Back, In Miniature

It's been a long absence, I know. I've been sick. But I'm better now, and as evidence, here's my beloved and I enjoying ourselves in the sun.

I am very intimidated by paint. I just don't trust my abilities with a brush. But I fell in love with these little wooden people and decided everyone should have a set of dolls representing their family. I began with us. They absolutely crack me up. I can foresee becoming rather irritating to travel with, posing these guys like Amelie's gnome.

One More Bag

For Olive's Mama Mary.

Bench Mondays

So it's, you know, a thing people are doing. People are posting pictures of themselves standing on benches on Mondays. I don't know. It's gone more general and now it's just kind of great pictures of feet on platforms. I rather like these ridiculous assignments. One learns when teaching that they loosen the artistic spirit because the fear of failure dissipates.

In this pic I'm about five feet up on some kind of piling-esque pole in the sick boat yard in Charleston. I climbed up a pallettey wall to get here. Adventures in Coos Bay.

A Two-Post Day

Scott's new tattoo, done by the amazing Dan Gilsdorf at Atlas, to commemorate his mother. It's based on a statue she kept by her bed.

Poet Mouse

This is my Olive. I am blessed to be her Noona! She is featured here wearing her birthday crown and birthday tutu that I made for her. Making tutus is my favorite new trick. The crowns, I think, will become a tradition for me with the little ones in my life. A new one each year, to supplement the dress-up box...

And this is Frederick. The book of the same name by Leo Lionni is one of my favorite children's books. When the other field mice are busy storing up grain and so forth, Frederick tends to sit in the sun and daydream. The others consider him rather shiftless, but in the dark of winter, when they've grown bored and cold, he shares his own bounty: he tells them the colors, the sounds, the images, the stories, that sustain them. He is, in short, a poet, and the book is one of very few with the moral that we should respect daydreaming.

Olive just turned one. I was thinking of bequeathment, as one does as a godparent, and I thought of Frederick, and that I would like to help Olive understand the value in experiencing the world quietly, seeing, dreaming, and storing up stories for cold days. For her first birthday I made her this quilt:
So happy first year, walking, talking girl.
And here is a lovely color to store up for the colder months.

Mother Gifties

When I run out of bag-space in my closet, I make them for my mom. Here's her new traveling bag, with lots of interior pockets, a little clutchy pouch and a matching notebook. I may have to make matching notebooks for all future handbags. A cereal box, a fabric scrap, and some odds and ends of paper. Very satisfying.

My Mama

Here she is, as I often think of her.  This photograph was taken before I was born, by the poet William Stafford.  He was good at seeing people, and though I didn't know her yet, this seems like one of the truest pictures I have of her.  Gentle, happy, big kind eyes full of intelligence, alert to all around her,  busy with her hands.

It was my grandma who taught me to sew, but my mama taught me to embroider and to pursue all the other sundry arts I have explored.  Here is some embroidery she laid aside years ago that I recently came across.  She bellydanced throughout my childhood, and created incredible dresses embroidered with mirrors.  The patience and artistry that went into those projects blows my mind.  I wish I had them on hand to photograph.

Her most recent art has been watercolor.  These beautiful cloud studies hang over our kitchen table.  I am amazed by her art, and how much she has learned in a couple of years since she took this up.  It's very brave to launch into an art form that you don't know much about; it scares me a great deal, actually, but she jumps in and learns.

Of course there are many many other things I admire about her.  She is the most brilliant person I know, and she taught me to be loving, and kind, and to be who I am in the world.  

And she also filled my life, and continues to fill it, with magic objects.  These little bits (chair the size of a quarter) are always passing from her hands to mine.  They are rich with family history, with beauty, with meaning.  She taught me to look for beauty and story in the objects that surround me, and I feel deeply blessed with this knowledge and with my love for her.