listening to On Being the interview with Brene Brown on Vulnerability. stitching clump grass on the cloth, thinking about the Cairn, thinking about the Goats
how hard it is to just say NO to holidays . How hard it is to just say NO to so many things, and still be able to say YES to so much.
Those grasses Grace! just beautiful… this piece is so transporting, She is showing the way stepping ever so lightly… tenderly… gently…
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yes to you Grace
I don’t know exactly how your life is filled on a daily basis, but mine is monday/tuesday all day and wednesday-afternoon in the office, out there in the ‘real’ world, a having to say yes to it all (I’m not complaining!) so we can afford to stay in our little house in the countryside, the rest of the week, I spend as many hours as I can at home: in my studio and walking with the dog, being there for the boys…basically saying no to life out there. Some might think it dull, but I Love my world and say Yes to that.
I have just noticed the grass on the left: it is beautiful, I think I only really saw it now ‘cos the light shone through; I have enlarged the image and stared at it for quite some time, saying yes to that as well.
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hi grace. this piece, backlit, is absolutely transporting. had to look really close as at first i thought you had laid a piece of grass on the cloth–but it’s the unbelievable stitching–the bit of realism that pulls it all together masterfully. speaks to me so deeply–yes. that’s what your work is doing. proclaiming YES
understand the difficulty of saying no to holidays. yes.
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That cloth belongs to the light, light completes it.
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here the holiday is just for mom. my gift to here. to keep her “cloth” together. there is nothing like light through cloth.
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Held to the light…that changes so much both in how we see things and what you are making here. I listened to the Brene Brown interview yesterday too. Yesterday I kept thinking about how my mother always says she dislikes Mother’s day, that if you love your mom you should show it all the time, not just one day a year. I think all holidays should be that way. We should have times of celebration in our life, but I want them to be different than what our culture has made them into.
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today I say yes to giving thanks, to gratitude, and no to the stories that serve one group at the expense of another/orhers, and especially to the embedded commercialism. your cloth speaks volumes
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i love this woman. she is so peaceful in that field of grass.
i am off to work today. i had yesterday to be with family but today is my payment for that. i love to say no and stay home. i will think of you today and the goats.
love coming your way..
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this piece just keeps getting more and more beautiful. i loooove the grass, and the whole piece for that matter. it is hard to say no to all that goes on around us. i prefer to be home to say yes to all that i love and enjoy. i looove the holidays and all that they celebrate. if only the celebrations could be simple and meaningful without all the senseless spending. that’s not what the holidays are about as afar as i’m concerned. many blessings and much peace to you this day…
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Yes to the different meanings imparted by the different lightings and the watching of it all grow into its beauty…xoxo, s.
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i love. Love. oh so LOVE the native grass., the clump grass. how it appears of it’s own accord here and there in the dry landscape of desert. often in Community. there will be several clumps. then none for maybe miles.
Why?
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the grass wasn’t there before.
yes. participation. and you don’t need to add the
disclaimers, it’s the same for all of us. We do what we
need to do out of Love.
and i watch your work and know where you are in your life
with your sons and where you will GO when they have
Continued with their own individuation from the nest.
It’s all really quite Fine, i am thinking today………..
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the backlit from the sewing lamp startled me.
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maybe the light completes everything?
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Moms. greatgrandchildren. family.
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Deb…how do we DO that tho.?….
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ali…part is the commercialism, yes, but part is also
the uhhh, Heart that’s manifest in it. i have thought
all day today, and really, yesterday too, about HOW to
give honor and Life to the SPIRIT of it??? and i really
don’t know.
Maybe, for me, and it would be different for All of Us,
individually, but maybe for me it would be to make a
Giant Feast for those rare times when we all come together?
Both my children, my son’s woman, my grand children, the
great grand son? Maybe then, we make a Giant Feast?
i love to cook, i love to feed people. but a Feast??????
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I Receive
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Peggy…i DON’T love the holidays and i am thinking about
WHY……………..
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suzanna….xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
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We are doing that next week. A feast. My wandering brother will be home for a couple days. First time in about 4 years and the last time he was here was not a good occasion. My mom is planning a feast…salmon, shrimp, gnocci…all our family foods. Hope he’s hungry.
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Wandering Brother.
i hope
he is Hungry.
i hope for the gnocci and
Family.
but it is His. however he needs. however he can.
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Maybe it’s figuring out just what we really are celebrating, what is important to us as individuals and then how best to honor it. I know for my mother, and I suspect her mother, it’s about gathering family together. Any opportunity to do that is a celebration. I’m going to be thinking about this some more.
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Grace this cloth is wonderful…I love how you have that connection with nature, the connection to country.
Such ‘thought-full’ cloths…I like to read what you are thinking as these cloths evolve.
I love the holiday season. Mainly because it brings family (and thoughts of family) together. I like celebrations to be personal. We light candles for those who are no longer with us, or cant make it home. The lighting of the candle, the little rememberance is important. I have a little tray with tea lights, and each person lights a candle/candles for those they want to keep in their thoughts. Makes you stop (in this busy life of ours) and take a moment to think of that person and what they mean to you.
Thankful for your heartfelt blog Grace.
Jacky xox
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if you’re a seed you gotta be in the right place at the right time or make the best of where you end up… same for anyone really
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it’s really strange in desert
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i really don’t know.
What IS a celebration?????????
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your Way is a very beauty Full Thing, these small lights
of love
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I love the ephemerals & feel like one most of the time!
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This is really interesting to me Grace. Does a celebration always have to be a gathering? My thought is no. Shouldn’t we always find something to celebrate, to honor as we go through our days, as much as we can? Maybe when we make a particular event “more special” we start down the path to what we have now for a holiday. Celebration often is about excess too. If we take Thanksgiving as an example, shouldn’t we think about what we are thankful for more than once a year? Shouldn’t we gather family and friends together as much as we can? Build community. And the idea of Thanksgiving as in honor of the harvest….well the timing would be different for every area. That needs to be more individual. I don’t know either.
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love the questions.
and i thought, through out the day about all this.
because if you, (me), are going to take some kind of
“stand”, either subtly or not….then, i thought, WHAT
IS MY POINT?????
so…that is a Big Question that i haven’t answered yet.
but i thought kind of just free associating as i sewed.
and i thought about these particular holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas when my kids were little. and then also, when I was little…how they were in response
to one another. and maybe i am a really bad person to be
talking about holidays because holidays of my childhood, my Formative Years, were so MIXED with so much baggage.
So, in response to that, there were the holidays i created for my two children. A Contrast.
oh…this is a LOT.
but i ended up thinking about what I WOULD celebrate now
at this point in my life. What could cause me to overflow with a feeling to Celebrate, to Witness by setting aside
a day or string of days? and really, so much is attached
to the movement of the Sun/Earth. Equinoxs Solstices.
Planetary things. These. Like when i was a child, and
into my middle adulthood….the days of the Songs of the
Spring Peeper. OH lordy…this would have been reason
for such celebration!
and now, here, the Rising of the Spadefoot Toad! the
Return of the Sandhill Crane! these things speak of
a continuity of necessity of the planet Earth.
so…writing this too, maybe we could give ourselves
PERMISSION to change what we celebrate as a Lifespan goes
on? DOES IT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE THE SAME THING, AT THE SAME
TIME IN THE SAME WAY? cAN it change??????????????????????
if not, why not?
and i thought about Family Reunions. my family never had
such a thing (birth family). but i like the sense of them.
my favorite memory is from my first husband’s family reuniion, the father of my kids. how his Uncle Whitey
climbed a tree in the park where it was held with a baseball bat and relived WW1. and how everyone watched
and loved him, crazy as a rat, as they continued eating
their potatoe salad of Aunt somebody, another Aunt somebody’s special pie. all the grilled sausages and
home made buns.
still thinking………….
love to you
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windthread 
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