High Tide

 

Today there is a high tide. 

It is cause by the moon.  The moon tonight is the biggest full Moon of 2010.

Astronomers call it a "perigee Moon," 

some 14% wider and 30% brighter than lesser full Moons of the year.

 

The drainage pipe there is to let the water that is in the street drain back into the canal.  

This could cause serious flooding if there were for example a lot of rain or 

a wind surge.

 

I told you before Christmas that I was going to be adding a section I called Fossils.

I will be writing more about this in the future.

It is interesting how I started this before January and how much it looks like the cracks of an earthquake.

But it also resembles the cracks in the desert from a parched earth.

  

Today I want to finish up a hand carved lino book mark.   

I will be printing it today as well.

 

Vision Calendar

My word for 2010 is IMPROVEMENTS.

After looking at Erika's Vision Calendar

I noticed the prayer flags in the window. 

I wanted a Vision Calendar that would some how be able to be worked in fabric.

I decided to make mine look like a this because our intentions for the year seem just a prayer.

I wanted a word that would convey something forward but also a word that would not be so big that I might feel overwhelmed by it's greatness and my smallness.

IMPROVEMENTS came to me in a couple different ways, and since it is twelve letters I thought it was perfect. 

Each flag has the month of the year on it.  I am thinking of doing these in a 'snail cloth' way that will reflect what I have improved over that month.

This is my table where I am working on carving linoleum stamps.

I am hoping to improve in making more lino cuts this year!!

The Tree

The tree is one of my favorite symbols.

When I was a child I memorized this verse.

Psalm 1

 ¹Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

 ²But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

 ³And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

Ancient Cloth's Tea Cozy

 

 

 

 

 Ancient Cloth got her tea cozy in the mail yesterday.  I was in a hurry to get to the post office so I didn't have time to write her a "proper letter" explaining all the symbols.  I got that in the mail Tuesday.  I told her to look at the symbols and see what they say to you.  You might come up with things that I didn't think of. 

So that is what I want you to do as well.  While you wait for me to write the meaning that I intended, what are some more layers of meaning in the symbols that you see?

BACK OF TEA COZY

Inner Healing of the Wounded Child

Before I sewed up the black and white fabric I cut this hand out of the red fabric that I got from Ann Johnson.
I have a problem with throwing anything away...even when it didn't work.  When I put it on the black and white fabric it looked more like a war protest image.
So I decided to  use the hand as a visual representation of something that I read in my journal.
I didn't write down where I got this and if you know I will be happy to give credit.

"GETTING RID OF BAGGAGE

When we have IT in our mind, break IT down literally into smaller pieces.  With your mind, however it works for you personally.  Take the rock or BOULDER that IT is as a symbol of IT and then make IT smaller in size.  Continue to do this until IT is small enough that IT no longer over powers you or feels bigger than you are.  Continue to do this until you can literally blow IT into the universe for her to now take care of with a breath, and watch IT dissipate into thin air and nothingness.  IT feels really good when we do this.  It allows us to take something that we once gave huge merit to and no longer see it in the same way.  It totally changes our perception.  This helps us to realize and recognize that we were the ones that was allowing IT to remain in a controlling nature to us.  What is your relationship to IT?  We were also the one that took IT down and CHOSE TO CHANGE IT'S  NATURE.  We have now taken back our control by  taking responsibility for what we gave IT."

I actually did this exercise at a charged moment.  I managed to reduce what I was reacting to...then I got a handle of how I wanted to respond.  It was quite empowering.

I got the term "wounded child" from Dr. Margaret Paul, who

wrote the book Healing Your Aloneness.

The Gold Blog Award !

A few days ago Erika at Every Days a Present gave me a Gold Blog Award. When you visit my page and you press on that star you will go to Erika's blog, which has been an inspiration for me.

I have been rather busy but have been wanting to accept it properly and to also pass out my own Gold Blog Award.  Here is a list of blogs that have been especially inspiring to me in my journey.

Writing Up a Storm, because Kari has helped me to see writing as fun and enjoyable...and usually it feels stifling and tense.  When I read Kari's blog I see it is just a relationship with words between friends.  Being visually oriented I have had trouble with words.  But Kari is multi gifted and she uses images to help us that are so challenged.  I love her prose and pictures.

I have also enjoyed the prose of  Iviva Olenick at Were I so Besotted.  She reminds me of romantic love and the roller coaster ride that it can be.  I also like the fact that she has embroidered these bits of prose on linen and made them immortal.

Lately I have been inspired by Textile Art Quilts by Lynn.  What has really got me fired up is her gutsy attitude when it comes to making art.  She says she just started making art two years ago and has had quilt shows and has made connections in the art and textile world that are helping and supporting her growth.  I think she is a great example of what I want more of.

Ancient Cloth has been a real friend to me.  Her friendship has been cultivated like the slow cloths that she sews.  She has showed me how to take things as they come not to be so in a hurry.  To trust more and to believe that all will work out if we exercise patience and love.  She is a giver.  She has taught me how to do the Slow Cloth technique.  I love the way her cloth as a feel of grace and a human hand of kindness.


Arlee at Albedo Design Journal makes me laugh.  She has such an incredible sense of humor and she knows just how to find my tickle bone.  I can "see" what she saying...and I think that is a gift.  I also love the same colors that she does.  Vibrant, rich, exotic fabrics all inspire me.  She is an experimenter, and an alchemist of color, a daring soul.  Here is some more eye candy of Arlee's.

I don't crochet...much.  But I really like the way Louise Bird at Science Crochet and Other Hypothesis thinks.  I like reading "long thoughts" that have been worked out in solitude.  I can tell that Louise has had a lot of long thoughts.  I enjoy reading her perspective.  She is a woman that is interested in science and math, and these were my favorite subjects in school.  Would love to have a 'cuppa' with her in her crows nest.

Black and White

When I see this now I can't help but thinking about the earthquake.  But I actually made this last week and finished it Thursday, way before the earthquake.

  I was really excited to use the black and white fabric.  I wanted to make something you might see at the MOMA.  But when I got through with the black and white piecing I thought the world was spinning around and around.  I thought I will never get these lines and dots to hold still.

I am not sure that I have now either.

But going with the idea of modern art and a tea cozy I decided to create the cup and saucer theme.

After I got through with it I wasn't really happy with her expression.  She just looks confused.

I think fitting that there is a question mark on the side of her head.  But there is also a yellow spiral which seems to me to show that she is going to use her imagination.
She is going to get out of the

RIGIDITY OF BLACK AND WHITE THINKING.

I understand this kind of thinking.  When I get looped into the duality of two different opposing forces I find myself in the SLOUGH OF DESPOND.   I want the way I want things to be to match the way things are.  I want the lines to be parallel...everything going in the same direction ...the way I want them to go.

when I get in this mode of thinking I stop treating people as humans.  I start resorting to the more efficient method of treating them like machines.

I have to stop my self from REACTING and start CHOOSING MY RESPONSE.

Otherwise I will wear this dull expression and shut down emotionally.  I am not able to connect to others and no one is on my side.  I feel isolated, alone and miserable.  This is the side of anger turned in.

To me doing this in a SLOW CLOTH METHOD IS A MEDITATION.

I am a rather deep thinker and doing these kinds of cloth are the kinds of conversations that I would like to have with a human...but it is so hard to get on that level because we lack time.  But I desire, crave and delight when something has come up from the well that is really SPIRITUAL in nature, to me anyway.

I really feel it is a gift to me, to show me THE WAY.

Traveling Art book!


We each make a page in what ever size we want using whatever media we want and send it to one person who adds a page of their own art, and in turn sends it to one person who adds a page and so on until it is returned to the owner of the book (you). You can have a theme for your book if you like or not.

If you are interested contact Lynn...here is her blog link with that post included.

Earthquake

Yesterday was our family's first major earthquake.  We do live near the beach and so we are in a tsunami hazard zone.  We have talked about what we would do during an earthquake.  We talked about what we would do if there was a tsunami. My husband said if it is big enough to throw you down then it is big enough to cause a tsunami.  This one threw my husband down on his butt while he was going down the stairs.

I was running around thinking, "Well this is an earthquake, I will go to the bathroom and ride it out.  They, (earthquakes) are usually not that strong."  I went toward the bathroom thinking about it being the strongest point in the house.  The earthquake started getting stronger not weaker.  I thought this is too big just to hide in a house...I need to get out of the house.  Then I came out of the bathroom and thought about going through the hall way to the front of the house rather than going out the back door, because the kids were in the front of the house.  I stopped right in front of the racks that are in the hall that have food stored on them.  All the sudden the big jolt came.  The metal bowls I make kim chee in flew off the top shelf, the glass jars crashed on the floor and the whole house was rocking from side to side.  I was looking across the cataclysm at Catherine.  I thought I am not going to be able to go through the hall to get you.  I can just tell you to get out of the house and that is what I am going to do and trust that you will be safe and do what I tell you.  It was a very out of control moment.  But I knew that it was more important for me to get out of the house and be safe than for me to get hurt and others to risk their life to help me.  So in some ways it did feel selfish to turn around and save myself...it was a twisted logic that  worked.  Maybe it is part of the Serenity Prayer that I have tried to practice in other areas of my life that came into play here.

We all got outside.  Joe was the last one out.  He was looking for me.  He couldn't hear me screaming for him to get out of the house and he kept calling me, believing me to have been knocked out.  It is so scary to think that he was still in there and I had to just keep calling for him to get out of the house.  He said it was very noisy and he couldn't hear me calling.  I told him that even you going through the house and kicking the jars that were on the floor would be very noisy and I could understand.  We decided that next time we all take care of our self first and get out of the house and then assess if anyone is still in the house later.

 There was a power pole that had shorted and was smoking in the front of the house.Catherine and Joe both remember hearing it short and seeing sparks....I guess in the house?  We were all gathered around and running toward the truck.  Joe unlocked the truck doors and we all piled in.We raced off the island.  We would have been the first off the island if it weren't for a car from Florida that pulled out in front of us on our way out.  I think the people were sight seeing because they were not going fast enough...for us.  If there had been a tsunami and it was that close every second would count. We saw other people were starting to get in their cars and get off the island as well.  This was not dress rehearsal this was  the real  thing.

Last year the power company who has a power plant on King Salmon, replace the only exit bridge on the island.  The old bridge we were later informed had sheered off 2 feet making it dangerous to drive across.  If that had been out only bridge we would have had to stop the truck and either walk across or go back to the highest point on the hill behind the Power Plant.  We would probably have done the latter as it was closer and would get us to higher elevation the fastest.

When we got off the island we went up the hill to a friends house.  Joe had his two way radio in the truck and started listening to the traffic reports.  We then learned that it was a 6.5 magnitude earth quake, but there was no risk of a tsunami.  After about 20 minutes later. we went to he TV station where my husband is the chief engineer.  They were also without power.

We got back in the truck went to the house ...saw that it was structurally sound and made plans to go back to the TV station.  Joe got the boys to load up the generator and some electrical cords.  We all went back to the TV station.  There was another engineer there that was moving the live truck into place to do a live shot.  They got the generator on the truck started and light turned on.  Joe started working on getting the 1940's back up generator running. He had warned the manager that the generator was too old and was not a reliable back up generator in case of an emergency.   He sent Isaac up to check and see what color the fuel was.  Isaac reported that it was cloudy but not black.  At this time they are all working with flash lights. They needed some thing and the other engineer had a friend that had an auto parts store.  So they called him up and he went and opened up his store and sold him the part.  The engineer said the store counter had fallen right on it's face.  It was a mess in there...and yet the man helped us out.

The generator started and Joe started turning things on.   They got the TV station back on the air.

The Camera was ready, the light was on and Joe went and found the news girl.  She was new and this was her first earthquake that she had ever been through. He came to her and  gave her the mic, she said, "What do you want me to do."  He said, "Get on the air and tell them what you know."  There wasn't enough light  so Joe got his little flashlight out and shined it on her face.  It looked like a movie.  It was an emergency and she looked like she was reporting on and in an emergency.  She had her news reporter notebook out that she was reading from and she was reporting what she knew.
 
       Catherine said, "This is so ghetto."  Maybe but sometime it is the appropriate technology that works and is the right thing for the situation.  I told her this looks right, this looks like the way it really felt.  It would be neat if we could get a hold of that video...if we do I will try to post it.

     About an hour later the generator quit...died.

     All that we could do was to transmit on the air live but nothing from the affiliate.  Since there was no electricity there was no way to get any live footage and edit it and replay it on the air.  So they made a little hand made written sign that said that they would be back  and taped it to the side of the new truck. (I wish I could remember what the sign said.  I wish I would have taken the sign when we left, because we were the last ones to leave).

   When the DJ from the radio station, that shares our parking lot came over and told us their generator had died.  Joe told him that he had a generator in his truck that they could use.  This radio station was one of  two stations that was keeping people informed.  It is nice to live and be a part of a community.  Joe said that the guys at the radio station couldn't have been more pleased to get that generator out of the truck than if you had said it was gold.

   The DJ said that there had been a lot of phone calls that came in concerning large screen TV's that they had gotten for Christmas all busted.  Talk about the Grinch that stole Christmas.

    I was glad I had been keeping my house clean.  My biggest tragedy was the laundry soap and come off the shelf.  It was the kind that has a spout that you press.  Well I had the lid off and it had poured all over the washer and dryer.  I thought this is just a little inconvenience.  It wasn't long till every thing was swept up and it was time to go to bed...at 1:30 in the morning.  It was a long day.

Black and White and Red all over.

Well this might be a good time as any to introduce you to a mistake.
I sometime get really excited about making something and only after about half way into it do I realize that it is going to be a flop.  This was what happened with this tea cozy I decided to make for Ancient Cloth.

She had mentioned a special cloth that she bought from the New England Quilt Museum. Oh boy, I thought I have some 'special' cloth and I hadn't figured out what to do with it.  I will make it into a tea cozy for AC.  Right. Here is the cloth.

I got this fabric from Alma Stoller before she was featured on the cover of Quilting Arts Magazine.

I had entered a quiltie in a contest that she was having on her yahoo group.

This is called Emotions.

It is really my first slow cloth in the sense that it was done slowly...lots of hand work and I discovered a lot of wisdom in it.  I explained this when I posted it on her yahoo group.

The orange lady is joy ad the green is fear but in between these two is the one that could either be anger or depression (anger turned inward).

When we are depressed or angry we are not really expressing our fears or joys.

We are stuck.

The other 'special' cloth is this nice red cloth.

couldn't really see it?

I took a class with Ann Johnson on Quilt Design.

She passed out a scape of her hand died fabrics to each participant.

I have never found just the right place for this piece.

I had just the motivation I needed to overcome all obstacles of fear.

But then realized this isn't going to work.

Will show you in my next post what I decided to do to "make it work".

To be continued in next post.

January has become a CLEANING month

I know the new buzz is Clearing Space...but to get right down to it I have been wiping, washing, dumping, re-organizing and deep cleaning.  Not only that, but I have been developing new habits, clean habits.  The first habit that I put in place was that I wasn't going to wash another child's dish.  In exchange for not washing them I have told them that they will have better thought out meals.  Which I have been able to do since I am not behind the eight ball in cleaning all the dishes. (We have a dishwasher...but I have a religious objection to using it, which my kids do not understand.  Plainly it is this; if I have to wash the dishes clean so that machine can throw soap all over them and rinse them, then why shouldn't I just go ahead and wash them.  So I do.)

Today Louise Bird wrote in the comments about how important tea was to British way of life.  I went down determined to have a cup of chia tea.  I could nearly smell it.  But when I went to look for the canister I couldn't find it.  The water was boiling and still I couldn't find it.  I started cleaning out the kitchen cabinets and wiping them down with a rage.  I clean one shelf then another.  Then I found a small bag of the left over chia tea mix that I had made.  I had enough to make a pot of tea.  I continued to clean and search for my container of chia tea mix.

I have done almost two cabinets and four drawers...and four hours later I figured out where it might be.  It had rolled under a metal rack that we store jars and can food.  Well I tell you that there is nothing that modivates me to clean than losing something.  So I feel that I am headed in the right direction for Januaray.


Erika C. at Each Day is a Present has been writing a lot about creating a vision for herself this year.  She has posted about making a Vision Calendar .  I have been thinking about making one...but I have decided to devote 12 pages of my new journal, when it gets here to the task.  She also talks about Choosing Three Qualities that you want to see this year.  I have had a lot to meditate on while I am cleaning...and I think that cleaning is a great way to meditate.  So I am going to be jotting down ideas, goals and qualities on as I work, to write into my journal.


 

I like to keep a journal.  I don't write a lot about what I am doing in the journal.  Sometimes I do but mostly I write about things that are important that I have read or that I heard that I don't want to forget.  I also write reflections of what I think about a certain situation.  I have been reading over my journal the past couple of weeks and have revisited some things that I had forgotten about.  I found they hold some incredible truths and are like a time capsule of the year.  I could just write in a blank book that doesn't have any date.  In fact I do this when I am writing my morning pages.  But I like the fact that it is a journal and that there is a sequence of time that keeps you going forward.

I usually buy a weekly planner.  One that shows five day/ or seven days on a page and then has a few photos through out.  This year I decided to try this Moleskin Artist Collection which is a blank page for each day.  Perhaps sometimes there will be art or sometime a Mind Map for a page. 

Have you been inspired by the New Year to make some changes, create a new habit, or change your focus by  giving you some new direction for the new year.  I wish you would share it with me.  It feels like we are all starting again at the starting line.

LETS GO!!!

Having Tea!

I have been slowly emerging from the holidays.

I have been cleaning and rejuvenating.

I have been rereading my journal from last year,

and contemplating the directions I would like to take in the new year.

To help with all this, I have been drinking tea every day.

Sometimes in the morning, and sometimes before bed.

Sometimes it has be a tea bag

but often it has been mint tea or chamomile tea out of my garden.

The best part of all has been having this tea cozy to help celebrate the ritual of having tea.

This tea cozy was given to me for a Christmas present by my friend Ancient Cloth.

How many different words are there for how much this means to me?

I love it!

  It so represents my heart and my journey and our friendship.

She sent me a note with the meaning of the different symbols,

and a special note about the moon fabric.

She wrote, "The butterfly emerges from the pain and fears we face.

Of course the stars are all connected.

The moon fabric I used is from the New England Quilt Museum for In The Beginning.

(I thought that was kinda cool)"

So do I, as I have been thinking about this new year and each day,

as a New Beginning.

Art Swap, Barter and Trade

Today I have officially lunched my new blog:

Art Swap, Barter and Trade.

You will find three of my hand carved linoleum cut prints.

I have traded different kinds of art with artist before.

Some of the trades I have been involved in included ATC, art dolls,

quilted pages, tip-ins and postcards.

It is fun and inspiring to get art from other artist.

I am really excited about starting this blog this year!!

Happy New Year!