my quilts.

i am thankful for so much. including pie.

and quilts~~~~~~~here we go, on a little trip through my quilty loves......in no particular order. breathe. this is a special ride.

okay. this one is a little baby like quilt my mawmaw made for me right after my wedding. she must have been getting me ready for babies or something. i picked out the fabrics with her on a trip i made to arkansas to see her and my dad. i was in a very feminine pink phase i guess. she then quilted it up, with hearts!! that was her doing completely. she was 85ish when she made this one.

this is the quilt my mawmaw made for max when he was a tiny tiny boy. i like picturing her going to pick out this fabric for him so much. and then the quilting she did, below. just a single star like design. she was 88ish when she made this.
this is my mawmaw's wedding gift from her sister, my great aunt erie. a double wedding ring quilt. i can't even imagine what kind of time she put into this. but i can feel the love she had for her sister when i look at it. the kind of love that you can't explain, but you feel it, and you can kind-of only say, wow. my dad had this quilt for a long time, and then after he died, his sister, my aunt becky had it. i saw it in her house and gently told her i would love to take care of it if she ever wanted me to. she thought about it for a day, and then just as i was getting ready to fly back to colorado, she carefully bagged it up and gave it to me.

this is a quilt i found this summer at a rummage sale for the fire department. i saw it in a stack of sheets, and when i spotted it, i kind-of gasped, like i always do now when i happen upon these beauties. she is thin and old and worn but still has a lot of integrity somehow.

i found this beauty at a thrift store. she is totally made from old blue jeans. and has many little embroidered scenes like this one all over her. when i was doing this very quick little photo shoot of the quilts, instead of overseeing my kids' packing jobs for this little trip to baltimore we have taken (my priorities are really funny when it is time to leave town), i didn't have time to lay them all out properly. maybe one warm day when i am inspired to, i will hang them on the line outside, one by one, and give them some serious recognition that way. some day. not today. today, this is the best i could do. i love these quilts so much.
this is the first quilt i ever owned. my mawmaw gave her to me when i was 10ish. she made her for me, and i slept under her for most of my childhood. now my oldest daughter sleeps under her. some of her butterflies are losing their fabric, but it adds to her charm somehow.

this is the first quilt my mawmaw ever made. she gave her to me on a trip i made to see her when max was a baby. when she gave her to me, i was happy to be getting a piece of her history, but it wasn't until a few years later that i realized how beautiful she is. we have had all of our picnics and rests on her when we're out and about, for the past 7 years. she just lives in the car. for being 75ish years old, she is incredibly strong. freakishly strong.
this is the newest sister to my family of quilts. i adopted her just last week from my favorite thrift shop. much of her fabric, the reds especially are wearing away. the grey border is so nice. and the quilting.
this is a VERY worn quilt i took home from a thrift store last year. a meticulously made lone star. almost all the fabric that makes up the star is wearing away. the orange and red is holding up the best. so interesting to see what ends up being the strongest color in the old quilts.
this is the first quilt i had the pleasure of helping to make. for my high school graduation, i asked mawmaw if she would make me a quilt. of course she said yes. i picked out the fabrics, and then, i think it took 7 years for her to be made. we ended up making her together, which i love SO much more than if mawmaw had made her alone. i got to learn how to quilt from my grandmother, which is so dreamy. on a few different visits we worked on her, and then for the grand finsihing, my 85 year old grandmother flew from arkansas to colorado by herself, and we finished this quilt. i woke up one morning on that visit, and she was done. my mawmaw had gotten up super early, cause she always did, and finished the binding. every stitch on our quilt was done by hand. and i love looking at her and not knowing if it was me or her who did that stitch. i also find the colors i chose at 17 funny, sweet, and, interesting.

log cabin love!!!
mawmaw made this pillow for me before we ever started the quilt. i think she felt bad for taking so long on the quilt, and so she made me a pillow. i took this pillow with me on the solo journey i made when i was 20 years old, to new zealand. i slept on her every night for two months while i camped, and youth hosteled a bit, all over those amazing islands. she is very faded now, and smushed, but so special to me, as you can imagine.
this one above, i found at a thrift shop. it is super thick and we use it a lot to cover up in the movie room. i am not in crazy love with it, but i appreciate it. ha. no offense to whoever made it, at all. i have made many things that aren't museum quality. like, everything. anyhoo....
this one. i found her at my favorite thrift store, on MY BIRTHDAY last year. how lucky did that feel? over the top lucky.
her many different star patterns are so fun to look at. try to pick your favorite one. it's not possible. they are all SO amazing.

wow. that's all. my quilt loves. i am a happy girl when it comes to quilts. and when it comes to many other things, actually. i am happy and crazy grateful for my family. for the love we create. it's the quilting of life, loving my family. thank you family. thank you mawmaw. your love and quilting has made my life something incredibly rich. i hope to pass on this art~form to many more girls. love love love......and gratitude.

patched knees and stones...

my patched up boys....

these stones. in their earth tones. they are not alone. making groans, and moans. they take no loans. they are the crones. we talk on our phones. through all zones. we are not alone.

nothing to say today, but these stones, and my silly rhyme.

envelopes

i have an obsession with old quilts. i know we all do. this one, i saw at the mercantile last weekend. i took a picture, but did not buy it. i kind-of feel like i need to, though. oh, geez. but, hey it's almost my birthday! that's justification for so much. and it was 30 dollars. that's not a crap load. and it is an envelope quilt. because of my fascination with the mail, this quilt pattern has become one of my all time favorites. look at it. couldn't you make a million envelopes and never be tired of all the different combinations you could come up with? ya. i love it. and i am going to play along with this girl's blog fun, and show some of what i've collected over the years so far, quilt-wise, and we'll see what else! fun. this is the part of blogging that makes me feel like i am in second grade, and it's show and tell day. i feel nervous, and excited. so weird! soon........

those are tarantula legs

that's what david told max when asked, 'dad, what are those hairy things in that plant?' this is at my mom's house. she raises tarantulas, max now thinks. he knew his dad was kidding, but it took him a while to stop staring. it actually took me a while too, after seeing them that way.

and yet she strikes AGAIN!!

to carry the thread from my last post into this one a bit, i have another way to relate what i'm trying to say. and to be honest, i'm really not sure exactly what that is. but i have this fascination with trash, compost, the stuff i sweep into the dust pan, horse poop!. all these things that are often thrown out, but that if used in a way other than the dump, become gold! i mean, there are some things that i have yet to learn how to spin into gold, like our poop, or some plastics that aren't recyclable, or some forms of violence. but hey, there are some scientists in boulder who have figured out how to turn the carbon dioxide in the air, into baking soda. see what i mean, the 'waste' or byproducts we're all choking on, often have some crazy potential stored up in them. like cookies, or a cleaner bathtub! and i feel like i've intuitively known this for a long time, which is why i stare at the trash sometimes in a way that might look a little strange if someone saw me. or why i like to save every piece of scrap anything, because i feel its potential. and here is where i am making my leap, so i hope you can make it with me. the 'messy' and 'undesirable' parts of our days, that often get left out of our blogging, are for me, very rich parts. i see how they end up feeding the creativity for my own processes. the sparks i get that give me my initial momentum in a project, often come from a dark place. of course! and here are my loves, yin an yang. and sometimes it is so not obvious how any light is going to come from a dark situation, like george w's little (ha, couldn't have been much bigger) reign, and i really am not here proclaiming it all works out in the end. i am just noticing how much i love compost, and intense ugly messy energy (once i stop being afraid of it) that often brings about huge creative potential, and makes me feel like i just completed an epic journey, or a mini lsd trip. and for me, i really crave seeing how people get their lives to these incredibly creative and fulfilling places. sometimes, it may be genetically induced, but for a lot of us creatives, it takes a SH*T (which is potential gold, right?) load of work and determination, and getting up again and again from falls, and setbacks. and saging. and sweating. and crying. i just love hearing people's stories, of their own epic journeys. they are actually the most inspiring things of all for me. this is why i got so much out of the wizard of earthsea books. i just read them last year, and ursula k le guin is now my favorite author.

here is yesterday's compost run. beautiful.

here is my nettles brew. i've been drinking it a lot lately, to support me through this most recent dark phase, i mean, pms.

and here is a little piece of heaven i dabbled with yesterday. mmmmm. i had an hour with my sewing machine, and then....

a very special yoga class, where i was one of two students who showed up. we got such delicious attention and adjustments. i learned about prana, and apana, some yin~yang counterparts. yoga and nettles. and sewing, and compost. bickering with the husband first thing today. a whining toddler. everything. and now the husband telling me to hit publish and come on. ha.

been making edibles....for body and hair

i must say something. cuz this topic has bothered for me as long as i've been a blog reader. when i first discovered the world of creative mama blogs, i was instantly mesmerized. i loved getting a peek inside these women's worlds. how they spent their time was so inspiring. i would seriously study their methods, and hoped so badly that i could find inside of me, the abilities to make a life for my family that looked a little more like 'her's'. you know what i mean? blissing out with the children all day long, creating beautiful handmades in every spare second, getting along with the husband everyday, looking good and stylish, making homemade bread and butter, and just feeling really proud about all that. who wouldn't? over time, i often felt like i was just a lost cause. i felt so far from living my days the way these girls were. but, i kept wanting it. after doing it (blogging) myself for a while (umm, a long while, but i was so shy at first i couldn't let anyone know about my own, and i whisper, embarrassing blog) i am realizing that people really can get crafty with what they choose to share. and it hit me yesterday, when i began piecing this post together. i had the shittiest morning. our rhythm has gotten out of whack, and i've been in the place where i just don't know if i can do it the way we have been, one more day. i was starting to have awful daydreams of giving up. and then, when i got home from a stressful drop-off at school, i felt my old friend, lady depression, knocking at my sacred soul's door. deep breath. that is a scary knock. thanks to a pot of beans i had started soaking (2 nights ago, is that okay? i wondered...) i found something to do that seemed a tiny bit interesting, and kept me from responding to that knock. my two year old miraculously was happy to play at my feet with her own 'soup' ingredients, and two hours later, i had a soup that i liked, and some cute pictures. i realized i could so easily paint a picture of our day being all about domestic bliss. and there's nothing wrong with that. i still read a lot of blogs that feel like this. and you know what, i believe those girls may be telling their whole truth. anything is possible. but it's just not me, i mean, it's just not my truth. i have such intense moments, and leaving them out feels like a lie. and i personally wish more girls who are intensity junkies like me, were talking about their challenging times, or at least going a little more in depth into those 'other' parts of their days. it normalizes life for me to hear other people share their struggles. it's the yin~yang again, for me. just telling myself that everyone has their own struggle, doesn't help me, as a tribal animal. i want to know my tribe intimately. not just their happy stories. i mean, if ani difranco didn't sing about her intimate personal struggles, i never would have been drawn to, and benefited from her music, like i have.

and now, without further ado, i dive into the pretty part of the past few days....

more osha root has been simmering here. mmmmm. no one is really sick, but i thought i felt a sore throat coming on, and that's what this is about.
i tried my hand at sara's hash browns for dinner. i did okay. i couldn't swing the whole pan sized cake like sara does, but i made these little latke-like ones instead. the man and i ate a lot of them....middle child wouldn't touch them. but that's her. first and third had a decent amount.

AND, this coffee popsicle i made in september, is incredible. i wish you could come over and eat one with me. a friend brought some iced coffee over for a breakfast we were making, but ended up drinking the fresh hot coffee we had made, and so instead of throwing his out, i sweetened it a bit, added some milk, and turned it into pops. i hadn't tried one till this warm day last week. olive was having her lime pop.

and then it snowed. yin yang. hot. then cold. tell me to stop with my yin~yanging.

so that is the baby, miraculously feeling satisfied playing by herself at my feet while i made some soup.

and a delicata squash. why do they have one of the best flavors on the planet? she actually could not get enough, because i insisted on having some too.

and there's my soup.

garlic/onion/beet/sweet potato/navy bean/curry soup. yumm. i cook like a hippie most of the time. with whatever is on hand, and whatever i'm drawn to. i sometimes try to use a recipe, but i just can't stick to it usually.

i also just washed my hair with egg yolk and apple cider vinegar, while holding a little glass of straight tequila in the other hand. i was kind-of scared that i might space out and sip from the wrong cup, but i didn't. i'm pretty over commercial shampoo.

i'm feeling really good about my hair right now. thanks to my farmer friend, melanie, who gave me the recipe.... 1 egg yolk, 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup warm water. whisk. mix into hair, let sit for 5 minutes (while sipping tequila if it's an evening shower, i say), then rinse with water.

okay....i swear, my hair has not felt this good in a long time. try it. and don't forget my secret ingredient.

the gaudi inspired dog-house

my middle girl loves her stuffed dogs. and last christmas time, i was wondering what to make for her. and it hit me. her dogs needed a house. i was loving gaudi's architecture a lot at that time, and tried to make a little house that felt like his magical creations.

i really wish we had a real dog. i am feeling like we are not quite ready to take on the new responsibility, but i am LONGING for a doggie friend. and i will make it the fluffiest dog pillows to sleep on, and we will love on it and make it feel like it landed in its DREAM home! i am just setting the intention. and praying that we begin to feel readier and readier.

doesn't it seem like a dog might want to be here with us on our walks? tell the man. he says vasectomy first. then dog. uuugh. i just can't go there. but i can go for dog first, and then we'll just see on that other very permanent thing. (meaning no!)

see, i even know how to stop and let the little ones check out whatever it is that catches their eye. i would be a good dog caretaker.

and look at this. it's blurry, but see? our kitty is looking for the dog. she has torn the house apart, looking. where is he? i am wishing one would just show up on our front doorstep and make it so obvious that it's time to have a dog.