Ornamental

listen

"As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can."
John Muir

so, i remind you before i go away for just a bit to stop whatever you are doing from time to time and lay your ear down to the earth, or to the wind, turn your face up to the sun and rain, and listen for the heartbeat that keeps us going still.  be still.  listen.  and bask in the beauty that surrounds you, both inside and out.

see you when i get back.  xo

the winged world

the moth stories continue:  last night i was surprised out back by the cone flowers by this HUGE moth that was flapping about by the light (its body, just the body, was the size of a hummingbird or my thumb).  roy hobbled out with his finer camera than mine around his neck and was able to snap both of these photos - the underside, as you can see above, and a front shot (blurry, but still - you can see the markings) on the screen of my studio.  we're still talking about this moth this afternoon, after we watched it sail into the darkness beyond the drive; and in doing a bit of research, i'm now almost certain that it was a Regal Moth.  roy even thinks it would make a grand pet, the size was that incredible to see - those wings spanned farther across than my hand with fingers fully extended.  each time i write a new entry about moths, i tell myself that i am surely boring each and every one of you with all this nature lore or "drivel"; but then each night i've been blessed with another magical visitor, things far too special not to share with all of you (yes, all).

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."  i have to share with you, too, the latest of my winged designs (and no, the wings aren't for fairies or angels, unless they were, perhaps, angels unaware).  remember the photographs of the lovely luna moth i found down at the foot of a walnut tree, tucked behind tall blades of grass?  i've kept those photos stashed away in my files, hoping that inspiration would strike enough to draw out something new.  i leave for alabama on wednesday, then fly from there to wisconsin on thursday for a ten day teaching stint at beloved valley ridge art studio.  to say that i am unprepared is a vast understatement, and something that has me in a bit of a panic.  roy is still in recuperation, still off of his feet for another two weeks, and the house is not at its cleanest.  laundry remains undone, the fridge is not all that stocked, aspen is under the weather and required a trip this morning into town to the vet, and my jewelry pieces are at an all time low.  i spent this weekend doing three things - hanging with roy, visiting with my sister and her husband who were up at my parents' cabin from alabama, and working my fingers as fast as they could go on earrings and necklaces.  i love this one - love it - and since quite a few of you had inquired as to how i'd use the luna photography, i thought i'd let you see this piece before it wings its way to beautiful southwest wisconsin.  i wanted to be sure and thank catherine for urging me, in her very own special, unique way, to strive for something different, and for inadvertently reminding me that i am able to rise above external difficulty and be all the stronger and more enlightened for the experience.  (oh, and the words on the back?  you've probably already guessed:  "watch how freely i can rise to new heights"). 

i'm not sure i'll be writing anything else here until after i get back from wisconsin, sometime around august 11.  i may be coming right back here to follow roy the seven hours across this state to wilmington, as his furniture needs to be moved into a new home at school, and i'm not quite sure how a boy off his feet will be driving that far a distance.  please know that i'll be thinking of you all, and hoping that your august is unfolding itself softly, sweetly, with peace and beauty and calm. xo

gift

 

"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." -- Bernard Meltzer

july valentine for you

moving forward

these moths - they just keep coming.  maybe they've always been around in profusion, maybe i just have not been aware of their abundance, but now?  i am finding them in the windowsills, on the floor, and last night, one with a furry body - just the body, mind you, without the wings - the size (and i'm not exaggerating) of my pinky finger.  i kept hearing some sort of odd noise, some flapping movement in the wet tree leaves just outside the screened door, and when aspen and i went to investigate, i was hit full on in the chest with what first appeared to be a very large hummingbird.  poor thing - i don't think he was doing very well - maybe the rain had caused problems with those massive wings of his, maybe he was simply in his last moments - but first, aspen got it, and after i shooed him away, i brought the creature inside, cupped in my two hands, to photograph under the kitchen light.  you can't tell from the photograph, but with wings outstretched, he or she was the size of my full open palm.  how magnificent!  and how lovely to take it back outside to let it go. i never cease to be amazed by the wonders that surround us.  they are everywhere, even in the depths of city life.  i marvel at the simplicity like a five year old girl, walking about in the wet clover grass out back, staring up into the sky to watch crows coming in for the night.  how lovely to focus on these things, elementally pure and good as they are, to let the innocence of nature wrap its soft cloak around me. i never knew there was so much variation in the patterns on wings, in the colors that show up across their backs.  if you'll go here, you can see the latin alphabet and numbers zero through nine, as "captured" by author and photographer kjell sandved on the wings of moths and butterflies.

what to do, then, but work with what is showing itself before me?  by the things that keep appearing on a daily, nightly basis at my feet?  so work with them, i do.  tiny green moth or butterfly wings, the size of my pinky nail, are so lightweight, so ethereal, that i can not keep them from moving with slight air currents as i try to set them into mica, then the frame.  no easy thing, these wings of air.  but to gather them as i discover their bodies out in the grass, in the windowsills, on the floor by the light, is to take something delicate, evocative, fragile as old skin, and create a lasting thing of beauty.  who wouldn't want to wear wings around their neck? try these words on for size.  see how they fit.  i think they feel like wings of steel, myself.  xo

"The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings." - James Barrie, author of Peter Pan 

backyard beauty

the world can be a crazy place.  the internet, tv, the radio, newspapers, all of it - crazy.  sometimes it feels good simply to meander out back with aspen, camera in hand, barefoot in the grass, and snap a few close shots of something, nothing, anything. as hard as i tried, i could not get this little fellow in focus - he was too busy moving all over that cone flower, gathering sweetness, sustenance.  working hard.  oblivious.  how wonderful. what is this?  a simple pile of sticks, gathered from the ones that were thrown, or that fell from nowhere, in the one flat part of our back yard.  in my old house i loved so much, the one with the great big covered front porch in town, we had a wood burning stove, and in winter i relished the short cold afternoons i spent wandering the yard that was surrounded by two acres of woods, gathering up sticks to use for kindling.  it made me recall elderly mrs. wallner from next door in my childhood, always always always out clearing her small yard of twigs and other tree cast offs.  we don't have a wood burning stove now, but the boys built a fire pit out back so we can sit in an evening and watch the flames dance, watch the prickly sticks burn. burn.  see what i did to my finger at the end of last week?  in too big of a hurry while taking an enormous pizza out of the oven for one of roy's friends, i knocked that finger up against the inside door of the oven.  bandaids don't help - they simply cover the wound.  what to do?  ignore the burn?  i keep knocking that finger into all sorts of things - laundry, dishes, tools.  annoying, painful, and a nuisance.  i think that the best approach is lots of fresh air.  lots and lots and lots. back to the yard.  i find such beauty in this overspent flower, after its fuschia beauty has faded into a dried, brittle remnant of the thing it used to be.  a tall flower, still, just a flower life time older, with a soft new shade of brown and grey. still beautiful.  perhaps i'll bring it inside and send to a friend in the mail.  do you think the beauty will still be understood? and here, finally, some lovely stones that we found in the stream down the way and hauled back to work into a fire ring.  i do love rocks, love stones.  how lucky am i to live where i am surrounded by them. i worked in fits and starts over the weekend while roy read or dozed or watched tv.  this whole moth visitation phenomenon has me sitting before the studio table and working wings into new pieces of jewelry that seem like rustic, ancient talismans.  moths have been around forever; so have wings.  no new theme here by any stretched means, but a renewed direction for me nonetheless.  thank you, divine providence, for that.  thank you for so many wonderful things.   i love bringing the outdoors into the studio and creating something from scratch.  moth wings - fragile, ethereal, finite - turned into a sturdy piece of artwork that can be worn around the neck.  with messages, hidden, but warmed by the neck, the chest.  i'm so very enamored of that. meanwhile, the cards and packages for roy continue to arrive on a daily basis (i've had to add another line of jute!), and have provided much amusement, tender feelings, nourishment and appreciation for both of us.  you all are absolutely wonderful, and i thank you 1000 times over.  xoxo

directions

i love it when nature tenderly helps me out in times of weariness and frustration:  this little friend was lying upside down in the grass just outside the porch this morning, and when i picked him up and turned him over, there was that wonderful arrow.  i'm not sure what is going on with moths and me - there've been so many wonderful wings, showing up here and there of late - but i carry their feather-weight beings in from outside, and am grateful for their messages of beauty.

"Between our birth and death, we may touch understanding, as a moth brushes a window with its wing." - Christopher Fry

firefly vignettes

i love the sound of cicadas in the summer - the rising and the falling of their calls, the late afternoon buzzing in the branches of overhead trees.  this morning when i walked out, early, to send robin off on his journey back to boone, i glanced down at the edge of a bottom step and saw this beautiful creature - newly emerged from its shell, translucent, wings damp and green (if you'll click on the photo, you'll see a closer view, especially of my scarred and weathered hands).  some interesting facts, from wikipedia:  Male cicadas have loud noisemakers called "timbals" on the sides of the abdominal base. Their "singing" is not the stridulation (where two structures are rubbed against one another) of many other familiar sound-producing insects like crickets: the timbals are regions of the exoskeleton that are modified to form a complex membrane with thin, membranous portions and thickened "ribs". Contracting the internal timbal muscles produces a clicking sound as the timbals buckle inwards. As these muscles relax, the timbals return to their original position producing another click. The interior of the male abdomen is substantially hollow to amplify the resonance of the sound. A cicada rapidly vibrates these membranes, and enlarged chambers derived from the tracheae make its body serve as a resonance chamber, greatly amplifying the sound. They modulate their noise by wiggling their abdomens toward and away from the tree that they are on. Additionally, each species has its own distinctive song.

In addition to the mating song, many species also have a distinct distress call, usually a somewhat broken and erratic sound emitted when an individual is seized. A number of species also have a courtship song, which is often a quieter call and is produced after a female has been drawn by the calling song.  The song of the cicada is a favorite sound effect used by filmmakers and animators as a means of representing silence, pathos, and the great outdoors.  prehistoric looking, aren't they?  while in china last september, roy ate an entire dish of them, stir fried, and said that they were actually quite tasty.  i can't imagine.

A summer insect (at least in temperate countries), the cicada has represented insouciance (i.e. nonchalance or indifference) since antiquity.  Jean de la Fontaine began his collection of fables Les fables de La Fontaine with the story La Cigale et la Fourmi (The Cicada and the Ant) based on one of Aesop's fables: in it the cicada spends the summer singing while the ant stores away food, and finds herself without food when the weather turns bitter.  In The Tale of Genji, the title character poetically likens one of his many love interests to a cicada for the way she delicately sheds her scarf the way a cicada sheds its shell when molting.  In China the phrase 'to shed off the golden cicada skin' is the poetic name of the tactic of using deception to escape danger, specifically of using likenesses/decoys (leaving the old shell) to fool enemies. In the Chinese classic Journey to the West, the protagonist Priest of Tang was named the Golden Cicada, in this context the multiple shedding of shell of the cicada symbolizes the many stages of transformations required of a person before all illusions has been broken and one reaches enlightenment.  enlightenment?  this gives new meaning to the words bug off.

it's been a hectic week here on firefly road, in spite of the slower pace with roy's surgery and days of rest on the sofa:  friends have been dropping in and staying 'til all hours of the night, his brother robin was here from tuesday until this morning for a visit, and even his dad came to spend the bulk of yesterday, visiting and laughing and sharing stories old and new.   aspen has loved the fact that i'm camping out on the living room floor while roy occupies my bedroom.  it's all i can do every evening to get the sheets on the futon before he is flaking himself out across the spot, sighing when i nudge him over a bit.  some dog.  falling asleep on the floor of the living room, a large spot with one whole wall of windows and another set of sliding glass doors that lead out to a small screened porch, is like falling asleep halfway outdoors.  

last night that nearly full moon inched its way across the mountaintops just outside those windows, and i drifted off bathed in silky, white light.  above the windows, i've strung the cards so many of you have lovingly sent, and it's a pleasant thing to wake first thing and gaze up at what looks like colorful prayer flags clothes-pinned to stretches of jute.

we've all - robin, roy, i - enjoyed opening the envelopes, reading the notes, seeing from what corners of the earth these cards have come.  all ages, from four to ten to who knows how many years, have tucked things into the mail to come this way, and we thank you for that.  there are many many many kind people out there, reaching out to us this week, both in the home and here on the internet, sending notes and letters of strong encouragement and support.  i remember now why i keep coming back here, again and again - why i keep doing the art and the writing that i do.  here's to you, one and all:  i send you my heart.  i wrap it softly in the days that have been good to me, and continue to be thankful for the place where this journey is taking me.  xo

wow

let's start this off with something pleasant, shall we?  night before last, i headed out to my (rusty orange honda element) car to pack pillows and blankets for roy's trip home from asheville (thank you, gina, for your immeasurable advice), and discovered this gorgeous creature perched on the driver's side window.  so fuzzy and cartoon like, with wings that resemble leaves and eyes...  it was a pleasure to watch him bumble his way through the air after i opened the door.

yesterday was a long, long, long day.  we left here at 8:00 am and spent from 9:15 until well after 6pm at the hospital in asheville - much of that time simply spent waiting to be taken back to pre-op, waiting for the anesthesiologist, the surgeon, the nurses, the shots.  it was a study in patience, and in the act of remaining cool and calm in front of one's child.  i didn't relish going it alone, all that time in the waiting room, doing just that:  waiting. listening to old people's stories to one another (a squirrel chased a bantam hen, a shark book was read to a three year old, an ancient woman babbled constantly, loudly, incoherently as she waited with a relative for surgery.  poor thing.).  i was able to go back with roy in pre op for most of his time there (hours), and carted around the hospital with me a massive 550 page novel i've only just begun.  and left it behind in two different places, only to have a nurse come running after me.  back to the waiting room i went, trying to read while trying not to worry.  i am not good at this - the not worrying or being overly concerned.  it was, again, an act. i think that in that nine hour span of time spent at the hospital, i managed to read (and retain) perhaps a total of twenty pages.  i'll always remember this book, when thinking of yesterday, and even when i order again from lovely fern and jane; (honey, it was your card i slipped into the novel for a bookmark, and your card i studied over and over and over again all day, while sitting in that great big waiting room).  i have to say this, though:  those nine hours away from this computer were a blessing in disguise...

roy is doing very well; i thank all of you who've written and sent cards, who lit candles, who sent prayers and positive healing thoughts.  he is in a great deal of pain, and will have to remain off his feet for a good four weeks; but his spirit is strong, his attitude is lovely, and we're both glad to have yesterday's milestone safely behind us.  he's trying to sleep, with the help of pain medication, but sleep only comes in fits and starts.  wearing a full length leg brace is not a comfortable thing, but wear it he must.  i'm proud of him, this day, and yesterday.  he truly is a trooper.

as for all of the outcrys and responses to the post i last wrote, i'm both thankful and regretful - thankful for the support, regretful that names were openly mentioned here.  i didn't have a single person in mind, i want you all to know, and am utterly sorry that what i wrote will cause one person some very real hurt.  as i've said before, i'm one to speak what is on my mind, what rests heavy on my heart, and never intended to point fingers or rouse a firing squad.  i also want to stress, to those who may not truly know me or understand my passions, that i love the gift of teaching, love being able to share what i know with my students, love being able to send them on their own creative path after they've learned techniques i've willingly and openly shared with them.  and that i want what's best for everyone involved.  one person wrote and told me to "quit complaining".  i feel that this is my own personal journal, online, and if i choose to air my hurt, my frustration, it is my right.  however my words are taken is up to you, those few who choose to read negativity into them.  if you don't agree with what i have to say, i still appreciate your comments; but if you are bitterly unhappy with the subject matter i choose to address, or the way i express my emotions about them, it is your own personal choice whether or not to read what is here on the pages of ornamental.

now.  time to go check on roy. xo

 

sunday musings

it's quiet here this morning - a sunday - sleepy little cove, birds being noisy but that isn't noise.  not at all.  roy's been out and about for days now, in and out the swinging screen door, camping with friends, visiting grandparents up at their mountain house, doing his thing.  tomorrow morning we rise quite early, drive the 80 minutes to asheville for the surgery, and hopefully come home tomorrow late afternoon.  you've been sending cards that i'm placing in a basket for now - he's on to us, that boy, and is tickled that complete strangers would reach out through the ether of the internet and let him know you care.  i'm touched, and ever so grateful.  this community feels to me a bit like church, not that i'm comparing the internet or this blog to a place of worship.  no, it's just that there is a group of people out there who, when need be, rise to the occasion and gather 'round in tighter circles to boost and shore me up with empathy and compassion.  i live a solitary, quiet life out here in the middle of nowhere, which is how i like it to be most of the time; but when i'm down, or confused, or sick, it's wonderful to know that i, too, have a community.  a village.  i don't know how to properly say the thanks that i feel for times like this, but maybe you understand just how grateful i continue to be.  and i thank you simply for being there, post after post, leaving such lovely words in comments, writing me beautiful letters, sending tidy packages in the mail.  you guys are incredible.

i've been spending whatever pockets of time i can muster in the studio, employing these crooked fingers to twist and turn and fashion ornaments out of the treasures i've forever gathered.  little dolls are everywhere - in small brass boxes, stacked in old jewelry displays, tucked into drawers.  they seem to be cropping up in profusion in the jewelry world, paired with resin in silver bezels, paired with wrapped fabric beads, paired with vintage crystal beads and wings.  i see these pieces and sometimes want to put the dolls and things i work with aside, to start out in a different, fresh direction; but there they sit, sweetly waiting for me to give them new life after being buried underground for years and years and years.  making jewelry, posting it, sharing it with the online world, always poses a dilemma.  am i subconsciously fabricating creations i've perhaps already seen, somewhere before, and wrongly thinking it is truly my own design?  when i sell a piece to folks, and then see similar work on their blogs, in etsy, am i to feel flattered, or annoyed?  when i teach classes in jewelry making, in art book construction, and then come across articles in national magazines written by my students with specific instructions for their "original" work, and when they then go on to teach the class, the style themselves, should i feel ruffled, or should i let it go? if i speak up and out, if i address the issue, feels are hurt and sides are taken.  always the eternal dilemma.  part of me wants to go into hiding, to create intricate works that only i will see.  what good does that do?  where is the art, the sharing, in that?  when students ask me for my resources, where i find  strands of certain vintage beads, a ribbon, the dolls, do i share that information with them?  do i shortcut the long hours i've spent pounding the pavement, surfing the internet with my slow connection, so that they can go straight to the source?  you already know the answer to that, i hope.  at that, i draw the line.  still, folks with more money than i are able to buy up large bulk quantities of things - the dolls, the beads, circular lenses of glass - and then either use them in their work or sell them for a profit. people ask me to sign my work, and most of the time i do.  i didn't used to do this; i figured that my look, my style, was signature enough.  but now, versions of that "look" are splashed across magazine covers, on blog banners, in published books.  well intentioned people are forever calling this to my attention:  the mica, the copper mesh, the resin, the metal, the fabric wrapped beads, the heavily wrapped wire knots, the found objects from nature and from antique bins incorporated into work, it's all there now - everywhere.  i feel childish writing this, and petty, selfish, vain.  i wish i were of the wise temperament that does not hold grudges, that doesn't get bothered by imitation (or, to put in other words, by "inspiration").  i always think back to fourth grade, which is the level where i feel i am today, when i wore my hair in a long thick braid every single day.  halfway through the year, another little girl began wearing her hair like this, and i came home whining to my mother.  her sage advice - that i should be flattered - didn't stick.  and here i am, some forty plus years later, feeling the very same way.  i vent with roy, show him the work, tell him the stories.  he sits and shakes his head, and wonders with me how best to handle things.  this post will surely ruffle feathers, and bring on a whole new round of discussion that i didn't want to rouse.  but, i've always been one to speak what is on my mind, to address the issues in my heart, and.  well.  here i go again.  let's change the subject, then.

it's raining.  i love this.  i love the greens and the blues of july in the mountains, the smells of the forest that are brought out with the rain.  i love the profusion of moths and butterflies, the songs of the jubilant birds, the breeze coming through the open windows.  i love the quiet that this little house affords, and the peace that comes from living a life that is mine, mine, mine.  i love traveling, i love coming home.  i love the moment, the present moment whenever that is, and love the feeling that being alive brings me.  i love being here, i love what i do.  let's end with that.  xo

now, about those wings....

 remember this beautiful creature?  it's been living in a zip lock bag in the freezer, as i can't bring myself to let it decompose when out in the natural elements.  i've decided, after much deliberation, that the "bones" i found at my parents' house earlier this week are what remains of a luna moth's wings after the feathery part has decomposed.  a couple of you wrote and said it was a bat; another wrote and said that butterflies don't have bones; a couple of you (bless you) suggested that they were from fairy wings.  but, upon closer inspection (you may click on the photo for a close up), wouldn't you agree with me, now, that they came from another luna moth?  they are as light as air, i tell you, and almost impossible to hold for a photograph.  you can see from my hands the scale of their span, and i apologize for the lighting:  i simply could not tilt my hand towards more light in the window, for twice they slipped off and fell to the floor.

these are my hands of july:  multiple blackberry thorns and stains, from the berries that grow out in the meadow to the right of my house.  i felt a need to go gather those berries, over a week ago, and have yet to do one single thing with the three or four cups that i managed to pick.  i'm reminded of a treasured childhood memory here:  i lived in a two story house, dutch colonial in style, on a street called winthrop where there were no other families, only elderly widows.  my brother, sister and i spent many an evening there catching lightning bugs, and we loved waking up to the sound of a lawnmower and the smell of cut grass.  i loved even more, though, waking to hear a lilting voice calling out loud and clear:  "nice dewberrrrries!  nice dewberrrries!"  we'd race downstairs in our cotton pajamas, beg mama for the ten or twenty cents that the large old black woman was charging, and then mama would put the berries in bowls for us with sugar and milk.  i loved hearing the singing voice of this woman, whoever she was, and loved seeing her lumber on slowly down our short street.  the sidewalks were paved in octagonal stones, and the street marker was set in a concrete column:  winthrop court.  we lived at 385.  it was a beautiful time, and i miss having my brother to remember it with me.

i've been distracted and disjointed all this week - traveling to and from alabama, sleeping in two different beds, schedule disrupted by multiple appointments, by driving back and forth from asheville, rain, sun, rain again.  life.  the studio is in shambles, as bad as it ever was (well, no, not really, but in dire need of a good shaking out), and i'm only able to go in there for one or two hours at a stretch.  welcome to reality, you say?  you're right.  my reality shifts shape and color from time to time to time, and right now what's real are the disruptions in my usually quiet days.  someone said that an unexpected gift from roy's upcoming surgery is the chance to have him home with me for an unusually long, extended visit.  and this is so - i see it as a gift, no matter the reason.  so, then, jewelry work is on the back burner for now, while i shuffle my life all around me.  here is a sweet little something that may or may not call out to you, as you see fit - she patiently awaits in my little etsy shop.  (SOLD) xo

a magical find

i wanted to share with you all something that i found one evening at dusk when walking across the carpeted grass of my parents' back yard.  up by my mother's little goldfish pond garden, there at my feet, were these.  can you imagine?!  light as air, i gingerly picked them up, cradled them in the palm of my hand, and carried them back to the house.  as best i can figure, they are the skeletal remains of a butterfly's wings, left to the elements.  they are, naturally, quite fragile, and i'm wanting very much to preserve them somehow - resin?  i'll need a fairly large container for this.  oh, the mysteries that present themselves to me, simply when walking through the grass at twilight in the summer of alabama....

color in flight

i've been spending the past few evenings sitting in an antique wicker rocker out on the side screened porch, rather than out on the deck with the view, because it is too wonderful a show with all the many hummingbirds that have discovered my two feeders hanging within view.  these birds are voracious and awfully territorial, meaning that they don't want to share the bounty of two feeders' worth of nectar with anyone but themselves.  do any of you know what i mean here?  they chatter and squeak and dive bomb one another like fighter pilots over and over again, then will go perch on the thinnest, scrawniest little dogwood branch to watch for encroaching competition.  the dogwood wraps itself around the corner porch, along with a smaller walnut tree, and it is a wonderful thing to sit and watch four or five of them sitting here and there like so many little iridescent bugs, preening and chirping and darting their heads back and forth.  i wish i had their energy, and their flying skills as well; i've watched them fly in pendulum arcs, back and forth, up and down, up to ten or twelve times in a row.  i'm sure you are wondering about the bird i'm holding in my hand?  it was a gift from my friend meg, three years ago, and was one she found dead beneath her feeder.  being able to hold it in my hand, or show children up close the detail of its glowing feathers, is a gift in itself.  it is as light as air, and just as soft.  and the little iron one perched on dried wood from the beaches of california?  a gift from my wisconsin friend sue, who knows and appreciates my utter love for creatures of flight.

this particular color - that luminescent shade of blue that turns to green, like the wings of a hummingbird, has been haunting me for months now.  remember the ribbon i dyed last june?  i thankfully still have a bit of it, and have been using it in tassels for jewelry, in artwork, in my journals.  i wanted to share with you a few images of classes that i'll be teaching next year, debuting at artfest.  i've taught there every single year that it's been held, and am now the only teacher who can say that.  a proud crown to wear, i think.

i'm leaving for a few days in alabama on saturday, at least i think i am - a trip delayed a few days by roy's visits (multiple) to the orthopedic surgeon in asheville, where we'll be heading again this afternoon.  hopefully we'll know the surgical dates by then - sometime right in the middle of this month.  i'd like to ask you a favor?  i would really love for him to receive some cards in the mail, wishing him a speedy recovery; i think it would be marvelous to string them up along a clothesline of sorts, here in the vaulted living room where i'm sure he'll be holding court on the red linen sofa.  if any of you would like to join in the fun,  please comment and i'll send you this address.  i just think that hearing from some of my readers would be a pleasant surprise... xx

update:  roy has a pre op and hospital appointment this coming friday, and the actual surgery is scheduled for early monday morning, july 14.  thank you, everyone, by your amazing enthusiastic response to my request for cards - you are all wonderful!  xxx

one more note before i head to alabama - there are a couple of lovelies listed in my etsy shop, as of today (yes, this is how i celebrate the day of our independence - by working independently).  sweet little somethings, in case you want to have a look.  xo

hands across the world

hands.  beautiful hands!  these are all taken by nine year old students of australian teacher kate bunney, who is a reader of my blog.  the other day when i posted the photographs of the luna moth, her charges were taken with the imagery of a hand caressing treasure, and inspired to make some of their own with accompanying poetry. 

i love the one above, holding a frangipani blossom, with the subtle glimpse of a red sneaker and plaid school uniform skirt.  i also love that quite a few of these little hands show signs of being out in nature - i.e., dirt on fingertips.  magic!  what a wonderful teacher kate must be.  it does my heart good to know that all the way across the world, across land and ocean, children are being inspired by photographs and words of weathered old me.   i've also received lovely photos from friend and student vanessa cullen (you remember her, the wonderful art teacher at perth college in australia, whose little "art babies" said they thought my jewelry was made with magic, by mermaids); vanessa showed them a little doll bracelet i made, and asked them what they thought it was.  obviously, a crown!  these children are one of the many reason i continue to write this blog, in spite of the time it takes - the reaching out, the sharing, the exchanges that are created.  what a wonderful, vast world this happens to be.  

what are the little hands around you doing?  are they covered with paint, with mud, with pancake or cookie batter?  are they dusted with sand from the shore?  are you finding finger and hand prints everywhere you look these days, and wishing you kept a better house?  don't fret.  the handprints grow bigger and bigger and bigger until one day they are out the door and leaving prints somewhere else.  take photographs of those hands, and of the smudges they leave, the treasures they hold.  and hold those hands.  the dimples will all too soon disappear.  what are my "little" boys' hands doing?  the other evening roy brought his electric bass out onto the porch at dusk and played some of his original tunes for me.  and robin?  he is somewhere up in michagan, pitching a tent and helping out at a music festival.  their hands are large now, and strong.  mens' hands.  i'm startled sometimes when i look at them.  where did those fat little dimples go?

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They're really saying I love you.

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.

              - written for Louis Armstrong