perfect days

perfect day December 30, 2000

At the turn of the millennium, I kept a daily journal of symbols and recorded my body moving through 1999, 2000 and 2001.

perfect day January 3, 2001

Images of millennium journal are here on my website ...thirteen years ago.  !!!     

perfect day January 11, 2001

During that period of my life, three things were necessary to be able to say I had a perfect day and mark it with a leaf shape. 

perfect day January 13, 2001.  Also creative day.

read my novel....have my walk....do my hand work.

extra perfect day, also creative January 14, 2001

Some things never change, do they?

What makes a perfect day for you?

For me, if I can do these three things.  Read some fiction, walk outside, and do some hand work, I consider my day to be perfect.

Thirteen years ago, I used this willow leaf shape to symbolize perfect days in the stitched journal I was making then..

I'm back with Dad  today.  Brought my book this time.

Any Human Heart

I read most novels slowly, disciplining myself to no more than 20 pages a day. I treat that time with the characters in the novel as a visit to another, separate place. I learn from novels and consider what I've read as how it relates to my life. Days that include a novel get close to being perfect. I just finished Any Human Heart by William Boyd, written as a journal kept by an English writer through every decade of the 20th century. He moved within cultural circles and over the course of the book drops names of acquaintances, (Virginia Woolf, Pablo Picasso, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Frank O'Hara) casually, and with a ring of truth. Throughout, he ponders the meaning of life.

from page 203
"Thank Christ, I didn't plant an oak. Is that a good definition of marking the aging watershed? That moment when you realize - quite rationally, quite unemotionally- that the world in the not-so-far-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them."

from page 401
"Those were the years when I was truly happy. Knowing that is both a blessing and a curse. It's good to acknowledge that you found true happiness in your life - in that sense your life has not been wasted."

Pictured are just some of the perfect days from the millennium journal I kept from November 1998 - February 2001.

Super Perfect

I had a perfect day today.
It's been so long since I've been able to do all three of these things.
Read my novel
go on my walk
and do some hand work.
In fact it was super perfect
because I spent some time in my new studio as well.

01/11/01

This is one of the images I just sent to Erin Snow, the acting curator of the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum for promotional purposes. I will be showing The Millennium Journal at this gallery May through July and it's time to start all the prep for that exhibition. The shapes read like a code and in this way, they relate to the quilt patterns that women made that we now call traditional. This image represents January 11, 2001. It was one of those perfect days.

Do it on purpose

"Find out who you are, then do it on purpose." Dolly Parton

January and February

These two months give me the most quiet time to create new work. Today was another perfect day.

Winter Solstice

April is here.

simple pleasures

Today, I was able to fit all three things in. Walk, novel and handwork. It was a perfect day.

A perfect day

I've read my book (A Bed of Red Flowers), and taken the dog for a country walk. If I'm able to also do some handwork (quilting) while my husband and I watch TV tonight, it will have been a perfect day. What more could one desire?