cloth.paper.string

beauties

I still make stuff; really, I do.   Last night I finished my second pleated beauty bag from Bend-the-Rules.  The first one was gifted before I had a chance to photograph it, made with charcoal wool and pleated with grey and pink thrifted goodness shared by Ella.

This pleated beauty is for me.  I thought that my first run at the pattern made a bit of a floppy bag, so I beefed up the second one, adding interfacing and canvas lining.  Despite breaking three needles on the machine while topstitching, I'm pleased that the bag can stand on its own. 

I ended up having just enough of the repurposed falling leaves gabardine.  It's the same fabric that recently inspired some freezer paper stenciling.   While the fabric is almost gone, I have a hunch those leaves will continue to fall onto paper and bookcloth.

Another beauty in my life turned two this weekend.  Two years old.  A fever, cough and runny nose kept our festivities quiet and slow, but we managed to bake a cake, share some gifts and talk a lot about the day she was born.  She tells her favorite part of her birth story like this, with elaborate hand gestures and enthusiasm:  "...den daddy scoop you UP out of water!"  She was born at home in a waterbirth tub, with her daddy catching her, welcoming her into the world (and these days she refers to herself in the second person). 

I remember experiencing such euphoria in those first days with her.  It seems like yesterday.  And too it seems that there hasn't ever been a time that I didn't know her.  Happy birthday, my little firecracker!

inside and out: celebrating spring

Inside, homemade chocolate croissants from the neighbors, delivered while still warm and gooey.  Eggs dyed with red cabbgage, turmeric, beets and coffee - and just about every combination thereof.   


Outside, more new snow.  Melting ice boulders on the shore.  The far-off horn of one of the shipping season's first arrivals into the port.

May the weekend have brought you and yours many signs and much celebrating of this new season.

heart-felt and handmade

When I was wee my parents ran an antique store that sold, in addition to farmhouse finds, the creations of a woman named Chicky.  I don't ever recall meeting this woman, but I knew she lived behind the stable on the slow and windy road to town.  Thinking back to the small community we lived in, I must have seen her with regularity, but I can't conjure up her face.  I'm certain it's because, for me, the image of her as a hen sitting on her eggs with a needle and thread, stitching away is the one that is rooted deepest.  Chicky made what folks today would call softies.

One year - it must have been for Christmas -- my sister and I both received our very own stuffed dolls made my Chicky.  These mice quickly became our mousies.  We have since both loved these little velveteen dolls literally to pieces.  My mousie is now blind, without whiskers, has a tattered ear and hand and is tail-less.  Her knickers, bonnet, apron with the cross-stitched 'S' on the pocket, as well as the little hankie that went in said pocket are long gone.  My sister's mousie still has a tail, but otherwise wears the time and the love much the same. 

These stuffed mice mean much to me and to my sister (pictured above with her shawled mousie sometime in the late 70s).  They also mean much to my mom, who gave us these handmade and thought-filled gifts, all while passing on an appreciation for that which is well crafted, that which is unique. I know this to be true as often in my hopes to impart similar appreciations on my daughter, I find myself thinking of my mom and my childhood.  I also know this to be true because of something my mom - now nana - made for her grand-daughter last year:  her very own mousie.

Chicky's days of sewing have passed, so my mom took it upon herself to figure out how to make one on her own.  My sister's mousie was borrowed and studied.  Fabrics were carefully selected.  Countless hours were put into assembling and sewing clothing for this doll.  My mom isn't a seamstress, and I'm not sure that she's ever made a three-dimensional sewn object before this adventure, but that didn't stop her.  These types of details never do, as she's always jumping in and figuring out, and also always seems to be wildly successful in these endeavors.  Of course, the mousie is amazing. 

The new mousie has become fast friends with my floppy-necked, dog-nibbled mousie.  Both are truly loved by the little one.  She likes to point out and kiss all of the old mousie's owies.  And she likes to take the clothes on and off the new mousie and admire her belly -- where there's a special embroidered message from nana.  The new mousie and everything about her story make her one of the most heartfelt gifts that we have been graced with.

I've thought about sharing the story of the mice since I started cloth.paper.string.  Somehow it is fitting that here on the 365th day of entering the world of blogging, the story finally comes together. 

I want to give a big thanks to each of you who have stopped by, looked at my pictures, read my words, felt the urge to leave a comment.  You are all so appreciated.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what this next year's inspiration brings, the heart-felt and handmade that it becomes and the sharing of it with you here.

new years realization

This time of year one is able to experience places that are typically inaccessible to the ordinary traveler.  Out on the lake.  Over the rushing water of the river.  In the middle of the marsh.  Above the crashing waves.

I quite like the perspective that comes seeing a place from a different angle, through a different lens.  It gives me confidence that that which doesn't seem possible can actually be realized.   A good realization for the start of a new year.

May you find places and see you things you never thought possible in the new year.  And, may the dreams you haven't yet had come true.

calling the light

In the darkest night we shared warmth and light with friends old and new.   Root vegetable soup and spicy winter greens warming our bellies.  Homemade pickles and pepper jelly keeping summer at the table.  Homebrewed barley wine ready after almost a year in the making.  Handwrapped carmels.  Russian tea cakes.  Pumpkin custard.  Pomegranates.  Winter poetry and prose.   A lovely celebration.

However you may be celebrating the season, may you too find warmth, find light; and may you share it with those near and dear.

littlest knits

I recently finished up a tiny little sweater for Ana's babe, who is due to come into this world in the next few days.  As I sized it up to my wee one I realized exactly how much she's grown, how much she's changed, how fleeting these last twenty months have been.  It is too easy to forget exactly how small she once was.  How her foot didn't come close to spanning my opened palm.  How her littlest toenail was but a speck.  How her entire body fit within the crook of my arm.  I can look at photos and see the changes, but watching her wrestle a bear into a sweater that would have swallowed her in those first months I know these changes.  My oh my, where did my baby go? 

Okay, back to the sweater that was supposed to be the subject matter here... it's a little bolero from One Skein knit up with Henry's Attic Organic Inca Cotton, colorgrown in sage.  According to folklore, the small eyelet detail on the back brings the wearer protection and good luck.  I wasn't sure how the eyelet would come out with the thick and thin nature of the yarn, but I like it.  The thick, the thin, the symmetry of the detail skewed a bit here and there and everywhere.  A bit like life with a newborn.  Like life with a toddler.  Like life all around.  Perfect, I think, for the celebrating of a new babe.

circle round

For the last six years I've made a solstice wreath for our front door.  A bit of greenery in the grayest of days; a reminder of the green days before and those ahead.  A symbol of the wheel of the year, the turning of the seasons.  A circle like that of the sun. 

Last year we gathered the pine boughs from a nearby forest, carefully snipping little wayward bits from many trees over many acres.  We set out today to do the same and instead happened upon a grove of trees that had been topped within the last few days.  Pines chopped at their midsections by some careless and greedy person.  From the branches strewn about, we picked up just enough boughs for a wreath. 

Back at the lake, I gathered a few bunches of berries from the numerous Mountain Ash trees that dot the shore.  Berries from a tree that symbolizes protection.  Protection from the cold, from the long dark days ahead. 

Weaving wreaths, I can not help but remember the winter my mother and her friend decided that they'd make wreaths for every window and door of their houses and barns.  Dozens of wreaths.  And if that wasn't enough, they vowed to hang them all as soon as the Thanksgiving dishes were washed so that when the sun rose on the first day of the Christmas holiday season, their homes would be festooned with holiday cheer.  All of this was to outdo (or at least surprise) the flamboyant neighbor who was the belle of the local holiday home tour.  In the days leading up to the unveiling, Mom and her friend trekked out to the woods to gather pine boughs -- forgetting twine to bind the branches for carrying, so that they ended up fashioning bungee cords from their bras to carry mammoth piles home to the clandestine wreath assembly line that had taken over the basement of our barn. 

I don't remember the reaction of the neighbor that Friday morning; but green florist wire, brisk air, and the scent of pine boughs mixed with leather gloves will always conjure up the image of my creative and spirited mother getting a complete kick out of making stuff with her friends.  I remember as a twelve-year-old thinking they were absolutely nuts.  But now, I completely understand.

orange. black.

Spicy black bean soup punctuated with carrots.  Pumpkin glow in chilly night.  Wrappers of junky bits snuck from the treat bowl.

May there have been a good mix of trickery and treat - and orange and black - in your day.