Five (or Six) Senses Friday

FSF is a weekly ritual of sensual reflection. Play along if you wish, in the comments or link to your own blog. What is striking your senses this week?

 

Tasting:  Fresh green garlic. I thinned a few plants out of the garlic bed and chopped them up, greens and all and added them to cubed sweet potatoes for roasting. Perfect.

Touching: Roots and thorns and tender leaves. Transplanting is the word of the day week month.

Smelling: Lilacs, lilacs everywhere. Dizzying, really.

Hearing: Night creatures. The sounds that disappear from November through May have returned to lull me to sleep.

Seeing: The miracle of wood bending and not breaking. So much wind this week.

Feeling: Frustrated. Disappointed with the results of my job search, so far. I know it takes time and perseverance, so yeah…carrying on and all that. Hot cocoa cure tonight.

 

Oh, and I’ve also been here this week.

And here.

Growing, growing is the topic on Luminous and Literary Traces this week. Enjoy.

Where I’ve Been

Here

 

and Here

 

Five (or Six) Senses Friday

Okay, does anyone here remember FSF? I had to search back nearly two years to find my last post! Well, I’m bringing it back. Like, right now. It may be past midnight, with C still down the road working the last sap boil of the sugaring season (for us, anyway), and I may have stayed up too late to make maple marshmallows for a certain freshly-eight-years-old sort of person who wants to have a s’mores party, BUT it’s still Friday somewhere, so here goes, and in case you don’t remember:

FSF is a weekly ritual of sensual reflection. Play along if you wish, in the comments or link to your own blog. What is striking your senses this week?

Hearing: Drip, drip, drip. The last of the snow and ice have melted off the roof this week. The sound of Winter’s grip finally, really and truly letting go is a glorious thing, even more so than the return of myriad melodic bird sounds. Fact.

Smelling: Sweet, sticky steam. The last hurrah…until next year, of course. Really, there is nothing like a maple steam facial. It doesn’t exactly clear the sinuses, but it’s happy-making. Another fact.

Tasting: Some of the last of our summer-in-a-jar. Tomatoes, peaches…all must go, so they are making heavy appearances in our cooking lately. My body is growing tired of our winter cache and craves the first greens. Soon!

Seeing: The miracle of Springtime. Just when I think I can’t handle the white and brown for a moment longer, I nearly crush a bright green clump of bulbs just emerging (they weren’t there yesterday!), or see that the amaranth has germinated and magenta stems are reaching up towards the strengthening sun, such a treat for my color-starved eyes.

Touching: Fiber. It’s been a while since I really wanted to. I have the opportunity to work on a really fun project (more on that soon!), and it’s been wonderful to make friends with my wheel again. This is a good thing.

Feeling: Hopeful and energized, increasingly so as Winter retreats. I’m making lists and plans.

What’s happening with you?

Frames

Every night, while C has been reading bedtime story aloud, I snuggle in with the boy-creature and stitch. The current project was a holiday gift to myself, something new to try, to rest my hands from all the usual fine motor movements they make. There is one little frame to fill in each month, a few minutes each night with which to execute the task. It’s meditative and apparently, mesmerizing. Last night, O’s face was practically resting on the fabric, he was watching so closely the motions of my needle.

The project would most definitely fall under the category of “Cute” and anyone who knows me well would know that Cute is not typically my genre, but for some reason I was drawn to it. I haven’t filled in any of the Cute parts yet, though. I’m obsessed with stitching the frames, one after the other. It is suggested, of course, that one completes all the frames ahead of time, so it’s easy to just plug in each newly released pattern as they come down the pike throughout the year. I’m not doing anything unusual as far as these things go, but there’s something about the frames. I think about them a lot. Their emptiness. When I complete a frame there is a new empty space. A void…waiting to be filled. A need. A want. A nothing waiting for a something.

It was supposed to just be another needlecraft to add to my Austenian skill set. Something to do when my fingers ached from knitting on the socks with the tiny yarn, because I can only stand having idle hands when I’m sleeping. But the frames are eating away at my brain like a microscopic parasite. This project is meeting me right where I’m at, I guess. On the linen, they are laid out, side by side. When I think about them, though, they are stacked against a wall in my psyche, like a flea market find…all these empty frames. My life is full of them. Voids that need to be filled.

We have had struggles as of late, mainly financial. It’s amazing how it cannot be contained, how that one very specific problem seems to ooze into every other aspect of life and taint it. We question everything. Our dreams, our worth. All that seemed possible only a few months ago now seems totally unattainable. Nothing can be discussed without that shadow looming over, driving it all away. All the pretty pictures we painted during the winter are reduced to a pile of empty frames. Maybe it sounds dramatic, but even when you know you’re vulnerable (just getting by, unable to save), you hope that things will only get better instead of the rug being pulled out from under.

I need to say this. I have tried everything I can to keep The Spun Monkey alive as a business. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, I hosted workshops with spectacular teachers, started dyeing yarns as well as fiber, began to wholesale my work. I did more fiber-specific shows, enjoyed an incredible amount of positive feedback and met a lot of wonderful people. However, I have only debt to show for my efforts. Important pieces of my “old” life were shelved so that I could pour all of myself into TSM. Lately, my dedication is not paying off in a way that serves my family’s needs, but I hesitate to close the shop entirely.

So, I have wiped clean the canvas and now have an empty frame for TSM. I’m not sure what a new picture of it will look like. I have empty frames for writing, editing and photography (my first loves, my schooling, my degree) and am wildly desperate to paint my fantasies there. There is a frame for our farm, for O’s schooling, for our friendships, our family, for service to others, for self-care.

Why does it feel like the paint is just out of my reach? 

Here is a first offering: a liquidation of my shop in its current state. I have about six new yarn listings going up tonight, so stay tuned for that later on tonight, but it ALL needs to be cleared out. If it’s to be kept alive, TSM will need to go in an entirely new direction and I need to clear out the cobwebs. It will work like this: Buy one item, receive 10% off, two = 20% off, three = 30% off, four up to ten = 40% off, ten items or more = WHOLESALE DISCOUNT (50%). I want it all gone so that I have room in my mind and studio to create the newness that is the only hope for resurrecting the Monkey.

The Woodland Sampler seemed like such an innocent project. Sheesh.

Liquid Gold

The first day of Spring came and went, drenched in a thick blanket of fresh fallen snow.

It was only the week before we were basking in warm days, a whole string of them, our ears filled with the sounds of melting snow and the drip, drip, drip of sap into the buckets, while brown patches of earth began to emerge.

We collected sweet sap all through that blissfully warm week, and through the pain of mid-week news that broke our hearts. A bright little light in our circle of friends had faded from the earth, leaving behind a deeply grieving community, a mother and father walking the most difficult path of letting go, a path my heart rebels against even imagining.

As the sap boiled, I watched it go from clear to golden, and then to the characteristic rich caramel brown, where it stayed as we waited for it to reach the perfect temperature. I noted how quickly the change occurred, from gold to brown. It looks like liquid sunshine for just a few minutes.

On Monday, my friend wrote that her son’s light had been so strong in life, that now he is gold. In the sunlight rippling on the water, in the return of every dawn, we can behold his brilliant golden light for just a few precious moments.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

And here is my liquid gold, now maple-y brown. I will always let the sweetness linger on my tongue, a reminder that nothing precious to us will stay forever. Every breath in and every breath out is an opportunity to honor the beauty of the present moment, because all we can truly hold onto is right now.

and still…

…we miss you.

*image by Ellery Hatfield

*painting by Julian Ranieri and the late Matt Miller

*???

A year goes by, and then two…and yet I still think you might be there when we go home for a visit. Sometimes you come up in a conversation and I have to remember to use the proper tense, to say things like “used to” or “he was.” And when the little painful contraction in my heart lets up, I have to smile because whatever memory we are speaking of is sweet and/or funny and, well, it makes just about as much sense to be sad when we think of you as it does that you’re gone.

A year ago, on Facebook, I said this:

A year ago today, I still clung, with a rock in my stomach, to a little thread of hope…until I knew for sure I had to let go of it. We honor you this day and every day, Gavin Powell, and shine your spirit through our hearts. xoxo

Yeah, and we still do, just fyi.

Three: 52

Portraits of my main squeezes, every Sunday.

I’m jumping in on this project a few weeks late, but that just seems to be a habit that won’t break with me. I can be okay with this. I have two words for 2013: ACCEPTANCE and DISCIPLINE. So, let’s accept the fact that I’m usually late to the party and move on.

As for the discipline, I require that in many aspects of my life. One sweet piece of my Discipline Pie is a new project I created, which you can find HERE. It’s a photography blog with multiple contributors, 6 of us regulars and an open spot on Sundays for guests. This gives me a creative focus with a deadline…so far, so good.

That takes care of Fridays. On Sundays, you will find me here, with a portrait of my sweetie and our spawn. Every week. Yes.

There is more. This year I’m gonna Make It Happen. So much is on my list in that regard, and sometimes I feel afraid terrified of actually manifesting the life I desire…I take things to a comfortable level, and then back off. I stop sharing, I stop writing. I start worrying about not doing it well enough, whatever it is. And you know what? The crawling into a cave thing? It’s more exhausting and inspiration-squelching than allowing myself to be here, to share, to give and receive feedback, and to be fully present in my creative life.

Yep. More on all that sooner rather than later. I promised fiber content ages ago. There has been dyeing and spinning happening, as always…just been quiet about it in the Webaverse. I’ll put a few things up in the shop tomorrow morning. Here’s one:

Reboot

We plunge ever onward toward the Longest Night and I feel the crisp air of November bringing me back to life. The painterly light is soothing, the chill that bites my lungs invigorating, and I am daily finding inspiration for projects old and new.

But still, late Autumn slips away so swiftly in the rush of preparing for Winter that I must remind myself to pause. For breath, for moon-basking, for cat-snuggling, for listening, for hand-holding, for story-time, for laughing,

for boat-sailing.

Sweeping out the dust bunnies from my inner space.

Next post will have yarn things. Promise.

xoxo

morning:noon:night::7

Falling and Lifting

Finally, we resigned ourselves to playing with ice. Even freezing temperatures have not been a constant and I failed to find joy in the seasonal confusion. I allowed it to drag me down to some dark places since this dreary winter began.

And then, in a Leap Day miracle, it fell…the thick, white blanket of winter.

I rolled around in it.

The chickens conversed about it.

I felt warm all the way through.

It seemed I was shirking my work, but even with hours of play and breaks for hot molasses milk, I was more productive in the studio than I have been in quite some time.

During the Icy Times, I was horribly unmotivated…I didn’t even tell you that I have all but abandoned my Etsy shop in favor of a new venue: The Spun Monkey on big cartel! There are still several small kinks to work out, but so far I find this to be a much happier home. I am slowly adding product and will be adding several new shop sections in the coming weeks. You will find a link there to sign up for the Newsletter, which comes to your inbox once/month with announcements and subscriber-only coupons. I’m looking forward to the unveiling of two new lines of repeatable colorways on yarn and fiber, and…the print shop. Stay tuned.