn't orient myself. The dense green canopy blocked out the sun and the view of my original path. I tried to retrace my steps, but every trail looked the same. I kept walking and eventually reached a private road to homes nestled deep in the woods. I followed that to a subdivision of gracious homes, and then to a narrow country road that led to the main road and back to my car.

Being lost was a strange feeling after following my familiar paths for so long. One moment I was sure-footed and confident, and the next moment I felt alone and hesitant, reliant on very rusty skills. (And isn't it funny that when you're lost, suddenly there is no one around to give you directions? And my smartphone with its navigation app was back in the car.) It forced me to follow my instincts and to take a zoomed-out view of my situation to figure out where I was. I think I may apply that lesson to my creative wanderings, and to my life as a whole.

I hope you are having better luck navigating your wanderings this spring.

Thank you, Craft Bloggers and Wordpress!

2011-04-30T16:51:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note of thanks to all of you activist-crafters who got the word out about the intellectual property theft experienced by Cassi of The Crafty Crow and many of the craft bloggers who have had tutorials posted there. Many of you complained directly to tugatnature, the blogger who plagiarized material, and lodged complaints with Wordpress.

Wordpress has responded by suspending tugatnature's blog for violation of Wordpress's Terms of Service. (Etsy, take note!)

Thank you Susan of Slow Family Online for alerting me about this latest development.

Keep vigilant, and keep crafting!

Spring Beauty

2011-04-27T01:33:00.000-04:00

Last week, on our hike at Mt. Pleasant Farm, my sons and I noticed the most delightful little wildflowers growing beside the trail. The plant with the tiny pink five-petalled flower is known as the Eastern spring beauty (Claytonia virginica). It's a common early-blooming perennial and thrives in a variety of habitats.

Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist whose scientific naming convention is what we use today, chose the spring beauty's binomial Latin form in honor of John Clayton, the English-born botanist and Virginia county court clerk who collected specimens in the American colonies and sent them to Europe for study.

Clayton's well-preserved specimens are stored at the Natural History Museum in London. You can see a digital version of his original specimen of Claytonia virginica here.

We saw the spring beauty growing in dense patches near a downed tree. The wildflowers grow from underground tubers that Native Americans and early colonists used as a food source. Wild-plant foragers continue to enjoy the potato-like root, which reportedly tastes like chestnuts and is a good source of Vitamins A and C. The spring beauty's leaves are also edible.

I don't think I'll be foraging and eating the wildflower's roots. I'll just enjoy the spring beauty as a sweet consolation for missing wildflower season in my home state of Texas this year.

I wonder what wildflowers have been popping up in your neck of the woods?

Celebrate World Intellectual Property Day

2011-04-26T08:57:00.003-04:00

April 26 is World Intellectual Property Day, and this year's theme is "Designing the Future." "Intellectual property" is writing, music, design, photography, and other creative works made by and therefore legally owned by an individual. The text and images on a blog, the original design of a ceramic or stitched piece, an illustration or art work, a recorded song--these are all examples of intellectual property that are legally protected from being reproduced.

Cassi of The Crafty Crow and Bella Dia just let me know that some of her blog posts (and a friend's and her sister's) and one of my tutorials had been copied almost in their entirety on another blog. The blog author included the photographs and word-for-word the instructions written by other authors. There was no link to the originating blog or any other indication of the original author of the posts.

I was stunned. The Crafty Crow provides a way to share free tutorials written by craft bloggers, and it's an amazing resource. But the site clearly attributes the source and links to the originating blog. Cassi had generously linked to my tutorial on the site. I had spent many, many hours taking the photographs, writing the text, and wrestling with Blogger on the formatting of the photographs so that the tutorial would be clear and easy to understand. I published the tutorial so that others could use it. I didn't publish it so that it could be stolen and passed off as someone else's work.

Cassi let me know how to get the stolen post taken down. I contacted the Wordpress blogger directly but also filled out a form through Wordpress that got the offending post removed. If you encounter this problem, the major blogging platforms provide a Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice. This notice allows bloggers to report stolen posts that originate by Wordpress, Typepad, or Blogger (etc.) users. If you see a Wordpress blog that has stolen your work, you can report it on this form. The Typepad form is here. Blogger's is here. Google "Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice" and the blogging platform to find the notice for other platforms.

I appreciate Cassi taking the time to let me know about the theft of my creative property and a way to address the issue. As a craft blogger, I feel that I am part of a generous, creative community.

I have looked into copyright issues a bit as a result of this incident. I found out that a published work such as a blog is automatically protected by copyright. A copyright notice, which I have added to the bottom of this page, is just a reminder to others that this work is protected. I have also added a restrictive Creative Commons license detailing how I'd like to share my text and images (as non-commercial links, and with attribution).

I urge you to educate yourself about intellectual property rights. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has several online publications that explain copyright issues. The World Intellectual Property Organization has an especially helpful pamphlet geared to kids (just my reading level!) that explains copyrights and what we can use from the Web in our own work. The U.K.'s Intellectual Property Office has some useful links related to protecting designs.

I know that this sort of stealing happens all the time. It's so easy to cut and paste someone's digital work. I also know that whatever measures we take to make copyright explicit will of course be ignored by the unscrupulous or uninformed. I hope that we can all use World Intellectual Property Day (and any opportunity we have) to spread the word about intellectual property rights. To stand up for our rights as blog creators and designers and artists as owners of the things we create.

Celebrating Spring

2011-04-25T10:50:00.000-04:00

Between the spring rainstorms, the sun shines as bright as a floodlight. Spring light limns the masses of petals on the flowering trees, creating technicolor explosions in each yard around the neighborhood.

The night before Easter, a rainstorm beat out a loud staccato pattern on the skylights and drenched the backyard. It brought the Easter bunny inside, where he hid chocolate bunnies and chicks wrapped in foil, lollipops and gummy bunnies and Tic Tacs, and coin- and seed-filled plastic eggs.

Only three children--a teenager, a middle schooler, and a preschooler--hunted for the treasures. The difference in ages melted away as they tried to beat each other to the treats. One handmade fabric basket, made by Amber of Shagbark Studio (more baskets for year-round storage fun available here), groaned with Easter booty.

By mid-morning, after an enormous Easter breakfast, Mrs. Easter Bunny had a minor meltdown and went to nap in a quiet patch of clover.

She remembered Easter pasts with her brother and sister and many cousins dashing around her aunt's yard. Cascarones, confetti-filled eggs, and brightly dyed boiled eggs filled their baskets. Cousins cracked the cascarones over each other's head, releasing the colorful confetti. The tiny paper circles and crooked rectangles--punched and cut from construction paper, tissue, and the funny pages in the newspaper--were carried on the breeze, snagging in the scraggly patches of grass and littering the yard for weeks afterward.

Later, as she mixed the cream cheese batter for a simple lemony cheese cake, Mrs. Easter Bunny remembered an Easter cupcake from childhood. A dozen of them in fact, carried in a plastic carton. Dyed green coconut covered the white frosting; jelly beans nestled in the faux grass.

It was Aunt Rosie who brought those cupcakes. Aunt Rosie, with her styled auburn hair and impeccable makeup and burgundy lipstick and elegant pantsuit, carried the cupcakes from the car parked in the dirt driveway behind a line of other cars, both hands supporting the bottom of the supermarket carton. A gaggle of cousins surrounded her to ogle the delightful treats, and she greeted them in her feminine, breathy voice. She walked in a cloud of Dep styling gel, Aqua Net hair spray, and spicy perfume.

She carefully maneuvered through the crowd of children and climbed the concrete steps to Aunt Elma's house, opened the screen door, and then gracefully balanced the carton with one hand as she held out a palm to keep the screen door from banging shut.

A dwindling crowd of acolytes followed her into the steamy kitchen, where Aunt Elma was busy mixing a big batch of potato salad. Aunt Rosie put the cupcakes on the table in the storeroom, with the other cakes and cookies: homemade carrot cake, Italian cream cake, Mexican wedding cookies. The children admired how the little landscape of the cupcake jelly beans turned into Easter eggs and coconut became grass, like the thin Communion wafers become the Body of Christ during Mass, except cute and colorful and probably yummy.

* * * * *

As Mrs. Easter Bunny dried the fourth dishrack of Easter dishes, she wondered what memories of spring celebrations past you see reflected in spring's bright light.

Montjoy Barn Interior

2011-04-20T23:31:00.000-04:00

It is late morning in south-central Maryland. Spring has arrived for certain after several false starts, and the gentle sun-warmed morning cedes to a humid afternoon as we explore Mt. Pleasant Farm, a nature preserve maintained by the Howard County Conservancy. My sons feed the goats before we meander down the grassy path to the stream. The hillsides are still brown with faded grasses. When we walk back up the hill, the sun is almost exactly overhead. We are drawn to explore the Montjoy Barn.

We open the double doors on the side of the handsome European-style wheat barn and peek inside. The interior is lofty and cool. The barn smells like autumn harvest, a combination of the wooden timbers, the dried grasses hanging from the beams, and the hay bales on the floor.

The barn is timber frame construction, made entirely of old-growth oak. Some of the posts and beams are 18th-century originals and bear the markings of the axe that shaped them. Wooden pegs join the pieces, and there are no nails used in the structure.

In the quiet coolness of the barn, I close my eyes for a moment and imagine myself transported back to the days of the Revolutionary War in which the barn was likely constructed. The stone foundation is like those found in German barns of the time, and the distinctive high ceiling and side doors mimic the style of English wheat barns. Right around the time the American war for independence raged, a skilled German immigrant may have directed the construction of the barn. Over the centuries since it was built, the barn stored tobacco and wheat and was later used to shelter livestock.

The silent barn contains the hush of laborers resting after a long day's work. It has done its job efficiently for generations, and now it is at rest.

Wanderings

2011-04-20T00:13:00.000-04:00

In my previous post I wrote about Sue Bender's exercise in "clear intention and genuine effort." Just so you know, my life isn't usually like that. This week, as my kids enjoy their spring break, I've been practicing the opposite: some aimless wandering and a little bit of laziness. We're sleeping in (a little, anyway). We're letting the weather decide on our outings. The dishes are going mostly undone, clean linens unfolded, leftovers reheated.

Monday we slept in and had a movie day. (Go see Rio if you can--we all enjoyed every minute of it. Fantastic animation, great message, and wonderful shots of Rio de Janeiro.)

Tuesday I vowed to get an earlier start to our day and visit the aquarium. But in the morning I had a moment of very un-clear intention and indecision. I had a little wardrobe crisis (it's not winter any more with its sweaters and layers to hide the bulges), and all I wanted to do was crawl right back into pajamas and into bed. I did not want to face the Spring Break crowds at the aquarium.

But I also didn't want to disappoint my kids. So I dug out some comfy capris and got over my grouchiness, and I'm glad I did. At the aquarium we watched the jellyfish floating in their cylinders of glass, puffing out their gossamer bells and trailing threads in their slow ascent. We saw a diver feeding lettuce to a rescued sea turtle, whose missing left front flipper didn't seem to affect its graceful glide through the water. We enjoyed the puffins, who look cute and oblivious and clumsy on land, diving into the water and swimming faster than we expected them to.

Yes, the crowds were awful, and we were all on sensory overload after a couple of hours. So we took a break and walked along the waterfront, across several bridges, and over to Little Italy. At Vaccaro's Italian Pastry Shop ("The Place for Desserts!"), we ogled dozens of kinds of Italian cookies and pastries in the display case. I let my kids have Belgian waffles for lunch (one had his waffle topped with a melting mountain of ice cream). And I had the best sandwich I have EVER had--a veggie mufalato grilled panini-style. It was stuffed with grilled eggplant, artichokes, tomatoes, olive tapenade, and thick slices of mozarella.

We ended the day quietly, the kids building their own Lego Bionicles while I finished reading the epistolary novel Sorcery and Cecilia (another recommendation, if you like Jane Austen and J.K. Rowling). Then, as I read aloud Sharon Creech's Unfinished Angel (yet another recommendation; thank you, Zee, for both of these books!) and we giggled over the language, my youngest fell asleep, exhausted after a full day.

It was a day of small delights in unexpected places, like these fallen plum blossoms floating in a glass jar that I found when I was cleaning house on Saturday.

I'd love to hear what you have worried over and then delighted in this week.

A Cuddle Bunny Family

2011-04-18T03:45:00.001-04:00

Last month my neighbor loaned me a copy of Everyday Sacred; A Woman's Journey Home, by Sue Bender. It was a delightful read, a series of vignettes about Bender's search to see and appreciate the gifts that each day brings. "Like the monk going out with his empty bowl, I set out to see what each day offered," Bender explains. In the process, she learns to quiet the harsh, critical voice inside her and accept her unique talents as an artist.

In one section that I particularly enjoyed, Bender describes an art project she set for herself: to draw and paint a pear every day for a whole month. She hopes to master shape and shadow in the process. While she doesn't achieve the skill mastery that she had expected, Bender learns to tap into the joy of the creative process:

"Waking up each day knowing I was going to draw a pear changed the quality of my day. Total devotion to one task, even for a brief period of time--to stop the world--was enormously satisfying. I was carried along by clear intention and genuine effort." (p. 101)

Drawing a pear may seem like a pointless task. Making bunnies might seem even sillier. But there is something very powerful in the practice of completing such simple projects. It is freeing to take a simple form, such as a rabbit, and explore color and pattern through it. Knowing the simple steps I need to take to make a bunny emerge from wool and thread clears everything else from my mind, and the world does indeed seem to stop, as Bender suggests, when I am immersed in stitching. I am also learning to set aside my self-criticism and doubts and just let the joy singing through my heart flow out in the embroidery and hand sewing.

I'm sure that this approach--the "total devotion to one task"--could be applied to anything we do in a day. Writing. Cleaning. Caring for a child. Tending a garden. Crunching numbers or managing people or directing traffic.

Each Cuddle Bunny I make is an expression of love and care. Each one also feels like an improvisation. I gather together my jumble of felted wool, threads, and buttons. As I sort through them and match colors that I like, I take a leap of faith that my skills will bring a pleasing shape together. The personality of each bunny emerges as I embroider a pattern of flowers on its side, sew on the long ears, choose a pair of buttons for the eyes, and finally add a fluffy tail. And I end up with a stuffed animal that can be loved by little hands, or just admired for its sweetness. How satisfying is that?

If you have sewn a Cuddle Bunny of your own from my pattern, please feel free to post a photo in the Flickr Cuddle Bunny group. It will be fun to see a brightness of Cuddle Bunnies collected in one place.

Boxed Bunnies

2011-04-12T11:49:00.000-04:00

Isn't it funny that no matter how much you lose track of time, it doesn't lose track of you? I have been so absorbed in bunny making lately that I will look up at the clock after I've finished the last stitch on a bunny, and it will be five minutes past the time to pick up my son from school or well past midnight.

So, time has flown by while I have been happily stitching away, and, as my son reminded me this morning, it's only 12 days until Easter (his favorite holiday). My vision of filling the Easter baskets of the world with felted wool sweater bunnies will not come to pass. I guess there's always next year?

But I'm happy to report that all of the Crafting for Courage bunnies have been sewn up, with the last bunny hopping out the door this morning.

A boxful of bunnies is also on the way to Japan for Operation Bunny Drop. I hope they will bring a little comfort to children whose lives are still so unsettled by the recent crises. The lovely commenters on yesterday's post remind me that well-loved toys are rich vessels for childhood imaginings. They also continue to offer solace well after childhood has ended.

Joanie's (Nini Makes) hand-me-down giraffe has now been loved to tatters by two generations of children (see her comment on yesterday's post), so she understands the power of a plushie. Did you see the sweet "Bunny Droppings" she crafted for Operation Bunny Drop?

Joanie's free bunny patterns continue to inspire my sewing. I made another Sunny Bunny for a special little boy who is about to become a big brother. I haven't met him, but, knowing his beautiful aunt and grandmother and sweet father and uncle, I am sure he has a very big heart.

Tweed Bunny is made from a thrifted Jantzen wool skirt, and his scarf was rescued from my growing mountain of felted wool sweater bits. It's serendipity that the felted sweater has the same tweedy pattern running through it as the bunny.

This little lavender-filled bunny sachet was inspired by Joanie's Naughty Felt Bunny pattern. I fell in love the sweet, simple shape of the bunny, and the stories Joanie shared about Camille and Issy.

I hope you can see how Sonia's (Cozy Homemaking) pincushions and sachets also inspired me as well. Check out Sonia's Etsy shop and Spring Cleaning sale. Her hand-sewn items are beautifully and finely crafted and would make lovely spring gifts.

The sachet is going out as a thank you to a Crafting for Courage supporter and friend who generously added a little extra to her donation. Thank you, Monica!

I'll be taking a little break from blogging to tackle taxes and fall school registrations and to try to get over a case of bronchitis. (I love flowering season, but my body does not.)

I am seeing signs from my recent rambles through blog land that spring has begun to pop up even farther north now. Enjoy!

A Sunny Bunny for Japan

2011-04-11T01:51:00.001-04:00

When I was little, the talking Mrs. Beasley was the doll to have. Buffy, one of the twins on the TV show "Family Affair," carried the spectacled old-lady doll around with her wherever she went. The doll had a hard plastic head but a huggable soft body, and her bright blue dress had rickrack trim. I remember pulling a big white plastic ring in back of the doll repeatedly to cycle through all of her sentences. She said several old-fashioned phrases, including "Gracious me, you're getting to be such a big girl."

A few years later, in the mid-1970s, the soft Holly Hobbie doll was my sister's favorite. I envied Holly's gingham patch dress and blue sunbonnet. She didn't talk, but she didn't need to. You carried her tucked under your arm while wearing your peasant-style dress and watching "Little House on the Prairie" or making a dried-flower arrangement with your mom.

I'm sure there are plenty of must-have dolls today with TV or commercial tie-ins like we had when I was a kid. But I'm happy that the handmade plushie craze has returned to offer lots of alternatives to mass-marketed dolls.

I love it when my son makes up a story about the adventures of a stuffed animal I've made for him, rather than repeating a story that is already "programmed" into the doll. Last week we learned about Hercules, a bunny whose parents had to give him up to live under a thicket, where he was befriended by Frederick the Mouse who brought him cheese.

I sewed the plushie pictured here using Nini Makes' Sunny Bunny pattern. The pattern was a real pleasure to stitch--no gusset to wrestle with! The felted cashmere is so soft and cuddlable, and my son immediately requested one of his own. He understands that we're sending this Sunny Bunny to Japan for a child whose toys were lost to the earthquake and tsunami. Crafters have already pledged more than 430 bunnies as part of Operation Bunny Drop, which runs until May 13.

**Please check out Makiko, Sonia's (cozy homemaking) sweet offering, and Margie's (Resurrection fern) rainbow herd of bunnies, which will bring comfort to children in Japan in much need of it. The Crafts With Purpose, Because Love Heals Facebook page has many pictures of handmade bunnies ready for donation. Thank you, Liz Minnick Valentin, for the inspired idea. I'm sure you will be inundated with a flood of cute bunnies.

I'd love to hear what favorite toy(s) you played with as a child (or still!).

Hope you have a playful, creative week.

Operation Bunny Drop

2011-04-08T06:29:00.002-04:00

Perhaps, after a few weeks of bunny posts, you've gotten the impression that I'm a little rabbit-obsessed? You might be right.

The Crafting for Courage bunnies have also seeped into my family's consciousness. At the dinner table last week, we were discussing the air strikes in Libya. My son, who is five-and-a-half, formulated his own peace plan. He wants us to sneak into bombers and swap out the bombs and put bunnies in their places. That way on their next bombing runs, the planes will drop bunnies to cuddle instead of bombs that destroy.

I think rabbits are fitting ambassadors of peace. Artist Shannah Burton (daskaninchen), who captures the essence of the rabbit form in felt, writes: "Because the rabbit burrows underground and is most active during twilight hours it has been given a shaman like role... a metaphor for a traveling spirit from this world to the next." Rabbits as symbols travel between worlds; they heal.

When I have seen pictures of Japanese children in shelters over the last few weeks, some laughing and playing and others in shock over the loss of family and home, I've wanted to reach out in some way to offer comfort. Operation Bunny Drop, sponsored by Marie Spaulding's Crafts With Courage--Because Love Heals, hopes to do just that. Inspired by felter Liz Minnick, who is working with a circus group in Japan, the project is recruiting crafters to make soft bunny plushies to give to children in Japan affected by the earthquake and tsunami. The group's Facebook page includes links to free bunny patterns to felt or sew. (Joanie's (Nini Makes) adorable bunny pattern is here.) The effort runs through May 13. Register here.

Thank you, Fiona (TizDuster), for spreading the news about Operation Bunny Drop. I think the children of Japan need a lot of comforting right now, even (especially?) if it's in the form of a little bunny.

Bunny Delivery

2011-04-07T04:10:00.000-04:00

This past weekend of off-and-on again spring, I drove north from Plant Hardiness Zone 5 to Zone 7. The difference in the trees was dramatic.

Here in Maryland the trees are heavy with blossoms. Last week the buds were still dots of color on the trees, each one its separate beauty. This week the trees are puffy masses of color, the individual buds indistinguishable particles of the cloud.

By contrast, in upstate New York this weekend, the trees were mostly bare, their trunks dun but pleasing shades of gray and tan, some electric green with moss.

My son and I enjoyed the full gamut of wild early spring weather. The cold, sharp wind blew up the hill and into our light coats while we played on the playground. The next day, my son fed the spring chicks at the hardware store and ran with a pack of boys on a gloriously sunny Sunday. Monday we walked downtown under a big black umbrella through a heavy downpour that made a pond out of our driveway. On Tuesday, the rain turned to snow as we sat at the breakfast table. It kept snowing as we drove south again. It dusted the very tops of the low mountains we drove past like a light, sweet coating of powdered sugar.

It was a weekend free of bunny making (I missed stitching!), though we did collect a few more wool sweaters for future bunnies. I did a little felting experiment and found that using the steam option on my washing machine yields a very tightly felted cashmere that is still so soft and pleasing to the touch.

I had the pleasure of delivering Crafting for Courage bunnies to friends old and new. One bunny made its home with a brilliant and delightful college student. At a new friend's house, another bunny found a hiding place in a wooden curiosity cabinet next to a pair of embroidered felt shoes from a foreign land. At a gathering of a circle of writing friends, the bunnies nestled on the fireplace mantle and were cuddled and admired under a dragonfly birthday bunting made by a multitalented friend. Two bunnies, waiting for Easter, helped us share a happy breakfast with a lovely friend. And then two of the bunnies came to see us off on our last day. They were christened Sakura-chan and Saiki (Psycho?)-Sake-chan.

These bunnies--the most improbable of vessels--showed me what a wealth of sparkly and talented and loving and generous friends I have the honor to know.

Signs of Spring

2011-04-05T17:16:00.000-04:00

Kawaii ne

2011-03-31T13:23:00.000-04:00

When I was in Japan in 1998, I kept hearing the same word wherever I went with my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter: "kawaii." It wasn't a word I learned in the cram Berlitz Japanese class I took before we left California. So I was mystified in my first few days in Mito when people, usually older women, would stop me and say, "Kawaii ne." At a Buddhist temple in Nikko, a whole busload of older Japanese tourists surrounded us with a chorus of "Kawaii!"s.

I think I figured out pretty quickly that they were telling me my daughter was cute. I learned to nod and tell them that she was "Ni hai san," because most people usually asked how old she was next.

"Kawaii" means adorable, precious, lovable, or innocent, and it was everywhere in Japan when we visited. At the mall, we browsed whole floors devoted to Hello Kitty! merchandise: backpacks, cell phone covers, t-shirts, stuffed animals taller than a toddler, toilet paper. (My daughter was not a fan of the cute after a lumbering Hello Kitty! mascot approached us and towered over her stroller. Definitely not kawaii!)

And it's not just teenage girls, who originated the kawaii craze in the 1970s, who are crazy for cute. Kawaii mascots adorn ads, are painted on the sides of airplanes, and served as cute symbols for the Winter Olympics, held in Nagano in 1998. Even the Tokyo Police have their own cute mascots.

Usagi wa kawaii desu ne. (I'm dusting off the little Japanese I know. I hope I said, Aren't rabbits cute?)

The first batch of the Cuddle Bunny printable pdf pattern has sold out. I've listed more in my Etsy shop so that you can sew up your own kawaii rabbit. You can find the pattern here.

A Brightness of Bunnies

2011-03-30T12:34:00.000-04:00

The bunnies keep multiplying! Yesterday I stitched together three bunnies that had been in various stages of completion. I am looking forward to seeing the bunnies that will get sewn up from the Cuddle Bunny pattern.

When I saw all of the bunnies I've made together in a basket, I tried to remember what the collective noun for rabbits is. A rabbit warren? When I looked it up, I found several nouns for a collection of rabbits. A warren and a colony and a nest of rabbits are familiar. But I found some unusual forms as well. A bury of rabbits. A down of rabbits and a drove of rabbits. A husk and a leash, and a trace and a trip of rabbits. For baby rabbits: a wrack of rabbits.

I'm calling my little collection of happiness a brightness of bunnies.

A Child-Friendly Space

2011-03-29T13:39:00.000-04:00

When I imagine a child-friendly space for my own children, I imagine a light-filled room with books and toys and crafts where they can be absorbed in play, either on their own or with other children. It's a safe place, supervised by nurturing adults.

That's the kind of space that Save the Children is providing for some of the 100,000 children affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. In these spaces children can play and be safe while their parents work to rebuild their lives.

Thanks to all of the generous support for the Crafting for Courage sale, we have been able to donate a much larger amount collectively than we could as individuals. I just donated the proceeds from the sales of the Crafting for Courage bunnies and pattern to Save the Children, and my heart is just singing. It has been a true labor of love making these bunnies, knowing that they will indirectly help to provide some source of comfort for children in Japan.

Thank you Zee, Wanda, Amber, Anastasia, Sherry, Ellen, Jill, Alicia, Monica, Sarah, Amanda, Jackie, and all of the Cuddle Bunny pattern purchasers for your most welcome support. I can't wait to see more Cuddle Bunnies being stitched up and multiplying.

Cherry Blossom Time

2011-03-28T14:08:00.002-04:00

Almost 100 years ago, a Tokyo mayor gave the people of the United States an extraordinary gift of 3,000 cherry trees. The trees were planted along the Tidal Basin near the nation's capital. Since then the sakura have bloomed in pink profusion in spring and have become a transplanted national treasure. This past weekend marked the beginning of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which will run for two weeks.

Seeing the cherry blossoms this year will bring a mix of sweetness and sadness. Nature gives us this incredible but brief show to enjoy every year. But the natural world also just dealt an incredible blow to Japan, shifting the main island by several feet and indeed shaking the earth on its axis. Terra firma could not be trusted--the very ground quaked, shifted, cracked--and the beautiful sea, depicted in screenprinted images of Matsushima Bay, rushed in to destroy.

How do we reconcile the beauty and the destruction? Buddhists have a certain way of viewing the cherry blossoms. They enjoy the beauty of the blossoms but recognize that at the height of their beauty they are about to fall. Death resides in their flowering, and their beauty is all the more poignant because it is so fleeting. The sakura teach us about life's impermanece even as we are celebrating this season of rebirth.

My limited Western mind has a hard time internalizing these concepts as words. They are easier to understand when I think in the language of the cherry trees. They dress in their fanciest clothes for a very little while. They don't know if a late snow will ruin them. But they dress up anyway in a joyful, hopeful seeding of the next generation that is also their gift to us.

I hope you make the time to enjoy the cherry blossoms and other flowering trees that are filling bare branches with color as March comes to a close.

I couldn't resist stitching sakura branches and my simplified versions of their blossoms on a Crafting for Courage bunny yesterday. I guess it's my way of holding on (literally) to that fleeting beauty and remembering that it will come again.

I'm hoping that other people might be interested in making their own cuddly bunnies. They are simple vessels, but so sweet and so ready to accept the love you put into stitching them. I had a lot of fun (and some frustration as well!) documenting my process of making the Sakura Bunny and put together a pdf of the pattern. It's available for purchase in my Etsy shop. Today, on the last day of the Crafting for Courage sale, all proceeds will be donated to Save the Children's Earthquake Tsunami Relief Fund. The mama-and baby bunny I showed in my "Say Yes" post are also part of the final listings for the benefit sale. Do stop by and take a look to support the children affected by the earthquake and tsunami.

I had a very helpful elf in Texas test out the pattern to make sure that my pattern pieces matched up with one another and instructions made sense. My mom, who won the Betty Crocker Homemaking Award in high school and is a talented seamstress and embroiderer, very sweetly offered to make some bunnies from her stash of felted sweaters. They turned out beautifully, and it is such fun to see the infinite combinations of fabrics that can be assembled to make each bunny unique, with its own personality.

Have a wonderful week!

Cuddle Bunnies

2011-03-27T09:54:00.002-04:00

After a week of bunny making and very little sleep, I was so tired yesterday that I fell asleep on the living room floor after dinner. I was listening to my husband play the guitar, and then I was just out.

For a while now I've wondered how Etsy sellers do this every week. Hard-working makers fill their Etsy shelves with delightful handmade items. Their owners generously share words and photographs about their creative process and their daily lives. Behind the scenes, there is the administrative work that you don't even see: hours of listing items, correspondence with buyers, boxing and mailing, not to mention the late-night hours actually creating.

From seeing friends selling their items, I've understood the difficult logistics as a bystander. This hectic week of bunny making has given me an inkling of the why of the process, the spirit that drives them past the need for sleep and other physical limitations. (And you can say this about so many other vocations: parenthood, nursing and doctoring, serving in the military, teaching, ministering, social service work, etc.)

At the very heart of my motivation is seeing my son cuddling the bunny I made for him. It's knowing that this humble little bunny, made of castoff materials lovingly brought together by my imperfect stitches, gives him comfort and pleasure. The gentle curve of its back conforms to his little hands. The felted wool is a textural treat next to his cheek. It fills his sensory needs, and it is also a vessel for his imagination and play. He puts together a family of bunnies, a coterie of friends. He weaves stories of their adventures.

I am glad I said yes to his request to make him a bunny.

More tomorrow on cherry blossoms and friends, two of the other motivators helping my tired hands do more than I thought they could. Tomorrow is the final day for the Crafting for Courage sale, and I hope you'll let friends know or perhaps even stop in one last time to shop. Your support for the children of Japan is very much appreciated!

Note--I'm having trouble with Blogger uploading the photos in this post. For now it will have to do! Family calls.

Say Yes

2011-03-26T12:18:00.001-04:00

I was born saying no. My mom tells me that I started wailing when I was born and just didn't stop for a year. I had a hernia as a baby, but even after it was repaired I still cried. The world with all its noises and smells just bothered me. Shirt tags made red, itchy blotches on the back of my neck. I hated trying on clothes. The chemical smells made my face itchy and hot, and all the fabrics were scratchy to my skin. Most of my childhood you could find me curled up in a chair or in my bed reading a book.

It's been a constant battle for me as an adult to stop saying no to the world, to stop pushing it away and holing myself up in my home, passing up opportunities because I feel like I'm just not good enough.

When I first read Joanie's (ninimakes) email asking for participants in the Crafting for Courage fundraiser, I thought of a million reasons that I should say no. A lot of them were valid. This was a busy week of afterschool activities for the kids, and I knew my time would be limited.

But I said yes. Because I have realized painfully over the last few years that saying no to opportunities to participate in a project with a caring group of people like this is in effect saying no to myself. Saying no to my connectedness with my friends and neighbors and even people in crisis halfway around the globe from me. Saying no to my creative self. Saying no to letting myself sink into the joy of making. Saying no, you're not good enough to work with others and put your work out there.

Making each one of these bunnies is a yes practice, related to the love practices I wrote about last month. It's facing that my stitches are imperfect but beautiful in their imperfection. It's accepting that I can only work at my own pace. It's accepting each step in the process and moving forward even when I don't have the pattern and instructions.

This is the third in a series of small yesses for me lately, mouthing the affirmative when I just wanted to run away from the anxiety. I said yes, and I am realizing that my perfectly imperfect self is enough.

Year (Oh, it's just been a week!) of the Rabbit

2011-03-25T09:02:00.000-04:00

Whew, what a week this has been! I can't believe that Crafting for Courage, which began with a heartfelt email plea from Joanie of ninimakes just a week ago, has come together the way it has. A billion, trillion, googolplex thanks to all of you who have come out to support the sale as shoppers and as makers (and sometimes both--I've had a hard time giving everyone else a chance at all of the beautiful creations that have been offered through this benefit sale!). The rush of support for the people, and specifically the children, of Japan has been enormous. Together we have provided a donation many times over what we could have given individually. Thank you!

I made a record four Crafting for Courage bunnies yesterday, and I will be sending bunnies out to their new homes today. I don't want to get too far behind on filling my pre-orders, so the bunnies I made yesterday have already been spoken for. More bunny making today, woven in between family and school obligations, and I plan to post more in the shop over the weekend and on Monday, the last day of the sale.

I have to give a shout out to my family as well, my craft widow of a husband and my craft-orphaned children. They have been tremendously excited about this sale, and so supportive. When my husband and daughter left last night for a school function, my youngest looked at me and said, "You know what this means? Bunny time!" And we both rushed down to our basement crafting room for more sewing time together. He is the guy responsible for choosing the bunny tails and button eyes, just so you know!

Have a wonderful weekend, my friends! And don't forget to stop in and check out the Etsy shops of the Crafting for Courage sellers. Crafters are continuing to list items for the Crafting for Courage sale, and all of the proceeds will be donated to the Save the Children Japan Earthquake Tsunami Relief Fund.

Crafting for Courage Finds

2011-03-24T01:38:00.000-04:00

I'm thrilled to announce that the Crafting for Courage online sale to benefit Japanese relief efforts is now LIVE. Click the Crafting for Courage banner at the top of the blog to check out the site for some treats for the home, family, and self. Be sure to scroll down through all of the posts to see all of the beautifully made items created with heart and soul. I hope you'll support the sale by purchasing an item or spreading the word. The sale runs through Monday, March 28.

I couldn't be prouder to have my bunnies part of such a positive project and with such an amazing group of women. I made the original one for my son as we were crafting together one Saturday morning. He carried it to school with him for an entire week, loved it, cuddled it, showed it off to his friends. When I told him that I would be making and selling more bunnies to raise money to help the people in Japan affected by the earthquake, he was excited but a little worried. He found a Sharpie marker and wrote "2" (it was the second bunny we made) and a heart on his bunny to make sure it wouldn't be sold.

As the rabbits have multiplied in our crafting area this week, my son has been having fun introducing his bunny to the new bunnies in their baskets. He has made blankets for them and wants to go to the thrift store to buy them clothes. Of course he knows what the bunnies' favorite kind of music is: hip hop. I'm glad that he has an "action" figure that is handmade and that he can pour his own imagination into.

You can purchase a bunny of your own through my Etsy shop. I will be donating all of the proceeds of the sale to the Save the Children Japan Earthquake Tsunami Relief Fund.

In the next week or so I will be sewing more bunnies to fill pre-orders from family and friends. I'm also working on a pattern for the bunnies that I will try to list in the Etsy shop once it's been tested. It would be fun to see how other crafters interpret the Crafting for Courage Bunny, and I can't wait to try the pattern with some recently thrifted fabrics.

Crafting for Courage

2011-03-23T02:12:00.001-04:00

What a difference a week can make. Just a few days ago, the branches of trees and bushes seemed naked. The world was brown and bare. This week the flowering trees are solid with reds and pinks, and the forsythia is ablaze with a golden fire. Spring, like hope, can sneak up on you like that.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last week, there was such a level of destruction that it seemed beyond the repair of human hands. The threat of a nuclear catastrophe still hangs over Japan and the world. Yet people in the most heavily affected areas are returning to their jobs, lining up for food in makeshift markets, salvaging bits and pieces of their possessions--returning to some semblance of normal life. Hope blossoms in the mundane.

Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes in the disaster and are living in schools and other temporary shelters, some still without electricity. Save the Children estimates that 100,000 children were directly affected by the disaster, losing family members and homes. The organization has set up child-friendly shelters to help children recover from the trauma they have experienced.

I can't begin to imagine the fear, anxiety, and the loss of a sense of security that this disaster must have brought to these children. But I want to help in some small way to lessen their pain, to offer some hope.

The Crafting for Courage online sale begins tomorrow, Thursday, March 24, and will run until Monday, March 28. By buying a handcrafted item or two from the Crafting for Courage participants, you can support the efforts of Save the Children to bring hope to the children directly affected by the quake and tsunami.

All items will be presented on the Crafting for Courage blog, with links to the Etsy or other online shops to purchase the items. All of the proceeds from the sales will be donated by the sellers directly to the Save the Children relief fund. Click back here tomorrow for a link to the Crafting for Courage site.

* * * *

Thank you so much for all of your kind comments about the felted-sweater bunnies, which I'll be donating to the Crafting for Courage online sale. I have had several pre-orders from friends (thank you, Zee, Monica, and Wanda!), and I'm stitching as fast as I can to have some ready to sell in my Etsy shop on Thursday. It is a joy to put together the cheerful colors and to see the personality of each bunny emerge as I stitch. Here are a few sneak peeks of the bunnies.

Hope to "see" you tomorrow at the sale!

BIP (Bunnies in Progress)

2011-03-22T01:36:00.000-04:00

The bunnies are multiplying! I am hand sewing the bunnies from felted sweaters, and their color combinations are making me so happy. They are a perfect fit for a little one's hands, and they are ready to be cuddled.

The bunnies will be in my Etsy shop on Thursday, March 24, as part of the Crafting for Courage online sale (March 24 to 28) to benefit Japanese earthquake and tsunami relief efforts. All proceeds from the sale will benefit Save the Children's Japan Earthquake Tsunami Relief.

I have heard about some wonderful handmade items that will be part of the sale. Sonia of Cozy Homemaking has a beautiful post about the project and a glimpse of one of her hand-stitched offerings. Joanie of ninimakes, who has energized us all with her organizing efforts, is stitching up a sweet doll with the most beautiful face and a hand-dyed textile that captures the sky. Margie of Resurrection Fern, who designed the dragonfly and sun logo for Crafting for Courage, is working on her distinctive and serene covered stones.

There are a few others that I can't mention right now, but you will be inspired by their work. I'll save those for a later post.

I hope that you will join us in our efforts to support the people of Japan. You can help by donating an item to sell. You can purchase one of the Crafting for Courage handcrafted items. You can spread the word about the sale to friends and family members. You can donate to the charity of your choice. Email me at editorana@gmail.com for details about how to donate an item to the sale.

It may not seem much, the work of a few hands, but together we are creating something bigger than what we could accomplish individually. We are crafting a small offering with great love (to paraphrase Mother Teresa) as material and spiritual support for a people in need of both.

We Are All Connected, Part Two

2011-03-21T02:55:00.001-04:00

My thoughts continue to turn to the people of Japan. I keep remembering the openness of the people we met when my husband, daughter, and I lived in Japan for several months.

One Saturday morning we struck up a conversation with the Arai family, with their two children Shota and Etsuki, at the playground. They invited us to dinner at their apartment, and we had fun trying to communicate in our halting Japanese. They forgave our pronunciation and grammar gaffes. We had them over for dinner as well, and they continued to send us handmade presents for my daughter and photo updates of their children for several years.

Seki-san was my Japanese teacher at The International Center, and she opened her home to teach me and other foreign students calligraphy, ikebana (flower arranging), and the the tea ceremony. On Girls' Day (Hinamatsuri), she invited my father and stepmother, who were visiting us, to see a home altar displaying tiers of traditional dolls. (She called my father John Wayne.) A few years later Seki-san and her family visited us in California, and she brought my daughter a cotton yukata and silk obi that my daughter wore for many years.

There are so many other stories I can tell like those. The spirit of hospitality and generosity of the people we met in Japan in that short period of time is something I've tried to pass on since then. I know that they would reach out to help others in need, and I'm hoping that the world community will open their hearts (and wallets) to help those affected by the earthquake and tsunami.

I will be taking part in the Crafting for Courage sale of handmade items and supplies later this week. Joanie of ninimakes got the ball rolling for this effort, and she designed the banner at the top of this post. Margie of Resurrection Fern carved the dragonfly stamp and discusses its symbolism here. All sale proceeds will be donated to the Save the Children Japan Earthquake Tsunami Relief.

I'll give you more details soon. I am planning to donate a few bunnies that have been hopping around the house lately.

This one I made for my son one Saturday morning that we crafted together. It's the third bunny in a row that he has requested. The first one was made from felt, the second from a thrifted faux velvet dress that we chose for its texture, and this one from my stash of felted sweaters. He carries spring with him, as you can see, and he is a very curious fellow. You can see that he is very interested in the neuroscience of chronic pain. He studied the brain scans from a recent issue of Time Magazine for several days.

Hope you have a wonderfully happy and sunny first week of spring!

We Are All Connected

2011-03-14T01:51:00.002-04:00

I was standing in front of the two-burner stove, cooking our lunch. I don't remember what I was preparing that day, probably my daughter's favorite meal of udon noodles with vegetables. While I cooked, my two-year-old daughter played next to me on the floor of the kitchen. The refrigerator was just her height, and she was making a game out of opening and closing the refrigerator door, delighting when the light turned on so that she could peer in at the pile of kale, cabbage, and root vegetables that a local farmer had just delivered to our apartment.

The room started swaying. I grabbed my daughter and clung to the doorway between the kitchen and living room as the entire building moved slowly up and down as if it were a boat riding long swells. The small earthquake lasted only half a minute and caused no damage.

It was the first of several quakes that we experienced in our three months in Japan in the spring and early summer of 1998, an expected part of life for people living on the island nation riding the fault-ridden "Ring of Fire."

My husband, who had been driving to work, called me from his cell phone to make sure we were OK. He felt the ground swaying, the telephone poles buffeted as if by a brief, strong breeze. But other than traffic stopping momentarily on the two-lane highway beside acres of rice fields, life went on.

We lived in Mito, a bustling city about 75 miles northeast of Tokyo and near the epicenter of the recent devastating earthquake. Anxiety about a potential earthquake became a constant background buzz in our thoughts, just as it was for our Japanese neighbors and for our Southern California neighbors back home.

But that anxiety didn't stop us from exploring. Three times a week my daughter and I biked to the International Center and took a language class. After my husband came home from work, we walked to Kairakuen Park and admired the plum blossoms. In the evenings we jogged along Lake Senba and on weekends rode in the swan boats.

Further afield, we stayed at a European-style ryokan (with the perfect Japanese-style bath) in Nikko. My daughter dashed, wet and laughing, down the hallway from the bathroom back to our room as we chased her in our cotton robes. We cleansed our hands at temples on forested hillsides and in urban parks. We walked the ancient, winding lanes of Kyoto. We stayed overnight at a monastery, strolling through the peaceful grounds in the morning rain. We went to a spring plum festival, an apple blossom festival, a rice festival, a Children's Day festival with koinobori floating across a wooden bridge.

One weekend we drove north up the coast, along a winding highway south of Sendai with rugged cliffs and towering pines that reminded us of Northern California. We hiked through the forest to the cliff edge and watched the Pacific waves battering the shore. We had hoped to go to the Tsunami Museum in Karakuwa, but we ran out of time. Today that area is horribly altered by the earthqake and tsunami, its land still flooded and homes and lives destroyed.

As I watched images of the earthquake and the resulting tsunami sweeping cars, boats, and buildings away, I remembered the faces of friends I had made in that short, sweet time in Japan and prayed that they were all right.

In one photograph I saw the face of an older woman, her expression of shock and resignation at yet another tragedy. And I remembered the red daruma doll heads that are sold at Buddhist temples in Japan, symbols of perseverance and good luck. The dolls are weighted at the bottom so that they always right themselves when tipped over. They embody the phrase, "Seven Times Down, Eight Times Up."

A continent and an ocean away now, I'm sending prayers for my friends as they pick themselves up yet again, as they salvage what they can and rebuild their lives.

**Thank you, Joanie, for inspiring me to sit down and commit this post to electronic type. I have been writing and rewriting in my head for the last few days as my anxiety grows. Your beautiful post on your California earthquake experience gave me the push I needed to connect with what I was feeling and share it.

A Given Day

2011-03-02T11:48:00.000-05:00

Today I am grateful for this blog. For encouraging me to keep track of my days in photoessay form for the last three years.

Over the last few days I have been looking back at my old blog posts. I wondered what was going on for me in March of past years, what patterns I could identify.

What struck me was how much energy and enthusiasm I had for sharing my crafting and everyday adventures with my children in 2008, the first year I started blogging. In 2009 and 2010, as my children grew and matured, I changed as well, and my blog posts became more contemplative. I noticed also how much closer in contact with nature I was in Ithaca than I am here in Maryland.

My energy is definitely quieter these days, and I'm accepting that change in rhythm as well. I've been doing a lot of reading lately, soaking in imagery and metaphor and wisdom. I am still crafting, but I haven't felt compelled to share my creations on the blog as much, and I will have to look at that more carefully to understand why.

I found this post, A Really Good Day, from March 5 of last year, which reminded me about gratitude.

I will keep this in mind today: "Let the gratefulness overflow into blessings all around you, and then it will truly be a good day." Brother David Steindl-Rast

Happy Birthday, Nanou!

2011-02-24T12:07:00.001-05:00

Dear Nanou,

I have arrived! And, as you said, it is much colder here in the Maryland Piedmont than in the South of France. But I must assure you that my acorn hat and polka-dot coat keep me warm enough.

Look at all the buds in the tree! Signs that spring will be here soon.

Please tell all the Critters that I am well, and that my handsome profile is much admired here.

For your birthday, I am sending you a video of the Toon Tellegen story, "The Elephant and The Snail," which I know you will love. Isn't it funny how an offer of hospitality (like a friendship) can have such unexpected consequences? It involves risk, but also the potential for growth and beauty.

Happy birthday, dear Nanou, and tell all of the other Critters in their faraway lands that I am thinking about all the stories of the Forest, and dreaming up new ones as well.

With all my love,

Brin

Are You Feelin' It?

2011-02-23T11:29:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of February, I gave myself an assignment. A little nudge to focus my often scattered attention. It was to write a series of love letters to explore the many faces of love.

Love wears the face of my grandmother and my mother. Those letters were easy to write.

Writing a love letter to myself was harder, even knowing that self-love is one of the foundations for all of the other kinds of love.

But as I was writing about love, searching for the words for love in many languages, I felt that something was off. I felt like a hypocrite, chasing love with my head while my heart felt as cold as the February days. I got irritable and cranky, out of sync with my loved ones.

And so I stopped writing. If I wasn't "feelin' it," I thought, then I sure shouldn't be writin' it.

Then, after an argument with a loved one, I started noticing some things.

Maybe you could call them love practices. The instinctive impulse, after being awakened from a deep sleep, to comfort a child awakened by a nightmare. Getting out of bed after a late night and making breakfast. And not just a breakfast of cold cereal, but a hot meal with protein and veggies and a little bit of spice and a fresh fruit smoothie to start the day off right. (Some mornings it was a love practice to just get out of bed and tell the kids to get their own cold cereal.)

Noticing itself became a love practice. Noticing when the boys played peacefully through the morning of the umpteenth snow day (OK, maybe it was just the fourth snow day :)). Noticing that my son never fails to say "thank you" and "please." Noticing the growing confidence of my once-cautious daughter as she took a flight all by herself for the first time. Reminding myself to acknowledge these acts with a word or smile became a love practice.

Even though I wasn't feelin' it all the time, I was practicing love in little ways, as were the people around me.

I think I'll keep on practicing.

Love Is a Person

2011-02-14T07:52:00.001-05:00

"Love can't be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can't be proved, any more than anything else important in life can be proved. Love is people, is a person. . . . It also has a lot to do with compassion, and with creation."
Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, The Crosswicks Journal, Book One (1972)

Happy Valentine's Day, friends.

Self-Love

2011-02-12T08:36:00.000-05:00

I am fighting the intense urge to sleep through February.

It's requiring a whole lot of maitri, a Sanskrit word that can be defined as unconditional friendliness towards oneself.

Maitri means accepting yourself just as you are are, warts and all. It's a form of self-love that generates a wave of loving kindness that spreads outward from the self to others. It rejects the idea that we have to reach a state of perfection (which is unattainable for humans, of course) in order to love others fully or carry out our responsibilities in the world.

For me, the Buddhist practice of maitri is a gentle voice in my head that tells me that I can keep going, and that I should. It means not beating myself up about my missed days of exercise or for a bout of emotional eating. It's a guiding voice that tells me to be brave and face the things that make me anxious.

It means constantly pulling myself into the present with a simple act or gesture--a kind word of connection, a smile, a cuddle, a long chat with a friend--rather than checking out mentally as I go through my day.

It also means facing this set of letters on the computer keyboard every day and trying to write through this February funk I'm feeling. Lately when I sit down to write I start off with one idea, and the words take me in an entirely different direction. It's a sign of my muddled mind, I think, and maitri tells me that I just have to accept that that's where I am right now.

Hitting "Publish Post" on this little love letter to myself and to you is also a form of maitri, a way of saying, as Madeleine L'Engle does in The Summer of the Great-Grandmother; The Crosswicks Journal, Book Two:

"'This is how it is for me. How is it for you?'"

Philios (Friend Love)

2011-02-05T08:47:00.000-05:00

I love my friends. They saw right through yesterday's musings about how a space affects creativity. I am so busted. My craft space is a mess, and I haven't been able to get anything done in it lately. I'll start a project and then spend most of my limited craft time looking for thread, paper, glue, or whatever supply I need. Then the unfinished project sits in another messy pile on my craft table, adding to the chaos.

So I can sit on my a** and philosophize all I want about what inspires, but I just need to get off said a** and clean up my room. (My mom would so approve.)

And I love my friends because they are producing glorious art in their not-always-inspiring spaces. Check out:

:: Lisa's birch heart necklaces and felted brooches, inspired by and distilling the essence of the natural world.
:: Jackie's papercutting composition, a balance of solid home and ethereal vapor.
:: Joanie's textiles, which bring together vintage treasures with careful, loving stitches. (And her organization tips as she has been diligently organizing her craft space. You're my hero, Joanie!)
:: Nanou's cards, with their palette and grace straight out of a French paperie, and her Critters that she has brought back from the forest to play with us.
:: Margie's crocheted pieces, which stop me in their tracks when I see them--the natural world encased so lovingly in delicate, lace stitches.
:: Sonia's pincushions, which combine vintage textiles and fabric patterns that make me feel very cozy indeed.

And, from the warm kitchen:
:: Natalie's winter comfort food, which makes me salivate as I am reading her recipes.

I could list so many more, but I will stop here and get off my a**, as promised, and tackle that space so that I can make Valentine's with my kids. Oh, happy Saturday!

Love Your Craft Space?

2011-02-04T02:15:00.000-05:00

How does a space affect creativity, I wonder?

Back home, my sewing table sits in a small space that was once a sleeping porch. Sunlight fills the small space throughout the day, bouncing cheerfully off the white walls and light carpet. Across the house, my collage and origami papers are stored in my light-filled office. Downstairs, the dining room, with its long wall of windows and big table, is the place for larger craft projects: basting a quilt; sorting a rainbow of wool roving and crewel-wool thread for Matryoshka stones; hosting a gathering of friends to learn how to knit mittens.

I sometimes feel guilty that my crafting takes up so much prime real estate in my home. But then I notice my daughter knitting a red-and-white scarf for her brother. Or my middle son sitting for longer than 30 minutes (and not in front of a computer or television or Gameboy) to fold origami cranes or paper airplanes. Or watching my youngest move a chair to the filing cabinet, where he gets out paper and markers to make a story book. Guilt, erased.

Here in our rental house, my craft area is in the basement: a dining table tucked between the ductwork for the forced-air system on one end and the washing machine and dryer on the far wall. When the heater turns on, a metal flap clinks softly as the air begins to whoosh through the ductwork. (My son doesn't like crafting there for long; the noises spook him.) A window above the washing machine and one on the outside door let in a bit of weak sun filtered through the outside deck, but only in the morning.

It's wonderful to have that set-aside space, and the mess is conveniently hidden from public view. But it's not a space that inspires.

I'm learning to make the space my own: a slow accretion of small objects. At the end of the summer I added glass jars that hold shells and stones collected on a summer trip to Hawaii. Another glass jar houses assorted buttons. Origami ornaments hang from a wire shelf. Handmade treasures remind me of talented, inspiring friends and whisper stories of connections made across states and continents.

The colorful wall of vintage handkerchiefs that my mom sent me have brightened up the space considerably. A sweet vintage hankie hugs a jar (inspiration and tutorial here) of dried chrysanthemums, which still bear the spicy scent of autumn.

Could it be that it's not so much the space itself that does the inspiring, but the handmade and collected objects that we fill it with?

Box of Love

2011-02-02T14:31:00.000-05:00

The box arrived in the mail a few weeks after Thanksgiving. The contents:

1 bag of shaped chalk (a baseball, basketball, and soccer ball)

2 pairs of white socks

3 sets of "Bob" Early Reader books

1 book about spinning tops (?)

1 yard batik fabric

6 crocheted cross-shaped Christmas ornaments

11 vintage hankies

A collection from my mother, of love and faith and memory. Items that we had forgotten at her house on our Easter visit. Books collected during her teaching days and no longer used but just right for one grandson learning to read and another whose voracious reading habit is hard to keep supplied. And crafty goodness she had picked up at yard sales and thrift stores.

I can imagine her filling that box one item at a time, remembering us as she did so.

The vintage hankies she found at a thrift store in the Great Smoky Mountains, where she volunteered on a visit to a Tennessee friend. She bought a whole box of hankies. She washed them on gentle cycle and carefully pressed them with starch.

The handkerchiefs hang like diaphanous flags on the wall of my craft space. The winter light picks out worn patches and shines through the linen. Red tatting edges cream linen. Openwork crosses a blue linen hankie with a monogrammed "P." Brilliantly colored patterns have faded to lovely shades from frequent washings.

Happy birthday, Mom!

Love Letter

2011-02-01T00:10:00.001-05:00

My grandmother had thick, straight hair when I knew her. It never took a perm, so she kept it short, in a choppy pixie cut. Her hair was iron gray from far away, but up close I could see strands of silver, white, and black side-by-side like interwoven threads.

Her hair was the first thing I noticed as my parents' big boat of a car, their yellow Chevrolet Impala, pulled into the driveway next to her apartment late on a Friday night. She leaned on the doorknob, holding the door open for us, the kitchen light spilling out into the night and making her hair gleam like moonlight.

Small, tired me pushed my weight hard against the Impala's heavy door until I felt its weight catch on its fulcrum, opening up to the Texas night and into my grandmother's country of cicadas whirring in mesquite trees and profligate stars sprinkled like crumbs across a deep velvet sky.

I raced my brother and sister to the door, wanting to be the first one my grandmother leaned down towards and wrapped in her arms, the first to be enveloped in a cloud of spicy Jovan Musk perfume and the lingering scent of sweet powder she patted in a cloud between her breasts.

My little sister with her long braids was my grandmother's Little Raggy Doll. My older brother was "mijito." In between them, I was loved and petted but without a pet name.

My grandmother was famous in her small town, or so it seemed to me. When we went to the Piggly Wiggly with her, or to shop for clothes at the Terry Farris, people would stop her. They would tell her how much they loved the hamburgers she used to grill and the milkshakes she made at the drug store's soda fountain.

A few times before it closed she took us to the soda fountain for a special treat. When she stepped through the double glass doors, people in the booths turned to look.

"Barbie! Barbara! Barbarita!" they called out.

She ushered us to a table of her former customers and introduced us proudly. "Estos son mis nietos."

In that moment I knew she loved us, that she felt intense pride just for the simple fact that we existed. Inside her small apartment, we got on her nerves, played too loudly, argued too much. But there in the drug store, when she told her friends that we lived in the big city or that I made straight A's, she was free to express her joy in our accomplishments. I blushed with embarassment, but also a secret sense of happiness for that knowledge: the sweet knowledge of a grandmother's love.

Winter Love

2011-01-30T23:30:00.000-05:00

A quick weekend trip to see friends renewed my winter-weary spirits.

I talked for hours with my daughter about music and books on the long drive. We ate Thai food. I saw art. I wrote and shared stories with a circle of new friends. I ate hummus and baba ghanouj. I celebrated the arrival of a new spirit in our community of friends.

I enjoyed the winter light. I hung love from a hook in the sun room.

These lovely 3-D hanging heart cutouts, by accomplished artist and teacher Jan (aka SnippetyGibbet), tell me that love is light, intricate, fragile, beautiful.

There are still a few hearts left in Jan's Etsy shop, so you may still have time to share one with a friend.

Mine arrived as swift as Cupid's arrows. Now to decide whether I should keep mine, or share. :)

Winter Kindness

2011-01-28T14:09:00.001-05:00

The East Coast was just hit with a snowstorm this past Wednesday. We got about three inches of snow overnight Tuesday, just enough snow to cover the winter-brown grass. A beautiful sight after a bleak winter. And it was packing snow: wet and heavy and just the right kind for making a snowman. The kids played in the snow and enjoyed their snow day. The boy across the street joined them. I shoveled the snow off the driveway, happy enough to be outside on the cold but sunny day.

Early afternoon the freezing rain started. My daughter checked the forecast; we were worried about my husband who was driving back from New York. Weather Underground predicted "a mix of rain and sleet will change to all snow by 5 PM. There may even be a clap of thunder before the changeover. Once the changeover occurs...expect a period of heavy snowfall to occur through the early evening hours across the entire Washington Metro area. Visibilities will be reduced below 1/2 mile. Snowfall rates of 1 to locally 2 inches an hour can be expected early this evening."

Soon after, we saw a flash of lightning and, as predicted, thunder. Within less than a minute, the sleet had turned into a steady snow. Thundersnow, it's called.

The thundersnow came down so fast that the snow plows couldn't keep up with it. The heavy snow brought down tree limbs and power lines; tall trees fell into the roads. Big trucks jacknifed. Cars slipped and slided. Others were stuck in traffic jams on the highways; the already long Baltimore-Washington D.C. commute times stretched for hours. Many people stuck on the freeway abandoned their cars and walked through the falling snow to a hotel or other safe place for the night.

My husband got stuck in one of those traffic jams. For five hours. I waited at home. And worried. After the kids were in bed and the heaviest snowfall had passed, I went outside and shoveled the driveway. I turned on all the outside lights. I stayed up and watched television and sewed. (And ate through half a bag of Nana's Cocina tortilla chips.)

My husband finally made it home, at 2:30 a.m., and he told me about sitting in his car for those hours. He turned off the car, restarting it only once an hour to run the heater. He did some work on his laptop. He tried to sleep. He talked with some of the other motorists. Most of all, he stayed calm, cool, and collected.

And when he saw taillights lighting up ahead of him and traffic inching forward, he started his car and drove on through the snowy roads. He swerved around cars abandoned in the middle of the highway. He skidded only once, on a thick patch of snow that had frozen into ice. He told me he felt so welcomed when he saw the lights of the house and the cleared driveway.

I'm happy to have him home.

Mom Rant

2011-01-25T13:54:00.001-05:00

An adjective is a word that qualifies a noun; that is, it gives more information about a person, place, or thing. It describes; it modifies; it identifies, it can even quantify. An adjective answers the question, “What kind is it?” It can denote the noun’s purpose. A qualifier, the final adjective in a series that sits next to the noun, is the “final limiter” and is considered an integral part of the noun.

Here are some popular adjective+noun combinations to consider.

Soccer Mom. Hockey Mom. And, most recently splashed across magazine covers and argued about in online forums: Tiger Mom. The last combination is not a new stereotype, to be sure. But it is packed with such a potent mix of ethnic and gender stereotypes as to encompass the whole nation’s anxiety about a lingering recession and its geopolitical decline.

“Tiger Mom” calls to mind the economic dynamism of the “Asian Tiger” economies (compared to the anemic U.S. marketplace). It conjures up the image of the stereotypical high-achieving Asian student (compared to the typical TV- and video game-addicted American slacker kid). It ascribes almost warrior status to the strict, demanding Mother who pushes her children to excel (compared to the permissive American moms who compliment their child’s every scribble).

Those adjectival appendages (Soccer, Hockey, and Tiger) are all nouns modifying nouns. They are called noun adjuncts, and, appropriately, they are grammatically optional. Irrelevant, you might say, to the correctness of a sentence.

In the popular press, these noun adjuncts are trendier than those adjectival modifiers that classify a mom’s role based on her employment status. Stay-at-home Mom. Work-at-Home Mom. Working Mom, which is semantically redundant. Full-Time Mom or Part-Time Mom. As if there is ever a time when a Mom is off the clock.

When did “Mom” become an insufficient signifier unto itself, when it is just one of the many roles a woman might play in her life?

And is anyone else tired of this constant ratcheting up of the mothering bar? Now moms are not just expected to be full-time professionals and nurturers (however they balance those demands). They are also expected to tackle the nation’s obesity epidemic by carting their children to soccer or hockey or any number of other sports. At the same time, they are tasked with bolstering America’s lagging educational performance by forcing their children to study and practice piano or violin countless hours a day.

And where are the Soccer Dads and Hockey Dads and Tiger Dads in the headlines? Are mothers single-handedly bearing the burden of raising the nation’s children, and, by extension, determining its geopolitical future? Last time I checked, the mothers around me have spouses or partners (male or female), parents of their own who help out, and a whole infrastructure of friends, neighbors, nannies, babysitters, day care centers, and schools who share that privilege and burden.

Can’t we all relax and ditch the adjectives that limit a woman to how successful her children are? Can’t there be as many different (and healthy) ways of parenting a child as there are parents and children? And, rather than placing the blame for our current national malaise on one particular group, can’t we focus on our connectedness and responsibility for each other? Focus on giving our children—and all children in our community, whether we are parents or not—our unconditional love? From that love follows the support, guidance, and structure (strict or lax, wherever you fall on that continuum) that all children need.

RUOK

2011-01-14T12:28:00.001-05:00

Two weeks ago, as I was getting over a long bout of illness, my five-year-old passed me a little slip of yellow construction paper on which he had written, "RUOK."

That's what you may be wondering about me, since I have been so long away from blog writing. I am happy to report that I am finally doing OK. I'm over the bronchitis and related ailments I had over the Christmas holiday, and I've started paying more attention to eating foods that are right for my body. Holiday eating this year derailed my gluten-free, dairy-free diet for a while, and my overall health suffered. I've read that 70 percent of our immune cells are in our gut, so it makes some sense to me that if our tummies are ailing, we will too.

I just celebrated my 44th birthday in late December, and I'm looking ahead to my 45th. I want to make it a fabulous celebration, so I am setting goals to make healthy choices every day to be fit to celebrate my mid-life milestone. Getting back to running and stretching regularly has been my challenge this past week, and I'm happy to report I met my goal of running three times this week. It was painful the first few days, but I got into a good rhythm today and had a very satisfying stretch afterwards. I took a picture of myself post-run, ruddy-faced but happy, to remind myself how good it feels to move my body.

I have a few crafty things to share from my Christmas trip to New Mexico. It may not be soon, though, because I am getting used to my new camera, which was a Christmas present. Just this week I figured out how to actually take a picture and upload them to the computer, so it may be a slow learning curve.

Now, I'm wondering, "RUOK"?

"Thy Life's a Miracle. Speak Yet Again."

2011-01-11T21:10:00.000-05:00

High Desert Dawn, With Moon and Snowclouds

I don't have many words to express the sorrow I'm feeling at the attack in Tucson on Saturday. Sorrow at the deaths and at the election-year hate-mongering and violent rhetoric that preceded the event.

I am finding a little solace in the words from Shakespeare's King Lear:

"Thy life's a miracle. Speak yet again." (King Lear, IV, vi, 55; as quoted by Wendell Berry in Life Is a Miracle; An Essay Against Modern Superstition)

My hope on this day of mourning, in honor of those killed and for their families and our grieving nation, is that we continue to speak--to speak up for hard truths; to speak to each across political divisions and other artificial separations; to speak out against ignorance, hatred, and violence when we see it.

Celebrations of Light

2010-12-01T12:34:00.000-05:00

Two years ago I presented tutorials for paper and fabric origami stars. According to my blog and Flickr stats, they continue to be a popular holiday craft. The paper origami stars make a great family activity to get the kids involved in the excitement of decorating and can be used throughout the year.

December in many religious and cultural traditions involves stars and the return of the light that emanates from them. I love how these origami star ornaments blend East and West, Christian and Solstice celebrations. I haven't tried this myself, but I bet the stars could also be adapted to create a Star of David for a Hanukkah celebration. (The Muslim Ramadan and Eid celebrations and the Hindu Diwali festival, which occurred earlier in the fall this year, involve stars as well.)

The fabric origami star tutorial is easy even for beginning sewists and very adaptable to a range of fabrics.

We probably won't be doing a lot of decorating this year at our rental house, but I'm looking forward to following along with Bella Dia's Book and Activity Advent. The idea is to count down the days until Christmas by reading one Christmas, winter, or holiday-themed book a day. (Bella Dia lists her suggested books here.) We don't always do a related craft, but the simple messages in the children's books keeps me centered on the essential themes of thankfulness, giving, and celebration of family. (My personal favorite is The Trees of the Dancing Goats, by Patricia Polacco. Sentimental me cries every time I read it, and my boys look at me funny when my voice starts to falter.)

The daily practice of reading these stories with my kids keeps me from getting too caught up in all of the things I feel I SHOULD be doing during the holidays. This year I've decided that the only thing I must do every day in December is curl up with a good book and share a little spirit and sentiment with my kids.

What are your tips for keeping the holiday stress to a minimum?

Tex-Mex

2010-11-29T08:30:00.001-05:00

Have you ever walked down a street on your way somewhere and been stopped short by the feeling that you are home? When I saw Federico Archuleta's stencilled Virgen de Guadalupe (a selection of Archuleta's graffiti art appears on his web site) on the columns of the old Tower Records building in Austin, Texas, I felt exactly that.

I love how Archuleta adds highlights and blends the spray paint so that the images aren't flat; they glow with energy and life. They evoke pure nostalgia, taking me back to my childhood in Texas in the '70s.

Archuleta's portraits are raw, iconic. They capture that unique blend of sounds that I grew up listening to on actual vinyl record albums in my grandmother's dining room, the needle lowering and making a scritchy sound (or a scary scratchy sound if you weren't careful). The songs I heard driving down endless miles of Texas highway on those fat 8-track cassette tapes in my parents' Texas-size Suburban: Johnny Cash and Janis Joplin, ZZ Top and Buddy Holly. Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton. Freddy Fender and the Rolling Stones. Eydie Gorme y El Trio Los Panchos and Merle Haggard.

This background music--a mix of country and western, rock and roll, and Tex-Mex--was playing (at least in my head) as we drove through the Texas night from Austin to South Texas, the stars spread out all around us on the wide velvet sky.

In the small South Texas town improbably called Alice (pronounced AH-lease by my kin and known as the birthplace of Tejano music), I met people related to me through my great-great grandparents at a very extended family reunion.

I talked with a man who had gone to elementary school with my grandmother. I chatted with a woman who was taking an algebra course taught by my uncle, then in his early 20s, when he died in a car accident. I learned that my grandmother and her sister had to attend a segregated school for Mexican American children in Del Rio, Texas, in the 1930s.

My mother reminisced with a cousin about the sentimentality of their great aunt, who cried "even when a stranger died." A woman who nevertheless kept a ranch and rental properties going after her husband's death and while three of her sons were away fighting in World War II. I heard the ache of loss in a cousin's voice as he remembered that as a boy he had to sell his favorite black mare, and how he now owns several descendants of his favorite horse.

Hearing these memories made me realize how vivid the past still is for all of us, how we wear it on our skin and speak it in voices accented by the small town where we were born. When we filter these memories through song or art, there's a truth and beauty that hits you solidly, like a steel hammer hitting a nail true and sure.

*********

Thank you to those of you who have already purchased the 2011 zencrafting calendar. I am hearing that they will make great Christmas gifts for colleagues. For Cyber Monday, the calendars are on sale for $12, and I am offering free domestic shipping. You can purchase the calendar here.

Have a happy week!

Weekend Field Trip: Boston

2010-11-22T02:31:00.004-05:00

I spent the weekend in Boston (mostly in Cambridge) gobbling up architectural and art inspiration. The whimsical massing of shapes of the Stata Center (above) on the MIT campus makes me want to sit down with odd-shaped blocks and design a similar structure for myself.

Throughout Cambridge, former factories have been converted into offices for genetic engineering, pharmaceutical, and other high-tech companies. The building shown above seemed vacant and "age proof."

Just up Massachusetts Avenue, at Harvard, the classically inspired buildings are more somber but just as inspiring in their ornate details and fine stone forms.

I spent Saturday morning at Harvard's Arthur M. Sackler Museum, most of it in the Asian gallery admiring the Buddhist statues and Persian ceramics and manuscripts. Persian artisans decorated bowls for everyday use with verses of romantic poetry around the rims. I love how Persians served up their poetry every day with the soup course. And these ceramics have proven to be enduring forms for literary transmission: some Persian poetry has survived only as inscriptions on these bowls.

The Sackler also displayed beautifully illustrated pages from the Persian epic poem, Shahnama (The Book of Kings). The level of detail in the pages is astonishing, with gold paint forming patterns on top of blocks of boldly colored opaque watercolors. The layout of the pages is complex, with some of the illustrations forming horizontal bands that break up the vertical columns of Arabic text. Other pages have a large central image surrounded by an ornately illuminated pattern, with a more subdued decoration forming the background for both. If you're at all interested in the history of the book, take a look at the Princeton Shahnama Project to see digital images from various editions of the manuscript.

Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, which I visited on Sunday, had its own Shahnama exhibit. The well-curated exhibited focused on the women in the narrative. To appreciate the level of detail in these paintings, use the zoom function to take a look at the secondary figure of a woman soaking her feet in a stream on this page (lower left). Her dress is decorated with gold, and the flowers that surround her are tiny and detailed, with varied shapes. Hers is a story I'd like to know.

I soaked up enough inspiration to last me several decades on this trip. As I was browsing the magazines at the newsstand in Harvard Square, the latest edition of American Craft caught my eye with its colors of the sea. The feature article, "Weaving the Sea," profiles revered textile artist Kay Sekimachi and her latest work. After decades of collecting seashells, coral, bones, and other items from a beach in Hawaii, she transformed these found forms into art jewelry. I'm sure her work resonates with artists and crafters who value traditional crafting methods and use natural objects as a sustainable source of materials.

I'm thankful for the time I spent in Boston immersing myself in such striking visual imagery. This coming week will be inspiring in a different way. My focus will be on the art of gratitude as I celebrate Thanksgiving with my extended family.

Have a wonderful week!

Flexibility

2010-11-17T12:41:00.001-05:00

A rain storm woke me up in the middle of the night last night, and the winds that blew it in are expecting to gust up to 35 mph this afternoon. I only saw a few smaller limbs down, so the storm was not as bad as the one this summer that knocked out several trees, including one that blocked off the road to our neighborhood.

The swaying branches in the wind storm reminded me of a term that I just heard that perfectly sums up what I need to embrace right now (and always): cognitive flexibility.

Basically it's the idea that you don't need to throw a tantrum when things don't go exactly the way you envisioned them. You can look on the bright side, count your blessings, or whatever other optimistic trope you want to employ.

We've been practicing this idea at home with my youngest. When confronted with the fact that he wouldn't be able to ride the roller coaster at the kiddie amusement park this weekend that he had so looked forward to doing, he came up with a cognitively flexible response all on his own without any prompting: "Oh, well. There's lots of fun things to do inside!"

It's been a great lesson for my son, but I think it's a way of thinking I need to embrace as well.

I had all these visions of what I was going to create for the Thanksgiving table and all of the heartfelt goodies I would make to fill up my almost-empty Etsy shop. I even sketched out ideas and made a good start on them.

Given what I have to do from now until next Thursday, those things aren't going to happen.

I had planned to lose 20 pounds so that I could feel better about myself at a family reunion. That did not happen.

I could throw a tantrum right now or just sulk about not getting these things done.

But I could also employ some cognitive flexibility and know that the regular exercise I've been doing to reach my weight-loss goal has made me feel better physically and mentally. The table runner I made from felted sweaters can be used this year even if it's not embellished the way I wanted it to be. It was a joy to sew, and I was happy to use up my stash of sweaters for the project. I can file away the embroidered linen napkin rings for a future Thanksgiving. The Etsy shop can wait.

And instead of looking around the Thanksgiving dinner table and seeing all of the projects I couldn't complete and the skinny person I'm not, for a change I am going to just be happy to be me in that moment, surrounded by my family that I love. That's the kind of flexibility I'll be happy to pass on to my kids.

Giveaway Winner

2010-11-13T02:10:00.001-05:00

Thank you all for leaving comments on the 2010 Zencrafting Calendar giveaway. The winner, chosen by the True Random Number Generator, is commenter #9, Sonia, of the beautiful blogs Cozy Homemaking and Naturally Dyeing. Sonia runs the sweet goodness of an Etsy shop she calls Cozy Memories, along with her card shop.

I'll put that in the mail for you soon, Sonia, along with a felted Snowflake Stone. Stitching it tonight while I watched "Vanity Fair" with my daughter sorta, kinda started to put me in the holiday mood. I may just have to stitch up some more to generate some true holiday cheer.

2010 Zencrafting Calendar Giveaway

2010-11-12T12:37:00.001-05:00

I'll be closing the giveaway for the 2010 Zencrafting Calendar this evening, at 9:00 p.m. EST. Please leave a comment by then to have a chance to receive the ecofriendly 2010 calendar/postcard set, printed on 100 percent recyled premium matte card stock. You might receive a little extra handmade treat to get you in the holiday spirit.

The nursery just down the street has already put up its holiday decorations, and I have to admit that I am not at all in the holiday frame of mind. Still, though, it's fun to start thinking about the holiday cards we'll be sending out. I'm hoping to find an ecofriendly option to print a family photo we had taken in Hawaii this summer.

So far Etsy seems to offer the most affordable choices. Of the many cards available (keywords: ecofriendly holiday cards), Foosie Design's Eco Friendly Photo Holiday Card and Envelope (joy) caught my eye as a sweet way to do a family photo holiday card. The shop also offers graphic cards, including a set depicting hanging mittens.

I'd love to hear your ideas for greening the traditional holiday card.

Wild Geese

2010-11-11T11:56:00.000-05:00

Mary Oliver is a poet of the natural world. In her collection, Owls and Other Fantasies, she observes birds and connects them to her spiritual life. Her poem, "Wild Geese," is especially inspiring to me. "The world offers itself to your imagination," she writes. It "calls to you like the wild geese." We just have to listen, and find comfort in recognizing our "place in the family of things."

You can find the full text of the poem here.

Only more one day to enter the giveaway for the 2011 Zencrafting Calendar, a collection of my photographs that documents observed moments like these, when the wild geese waddling in the field respond to a shared silent signal. They take off as a group against the stripe of clouds, arrow up and high away from the field, only to glide down with a raucous cheer to land on a nearby pond.

Leave a comment on this post before Friday, November 12, at 9:00 p.m. EST for your chance to win a copy of the professionally printed calendar--a great idea for holiday gift-giving or to display as a desk calendar or wall calendar. It's printed on recycled card stock, and each month can be reused as a postcard.

My running clothes are fresh out of the dryer, so I think I'll skip my lunch break and see what my imagination can encounter outside on this breezy early November day.

Sheep Bell

2010-11-10T23:05:00.000-05:00

I had a close encounter of the sheep kind this morning. This friendly fellow walked over to the fence to say hello, accompanied by the most charming clanging of his sheep bell.

The bell is a reproduction of the 1898 Saigne Legier Chiantel Fondeur bell, which was originally produced in Switzerland. I bet it would make a lively holiday decoration, sourced here.

His horns had seen better days, as had his friend's (below). I thought he was a rare three-horned sheep, but my son thinks that one of his horns got split at some point.

I thought you might enjoy seeing this very rough video of the sheep walking up to greet me. Isn't he sweet, with his thick body and skinny legs?

Can anyone identify the breed of sheep?

Heartfelt

2010-11-09T01:48:00.001-05:00

Here's another Slow Felt piece that I had been stitching on in my imagination for months--I've been planning out how to approach the piece since February but hadn't done any actual stitching. Tonight I had a chance to sit on the sofa and stitch while I caught up with episodes of "In Treatment."

The piece started with white wool roving, which I wet felted into a rough rectangle. Then I added wisps of the colored roving to make the heart-shaped flowers and wet felted that. The piece didn't felt as solidly as I wanted it to, and I have to admit I didn't like it. It turns out it just wasn't done! (The finished rectangle measures about 6 1/2" x 8 1/2".)

The stitching with crewel wool brought the wool together nicely and gives it nice dimensionality. I think it may still need some background quilting stitches, but I'm much happier with it now. It feels right.

And the best part of the stitching therapy was that it got me thinking about my husband and how supportive and encouraging he has been of me. This one's for him!

Eco-printing--and A Giveaway

2010-11-07T21:24:00.005-05:00

October was a beautiful month here in the Maryland Piedmont. The fall was slow to get started, but when it did, the colors were glorious. The week before Halloween marked the height of leaf color, and it felt like we woke up that Monday morning to see gold all around us. As I was driving my son to school, he and I were exclaiming about a new stand of golden trees around every corner of the country roads we travel on. The colors have become muted now, and there is a chill in the air that suggests the deciduous trees will soon show bare limbs silhouetted against gray skies--a more muted phase of their beauty that I appreciate as well.

I'm happy that I stopped to photograph this spectacular day, as well as others that I want to remember, so that I could capture the memory as a digital image. But I have also been wanting a more tangible way to represent them: their images and the story behind each one. Last month I created a 2011 calendar of photographs featured on this blog. I posted the pdf electronically for free upload. I also had a batch of the calendars professionally printed on 100 percent premium white recycled 100-lb. matte paper. (You can view each month of the printed calendar in the 2011 Zencrafting Calendar flickr set.)

I'm really happy with the quality of the printing, and I wanted to share a bit about what I learned about the custom printing process.

I wanted the calendar to be high quality, affordable, and ecofriendly. I decided to go with an unbound, oversized (5 1/2" x 8 1/2") postcard format. Each month can be displayed as an individual print using a binder clip, clothespins, magnets, or on an easel or other display stand. (See decor8's "2011 Calendar Roundup" series or Etsy (keywords "2011 calendar") for some inspiring display ideas.) I found some affordable and fun vintage display stands--an old shoeshine kit, a folding ruler, and a coaster holder--at my local antiques mall. And when the month is done, the print can be repurposed: mail it as a postcard; cut and display the print or use it for a collage or other project.

My primary concern in having the calendar printed was to make it as ecofriendly as possible. I found a useful guide in Ecoprint's "Little Green Book," the "green standard" for printing projects. (The pdf is available for free download by signing up on the company's site.) Ecoprint was the first "carbon neutral" U.S. printer and is located close to me in Silver Spring, MD; unfortunately for my needs, the company primarily handles larger commercial print jobs.

With the holiday season soon upon us, many of us are thinking of holiday cards to send out to family and friends. It may take some extra research and leg work, but there are some ways to "green" a photo card, invitation, or other custom printing project with a comparatively small print run:

Use recycled paper with a high post-consumer content (PCW); a minimum of 25 percent PCW is recommended for coated papers. The big printing venues I checked (Walmart, Snapfish, Shutterfly) don't offer recycled paper as an option. MOO does, and the print quality is excellent, but the upcharge for recycled paper was cost-prohibitive for my project. A few online printers offer recycled papers; use the keywords "eco friendly printing" to find them. You might also consider printing your own photo cards at home using photo paper, such as GreenPix Photo Matte, which uses 100 percent PCW. Or, go graphic, using recycled cards to make a collage or ecofriendly recycled handmade papers from The Paper Studio's Studio Green. (Please note that I haven't ordered papers from these companies, and they aren't paying me to plug their products.)
Make your whole project recyclable by avoiding foil stamping, UV coatings, and any added plastic pieces. Leave off sticky mailing labels that also make recycling envelopes more difficult.
Avoid metal inks because they add toxins to the waste produced by the printing process.
Reduce paper consumption by choosing a paper-conscious layout, one that doesn't require extra trimming. A postcard format instead of a folded card that requires an envelope uses the least amount of paper, and the postage may be cheaper. Choose as light a weight of paper as is suitable for your project.
If you choose a soy- or vegetable-ink option for lithographic printing, check to make sure that the soy ink has low VOCs (volatile organic compounds). The percentage of VOCs should be below 3 percent.
Digital printing is an ecofriendly option since it involves less startup waste and uses fewer chemicals.
When possible, choose a recycled paper that has been processed without chlorine (PCF).

I had a lot of fun creating this calendar. In fact, my whole family got jazzed about it. Most of the prints have an associated blog post, and my tech-savvy daughter and husband helped me figure out a concise way to include a link on each calendar page. A tiny QR code links to the related post and can be read by a smartphone such as a BlackBerry, iphone, or Droid. For those of us without smartphones, there's also a printed link with the related post's URL (some typing required :)).

To celebrate my first venture into custom printing, I am offering a free copy of the printed 2011 Zencrafting Calendar. To enter the giveaway, leave a comment here by 9:00 p.m. on Friday, November 12. I'd especially love to hear about your experiences with ecofriendly photo and card printing. I'll draw a winner from the commenters and post the winner's name on Monday, November 15.

I am also offering the 2011 Zencrafting Calendar for sale; click on the "My Etsy Shop" link on the upper right to purchase. The cost is ~~$16.25~~ $12.00 for the 12-month calendar; remember that each month is printed on high-quality paper that is suitable for display and sending as a postcard. **Added 11/29/10: I'm offering free domestic (U.S.) shipping for the calendars.**

Have a great week!

Pat

Sweet Empanadas

2010-11-05T22:18:00.002-04:00

Fall is the time of year when I especially miss my family back in Texas. Just about every Thanksgiving when I was a kid, my parents would pack me and my sister and brother in the car and drive south from Houston to the Rio Grande Valley, where my parents grew up and both sets of grandparents lived. My grandmothers were wonderful cooks, though my Grandma Chenda (short for Rosenda) was the one who taught my mom (her daughter-in-law) how to cook.

When I'd burst through my Grandma Chenda's screen door to greet her, she would usually be standing in front of the white cast-iron stove in her kitchen cooking tortillas for everyone. She would make stacks and stacks of them, all lined up in rows on aluminum foil, ready to be wrapped up and handed out to her children and grandchildren. Of course I had to sneak one warm from the stack as soon as I got there.

Another one of my grandmother's specialties was sweet empanadas, pastries that she filled with pumpkin, sweet potato, or sweetened refried beans. I liked to sit at the kitchen table and watch her roll out the dough and then carefully crimp the edges with a fork after she had spooned in a bit of filling. I don't think I can describe how wonderful they were. The dough was lightly sweet and so soft, and the filling, hot from the oven, was almost caramelized and steamed so that I had to blow out a cooling stream of air around the bite. But of course I couldn't wait for them to cool down. For me, the aroma of pumpkin and cinnamon and allspice from the filling is the essence of fall--and my grandmother's love.

A few years ago I asked my Tia [Aunt] Minnie for grandma's recipe, and she sent me the following recipes. I'm happy to share them with you.

Empanadas Dough

[My aunt writes: "The recipe was used by Mother."]

Dough:

1 teaspoon dry yeast

1/2 cup lukewarm water (105 to 115 degrees) [I ended up adding about 1 cup of water]

1/4 cup shortening [My grandmother used lard or Crisco. I use canola oil.]

4 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1. Dissolve yeast in water; set aside. [I added a little bit of sugar to feed the yeast beasts.]

2. Cut shortening into all dry ingredients.

3. Mix the dissolved yeast and water with the dry ingredients until you have a stiff dough. More water may be needed.

4. Do not let the dough rise. Roll it out thinly. Cut with round cutter, depending upon the size of empanadas preferred.

5. Place a small mound of filling in the center of the circle. Moisten half of the edge of the dough and fold over to make a half-moon shape. Tightly seal the pastry with a fork dipped in flour. [The recipe didn't mention baking temperature or time. I baked the empanadas for 20-22 minutes at 400 degrees on an ungreased baking sheet until outside was browned and filling bubbled.]

For the filling, I boiled about six small sweet potatoes and two apples from our CSA share with a cinnamon stick until soft. I removed the cinnamon stick and mashed the drained mixture with a hand mixer and added about 2 tablespoons Earth Balance natural buttery spread (you can use butter instead), about 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, and a dash of salt. It was just lightly sweet.

Here's the filling recipe my aunt gave me, along with her dough recipe, which I haven't tried yet.

Empanadas de Calabaza (Pumpkin Empanadas)

[My aunt writes: "I use beer instead of yeast. I like it. Aunt Minnie." My aunt's hand-written notes are the best part of the recipes for me!]

2 (16 oz) cans pumpkin

2 cups sugar

1 (2 inch) stick cinnamon

2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

3 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup shortening

3/4 cup beer

Combine: first six ingredients in a large, heavy saucepan; bring to boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat. Simmer one hour or until thickened, stirring often. Remove and discard cinnamon stick. Let pumpkin mixture cool.

Combine: flour and salt. Cut in shortening with a pastry blender until mixture is crumbly. Make a well in the center of mixture.

Add: beer, stirring with a fork until dry ingredients are moistened. Shape into a ball. Flour hands and shape into 1/2 inch balls; roll or flatten to 1/2 inch thickness on a lightly floured surface. Let stand 30 minutes. Roll each dough round into a 4 inch circle. Place about 3 tablespoons pumpkin mixture in center of each circle and fold pastry in half. Moisten edge with water and press with fork to seal. Place on ungreased baking sheets.

Bake at 400 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.

Yield: 1 1/2 dozen

Let me know if you try out the recipes. I'll be heading to Texas for Thanksgiving, and I'm hoping to have some "real" empanadas baked by the pros. Both of my grandmothers have passed away, but my mother and aunts have thankfully preserved their recipes and kept these traditions alive.

*Added later: Don't want the hassle or calories of making edible empanadas? CraftyChica posted an easy-to-folow tutorial for a felt empanada pincushion here.

The Calendars Have Arrived!

2010-11-05T14:30:00.002-04:00

I'm so excited, I had to show you the 2011 zencrafting calendar I had professionally printed. I'll have a full post on Monday with more details.

Have a happy weekend!

Slow Felt

2010-10-26T11:55:00.001-04:00

I have been working on this piece for over a month now off and on, and it's funny how it changes every time I come back to it. I felted and fulled wool roving to make the 12 x 14 piece, and I'm adding crewel wool stitches to "quilt" a pattern like Mongolian rugmakers do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeu4pbtQuEE.

This past weekend was sunny and cool, so I took some time to sit out on the back deck and stitch. I initially used embroidery floss to form the golden circles, but the weight was just wrong. The wool puckered into little peaks, which is a nice effect that I'll file away for later use.

But when I used the crewel wool, I knew I had found just the right thread. The felted fabric lays just right and has a nicely solid texture. I spent most of my sewing time pulling out stitches, so this piece is definitely turning out to be "slow cloth."

It's interesting how the colors are just the ones I'm seeing now in the woods--golden grasses and leaves, the crimson of barns and gates and leaves, and blue sky amidst the remaining green.

How have you captured the fall colors?

Noticing

2010-10-20T01:27:00.000-04:00

My friend Margie at Resurrection Fern has been documenting her glorious fall in southern Canada in visual poetry. In one of her recent posts, she asked what her readers are noticing. The post encouraged me to finally stop at a place I have been noticing just from the window of my passing car. Every day, several times a day, I pass a dam bordered by a thick cluster of trees that have been in full fall color for the last few weeks. Each time I pass the textured mass of orange, gold, and red, I vow to stop and try to take photos. I finally stopped to walk around and enjoy the views, though a recent heavy rain had knocked some of the fullness from the trees.

I noticed the regular pattern of dew on leaves. It reminded me of the pebbled skin of a lizard.

I noticed the golden leaves blown like kites caught upright in a sudden gust.

I noticed a staircase to a tree lit golden by the morning sun.

I noticed myself enjoying my life and the people in it.

DIY Calendar

2010-10-17T08:59:00.000-04:00

I'm so excited to show you my first attempt at the DIY 2011 zencrafting calendar. I printed out the pages on 4 X 6 premium photo paper on my inkjet printer at home, and I couldn't be happier with the quality. I bound the pages using the ring binding off an old notebook. It's a wee thing and should work well to keep in my purse or on my crowded desk. It's a reminder to take joy from every day and share it with the ones you love.

Click on the links in my sidebar to print out your own calendar or daybook and let me know how yours turns out!

Zencrafting Calendar and Daybook

2010-10-15T22:46:00.008-04:00

Lately I have been trying to take stock of the last two years of this zencrafting blog. I've been looking back at what I've written and photographed and am trying to compile them into something tangible. My first stab at a zencrafting compilation is in calendar form. I've put together some of the photographs I've taken for the blog over the past two years into a daybook for the remainder of 2010 and a calendar for 2011.

You can download them and print them for your own non-commercial use by clicking on the links (the text, not the thumbnail) in the sidebar at right. I'll be experimenting with getting the calendars printed professionally. If you are interested in purchasing a 2011 zencrafting calendar, please leave a comment here. And I'd be interested in hearing your feedback about the calendar design or other issues.

Thanks for visiting and making this such a special place for me.

Autumn in the Maryland Piedmont

2010-10-13T13:03:00.005-04:00

It was one of those gorgeous, sunny fall days that made me happy that I had to get out of bed this morning.

I had insomnia last night, and I was just getting started on my sleep when the kids woke up. I didn't think I had energy to do anything but the bare minimum this morning.

But after dropping off my son at preschool, I had about half an hour to wait for the library to open. I noticed some playing fields behind the library and thought I could get in a quick walk. A paved path led through a wetlands area that had been restored and planted with grasses. Ducks bobbed on the pond, and the grasses waved in the breeze. Across the highway, farm buildings were laid out on a carpet of mowed green fields and faded gold ones.

The colors were subtle, and I had to walk slowly to appreciate the pointed ends of the dried seed pods and the woven interplay of waving grass heads. Jimson weed flowers bloomed light violet and close to the ground. I felt grateful for the view, near and far, and my energy was restored.

After a quick stop at the library, I took the long way to the gas station, past my favorite stone house. I passed a flock of sheep grazing lazily in a pasture.

Down the road, I noticed an abandoned farmhouse tucked behind overgrown hedges. I had to dodge trucks on the narrow country lane to get close to it, but the sense of absolute stillness there was worth the effort. The house felt like it was waiting quietly--perhaps for someone to sand and paint those rough boards, replace the tin roof, and make it a home again. (More photos at my Flickr photostream, Piedmont Fall set.)

Hope your errands were as much of an adventure as mine were.

Cranberry and Gold

2010-10-07T05:17:00.003-04:00

Is there anything more cheerful than a bunch of mums in the morning sun, dew-sprinkled?

Before the mum's petals open, they are small cranberry flames. That unique combination of cranberry and gold (and olive, too), as Lisa of Lil Fish Studios points out, that blazes in the fall fields and forests.

The mums glow with a gentle fire. I am hoarding their flames like glowing coals to see me through the coming winter.

Fields of Gold

2010-10-05T23:17:00.005-04:00

Last week saw our last glorious days of Indian summer, when the sun lit up roadside grasses.

Near our house, a field slopes down to a fenced valley, and the grasses wave delicate purple tops against the sky.

I love the humility of bowed, bristly heads.

The Textile Museum, Revisited

2010-09-30T11:30:00.000-04:00

I am having an internal mini-debate. It's about tradition versus innovation. Let me tell you how it started.

Earlier this month I went to a workshop about nihon shishu, the art of traditional Japanese silk embroidery. The samplers on display were beautifully stitched. The colors were striking, the patterns graceful. (Check out the Japanese Embroidery Center for an Art Gallery of nihon shishu.) I admired the virtuosity of the stitches and the time and care devoted to each one. I also responded to how meditative the handwork itself can be.

It's quite impressive that this form of embroidery has survived for more than 1,000 years, its rich history preserved. However, I was put off by the lack of innovation or improvisation allowed. Stitchers can use only set colors. New designs are discouraged until embroiderers reach a certain master level after years of apprenticeship (and thousands of dollars in kits). The appeal of learning a new technique for me is being able to use it in the context of my own work and not to copy set patterns.

Then I took a Friday Field Trip to The Textile Museum. It snapped me right out of my funk. The textile art on display (with descriptions that tell the cultural context of each item) made me realize that tradition and innovation are not opposing principles. Artisans are continually using traditional techniques and tweaking them. They collaborate with artists from other traditions. They experiment with newly available dyes. They borrow outrageously from other cultures. Click through The Textile Museum's online Textile of the Month Archives to find any number of examples. (And lots of inspiration for developing your own designs.)

The Textile Museum began with the founder's love for Oriental rugs. It could have remained a very traditional museum with a small audience of patrons. Instead it has broadened its collections and exhibits to reflect the dynamic changes in textiles. One recent exhibit showcased the wearable textiles of Japanese fashion designers. Another splashed bold Modernist fabrics by three prominent postwar British designers on the museum walls. (Check out the Flickr photos of the exhibit's mod opening.) Next month's featured exhibit explores the traditional weaving and dyeing technique from Central Asia known as ikat that fashion designers have incorporated into modern designs. In the winter and spring, ecoconscious design will be featured in two exhibits: recycled textiles and green textiles.

The setting for the Museum can be a little intimidating (at least it was for me). The collections are housed in two side-by-side townhouses next to Embassy Row in one of D.C.'s priciest neighborhoods. But crossing that invisible social divide was well worth it.

Although the Museum itself has more than 18,000 pieces of textile art, only a few pieces are shown at any one time in two main exhibit rooms. Unlike in larger museums in which there are too many pieces to even skim, the limited exhibit space at The Textile Museum gave me time to focus on the details of each piece. I learned how fiber becomes structure in a hands-on room that would be great for my kids. And I explored the museum shop, which Apartment Therapy has rated one of the top ten in the U.S.

If you decide on a field trip to The Textile Museum, I recommend a side visit to Looped Yarn Works and lunch at Teaism. Defintely a day out that would give you a healthy dose of tradition, innovation, and fun.

Friday Field Trip: The Textile Museum

2010-09-27T12:13:00.000-04:00

Washington, D.C.'s Kalorama Neighborhood

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
--from "Little Gidding (No. 4 of "Four Quartets")," by T.S. Eliot

I'm intrigued by T.S. Eliot's idea of exploration. That we keep exploring unfamiliar places so that we can come home and make the familiar new again. More than that, Eliot might be saying that exploration leaves us with a deeper knowledge of our own "place" and ourselves. Perhaps familiarity breeds a dullness of vision, and it is by traveling and encountering new cultures that we fully open our eyes to an understanding of where we live; that the voyage to know what seems foreign is essentially a way to achieve self-knowledge.

The Spanish Steps

As I was walking along the streets of Washington, D.C. on my latest Friday Field Trip--a series of solo jaunts to get to know the Baltimore-Washington region where I'm now living--I could feel something waking up inside of me. It was partly the energy of the city, with people walking briskly and purposefully to their jobs. It was also the jarring strangeness and elegance of Embassy Row, where even the tiniest nations from all across the globe inhabit stately row houses.

Mostly it was the upsurge in memories of exploring other cities when I was younger and alive with dreams of what my future would hold: of getting off at a randomly chosen Metro station in Mexico City to walk around a neighborhood and imagine the dreams contained in each home; of staring up at the skyscrapers in Chicago's Loop and thinking about the great work I could do in each office; of biking along the beachfront path in Santa Monica and feeling the restless creativity of Los Angeles; of admiring the juxtaposition of art objects in a Phoenix museum.

The Textile Museum

I'm viewing these Friday Field Trips as ways to reconnect with myself, and more specifically with those entwined senses of imagination, curiosity, and wonder that sometimes get squashed as I'm driving carpool, folding laundry, or going about the daily-ness of living. There is wonder to be found in each of those activities (OK, maybe not in folding laundry) if I'm awake enough to see it, just as artisans wove wonder into the objects of daily life displayed in The Textile Museum's current exhibit, "The Art of Living: Textile Furnishings From the Permanent Collection."

There is wonder embodied in the exhibit's woven Victorian wallcovering of scrolled floral forms. In a brilliantly dyed Peruvian wall hanging that juxtaposes European, Asian, and Native American motifs. In the collaborative colored Vs of a rug woven by Navajo women and designed by a Modernist artist. In a massive embroidered wool rug stitched by a Mexican artisan in 1783.

George Hewitt Myers, who bought his first Turkish rugs in college and started The Textile Museum, recognized the wonder of these objects and collected them to understand the techniques, colors, and patterns that formed them. His quest to bring together astounding examples of non-Western textiles is a form of exploration, and one that ultimately helps us understand the textile beauty beneath our feet and all around us.

Prince Panda by Joseph Barbaccia

Friday Field Trip: Mt. Pleasant Farm

2010-09-10T21:30:00.007-04:00

As I drive around my new home in Howard County, Maryland, I have been trying to make sense of the place. It's a sometimes uneasy mix of rural and suburban.

My daily drive to my son's school takes me along the busy county roads that shuttle commuters to Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. Alongside them the fields of sweet corn are spent, glowing golden in the sunny but cool early fall.

I take a winding side road to be sure to drive past an old stone farmhouse nestled in a green hollow. The long way around takes me past a stucco farmhouse built onto an original log cabin. The farm is perched atop a hill only a few feet away from the busy junction of two farm roads-turned highways.

However, between the surviving farms, small developments of McMansions increasingly dominate the landscape. Round a corner on the shady country lane, and the road is cleared of trees, opening up to reveal a sign advertising estates starting in the $750,000s. Though the loss of farmland to development slowed across Maryland between 2002 and 2007, Howard County itself lost more than 8,200 acres of agricultural land, a 22 percent decline.

This morning I decided to take a closer look at Howard County's rich agricultural heritage. I hiked the paths of the 300-year-old Mt. Pleasant Farm, which the Howard County Conservancy, the county's non-profit land trust, currently runs as an environmental education center.

I was drawn immediately to the Montjoy Barn, built in the late 1700s and moved to its current site for preservation. It is the oldest barn in Howard County and the only existing example of an English wheat barn in the county. Its horizontal siding sets it apart from the vertical board and batten barns on the rest of the farm.

Just past the barn a mowed trail winds through a meadow of goldenrod, thistle, and milkweed. Purple chicory flowers bloom low alongside the path.

Each dip and bend in the path reveals a new vista of native plants and grasses. At the bottom of the hill, a small stream lined with mica bounds the farm; a group of Conservancy volunteers closely monitors its water quality.

Another trail winds along the back of the farm, past a grassy meadow that must once have been corn fields. From there the noise of the cars on the road recedes, and the housing developments across the highway seem a world away. I notice the slender plastic tubes that protect the hardwood saplings from deer. In a few decades these young trees will have reforested some of the cleared areas. As those trees grow and leaf out, the pressure of population growth will no doubt continue to put more demands on the land, challenging residents to preserve at least as much as they take away.

Starting Small

2010-09-07T08:40:00.003-04:00

I have a few designs emerging slowly from needle and thread on wool and stone. This Crewel Stone, for my friend Jackie at Smoothpebble, stitches the rich harvest of late summer and early autumn. It is golden; sun made manifest.

Happy birthday, Jackie.

I know that most of you have endless amounts of self-love and self-confidence, and you never wake up without them. However, for those of you who have moments, like me, when that reservoir of inner acceptance is running low, fill it up by reading this grace-filled post of Jackie's.

And a happy September to all of you.

Goodbye, Summer

2010-08-28T18:39:00.002-04:00

School starts next week, and we snuck in a last weekend trip to the lake. It had rained most of the night before, and the morning was overcast when we set out. But the sun came out just after we got to the park. The weather must have scared away most folks, so we had the whole place to ourselves.

I haven't used my camera much this summer, and I enjoyed the process of getting my "camera" eyes readjusted. At first I saw the stones on the beach as an amorphous gray pile. Then my eyes snagged on the man-made debris: a spent gun shell, a bandaid, a bottle cap. The colors and patterns of the natural world finally emerged. Ladybugs flitted between stones (which I didn't manage to get a good photo of). Shells and seaweed formed abstract tableaux.

Shells nestled among the stones and a piece of weathered red brick.

A strand of seaweed framed a stone glossy from a receding wave.

A delicate branch rested on a stone frame.

Seaweed arched across a stone.

Not far away, a caterpillar formed a fuzzy arch across the wood chips on the playground.

It was a quiet goodbye to summer.

Settling In

2010-08-13T14:28:00.002-04:00

I have done a lot of driving this summer. Lovely drives down country lanes bordered by vegetation so lush that my car moves through tunnels of green.

Down the country lane that leads to the county fairgrounds, I admire the barn that has been rooted on its Maryland hill for at least a century. Nature and the elements have gently altered it. Trees have grown to tower over it. Its boards have weathered to silver in places. The farmer has tweaked it: a cinder block office has been tacked onto the side; a new tractor parked alongside; a tin awning added to shade stalls. Surface changes only: the barn's frame--its essence--remains intact and functional. More than that, though, the evidence of the slow accumulation of refinements means that the barn belongs.

I have to admit that as I pass the barn I feel envy mixed in with the admiration. Not envy in the sense of wanting to possess what the farmer has. But envy for the barn's quiet, sure knowledge of belonging.

It has been a little over a month since we moved to Maryland, and I am still feeling an acute sense of dislocation, a sense of not being home. This is my 12th move in my 43 years, the 8th move as an adult. I know the drill--how to pack and unpack and dispose of boxes, update addresses, register kids in school, make friends, scout out grocery stores and restaurants and doctors and hair stylists. Those are the surface changes that are meant to take hold and root me in a new place. But the roots are slow in taking hold since I know that this is only a temporary move, a one-year caesura in our life back in New York.

So I'm betwixt and between, and feeling uneasy about it. But I'm also trying to hold on to the idea that this in-between-ness could hold some rewards as well: a heightened appreciation for all of the amazing things in my old home and in my new one. And, most importantly, that what I have right here with me--my family most of all--is all that I need to feel at home.

Il Dolce Far Niente (The Sweet Doing of Nothing)

2010-05-04T10:22:00.004-04:00

"Our culture aids and abets us with the expectation promoted by the information and communications industry that more information is always better and always potentially available. Therefore, we must always be available to receive any such piece of information that is sent, solicited or not. If we succumb to this illusion, we cooperate in maintaining a persistent dividedness of mind and heart. We deaden and numb our feelings, we fail to ask the deeper more essential questions. We are so busy sending and receiving fragments of information that we can increase our tolerance for violence, escalate our consumerism, and impair our compassion."
--Janet Ruffing,"Resisting the Demon of Busyness," Spiritual Life, Summer 1995.

I have an internal alarm bell that goes off when I am too busy being busy to pay attention to the important things. What trips the alarm is my driving. When I honk at a driver who cuts off my forward progress, as I did on Sunday, then I know I am trying to go too fast, do too much, push past the pace that's comfortable for me.

This spring with all its busyness and planning has fragmented my attention. I need a little break from the inspiring but constant flow of information and entertainment--blogging, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, ipod, etc.--to create a few more small spaces in my life for quiet contemplation, for the sweet doing of nothing.

Have a Happy May!

Growth Rings

2010-05-03T11:15:00.001-04:00

I am so thrilled that Jackie, paper artisan and photographer--and true friend of my heart--just opened up an Etsy shop, smoothpebble studio, to share her papercuts. Jackie's papercuts were what inspired me to try my hand at the difficult craft, where finding that sweet spot of just the right pressure on the paper is the elusive goal. When you reach that point, it's all bliss and flow, and Jackie's certainly there. It's been exciting to see Jackie's own patterns emerge. She's uploaded a great selection of her papercuts to her Flickr Papercut/paper gallery, which is so inspiring.

Jackie snuck in the opening of her Etsy shop while I was away at Easter, but when I returned I immediately snapped up this tree ring snip that I had admired on her blog. Her careful cuts reveal the heart of the tree, its growth moving outward like ripples from its core. Those rings tell the story of the good years and bad, a layering of wet years interwoven with drought, when growth shows up as a thinner line. Those rings give the tree its strength, a core that is shells within shells within shells packed so tightly around themselves that the resulting strong, upright trunk holds in even its branches thrashing in the wind.

The papercut speaks to me of the parallel path of personal growth that Jackie and I have been on since we both started our blogs. Jackie's post, Self Love, expresses her search for authenticity and self-acceptance with her unique blend of honesty, grace, and humor.

In addition the growth rings snip, I have the honor of having Jackie's book, For the Beauty of the Earth, as my daily meditation on nature's patterns. The photographs are little epiphanies, wordless tributes to color, pattern, and, truly, the joy of life's unfolding. Watch the slideshow of Jackie's 365::2009 photographs, and you'll see what I mean.

Be sure to pay Jackie a visit to congratulate her on the shop opening. Tell her a little birdie says hello.

JOYStone: "Pure Joy Barely Contained"

2010-04-26T02:39:00.005-04:00

My friend Zee--who leads Emma's Writing Circle, the weekly writing group I joined last summer--requested a Crewel Stone with the word "joy" on it for her sister Laura. Laura's middle name is Joy, and the stone would serve as both memory and promise.

"I think my sister would most love to have a purple stone with the word JOY on it, and a bit of abstract stitching around it, whatever moves you at the time your hand holds the needle," she wrote in an email. She shared the story of her sister Laura and her library card:

"When Laura was a little girl, probably 7 or 8, I went with her to the new library in our Bronx neighborhood; it was just an apartment in a big building that had been converted into a 'branch library.' We had to fill out forms to get new cards and then we went back the following day and our cards were all typed up and ready for us. Well, even then my sister had a terrible handwriting. So her card read Laura TOY instead of Laura JOY. She thought this was the funniest thing. She almost fell down from laughing so hard. This was a time when she was always laughing so hard that she almost fell over, the power of her own hilarity was that strong. EVERYTHING was funny to her, she was pure joy barely contained inside her skin. The librarian asked if she would like them to type up a new card for her and Laura was emphatic that she was THRILLED with her new identity as Laura Toy. She kept that card for YEARS and YEARS. I wonder if she might still have it; I'm going to have to ask her."

As I sketched some ideas for JOYstone, I thought about the intensity and energy that the word connotes. Joy is an intense physical response; it seems to flare up in an instant and can be gone just as quickly.

As Zee wrote, in its purest expression joy can barely be contained. I wanted the stitched joy to pulse with energy and spill over beyond the margins of the stone.

I chose the colors and beads to capture joy's intensity, transforming the stone into a jewel, which in fact the word "joy" is related to (joya in Spanish has the same Latin root). The ribbons around the stone represent flow and connection, how the expression of joy can flow through our bodies outward and connect ourselves with others, much like the sharing of stories in Zee's Writing Circle spreads joy all around.

The most unexpected aspect of JOYstone is how it feels. The raised crewel stitches, which I outlined with a double line of split stitches and then connected and covered with satin stitches, are soft ridges to the touch. A quick squeeze is a gentle reminder of joy, both the childhood kind that Zee described and the more mature kind that arises from "a sense of well-being or satisfaction" (Oxford English Dictionary) and engages body and spirit. I hope that as Laura Joy holds the stone in her hand, she feels the joy that I felt as I stitched it.