Invitation to the 3 Pears Gallery in Pawlett Vermont this Saturday

Don’t forget, if you’re in the area and are looking for something to do on Saturday afternoon, Jon and I will be at  the 3Pears Gallery opening reception, in Pawlet Vermont.   It’s from 1-4 and  there’s lots of great art to be seen.  Jon is showing some of his photos and I’m showing my Chicken Potholders and Streaming Pillows.

3Pear Gallery is located at 6256 Vermont RT 30 Pawlet Vermont  for more information call  802 770 8820.

I know the Goddess Within Me

I was not in the best mood when I woke up this morning.  I don’t know if it was the idea of sharing a burlap sleeping bag with Jon and George Washington that set me off, or the cold dreary weather (I’m glad to have the much needed rain,  sometimes I just wish it could do it while the sun was shining) or just me.   Jon serenading me with a improvised Broadway Show-Like song got me laughing, but it didn’t last long.   So I can’t imagine how I was able to create this very colorful and cheerful pillow for Wendy to give to her daughter for her 40th Birthday.

Wendy asked me if I could make this pillow months ago, and for some reason I put it off till the very last minute.  I knew I was going to work on it sometime this week, but I had no ideas about what the words would be.  They just weren’t coming to me.  Then it was Wednesday night, I was in my yoga class, not thinking about the pillow, I was actually feeling kinda bad about myself.  Often when I’m doing yoga, old feelings and memories will surface.  Usually feelings of shame or self loathing or painful memories.  I allow myself to feel them then let them go, it seems to work.  So there I as doing a forward bend when I was assaulted by these awful feelings about myself.  And the next thing I knew I was repeating the words, I am strong I am brave I am beautiful  over and over in my head.   And as I came to stand straight up, I remembered the Goddess inside of me.  I remembered how I called on her in some of my most desperate moments and she was  always there.

When I sat down at my machine this morning, I knew what this pillow would say.   Wendy had sent me a couple of her daughter’s old Laura Ashley dresses and I gave one to the everyday goddess to wear and made a cat from the other.  I looked at the finished pillow mystified that my dark mood hadn’t tainted it.  Actually it cheered me up to look at it.  As if, like the Goddess that is always inside of me but I can’t always see, I had accessed the part of me that was feeling like sunshine.  Maybe it was those bright colors on that Laura Ashley dress or knowing that Wendy’s daughter lives in Bermuda.  Just thinking of all that warm sunshine makes me smile.

I heard some thumping so looked out my window and saw Lulu in the sheep shed.

As I watched, the Donkey Madness began.  Simon bit Lulu….

… Lulu kicked Simon…

…Fanny kicked Simon…

…then they all started  running around the pasture kicking…

and chasing each other…..

Finally, they settled down and grazed.

Last night I dreamed that George Washington, Jon and I were sewn  into a big burlap sleeping bag together.  It makes me think that sometimes my subconscious is just messing with me.

My left hand first started hurting after making 15 chicken potholders for the opening of 3 Pears Gallery in Vermont.   It’s that muscle between the pointer and thumb.  I lowered my stool so there would be less pressure on my hand and was mindful of relaxing it while sewing.   I tried repositioning my hand, but found I  didn’t have as much control.    I thought of all the Carpal Tunnel nightmares I’ve heard about and knew I didn’t want this to get any worse than it already was.  What would I do, I thought if I couldn’t make anymore streaming pillows or stitch draw on my potholders.  And what about all the ideas I haven’t even come up with yet, If I couldn’t draw with my machine, they would never happen.  I thought of Grandma Moses, she was in her 60′s when her arthritis got so bad she couldn’t do her needlework anymore.  So she started to paint. I always told myself  I’d be like Grandma Moses, if for some reason I couldn’t sew anymore, I’d do something else.

I wasn’t at this point yet, but my mind was.  And off it went, not to the creative place of all the other directions my art could take, but to the dark place of the possibility of not being able to do  what I wanted to do.  I kept at it for a while, until I was all worked up and really starting to scare myself.  So I took my complaint to Jon, knowing he could at least calm me down.  And he did.  I rested my hand for a few days, sewing Jackie’s quilt, the kind of sewing that doesn’t hurt my hand, put heat on it at night and made a appointment with, Roseanne, my Chiropractor.  I know if you catch this type of injury early it’s easier to heal.  And as much as I admire Grandma Moses, I’m not ready to give up drawing on my machine yet, if I don’t have to.

And it looks like I’m not going to have to give it up.  I saw Roseanne today and she adjusted my wrist and massaged some muscles in my arm and elbow and did some other stuff that I can’t explain.  I might have to do some more massage on my arm and elbow, but the damage is minimal and I should be good to sew.   Tomorrow I’ll try it out on a pillow I’m making for Wendy.  And I’m trying to remember that anything can happen at any time, and to be grateful for what I have.

One of the potholders made from the clothes and linens Jackie send me

Jackie also asked me to make four potholders from the clothes and linens she sent me.  But I was having so much fun, I got carried away and made five before I stopped myself.  I used some of the hand embroidered linens and made sure to put a piece of a hat or shirt that belonged to Jackie’s father in each one.

Potholder made from a linen hand towel

There was a small hole, just above the leaves,  in the linen hand towel that these flowers were embroidered on.  I decided to cut the place where the hole was and put the blue denim between the leaves and stems,  and shifting the design so they no longer matched up.  It seemed a visual of the name of Jackie’s blog Quilt of Missing Memories.  The light blue becoming the forgotten or lost.  The rest of the potholder rearranged around it.

This was made with one of two embroidered linen napkins

I used a piece of the apron strings from the apron that was in the quilt I made for Jackie’s sister Nancy

Second of the two embroidered linen napkins

Apron Quilt all done

I finished the quilt for Jackie yesterday night.  I’ve decided to call it Apron Quilt since the apron came to have so much meaning that was revealed as I was making the quilt.  Also, I like the idea of the apron as a symbol of  strong and nurturing women.  The anchor of the quilt.

That’s Jackie’s Grandma Esther in the middle.  She put the note in the pocket of the apron. The older girl to Esther’s left is Jackie’s mother Carol.

But surrounding the apron made by Jackie’s great grandmother and later shortened by Esther’s sister Anna, there’s other family memories.   There’s a skirt, shorts and linens  that belonged to Jackie’s mother, Carol.  A scarf that belonged to Jackie’s  mother-in-law. And a shirt from her father.   And then, there’s a couple of shirts and a pair of corduroy pants that belonged to Jackie’s husband.   Including the pocket with the name Rich stitched on it, a personal joke between Jackie and her husband.

I also made some potholders that Jackie is giving out as Christmas gifts.  But I’ll write more about them later.

The back of Apron Quilt

Nancy and her quilt Found Memories

Before I made the quilt for Jackie, the one with the safety pin in the pocket of the apron.  I made a quilt that Jackie gave to her sister Nancy for her birthday.  I called the quilt Found Memories, referring to Jackie’s blog called Quilt of Missing Memories about her life with her  parents  her husband and other family members who had Alzheimer’s or Dementia.  Nancy’s quilt also has a apron in it and clothes and linens that belonged to her mother and grandmother.

Butterfly, inside my window

Now that it’s warm and my windows are open, sometimes when I look out my window it’s what’s inside that’s worth seeing.  I just heard a fluttering and looked up from my sewing  machine to see a butterfly inside my widow.   After taking a picture, I opened my door and it flew out.   Time to get those screens.

Ma, Tess and Zelda

I have a hard time writing about something that’s emotional when I’m going through it.  It doesn’t make for good blogging, after all, it’s the drama of not knowing what’s going to happen that often keeps people coming back.  I guess it’s that writing isn’t my natural mode of self expression.  So many of you probably already know from reading Jon’s blog that our sheep Ma has had some trouble in the past couple of days.

Ma got in a tangle with Red just after she was shorn and Red, who would normally get a mouth full of wool, got skin instead when he tried to get Ma to pay attention to him.  These two have not had such a showdown, since we first got Ma last year and she was being herded by a dog for the first time in her life.  And  I was upset when this  happened on Monday.  I get protective of my sheep and as much as I appreciate and truly need Red’s help often, when moving and containing the sheep, when I see blood no matter what the cause, it gets my fur up.

A big part of it is the responsibility I feel for my sheep.  Jon, who has had sheep for years, knows so much more about them than I do, but there are often still no clear cut answers to how to treat sheep and when to call the Vet.  A lot of it comes down to experience and intuition.

Through out the day yesterday, Jon and I both went back and forth over wheather we should call the Vet back or not.   Monday night, I was sure we needed a Vet, and we called her, but on Tuesday morning, before she showed up,  Ma was up and  her wound looked like it was healing.  By mid morning she was grazing with the rest of the sheep.  But in the heat of the afternoon, she was lying in the shade and not moving.  The other sheep got up but she didn’t.  We were sure she was sick and called the Vet.  A half hour later she was up and grazing again.  We decided to let the Vet come.  Maybe it was just the heat that kept her from getting up, but she suddenly looked skinnier than just the day before and we thought if nothing else, she was probably in some pain.

It turned out to be a good call.  The Vet said she felt air pockets under the skin, an indication of bacteria.  She worked on Ma for over an hour, cleaning her wounds and  packing them with gauze and iodine and giving her antibiotics and painkillers.  It was a nasty messy job most of which I didn’t watch as I kept  Ma from backing up while Jon held her head.

This morning Red gently got the sheep into the pole barn and held them in the corner while Jon and I pulled the gauze out of Ma’s wound (yuk) and gave her a couple of shots.  Then we opened the gates and Ma ran off with the rest of the sheep and donkeys to graze.  She looks healthy, alert,  her sunken sides filled in again and her appetite back.

We’ll keep an eye on her and give her five days of penicillin.   And next time one of the sheep get sick, I’ll  know a bit more and trust myself a bit more than I did this time.  The fear of this kind of responsibility used to keep me from doing things. (like having sheep)  I was afraid of what could happen under my watch.  But I know now that this is what being alive and living a full life is.  Responsibly taking on what I believe I can, and doing the best I can.   Knowing sometimes I’ll get it wrong, and trying to be self aware enough to learn from what ever happens.