Handmade Heart

December is a month to think about the handmade.

What sustains us when the rain pours and the sea swiftly rolls right into the rhythm of our world? Where can the mind wander when the hand creates?

The world all around us at time can seem frightfully modern. Lost is that touch, the human touch, it's imprint pounded into the metals that comprise our existence. We crave handmade sometimes, and yet all around us is the desire for new.

People use to think about their destiny and cull it from the very hearth of nature. They would travel from sunup resting at noon, and on again, until they had made their mark on the days passage. Little comfort was theirs but the luxuriousness of the nights star scape. They crafted what they could, when they could find it.

It's stormy, waves pound with extra punch and it is a day I stand thankful to be inside. Warm, cushioned by a newly done bed, and recovering from sickness last night.

Fall is giving way in the Pacific Northwest, and the cold clenches of November are starting to feel more like December. I'm excited for Christmas this year, and plan to start early. With a little one, and one on the way, the sooner I start, the more likelihood I may accomplish this Christmas spray I envision.

Sewing has been fast and practical as of late. Nursing covers, little p.j. pants, and sometimes, in bleary-eyed trances of not being able to focus because I'm up so much at night, I sew together just random scraps, more to just hear and feel the purr of my machine. It engages something, suturing my sanity together; mending pregnancy brain.

At first I am sick, real sick, but this second little one has been more merciful than the first, and I am finding that after three months of enduring all day sickness, any time I can be up and about is really imbued with a new vigor.

I've been listening about Thomas Jefferson while I go about life's tasks. What is the key I have learned? How fervently he believed in keeping busy as a recipe for happiness. It seems to me so interesting a man whom accomplished so much, and also had so many to serve him, was such a believer in action.

I'm reading his Garden Book, and also the lovely prose-like Ahab's Wife, a story by Sena Jeter Nashlund. I wish I had more time to savor it slowly as I am thoroughly pleased with all her sewing/quilting references so far.

The nesting is pestering me with such a ferocity this time around, that I wonder will it ever cease?, and I try to make peace with a rate of progress that is slower than I would like.

Remembering to rest, don't we all need to be reminded that being busy is important, but there are seasons when rest is so oft forgotten yet so vital.

I have planted daffodils and tulips that will bloom when the baby comes, so I can look out the window of my bedroom and see them grow set against the sea.

Summer

Working on a quilt a long, watching the roses bloom.

Summer begins.

I am thankful.

Watering the Roses

The roses now live on a dock like deck on the beach. As roses go, they are lucky ones, despite the fact they are bound by pots. They have been through a lot of stress, and they deserve this respite. They were neglected during pregnancy, they endured a move, rearranging, and some time without water.

Now they are nestled in, gearing up for another season. I am ashamed to say they didn't even get pruned (I was moving with a baby). The old garden roses are champs, and they have fared so well, they are up by the house, the teas and such are down on the lower level. I spent a beautiful evening watering and tending to them, saying my apologies for neglecting them. I hope they forgive me.

Another Beach House

Some much has altered in my life recently. Change has been a fixture.

A move.

Motherhood.

A new creative space.

As I spend my days moving into another beach house, I am longing for free time to create.

My son occupies my moments, beautifying them in ways I could have never imagined.

I have a small room to do up into a studio, for the longest time I pondered what exactly this small room was supposed to be??? Then it was reveled to be a sauna by the fuse box. I have my fabric cubbies filled, my machines set on a table, and as soon as hubby get the power, I will set to work. I hope for many hours in my sewing sauna, maybe it is a metaphor for my creative life heating up? I am ready for this new chapter.

For now I steal moments, pretend I'm not sleep deprived, and set to work in little chunks of time preparing the studio, I think my supplies have missed me, they breathe again.

As I unpack, I note what a different woman I am. How motherhood has altered my approach to creativity. I begin the process of narrowing down what is important and I center my vision to target in a way I have not before, a way I could not.

I think we all honor the world by being creative. Our creativity brings to others joy, pure, infant like. I want to be held in color as it were a pair of mothering arms restoring the weary sleepiness and tuning my heart to task.