I walked into my studio this morning and was stopped in my tracks by a rainbow , gobsmackingly intense, parked under my wee Structo Loom.
I raced for my camera to catch it before it flickered off to play in another corner of the room.
Such small and fleeting things bring so much joy!
I turned my back and a moment later, the rainbow was gone…..
I hope that unexpected delights will suddenly appear for you too! 🙂
An odd thing has happened with this post…. not only did the rainbow in the studio disappear, but so has the post itself. I’ve been wrestling with getting it to show up again and wondering how and why a post would simply disappear. Sigh…..
I am no longer carving wooden dolls, (health issues).
These One of a Kind Wooden Dolls are all for sale. They are $100 each + shipping.
I spent hours making little fitted shimmery vests, and spent more hours messing around with lace for skirts. Sadly, the lace skirts just didn’t cut it.
So, when a dear friend gave me some vintage hankies, I had an ‘aha!’ moment…. and the skirt dilemma was resolved: Tie the hankies on with ribbons. This is a super simple non-sew skirt option that I came up with decades ago for dolls in my book: Soul Mate Dolls: Dollmaking as a Healing Art. It works so well! And, now, I am happy!
Last week I was given two little gifts that made me feel all hippetty skippety and happy….
The first gift was from a dear friend of ours who has just moved and is downsizing. She’s been treasuring a collection of vintage hankies and some linens from her grandmother for years. She asked if I would like to have them and I am so thrilled to have them ❤
The second gift is from my grandson. He’s been learning the ins and outs of 3D printing and decided to print himself a tiny loom. This was so exciting for me, as he’s been weaving with me, on and off all his life. Having him decide to print himself a little loom made me feel all ‘wheee!’. And, then, when he presented me with this tiny loom, joy simply bubbled up all over! It was such a delight to sit with him and do a little weaving together. Sigh…. happy….
Simple little gifts can be such a source of joy….. ❤ and I hope that little treasures and delights will find their way into your life, too! ❤
One of the things that I am learning about living with Long Covid is to be gentle with myself and stop just “pushing through”. I have had a very bad habit of over working all my adult life, and now, that’s not possible anymore.
So even though I am working to deadline on a new little book (thank goodness it’s a little one- I don’t have the wherewithal to do another ‘big’ book), I am taking time to enjoy some simple little things that make me happy….
What makes me happiest? My husband, our beloved family, our friends…. you know, all the truly BIG important things, so that all goes without saying…. even though I just said it! 🙂
Okay…. so a simple little thing that makes me happy?
Bead weaving. Last summer, I wove a new Goddess figure that was fairly complex…. but life has gotten complicated since last summer, (no time or energy for larger figurative weaving right now… but that will happen again- after the book is done and I am further along with making peace with Long Covid) so for now, I have warped up my little Mirrix Mini and have been weaving a super simple little band that might become a bracelet or a book mark or part of one of the new series of Goddess figures that is currently on hold until the book is done.
At first, my ‘Gremlins’ were all judgie: Oh this is not good enough, blah blah blah….
I told the Gremlins to shut up, as this is NOT about ‘good enough’….
it’s just a simple little thing that makes me happy.
My husband turned the beautiful wooden beading bowls for me almost 40 years ago.
They make me happy, too.
I hope that you are finding Simple Little Things that make you happy, too!
I spent a challenging day in the hospital yesterday, being treated by the most incredibly kind and compassionate Health Caregivers… the EMTs, nurses and doctor were wonderful.
What started out looking like a cardiac even has turned out to be (after more than 8 hours of testing and examination) to be Long Covid.
This explains so much about why I have been feeling so awful for the last 5 months…. I thought that my slowness in recovering from Covid was because of the grief I was suffering over the death of my beloved son in law, and other illnesses in the family.
That might have had an impact, but now that I have had Long Covid explained to me and the fact that I am ticking all the boxes and then some, makes sense.
Please, friends and family, if you are feeling ill- get help! I am now being entered into a Long Covid program with lots of dr apts and hopefully a happy and successful outcome that will leave me feeling like me again.
I wish I had taken more Comfort Bears with me, but I only took one, and gave it to the lovely woman who cared for me in the ambulance (her partner was kind, too, but was more in an admin role than caregiving)…. and she loved it
. Once I am feeling more energetic, I am going to make sure that I send a whole bunch of Comfort Bears to the Emergency Ward!
And, wow, am I ever lucky that one of my close friends is an Emerg Nurse, who took care of me before the ambulance came and who talked with the intake folks. Bless her heart!
I am also soooooo grateful to my darling husband and precious daughter who were there with me through it all and to our sweet son and daughter in law who cared for our puppies while the whole long thing was going on.
So…. please take care of yourselves!
Get help!
I am embarking on some radical self care, so slowing down on all kinds of things. Hugs all round!
The year of the Rabbit is seen as a year of sweet goodness in all kinds of ways.
I am totally in favor of that, and I certainly hope it will show itself to be a gentle and healing and harmonious year in 2023.
This Rabbit year is a busy one for me.
I am focused on 5 things, as well as all the usual things that unfold in life-
1- Grieving the sudden death of my beloved son in law is hard work, and has revealed the deep paradox that love offers us: The immense gratitude for everything that love brings us, including the shocks and anguish of loss, as well as all the incredible blessings… truly paradoxical.
2- I am knitting as many Comfort Bears as I can get done before the Celebration of my lovely Son in Love’s life this Spring in his honor to give to people at the Celebration of his life.
They were very important to him, and he always had at least 3 in his pockets, as well as his personal Comfort Bear, so he could give them to people who needed comfort. He was such a lovely man that people would confide their sorrows to him, and he would give them a comfort bear, and then see if there was something else that he could do for them. Kindness was truly his religion!
As I have been working on the Comfort Bears, a new design for them has evolved, and I will make a pattern and a video for them when I can get to it.
BUT… this year of the Rabbit is a VERY busy one indeed….
3- I am working to deadline on a new book- Yay! I can’t say anything about it, except that I am working with my much loved editor (hurrah) again at Stackpole Books. Writing this book is really helping me to move forward and it is very healing to be focused on loveliness!
4- I am also working on a new solo show of my woven works for 2024…. again… very healing, very powerful, and exciting as I have had lots of breakthroughs into new places in my wovenworks 🙂
5- And this is the one that is most immanent and that I am scrambling to get the work done on asap:
For about 7 years (!) I have been working on a new set of looms and co-creating them with Donna and Gary McFarland of Dewberry Ridge Looms. I am just a (rather large and longish) Hare’s Breath away from finishing up all the editing, pattern writing, video shooting, photo taking, photo editing and all that that involves, so that I can finally…. F I N A L L Y get these looms out into the world. Whew and yay!
And, oh yes, I mustn’t forget…. my husband and I have unexpectedly adopted a very sweet and rather wild little new furkid who is an astonishing handful and is completely full of adorable love and puppy wackiness…. puppies…. sheesh….. and lots of loving laughter.
He is my devoted studio companion, and has his own chair right beside me. Excellent solution to the problem of him needing to be glued to me 🙂 ❤
I hope that 2023 will be a truly fine one for us all. Happy Year of the Rabbit!
Last summer, a friend said that she needed the time it takes when being properly sick….
And now, I am in a time of being properly sick, too….
Last Saturday, after a few days of testing negative….
And a week of being oh so sick….
And, today…. still positive….
But, happily my lovely husband, who has been ahead of me on this journey, is now testing negative, so hopefully, I will too, and the sooner the better.
Luckily, we were fully vaxxed, which makes me very grateful, because the thought of going through this without having done that doesn’t bear thinking of.
Hopefully, I will be feeling much better really quickly and will happily be through it.
The death of our beloved 15 year old small dog has been really hard on both my husband and me.
I wrote in my previous post about the Comfort Doll that I carved from a fallen branch- LINK
When I was carving her, I was inspired to carve a Teddy Bear that would have an open space in it’s heart…..
I used amber color shellac to paint the Teddy Bear to look like our little dog, and then…
My husband and I each placed a tiny scoop of our little dog’s ashes in the open circle.
Then I glued a gold heart over it to seal it….
The glue seals it completely.
It took a while to dry and turn clear.
We both held the little teddy bear and found it to be very comforting….
We sat Teddy Bear and Pollydolly in front of the box of our little guy’s ashes, but when I finished weaving her outfit and knitting a red sweater and blue jeans for him, we sat them on top of the box:
My husband loves working with metal, so he made a little steel doggie: Edward Alloy in tribute to our wee fellow, and it has joined them on the box…..
We have found this tender making of small things in celebration of our wee dog to be very comforting!
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