Pisces Moon Studio

I wasn’t planning to post a turning-of-the-calendar bit. For me, the year ends and begins at solstice; that seems a more fitting turn than an arbitary date of January 1. But I didn’t write a solstice post either, this year. And I just finished reading Claire’s elegant summation of her past and future year. It set me to thinking.

What have I done this year?

Without going back at looking at notes, I’d say that this year has been personally a little disappointing. On the positive side, I have sold a few pieces and made a little money from my art; I’ve expanded my web business a bit; I’ve turned a difficult corner domestically into a space in which running the household and the finances efficiently is a bit easier. I’ve spent time cooking, enjoying the process as much as the product, while creating healthful, tasty meals for my family. I’ve read Twyla Tharp and taken much of her teaching to heart.

On the other hand, I’ve had some health setbacks this year and spent a bit too much time in a funk over that instead of dealing with it as best I could. I’ve spent a great deal of unproductive time worrying about this-and-that which is out of my control, instead of letting go of things I can’t do anything about. I haven’t made time to stuff the filing cabinet of my mind with artful things which, when processed, will become the basis for my own future work. I’ve read too much and not done enough.

So… no list of resolutions for the New Year. Just a recognition of places that could use improvement and the need to address them with specific goals.

And a note of thanks to you who have read my blatherings this past year, with wishes for a bright 2006. May your New Year be happy and prosperous! :)

The photo isn’t much to write home about; it was really too dark and the autofocus thingie didn’t want to work hard enough to figure out where the house was. So it’s pretty fuzzy.

But she lights up!

Merry Christmas, or midwinter holiday of your choice, from the Elephant’s Child and the Lady in the Window.

… in quite some time!

I checked on the Lady in the Window several times between September and mid-December, but she wasn’t wearing anything particularly noteworthy. Even at Halloween, when I expected that she would dress up, she was wearing just an ordinary gray-green sort of dress. Had she lost interest in entertaining us, I wondered?

Just when I was about to give up hope, our lady made a comeback.

My son says that her halo, which doesn’t show in this midday picture, lights up at night. I’ll have to pay her another visit at dusk and report on what I see.

On Wednesday I worked all day, getting the wall completely scrubbed down and bleached. It appears (crossing fingers) that the pink insulation board design wall was trapping moisture against the wall during last summer’s excessive humidity. I’m going to repaint the wall with mildew-resistant paint, leave it open to the air, and hope for the best.

The bug guy also came on Wednesday. (It was his regular day; I’d forgotten about it.) That webby thing on the brick wall? It’s the abode of an opportunistic spider who took advantage of soft, sandy mortar and scooped himself out a hole in which to take up residence. No problems, and the house isn’t going to fall down around my ears.

Whew!

Mt. Everest at sunset
Image courtesy Xavier Murillo

After the week’s worth of physical work, yesterday I took a holiday. I have this unexplainable fascination with people who climb large mountains, which started many years with a 50-cent garage sale copy of Seven Summits. This is the story of Dick Bass, the first man to climb the highest peaks on all seven continents. He’d planned to do it in a year, but it took him four tries to make it to the summit of Everest. When he finally made it to the top in 1985, he was the oldest person ever to have summitted… at the age of 55. (The title is currently held by Ramon Blanco, a Venezuelan guitar maker, who was 60 when he summited in 1993. Bass tried to take back the title in 2004 at the age of 74 (!), but had to turn back when he injured his back on the way up.)

So yesterday morning, which was dark and chilly and spoiling up for cold winter rain, I went to the library and checked out four books on mountain climbing. Came home, put on a pot of soup, curled up in my warm bed, and read about the triumphs and perils of Mount Everest all afternoon.

It was a lovely day.

To make this at least a little textile-related: I have fibromyalgia, and there are days that climbing the fourteen steps from my studio to the kitchen feels like I am trying to summit Everest without oxygen. In the back of my mind there is an image trying to come into focus, compounded of this feeling, the incredible landscapes at the top of the world, the dancers who so often fly effortlessly through my work, and the words of Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me to the End of Love, all together. I have no idea whether it will ever gel, but I can hope.

Do you ever suddenly get a look at something very familiar and see it in a completely new light?

This is the exterior wall of my house, viewed from the seat in (ahem) the smallest room. The first thing that caught my eye was the texture of the brick and the play of the light across it. But then I concentrated on that circular webby thing on the wall, and that too was fascinating and beautiful.

There is a small hole in the mortar there, in the center of the web. Is it an insect of some sort that made it? Is my house going to fall down around my ears if I don’t get the pest control people out here pronto?

I don’t know. For the moment, I will just enjoy the sight of it in the clear sunlight, and think of ways I might use this image in a quilt.

This week I am sharing access to the car with DH, so when I have it, I must run errands.

I took a huge load of stuff to the thrift store yesterday. I went to the grocery, the bakery, and the bookstore (where I picked up the latest QuiltArt). I ate a late lunch at my favorite little Mexican place and I spent the rest of the afternoon convincing lunch that it was okay to stay put, really. No need to leave so soon.

Today I am relieved of chauffeur duty, so it’s back to the Chaos. I hope I’m on the final stretch, because I have an idea I want to try with yarn and stuff. Oh, I can get to the yarn bin, but I don’t seem to have a single horizontal surface uncovered on which to sort and choose colors. And I’ve just received the final payment on a small commission quilt, so maybe I’d better get that thing finished and shipped off, ya think?

I got about half of the small room cleared out yesterday. Sorted and set aside a bunch of stuff for Goodwill. Cleaned out a file box that held some photos but mostly contained envelopes and folders of sales brochures that I’d picked up at quilt shows a decade or more ago. There is still a file box full of quilt photos taken at those same shows. I posted a note to the QuiltArt list asking if anyone wanted them, but so far there are no takers.

I need my son to help move the two antique Singers (neither in working order although the trim is in good shape; neither is a Featherweight) to the car so I can take them to the thrift store. I’m keeping the 1928 long-bobbin model that belonged to my mother-in-law, but these other two were garage-sale purchases years ago and have no sentimental value.

Today I need to clean the mildewed wall. Then I will clean the stuff off the drafting table and move it into the small room and begin the organizing and putting away of the stuff I moved out of the room earlier. Once that is done, I need to do some rearranging and organizing in the big room, and I hope the chaos will be under control.

One step at a time, but today I am feeling more hopeful.

… for no apparent reason. So here are some random thoughts for the day.

Yesterday it rained, the hard-driving change-of-season thunderstorms with tornadoes that we get in spring and fall. This morning the rain has ended, the sky is deeply dark and overcast, the temperature is in the upper 30s and there is fog. It’s beautiful sleeping weather. And I need to get up and get busy doing many things.

The studio cleaning project is now in the excessive chaos stage, where I’ve moved a bunch of stuff from former resting places to the top of my work table. The next step is to clean the wall behind the design board of mildew and move things from the inaccessible corner where the two antique Singers are stacked. Once that is done, I can put the design board back, move the drafting table into the small room, and start trying to figure out how to organize the surface design supplies that were INTP invisible on the top of the table that used to be in that room. (Of course, I could just put them back on top of the drafting table, but that would defeat the purpose of cleaning up, no?)

I can’t work in chaos. I haven’t even been into the studio in two days because the mess is driving me nuts. And because I can only work a couple of hours at a time, it’s going to take a loooooooooong time to get this straightened back out.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

I think I will try to have a studio sale a couple of weeks after Christmas. I have years of quilting magazines that need to go to new homes, plus fabric, quilt tops, works-in-progress that I will never finish, and assorted stuff that is far too good to throw away and would be totally unwelcome at Goodwill.

Two brighter notes: I helped my son work on a research paper for English yesterday. (I cleaned up a few misspellings and grammar oobles, but mostly I was a backstop for him to bounce ideas off during the thinking and argument phases.) He’s really working at it this semester. Although he’s quite bright and has a good work ethic, in the past he has shown a distressing tendency to shrug off the really unpleasant stuff that he didn’t want to do. I’m heartened.

And I think I have finally found a bread that doesn’t cause me to break out in itchy hives. I can have an occasional grilled cheese sandwich again!

Okay, enough procrastinating; time to head back to the Pit of Chaos for a while.

Less than three hours from “order placed” to “order shipped?” With free shipping, too? Somebody pinch me; I’m dreaming!