new work that grows

There's something un-real about the month of December,
as if real life deadlines go on hold.

I've been stitching 9-patches, making new cloth from tiny squares.

In the busy days
in the dark time of December
I retreat into the grid.

I sit by the window with the bird feeder view and hand stitch.

mrs cardinal

mr cardinal

I pin my work up because it is impossible to see it when it is in my lap.

I plan to organize the finished quilt with a horizon.

I've been looking at the open water, it's always moving, the ice not in yet

The moving water makes me think that I always am asking why?
Why do I ask why?

Trust myself.
Learn why

"what does it mean to say "I lose myself"  asked Immanuel Kant in 1786

I  lose myself in this grid

it's dark by 4:30
It's the shortest day.
But the cloth gets larger.

In the evenings I plug away on the sunny-rainy piece.
The stitches make it denser, but it doesn't get bigger

Our girls come home on Saturday.

devotion

I have been painting these circular lines with thread for months.
I told myself that I have a dead-line - that I need to focus.
But the truth is that I need to finish something.

I need to complete something that is evidence of my daily labour, evidence of my devotion and evidence of my contemplation.
Circles may be endless, but I am not.

I work to make the fragile marks less like lines and more like brush strokes.  I want this sky to be a summer sky - even better, a sky in early spring.
Fresh, nearly aqua,
not turbulent or stifling
nor too pretty.

I want these concentric circles to open outwards into a bright future and I want to communicate this positive feeling about the future to others.
Yes, sometimes, a murder of crows flies across the bright calmness of the sky.  It actually happens quite often.

A sudden burst of darkness, it just happens.
But it's fleeting.

The circle is what is eternal,
rotating like a wheel,
on and on,
calm and blue,
mark after mark,
line after line.

Accumulation.
Devotion.
For-ever-ness.