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:
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!
Last week, our darling little dog died. He was 15 years old and we miss him terribly.
The day before he died, a branch fell from the huge Elm tree in front of our house. I love the tree and so I picked up the branch and moved it onto our lawn, thinking that I should probably carve something from it.
A couple of days after we came home from the Vet, without our dear boy in our arms, the impulse to pick up the branch and start carving grew stronger and stronger.
I had been feeling called to carve another 6 inch doll like one that had carved last fall, so I used her as a companion and guide:
I used the same branch for her arms:
And for her legs, but I got the first pair all wrong, so I made another pair from another scrap of wood.
Of course, it took me a few days to carve her and to allow the still wet wood to dry before I could paint her.
This allowed me to follow my inner prompts that were a gift from this little healing dolly and start work on carving a teddy bear. I have posted about him here: LINK
I was surprised that she wanted a very round head, but when I went to carve it down, she firmly told me to just sand it smooth and live with it. Okay…. it’s important to not try to push the doll where she does not want to go!
She let me know exactly what she wanted for her hair, leotard, leggings and boots:
I knitted her a dress that was totally wrong for her, but works beautifully on a different doll.
Then I tried a different dress that I had knitted for another little doll. Nope.
She wanted me to weave her a white skirt and shrug from yarn that my daughter in law spun.
So, I did….
Her name is Pollydolly and I have found the process of carving her (and the teddy bear that I will post about next) to be very soothing and healing.
Dollmaking is very much a healing art and no matter what form it takes, it’s good for the soul.
Grieving is a journey that is unique to each person who has to follow the path, and it’s important to do the things that help the grief be nurtured in a transformative way that becomes the root of compassion.
Carving dolls and bears and knitting and weaving are an important part of my way of healing.
In the next post about the Teddy Bear that Pollydolly told me to carve, I’ll show you where she is sitting now. LINK
If you are grieving, please know that you are not alone. There is so much to grieve right now, and we all have to find our way through it. Blessings on your journey!
My husband, Jim Findlay, and I really enjoy co-creating.
He has always had a penchant for welding and metal smithing, and because of the pandemic, was able to explore his love of metal working more.
He’s a musician, and has had almost all his gigs cancelled for the last 2 years.
So he re-directed his creativity into his woodworking and metalsmithing.
Seeing what he was up to inspired me…. I’ll show you more pictures of some of our co-creations later…
I have loved the ‘Heart and Hand’ blessing image from folk tradition and worked with it in various ways for decades.
I asked Jim if he would be into welding hands that I could add hearts and cuffs to in various ways.
He liked that idea.
And then, we started taking Fused Glass classes, and we got all excited about making the
hearts and cuffs in Fused Glass. We loved working together on the glass. It’s magical!
We decided that this was the perfect Christmas gift for several family members.
We took the class several times over the spring, summer and autumn to hone our skills.
(We make Christmas presents all year long, so it’s part of our rhythm as a couple.)
It took a lot of trial and error to get the hands just right, and so Jim built a very
nifty jig to shape the rods. (Lots of cutting and welding was involved!)
We are sooooo pleased with how the Hearts and Hands turned out.
They were totally made with love in every step!
One of our family members said that hanging it in her window
would be like waving to her neighbours, and sending love out into the world.
I was delighted when she said that, because that is exactly what the Heart and Hands are meant to be!
They are a symbol of welcome, but also of protection, too….
and the metaphor of saying that only good things are welcome is pretty significant these days.
We learned a lot while making the Hearts and Hands.
We have also started exploring including wooden hearts that I sculpt from offcuts of fallen trees that have been given to us for firewood, but Jim has been milling into usable lumber rather than just chopping for the wood burning stove.
( We sent the first one of the sculpted wooden heart version off to friends without remembering to take a pic of it, but will make more and then photograph them.)
The Heart and Hands were the inspiration for making the cardboard folders
Many years ago, I bought a vintage gnome at a garage sale.
Rather liked that he had weathered off all his paint, and yet was still steadfastly all in one piece.
Last month, when I was weaving hearts for the window, I decided to add gnomes to the window, and the old fellow didn’t look cheerful enough to add to the gaity.
So I painted him:
It struck me as being odd that he didn’t have a mustache, so I added one, using my much loved old ‘Gnomes’ book as a guide.
I tried to add the Bunny to the window, but he’s too big and floppy, so he’s sitting in a corner of the studio instead.
I designed him many years ago for Canadian Living magazine.
Here’s a link to the pattern for him and his sweetheart: KNITTED BUNNIES
And, then, I took pics of some of the other things in that corner of the studio.
Including a little video:
And then I totally forgot to blog about Gnomes and Bunnies and looms.
Tottie Talks Crafts Blog 