the peaceful peacock

Like the new wid­get?  Please feel free to copy and paste the code in the text box (over there on the side­bar) in order to link to my blog.  I’m work­ing on a cou­ple more in dif­fer­ent sizes as well–stay tuned for updates.

So while I’m doing some behind the scenes geek­ery, you can catch my posts over at The Yarn Shop and Fiber Place.  The Yarn Shop is my fiber mecca here in Boze­man and I’m pretty sure it’s the best yarn shop ever.  I’m in the process of help­ing them move grace­fully into the 21st Cen­tury with a new for­mat and look, a Face­book Fan Page, and Barb has taken quite a shine to Twit­ter.  We would love to have you join us in what­ever way works for you, includ­ing stop­ping by for some face-to-face time.

Keep check­ing in to see the tin­ker­ings!  Almost done with all the lay­out work!

I sup­pose a few may be won­der­ing how my chal­lenge of the utmost kind is hold­ing up.

It’s chal­leng­ing.  And good.  And I’m hav­ing fun with it so far.

One of the ele­ments that I like about par­tic­i­pat­ing in some­thing like this is that it becomes sur­pris­ingly per­sonal.  I’m look­ing inside and out to dis­cover exactly what it is that makes me tick in regards to per­sonal style.  I’ve been brows­ing fash­ion sites, flickr groups, and inspi­ra­tional blogs to open up new per­spec­tives, and I’ve been caught up in the feel­ings of lack and out-of-placeness that come from check­ing in with fash­ion sites, flickr groups, and inspi­ra­tional blogs.

And I’ve come home to the foun­da­tions.  The core.  Ele­ments that cre­ate the essence of me.

When I was about 20 years old, I remem­ber stum­bling onto a bumper sticker that sim­ply said, “I Am”.  I knew this was valu­able infor­ma­tion, some­thing to be tucked away and stored and pon­dered over, but I didn’t really get it at the time.  I think I’m start­ing to get it.  The les­son is one that only comes from watch­ing the days flow in and out, stealth­ily tak­ing time by the hand and pass­ing it under my feet.

That’s a deep and fancy way of telling you how wise I’ve become in my thirties.

What I do know is that every­thing changes.  But I am always me.  I am always here.  I am always doing what I do.  Here changes, what I do sways with the breeze, the pieces of the puz­zle fit in dif­fer­ent pat­terns from days to weeks to years, but I still value the same foun­da­tions that I have held close to my heart my whole life.  It’s good to know that now that I’m pass­ing those lit­tle parts and pieces of myself on to other human beings, and I’ve done my best to pol­ish up the tar­nished spots and to repair the bits that came home damaged.

No mat­ter what, I always Am.

In the moment.  On my way to some­thing.  In love.  Enjoy­ing myself.  Won­der­ing.  Think­ing about some­thing else.  Happy.  Con­tent.  Ful­filled.  Chal­lenged.  Hope­ful.  Bak­ing.  Sewing.  Learn­ing.  Nurturing.

Kind.  Grace­ful.  Blessed.

Even when I’m irri­tated and frus­trated and impa­tient and tired and crabby and in the crap­pi­est of moods.  I Am.

And I must admit, it’s kind of fun to find ways that express that in some­thing as imper­ma­nent and fleet­ing as cloth­ing.  It’s a challenge–and not my usual kind of chal­lenge.  A chal­lenge of the utmost kind, indeed.

So I begin with some­thing easy and familiar.

Skirts.

And an old skill that I haven’t vis­ited since those days of 20.  With this first piece, I honor all that I Am.  I also honor all that I Was.  Because while 20 was a pretty good year, it’s a part of me that still hurts some­times even though I wish it didn’t.

In grat­i­tude, I make this skirt for a young lady I knew a long time ago.  She was a whiz at embroi­dery.  And she was rather fond of faeries.

Before Annabelle was born, I laid out a plan of what I thought I could actu­ally achieve with an infant and a tod­dler underfoot.

I knew that phys­i­cally cre­at­ing would be a chal­lenge (to say the least…) so while she was very, very tiny and liked to sleep all the time, I learned to make my own hand­spun yarn.  Once the wheel became too excit­ing for tiny hands to resist, I moved into the next phase of the plan, switched gears and focused on lay­ing out the web­site of my dreams.  I have been deeply immersed in learn­ing the skills to make this happen–not an easy feat.  It’s just about there though and I’m pretty sat­is­fied with the over­all appear­ance and set-up (like the bare bones of my gallery!  take a look!)

And so comes another shift.

The time has come for me to drag my moth­er­ing hor­mones away from the chil­dren (some­times kick­ing and screaming–me, not them) and into the stu­dio for a few hours a week to hit the machines.  We have a sum­mer mar­ket com­ing up you know…but don’t say that out loud because I start get­ting a lit­tle frayed around the edges.  The plan was to begin cre­at­ing inven­tory in Jan­u­ary and I hon­estly can’t stop myself.  I just walk into my stu­dio, sit down, and auto­mat­i­cally start stitch­ing things together.

Slow and steady.  That’s me.

And that’s a tall order for a woman whose mind fol­lows the pace of the speedy lit­tle rabbit.

This year I plan to offer a wide selec­tion of hand­spun yarns, a vari­ety of knit­ting and cro­chet acces­sories (like the hook and nee­dle cases), and a lim­ited col­lec­tion of hand­made cloth­ing of my own design.

Which just might uti­lize my skills in hand dye­ing and/or applique, like this cus­tom skirt in the works:

And due to the unex­pected arrival of the girls last fall, you just might see an appear­ance of some hand­wo­ven goods.  Like belts.  Maybe.

So click your heels three times, whis­per a spell and it might come true.….….

Happy New Year!

This will be the year when old is good again.

And by that, I mean like this:

I wish I could say that I made this lit­tle beauty, but it’s a gem that I found on Etsy in my lat­est round of research.

My research for ~ a chal­lenge of the utmost kind ~ that is.

Begin­ning today, Jan­u­ary 1, 2010, I will be abstain­ing from buy­ing any new item for my per­sonal wardrobe.  I will be mak­ing my own clothes or buy­ing them from sec­ond­hand shops, scor­ing bits from free piles, and con­cen­trat­ing on cre­at­ing a look that works for a stay-at-home-mama/ fiber artist/writer with ease.  (Edit:  except for tights.  And sun­glasses.  So there.)

First stop:  house dresses.  Just like my gram used to wear.  The pat­terns are queued up and ready for their mish mash of alter­ations, the prac­tice fab­rics are washed and pressed.  And there will be a dress just like the one you see up there.  Yessiree.

Are you ready to join me on a jour­ney into the good old days?

Not every day is full of dis­ci­plines and tidy­ing up and laun­dry.  Not every day indeed.  Some days, in fact, are self­ishly devoted to what I want to do, and appar­ently all I wanted to do for the last four days was spin yarn.

Patient Papa, strong and flex­i­ble as always, took the helm of the house­hold while I stared at the spin, spin, spin of the wheel and watched fiber fly from my fingertips.

It started inno­cently with a quick upcy­cled project using a fuzzy acrylic and some left­over choco­late brown hand­spun singles…

and moved into another upcy­cled experiement (left)…and some hand­spun wool (right)…

and that was so fun that I tack­led a cou­ple more col­or­ways in wool…

and then I tack­led some hemp fiber…

You might notice that enor­mous moun­tain of unfolded laun­dry behind the wheel there.  And you might even see the sweet lit­tle shirt with the spin­ning wheel on it that my pal Heidi made for Annabelle.

Yep, that’s right Annabelle.  Some days your mama is a spin­nin’ machine.  Spe­cial thanks to the papa and the kid­dos for cut­ting me some slack while I immersed myself in the prac­tice of work­ing med­i­ta­tion.  It was sorely needed.

On the left there you can see the lat­est ver­sion of my upcy­cled yarn efforts.  Basi­cally I ply a bunch of plain bits together into some­thing new and funky.  I’ve been learn­ing a lot by work­ing with already-made yarns and it’s a relax­ing and low-key way to prac­tice nov­elty spin­ning tech­niques like coil spin­ning and Turk­ish knots.  I’m really dig­ging the effect of the mul­ti­ple lay­ers of color but the tech­nique needs some refine­ment in order to cre­ate a bal­anced and secure result.

On the right, you can see the results of this prac­tice with my own hand-dyed, hand­spun wool yarn.  This par­tic­u­lar set is a crepe yarn spun with sparkle and coils.  Sadly, it’s hor­ri­bly itchy so I think it would be most appro­pri­ate for a bag or for outerwear.