Nettles, Treadles and Love

Well, in the almost year since my last post I haven’t been up to making exactly nothing, just not enough to really blog about, but the accumulation of all of the odds and ends, bits and bobs, kind of makes up a proper blog post.

I ended 2017 by indulging my inner poet by reading at my first open mic poetry night, sharing my whimsical word patterns with the local folks.

I would say that the main all consuming project of 2018 has been the clutter clearing.  It has mostly happened in small unassuming, invisible, ways.  Truly, clutter clearing goes so deep, and I feel I have barely scratched the surface.  I have been inspired by Karen Kingston‘s books for many years, and this year I actually took her online courses to really get things moving.

Some of the visible clearing…

The clutter clearing actually inspired me to dive back in to my meditation training, which is another deep ongoing project.

Which inspired me to work with a particular space clearing flower mudra morning practice for about a month where I made a flower and candle offering each day.   I needed to buy lots of flower bouquets for this practice.

I then felt inspired to save all of the flowers as they faded and put them on my drying rack to dry.

Then I got the idea to put the dried flowers in a frame that I had that could hold them.

and then I made one for a friend…

I made my first flower essence from the beautiful wild rose bush on the property.

I clean houses for a living and listen to a LOT of podcasts all day long.  A recent favorite is the Medicine Stories podcast. When my neighbors let me harvest the dried flowers from one of their spent lavender plants I enjoyed the bouquet for a while but then was inspired by Amber Magnolia Hill and her podcast to make some lavender infused oil for the soothing practice of body oiling, which she talks about on this episode.

I also got the treadle going again after some neglect.  I made a pillow case for a small pillow I use in bed out of an old sheet that had ripped.

Most recently I attended an open weaving lab at the Fiber Circle Studio in Cotati and got my first introductory weaving lesson.

and then the following images are just hints of things to come as I learn techniques and strategies to bring some ideas into form…