Startled Erupt

Okay... I'm going to try to make this blog thing active, attract energy and get my creative mojo on.
Here's the deal... I'm working on a 1) garden, 2) a new way of working with fabric, 3) making a living and 4) living the good life.
So... on the first count, I don't have much experience with growing stuff. I've always said that I'm a person who makes things, not a person who grows things, but I've come to realize that making things and growing things comes from a similar place, a place of nurturing. To make things,one has to nurture the creative mind. Ya gotta keep an eye out, keep looking, always feel when you're looking, let the visual world get in your brain, and your body, which comes out in your hands, in which ever medium you choose. I'm (hopefully) starting to wake up again and let that feeling come back to my seeing, to honour the things and sights that move me, to let it be okay that what I see moves me. Its okay. On growing... and nurturing... little tiny seedlings which miraculously sprout, then grow into plants with real presence, like the wee beet seedlings that sprout up in their little doublet cutie-pie bow-tie way and grow into hardy, leafy, red/green robust leaves, with that fantastic Deep Red Root down below, that TASTES SO GOOD, especially when roasted. Water, sun, soil, attention, a little education used in the right places... all these elements make the stuff grow.

On working with fabric....  I'm still making quilts. I have always had a bit of a problem with my way of making art. I generally make things that are "craft" rather than "art", but then I make them so they are not really useful. Like furniture that you can't sit on, or scarves that you can't wear, quilts that are too small to sleep under, like that. Then, when I make something useful, like bags from recycled textiles, or aprons from beautiful linen fabric... then, I don't feel like its art. Then its something useful.
Frustrating... right? So, I will make quilts. I may make some big enough to sleep under. I may make them and mount them to a wooden support, much like the canvas that a real artist paints on is mounted. I may do something else. And.. its okay. I may be a fuck-up (to quote Herb- not that he was talking about me), but its okay. That's why I am working with fabric in a different way than before, I am doing what moves me and that's that. Art or not, craft or not, that's that.

As for making a living; I will have many jobs, (I have had many jobs). Currently, and hopefully for a long time,  I work at the bottle depot in my new small community. My focus there is on types and sizes of bottles, whether they once contained alcoholic beverages or non-alcoholic beverages, and whether or not they contained beverages or some other substance. If a bottle that once contained vinegar comes in, we send it to the recycling centre. Things that come to the bottle depot, in order to be redeemed for a refund, must have once contained stuff to drink. Not stuff to make drinks out of, but drinks themselves. Plastic, glass, aluminum, metal, large or small or extra small, brown glass of a certain shape, glass containers of a certain height, did it contain milk or milk substitutes such as almond "milk" or rice "milk", was it imported from a different place, is it listed in the current list, all of these things must be considered before handing the lovely person in front of me a nickel or a dime. Wow! I love this job too, for the very fact that it just may be erasing, with every transaction, the work I did for the previous ten or so years, that of a retail clerk... charging a customer money for the material goods they felt they had to have. Here, in this job, I total up the # of beverage containers that a person brings in and then.. I HAND THEM MONEY!!! I love this, its like an eraser for all the years of taking money. I feel that with each transaction I am moving towards the light, god help me!
Then, I have a few sewing jobs on the go. I hope to do more of this.... the making of things practical and being paid for it.  I dunno why I have always been such a fuck-up (to quote Herb) about making a living. I just don't care that much about money. I like people and I like stuff and I like trees and I've never been able to make the money thing mean tha much, although I lie awake at night worrying about unpaid bills and the future without a "financial cushion". Frustrating, right? Ahhh, well.

Point 4). Living the good life. Its all about living without apology for me. I will do my best.

Turning Point

I'm finishing quilts that have been on the back burner for a while. I am finishing them so I can move them on, to make room for a new way of working. I'll be at the Silk Purse gallery with some members of The Cutting Edge textiles group during the North Shore Art Crawl http://nsartcrawl.ca/ April 16 and 17, 2011. I'll be quilting, displaying and chatting about textiles and patterns and life in general. Come down and see us.
I am excited about my new start, which begins with a finish. Things are rarely as cut and dried as I imagine they could be, but I'm slowly getting used to the way of the world, how things are tangled together but become clear in the distance as I look back. I'm finding that the best way to do it is to enjoy the entanglement as it holds and releases me.

Finished Project

I love it when a project is completed.


The quilt for the baby next door is all done. His name is Gibson and his dad is in the music business, so I used fabric with guitars on it for the back.
I finished the patchwork, layered it and quilted it just so I could have the thrill of sewing the binding on. I love a striped binding.
Weekends are not long enough. I use Saturday to catch my breath, some would even say I daydream the day away, and on Sunday I just start to enjoy the time, dig in to a project and the cold hard reality of leaving the house again on Monday sets in. I'll have to change my outlook, maybe my habits, because it seems that I will be working for a while yet.

On Saturday, I had a nice late breakfast with Jackie at the Roundel Cafe on Hastings St, and we walked up the block a bit looking in the little gallery shops that are opening up. The neighbourhood is growing into something new. I walked past Elizabeth's house on my way home to check in, but nobody home. Fortunately she drove up as I was halfway down the street so we had a wee chat through the window. Its nice to have friends close by.

Sunday was a walk in the park (Stanley) with Pat. We haven't seen each other all summer as she spent a lot of time with her mom on the island sorting things out with her. It was very good to catch up and she seems happy now that her mom's health and papers are in better shape. Pat served tea and some delicious pumpkin pie that William made. She tells me this is his season to practice making pumpkin pies and as the weather gets cooler his pies become evermore delicious.

Ken made progress on the deck out back. I love it. Its all bolted and the posts are in and the wood he saved from the old porch is not up to snuff, so we need to price something else. Too bad we can't re-use, but its full of holes and would not be a good roof for the area underneath.

Homer mostly slept all day.

HS Reunion vs. Gum Disease

Oh boy.
Thursday I go to the dentist after an absence of about 16 years. The hygenist cleaned and scraped and used a sonic blaster and an hour later I'm out of the chair, new $120. toothbrush with wireless SMART GUIDE in hand and lighter in the pocketbook by another $300. I had to book two more appointments. Okay, I'm thinking if that SMART GUIDE had found me 16 years ago, I might not be in this position. But then again, I have saved 16 years worth of dental bills.

Friday night I gather all my nerves together and go to my 30 year high school reunion. About half way through the evening I'm thinking back with fondness to the hour I spent in the dentist chair. I am an introvert. Being in large groups of people who I barely know makes me want to be invisible in a corner so I can watch, or wish I was a person who could say clever things that were both heartfelt and memorable, but alas I am not. I am the person who tries to be different and honest and I say the dumbest-ass things that will haunt me for days. I am sure all of the people who were in that loud, crowded room were very nice, but many seemed to have the same script, repeating over and over What Do You Do? Not; How Do You Do, or Who Are You, or What Does your Muse Say When She Visits. No, it seems the one question that makes me squirm is asked again and again. "I make boat covers" I say to the stockbroker, the semi-retired accountant, the advocate, the engineer and the librarian. "Do you want to see my car?" I say next, so I don't have to talk about my job that is enjoyable enough, but does not fulfill me. Then I lead them to the window and point out to the dark street where my little car is parked and waiting to take me home. I wonder how all of these kind folks seem to know how to 'do the room', where did they learn this skill which I so clearly do not possess? I did eventually have a nice time talking to the other brave introverts who settled themselves in the quietest corner of the room and talked about how nice it is to stay home and knit.

Saturday is a rain day. Stayed inside and knitted. I also began to sew a patchwork quilt together that has been on the design wall all summer. So involved I became in that project that I did not venture out of the house even for a minute.

Sunday. Here is the day to catch up on the things I didn't do yesterday. There was a quilt show to see (which would have involved talking to many people and probably answering the question "What Are You Doing Now?") I didn't go. The lovely people at Compass were hosting a Show and Shine event. The questions would have been asked, but by people who really want to know, these would have been genuine. But I had already squandered my networking energy on Friday night. I stayed home and sewed more scraps of fabric together into a quilt. I helped Ken when he needed assistance in putting up a new back porch. I picked all the little tomatoes which were complaining about being out in the rain. It was a good day.

one

This is the first one. Thats why its called one.
House of Bug is a place to set down ideas, whats going on right now here at the house, what may go on in the future, a place to note the things that move me.
My current thrill is the 'sungold' tomato plant on the back patio that puts forth perfectly round buds of semi transparent deeply orange gorgeousness, that when eaten transport a person to a place so sunny and robust with life that it takes a moment to come back to the here and now to savour this very moment. Its quite a ride, really.

I love my bug. Built in 1963 and bought by a lovely purple loving character of a woman named Maxine when she was 45 years old. She drove it and cared for it and kept it in a garage that her husband built for 45 years. Now I get to drive it and care for it and I hope to do that for 45 years before Lila-Bug passes on to the next lover of beautiful (and practical) things.

The lady next door is about 90 months pregnant with her second child. I made a small cowboy quilt for her first, and I'm making a little quilt with stripes and dots and animal faces for this one.

I'm knitting a striped scarf for my friend Paula so the winter on the west coast is a little easier to bear.