Lovely World

away

I will be away from this space until the first week of July. I am traveling out west to Yellowstone National Park and the Salmon River in Idaho.

Take care for now.

♡ Maribeth

i am here

I have been so busy, here and there. Here is a brief glimpse of me, look quick before I'm off to something else!

I keep looking at my feet in this photo. I have been attending yoga class regularly and often find myself focused on the contact between my feet and the floor. I really like this grounding. It is a point of mindfulness.

I put a few birds in my etsy shop earlier today. Please take a look if you like. Lovely World Handmade.

Hope all is well. ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

friday regroup

I bought some hand-printed fabric from Bookhou. It is a very nice quality. I am making some storage containers with it. I made one this morning based on a pattern in Bookhou's b.a.h. Magazine. I used a medium interface, and lined it with white linen. It stands up and holds its structure well. These are very easy to make. I hadn't sewn in forever, and was very happy as I cut up fabric and sewed it together.

This is the state of my inspiration bulletin board. It has looked like this for a few weeks. I think it represents the break I have been taking from the intensity of creative work. It is a deep breath, a clearing of the head, a blank slate, a regrouping, a look in other directions. It is possibility. (You can see a lovely ceramic heart my son made me hanging on the board.)

I got an ipod touch. I am just beginning to load it up with music and podcasts and all the other amusements that seem possible with this small device. Here is some music I have been listening to lately:

* The new The Decemberists CD (I started to write album - but I guess that isn't really the right word - although it appears that you can purchase this in vinyl)

* The Smiths Best of 1. I do have some old The Smiths albums. I began listening to them back in the 1980s when we didn't have CDs.

 

Happy weekend to you.

the long view outside

I'm spending very little time online lately. Instead, I'm finding myself outside as much as possible. Gardening, hiking, watching softball practice and games. This has been a good break away from screens for me. When I'm outside, I see the long distance, the big picture. When online, I can develop tunnel vision. Does anyone else feel that way too?

The top photo is my lawn. I love that it is an incredibly weedy lawn because we get blankets of dandelions, violets, thyme, and moss.

The two middle photos are of a recent hike on Pine Cobble. The top of the Cobble is a jumble of stone. I love the cairns that have been built out of this jumble. Nature's altars.

The bottom photo is of the little parade that opened the Little League season. My daughter marched with the band. I realize that I am thankful to live in a town that closes a main street so that baseball players and the school band can march to the ball park.

flamingo

I finished the flamingo over the weekend. This burst of pink is now sitting on a shelf in my work room and I am enjoying it very much. It is made from hand-dyed wool, linen, and cotton and stands about a foot tall.

The process of designing and making this bird was a pleasure. I would say that I was in my creative "zone," that place in which my creative spirit is made manifest in the piece I am creating. The experience of making something that truly expresses me - my style and vision - is powerful.

I see so many beautiful, creative, and clever things online. At times I have wondered how I could ever find my own unique style with so many images of other people's work clouding my mind. Because I am self-taught in my craft, the internet (as well as art and craft books) have become my school. I have had to learn to take from what I see: technique, use of color, thematic ideas, materials, and meld it all into an expression of my own. My craft is what emerges after and apart from the inspiration I find online and in books.

In making my soft sculpture, I have been inspired by these artists: Lemmikkiapina, Abby Glassenberg, Jennifer Muskopf, Abigail Brown, Ann Wood, Stephanie Congdon Barnes, Tamar Mogendorff, Mimi Kirchner, and many others I'm sure. I honor their work and thank them for their inspiration. But, I need to do the hard work of making my own craft.

If you have a reasonable level of skill, it is easy to copy someone else. But, is that honest? Does that ultimately feed and satisfy your creative soul? Does it make you feel joyful? Having a creative vision and manifesting it is hard work. It does not happen overnight. You have to practice, make mistakes, rethink your ideas. You have to try and try again. The work is worth the effort - as you begin to see yourself in the pieces you create.

I have been sewing and painting this year. I paint a little each day (on my calendar) and sew on and off throughout the week. I can see many connections forming between my paintings and my sewn sculpture. The way I relate to color, shape, texture. I can see hints of this cohesive style as well when I embroider or crochet or make a collage. It is through repetition and everyday practice that I learn about myself and experience the joy of being in the moment of creation.

I am thankful for the opportunity to make things. My life is so much richer for it. 

busy

Busy.

My children are on school break.

Passover began yesterday evening. We had 15 people for our seder. A very nice time, after days of preparation.

Our public library's annual used book sale is this coming Friday and Saturday. I am very involved in organizing this event. Today we moved two moving trucks full of boxes of books to the school gymnasium. We unload and set up over the next two days. Hard work, but good work. And it is very satisfying work for a book lover.

I apologize if I owe you an email, and for being a bit absent from my usual blog reading.

I've been busy.

Many years I find myself in July, wondering what happened to those lovely months of April, May, and June. These are often months full of activity. I am committing myself to a mindful appreciation of spring this year. Yes, this week is a busy one, but I am going to stop and notice and be present.

watercolor birds

I finished these new birds last week. I am very happy with the bright and cheery colors. The hand-dyed wool is so nice to work with. I especially like cutting and stitching the tail feathers.

It was 77 degrees here yesterday. The resident birds worked themselves into a frenzy of song. I can hear them out there again today. I expect we'll be seeing baby birds before too long. I also heard the frogs peeping last evening. That is a sure sign of spring. The peepers are one of my earliest childhood memories. I remember my mother holding me as we stood outside in the growing dark. She told me that the peeping sound that enveloped us was the frogs awaking to spring.

What is it that makes early memories? An experience with strong emotion surrounding it? An experience reinforced by repeated retelling? An experience of something so new that it deeply embeds in our mind and heart?

control

Do you ever try to control the people and things around you?

I do sometimes (I used to do it a lot more, I'm loosening up). And it never really gets me anywhere. I have begun to note that the harder I push at controlling people or things, the worse it feels. My body and mind become tight, constricted, and inflexible as I try to impose outcomes that would probably be well enough left alone.

My children and my husband are often at the receiving end of my efforts to control. I think this comes from the perceived role I have taken on to make the day, and our lives in general, run along smoothly and on schedule. Do you ever find yourself barking out orders like a drill sergeant? In particular, I do this in the morning as the kids get ready for school and in the evening as it gets close to bedtime. This is good for no one. And interestingly, on the days I am not working myself up into a tizzy, everyone gets off to school and to bed just fine.

Another potential area of trouble: food. Trying to control what my kids eat. That is a tough one. (One of the very funniest essays I ever read touches so beautifully on this: Ian Frazier's "Lamentations of the Father" in the Atlantic).

So where is the better place to be? Of course, it never hurts to ground myself right there in the moment. No worries about what comes next. My infatuation with the past and future only act to unanchor me from the task at hand.

I recently found myself sorting it out this way:

control = fear of loss of control = burden to self and others

loving care = interdependence = closer trusting relationships

So, I can be a parent (or be a wife, or a friend) who acts out of a place of fearful control or out of loving care. I pick the latter. How about you?

I've noticed this process of control vs care in knitting. When I'm knitting without angst, the yarn gently unwinds from the ball and twists itself into the piece I am making. If I am in some way frustrated with my progress, I am more likely to drop a stitch or knit too tightly or botch things up some other way.

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"Only in an open, nonjudgemental space can we acknowledge what we are feeling. Only in an open space where we're not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly." Pema Chodron

ordinariness

I recently heard a radio interview in which a man stated that he believed the most profound freedom is found in the state of being perfectly ordinary. Ordinary is the place in which we simply are. We are not striving. We don't have to be better than anyone else. We do not seek recognition and reward. I have been thinking about this a lot lately. It is not an entirely new concept for me, but I guess I would say I was ready to hear this again and go deeper with it.

Are we a culture that values the ordinary?

What about children? Do college admission offices look for ordinary children for entrance?

Does ordinary feel constrictive to you, or expansive?

Ordinary: commonplace, usual, average, customary, regular.

What does extraordinary mean to you? Is it possible to sustain a sense of the extraordinary without becoming exhausted?

Is the ordinary life the place from which true creativity, a creativity without ego, grows?

Do you find freedom and rest in being ordinary? Or does it bring panic?

Can you see connection in the ordinary? Does being extraordinary perhaps separate you?

Can the extraordinary act exist without the ordinary person to perform it?

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The essence of it is to let yourself see how much clinging to how you want your life to be is nothing more than a process of self-torture. Drop it, and allow yourself to fall openly and unguardedly in love with your life as it is and everything in it.

 Saki Santorelli "Heal Thyself: Lessons on Mindfulness in Medicine"

Umbrella, light, landscape, sky

There is no language of the holy.

The sacred lies in the ordinary.

Tao Te Ching

finding home

Although I arrived home on Sunday, I am still playing catch-up (with housework, emails, mail, work responsibilities, and the like). While in Miami, I was able to notice the contrast between true rest and the busy here-and-there life that I usually lead. The noticing was quite profound, actually.

The trick is how to translate a more present, mindful state of mind to my life no matter what. I began taking a look at the ungrounded, chaotic patterns of my life last year. I found myself involved in so many activities (volunteer, personal, family) that I never had the chance to focus on any one thing at a time. And I found I was often running late. And I began to resent the to-do lists I would write for myself, simply to remember what it was I had to do.

I have cleared some space. I have been saying no more often. I know that "learning to say no" sounds somewhat cliche, but it is an extremely powerful thing. With it has come an unfolding awareness of my boundaries. And saying no doesn't just mean to requests that I get from other people. It also means saying no to things, activities, chores. This is a work in progress. Having grown up with a mother that rarely ever said no, I will probably be sorting through this for the rest of my life in one way or another.

{I took these photos of gulls while sitting on the beach last week. They were flying so low, right above my head. Probably looking for something to eat.}