Busy Hands Homestead

Time is rushing past.   The windows are down, my hair tangling in the wind, as I sing along to the radio, and my hand rests on the stick shift, flying down the highway in fifth gear. I have twenty minutes of, what feels like open time, on my way to pick up the kids from horseback riding camp. They have enjoyed a week of horses, ponies, baby goats, tiny bunnies. I’ve endured a week of begging to bring tiny, furry, undeniably cute creatures home.    They almost convinced me. ALMOST. The default answer is: “not until the house is done.” Time is rushing past and it is hard to stop and take a moment to pause, and even harder to look back and reflect on where we have been. We move from day to day, week to week, month to month while also tackling project after project. It is hard to prioritize. It is hard to focus. Sometimes it feels like we are moving in circles.  It is suddenly summer, and not just summer but the middle of summer, almost the end of summer...

I have been writing and re-writing an an artist statement to accompany my First Friday show at the Missoula Community Food Co-op. The official event is on April 7th, but my pots will be on display for the remainder of the month. "This will be easy," I thought. After all, the wheat design carved onto the surface of my mugs, bowls and plates is an external expression of a more than a decade long ritual I have created for myself to process the news of violence and conflict present in our world. But still, the words to articulate feelings and motions are hard to construct. I was 18 for 31 days when September 11th became a date marooned in the year 2001 and we entered a pre- and post- world. Slightly tipsy, from my first honey brown beer, at an elevation over 5000 ft, in my best friend's college dorm, I watched bright dots flashing across a night sky and I was struck by the surreal beauty of what could have been mistaken as fireworks on screen but what were in reali...

I have been trying to spend as much time in the studio as possible.  (Does that explain the lack of blog posts? It should.) I have week or two until Adam is back at work and I no longer have the luxury of spending long day time hours at the studio.  I feel like I am constantly behind.  The list of things I want to make never getting shorter...  but a few nights ago I trudged through the snow carrying a backpack with a tripod and a camera and a giant box of mugs and bowls.  I had attempted to drive down the road to The Clay Studio of Missoula and promptly got stuck.  After a few tried I got unstuck and I parked on a main road that was getting plowed and walked.  My arms ached by the time I got inside. First learning how to use the wonderful camera I borrowed and then moving one piece at a time through three small boxes of new work. I snapped pictures for hours. By the time I was done, there were eight additional powdery inches of snow on the ...

"I am sorry, I can't help", she says sliding my tax forms across the table. I don't remember if she wore glasses, but if she, did she would have been looking at me above the rims. "What is it that you do again?" I wince and opt to believe that the condescending tone was only in my imagination. Sylvan is sitting on my lap. "I am a mom", I say embarrassed.  Was I blushing?  I scrape a bit of dried clay off of my fleece, " I do lots of things." I am between day one and two of three days in the kindergarten classrooms at my daughter's elementary school.  I had spent the last two nights in the studio rolling out clay slabs until the wee hours of the morning. What do I do? I am a non-entity on a tax return.  I don't exist.  I am invisible. I do things. The thoughts run through my head. I am productive. I consider myself a valued member of my community.  Really. I smile. "Well.  Thanks for taking time out of your day t...

The kids and I walked through our garden this morning an snipped flowers for our first summer bouquet:  some roses, a sprig of lemon balm, parsley blossoms, bolting radishes and flowers off of what I am fairly certain are pretty, but invasive, weeds.   It sits in front of me as I trail shapes onto the cups that I threw during yesterday's nap time.  While the children sleep an apple tree moves through the seasons; carrots, beets and cabbages grow  in rows; and hens peck at scratch. Today's nap time creations. 

The days are sunny and long. There is no time sit down or sleep. There are morels to pick. So many morels to pick that we actually let our kiddos go over to a friends house for an entire day while we scrambled across the steep slope of the burned forest floor.  Our first day together with out children...  in - oh - 5 years or so.   There are summer birthdays to celebrate. There are amazing thrift store scores to discover.   Yes these are my new, super sexy footed pajamas. As I am climbing into bed. Adam: Are you glowing? I look down.  Me:  Yes. I. Am.  All the pterodactyls glow in the dark.   HOT.  right? There are bread baking skills to practice and share. There are more cups to etch.  There are back yard summer nights and bright summer mornings to enjoy with friends.  Somewhere in the doing and going and fun there is time to sleep and maybe the occasional moment to post ...

My kitchen is turning into a studio...  again.  Twelve tumblers in progress. 

Flowers, French Toast Casserole with Blue Berries and Cream Cheese and a Fantastic Straw Hat (not pictured).  What more could a Mama want? A Marlies and Susan Collaboration - my newest flower pot purchased at The Clay Studio's Mother's Day Sale.  A late, late afternoon walk in the bright sun.

AH!!!!! I am about ready to scream!!!!!  I have spent the last 45 minutes trying to get one text box onto an image and I can not figure it out. I have focused on it so intently that my coffee is cold. Cold. I don't have time for this!!!! And then I accidentally saved it like this: I can't figure out how to undo it.  Anyway that last bullet point is supposed to say that I added 3 double crochet into each stitch for the bottom half of that corral shape (it appears denser).  A few months ago I watched this:  The beautiful math that links coral, crochet and hyperbolic geometry: Margaret Wertheim  I finally sat down and made myself a "stitch library".   Why?  Well, for years now I have been telling myself that I am going to combine all those craft skills that I love: knitting, crochet, sewing and pottery.  And then I fall short of that goal. I like the ceramic pieces too much on their own...  or I make up s...

The day has been creeping. The moment I woke up I wanted to pull the covers back over my shoulders. I am on a string of late nights, and Sylvan is a string of sleepless early morning hours, so while my shelf at the clay studio is crowded with an increasing number of mugs and cups, my body is telling me to just stop and go to bed - I didn't listen and now have a cold. Last night I didn't crawl into bed until 1:30, Sylvan woke up before I managed to fall asleep, and I watched every hour pass on the clock across the room.  I nursed, changed his diaper, Adam got water, I took Sylvan to the bathroom, when he started screaming: "Pee, Pee!" at the top of his lungs.  I considered trying to convince him to go in his diaper, and decided that that would be counter productive to the potty training effort. I dragged myself out of bed, got myself and the kids dressed and staggered down the stairs for a quick breakfast before we drove across the Y to Ivory's Rookie S...

Sylvan had been running around grinning, in a wonderful mood, dishing out hugs and kisses and just before I stepped out of the door, Ivory came down and I gave her a hug and a kiss as well. I touched up the little cups I had worked on the night before and then spent the next seven hours working on ten mugs.  Putting on layers of Shellack, wiping away the surface, creating texture and adding a slip trailed grid. I stared at the finished mugs in front of me. I had been handling them so long - looking at them for so long - that I could no longer tell if I liked them.  All I knew is that I wanted to go home. When I walked through the front door, Sylvan was napping. Ivory and Adam and I sat around the dining room table while she mixed color after color, testing each result until her splotch filled papers covered the table. Much too soon, I got back into the car and drove to the Missoula Community Food Co-op .  Hours later I finally walked through the front door and I ...

After many, many more hours of work and a treacherous fall that put me flat on my back with this thing on top of me the clay component of my sculpture is finally built.   It is slowly drying, covered in plastic and hopefully no cracks develop.  This sculpture will be my first attempt to combine the many hand crafts I enjoy.  I hope to incorporate fibers -  sewed, knitted and crocheted - in the final piece.  (I like this form so much it will be hard to make myself take that next step.)  

Our world is winter white and cold. The high today is 13 degrees Fahrenheit. I am somewhere between washing the dishes, folding 4 loads of clean laundry, sorting all the things that have collected on the bathroom shelves back into their spots and sledding. Sylvan is napping.  Ivory has, not one or two, but four puzzles spread out on the dining room floor.  Two and a half puzzles are completed.  Adam is trouble shooting the waste oil furnace in the shop.  It shut down yesterday for no apparent reason. I spent Saturday and Sunday cleaning.  Moving furniture and mopping everything from wall to wall. (When I say mopping picture this: crawling on hands and knees scrubbing the floor with a rag.  I don't actually own a mop.) Adam sealed up house envelope gaps here and there that were pointed out to us during our Energy Audit last week. We winterized a few windows (in our unheated back room - our washer froze.  That was a first.) In the past few wee...