Embrace Life

Remember paper dolls?  The flat dresses with the little white tabs that you folded over the shoulder of  the doll, who was otherwise  naked, except for underpants or a slip.  And how the  paper shoes, with the same strategically placed tabs, somehow stayed on her feet( for a while anyway).  Thinking back on it, I can’t imagine why they were so much fun.  But I still love the idea of them.

Last week, Susie send me a card because, she said,  it reminded her of me.

by Marylou Falstreau

It reminded me of me too, and of paper dolls.  That’s when I decided to give one of my goddesses the fabric equivalent of a paper doll dress.

That’s where it began, but there were other things on my mind (which I only realized later)  while I was making it.  Hawaii.  I just finished reading Molokai by Alan Brennert.  It’s the story of one girls life in the Leper Settlement on the island of Molokai. (Lots of loss, love, pain, and joy)  The story took up a lot of space in my head and heart.

As if this wasn’t a big enough dose of Hawaii, my friend Kim was supposed to go to Hawaii this week and had to cancel her trip.  Jon and I took her out to dinner (a poor substitute) but we all agreed that something good would come of her being home this week instead of being in Hawaii.

This idea fed into a conversation that Jon and I were having while walking the dogs the next day.  We talked about  embracing life, not just what we perceive as the good parts, but all of it.  So instead of shutting down and tightening up in the face of fear or loss or rejection or disappointment, embracing it.  As Kim was about to embrace her  vacation week at home.

So, that’s the story of my new pillow Embrace Life.   It’s new for me, different from my other collage pillows in subtle ways.  And moving me in another direction that I’m liking.

Embrace Life is SOLD.

Maggie and her pillow

Jo-Anne emailed me this photo of her dog Maggie and my pillow Expanding the Universe.  Jo-Anne said she got Maggie to pose on the pillow but she won’t get to use it on a regular basis, since she would really prefer to chew on it.

Becca's Room

This is a photo of Becca’s room with my quilt and two of my pillows.  Becca told me she has a piece of art from either me or Jon in every room of her apartment.   I’ve never met Becca, but we got to know each other better from reading each others blogs.  Becca’s is called beccaseventhorizon she writes about her life with nature and animals and always includes one or more of her beautiful photos.

Jon's notecards framed on Barbs China Cabinet

I loved the way Jon’s  Autumn notecards looked framed on Barbs China Cabinet.  She said she got the black frames at an antique shop.   I’ve seen these images again and again, but they look so different framed and in someone else’s home.

Jon painting the bathroom door, how he continues to surprise me.

One of the many things I used to do for a living was paint houses, inside and out. When I got divorced and started making my art part time, I vowed never to paint again.  I threw out my brushes and rollers and scrapers and spackle and gave away the paint bucket I kept them all in.  I threw out my painting clothes (except my work  boots, which are great around the farm).

Then we bought Florence’s house.  Our house, Jon’s and mine, my house.  And I finally feel like I’m home.

I love Bedlam Farm, where Jon and I fell in love and I started doing my work seriously for the first time in my life, and I learned how to care for and open myself up to the animals. It’s where I felt safe for the first time in my life.  I found myself on Bedlam Farm, and it will always be a magical place for me.  It has been my home and a wonderful one,  but it isn’t me.  For me Bedlam Farm is a threshold, a place to pass through.  I’ve faced the demons at the gate and now it’s time to move on.  To  the place Jon and I, as the people we are now, choose to live.  And now we’ve found that place, and it shouldn’t surprise me, but it does, that we have the same vision for it.  Basically do as little as possible to make it livable for us and the animals, then focus on what’s important to us, our lives together and our work.

So when we decided to paint the kitchen ourselves instead of hiring someone to do it,  I found I wasn’t apprehensive about it at all. It was as if another person had taken the vow never to paint again.  It held none of the old feelings or fears of being inadequate,  nor did it bring up old memories.  It was almost as if I had never painted before, except that I knew how to do it.  It was actually a pleasure, I’d even say fun.  And Jon and I did it together.  In between he mowed the lawn, and we danced to Bob Dylan, had lunch on the porch and visited Rocky.

I’ve bought sold, fixed up and lived in a lot of houses but this this the first time I’m doing it the way I want to do it. In a way this is really my first house.  And I intend to be there a long time and with Jon, make it the new Bedlam Farm, our home.

Sometimes someone will email me and ask if I will make them a specific pillow or wall hanging or quilt.  I always get a little uneasy at such a request, because I’m not always good as saying no.  Although by now I have enough experience to know that if I’m trying to make something that I don’t want to, I won’t enjoy doing it and I won’t do a good job.

If I don’t know right away if I want to do it or not, I usually don’t answer right immediately .   I give myself time to think about it,  sometimes a whole day.   Then I see how I feel when I do think about it.  If I get an ugh kinda feeling in my stomach when it comes to mind, I know not to do it.  If it’s not an ugh, I do it.  This doesn’t mean that if I say no to a request, that I think it’s an awful idea, it just means I’m not the right person to do it.  I have my line and sometimes I’ve done a balancing act on it, a few times I’ve stepped over it.  I like to believe that I’ve learned from those times.

One that comes to mind has to do with a piece of dog fabric and a potholder.  Someone gave me a bunch of fabric with dogs on it.  Some of it I enthusiastically used and some of it sat on my shelf.  It was just ugly.  I don’t remember how I got to this point, but one day I found myself at my desk piecing together a potholder and using this ugly dog fabric, just because it was dog fabric and I had it.  I remember struggling with it, then finally throwing something together.  I only made one, and put it in a pile of other potholders that were going in a show.  When it sold, I was a bit embarrassed and glad that it was gone.  I told myself that I would never do that again. I still cringe when I think about it.  It’s not so much about the potholder itself, I’m sure whoever bought it, likes it (I hope).  It’s more about me feeling like I wasn’t being honest, I wasn’t being authentic.  My work is a piece of me going out into the world, if I’m not true to my work I’m not being true to me.

Above is a commissioned piece that I didn’t even have to think about.  When I read the email from Anita, I immediately knew I wanted to do it.  I understood and loved everything about it.  It is so close to what I am already doing, I almost could have come up with the idea.  Even with all that, it was still a challenge.  The pillow has more words that images and most of the words aren’t mine.  But I decided to see the words as pictures and fit them all into the design.

It’s a little different for me, and I had my doubts yesterday when I left the studio.  But today I could see that it worked.  And I’m glad to say I think the beautiful words will always  stay with me and happy to share them with you.

“Just for today, I will not be angry
Just for today, I will not worry
Just for today, I will be grateful
Just for today I will do my work honestly
Just for today, I will be kind to every living thing”

Reiki mantra by Mikao Usui

At the end of my yoga class Monday night, Toby, the teacher spoke about the meaning of Namaste.  “It means I see the light in you” she said, “we all shine.”

I thought of the streaming pillow I was working on during the day.   I had stitched the words “here in my heart, the world shines”.   Nice words, but I didn’t really know what they meant, not until the end of my yoga class.  We all hold the world in our heart, and we all shine.

Words in the dark
girl dreams of horse
the Language of Sleep Speaks My Soul
here in my heart the world shines
truth turns The Wheels
Come Dream Your Dream

(I think this pillow is sold, if it becomes available, I’ll post it again)

Pretty Colorful Sticker for your envelope

Remember when I got my DYMO label maker, how excited I was?  (Well it may not be my most memorable post, but I still get excited everytime I use my label maker)   Anyway, it makes these great labels with my return address and the addressee.  I don’t even have to type the address in, (and it’s a good thing because I’m really bad at typing numbers, I mix them up and put them in the wrong order, sometimes I think I make up new numbers)   I  just copy and paste the address from an email or PayPal and in moments it’s printed and ready to stick on an envelope.  It has made my shipping life sooo much easier.

So a while back I had a large load of shipping (as I did today with Jon’s notecards which are on sale this week check it out here if you haven’t already) and Jon looked at my packages and said “They’re not very colorful”.

Well no, they’re not colorful, but I was just glad to get them all packed up with the right address on them and in the mail.

A week later, Jon hands me a package.  Inside was a whole bunch of pretty colorful stickers to put on my packages. My first thought was that Jon was so sweet and my packages would have a personal touch and look so much nicer.  My second thought was to try and find out how much they cost.  I know they’re a gift and I didn’t pay for them,  but I couldn’t help thinking how they added onto the shipping cost.  I had it all figured out, how much to charge of each package  and now here’s something I hadn’t taken into account. ( Even as I thought this I knew it wasn’t  really true. I have an idea how much the packages cost to ship, but I’ve never sat down and done the math, figuring out the weight and size,  my time and gas etc etc.   it’s just not the way I do things.  To be honest about it, something I loose a little money on shipping sometimes I make a little and sometimes (as Goldilocks said )  it’s just right).

luckily, before I got too crazy about it,  the Don’t be Small voice piped in.   I have a  healthy fear of being a small- Small Business owner (I’ve worked for many of them).  So I let it go.  I gave Jon a big kiss and thanked him.

Now when I do my shipping I smile each time I put one of those pretty colorful stickers on an envelope.  I hope if and when you ever get a package in the mail from me, they make you smile too.

Silver Moon Patti's shop and tarot card reading

Today was a BonBon Day.  I didn’t know what a BonBon Day was until today, and I didn’t know what a BonBon Day was until my friend Margaret told me.   A Bon Bon Day is when you spend a whole day in bed eating BonBons.  Now Margaret told me she has never actually done this, spend a whole day in bed eating BonBons,  and so today wasn’t literally a BonBon Day, but if you see BonBon Day as a metaphor, then today was a BonBon Day.

For the last two Art Shows at the Pig Barn Gallery, Margaret made sure all the food was out for the Artist’s Reception. (With Kim Gifford’s help at Anointing the Goddess)  She cut the cheese into tiny pieces, found plates and bowls for the crackers and hummus, and even put a table cloth on the table (something I never would have thought of)  Then she monitored the table getting rid of the empty plates and keeping the bees away.  So I wanted to do something for her.

Margaret had never had her tarot cards read before and had been wanting to do it for a long time.  So today I took her to Silver Moon in Brattleboro VT and visited Patti, my tarot card reader.  Margaret and I walked around town,  each had a half hour reading, then had lunch.   On the way home we stopped into Crazy Russian Girls Bakery  in Bennington and had cookies and a peach tart.

Somehow calling it a BonBon Day made it even more fun.  Like it’s definitely something we should not be doing especially on a  weekday and did it anyway.  Makes me want to have more BonBon Days.

As I’ve written before, I have a wonderful list of people who want streaming pillows and wall hangings.  I began my day thinking about making a pillow for a woman who is a healer.  She told me a little about her work and I was inspired and excited to get started on her piece.

So I began, having a clear idea of what I wanted to do.  The face and hair, the unclothed body, I stitched one leg then down the other to the foot and…….whoops….the foot was coming out of the wrong side of the leg. Ok, so start over.  I set up a new piece of fabric with batting and backing and realized I was a bit tense.  I picked up the piece with the mistake on it and thought I’d just loosen up a bit,  a little practice before stating the real thing.  I started stitching a big eye….and didn’t stop.

Words in the dark, that’s what it was like.  Something inside of me needed to come out.  Something I wasn’t consciously aware of.   I kept on sewing, until  I stopped, dried up, not sure what to do next.

I still don’t know what this piece is all about, I don’t want to know, not until I finish it tomorrow.  Then I’ll look at it, read the words and see if it makes any sense or if it matters.

I know I put up photo’s of this piece while I was working on it, but I never posted the finished piece.  (This piece is sold)  So here it is.  The words are:

I’m Lighting Up My World

Butterflies Are gone from My eyes
Seeing Set me Free
I Dreamed A Life that came to Be
sunshine eyes
Luscious Maverick Sees All

And don’t forget that Jon’s notecards are on sale all week for only $10 + shipping.  Check them out here.

We closed on the New  Bedlam Farm yesterday and although we haven’t sold the Old Bedlam Farm yet, I’m still thinking of moving.  So in celebration of the idea of moving (moving to a new house, moving the notecards, moving less stuff to the new house) I’m having a Note Card Moving Sale.  Any pack of Jon Katz notes card are $10 + $3 shipping, for one week.  Each pack of notecards comes with five 5×7 cards (except the Chicken and Fox series, they have 6 cards in each pack) and all  are signed by Jon.

Sorry, the Sale is over.  If you’d like any of Jon’s notecards they are still for sale at the regular price of $15 + $5 shipping.  Just email me at maria@fullmoonfiberart.com.  Thanks!

 

 

 

Bartleby

Daily Egg

Flowers and Light

Autumn

Big Barn

Fox and the Chickens

Stonewall Secrets

Judy

Windows and Doorways