collections

I get the need part-the feeling that you must have something to fill a need. This need comes in many forms, the need to look "right" the need to have supplies to make stuff or books to instruct or amuse, music to fill the air, space to arrange it so that you can find it, money to keep it coming. But isn't this need really just one big need that never gets filled?
Isn't it in the nature of the need itself to be unfulfilled or it ceases to exist and what part of ourselves has a preinstalled self destruction option?
So the need just keeps shifting from one aspect to another: shape shifting- to insinuate itself into whatever part is left unguarded, unprotected.
In some more refined context, it is called collecting, and this may be valid for some, safe and even profitable if a market exists. But I think for most, it is just unspecific need, drifting into our lives, fitting into whatever shape our wounds have assumed. Perhaps until we do whatever healing we need to do, before it goes away, or it does us irreparable harm.
I collect books on knitting and quilting and decorating and building: more than I will ever use...more than I can even find....in my piles. My personal stacks. I have bought bookshelves to house them and even joke about our library, but they are overflowing, unruly, and threaten to overtake what little open space we have unless the need is tamed or more likely replaced with a different, less demanding need.
Ah, but my needs are very demanding, the need for supplies and rooms to put them in, and the need for inspiration and time to implement and money to feed the supplies and keep the house and fund the inspiration. I have always been at odds with my needs, sometimes denying myself to an unhealthy degree and at other times self indulgent to the other unhealthy extreme of addiction, and mostly I have wavered somewhere in the middle, balancing on a high wire. With no net, the hushed crowd of my needs, gathered below in the dark tent.
This rave is precipitated by my not being able to find a book. One book. A book which has the pattern I need to begin the other mitten. It is here somewhere. I just know it.

pictures from out east

Pixie climbs into my bag as soon as I come home.

the girls

not much fibery activity taking place around here. too much time at work and in the car. My commuted has pretty much tripled and I am taking it day by day.
but the kittens are really cute.

the ritual

Things are preternaturally quiet here with no kids in the house.
We are performing the ritual of "cleaning of the child's room when they leave for college" today. Bailey's was not nearly as bad as the others!! I am left with several loads of laundry which may or may not be clean already but since it was wadded up into a little ball and left in a pile, who knows?
....And a couple of bags of non kitten friendly debris-but nothing too alarming. (there have been other children (plural) who shall remain nameless, whose rooms needed to be dug out with a shovel while wearing a hazmat suit but we shall not go into the sordid details here).

I have made an order from Mz Kathy Smith -do you know her? email me if you would like an email address. She supplies me with all of my notiony needs! I am ordering, "The Farmer's WIfe Sampler and cd" from her. What can I say the picture looks awesome!! I am also ordering some ginghers from her because I have been wanting some for a long time and I work!! so I can treat myself once in a while and stay away from big box places (except when I need jeans,) and support my small enterprises who work hard to compete against the wally worlds and tarjays. etc. end rant.

Yahoo woes

Hello out there! Apparently yahoo has decided I am a persona non grata which pretty much eliminates my email activity from my fellow group members. So if you are out there, I am still here, just unable to post! either on the web site or from my own email server.
sigh, life without email.

selfie

day tripping

...into my sewing room. Audio will be "the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society", on CD. Task at hand: to make serious progress on my Jane Austen Patchwork top. It is possible that I could finish the large diamonds part of the center today and then i will have to decide if I have the stamina for the 2500 tiny diamond border. Only time will tell. I am not making any promises.
I also have a physical therapy appt for my shoulder. A good tme for a break in the machine piecing activity.
I am in denial that Bailey is leaving in spite of tripping over her packing detritus every time I walk through our tiny house. How quiet it will be when she is at school. It will hit me next week I suppose when I am not seeing her each day. Twenty nine years of parenting people. Do I get a crown or something?
I did cut out a Mimi Kirchner doll and some gloves (this month's issue of Threads has a glove pattern. How cool is that?) with the wonderful felted wool that Val sent me I cannot wait to stitch on these, but I will wait till I have made some hay on the JA top.
And yes Ms. Calico, I will surely use the wonderful hand dyes that you sent to me, I was THRILLED when I opened the box and saw them along with the wonderful kitten fabric! The hand dyes will be a part of my Piano keys blocks.
And finally.......drum roll or french horns or something.... my Bird fabric. I cannot tell you how much fun this was! right up there with getting my poetry published by (someone else). One of the reasons I love my kitties is because they make us smile. Sometimes we forget how. This fabric also made me smile:) if you have ever thought about trying it, go to the Spoonflower web site and give it a whirl.It is not hard and there is a lot of inspiration and help on the site. Best 21 dollars I have spent in a while.
Just so you all know, I do not get paid for any endorsements. I only share things that I use and like. sometimes love.

Hoarder

Am I a hoarder? when did I become a hoarder? It seems to be a common thread, if you will excuse the pun, amongst quilters and knitters. I think I became this way in the same way one becomes fat. You prepare for lean times, you stock up the larder, the stash, in the same way, to forestall that inevitable time when you will not be able to get to the fabric store, not be able to find the perfect thread, notion or color. Or dinner.
I was bone thin for many years and also fit most of my belongings in a foot locker. And now-not so much. I am much rounder and have a house full of supplies to create my every whim and yet I still shop for more, rather than enjoy using what I do have. I have every kind of pencil, pastel, paint, glass, fabric, fiber, needle, cutting implement, support, gesso, journal, and container for the afore listed.
And by shop I do mean spending hours on the internet- just looking .But even the looking is a waste of that most priceless commodity: time. I do not often buy now. I have stopped collecting and now wish to decrease my stash, my girth, my corporeal weight and as I do I find I am less interested in holding on to the possessions that I have accumulated. I long for minimalist clarity.
I pass by people's tag sales and I do judge. Usually I think "what a bunch of (&*^^%.". Honestly why does any one think anyone wants to purchase their old junk. The lamp with the ladies in fruity hats dancing on the base, the three legged chairs, the bedding that they bought at the church charity sale and never opened, now encased in sticky yellowing plastic.The stuff you want to throw away but hold onto out of some misguided moral compass heading.
And then I buy something. Out of guilt maybe, for being so judgmental, so unkind in my thoughts, I once bought a book about the history of Virginia as told by rodents because I felt sorry for the author at the book signing. (It was a series, no less). yep. add that to the list of noggin thumping ways of thinking.
And now I think I will go plan for my yard sale.

plans for vacation!!!!

Make a six inch dove in the window block using english paper piecing
print out some shapes for the piano key blocks
work on Jane Austen top!!!
Cut out another mimi kirchner doll
clean my house...
at least a little...after Bailey leaves-there will be a path.
take bailey to school-boo hoo
walk every day at least once maybe bike too
physical therapy for shoulder 2x wk
make fabric designs---mine has shipped! I can't wait to see it!
paint walls pictures floors anything
cook healthy meals (poor mike needs a break from the kitchen)
post some poetry to new blg -more will be announced later on down the road.
Picture is at Allman bros concert