In the last week I have come in personal contact with three people, all of whom, within 24 hours of meeting them, contacted me that one of their children had tested positive. The rate of infection has increased dramatically in New York City in the last few weeks. Lines to get tested go on for blocks and most places now require an appointment. I just went to one website to see when the next available appointment for a test would be, and the earliest is at 12:30pm Friday, December 24th! One friend reported that they were able to obtain a PCR test, but the results were delayed so she wouldn’t know for 3-5 days, making that test all but moot.
I gave our last home test to a friend who’s daughter’s friend tested positive and though new home tests are on the way, we won’t have one for a few days. We just had a family meeting, to make sure everyone understood how dire the situation is here. Mask wearing everywhere including within any public space in our building is mandatory. I haven’t left the house in three days and have no intention of doing so for the foreseeable future. Sigh.
I don’t know about all of you, but I’m SO over this, and yet here we are. We are all vaccinated, we have had our boosters, we will don a mask, I literally just ordered more N95‘s from Amazon and more at home covid tests, because for all the, albeit waning, optimism I hear, Covid is here and it will not be going away any time soon. We ALL get that, right? This isn’t going to end until all humans are vaccinated. I mean, that’s how virus’s work, right? They mutate and they’ll keep mutating as long as they’re alive. It’s what they do.
I really, really, really do not want to go back into lock down here in New York City and it doesn’t look like anyone’s thinking that at this time, but boy, things aren’t looking good. And I’m not going to lie, I’m scared. In many ways I’m more frightened now than I was almost two years ago when all of this began. Remember those days? Remember how this time two years ago, none of us knew what was headed our way? Remember when masks were something you only wore skiing or for Halloween? Remember?
COVID New York City – April 2020
On a lighter, more upbeat note, for all of you who love doing things like crafting, hand stitching, slow stitching, quilting, sewing, cooking, and the like, we’ve got this. There was a meme that went around when Covid first hit labeled “Quilters: Self-isolation? This is what we’ve been training for.”
And just so you know, I’ve spent the last few days putting together my own kits: fabric and thread kits for some upcoming workshops that I’ll write more about next time!
There are diversions and then there are DIVERSIONS! Organizing can be one of those. I finished the BIG piece I’ve been working on and instead of leaping into something new, I got sidetracked with organizing. Organizing my work space, it’s pretty small so it takes some doing to spend more than a few hours on this one, organizing my threads, I’ve got a LOT of thread, so this one is easy to lose oneself for a day or two or week or month, and organizing my materials, again there’s a lot of stuff, some of which I use often, others not so much, still it’s a sink hole.
It all began with a YouTube video, doesn’t it always, though?
See that huge bag filled with thread winders? That’s only some of them. I did another video for my Patrons over on Patreon and had a little give-away. Five lucky patrons are receiving a nice package of those thread winders from me. I haven’t sent them yet, because I keep finding cleverly hidden stashes of OH, so that’s where those were! threads that I then rewind onto those large cardboard bobbins and put in those 16″ long plastic refrigerator shelves. It makes my life so much easier when I can see everything easily and quickly.
But now I’m nearing the end of my reorganization efforts, not that one is ever really done organizing, it’s like laundry, AND I have a lengthy to-do list that is calling to me as well, but the nagging thought that I need to start a new piece has been buzzing around making life feel a bit more fraught than usual. A friend of mine used to say that she was both the team of horses pulling the carriage AND was also the driver with the whip beating those horses on. It’s all a bit like that. Still there’s good that comes from it. Organizing makes me breathe easier, having a to-do list calms that voice that screams at me, and knowing I will not feel calmer until I begin a new project, propels me on.
It’s all good, as they say.
The stoics suggest that each day is best lived as though it were your last. But if I did that, I wouldn’t get all that much done, because I’d just spend every moment that they’d allow with my children and husband and cat. So yeah, there’s that.
Now I have some fabric kits for one of my upcoming workshops to pull together… did I mention those?
No?
Oh well…
*Ariane is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to www.amazon.com at no additional cost to you.
I’m not feeling great. I should probably just end this post right here. But, no, I’ll soldier on. Not because this post is important, it’s not, but because it represents all the things on my to do list and so much that is just life. No one needs to hear my laundry list of “woes”, we’ve all got them. More to the point is that I’m struggling. My mom’s death feels like an endless, bottomless pit of emotions. I know I’ll get through it. I know work-arounds that help me get through those days when things are really bad and “getting through the day” feels impossible. That’s when the put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other method of coping gets enacted.
Grieving is a luxury. Some days require putting all of that to the side so that other things can be dealt with in a timely fashion and because life moves along, it doesn’t wait for those of us who are grieving. And I also know I can’t leap frog my way beyond the grief. It will be there waiting for me on the other side. It’s always there. Some days I’m luckier than others, the grief stays on the edge, other days it moves front and center. Those are the days when every step feels like I’m dragging a fifty pound weight. Those are the days when showing up feels like a monumental task. But I know from designing, from creating, from every day that I work on a piece, that even when I don’t “feel like it” showing up for the work is one of the most important things I can do. And, counter-intuitively, it is what ends up making me feel better in the long run.
All of this reminds me of something Michael Crichton once said. It was decades ago when I was the Director of the Aspen Writer’s Conference and had reached out to him to kick off the conference. He was game and gave an amazing talk in the Paepcke Auditorium at the Aspen Institute. I will have to paraphrase as there is no transcript of his presentation. He was talking about writing. Imagine, he said, if you were a commercial airline pilot with a full schedule of flights and woke up one morning and said, You know, I don’t really feel like flying today. I think I’ll go back to sleep for a few hours. Writing (any of the arts) is the only “profession” where people talk themselves out of getting up and putting in the hours. Everyone in the audience was quiet. But it doesn’t work that way, he continued. If you’re a writer/artist then you get up and you put in your hours, whether it’s flying a commercial airline or writing a book, or in my case, working on a new piece, writing up a new workshop, filming a new Youtube video or any of the other things I’ve got on my list of things that I need to do because this is the life and profession I’ve chosen for myself.
How does grief fit into all of this? It doesn’t. It’s just there. All the time. And as a result, it is I that must make the necessary adjustments in my life to accommodate these new feelings and emotions, while continuing to show up for the work.
I’m just about finished with my big improvisational stitching piece that I’ve been working on for the last 7 months or so, and it’s bittersweet. It always feels like a tiny death. There’s sadness and a kind of grieving that happens. Sometimes I just leave it up on my design wall and look at it from time to time, knowing that eventually it will need to be stretched and framed or mounted, floated or somehow “finished” as in ready to be hung on the wall or made into a pillow or whatever I’ve decided I’m going to do with it. But often I just can’t and so on the design wall it stays until something else is begun and necessitates that I take it down to give room for the new piece.
Also there’s the feeling that I’ve done my best and maybe this will be the pinnacle of my creativity. Maybe everything from now on will just be a rehashing or versions of the same thing; I won’t progress as an artist beyond this, is the thinking. But I don’t know that to be true. It hasn’t been so far, so why assume it will be now? I keep growing, exploring, investigating, learning, trying new things, new ideas, why invite trouble? as a friend of mine used to say.
The stoics are big on living today as though it were your last, being kind and recognizing that every action we take is a choice. So today I’m choosing to just keep going. I know I’m nearing the end, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less joyful working on it. In fact, savoring each stitch, knowing that I’m almost finished makes it all the more wonderful and magical. Taking joy in the process is always the answer and boy, have I loved working on this piece!
Yesterday I had my monthly, scheduled livestream for my Patrons. We had such fun! I was talking to them about some ideas I had for this piece and everyone was chatting and I had a moment when I just stopped and savored the joy of stitching, of this piece, of all that’s happened since I began it. And that’s the thing, each piece carries with it so many memories as life continues going along. This piece came with me to Africa. It was with me when I learned of my mother’s death. I took it to Egypt and Jordan. I carried it in my backpack through countless airports and airport security. It’s been put up on my design wall hundreds of times, only to be taken down again to be stitched, added, stretched, pulled, manipulated, torn, cut into, bound, sewn and even stuffed. It has my tears soaked into its very fibers, I’ve painted, stenciled, appliquéd and stitched and stitched and stitched, culminating in this piece.
Now it’s almost done.
A tiny death. What’s that cliche about one door closing and another opens? This piece will give way to the next one and the fun and joy and magic will begin all over again.
This was a question a number of people asked after my mother died. But I wasn’t. I hadn’t. In fact I couldn’t remember dreaming about anything or anyone, until this past week. Maybe it was because it was the first Thanksgiving since she died. Maybe it’s because her birthday fell on Thanksgiving every 7 years and so Thanksgiving always reminds me of her or because this was her first birthday that went uncelebrated. This past Saturday she would have been 93 years old.
When we were in Jordan, just a few weeks ago, (it seems like months already) our guide told us that the life expectancy there was mid seventies. He then asked if I was considered old in the US. “It depends upon who you ask,” I joked. “How about you?” I asked.
“I don’t feel old, until I look in the mirror,” he replied. Which was just the sort of thing my mother would have said. We laughed about that.
“Aging isn’t for the faint of heart,” my mother used to say. She also was known to say, “Aging sucks.”
But in my dreams she isn’t old. She can still speak. She has shoulder length hair and in my dream last night she was wearing an emerald green bikini, of all things, with a cream colored, open lacey top that I’d crocheted for her. Did I mention that I’m teaching myself to crochet? I’m no where near good enough to make such a thing for anyone, let alone as a gift for someone I love, but in my dream, she looked amazing and youthful and the crocheted top looked pretty fabulous as well!
I remember thinking, “I want to look like her when I’m her age,” but in the dream I said nothing and instead just told her how much I loved her. She gave me one of her magnificent smiles and then began talking to someone else in the room. I almost said something about how happy I was that she was wearing the top I’d crocheted her, but didn’t want to interrupt her conversation with this other person. Secretly, I was thrilled. After all I only just began trying to crochet in the last few weeks. Wearing that crocheted top that I’d made for her was so typical of my mother. She was a huge supporter of all my various passions, particularly when it came to making things.
It was my mother who taught me to knit and as she was right handed, (I’m left handed) I learned to knit right handed as well. I’ve often wondered if I should try to reteach myself to knit left handed, but then I think, “Why?” Besides I’m closer to the end than I am to the beginning of life, why jostle the waters? And I knit pretty quickly right handed, so there doesn’t seem to be much point. And, added plus, any instructions and videos are always written for right handers.
My mother would have approved of my dream, though I don’t think she cared for the color emerald green, but even so, it would have made her laugh. She loved to laugh. So today, I will remember her laughing and am grateful to have my dreams of her when she was still able to speak, when she was still able to move about easily and painlessly, when she was happy.
There’s something about traveling that’s like falling in love. Everything is new and exciting, the people, the smells, the food, the architecture, the monuments, art, culture; immersing yourself in something so completely different from what you’re used to, from what you know, is akin to falling in love. It’s exhilarating and defies description. When I’m traveling I want to know the language, see how the people live, understand the customs, go to their markets, eat their food, see the artisans at work, lose myself in this foreign place. It’s a high like nothing I’ve ever experienced. That I can share that excitement with my husband makes it all the more magical.
With my Husband in Wahtye’s Tomb
That he shares my love for travel, makes it all the more amazing. Together, we fall in love over and over again with the country we are visiting. This trip to Egypt has been no exception. In the above photograph we are standing in front of Wahtye and his wife in the recently discovered Wahtye’s Tomb, which is also the subject of the National Geographic Documentary of the same name.
The young man on the left is who guided us just this morning into the tomb. It was such a treat to meet him and talk to him about how it felt to discover such a treasure! After the tour he and his director decided to show us something they had just uncovered an hour or two before we got there.
The top shape is a mummified lion cub discovered this morning by the same archeologists who discovered Wahtye’s Tomb! I could barely contain my excitement.
The joy and sheer exuberance of being able to see things that I’ve only read about and seen pictures of is beyond anything else I know of. It is to be transported to another time.
“Bent Pyramid” the 2nd attempt by Sneferu to build a pyramid with the calculations off and requiring a slight adjustment, hence the “bent” sides. 4th Dynasty, 2600 BC. His 3rd attempt was successful and became the template by which others were then built.
Along the way we passed this handsome fellow.
Look at his eyelashes!! Isn’t he beautiful?
Tomorrow we leave for Jordan, yet another opportunity to fall completely in love all over again, awaits us!
Special thanks to Nabil Ashour, Medhat Hafez and Abercrombie & Kent.
First things first. We are in Egypt! Yup, you read that right. More specifically, at this very moment, we’re floating on the Nile, taking in the sights as we make our way toward Luxor. Everything about Egypt is inspiring, the history, the beauty, the art, the textiles, the carpets, the people… amazing. I’ll give you a pictorial summary of our first few days, but I have to tell you a quick story, so you get the backdrop for this trip.
When Richard and I got married, we pissed off a lot of friends and family when we announced we were planning on getting married on Christmas day. Talk about young and foolish. But friends and family balked at that idea, so we scrapped it and settled for the winter equinox, which was December 22nd that year. We then planned our honeymoon. We decided we would spend xmas eve and xmas day in Jerusalem at the King David hotel, New Year’s Eve was going to be in Giza, overlooking the pyramids, then a cruise along the Nile, ending in a quick flight to Jordan to take in the sights of Petra. Did I mention our son was 9 months old when we got married? Never ones to go with convention, we did things our way and then often would remark to each other later that “our” way wasn’t necessarily the best way and there was a reason people get married, take a honeymoon and THEN have children. But I was in my later 30’s by the time we decided to have children, and planning a wedding took a back seat. So there you have it. Anyway, the intifada broke out about three months before our wedding and as we were traveling with a small child we were advised to scrap our plans. (We had reserved everything, right down to the guides.) So we did. We canceled everything and ended up going to Mexico where all three of us got really, really, really sick. So sick. You have no idea how sick. We referred to it as “the honeymoon from hell.” Except that I have great memories from that trip even so. But we always wanted to try and recreate our planned honeymoon. Years ago I was fortunate enough to be sent to Jerusalem to cover a conference, and Richard tagged along, so we were able to do that part, but we never did get to Egypt or Jordan, until now, more than two decades later.
Okay, now that you have the backstory, let’s get on with Egypt!
On the Nile in Edfu
Our Cabin (and the artistry of the staff) as we float along the Nile. Those are bottle caps for eyes, by the way.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I can’t write about Egypt and not show you a photograph of the pyramids. So here you go.
The pyramids of Giza
And the camel ride that cannot be refused.
“Valentino, not the designer.”
Camels, or I should say, this camel was very sweet and friendly. For some reason I had the idea that camels were ornery, like llamas, but I was mistaken.
And then there’s the sphinx.
The Sphinx
Outside the Egyptian Museum where 2/3 of the collection has already been moved to the new museum still being built. And yet, it was still overwhelming!
Look at this cloth!
Embroidered Cloth
And this one, which is perhaps my favorite.
Indigo Cloth
The internet is spotty out here on the Nile, so I’m just going to end with a few more photographs. More to come when I get the chance.
Abu Simbel
Ancient Graffiti
This last was one of my favorites. I fell in love with the “graffiti” that peppers the temples. This one is from around 300 BC. Think about that. It gave me all sorts of ideas for my next workshop, which I’ve already roped my friend, Pat Pauly into making linen fabric kits for. More on that in a few weeks!
Yesterday I released a new Youtube Video with the same title.
Go check it out!
There are a few other key factors to interpretive hand stitching, improvisational hand stitching, expressionist hand stitching or whatever else you might want to call it. I think all of these are good descriptors of my process when taking a piece of linen and starting to stitch on it.
The first few stitches
However at a certain point, composition plays a key role in how the piece evolves. It’s not enough to just stitch and hope for the best. Without a good composition it can look like a bunch of disparate parts, each might be lovely taken on their own, but they aren’t necessarily interacting well with one another.
More stitching added…
Another common issue is that one part can take over, drowning out everything else; this brings its own set of challenges. Or perhaps the whole thing is stagnant. There’s not a great deal of movement, so it’s important to know when these things are happening and why. Without knowing why, it is nearly impossible to remedy.
Once the large X was removed the two half moons in the upper right and again in the lower left began to dominate
The trick then is to resolve the “divas” and figure out how to turn the volume down or remove them. In this case, I had to remove it. Between the shape and color it was too much. Except that when it was removed, I was faced with a new challenge.
Piece without the darker shapes
So that’s where I am right now. I’m sitting with the challenge of having removed three domineering shapes. Taken on their own, they were fine, but when seen as a whole they were dominating. Except now the piece isn’t grounded. It’s lost some of its vigor. Partly that’s due to the removal of the color, which lended a great deal to the overall piece. So now I have to figure out how to pull it together, give it some excitement. And this is how it goes. There’s a kind of ebb and flow that inevitably happens when working on a piece like this. Take away some aspect and suddenly there’s a new set of challenges.
The key is to not give in to discouragement. To keep going no matter what. To keep trying new things. Thinking out of the box, pushing the boundaries of what I know how to do, trying something I’ve not tried before, test out other colors or reintroduce a color I’ve removed and see how that shifts the conversation.
This is the process that is interpretive hand stitching. Where one idea leads to another and another and another and on it goes.
Yesterday I released a new YouTube Video: My Top Ten Favorite Threads For Hand Stitching.
As a follow up to that video, I’m adding my favorite materials to use, as well. Click on any highlighted text for more information.
Fabrics:
Pat Pauly’s gorgeous hand dyed linens. My absolute favorite thing to stitch on is 100% linen and Pat Pauly’s gorgeous hand dyed linens are the best, most unique and above and beyond anything else that’s out there on the market. Pat is almost always sold out of her linens as the demand has been fierce, however, if you want to learn how to hand paint, stencil and screen print your own, take one of her workshops and you can learn to create your own. As a quick aside, I have a brand new workshop that I’m offering in 2022, which features fabric kits made up of Pat’s linens that she is specifically making exclusively for my workshop. These linens are only available to those who sign up for the workshop! Very exciting.
“Flow” using Pat Pauly’s hand dyed linens.
2. Mulberry Bark. I love layering my linen with Stef Francis’ Mulberry Bark. I stitch directly onto it. Some people have said they soak it in water, but I don’t. I prefer to pull it, bunch it up, stitch it down and let it be.
4. Stef Francis Silk Throwsters. I love this stuff. It’s a bit like wool roving, but it’s silk and has a beautiful hand and texture to it. I needle punch it and then stitch on top of it.
5. Stef Francis Sari Ribbon It comes in a huge hank! I couch it, ruch it, scrunch it, twist it, use it to wrap other things in it and then stitch on it. There is no end to the things one can do with it.
Wrapping with Silk Sari Ribbon
6. Old T-shirt. I love hand dyeing an old t-shirt and then cutting it up. I did a video on how to do this. See below.
7. Silk Velvet It’s fun to hand dye your own, but Stef Francis also carries some beautiful silk velvet in gorgeous colors. If you want to get really creative, you can emboss your silk velvet, as I did in the photograph below. I like using wooden stamps, like these.
*Disclaimer: Ariane is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to www.amazon.com at no additional cost to you.
So here’s the thing… I feel a whole lot better when I show up even when I feel awful, even when I feel things are rough and I’m tired, even when I don’t want to. I’ve also learned that showing up anyway is the single best remedy for not continuing to feel that way. Except that it’s also really hard to do. That’s the thing. It’s really, really hard and sometimes… sometimes it feels impossible. I know it technically isn’t, but it sure feels that way.
Marcus Aurelius wrote about pain a great deal. And in his writings about it he consistently focusses on choice and responding, rather than reacting. I’m a huge fan of Marcus Aurelius, not just because he was wise, but because this guy was one of the most powerful men in the world and yet he continued to do his best to remain humble, to avoid arrogance, to nurture self awareness and to treat others with respect and kindness.
So yeah, showing up anyway. Easier said than done, so I have found ways to do so that aren’t quite so laden, that make it a tiny bit easier. I call it setting myself up to succeed.
Here’s what I do:
Thread up a whole bunch of needles with different types and weights of thread. I use both Chenille needles and Milliners Needles.
Grab a needle, any needle, it doesn’t matter which one, and begin stitching. I have a couple of mindless go-to stitches that don’t require any thought. They are the meditative stitches like french knots, bullion knots, colonial knots, seed stitch, chain stitch, fly stitch, straight stitch and then I riff on them, which means I start exploring every aspect of that stitch. How many wraps can I make on a french knot before the whole thing begins to fall apart? (It turns out a lot more than you might think!). What ways can I stitch a straight stitch to create different patterns?
Exploration
Investigation
And before you know it, I’m playing!
Stitching, more than anything, changes everything, even grief, even pain.
If you’re curious to know how I did this, I made a video about it and you can watch it here:
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