I was away for a while, living the life of the monks. This isn’t quite what you might expect. There’s lots of some things you count on–meditation, hard work, silence, simple vegetarian meals . . . and of other things, not so much.

Sleep, for one thing. Though, oddly, once I settle in to the rhythm of the place,  I think I may get more sleep there than I get here at home (which, in itself, is not so much).

And then there are things you don’t expect at all.

Like an impromptu salsa dancing class at 7:00 in the morning.

Like being identified as a baker and being asked to make a dessert big enough for 50 people and getting to use what’s essentially a riding mixer.

Like being moved to tears by sitting for hours with an old man’s worn leather slippers.

Like connecting with old friends. And making some new ones.

One of the best things was having hours of time to devote to art practice. We have an assignment, and I’d started on it at home. But being there, sitting with those slippers, making contact with all those people who were also touched by the life of this remarkable man turned my artwork in a new direction.

Still working with the cicada. Gone to ground.

As hungry ghost.

Emerging.

Taking refuge with others.

A good week, and one that’s got me fired up to jump into several back burner projects.

Still not, alas, the birthday present, on which I’m a little stuck in one key area. But something that might be Christmas gifts. And something else that might be my next book.

In the meantime, it’s awfully good to be home.

With art on the brain.

I made a present for someone with a birthday this week (who doesn’t, fortunately, read this blog).  Someone who likes blue.

My Better Half came home from an estate sale a few weeks ago saying, “there was a lot of cool stuff there–you should make me a list of things you want me to look for at tag sales and auctions, in case you aren’t with me.” Art supplies and old kimono fabric, said I.

He looked crestfallen. He had seen both within the previous two days.

It was too late for the kimono fabrics, which apparently went for a song at an auction, but I did get to go back with him to the estate sale selling art supplies, and picked up some wonderful big brushes, some old books that can ethically be cannibalized for projects, and a whole heap of canvases–the whole lot for $5.00. Sometimes these sales make me sad, but at this one the grown son of the artist (his mom) was genuinely happy to have her art supplies being carried off by people who appreciated and were going to use them that I didn’t feel so badly.

But the kimono scraps stuck in my head, so I started surfing for them online, and . . . voila: I bought the first of what I hope will be many. This one started life as a sleeve, probably in the mid-20th century, and over the last day or so I transformed it into what I think is a quite elegant scarf.

The fabric is silk crepe de chine with a pattern of what might be highly stylized clouds, but might also be ripples in a pond. Either way, they’re lovely, the fabric is in great shape, and I was able to find a nice silky crepe in a contrasting color (a sort of storm-cloud blue-gray) that works either way to use as a backing for it.

I took the top picture yesterday when I was starting the (hand) sewing, and the bottom one this morning after I finished it. I took them in different rooms and in different weather, but the top picture gives a better sense of the actual color, which is slightly grayish. Looking at both pictures, though, shows the slight difference in the pattern–one side is sort of a negative of the other. I debated long and hard about which side to have show, and involved everyone in the family in making the choice. In the end, Second Child pointed out that it was a win-win, as the two sides are equally pretty.

And, honey, you picked exactly the right thread color when you went to the fabric store with me, but I still don’t get that you don’t get that a scarf doesn’t have to be wooly and warm to be desirable.

Suddenly it’s fall, after weeks of unseasonably (but welcome) warm weather. A couple of stormy days have taken down most of our leaves, and the tree skeletons are bare and beautiful. Now we can see berries everywhere. Their simplicity is wonderful.

1931-2009

Apropos of today’s moon missile escapade . . .

When people first traveled to and walked (and bounded and played and golfed) on the moon, my grandfather, a lovely, gentle man living in east Tennessee, heard about the moon landing and perhaps even saw it (looking back, I don’t remember a television in their tiny country house, but maybe a friend or neighbor had one).

His take?  Naaahh.  Didn’t happen. He didn’t really elaborate about this, never said whether he thought it a silly hoax or perhaps mass hysteria–he just wasn’t buying it.

I was ten or eleven at the time, though, which meant I knew a whole lot more than this man who’d lived through war times and peace times, fat and thin years, good harvests and bad, who, with my grandmother, had raised four kids and a whole lot of corn and beans and potatoes.  But as I helped him in his garden, taking the wavy, snake-shaped pieces of rubber he’d cut with his pocket knife out of cast-off inner tubes and lacing each one in and out among the bright leaves and sweet-tart fruits in the strawberry patch (to scare off birds that would otherwise peck at or make off with the berries), I explained earnestly that it really happened, and what a great thing it was. In reality, of course, I’d been annoyed when our parents made my little sister and me leave off playing outside and come into the house to watch Neil Armstrong climb down his ladder to leave his mark on the dusty lunar surface.

Anyway, he said, if it did happen, that would be a terrible thing. His take was that everything that happened affected everything else–such a thing could not occur without serious consequences. Trespassing on the moon like this would certainly disrupt the weather, the tides, the seasons. Nothing good could come of such a thing. He met my certainty with his and popped a perfect strawberry, warm from the sun, into my mouth, and then cocked an ear and said, “Listen!”

“It’s a cat!” I said, jumping up and looking around.”Where is it?”

“That’s no cat,” he said, laughing. “That’s a catbird–look yonder–that’s him up in that tree, waiting for us to leave so he can eat his fill.”

“That’s silly,” I said. “A cat can’t be a bird.”

“Maybe they can’t,” he said. “Or maybe they can.” He plucked another ripe berry and ate it.  “Now,” he said, “let’s get these snakes all put out before that critter gets our berries.”

Over the summer, Second Child got to be fond of taking long walks; she often brought home things she found that she thought I would like. Among them were the dried husks of several cicadas. And a wonderful intact–though dead–dragonfly that still retains much of its iridescent brilliance. The cicadas live on the top shelf of my desk. All summer they’ve been looking down at me while I’ve been looking up at them. Here is one of them, perched atop a discarded bit of nice wood left over from a fly-rod handle turned by my Better Half; it sits next to a little origami Jizo and a wonderful sculpture by Second Child.

Tonight I set up shop in my studio (i.e., our kitchen table) to play with painting them.

A sumi ink cicada:

And another:

The dragonfly in watercolor. I’m trying to work in monochrome:

Ditto for a katydid we found last week. Its body looks more like a leaf than a leaf does. But its face is ghostly:

The katydid had to be put outside immediately after its sitting–it smelled horrible. But the others are back on my shelf. I think I’m going to want to keep working on those cicadas.

Today is the birthday of Persian Sufi poet and mystic Jalal ad-Din Muhammed Rumi, most often simply called Rumi (September 30, 1207 to December 17, 1273). He was born in what is now Afghanistan; after his death his devotees founded the Mawlawīyah Sufi Order, known as the Whirling Dervishes for the ecstatic and meditative dancing that is part of their religious practice.

Here is a poem to celebrate Rumi’s birthday:

The Lovers
will drink wine night and day.
They will drink until they can
tear away the veils of intellect and
melt away the layers of shame and modesty.
When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don’t even exist.
Become this,
fall in Love,
and you will not be separated again.

(Translated from the Persian by Shahram Shiva)

What is the poem about and who is the Lover? You decide.

This is another tutorial for something that seems rather intuitive, but someone asked how the little notebooks were made, so here goes:

What you need:

• Backing: A rectangle of cardboard, like the ones at the back of a legal pad
• Filler paper: 20-30 rectangles of plain paper of just about any kind suited to the use to which you’re going to put your notebook (e.g., printer paper for a notepad, drawing paper for a sketchbook, miscellaneous papers for a funky look)
• Cover: A rectangle of decorative paper for the front (here I’m using a piece of lightweight art paper on which I’ve used one of my hand-carved stamps)
• A small ponytail elastic (I like the “non-ouchy” kind without the metal part, but you can use an ordinary one as you like)
• A small paper clip
• Something to cut with: scissors, a craft knife and ruler, or a paper cutter
• A hole punch
• A stick, wooden sandwich pick, or the like

The first three items, the back, filler paper and cover bits should be the same size. We made our notebooks 4 x 4 1/2 ” (because we needed a lot of them and needed to get an assembly line thing going) but you can use any dimensions that are pleasing to you.

The sticks should be a bit shorter than the smaller side of your notebook, and should not have any splintery or rough edges

Step 1: punch your holes. If you’re using a handheld paper punch, make a template for the hole placement using an extra sheet of the filler paper. Fold the paper in half and punch a hole through both thicknesses about 1/4″ from what will be the top of the notebook and about 1/2″ froom the side. Unfold this paper and line it up with a few sheets of your filler paper–punch holes through the holes you’ve already made. Repeat until you have as many filler sheets as you need. If you’re using an adjustable multi-hole punch, set the placement for the holes using the guides on the hole punch.

Do the same for the cover paper and the backing cardboard.

Step 2: Sandwich the filler paper between the backing and the cover and line up the holes so you can see all the way through.

Step 3: unbend your paper clip as shown:

Poke the small hook you’ve made through one of the holes, working from front to back, and pull through a loop of the hair elastic:

Insert one end of your stick through the loop, then repeat with the other hole, the other end of the same elastic, and the other end of the stick:

All done!

A good friend teaches a wonderful writing class. This most recent class had a few more than 20 students, and she wanted to give each of them a notebook they could keep with them at all times.  Three of us got together and made notebooks until our fingers were sore, learning, somewhere around notbook 18, exactly how the notebook assembly line should run.

Here’s a prototype, made with one of my hand carved stamps and some scraps of brown handmade paper. And a wooden sandwich pick:

And here are sons (and daughters) of the prototype notebook (by now some have sandwich picks and some have twigs):

My writer buddy said people just about fell out of their chairs when told they could each pick one. Easy stuff, big payoff.

I’ve been under medical house arrest for nearly 3 weeks waiting for the stitches (see previous posting) to come out.  Last weekend I played hooky and carefully walked through a nearby pick-your-own orchard gathering these with second child and a friend of hers:

At the moment the whole house smells like peach chutney, thanks to the stalwart efforts of my Better Half, who is using his grandmother’s recipe.  Mmmmm . . . peaches, sugar, vinegar . . . okay, I won’t give away his family recipe. Wonder whether I could convince his non-bloggingness to do a guest post about making chutney, though. Stay tuned.

Whew! Upright again after 10 days on the couch with my foot in the air. Tip: watch out for foot/soccer ball/dog mouth collisions.

The bad news: having a laptop computer takes away any excuse a self-employed writer might have to lay off work during a convalescence.

The good news: 10 days on the couch still gives one lots of time to get into trouble dream about new projects. I started lists of new projects, made notes about ways to complete unfinished projects, and basically ended up with some very exciting to-do lists, enough to fill many weekends when I’m off and many minutes and hours here and there when I should be working instead.

I kept my little idea book and pen by my side (right there with the antibiotics and the bandages and the DVD remote), and filled pages and pages with ideas, inspirations, and notes. And now I have more projects to do than I’ll ever have time for.

Indeed, a little down time is a dangerous thing.

Owing to the goodness and patience of my Better Half and the bounty of our state’s inter-library loan program, I was kept well inspired by the steady stream of books that came to me while I was down. What I would have done without the patience and indefatigability of my Better Half and the bounty of our state’s inter-library loan program, I know not.

These are among the books that kept me inspired over the last 10 days (in no particular order):

Gwen Diehn’s wonderful (that’s redundant, of course–all of Gwen Diehn’s books are wonderful) book for kids on making books. Don’t let the “for kids” part put you off–it’s a great introduction to making books that don’t just lie there, and has given me new ideas for my sister’s belated (belateder and belateder by now) birthday present.

This one’s so great I’m going to have to get my own copy after I turn it back in to the library. I already have her other book on journals, so I got it out, too and added it to the stack by the couch:

This one taught me a lot and gives me confidence that I can pull off another project that’s on my list.

This terrific volume from Lark Books (whose whole catalog I would love to own–Lark people, are you listening?) is another one that goes on my to-own list. Even Second Child, who deliberately skirts the edges of much of my making-things drive (don’t worry, she has plenty of wonderful creative outlets of her own), got caught up in this one and spent a long time going through it with me: “Oooh, look at this one!” and “Could you make something like this for me?” (note to self–add more projects to the list).

I checked out a lot of books that began to look the same. But even after looking at a number that I won’t mention here because they began to feel a little same-old-same-old, I’d find a gem–same genre, but with a fresh, original take on the subject. This book by Holly Harrison was one of these–really worth going to get.

Here’s another I almost overlooked–at first glance I was afraid it was another of those “if you stick a paper crown on it, it’s art” books, but I was wrong, wrong, wrong–I loved this one and especially picked up a lot of tips about different techniques and materials from this book by Lynne Perrella:

Finally, this one was still hanging around from when I made the noren a month or so ago.  I checked out several newish books about printing (with an emphasis on printing on fabric), and some were good and some were disappointing. I won’t reveal the name of the hip, hot, newish one that I thought was wayyy too simplistic and not terribly inspiring, but I will say that this book by Lena Corwin is much better–this is one to buy if you’re going to buy a book on hand printing on fabric.

My art and craft book budget is pitiful these days, so my new technique is to look up on Amazon all the books I might want and then try to hunt them down through inter-library loan.  I’m astonished at how often I’m able to get my hands on the ones I want–and for free, too (good news for the poor, the broke, the frugal, and the just-plain cheap). Then, once I’ve vetted them, I like to support these authors/artists whenever I can, so I buy the ones I know I’m really going to want to refer to again and again.

Cheap tip:  open a tab on your browser for your online bookstore of choice, then open one next to it for your local library and bring up your account there. When you see a book you think might be useful, pop over to the library site and put it on your “request” list. I find that these books often become available within a very few days.

What?! you don’t have an account at your local library?! Go and get one immediately–it’s free and it enables you to maintain a list of things you want to have sent to you asap. You can also probably sign up to be notified by email as soon as the library gets the book for you. Between the Better Half* and me, someone from our family is at the library at least 3 days a week.

———–

*Of course, some of us are retired and can read any time we want to. Hrmmph. Lucky man. On the other hand, my little taste of being able to read whenever I like was delightful, but if it means I have to be an invalid in order to do so, I’ll take health any day, thanks.