View from my Studio Window

I only have a few hours in the studio this morning.  In the afternoon I’ll be working my monthly shift at the Cambridge Co-op.

While I’m there today, I’ll buy some deodorant and protein bars for my trip.  (I have to take the malaria pills with food and a protein bar makes food always available).

But before going to the Co-op I’m having lunch with Jackie Thorne and Carol Law Conklin.  Carol has her Batik Art at the Artisans Market, next door to the Round House Cafe and she’s working there this afternoon.  I’m looking forward to hearing more from Jackie about the owl who flew into her car on Christmas Eve.  She just released it after its recovery with a wildlife handler.

When I was in my 20’s and first left school, I had a community of artists around me.  We supported each other by having critiques and group exhibits.

It’s something I’ve always longed for.

Thinking about having lunch with Carol and Jackie, I realized that once again I’m surrounded by creative people.  It doesn’t function the same as when I was twenty, it functions in a way that works for me and where I am in my life now.

And it’s not just a community of people who live close by.   My creative community is also online, all over the country.

When I think about the  artists, writers and healers who I communicate in one way or another, during just one week, I’m astonished.  And somehow I’m just coming to understand that I’m one of them.  We’re all spokes in the same wheel.  Creating thought-provoking, healing and beautiful words and images and putting them out into the world.

It’s not the creative community that I would have imaged when I was younger.  How would I?  There was no template for it, no hint of it.  But for me, I couldn’t have dreamed up anything better.

My first attempt at the three sister’s garden

I was early in the morning, still dark outside, when the idea came to me.  It seemed so obvious once I thought of it, like it was already done, or I had seen it somewhere else.   It was that familiar.

The red stitched kitchen on my latest wallhanging needed a Three Sister’s Garden sprouting from its center.  Filling the space, with its life and life-giving foods.

The wall hanging is big, almost 5 feet square.  I wasn’t sure if I could stitch the drawing directly on it.  It’s hard to move a large piece of fabric like that around under my sewing machine and make intricate drawings.

So I started with a small piece of fabric, that I thought I could then attach the to center of the kitchen.

The drawing of my kitchen on my wall hanging before the Three Sister Garden.

But it didn’t work.  I wanted the garden to look like  it was growing in the kitchen, and trying to sew on a piece of fabric with the garden sewn on it, looked… well….like a piece of fabric with a garden sewn on it.  

I decided I’d have to try sewing directly on the wall hanging.

Turns out it was easier to do than I expected.  And I already had the practice of sewing the first garden so it was just fun to do.  Getting the shape of the leaves, and working with the different colors of thread.

First I sewed the corn, then the squash…..

…the beans came last.   I used a little gold thread for the tassels  on the corn and corn stalks and on the bean vines.

It actually came out better than I was able to imagine it.  That doesn’t happen often.

Now I’m working on the Goddesses hair.  Fiery orange oak leaves, a fierce symbol of wisdom.

So often with my wall hangings and much of my work, I fill up every space.  But I’m thinking differently about this one.  Entertaining the ideas of simplicity and less is more.

I’ll see what happens when I’m done with her hair and face.  I’m not sure how I’ll work with  her eyes yet but I keep getting the feeling they need to sparkle.

Fate would make a great agility dog.  The only problem is she’d have to have a person to do it with her.  I’ve never been much into “organized” anything.  So Fate has fun the way I do.  By doing what we like to do.

Me, Fate and Red all had fun walking and running and jumping through the woods this afternoon.

Fate and my “Solstice” Quilt

I clicked the Check Out button on Amazon and got a picture in my mind of a little girl in an apartment in Albany wrapped in a pink comforter.  Maybe it will make her feel a little warmer, a little safer, loved just a little more.

To be able  quickly, easily and inexpensively  to bring some warmth and comfort to someone who is coming to America and is in need of the basic necessities is a gift to me.

Jon’s been writing about our getting involved with a local refugee movement in Albany NY.  He’s already helped fill welcome bags for refugee children, by posting the need on his blog and people all over the country responding overwhelmingly.

Now there’s another need for the refugees coming to Albany.  It’s happening as I write this.  Families are coming from Syria and other places and need a  home and the basics to live in it.  Bed sheets, pots and pans, silverware, plates, blankets.

And the US Committee on Refugees and Immigrants has made it so easy and inexpensive to help.

They’ve set up a page on Amazon where you can choose simple household items to buy ranging in price from $6 to $30.  You don’t have to wonder where your money is going because you get to make that decision.  It’s that direct.  You buy a set of silverware or cups and you know soon a family is going to be eating or drinking from them.

Can’t you just picture it?  I can.  And it make me happy knowing I can help in this very simple and basic way.

I also like to think of what it must feel like to come to a new country after being driven out my home and knowing that the people there care about me.  That I’m welcome there.

In a way it’s as nurturing as cooking someone a hot meal or tucking someone into a warm, safe bed.

When I come back from India, in the end of February, Jon and I are going to meet with the organizers of the refugee effort in Albany NY.  We’ll be assigned a family to help acclimate to their new home in America.

But right now, buying that Comforter felt really good.  Like I can do something with such little effort.  Something very personal and necessary for someone who needs it.

Click here for the  Amazon page where you can buy a teapot or towels for a refugee family.

Two nights ago I had a dream of a rainbow-colored, checkered bird flying over a gray landscape.

Somehow it seemed the perfect image to add to my latest wall hanging. So this morning I drew the bird from my dream with my sewing machine.  Then I cut out the image and laid it over a piece of an old quilt that someone sent me.

I cut the bird out of the quilt.

Something I hadn’t considered was the backing of the quilt.  Blue with red roses, it almost seemed the shadow of the bird.  I cut out a couple more and pinned them to my quilt.  Making them fly up and across it.

That’s Zelda and Rosemary, Liam and Socks.

It’s a muddy Monday morning on Bedlam Farm.  Warm for January but no one here is complaining.

The girls and boy in the video are saying “Girls are strong Trump is wrong”

I was in eighteen, having sex with my first boyfriend and I didn’t want to get pregnant.  There was no one in my life that I could ask for advice or help in getting birth control.   So I opened the yellow pages and saw an ad that had a drawing of woman with long hair and a description that made it sound like it was a clinic run for women by women. I think it was called Women’s Choice.

I don’t remember much about the experience.  It’s pretty fuzzy to me now.  I think mostly because I don’t want to remember.

I drove myself to the clinic which was really  just an office with a small reception area.  It was above a closed storefront in the dying downtown in Hempstead NY.    I was the only patient there.

Everything I remember about it was dark.  The shuttered store front, the stairway leading to the office, the reception room, the exam room.  In my memory it’s even overcast outside.

When I think of the  receptionist/nurse I get a picture of Nurse Ratchet in my mind.  Whatever she really looked like,  she spoke very little and was formidable.

I had no idea what to expect, no idea what an exam would be like.

The doctor was a very old man.  I don’t remember having any conversation with him, but I must have spoken to someone because I left the office with a diaphragm.  Thinking of the dinghy, shabby exam room,  still gives me the creeps.  My mind is closed to the details of the experience.

Needless to say I never went back.

Soon after that I heard about Planned Parenthood from my health teacher in Community College.  When I told her where I went to get birth control she was horrified.  That’s an abortion clinic she said, you don’t want to go there.

In comparison, her description of Planned Parenthood sounded like a dream.

Sometime later when I decided to go on the pill, I went to Planned Parenthood.   It was clean, brightly lit and staffed by friendly women who actually talked to me.  Still on my parent’s insurance, I only had to pay what I could afford.   Since I couldn’t let my parents know I was on birth control the receptionist told me if they had to call me they would identify themselves as “Sue”.  (this was way before cell phones, of course) I didn’t even have to explain to them how not only couldn’t I  imagine talking  to my mother about sex, but even if I could, she didn’t believe in women having sex before they were married.

I don’t know that I would have had the courage to find another place to get birth control if I hadn’t heard about Planned Parenthood.  I went back there  every year, no matter where I lived, for the next 15 years while I was on the pill.

For me the Women’s March On Washington was personal.    As personal as my own body.  As personal as all the indignities that I’ve ever endured as a girl and women.

I didn’t know I’d feel this way when Jon, our friend Cathy and I set off to be a part of it in our small town of Glens Falls NY.  Even then it was more abstract.  I imagined it would be like calling my senator with my opinion on an issue or signing a petition.

But I found being a part of the  Women’s March reached deep into my psyche and was as  physical as my body.

I’m still a little stunned that yesterday’s March, and all it hundreds of sister marches through out the world,  was in essence about and for women.  I know there were many issues tied up in it.  People marched with their own agenda’s.  But at the heart of it was women, unapologetically making a stand.  Saying that the physical, psychological, societal and economical indignities and injustices that have plagued us is unequivocally wrong.

I don’t know what will happen now.  How this will play out.

So I’m going to start by doing the only thing I can think of right now.  I’m going to volunteer at the place that was there for me when I needed it.  The place whose roots are in the birth control movement started by Margaret Sanger in 1916.   The place  that I know means so much to so many women and men. (because men benefit from Planned Parenthood too)  I’m going to start by volunteering for Planned Parenthood in Glens Falls, where the Women’s March began for us yesterday.  It’s a place to begin, something I can do.    My way of staying engaged.  And standing up for my truth.

What  a strange day.  The prospect of paper work, much-needed to be done, weighed over me this morning as I went to my studio.  I’m not sure where my head was, or my body, it seemed like both were miles from me.

So I did what I could and backed a scarf I made a couple of weeks ago and pulled out a Bedlam Farm Tote Bag I also made long before today.

I usually like to have more than one of a piece to sell at a time, but that just wasn’t happening.  So I thought it might be a good day for Jon and me to make one of our videos and put the Ogg Winter Scarf and Bedlam Farm Tote Bag up for sale.

It is a quiet internet day with the inauguration happening and I think that’s in the air.  People are preoccupied.  As, I guess, I am too.

So, here’s some photos of the scarf and tote bag.  The Ogg Winter Scarf is sold.  The Bedlam Farm Tote Bag is still available.  If either of them appeals to you,   If you’re interested in it you can email me at [email protected].  I take checks and paypal.

And here’s to those strange “off days”, and the good things they can bring.

“Morning Glory” Ogg Winter Scarf     $60 + $8 shipping   SOLD

“Balance“ a Bedlam Farm Tote Bag   $48 + $8 shipping

It always makes me happy when I get this message on my teabag.   Thought I’d share it with you.