.2024 stitch journal.

 2024 was my second year to finish a stitch journal. I used a linen cotton blend leftover from my summer workshop at the Grunewald Guild, a vibrant mustard yellow with a royal blue #8 thread. I started with my word of the year - devotion - there's a few definitions for devotion. I was drawn to these two most - an act of prayer and the act of dedicating something to a cause, enterprise, or activity. For me, the word represented an open heart and mind - the dedication to being fully open + present to live and what it would bring. It was so fitting, as this year brought so much newness and unknown to me. Life is an experience and I am a devote student.  I stitched it in the middle of the journal/piece of fabric to remind myself every day. Then slowly started stitching blue circles, one circle for everyday. It feels so good to have compete my second year of this tradition/practice. 

I love having a piece to hold the year. A year of so much. 

.what can I learn.

 

What can I learn?

Two weeks at home with an injury that challenges my independence, my clarity, my peace 

I find myself more anxious to think that maybe I’m exaggerating
to base my progress on some secret expectation
To allow my hours to be disconnected from my pained body with a running mind

How can one have radical autonomy?
Not that I don’t need anyone
Not to lose my belief that liberation is only through community and that we are all 100% interwoven

But how can I be so fully and firmly rooted in myself and the deeper earth, that I ask for what I need without apology
I can sit in the moment with peace, patience, and understanding 

or at least understanding that this moment arrived unannounced uninvited but it came 

and my job is to greet it and 

be curious
be kind
be gentle
- with myself

To not ask why but
what do you need?

Can I listen closer?

To be so radiantly autonomous that I receive the request to rest and just be
To be so radically autonomous that I receive the interruption as the journey
To be so radically autonomous that I receive the discomfort as a sign to listen closer and to care more
To be so radically autonomous that I receive life in a way that makes me more tender
To be so radically autonomous that I receive it as a pathway to connect more
not less

.blue skies of January.

I came across a question this week that made me pause - what brings your unrestricted joy right now? - 

I think it's a blue sky

 

after the dark short days that feel like fleeting moments between the never ending nights

the surprise of a blue sky

the delicate yet vibrant pink/orange sunrise

the weak yet radiating sun rays enveloping me on a slow cold walk

it can feel like a deep exhale

a moment of resounding joy

the truth that impermanence is the only constant

the reminder of hope 

the hope of spring 

with all the complexities the unbearable unknowns lurking this year

maybe the greatest joy is the simplest of pleasures

maybe it can be as simple as a blue sky day

maybe it has to be, the rest is too much to hold

what brings your unrestricted joy right now? 

.becoming and becoming.

January is the perfect season for slow stitches. I find myself squeezing in time to finish the quilting on this lap sized quilt I'm calling "becoming and becoming." Not for the need to finish it quickly but the need to be in the meditation of stitching. 

It's been a very slow project, starting with the hand dyed indigo cotton from over a year ago. I knew when I dyed the yardage I wanted to include it in a quilt. It's such a beautifully rich color. A quilt is something the quilter has to spend a lot of time with, so you need to find joy in the fabrics and indigo seems to be a color that just pulls me in.

In July, after my slow stitching class at the guild I knew I was ready for some hand sewing. I pieced together a tiny little log cabin square of indigo and white. I imagined a quilt of nine or twelve smaller log cabin squares but when sewing machine broke, I decided to let that be a creative invitation. So, by the time I added the fifth layer of the first square, I decided to keep building on the one square,  hand sewing alternating strips of indigo and white. After a few more layers, I allowed myself to release further into the project, letting go of the classic log cabin style, allowing improv and chance to design the quilt. If the indigo exceeded the length of a side, I cut it and continued onto the next side, disrupting the balance of the pattern, until suddenly I introduce bright yellow triangles illustrating the radiating/expanding energy of intention of the quilt - the forever process of becoming. 

This is my first fully handsewn lap quilt. The project has taken months and has been picked up and set down over and over again until finally layered and pinned up by the end of the year. That was my goal, to fit the quilt into 2024, perfectly lining up for a slow stitch project of January. I think this should always be my plan because the big canvas to stitch on feels like salve for the cold and dark soul of winter. 

To find the sweet meditative rhythm of holding all the layers together - round and round and round - until you read the edge and at that point I'm planning on adding an electric yellow/green stitches in a larger circle. 

And then I found this poem online, which seems to give words to all the feelings of a slow stitch and finishing this slow quilt in January. 

.2025.

May 2025 be filled with:

joy

adventures

love

presence

good food

deep conversations

travel

new landscapes

familiar places with new perspectives

ritual

peace

lightness of being

creative projects

new discoveries

feelings of being at home

tight hugs

long drives with a view

little getaways

big explorations

studio time

new friendships

deepen friendships

connected moments

vulnerability 

laughter 

fun

playfulness

excitement

desire

discipline 

belonging

feeling seen

time in the mountains

camping trips

dips in the river

overnight kayaking trips

time with the ocean

slow mornings

walks

poems

new ideas

listening to understand

lots of art

teaching

learning

flow

intentional practices

expansion

and a blessing from one of my favorites, John O'Donohue

-----------------------------------------

A blessing for presence

Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.

Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.

Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to
follow its path.

Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.

May anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of
soul.

Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek
no attention.

Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around the heart of wonder.

~ John O’Donohue ~

.open your life, open your hand.

It's August, some how. The summer seems to be evaporating faster than last. I've spent the last two days at Lake Chelan, a place I visited every summer growing up. A place of endless days of sun and swims and no schedule.

It's been a wild and full few weeks with a busy schedule, teaching a slow stitch class, work, unexpected news, slow days, fast days, river dips, community meals, evening walks, good conversations, more unexpected news, art shows, lake swims, and an expanding heart.I saw this poem a few days ago and it felt so true.
---------------------------
Let July be July
by Morgan Harper Nichols

Let July be July.
Let August be August.
And let yourself

just be
even in
the uncertainty.
You don’t have to fix
everything.
You don’t have solve
everything.
And you can still
find peace
and grow
in the wild
of changing things.
-------------------------------

but maybe the most summer of all summer poems is this one, a Mary Oliver classic.

-------------------------------
I don’t want to live a small life.
Open your eyes, open your hands.
I have just come from the berry fields, the sun

kissing me with its golden mouth all the way
(open your hands) and the wind-winged clouds
following along thinking perhaps I might

feed them, but no I carry these heart-shapes
only to you. Look how many small
but so sweet and maybe the last gift

I will bring to anyone in this
world of hope and risk, so do
Look at me. Open your life, open your hands.
-------------------------------
The fire season sunsets are electric - quick explosion in the sky before the night settles in. The days are getting shorter with full darkness by 9:30 PM. The summer is fading but it's still August. Unexpected and full and alive.

I don't want to live a small life.
Open your eyes, open your hands.

.finding softness.

I was driving through the vast wheat fields yesterday and the expansiveness felt like a prayer

That some how the limitlessness of  h e r e  was a prayer that all beings may be free

I don’t know how to describe what I feel when I’m in vast spaces. It’s a practice for me to witness the radical openness of nature, to see my own reflection or maybe the stark contrast of my limitedness I burden myself with 

I arrived at deep lake to kayak and there was a softness, a gift of new eyes from the wheat field prayers - 

the glimmering light

the applause of dancing leaves

the chorus of birdsong

the reflection of above on the life below the water 

Asking:

How can I hold more softness?
How can I listen deeper?
How can I afford more grace to myself and world?
How can I say thank you more?
How can I hold my joy + grief with tenderness?
How can I be more free?