Oh Shibori...

I’d like to add home-made soaps to my product list, but everyone is making soap these days. Instead, I’m leaning toward Shibori indigo dyed flour sack dish towels. (You can Google it – but only do so if you want to spend an hour on your newest pintrest board.) And maybe I’ll move up to Shibori indigo-dyed canvas totes or silk scarves.

The Gift

We fell out for reasons - but life is too short for that shit. D. doesn’t have much, but she has a great way with people. I’m glad we had Allie in common, though we knew her at opposite ends of her life. D. encouraged me to dive into my pebble art, so I made these for her and her daughter.

The Little Glass Bead

After she died I learned that she and D., a once close friend with whom I had fallen out years ago, had worked together for the past few years. Now I’ve reconnected with her parents (now divorced), and with D. Allie’s mom gave me this glass bead – Allie brought a bag full of them back from her many trips to Venice.

The Little Girl Next Door

At fourteen I babysat the baby girl next door. I adored her. She was a sparkplug – always smiling, always dragging sunshine through every room behind her. She couldn’t say my name, so I became Meenie. When she was three, her family moved away. I saw her again when she was five, and then last year I read her obituary. Breast cancer.

The Rabbit (Look closely, she's hiding)

My daughter bought a rabbit promising she would provide for all the rabbit’s needs. Ha! She went away to school, and now it’s my rabbit. She doesn’t love me the way the dogs do; she's aloof AF, but she allows me to feed her, and if she feels especially friendly she has been known to bonk my ankles with her nose.

The Nook

We ensured our renovation included room for two comfy chairs in front of the fireplace. The original off-white area rug had to be replaced with this darker version because I have dogs and couldn’t keep it clean. I was cool with the replacement, until I saw Mali’s beautiful red rug from Bangkok and now my Costco rug just doesn’t cut it.

Daisies

We’ve asked our parents to stop buying presents for our birthdays. Adding more stuff is counterproductive to our death purge. My mother is fine with that, but she couldn’t resist this little Gerber daisy. Boring pollination-mechanism notwithstanding, Gerber daisies are one of my favourites. I just hope I can keep this one alive long enough to plant it outside in May.

The Wine Decanter Set

I worked at my first real job for 10 years. It started as a maternity leave position, then became permanent. Over the years it evolved and grew, until I was working most weekends and taking work home in the evenings. One day they announced they would be merging my job with another full-time position. No thanks. This was my parting gift.

[There used to be 4 glasses. I'm a bit klutzy]

My last multi-day post -- I promise!

February 18, 2018
The Teacups

I started collecting these teacups shortly after I got married. (Royal Albert, Rose Chintz series). I had three out of six (pink not shown – Kate took it), when I started to feel uneasy – like collecting is just a fancy word for hoarding. I’m not sure why I have any stand-alone teacups. My great, great grandmother’s china set has plenty of them.

February 19, 2018

The Set

My grandfather was an only child, and so inherited these from his mother, who inherited them from hers. Then they skipped a generation and came to me. My grandmother insisted that when I was a kid, I asked her to leave them to me when she died. I hate to admit it, but it sounds like something I might have said.


February 20, 2018

Orchids

My plant taxonomy professor would become more than a little animated when it came time to discuss the complex pollination mechanism exhibited by members of the the plant family Orchidaceae. Only the pollination mechanism of the humble milkweed caused a similar reaction. Excessive? Perhaps, but it paled when compared to my entomology professor gushing over the tender maternal instinct of earwigs.