the peaceful peacock

Some of you know, some of you don’t, but we took a grand fam­ily jour­ney back to Ari­zona over the last week.  Good med­i­cine for the slow drag of win­ter come Feb­ru­ary.  I feel cryp­tic and filled with color, a feel­ing almost for­got­ten in my three year baby-growing respite from the road.

Sim­ple sen­sa­tions of home are fresh and won­der­ful once again.

Touch­ing :: The faces of my sweet beau­ties, who are upside down and inside out from three days of confinement.

Tast­ing :: The mem­ory of carne asada.  And salsa.  And fresh tor­tillas.  Sighhhhhhhhh.…

Smelling :: Fresh moun­tain air ~ clean, camp­firey, and instinc­tively famil­iar on a deep and sat­is­fy­ing level.

Hear­ing :: The preen­ing of birds and the purring of cats.

See­ing :: The beloved big skies of home.

Stay tuned for pic­tures.  Lots of pictures.

I take it back about not mak­ing any New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions.  The other day we were out play­ing under the blue­berry sky again and I stum­bled across a solu­tion that solved a lot more than my query about how to make the moun­tains look big­ger with my sim­ple camera…

Aim higher.

The win­ter lasts a long time in Montana.

A looooooong time.

We are cur­rently in the throngs of Win­ter 2, the post-Christmas lull before the real deep-freeze mad­ness sets in.

This year we have been graced with plenty of still, blue skies and pre­co­cious black birds to waken our dreary eyes.  A refresh­ing prepa­ra­tion for our next season.

Still Win­ter.

Hang in there, say the black birds. Make new plans for gar­dens and sum­mer­time frills, fix the parts of your insides that ask for atten­tion still.

Thank you for your mes­sage, Brother Birds.  You hang in there too.

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.….….