Stitching together remembrances

Today some slightly different stitching on a big communal project.

Off to the Henderson RSA with a old friend to work on the 5000 Poppies project.

We stitched hundreds of knitted, stitched, crocheted red poppies onto a three-metre banner which will be part of several WW100 exhibitions and commemorative events over the next year.

Hundreds of people all over the country have been making poppies for this project, it felt great to be part of that big group working together to honour our history and make sure we learn from it. Find out more here: 


Among the many laughs on this happy day, also some poignant moments as we read the individual commemorations that accompanied some flowers.

They shall grow not old as we who are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning...

...we shall remember them.

Habits

Blogjune comes to a close. Thanks Con!  I think this year I managed to post almost every day - and I think most of them were worth reading.  Its not over - I like routine and have a few drafts in the holding pattern.

Here's another of my sillier routines - the Bed Head Project. Selfies when the sleeping hairstyle is especially good. It does you good to laugh! And to sing, don't forget that invitation.

Working small for a change

Today I picked up scraps and made some little quilts. Postcard sized.

What a change and relief from the recent giants!  Working at small scale is quick and easy. Everything fits in the hand, holds together without pins and doesn't need special engineering support to get through the sewing machine.

Of course they don't have quite the same impact and they wouldn't keep much of you warm. But great to freshen up with a change, use some scraps and to try out some new ideas.

They also serve who only stand and puff

Sometimes my role as Fairy Godmother includes being a stand-in Gymnnastics Mom.  It's a highly specialised form of sideline athlete. 

Today's challenge involved cardio-vascular fitness, aesthetic sensibility and marshalling tiny gymnast-siblings into a production line.

Yes - the moms and tinies prepped the practice gym for tomorrow's junior competition. My favourite bit: the balloon walk!

Starting over

Yesterday I shared a fabulous knitting technique. http://stitchsarah.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/knitters-delight-perfect-tubular.html

Tonight I finished the ribbing, admired my work, unpicked the contrast yarn and discovered...an orphan loop!  I'd missed picking up one stitch. Aue!

No cunning idea for rescue came on a flash of inspiration, so the oldest strategy in the knitter's repertoire came into play.

Unpick it all and start again.

A bit of a bother, but to be honest I made a better job of it second time round. It took about the same time as it takes to sing the Beatles "Starting Over" five times.  I wish this strategy were available in more facets of life!



Knitters' delight: perfect tubular ribbing cast-on

For a change, I share this technique learned two-thirds of a lifetime ago. Credit to Heather Halcrow Nicholson

1. Using any contrast yarn and speedy method, cast on HALF the number of desired stitches.

2. Knit one row in contrast.

3. In proper project yarn, knit 5 rows Stocking Stitch, beginning and ending with knit rows.

Now for the cool bit. 

4. P1 from the needle, move the yarn to the back.

5. With the left needle, pick up the bottom-most loop of project yarn where it pokes down below the contrast.

6. Knit this stitch. Move yarn to the front.

Repeat steps 4-6, alternating purling from the needle with knitting from the bottom row of project yarn loops, until all stitches have been purled from the needle. 

Voila! The knit stitches have created the tube and you have the correct number of stitches. Continue in k1, p1 rib as required. Unpick/snip out the contrast yarn whenever you like.

Singing again, dressed up!

I've said it before, it's great to sing. And everyone can.

Tonight, I sang in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Ode to Joy, with our own amazing NZSO. Pictured, me in concert rig. Any opportunity for sparkling cleavage, I say!

You can find my next public singing dates here http://www.acs.org.nz

This is not simply an attempt to sell you tickets - though that would be great! - but you'll see there are a couple of opportunities to come to an Open Rehearsal, see what we do and even try it out for yourself in the anonymity of the chorus.

Remember, everyone can sing!! I invite you to take up one of these free opportunities to enrich your life with this beautiful activity. Wear whatever you like, but please join me!

Pre-concert nerves? why yes, just a little

Final night of review and rest, for tomorrow I'll be a Beethoven 9 gal.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L7lQ_KplYHs 

We're performing this incredible work - from memory! - with the wonderful NZSO 

It's more than a little scary to look forward to. Utterly amazing and exhilarating to do!

Life as a working artist. Part 6, Delivery

Today I delivered my first artquilt commission to very happy clients. I'm rather happy myself.

The work looked great, met/exceeded expectations and was ready slightly ahead of schedule. 

This project was a gift in so many ways: Recycling my professional skills in project management, client relationships and service delivery management.  
Working with people I respect, admire and enjoy spending time with.
Making something unique and beautiful, inspired by a joyous event.

Can't share the whole thing, but here are the last stitches going into the binding.

So, today is definitely a day living the dream and feeling truly grateful.

Out Of Order...

...and Otherwise Occupied.

I'll be back when I've beaten this virus. Hopefully in time to sing the big concert on Sunday.

I am my mother

We are so alike.

Once upon a time this would have bugged me terribly. Now it's comfortable, friendly, a source of comfort and compassion, a foundation for cooperation.

No doubt it's been true forever, but it seems recent. Maybe it's to do with a bit more relaxation on her side and more maturity on mine.

Maybe as we both grow up we are learning to like ourselves and the reflection of ourselves in each other.



I am my mother-in-law.

I realised today that my quiet, no-fuss, engineer husband is even smarter than I thought he was.

Not only was he smart enough to recognise and secure unto himself the marvel that is me, he has also Married His Mother.

This realisation has been dawning on me for a while. Spent the last 24 hours with my lovely mother-in-law. If course she's lovely, she's Just Like Me!

*we like the same breakfast
*we find the same things funny (almost everything but especially the male members of the family)
*we are both crafty needlewomen
...the list could go on for some time.

We had a super-fun day together, sewing, knitting and playing with her extremely flash embroidery machine. Now I know I don't need one myself, I've got a pal who loves to share.

The blokes didn't get many words in edgeways, but the clever chaps like it like that.

Being able to be friends with the in-laws is a great blessing.

The legion of teachers

I've learned a lot from books but more from humans.

Almost every skill, piece of knowledge or strong memory has a person attached.

Maybe this is a result of my gratitude practice http://stitchsarah.blogspot.co.nz/2014/01/gratitude-again.html. Each time I exercise a skill, use some knowledge or review a memory, the person arises from my memory and I thank them silently.

Chris, who clarified depreciation accounting; Annette, who gave me the key to perfect mitred bias binding; Julie, who taught me how to find my "head voice". There must be hundreds of others. 

I think of you all as the benefactors of my life. I honour you by using your gifts as well as I can - and by sharing what I have received.

If you can speak...

... you can sing.

I've been singing in choirs most of my life, even had some individual lessons to improve how I sound alone. Nothing special to begin with, but over time I've improved, and I expect that to continue. More about that in this earlier post http://stitchsarah.blogspot.co.nz/2012/10/learning-to-sing-at-last.html

It's the Best Thing. Better than chocolate. Or sex. It may be that I'm doing either/both of those unskilfully, or that more participants/lessons might help, but you get the idea.

If I were given a diva's bouquet for every time someone said to me "I wish I could sing" or "I can't sing" ... florists would be our most profitable business sector.

I don't know where Voice Shaming comes from, but it's a horrible thing we do to each other. 

Why do people with zero expertise choose to sneer at others' voices?
Why do so many of us take that baseless criticism on board?

Honestly folks, if you can speak, you can sing. 

Singing uses exactly the same physical equipment as speech, just some additional skills required. Some people may find those skills easier to learn than others do, and some people's physical equipment may offer a more pleasing basic sound than others, but it's something we all can do. And it feels so good! If you sing with me, 100% guarantee I won't be judging what you sound like, I'll just be so happy we're doing a fun thing together. 

The picture is my view at rehearsal in the Auckland Town Hall. A whole lot of happy people doing the good stuff.

Personal best

Walking is a key part of my mental and physical health programme. The favourite is 6km at low tide on Muriwai Beach, but anywhere with a reasonable surface will do.

I use Map my Run on the iPhone to record my efforts. It's a simple enough app but like anything, prone to issues caused by the User.  This morning I somehow fumbled an unintentional Pause at the beginning. Over a kilometre later I noticed and resumed. Net effect: significant distance covered in tiny time.

The resulting spectacular pace makes my regular brisk walks look rather, well, pedestrian - it will have to go. But I'll keep it for a while out of vanity. A 93 km/hr split - not bad for a middle-aged artist.

What shall I do about it?

Something is wrong somewhere, the details matter not. I shared my thoughts about it with a friend.

With great perceptiveness the friend responded "that's what you get when xxx and xxx. Welcome to the future"

I don't want to accept the inevitability of that kind of future. I want to find the sweet, powerful effective place between doing nothing because it's pointless, and doing any old thing out of impatient reaction.

Somewhere between my friend's clever cynicism and my passionate anger, surely there lies a powerful source of energy and direction. To take meaningful action that might improve the situation.

For now, I'm making the world a better place one beautiful warm artwork at a time. While looking about for other leverage points.

Going to the water

When I'm angry, sad, afraid or hurt - thankfully a diminishing proportion of my time - I go to the water.

A swim or a walk on the beach is exercise, always a good tactic for emotional balancing.

There's beautiful or at least neutral sensory input (scenery, sound of waves, texture of sand, buffeting by the wind) all of which help me get out of my head and into my body.

Even more beneficial, the ocean or river is an unmistakeable reminder that everything changes, all difficulties wash away in time. That anger, fear or sadness need not be permanent.


Life as a working artist. Part 4, Going boldly online.

I think I made my first website in 1996. I've been posting pictures of my working process to my Facebook timeline for some time, and today I made a FB page for my studio or business or whatever it is. As a former cataloguer the proffered categories seemed incomplete, unhelpful. Curious to find out if this will be an effective way to share what I'm doing. There are a few more developments in that line still to come.

It's been a long circular path to come round to making an online presence for myself. It seems a little strange when so much of my recent energy has gone towards making in the physical realm. We'll see!

How long does it take? Part 2, Are you really asking about duration?

I am still figuring out how to answer this question.

It comes most often from the non-crafty, non-artist person looking at my work, with perhaps a degree of horrified fascination.

They are (at minimum) intending to show a polite interest. They are (I think) baffled by the mechanics of creation.

Like a good former reference librarian, I can't take this question at face value. I want to climb into their head a little, figure out what it is they really want to know.

If the question was "how long did it take?" that's amenable of a brief answer:elapsed time at x intensity.

However, the question is almost always "how long DOES it take?" and I think that's a deeper question about ongoing process and the experience of making. 

Am I right? 

The photo shows a king-sized quilt of hand-pieced 3-D bow tie blocks, 4 inches square. By the end of the project I could stitch one with my eyes shut, in about 15 minutes. I made them only when travelling, over a period of about 7 years. How long did that take? To me, it is the least interesting element.

How long does it take..? Part 1

Once upon a time I had hair long enough to sit on (which is a most unpleasant thing to actually do). I lost it as the result of a bit of drama. A story for another day.

People were always wondering if it took a lot of time to care for. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. Undo the overnight braid, Rapunzel; twirl it around a few times and stick something interesting through the nest. 1 minute. Easy-peasy, super quick.

Now it's short and to look good requires a daily soaping, a selection of sticky products, hot-air drying with 2 sizes of brush, generally quite a bit of fuss. Minimum 15 minutes.

Or, I can leave it be. In the interests of doing something more interesting with my time.

If you know me on Facebook, you may have seen my Bed Head Project. Selfies straight out of bed. Immortalising the wonderful styling efforts of the feather pillow. Much more fun than all that hot air!

Thanks to Corin for the inspiration for this post :-)

Life as a working artist. Part 3, Later introduction.

...more librarianly whakapapa. Things took a technical turn, I understudied and eventually replaced the IT librarian. Made my first website in '96. Learned to read building plans, procurement documents and service level reports. Ran educational and design projects, participated in ILS specification and selection, managed major system migrations and system configuration to support developing library business needs.

My colleagues were clever, well-educated people with an amazing work ethic and esprit de corps. We had so much fun.

I'm not working in libraries any more, but I'm glad my professional life has largely been in service to the servants of the reader.

Life as a working artist. Part 2, Early introduction.

The format of this post title complies (if my memory serves me) with the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd revision (aka AACR2) for titles of the individual parts of multipart works, where these titles have both numeric and textual components.

In other words, I have been a cataloguer.

Why the confession/demonstration?  Reviewing Con's list of #blogJune participants against my draft posts, I felt I needed to assert my library chops - because I won't be talking much about current library practice.

For most of my working life I've thought of myself as a librarian, though I don't hold a library degree.

In the 1st caterpillar phase I shelved books at the local public library, learning about order, searching on microfiche and film, caring for serials, profiling and selecting for housebound customers, managing volunteers, most importantly delivering service to a community.  My colleagues were clever, well-educated women with an amazing work ethic and esprit de corps. We had so much fun.

We also worked through the mission that is a green-fields library computer system implementation - from card catalog/circulation to a menu-based amber screen system. 

Then I went to library school and moved on to 10 years of cataloging. Books, yes but also music (sheet & recorded), MBA videos, journals, newspaper articles, exhibition catalogs, jigsaw puzzles, toys, artworks, a rug, a banana and my favourite : packets of chocolate biscuits.

I learned about meticulousness, accuracy with speed, judgement, access, supporting discovery, indexing. My colleagues were clever, well-educated women with an amazing work ethic and esprit de corps. We had so much fun.

[Part 3, Later introduction will follow]


Portrait by one feature: shoulders

He's a short man, made to look shorter by the disproportionate breadth of his shoulders.  They nearly ended his life before he had a chance to draw breath -a struggle for him and Mother to achieve his birth, both battered and bruised.

Those shoulders powered kayaks through white water, hockey balls into the net, sometimes knuckles into faces. I learned their breadth most accurately, making custom-fit shirts short enough, lean through the torso, with room for the bulky deltoid and trapezius muscles.

That frame gives him the posture of a fighter, of a man who carries the world on  his broad, broad shoulders.

Portrait by one feature: toes

Sometimes you need only one of their features to bring a whole person to mind. An excellent observation practice for the working artist.

Tenfold, no losses, broken One hides the memory of her pain
Tinted - the bolder the better.
An almost-perfect curving arc of graduating lengths.
Big Ones lean a little away from centre, witness to winkle-pickers past.
Otherwise we are all straight, strong, flexible, talented!
Number 4 nestles slightly under number 3
Tiny 5 has a triangular nail. She too shows the signs of the search for the perfect shoe.
We have learned to accept the Jandal, but go everywhere we can unwrapped. Best of all in the ocean. 

By my toes shall ye know me.

Portrait by one feature: hands

Large hands, strong and steady. Warmer than most.
Deft in precise creation and repair of delicate things.
Scarred and soft - the serious hard work is long past.
Square ridged nails - short on the left, long on the right - a guitarist
Quiet and restful, not eloquent, shy.

You know whose hands these are.


Portrait by one feature: eyes

Like a precious jade
Like the most delicate of ferns
Like the tropic sea I anchored in
Like a new apple
Her eyes

(Sometimes you need only one of their features to bring a whole person to mind. An excellent observation practice for the working artist.)

Life as a working artist. Part 5, Burden or bonus?

I'm putting in a solid 9 hours a day in the Soft Foundry (my sewing studio) and making more beautiful warm things than I ever have.

The more I make, the more ideas I get. Everything I sketch or arrange sparks off a new trail of inspiration.

Sometimes all these wonderful ideas and inspirations feel like a burden. How will I ever work with them all?

For now, the plan is to draw, sketch or sample as much as I possibly can. I don't actually have to make them all. When it's time to start something new, I just do whatever I feel like. Simple, really.

Here's a something that might become something, someday. Or not.

Best sort of delay

As is so often the case, I've left today's post to the last minute. It will therefore be short.

The hour of writing is so late because I've been out for the evening - a date at relatively short notice with a dear friend.

We saw an  excellent film (Ida: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ida-2014), ate a delicious supper, best of all, hours of challenging and amusing conversation.

In my hours in the studio alone I've thought a lot about human connection of all sorts. Again and again I realise the benison of friendships old and new. 

Life as a working artist. Part 1, Wardrobe crisis

It's pretty dreadful. 

I used to care about how I looked when I went to the office. My shoe collection was legendary for variety, colour and often total lack of practicality.

Now it's PJs or exercise clothes all day. And on my feet? Not even nail polish.


KNOWING / notKNOWING

Hey, you friends and readers who are older than me. Younger people too probably. A question.

How do you KNOW?

You all seem to know your own hearts, your own desires. To have gained or found or created your peace and confidence with who you are and where you're going.

Maybe you think that's true of me too.

Afraid not. I remember realising on my 25th birthday that I had never imagined being older than 24. In the 20+ years that have passed, I have only rarely felt that I knew simply and wholeheartedly who I am, and where I want to be.

There are really good things about this.

I believe I've thought more about what matters, about who I admire and why, more about my choices, than if I had an autopilot managing my course. I've felt more deeply each decision that comes my way. I like to think I've been more open to hear others' thoughts and ideas.

I've come to be comfortable with that uncertainty. Maybe I do KNOW.
Maybe I'm The Woman Who Makes It Up As She Goes Along And It Works Out Just Fine.

In praise of Round Robins

Not a fat little songbird , though sometimes they participate.

Round Robin is a group quilting practice. Each person makes a small start to a quilt project, swaps it with someone else and adds to what they received. It goes on, exchanging and adding, until everyone has worked on every project. The finished works - usually quite large - is given back to the person who started it.

Some groups have a "recipe" for what technique or design to use at each swap. Many groups keep the growing project secret from the originator, so there are wonderful surprises at the final handover.

It's a great experience to get you out of your comfort zone and face a regular design challenge.

A bunch of my friends are using this process to make quilts for the Mangere Women's Refuge.

The picture above is Cherry's Mariner's compass centre, I've added the deep orange framing triangles. I can't wait to see how this turns out- and to swap for my next challenge.

Memories for all time: #3, the first hour in Singapore

02-DEC-1978
It was a much longer plane flight than we were accustomed to. 12 hours! half a day from your life is a big deal at 9 years old. I don't remember being grumpy. I don't even remember my 5-year-old brother being grumpy. Probably best I don't ask my Mum for an adult recollection of the trip.

We were charmed by the care-package of strange fluffy socks, folding toothbrush, tiny tube of toothpaste.  We'd had a smoker in our home until the previous year - so the drift from the aeroplane's smoking section had a familiar comforting feel.

Mum had prepared us for moving to Singapore by teaching us to eat with chopsticks. Sliced banana in a bowl! No mere noodle, beansprout or shrimp was ever safe from us after that initiation. We were quite disappointed to discover there were forks...

So...finally the big plane lands. The doors open. A wave of soft warm moist air rolls almost visibly through the dry chill of the cabin. And the smell! A complex mixture of avgas and jungle - decaying leaves and waxy sweet perfumes dissolved in kerosene.

Down the stairs onto the warm tarmac in the sudden dark of tropical early evening. Bright lights haloed by the most Enormous flying insects, unable to dodge the tiny bats feasting among them. Strange faces and accents directing us onto the old-fashioned white bus, rattling off into the mysterious scented night....

What I did on February 1

There are three perfectly good posts I've written tonight, and they can all wait because I'd rather give you the truth in my heart right now

My overflowing joyous pain-clotted leaky heart

It's been one of those days with a lot in it. 

Beginning in easy harmony with a dear longtime friend -- doubting my own judgement -- walking hard up the high hill, alone and pleased to work hard -- smelling the scent of roses in the stone-terraced gardens -- friendly chat with strangers -- being cross with myself -- finding a good cup of coffee -- getting irritated with beloved people -- finding a tactful way to be alone -- watching Aotearoa slip by beneath the plane -- nurturing the seed of a plan to see more -- maintaining discretion -- saying goodbye to three dear people, not knowing when I will see them again -- dreading that yet more choice and change will be upon me soon --  realising i can have my cake and eat it too -- messing around and wasting my own time -- driving far too fast to arrive on time -- hyperventilating with anxiety because nearly running out of fuel, having to stop to fill -- relieved to not be late anyway -- coming to a favourite place and finding myself quietly accepted -- enjoying my sewing project -- hating my sewing project -- enjoying it again -- feeding the kitten --  talking, listening, laughing, embracing, kissing -- sharing pain and fear and grief -- eating the delicious dinner -- enjoying a moment of pretending i belong to a family -- helping with a simple chore -- discovering new connections and ideas -- wishing that everything were different -- mocking my own self-pity -- finishing a project -- planning a next-time -- being peaceful -- seeing a shooting star -- knowing that despite all the difficulties: 


If you, dear reader, were part of this day, thank you for all you gave 

Memories for all time: #4, Giant Ladybirds. Ladybugs, actually

Somewhere near Sacramento, May 2006



We're driving the tiniest Dodge RV we could hire, and it's still plenty spacious for 2 adults - one of us is a 6-footer. Everything is bigger in the US. Of which more later.

Our start-point: San Francisco, our destination: Los Angeles. We're driving the famous Pacific Coast Highway, starting with a run up the Napa Valley and back down past Sacramento.

It was a wonderful trip. The Napa Valley section was my secret homage to Ursula K. Le Guin's not-quite-novel "Always coming home" which might be going to be set there. Without meaning to, we found ourselves driving past the great wind farm that had caught our eye from the air days earlier. The turbines are giant ballerinas, dancing a graceful slow twirl in the light air of evening.

Near the wind farm we found a "park" where we could camp, or rather, a permitted open area to park the Dodge and feed the shower with quarters. Not a tree in sight to break that constant breeze ruffling the endless acres of bleached wheat grass.

In the morning, eating breakfast at the massive concrete picnic table, I suddenly realise I am sharing the space with dozens of ladybirds. Or, since we're in America, Ladybugs. They deserve the capital letter because they are HUGE. Each one the size of my fingernail, more orangey than the l'birds at home, but unmistakably my ferocious, spotted totem insect.



Witchery

I've always considered myself to be a scientist. So it's a little strange that I also conduct weird and (until now) secret rituals including these:

The Vigil : watching progress or change as a way of participating to affect the outcome. Favourite is monitoring airport departure and arrival pages as my friends travel. To "see them safely there/home"

The Shrine : constructing arrangements of random, discovered objects. Outside the ballroom collecting fallen sequins, diamantés, hairpins and assembling them in a niche in the wall. Telling a story.

The Litany : composing and reciting speeches or conversations. Practice for communicating difficult topics, and for examining my own potential reactions.

The Revelation : wherein the truth is laid out plain by means of speech or letter - this is an example.

The Robe or Vestments : symbolic or significant clothes or shoes. Recalling a location, event or emotion.

The Amulet : jewellery worn to memorialise an event or invoke a special power. Current favorites are a series of astronomical objects photographed and printed on porcelain discs.

The Sacrifice : giving, destroying or disposing of an object as an imagined exchange for a desired outcome.

The Service : carrying out an activity for another as a gift or transfer of energy from me to them.

Crazy, superstitious stuff, for a scientist. But science has taught me that there is far more to the universe than we can yet describe, and even a cursory reading of history clearly shows that many of today's comfortable concepts were unthinkably strange until recently.  

I recently read some difficult physics showing that matter - that's EVERYTHING - is continuous. There is no separation between anything, including you and me. Or, as Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently put it:  "...the fundamental interconnectedness of everything..." That's a good motto for this mystic/scientist.

Memories for all time: #2, plane journeys

We'd been flying Auckland to Oamaru to visit grandparents as long as I could remember, at least once a year. A plane to Christchurch. A much smaller plane for the flight Christchurch to Oamaru - with a brief bounce at Timaru, if you can believe it. Grass runways at both these small airports.

The pilot stayed overnight at the only hotel, and flew back the next day. He (always a he!) was always a friend, and welcomed my small brother and me into the fascinating crammed cockpit for pre-flight inspection.

The little plane flew low and the South Island sky was always clear. We cherished our turns at the window seat and were utterly fascinated with the landscape - mysterious braided rivers, dry hills, endless straight roads, crawling cars and tractors, tiny cows and sheep. Later we would drive through that landscape - unbelted between the grown-ups on the front bench seat of Granddad's big blue Holden. To this day I cannot comprehend how anyone can be bored on a long car journey, or ignore the miracle of physics that lifts a machine into the sky.

Some early mornings on the return flight there were crates of tiny yellow day-old chicks in the rear of the cabin. Being ferried up to Christchurch to begin their miserable lives as battery hens, no doubt.  I can still hear their tiny peeping calls over the roar of the propellers.


Memories for all time: #1, the shower

Once upon a time,

...not a vague time, exactly remembered. I was 16, a straight-As student at Carmel College, in the home of my favourite class, the Biology lab, at the end of 4th period on a Thursday late in April.


Cleaning the blackboard at the front of the classroom. Behind the long teachers' bench that ran across the podium. So neat, that broad space. Territory of of our clever, confident, stylish young teacher, who could use words like "envaginate" without blink or blush and made us all feel we were capable of comprehending anything.

There on the scratchpad, in small flowing script:

I cry in the shower, the falling water hides the sound of pain

It was impossible to look away. My eyes were as caught as my breath, as my heart thudded with a strange mixture of pity, contempt and fear. I will never forget that moment.

Then, I didn't understand, though I felt the powerful pull of recognition.
Now, I know exactly that feeling.

Then, my teacher seemed another class of human, so far advanced from my own immaturity.
Now, I'm 20 years older than she was.

The great difference is that the contempt and fear are (mostly) gone, gentled with experience and compassion. And I've learned to let the water wash away the pain. I hope hers is gone too.

gratitude, again


I'm sure I've written about gratitude before. It's still a somewhat selfish activity - most times I'm deliberately practicing gratitude because I know it's one of my best strategies in the battle against gloom. There is nothing more effective in quelling a pity-party than counting your blessings, speaking aloud an audit of beatitude.

But sometimes, there's a spontaneous magical moment of simple joyous realization of how good and beautiful life is.  I like to think those moments come as a result of deliberate practice.

Thank you, holy universe, for those moments.

the despicable emotion


Tonight I did an incredibly rare thing for me.  I expressed my suddenly unbearable internal misery in 15 tweets of self-pity.

I simply could not be either positive or silent any longer, despite using every hard-won technique in my extensive repertoire of mental health management. Go look at them here https://twitter.com/stitchsarah if schadenfreude is your thing. Or maybe you'll just be disgusted.

It wasn't fun or pretty.  Some very kind people contacted me with beautiful messages, for which I am truly grateful, but overall it wasn't a good exercise. I ended up ashamed, disgusted with myself, resolving to try harder to keep those feelings away from public view. I'm well aware that this post is an exercise in ritual self-humiliation in futile expiation of the above-mentioned shame. Along with all the risks of being transparent about imperfection.

Folk wisdom says it's best to be honest, to share your real feelings. But look at what the images for self-pity show. It's an emotion that is mocked and despised. Where's the distinction between so-despicable self-pity, and the honest and necessary acknowledgement that one is desperately unhappy?

Naturally I'm fighting to turn away from this. Yes, I'm practicing gratitude for every scrap of good in my life AND the lessons from the difficult stuff. Of course I'm doing my bloody utmost to be positive. Most of the time it works. But not all.



unpacking, creating order


I returned back to my flat after a beautiful week away housesitting.  That means unpacking the car and bags, and a lot of sorting out.  Creating order. Which is my very favourite thing among many others.

"Homecoming" is easy now - it's the flipside of the speedy packing I wrote about earlier. However, housesitting is really different from a hotel trip - in so many ways. Focusing on just two elements:

I take much more stuff, because I plan to do some nice recreational things, and cook of course. This time I took sheet music (singing practice), sewing machine & fabric (finish a quilt top) and an assortment of edibles to complement the good stuff I knew I'd find in the pantry.

It's bigger, and I use more of the space. I had stuff in two bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, laundry, lounge, office, garage, bikeshed, deck! Pretty well spread out, what luxury.

You do your best when packing up to leave, but it's inevitable something gets left behind. That's where the orderly unpacking comes in - if I put stuff away in its proper place as soon as I get home, theoretically I'll notice the gaps and realise what's missing. So far, I'll I've missed is the cheese ("Who moved my cheese?") Hopefully the family will recognise it's feta and make a Greek salad.

Hope there's nothing else more significant ...





Solitary no more

I've been house-sitting this week, with the bonus of a tiny wee kitten to care for. She's been just enough company. I've seen a handful of friends - exactly the right people and the right duration - otherwise a most blissful solitude.

Tonight the family returned, late in the evening, after a long drive. They're all in bed now, but it's incredible how the feeling of the house has changed. Solitary no more, a new energy.

The birthday

December 31 is my birthday. It's an odd date, but it's the one that late 60s obstetric practice delivered (yes, that was intentional) and at least there's always fireworks.


There was a lot more than fireworks this year : a beautiful location, a fun challenge, numerous good and kind wishes, some art making, time with friends and a swim in the ocean. And a kitten.

Feeling lucky, blessed and glad to have made it to 45.