Grey

It's looked like this a lot lately. I'm due in about five weeks. The weather is great for nesting.

I find myself craving spring. Daffodils sit by my sink, in the boys room, and there are roses in the wall vases.

Grey is supposed to be a big color. But it is never for me. I use it when I need grey, but living in the northwest, grey is ample and not a color I necessarily buy, which is why I have like two pieces in the stash and realized lately that maybe I should.

I've been re-doing the boys room. Two cribs, one closet, two boys soon enough. I'm at the stage where I'd rather organize the closet than make a decision on where to hang the pictures. The main problem being all the pictures are very small, and the walls big, and I need something with better scale. I think back to being in Lowe's, and looking around, and there were like three other pregnant ladies, and I felt like we were all stuck on the same broken records of how to organize itty clothes, procrastinating so we didn't have to hang all the small pictures.

Got a great new camera, now if I'd just off-load the pics and put them up on the blog!

I planted tomato seeds, lobelia, daisies, and some snapdragons -- we will see. The roses this year have been beaten by cold but they seem to persist. I'm late with the Felco's, gasp, but then so it the sunshine I require to be out there.

I delight today in allowing someone to come in and help me soon. Sometimes it is so hard to accept help. Sometimes it is so needed. Sometimes we need to ask others when the ones we love can't help. Sometimes it is important to accept help even when we think we don't need it. To pay for help, to arrange it, to admit you can't do everything while undergoing a season of limitation. Since I can't bend, and walking is painful, I am accepting help, and proud of myself.

Working in the studio, I alternate between the art quilt on my wall, and going to other piecing projects when I must sit in this late term exhaustion of swollen feet which fit only in Crocs. I'm trying to relish these last few weeks, trying, I said. I'm holding the sweet feeling of have a few hours hear and there to sew before a newborn holds my hand. The quilt is done, resting on the crib rail, and yes, pictures, I need pictures.

The sea has calmed, though the rain has not let up. I am thankful for a child's long nap, and the stolen moments off my feet.

Snowy Days

This is his quilt.

The one made while waiting for him to grow.

I like how it reminds me of a teetering pile of books.

I finished it this snowy day in January.

The top is done from stash, minus the red pieces. I don't buy that much red. I even looked in my spacebags of scraps, and no reds big enough.

I could patchwork the back from stash, but I'm just not much of a fan of that, especially for baby quilts where I want the nice silken feel of a quality sheet to use for the back, all one piece. I also like when you hold up a white quilt to the light, and it is white all the way through, so I will use a white backing. Maybe I will do a rainbow binding? Or a black one?

Also some knitting, when it comes to knitting, I'm not that great. But I try, and I do enjoy the feeling of accomplishment gained when you use the big chunky yarn. This one is done out of baby's breath blue yarn, and I want to make another one in white, then I will knit with the minky like yarn I found too.

I find I work these days assembly line style, do all the cutting, then the sewing, then the trimming. With a toddler, you don't have the focused time to always see things through. Thomas the train sewing, stay tuned, the big brother and little brother pants, and some other sewing that so far has been bit of a failure, uhm, cart cover???

I am doing well with my resolution, which is less mindless interneting. Such an easy trap to fall into when pregnant and trying to get the feet elevated.

January is my month of cleaning and purging. Every. Single. Day. I go through something, a tub, a drawer, a corner, a problem area, or spend an hour in the garage. Must take advantage of the nesting and the "brrr" days as my little one says. I'm feeling proud of these accomplishments, even if it seems life goes on ahead of me messing things up even faster :)

The sea has risen this afternoon, and the snow is melted off the patio stone, grey fronts move past out on the horizon, and it clears to the north. I catch a few minutes to record the feeling of finishing a quilt top, however small, in print.

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.