Yet because of his practiced eye and cultivated voice, he makes this experience completely come alive with gorgeous sentences: “A two-litre bottle of Fresca came by with a four-year-old girl attached.” Isn’t that so much more evocative than an ordinary description of a little girl drinking a big soda?

Read. Observe your surroundings today. Then plan how you can translate that experience into your art — in words or in images — and go make something beautiful from something utterly ordinary.

I essentially quit writing earlier this year for several reasons. I broke my hand; I was busy with work, which includes much typing and was progressing much more slowly than usual due to the break; I had done no art for more than a year; and my life was very uneventful and I simply had nothing to say.

The hand has healed, mostly, although it’s still not quite as it was. I’m busier than ever with work, for which I am extremely thankful. I still haven’t done any art.

But for some reason, a couple of months ago my husband decided after 34 years of marriage that perhaps it was time to go out and do things. Social things. Visual and performing arts things.

It started late in the summer, I think. We had gone to several of the summer classic movies at the Alabama Theatre, a 1927 movie palace extravaganza in downtown Birmingham. At one of them I noticed a poster advertising a performance of the Nutcracker by the Moscow Ballet, scheduled for the Alabama late in November. I made some general comment about not having been to a live ballet since elementary school, and he asked, completely out of the blue, “Would you like to go?”

Then he started wondering about seasonal events. I started checking local calendars and setting up things for us to see and do. So far, just in the past month, we’ve

• seen an exhibition of artifacts from Pompeii: Tales of an Eruption at the Birmingham Museum of Art;
• attended a performance of Handel’s Messiah by the Alabama Civic Chorale;
• visited an exhibition by many of Alabama’s famous folk artists, including Thornton Dial, Mose Tolliver, Nora Ezell, and Lonnie Holley;
• attended a performance of Christmas music by Colla Voce, a 30-voice ensemble, presented at a local church.

The ballet is Friday night. On Saturday night we go to another Festival of Christmas Music at Samford University. There’s another one Sunday afternoon by the Birmingham-Southern College choir, and an orchestral performance the following Sunday. I have at least one more art exhibition I want to see, The Black Madonna at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

So I will have some things to talk about for a while. I’m looking forward to comparing the various choral groups’ performances, because there are great differences even to my untrained ear.

It isn’t fiber art, but hey. I’m getting there.

Off to the art store through the cold pouring rain this afternoon. Excellent! Prismacolor pencils are on sale, even! So I picked up a tin of 24 pencils, noted with pleasure that the box said “Highest Lightfast Rating,” and brought them home.

Piffle.

The pencils in this particular assortment are all earthy colors — various dark greens, a couple of yellows, an orange or two, and a ton of brown and gray. Not at all what I need. I had no idea that there were different assortments — I just thought, naively, that the 24-pencil box was standard.

Ah, well. Gives me an excuse to go back tomorrow, when the weather is supposed to be much better.

Click on image for larger view

So in lieu of creative work with fabric, I offer my most recent artwork: Patchwork in Cheese:

It was an ephemeral work of art, but well-received by its intended audience.

Game?

Then check the flip side for pictures…

I tell you what. To make it more interesting, I’ll send a prize to the first person who guesses what the subject is.

Can’t wait to see your responses!

The “something” might be a photograph, or an essay, or a drawing; it may not always be something textile-related. But I will do something each day and preserve it here for my entire audience of 2.7 faithful readers.

Sleepless Mom, 4 am
Pencil on vellum
January 1, 2006

Today’s entry is painful to my vanity, but the story is amusing, so I’m posting it anyway.

Last night was New Year’s Eve, and my son was invited to a party with some friends across town. This was his first New Year’s Eve since turning 21, and I, facing up to reality, had the “I know you know this and I trust you but I’m a Mom and I’m required to say don’t drive while drunk” talk with him before he left. I trust him. I know he’s a good driver, but there are all those other folks out there on the road on New Year’s Eve…

So I went to bed shortly after midnight. I dozed off and on, checking the clock at 1 am, at 2 am, and at 3 am. By 3:00 I was beginning to worry. By 4:00 I was in full-blown Midnight Horror mode. I got up, trying to decide whether I should call his friends, try to track him down, call the State Police, or what.

Then I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror and had to laugh out loud. Midnight Horror, indeed!

So I asked my Horrible Self in the Mirror: “So, are you worried to death because your only son is out at a New Year’s Eve party and it’s 4 am and he’s legal to drink, or are you worried to death because your only son is out at a New Year’s Eve party and it’s 4 am and he’s legal to drink and he’s driving your car???”

And just then the front door opened and he slipped in quietly, trying not to wake me, and I got pencil and paper and recorded the frantic-bags-under-eyes-wild-hair-everywhere-Midnight-Horror-Mom for posterity.

After I hugged him and welcomed him home.

And then I went back to bed and finally to sleep.

But she lights up!

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

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.

A bit of stability in an otherwise chaotic world.