Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Post #1964: The hands and the heart are always connected.
Whenever I experience stress or confusion in my life, I crave comforting words from my partner, sleep, and then craft – in that order. Locking myself in the sewing room to either start a new project or reorganize old ones has the same effect. The point is to be alone and imagining the making of the new. This weekend I did both – reorganized my sewing room, and made a new skirt. (That was followed by making a second skirt last night, which I am wearing at work today.)
The picture on this post is of a quilt that I made for some friends who got married this summer. Whenever I give a quilt I think of it as giving someone a hug that doesn’t end. For what else is it to wrap oneself in the hard work and time of another – than a multi-faceted embrace?
Sitting down at the sewing machine is often daunting, sometimes frustrating – but almost always I am rewarded by the small accomplishment found in the work of the hands.
Post #1963: We don’t really plan for anything
My cousin died two weeks ago and since then planning has been difficult. I was organizing a meditation retreat for 20+ people, but now I won’t be able to attend because of the funeral. I thought I was leaving Friday and coming back Sunday but now I’ve switched everything around to make driving easier and the family visit longer. I had a September that was all balanced and organized and now a bunch of it has been thrown out the window. And yet I still try to make plans, because that’s what I do. I plan my life as much as one can which is ridiculous in one sense, but absolutely essential in another. My cousin did not plan to die, but she could have planned a life that did not involve the death she had.
Post #1962: Life is too short to be stingy about love
Last night while meditating, this thought kept looping around in my (monkey) mind – “life is too short to be stingy about love”.
Post #1961: We got ourselves a platform, baby.
After work on Friday we drove to our place at Link Lake to camp for the weekend. We didn’t know how far along the building of the cabin had progressed (if at all) because while our builder is great at building, he is terrible at communicating. So terrible that he had our building permit in hand for a whole week before he dropped us a line to let us know. Fortunately we hit the road early enough to get to our property before nightfall and were ecstatic to see that construction has started and the foundation, cabin platform and deck are done already.
We pitched our tent on the deck (which sits 8 feet off the ground owing to land slope) and used the cabin side to set up the camp stove. It was our first night sleeping on the land together – our first night in our almost-cabin.
Post #1960: Every day learn something new
This doesn’t look great yet because it’s mid-process but once finished and blocked it will be a gift worth giving. I started this yesterday morning on my way to work, but not before watching a youtube tutorial on something called “foundation double crochet” which is a better way of starting crochet projects that I’ve been putting off learning. For some reason it seemed too complicated, but once I watched the video and practiced for five minutes I got it together – and did 168 foundation double crochet stitches on the bus ride to work. It’s a rare day that I don’t learn a new thing, and some days the new thing I learn is really exciting to me. This was one of those things.
Red Cedar 