For the record....a bad month.

I feel the need to write these things so that I can remember that there is a reason that life seems a bit hard right now. A reminder to be kind to myself and make self-care a top priority.
In the last month there has just been a lot of big and little things that happened that could rock my emotional boat. The biggie is that we have seen sister Fran's cancer progress so quickly. In the end of May we were all able to enjoy what we thought could be our last full family get-together at a house in North Myrtle Beach. Since that time Fran went from being able to enjoy our time at the beach together to going in to hospice on the 7th of July.

My Funny Frannie, we called her our blue footed booby because of the shoes she had to wear on the beach due to Doxil and little orphan Frannie since she lost her long locks to chemo.

Fran at the hospice facility with her two daughters and kitty Maggie.

My dad and I went down to North Carolina to be with Fran and her family and spent over a week doing what we could to try to make this last part of life easier. It was an incredible experience, deeply emotional and utterly exhausting and heartbreaking and yet somehow there were times that were beautiful....a sacred time. I will never forget the feeling of waking up after an afternoon nap taken after staying up all night with Fran. While I slept it had rained and when I awoke it was to see this glorious rainbow that lasted so long. I had hoped it was a sign that Fran was finally released from her pain, but as of this writing she is still hanging on.

At the same time that this is happening my daughter has been having problems with one of her eyes. First it was thought to be just conjunctivitis, then ocular herpes, and finally after about a month it was decided that it was a rare disease called acanthamoeba keratitis, basically amoeba in her cornea. It is a serious problem. Her eye looks a lot like this one.

We wound up having to go to NYC to see an expert in this rare condition that can come from improper use of contact lenses. As of this time treatment is working on the amoeba but is so irritating to the eye that new medicines have been ordered as of this week. She still can not see out of it....just shadows but it is too painful to have it open much anyway. It was awful to be in the doctor's office and have all the doctor's in the practice come in to see this rare problem. Great to have them all on board but really brings home how serious and unusual this is. And when she could not see the very big letter 'E' on the chart my stomach did that thing that happens when we feel punched in the gut by life.
Adding to this 'in your face' reminder of how fragile we are and that life is uncertain and a gift to be cherished were two accidents. First my brother was rear ended by someone not paying attention....maybe texting. He was sore but basically ok though the car was totaled and if he had had a passenger it would have been a tragedy. Second was my son who narrowly avoided a head-on crash caused by a drug dealer/user without any insurance. His truck is also totaled as the back axle was ripped off so great was the force. These are those things that we struggle with being thankful that it was not worse and yet hate that it happened at all. They remind us of just how quickly life can change.
My daily life changed a lot when on our way home from our vigil with Fran I found out that something had gotten in to my chicken coop at home and killed all but one of my girls. Anyone who knows me knows how big a part of my life my girls were. They were not just chickens or pets, they were my companions. I was a crazy chicken lady and I probably talked to them more on a daily basis than anyone. First while we were in NC I had gotten a call from my chicken sitter to tell me that my special girl 'Sweetie' had died. Thankfully she died peacefully of natural causes. She was the one I had to take in the garden with me to protect her from the other girls. It is so lonely out there now.

Sweetie in the garden with her chicks.

My son, who also talked with this little chicken at times, buried her and made this little cross out of tobacco lathe and hay bale twine.

I had known that my coop was not as secure as it should be. And I had worried that something was going to get in so it is not like I did not know that there was a possibility of an attack. I was actually more worried that something would dig under the coop to get in. I knew that chicken wire was not supposed to be good enough to keep things out but in 8 years here and several over in my old house I never had a problem with holes in the wire. I guess I was due....plus the wire was probably weaker after all those years.

A few months ago I had asked my father if he thought we would travel more together if we did not have the chickens and he said yes. I was very lucky that I had finally found someone to watch them so that we were able to go to the beach with all the family but it is still not the same as being able to just leave home without asking for help. We still have the cat to worry about but it is easier to find someone to care for one cat than someone to take care of a flock of chickens. Libby has chickens of her own and she took better care of my girls than I did, bringing them treats etc.. I felt so so sorry for her finding the horrible slaughter. What an awful thing to have happen to her. Again my son came and did the job of clean up so that when I got home it was just to an empty coop. I am thankful for both Libby and Buddy for all that they did.
I am taking it all as a sign that I need to be chicken free for a while. Dad's macular degeneration has been pretty stable but at 88 years old there is no telling how long we have left to be out and about traveling together. I know I can get chickens later but I do miss my friends and while I can replace 'the chickens' I can not replace Momma the matriarch and top of the pecking order, who had a stroke and I rehabilitated but still stumbled a lot,

or Dottie whose voice I could distinguish and who always answered my questions,

 or Handsome who must have had a terrible fight trying to protect his ladies,

or Millard who....well you get the idea.

Spring-ing

It is that time of year when things start revving up, an awakening, not just in the external world but in my mind as well. My thoughts jump from one thing to the next with lightening speed, and each new idea or task MUST be acted on NOW!! The creative thoughts can be like a bombardment of the brain. I love the feeling of coming alive again and beginning to have some energy and desire to take things on. However, I do not enjoy the rapid cycling of mood, the turn from joy to despair can happen in an instant that comes along with it. It is the time for me to be on the look out for the signs that a real mania may be taking root. The tricky thing with mania is that it feels so good and energetic that, like taking a drug that you intellectually know it is dangerous and bad for you, the allure is really strong.
 
So far the desire to clean and organize has been the strongest and I have been managing to keep it real as far as not starting too many projects. One of those things has been a sudden need to get the old family photos scanned and put into boxes according to generations/eras. I am able to find some reasoning to why I feel the need to do this now. One reason is that Dad has been looking for an old photo of an ancestor for a relative that is doing research into family genealogy. This relative has a photo copy of the picture from my mother that she made long ago. We are not even sure that the photo is here. The other reason is that I finally hooked my scanner up to my laptop. One of the good things about this side of the bipolar spectrum is that I tend to tackle those things that have been on the 'someday' list for years. So not only have I been organizing and scanning these types of photos...

(Little me with my big sisters circa bbb. (before baby brother))

 My grandmother, great grandmother, and great great grandmother and family

 My dad with his elf ears

 My mom (the phrase at the top is part of a family story)

 Yours truly in first grade...I think

And some unknown person in a fading photo that HAD to be scanned before it totally disappeared!
And if I am preserving photos I MUST finally deal with the photos that were 'rescued' from a fire in the early 1980's that burned our ancestral farm.

And since the weather is getting a bit nicer and we have more daylight hours I am spending a lot more time outdoors. Pruning the fruit trees...

 ...building more of my stick fence with those prunings...

and guarding the chickens since we had another attack by the hawk. Of course it killed my favorite chicken of all time, my Silkie, Grumpykins. Here she is as a day old peep, showing why my daughter gave her that name.

She was one of the two moms and the other mother hen and the chicks would not go to bed that night. They were looking for her and even when I scooted them into the coop they checked each nest just in case she was there. That made me cry. I still miss her. 

 But I did not get chickens just to keep them locked in a cage so I do what I can to protect them and just have to take these loses as part of the circle of life. We all have to eat. Thankfully I scared the hawk off before it got a bite of its meal. I hope it will go back to looking for dinner elsewhere so both the chickens and I relax a bit when they are out and about. Thankfully I have such a good rooster in Fred...

he spots that hawk and warns his girls with three distinct noises. One that means 'keep your eyes on the skies girls', one that means 'run for your lives', and another that means 'hide and be quiet'. He often spies the hawk and the only way I can find it in the sky is by looking where he is looking. Sadly, the two mommas and chicks had formed their own rooster-less group, and it is possible that Grumpykins died trying to save her chicks, who would have been easier prey.
The little bit of felting that I did do was to work on another illuminated piece. Since the house was still fairly clean from my Felt-Together weekend I invited another friend to come play felting. Chris and I became friends years ago; see this post for the back story. She worked on making a vest and I worked on laying out this...

which may be a candle holder...

or maybe a lampshade...

or maybe it will just stay like this.

And continuing with getting together with friends I also had a wonderful time going to the bulb show at Smith with one of my old class mates, my forever friend Kristen. We met in at an orientation luncheon given for the Adas (aka women who are going to Smith at a nontraditional age) and we have remained friends ever since, even though we may go for a very long time without any contact. Those are forever friends...the kind of people you feel a strong connection with right from the moment you meet that never goes away.
Here she is 'photo bombing' (popping in to someone's photo of something else) something which I have never heard of. In this case her appearance made the photo better.

These beautiful flowers at the bulb show...

inspired me to start this piece using colors that are very unusual for me to work with.

It is still very much a work in progress.  It needs a bit more fulling but I am adding some stitching first. I am not sure where I am going with this or if it will get done or just added to the pile of UFOs. Especially since Spring is springing.

P.S. Talking a lot more than usual esp. quickly is another sign of mania...is the same true of posting on my blog?

Friends, Felting, and Fun.

The Felt-Together with friends was just what I needed; I think it was for some of the others as well. I always have this weird thought before hand whenever I invite someone that they really don't want to come here but that they feel obligated because I invited them. I know it is not true but I still felt so good when everyone was thanking me for organizing this get together. It was a really good time! For these Felt-Together's there is a core group of five friends and we invite other friends to join us for the weekend of fun and felting. Since I have a small space for working in I only invite two additional friends. This time there were only five of us but it was just right. The alternate friend who came this time was Robin's sister Susan who was the spitfire of the group. It was so much fun to have these two sisters interacting with the typical big sister vs little sister banter and hear the family stories. I love the Blakney family!

Most of us worked on small jewelry-ish projects. My friend Joei worked on one of her nuno collage images. Unfortunately I only took one photo the entire time.

I did some experimenting. I had several yarns that I had never tried, one of which was a so called eyelash yarn. My beautiful (inside AND out) friend Cher wore a lovely felt garment that had some of that type of yarn. I loved the effect when it is covered with a layer of wool. Some of the fringe ends come through the wool layers and some form loops.

I also experimented more with some wire mesh I bought on clearance a while ago. I really did not know then if it would felt in but it was shiny and on clearance so how could I resist? It works amazingly well. 

I used some to encase a glass gem that was another long ago shiny MUST purchase.

I also experimented with felting the pieces of silk that I painted and silk screened a bit ago. I really like that the inks act as a kind of resist so where there is more paint fewer of the fibers come through. This means that the piece can have several different textures even though it is one piece of cloth and one kind of wool. This will definitely get played with some more.

My bestest friend Joei spent an extra night here and when she asked me what I wanted to do next I told her I needed to start a bigger project. If the studio stayed too clean I would not be inclined to do anything since I would not want to make a mess. I seem to need a certain amount of mess to be able to create. Too much and I can't find anything...too little and I don't want to get anything out. I got out all my white stuff to make some lampshades. This had been on my to-do list for a long time...ever since taking the Illuminated Felt class with Sharon Costello. I love the light that comes through the felt, and we had some pretty ratty looking shades here that would be good to practice with. I finished two. I am happy with the felt but need to work on my proportions and shaping. Looking around at other lampshades here I realized that they all look odd if you are looking at the lamp and shade as separate pieces. These were stiffened with  Golden GAC 400 medium made for stiffening textiles.

I will end this post with photos of those growing chicks. I am really hoping that they are hens but I am starting to see signs that that may not be. But I won't really know unless they crow! They sure are interesting looking with a mix of Silkie feathers with Ameraucana feathers. 

This photo looks like they are getting a talking to from one of the moms.

Late again posting and not much felting.

I sat down to write a blog post last weekend but got interrupted and never got back to it. (I got interrupted two more times since). I have realized that I am doing the same thing with my blog that I used to do with writing letters. Yes, I am old enough to remember when we used to write full page letters, sometimes many pages. I tended to put off my letter writing because I felt like I needed a big chunk of time to do it in, and had to be in the right mood, and...well you get the picture. And the longer I put it off the more there is to say to catch up on all the 'doings'. So today I am just going to bang a post out and not worry too much about what it says or how it is written. I also have not been felting much or taking many photos and the photos are the best part.
The non-creative, non-felty things I have been doing include taking care of (aka just watching) these new chicks; though with two mommas they don't need any watching.

Even though they are much more feathered out now they still get cold and have to snuggle under mom sometimes...

The cold weather has been making chicken and duck care a bit more of a chore because of the frozen waterers and not being able to use the hose to fill them. The other day the ducks got fed up enough with not being able to properly bathe that one of them tried this...

That was funny but this is just all kinds of wrong.

 

Along with the cold dealing with the clean up after the blizzard (named Nemo by the national weather but Charlotte here in CT) took a lot more time than I expected. We got just under 2 feet of snow and not much wind so we were quite lucky. 

 I had quite a time digging a path to the door of the chicken coop, first I had to 'shovel' the trees!

 I don't think I have ever seen the front porch covered this much with snow.

Here is proof that ducks are dumber than chickens. The chickens did not even cross the threshold but the ducks tried to fly/swim through the snow as though there was some place without snow to go to, quacking loudly the entire time. I had to pick one of them up to put it back in the coop when it became exhausted with the effort.

With Dad's help I finished mounting my Tiffany window piece just in the nick of time to enter it in to the West Hartford Art League's 'Out of the Loop' fiber art show.

When I dropped it off I was a bit disgusted to see that one of my former students submitted the piece that she had made in my class. This is the third time that has happened even though I tell students that this is not allowed since the piece is in part mine. Many exhibits state in their rules that pieces done in a workshop or with an instructor are not allowed. Sigh, I guess that is just the risk of sharing knowledge and techniques, but that does not make it right.
While I was down in that area of the state I indulged in a trip to Dick Blick, a large art supply store. Among the items I purchased were fabric printing inks. My mother used to do silk screening and we still have all the tools. I only did a bit of experimenting but I can see a lot of possibilities for making patterned silk to use in my felting. I really want to explore the ways that the transparent inks overlap. It is similar to watercolors in that way. I played with monoprinting too and loved that. Before I do any more I want to see how the fabric felts in.

The one bit of felting I did was rather involved and kind of mixed media. I have been wanting to do a still life. But since I have a habit of not just trying one new thing in a piece I also explored painting on the felt....and I did more exploring of my idea of creating a kind of relief picture. The piece is also about art vs. craft. What is it that makes one thing automatically considered ART? Is it the medium? There seems to be a kind of hierarchy in the art world with sculpture and oil painting being at the top. A still life is such a classic genera of the painting realm. In art history it is easy to see how this attitude could have developed. A friend who bought one of my pastel paintings often asks me if I have done any more painting and says he doesn't 'get' my felt work. I will admit that this attitude has changed some over the years; and that even I have the same prejudice. That is why I was so thrilled when one of my felt pieces got an award in a traditional 'fine art' show.
I am quite pleased with how the piece came out, especially since I was not looking at an actual still life and was just working from memories, but in the photo below you will see that my critics are not too sure about it.

 It is hard to see in the photo but the vase and table edge come out from the background by about an inch and a couple of the pussy willow stems are fully three dimensional. I painted the edges of the canvas and some of the edges of the felt as well.

The rest of my time has been spent doing some much needed cleaning and organizing here. I decided to schedule a 'felt-together' with friends to give me incentive to do those tasks that can always be put off until tomorrow. So this weekend I will get to do some felting and definitely have some fun.