Healing Handcrafting

exploring process and healing through fiber arts and handcrafting

Tag Archives: comfort


by 1 Comment

Recovering, Crafting & Learning Post-Election

Hello to you. It’s been a while. Given that my blog is about the healing benefits of handcrafting with a little bit of elbow room to talk about other things, I made a choice not to write every day about how I’m metabolizing the election outcome in this here United States of America. But to be frank, it’s all I’ve been thinking about. My Slow-Stitch journey has taken a pause and will resume soon (I apologize to any who might be following that and stitching along). I really found it hard for a bit to do anything that was remotely and technically enjoyable because I could not emerge from my own dismay. Things that have helped: attending a peace rally, going to a lecture addressing white privilege and US history, talking with people about their ideas and reactions, many similar, many not, and making a clear decision to be vigilant, to listen and do my best to be an active participant in my community. Joining fellow knitters and crocheters in our local group that contributes items to Knitting4Peace has also proven yet again to be a refuge and a joy~ making things with people for people all over the world is soul medicine. And, walking around outside.

I received an invitation a few days ago to participate in a local Holiday Pop-Up for area vendors and decided to do it. This is also taking some attention away from my Slow Stitch work, but it’s a good and important process for me, to get back involved with making things that I love with wool and yarn. It’s allowing me some room to let myself have fun and just enjoy being random, with a goal in mind, which I need sometimes. I’ve been spinning yarn, weaving and crocheting here and there as I can. My kitchen table is covered with my ongoing projects, my kids are excited to felt rocks and make things too, and it’s just plain feeling good.

Super Moon
Bird’s Nest
I think this is coyote scat, but not sure!

Supermoon, bird’s nest and what I think to be coyote scat.

img_1020

Can I hide in there, too?

Some ongoing projects and yarny explorations.

Have a sweet week. I hope it includes doing what brings you calm and peace.

Advertisement


by 1 Comment

Slow Stitch Stitch-Along, Week 4

I like having this Stitch-Along right now. It’s keeping me connected to what I really, really want to be doing but am having the hardest time devoting time to. It’s a constant struggle for me these days, to pick up what I love (other than my children). I plan on writing more about this in the coming week, but I feel rather sure that this election cycle here in the United States is one culprit in a cauldron of stressors.

I found time today, though. Time to sit and complete my bookmark. I turned the design into a house with a chimney and gave it a thatched roof. When my daughter saw it, she decided she wanted to write a story about sewing bookmarks. I hope she does! I mounted my other experimental piece on an antique handkerchief and I thought about time and the apparent coming of a new age of politics in this country.

I thought about ways I might be more gentle in my approach to life, and more disciplined so that I might do at least some of things I long to do, but hadn’t written in to some original plan of adulthood. I thought about adjusting, letting go of some things and turning towards those things that call to me, including service to this aching world.

The coming 4th week of the Slow Stitch Stitch-Along will include learning a new one (for me): the fly stitch.

One square or two. Fly stitch. Different patterns, directions, colors, fabrics. We’ll see. My hope is to do one square on plain linen, and one piece including a few fabrics using both running stitch and fly stitch. We’ll see how it goes.

Again, for those who might want to join, we are using the book Slow Stitch: Mindful and contemplative textile art, by Claire Wellesley-Smith as our guide. I am a brand new stitcher and am finding my groove. Anyone is welcome to join us, with any skill level.

fullsizerender-126


by 2 Comments

Using What I Have and Adjusting to Reality

When I began this weaving project, it was in my mind a mat, a space for me to sit, to think, to feel texture and to meditate…


For a while, I worked on it every night, sitting in a dimly lit room nearby my falling asleep children… 

Then it sat,

And sat,

Waiting for me to come back.

And I did, with the same destination in mind. 

But when it was finally coaxed off its wooden support, it was not flat. 

It insisted on curving, no matter the wetting and pulling and stretching I subjected it to. 


There was never a moment I thought about starting over. It was too late for that. I suspect the too tight pulling of the cotton weft in the midst of woolen rounds was the perturbation in the otherwise peaceful flow. Ironic, given that it was those very cotton strips that inspired the piece to begin with. 

Time to reconsider, time to adapt…

A chance to use more of what would otherwise be tossed away. 

My old worn sweater,

An antique bobbin of woolen thread,

My grandmother’s very old doily, worn, strained, yet saved. 

Wrapping the outside of the now bowl in my old worn sweater, allowing for waves here, ripples there, I feel the comfort I was longing for when I first began those initial rounds. Gentle stitching with the woolen yarn offers chances to start anew, start anew, as weak spots made for unplanned breaks. 

Stitching burlap around the soft bowl suggests sturdiness and the promise of support. 

And this tired, beautiful, intricate and broken gift offers up its last, sweet breath and is saved, its softness part of something new. 


Now my mind wanders to what it will hold, this comfort bowl of mine. Old things. New things. Found things for sure. Memories, too, no doubt, of specific moments and foggy plans that were once laid out on paper with pen, changed over time with cross outs and rewrites. Maybe appreciation, too, for adaptations so subtle they are almost imperceptible in loud life.

It will all be in there.