Meeeeerrrrrry Christmas

HO HO HO

Well, if you’ve followed me a while, you’ll know that I don’t really “do” Christmas. I like the pretty lights and the greenery, but the commercial part leaves me cold. I ordered Sandy and I some socks from Nordic Socks and surprised him with them yesterday. That’s as exciting as it’s gonna get around here, folks.

The studio at the arts center is closed today through Monday. I meant to go yesterday but instead I spent the day lazing about reading and playing games. I cut up some of Sandy’s old shirts with the intention of finishing up the blanket made from his old clothes that I nearly finished about 3-4 years ago. Since I gifted myself with some new clothes this holiday season, I’m going to do a major purge of my own clothes. most of which are not really fit to donate anywhere. According to the news articles I’ve read, our American cast-offs cause additional problems rather than helping the poor. Most of them end up in the garbage anyway.

One of the things I have pondered a lot in these last few months is what really makes me happy. There are times when absolutely nothing makes me happy. I just don’t want to do anything but turn my brain off or distract it with strategy games or reading. So it is important that I identify something that really makes me happy, not something that I think “should” make me happy. That is a prime Enneagram One sentiment – this should make me happy so I should be doing it. Sometimes those things change and we hang on to them. I think that happens a lot to me, and in art in general.

I remember having those “flow” days in the little studio in the church when I wove the denim strips into blankets, and Sandy’s shirts became cloth woven squares for the blanket that I mentioned above. And just playing with weaving the cloth strips into different colored squares, sometimes veering off into wild directions. Then sewing them to stabilize them was meditative, whether I did it on the machine or by hand. I owe this direction in my fiber art to Jude Hill, and I am eternally grateful for her inspiration.

So, even though the focus this week is to finish weaving Cathedral and to finish sewing these masks, in between I will be readying for this next phase of weaving cloth strips again and slow stitching. I’m also going to finish warping the Macomber loom and weave a rag rug from the knit shirts that I’ll be discarding. I already have a whole basket of these, as well as a whole lot of denim that someone donated to me long ago. A friend and I went to Reconsidered Goods, a really good local thrift store here with a focus on recycling and catering to artists, and they had a big bin full of torn fabric strips that you could fill a big grocery bag with for one dollar. Some of the printed fabrics were quite fabulous so I did that. If I wear out my hands cutting strips, as I often did before, I can play with them. But I’m going to try to stop myself from cutting too much at a time. I might manage this if I switch from project to project over the course of a day.

We also need to walk. We have to start moving our bodies. We NEED TO WALK, every day, several times a day. We have to do this whether we want to or not.