Category Archives: Heart and Mind—Deep Thoughts

On the Road Again

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Today we hit the road for Texas, on the first part of our summer art show tour.  For those of you who don’t yet know, my husband Bryan makes a living selling his fine art photographs at juried art shows and gallery exhibits around the country.  In this very truck (stuffed mostly with photo, framing, and display supplies, with personal effects in the nooks and crannies) we make our way across America every summer.

It’s a crazy thing, full of much more hard work and being dirty, and much less glamor than people usually imagine when they’re in our booth.  But it does have its upsides: visiting friends around the country, spending time outside, seeing new places, and the freedoms of being self-employed.  (Freedom provided that you show up to set up your stuff at exactly the right place and time!)

My goal is for this blog to keep going no matter where we are.  While I won’t promise that an occasional urban adventure story or photo from the road will not creep in, I do have photos from my studio on my trusty laptop and I want to continue to bring you projects and tips for a handmade life, even a mobile one!

If you’re curious, I can also add a “Where am I?” widget to the sidebar, so you guys can see where I’m posting from as the summer goes on.

Happy trails to all!

Me-Made-May 2012!

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What is that, you ask?  It’s a fabulous idea from Zoe of the blog ‘So, Zo…’ wherein participants make a pledge to wear one or more self-made garments every day for the month of May, and/or to interpret the challenge in their own way.

 

 

What I really love about it is the idea of spending a month thinking about what we make and wear and why.  Does what you wear suit your personality and what you want to say about yourself to the world?  Why do you choose to make things?  Do you wear/use the things you make?

My pledge for May is to wear at least one thing I made everyday, and document my experience here in a way that’s also relevant to those of you who don’t sew, and addresses some of the interesting questions above.

If you do sew, I encourage you to head on over to Zoe’s blog and check it out!

If not, what about coming up with your own Me-Made-May challenge?  Maybe pledge to cook one new recipe or make one up yourself each week, or finish your woodworking project, or even the mending!  I think anything we make has the tendency to push us towards, as Zoe puts it “a more self-sufficient, sustainable and authentic life.”  I love that phrase – I couldn’t have described my own goals better!

The last part of my personal pledge for MMM’12 is to make more friends in the blog world and reach out to the other creative types out here, so I’d love it if you let me know your ideas, and pass on the spirit of Me-Made-May!

I love hanging the laundry outside. . .

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I do realize that this may mean I’m a nerd.  But it’s so true.

I love everything about it – it’s a quiet moment outside in a day in which I might not have time for a hike or just watching the clouds.  There I am, I can look up at the sky, I hear the birds, neighborhood noises, feel the breezes . . . I even love the way the clothes look hanging there.

In past summers when we have rented a place in Madison WI, I always found a way to string up some sort of clothes line in the back yard.  Although the smells and plants are different there, I enjoyed them just as much.

In Flagstaff, the good outside laundry days are increasing now (when it’s not snowing – typical mountain springtime).

Who cares if I’m saving money and gas for the dryer (well, Ok, I do care about those things too) – drying the laundry outside gives me a mini outdoor meditation in the middle of my day.  I have to do the laundry anyway, why not do it in a way that I love?

Of Course You Can

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I have had this slightly homely little reminder hanging in my studio for years now.

At the time, I was reading a sewing book, I won’t say by whom since I actually respect and like this person’s work.  But in this case, the author had me all riled up by suggesting that in order to make a small, curved, flat-felled seam, you really must get this special foot for your sewing machine.

While I believe in tools, I also believe in skill.  I get insulted when people tell me I can’t, that there’s only one way to do something, especially if that way means you must buy this exact thing, etc.

The middle of this piece of fabric is my tiny, curved, special-foot-free, lovely seam.  Forgive the wonky handwriting.  I keep it around to remind me that what we are capable of is not defined by the gadgets we buy, or by anyone else’s ideas of what is possible or likely.

What words or things do you keep around to remind you of something important?

Breaking Bread with Friends

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So, on our trip this past week I was thinking a lot about how much means to have food with friends.  It’s got to be the oldest form of human social interaction.  When I see friends that I have been missing for a while (and it helps if the food is really good) it reminds me, this is still important. When I sit down with people I care about to eat something carefully prepared, a special kind of magic happens.

The beautiful bread above is from the amazing Sparrow Bakery/Bread LaVoy in Bend, OR.  Truly awesome bread and pastries, I highly recommend it!

What kind of magic are you making with your friends and loved ones?

Four Pairs of Hand Knit Socks Arrive in the Mail

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Not the kind of thing that happens every day – a small miracle made possible by the connection between two people.

Two summers ago I took a chance, and let a customer leave my art show booth with two large felt bags in exchange for a small check and a promise to pay the rest a little bit at a time.  Over the coming months she restored a good piece of my faith in humanity.  We wrote back and forth a bit with the checks, I fixed her bag when the handles I had bought didn’t hold up to wear.  She and her family visited me again this past summer.

Then yesterday I got this package in the mail from her, she hadn’t written me beforehand, what could it be?

Four pairs of slightly felted hand knit socks.  Plus a lovely sweater that had shrunk too much, all intended for my recycled felt projects.  I have pretty small feet, those socks are going to get worn, and so happily, and then when they wear out they can be part of something else.

It’s the connections we make and the people we trust that give us beautiful unexpected moments.

Hands and Machines

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I’m reading a fairly amazing book called “Living the Good Life” by Helen and Scott Nearing.  One of several standout quotes from the first section of the book is this one:

“Mankind has worked for ages with hand implements.  Machine tools are a novelty, recently introduced into the realm of human experience.  There can be no question but that machine have more power than humans.  Also there can be no question but that they have watered down or annihilated many of the most ancient, most fascinating and creative human skills, broken up established institutions, pushed masses of ‘hands’ into factories and herded droves of anonymous footloose wanders from urban slum to urban slum.  Only the historian of the future will be able to assess the net effect of the machine age on man’s joy in being and his will to live.“

I think about this all the time, as I’m making things by hand in ways that have declined or almost disappeared since the industrial revolution.  And I have watched a similar thing happening lately to my husband Bryan with the explosion in digital photography.

I personally think that while some machines are truly labor-saving, we as humans still need to make things ourselves.  For self-fulfillment – I can’t go more than about a week without physically making something or I start to get unhappy.  And because when we make things, we learn and think about where they come from and what goes into them.  It helps us understand the materials that are available and the amazing creative power we each possess to craft our own ideas and dreams using these materials.

What do you think?

PS: I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in living even a little bit outside the box.  Even if you don’t agree with everything the Nearings believe, it’s inspiring to read the story of two people who chose their own path and followed their own hearts and minds.

Testing – Our Beautiful Path

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So here is my first “real” post, I want it to include pictures and some thoughts about what this blog will be about.

This is a lovely old Ford pickup bed, just before its transformation into a chicken coop for our friends in Oregon this past summer.

I thought the colors in the many layers of paint and rust were just lovely, and the shapes.  But how does that relate to the blog?  I have been thinking (helped along by yoga class) about the paths we take and how, if we are to truly succeed, we have to consider the whole path as our goal and not just the finishing point as our goal.

That certainly applies to this blog!  I have lots of goals for it; I hope that it will help me reach out to more people than I can physically teach, and help inspire them to create whatever it is they dream of (especially if it involves fiber)!  I hope that it will be a platform for me to communicate with all kinds of other creative people, to answer questions and get and give new ideas.  I hope that it will help me make a name for myself as a teacher and fiber artist.

But none of this will happen if I don’t put a real effort into each thing I make and each post, as if each one was my whole goal.

So, I invite you to come with me on a new path!  I hope we can build up layers of experiences and ideas as lovely as the paint from the long path of a very old truck bed.