never catching up

Turns out, this pile was the tip of the iceberg.  

In case you are wondering, I did say ‘no’, emphatically NO when I was first presented with this pile of jeans.  Where had he been hiding them? Why would he keep them? I had no idea how many more he’d been stashing away.
There were plenty of excuses for not accepting the challenge. Besides, who’d be crazy enough to repair those?   I know the answer now.  Me.  Me! Not all of them, or even the jeans in that photo, but a pile of them.  

The mending bug hit me first with socks.  I’ve found that darning socks is pretty satisfying.  Then there were all those articles and books and posts showing up on intentional mending.  It is a crazy phrase. All mending is intentional. It was the part about making mending visible that kicked me into gear.  

A few weeks ago, I found another stack of jeans without knees placed on the table next to my sewing machine. 

 

One pair to go. I wonder what he’s hiding next?

A long time ago, before I became a dyer, I blended different types and colors of yarn together to make wonderful multicolored, textured skeins.  I knit them into afghans and sweaters.  Most of them are not only favorites but still in use. Then, I became a dyer and didn’t look back, until a year or so ago.  Wonderful patterns started popping up using different yarns held together.  I put it on back on my list.  

I’m late to this party, but loving Love Note. 

One strand of Noor and another of Weatherfield, both in Elderberry.  

What are you knitting this summer?

7 weeks in isolation

when I’m an old lady I shall wear leopard and pearls to go for my walk.

*When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me. J. Joseph

Get your feeders out!

it’s time! If you live along the east coast, even the northeast part of the US, it’s time.  Imagine if you traveled all that way and came home to find this. 

paths through isolation

 

It has been more than a year since I last visited this blog.  There have been  a few times that I came to check a pattern I had knitted or to see if I had noted the yardage of some handspun, and once to look for an image that kept popping up in my memory.  I left this behind in favor of a quick Facebook post, or an even shorter Instagram caption.  So much has changed in the last two months and  I feel a stronger need to communicate.  I suppose that the harder it becomes to be heard, the more one wants to shout out.  Its not just me.  The world has shifted; boundaries stretched shrunken.   I am the lucky one.  I know it. This isn't really hard for me.  I often stay on my property for a week or more without leaving and feel no angst. It is perception.  It is a matter of choice.  Today I see open woodlot around me limits the world I inhabit. The spaces between the trees that mark the edge of the woods are not walls. None the less, I feel the leash of limited space. It has been nearly four weeks since we made the decision to self isolate.  Friends from around the world have reached out and we have reconnected.   Each visit a rabbit hole to travel through.  

How are you doing?

 

Mr. Ed, Butterfly Girl and the Frog Prince

for my friend Ed...

If all good stories begin with once upon a time, then this one should too.

One morning as I was pouring my first cup of coffee, Ed walked in to my kitchen, and with that straight face that he puts on before delivering an absolutely absurd remark, says to no one in particular and anyone present, ''In my next life, I want to come back as a frog'.  I laughed.  Over the years, we have thought of Ed and that morning many times, and laughed.

The day before, Linda and Ed had landed at the airport in Rhode Island on their way to one of Ed's reunions.  We'd picked them up, done a bit of sightseeing and brought them to our home. They spent the night in somewhat dubious comfort on our hide-a-bed in the den, a room with walls lined with Central American masks collected on our many trips south.  Centered over the head of the bed, is the largest and most colorful mask, the Butterfly Girl.  She has the head of a maiden, wings and antennae of a butterfly, tail of a mermaid and the voluptuous bosom of…. she's lovely.  Clutching her bosom with arms outstretched and nestled in between, is a happy green frog.  Ed couldn't have helped but look up at her as he drifted off to sleep.

 Ed was the jokester. He made us laugh.  When I think back to all the jokes he told us, none have ever made me smile more than that morning's one liner. 

                 

The butterfly girl is a truly beautiful piece. She is a fertility mask.  Part butterfly, she is a creature that lives both on the earth and in the air.  She morphs from a lowly earthbound caterpillar to the most beautiful and ethereal butterfly.  With her mermaid tail, she exists in all worlds:  earth, sea and air.

The frog too, transcends:  morphing from a tadpole, existing only in and under water, to frog, living on land and water, an air breather.  

I know there is a lesson here.  I can feel it, touch it with my mind but not quite express it in words.  Ed has left his earthly body.  He has, like the butterfly and the frog, left the old one behind to become something new, and wonderful.  

(If Ed gets his wish and comes back as a frog, I think he will be the Frog Prince.  You know how that story ends. )

 

Thanks, Ed.

1.29.19

1.30.19

in the winter woods