Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Hey People!
I am seriously still here – but silent this week due to an in-law visit, a medical appointment, a blood donation, a workplace-violence incident, school, a bunch of work meetings, and the fact that I’m heading out of town for the long weekend. Also, research on possible land to buy for rec uses.
In short, my brain has been packed full of other stuff than writing here, or even responding to email.
Maybe that will get better soon and I’ll find some time to tell stories about the above. Or maybe I’ll just start responding to the emails piling up in my inbox. Either way, some of you will hear from me soon. As soon as I am able to wiggle enough thinking space for new output.
Stay with me, my darling beet!
Dear Brian (an open letter):
I’m just going to come right out and say it: you have made the last five years of my life more incredible than I ever thought it could be. For real. It’s been amazing. And I’m hopeful the next five years is going to bring more of the same love, fun and adventure we have so far proven we’re capable of. We’re on the right track after all, with our intention and positivity guiding us every step of the way.
Because I do think that optimistic intention is the reason we have been successful thus far – the fact we allowed ourselves to fall giddily for one another, the fact we willingly exposed the vulnerable silly parts of our beings and stepped out precariously with hopes that our quirks matched up enough to smooth the path ahead. For two people in their mid-thirties (each with a failed marriage behind them) to believe a life with someone else was not only possible but desirable was risky! And I seem to recall that for the first several months we each hedged around the idea of a future together before we could finally admit how much we wanted one.
So here we are. Five years from the day we met, two years from the day we married*, living in a little bungalow in East Vancouver and continuing each day a little further together. Our routines are well-established, those patterns we have selected to groove into our days are a balance of the mundane and the beautiful. That which keeps us going coupled with the deeper nourishment of a shared life – I think we’ve got it going on. And yet still we manage to have new adventures all the time – plans, idea, projects, discoveries! Just when things start to get a little too routine, we take a side trip down a logging road and a whole new landscape for exploration emerges. (And when we first met you told me you were boring. Liar!)
This is a public letter and so I worry some about being *too* mushy (because bleh, who wants to see love in this cynical world of ours) – but for the record I want everyone to know that I love you for your kindness, integrity, intelligence, lovingness, commitment to parenting, sexiness, creativity and willingness to express yourself. I love you for bringing me coffee in the morning, and helping me move heavy stuff in the garden, for trusting me when I say “let’s climb this fence and see what’s on the other side”, for sharing bedtime stories with me, and because you are not afraid to love me fiercely in return. I love you because together we are creating a beautiful life, and because waking up beside you every morning is a privilege that never ceases to impress my heart.
I love you, because I do. Very much. Forever.
So hooray for our first milestone. Five years! I only wish I had met you earlier so we were further along in this thing we are doing together.
Stay with me, my darling beet! We have such an amazing future ahead of us.
xoxo
Me.
* Our anniversary is actually Sunday – as in, we celebrate our anniversary the last Sunday of September no matter what the date. We met at 4 pm on the last Sunday of September five years ago and were were married at 4 pm on the last Sunday of September two years ago. Just for the record.
Design Notebook: First-ever sweater!
After my first successful capelet completed this summer (which I finally got to wear last Friday and I am bonafide in love with) I have decided to go all the way and crochet my first-ever sweater! Interweave Fall 2012 has a lovely colourwork pattern that looks like a good first sweater project (difficulty level of 2). I couldn’t really afford to do it in their suggested yarn, so instead I ordered a silk/wool combo from Knitpicks. Very similar to the yarn I used for the capelet. Also, I adapted the colourway to include my favourites since I couldn’t get exactly the colours shown below.
So! This sweater and the colours as shown below – of course I can’t start untill I get some more gifts completed, but at least I’ll have all my materials once I’m ready to go and I’m quite excited about it 🙂
Wednesday’s best intentions.
I came to work with the best intentions to get a certain task done, but somehow my day (so far) has been mostly used up with union matters. This is all fine, because I enjoy both sides of what I do here, but it’s become a frequent occurrence lately – and the situations I am asked to help with are getting more difficult.
Fortunately, I am also finding that the skills I’ve been working on via the Justice Institute Mediation program are definitely paying off, and I think I am increasingly able to bring a more measured approach to some of the really difficult cases I get involved in. Plus, I have so much stuff to practice! More than anything I feel that after ten years of being a union steward, it’s something I’m pretty good at, and I’m glad I’ve had this opportunity to be an advocate for some really great people because it continues to teach me a lot about myself.
Now, on the other hand, crochet is a brand new skill (like my segue?) and I’m just at the start of that learning curve – but look at the photo above! Totally in love with these new fingerless gloves made out of self-striping sock yarn – even if they are not quite a matched pair. (No one will notice once they are on).
A tale of two work bags….
As I’ve mentioned here before – I didn’t always know how to sew, and I certainly didn’t grow up with any abilities in that regard. In fact, I was raised with the belief (penned in my first report-card from Kindergarten) that I “lacked hand-eye co-ordination” and therefore would never be very good at anything that required it. (Funny enough, I played the fiddle all through my upbringing and that requires a lot of hand-eye co-ordination…. it’s just that I was measured it in how straight I could cut with scissors, not whether I could master a complicated musical instrument).
Anyhow! About fifteen years ago I taught myself to cross-stitch (from a book) and that was the start of learning about handwork for me. I still had no notion of sewing, but the easy crossed stitches on Aida cloth counted from a pattern made a lot of sense to me and I took it on.
That work bag on the top left is the first thing that I ever sewed (if you don’t count the miserable bean bag frog that I barely completed in grade six sewing class) – ten years ago, just prior to embarking on a road trip, I got a piece of cotton twill and hand sewed a small envelope in which I could carry scissors, threads, patterns and embroidery hoop in one place. It was the simplest design I could think of and as you can see from this photo, I didn’t know a thing about finishing my seams:
But despite its rough and rudimentary nature – I have used that work bag for the past ten years and it’s held together quite nicely – a testament to the fact that even the most basic, shoddily done hand sewing is ten times more resilient to most of what you find in the bargain stores.
In any case, I have felt recently that a new work bag is in order, as my original has been fraying – and while I could have gone with a more complicated pattern or design (with pockets or dividers) – I love the simplicity of the work bag that folds down easily and tucks into almost any purse. Plus, the basic canvas/twill shows off my recent hexagon obsession so nicely:
This little project represents just a half hour of work on my sewing machine (the hexagon detail was done separately by hand), but even more so it stands as a reminder that sometimes the most basic thing is what works best.
Red Cedar 