Sunday.

I hope all of you are celebrating Mother’s Day — and being celebrated. And maybe somewhere in your day are a few coveted minutes and a cup of tea (or something deeper and redder) and time to reflect on the day, on the role, on the years of commitment and love and challenge and reward the day brings up. The mix and balance are different for each of us, but hopefully it is a day in which you pause and remind yourself you’re doing a good job, you’re doing what you can do, and it matters. Hopefully others around you tell you these things today, too, but I know it doesn’t always happen. So Happy Mother’s Day.

Among the oddities of regular life here in the last few days were moments spent watching Avalon High, High School Musical 1, High School Musical 2, and beginning to watch old Star Trek episodes with the boys. This morning, as I prolonged the time before I gave in to the electronics requests/whining (which begins well before the sun is full), I covered up next to one while he read, and I read a graphic novel I picked up the other day from the teen shelves. It’s a ghost story, at its core, and it was pretty darn scary on some level! The high school protagonist is Russian, and so there are themes of culture and family and identity all tumbled about within her rather gritty school days. Another I’m reading is about a young Jewish girl, also at odds with her family’s expectations…. there certainly seems to be a (positive) trend in cultural identity graphic novel stories right now for the audience. Similarly, for those looking, you’ll find a number of graphic novels with females at the core, which is certainly a good thing! (I tend to scour the section of both teen and children’s libraries when we stop in, picking up anything I haven’t run across before. Most of them get read by one or two of us, some by all three of us!)

I picked up To Dance: A Ballerina’s Graphic Novel, again, too. It will always stick with me as important. In other moments, I’m reading Hoffman’s The Dovekeepers,which is very heavy. But in the car, I started Science Fair Season, and I am blown away by the writing. Rarely have I been so in awe at the mastery of prose. I am reading it, of course, for work, but it is very, very good.

The Year Quilt: Final Stretch

Yesterday, between soccer games and after the splurge of Dynamo doughnuts (and early game putting us near the bakery early enough for the kids to get what they’ve been dying to try: maple bacon apple doughnuts), I spent time working on my ’42′ year project. I’ve got a little more than a month in which to finish up the piecing and call it “done.” I’ve been lackadaisical about this one. Initially, I feared I would finish it too quickly, so I backed off, and then the year began to slip away. When I started taking stock a few months ago, it was clear I was seriously at the bottom of a mountain still to climb in order to meet both the end of this year (late June) and the ‘math’ of the project, which is part of the symbolism for me. (Somewhere in the project, the numbers have to make sense for the year.) So I have been working on it here and there, now and again. And slowly the number of panels has grown. I have less than a handful left to meet the number I think I need.

Beyond that, I have no concrete plan. I know what I want to do with this one when it is finished, and that knowledge is guiding its layout. I plan to hang it. Once I realized that and realized there is a wall I can use, at the expense of a quadrant of old family photos, I moved forward with this specific wall placement and size limitation in mind. But beyond a few sketches in my design book as I’ve contemplated whether I wanted to set the panels directly atop one another or offset them, I haven’t given much precise thought to assembly. A week or so ago, I realized, suddenly, that I wanted to integrate small log cabins, and then, struggling still with the math and the limited number of days left, I hit upon another idea for small block integration. But I was figuring I would topstitch some of these blocks, adding them directly to the seemed panels.

That was what I anticipated, until I started working yesterday. It is much more “me” to set the blocks in, to integrate, to give it a finished appearance, to spend the time to bring about the ‘pieced’ integration, even though part of me thinks the raw-edged, layered approach might have been appropriate and textural. Even though I’ve let the finished elements begin lining up and spreading out across the design walls (we’ll never see the bookcases in this room again, I fear), I’ve been waiting until all panels are done in order to finally pair them up to balance the greens and blacks. The waiting puts part of the process at a standstill… there’s not a lot of “sewing” until I finish the handwork of the panels.

But yesterday, on a whim, I decided to go ahead and start assembling some of them… and as I did so, I started hacking off excess background, making background strips and inserting log cabins… I didn’t even stop and determine a finite size for each panel. Instead, I’m working free-form with each piece, trusting that the variance that will emerge is part of what will bring this together and give it life. It will not be simply a grid of uniformity. Slowly it’s taking shape… a shape I didn’t plan…. but it is also very much taking on my voice and aesthetic. The way the log cabins are being integrated will space out the panels, but the approach also brings in and mixes up background elements, a characteristic style of the way I’ve designed several of our Here2There quilts. I’m loving what I see taking form on my wall.

Through the year, I thought I was doing just these appliqued panels, and yet suddenly it’s become more, more nuanced, more layered, more complicated. It is definitely become what a year piece should become, and at this point, I respect the fact that sometimes the true “evolution” of a year quilt happens in the final months, days, hours. No matter how much you create week by week or how disciplined you are, there is magic in bringing it all together, fitting together pieces, seeking out the bits and pieces that need to be spliced in to give it final voice.

A month to go.

By the way… One of the many collections of Cul de Sac, by Richard Thomspon (and mentioned recently when we discovered it) is on sale right now at Amazon. Great price — and eligible for free shipping for prime users. You can find Richard’s blog here: richardspooralmanac.blogspot.com/. (Yesterday and today, he showed some ‘mother’-themed panels and strips. Some of you will find yourselves reflected!)

Monday.

I wanted to post yesterday. In the midst of a marathon-three days of busyness, I realized that I was in the middle of an internal  avalanche of words and philosophy and emotion. Though I feel I’ve shut down my words in all mediums, all of a sudden stories were colliding and collapsing and spilling in my head and over the edges of my control. That, in and of itself, wouldn’t have landed me on the blog. But an unexpected half hour with a comic strip turned things around–and that brought me to the blog. This is a strip you have to see… whether you have young illustrators yourself or whether you scrawl your own daily notes in comic style, or whether you are simply a fan of the genre.

Here is how it went…

Up early , I did a few morning things in the dim light and then worked on hand-sewing another leaf for what is beginning to feel like the endless ’42′ quilt. When the youngest woke a bit later, we moved back to blankets and pillows, each with a book in hand. And somehow, as I snuggled back into my space next to him, too much washed over me. He read his book, and I struggled to hold my tears in place. Shaking myself, I picked up a book of comics I’ve been carrying around for days and days. It is Cul de Sac Golden Treasury: A Keepsake Garland of Classics. I found it quite accidentally at the library. Cul de Sac is by Richard Thompson, an illustrator I had never heard of before, but a glance at the opening pages told me it was a comic series I had to look at, both because of the style… and because of the content.

I’m a huge fan of Calvin and Hobbes, which I didn’t really discover until I read it with the kids in the last few years. I love the strip both for the line of it and for the wonderful and very funny articulation of Calvin’s thought and speech patterns. When we were big into Calvin and Hobbes, we read every collection we could find at the library, and we read some of them several times. Yesterday, sitting and reading the Cul de Sac book, I found a similar combination of humor and attention to the thought processes of children. The strip deals with a 4-year-old girl named Alice and her time at the Blisshaven Academy Preschool. You see her both at school and at home with her family. Some of the strips are just drop-dead funny. Some of the strips, you read as a parent, and you see the role of parenting stripped down to some bare essential… beneath the humor of it all, Thompson has an uncanny way of distilling the family setting and the way parents circle around the periphery.

I read for about a half hour while the youngest was engrossed in his own graphic novel. And then, we started reading Cul de Sac together. He, too, found the panels funny, and when his brother got up, he insisted we backtrack and read a bunch of them aloud again for his brother’s benefit. We all laughed out loud together throughout the reading. I know there are a number of other collections, and I am looking forward to finding and going through them all!

From an illustrator’s perspective, one thing I love about looking at a strip like Cul de Sac or Calvin and Hobbes is that it reiterates that you often really do draw the same character in almost the same position for several cells in a row. I think sometimes beginning comic artists resist this or thing there’s something else that has to go on. You can learn a lot by reading, enjoying, and absorbing wonderful strips like Cul de Sac.

Thompson has a very distinct line in his illustrations, but I find it really amazing how much he can depict in a small space and still have room for plenty of text. There’s a lot to study here! When I get a chance, I’ll be poking around to find out more. Part of me wonders how I had never even heard of this strip. I think it might should be required reading for parents of preschoolers! But then the practical side of me admits that I don’t even get the daily paper. I wonder what other amazing comics I’m missing?

(Something in me continues to percolate in this genre…)

All in all, Cul de Sac gave me a mental break, and we moved into our day. Shortly after, we found ourselves on the front steps whittling down a pencil for a science project. We broke several in the process. It was much more difficult than we anticipated–and we’ve each got sore thumbs to prove it!

Tying it all together… do you think I haven’t suggested that he do a comic strip panel or two about his experience with this science project. Absolutely! Do you think he’s buying that idea? Not really. The reality is that I am the one that should do it. I should be documenting that, along with a zillion other day to day moments, in my own strip. It’s always had a name in my head anyway, and there are scads of panels scrawled into various sketchbooks tucked here and there, and the cup of spilled lemonade yesterday afternoon fits right in. Someday, right?

Thursday.

This photo is not new, and the window is clearly not even close to clean. But I’m a sucker for a good reflection. This photo came to mind when I was thinking about a piece on parent involvement I posted at Science Buddies this week. I’ve certainly not been the model parent when it comes to understanding how best to let things unfold on their own, and I’ve certainly struggled with the role of parent involvement (and being supportive without pushing) when it comes to art. But with each project and assignment, I learn more about my role — and what they need from me for a certain task, exploration, or assignment.

The post at Science Buddies is on parental involvement in a science project. You can learn a lot from watching kids at the bubble-making table at the science museum — or watching them explore a circuit kit at home.

Wednesday afternoon.

These look much more like it, right?

As we got ready to leave school, I told the kids about my sunflower dilemma. They have been along with me in the last few days as I’ve driven around searching for a sunflower, so I was surprised when one said, “How about the school garden?” And the other said, “Yeah! There are sunflowers there!”

And neither thought to suggest the school garden this week as I’ve gone on and on about the need to take a detour here or there in hopes of finding a sunflower? Seemed a bit strange! But then again, it shows me how much attention they’re really (not) paying to what I say.

So we turned the car back around, drove up to the garden side, and they both hopped out to search for sunflowers while I looked for someone to park. In the end, they came back with a handful of sorrel to munch, but there were no sunflowers.

As we left, again, I was describing sunflowers and telling them that along the street we were on, I know that someone has had sunflowers blooming in the past, but that it must just not be the right time of year. All of a sudden, they both started saying they saw sunflowers, that I’d just driven past them… Really? So I backed down the very narrow street until I was parallel to a large bush of something that was definitely not a sunflower and in no way matched the description I’d been giving them.

We headed off again, and I decided to do one last circle by a flower shop I’d passed yesterday but skipped in favor of the farther away and larger one that I thought would offer more impressive flowers.

We slowed down as we drove by, and, bingo… a bucket of sunflowers out front. I parked down the street, and they both jumped out to walk back to the flower shop with me. I snapped some photos of the very classic sunflowers with their large brown centers, and we got ready to walk back to the car.

I didn’t buy a bundle of sunflowers. Instead, I bought a single “Milky Way Bombe” dessert (their choice) for them to split from the bakery that caught their eye next door to the flower shop.

They’ll enjoy that more. And I did get at least a basic sunflower photo. (At least I think I’m on track this time!)

In a rare twist of art and science, I worked recently on a piece about Van Gogh’s sunflowers. I’ll be posting it this week at Science Buddies, and I thought I’d use an original photo with the post. I went out of the way the other day to drive by a flower shop where I know I’ve routinely seen sunflowers in the past in bins on the street outside the door. Not this time. No sunflowers.

So yesterday, I drove a very roundabout way home after school, passing by another flower shop and stopping to take some pictures. When I pulled them up today to see if I could hone in on a snippet of a sunflower, I knew something seemed wrong. Colored sunflowers? It didn’t register yesterday that there might be a problem… that there might not be a real sunflower in the mix as I hopped out of the car and snapped a few quick photos. (You have to understand that part of what I’ve been researching involves differences and anomalies in sunflowers.) I worried that a meter maid might come along and think my car too far in one driveway or another, but I didn’t stop to worry that I hadn’t found a sunflower. Today, as I cropped the images, I started to doubt what I’d captured in my lens.

It’s probably a classic sign of having just too much on my mind, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, bring the Gerbera Daisy to mind. In reality, it’s always been one of my favorites. But I had sunflowers on the brain. I did stop, puzzled, and pop a few other flower names into a search engine. I won’t even admit which ones I checked! As images came up, I thought to myself, “Okay, it’s not that.” I finally asked a colleague…

And now I’m wondering if I have time today to go out and scavenge a sunflower in time for posting tomorrow. Of course, if I find one, I could bring it home to draw…

Saturday. (Hands from yesterday after art class.)

He may not be loving the acrylic he’s working on, but his paint-palette hands certainly suggest it’s a full-on experience, as do yet another pair of good jeans that now fall into the ‘paint jeans’ category.

I was trying to test my camera, post cleaning, and so I snapped a few of my youngest yesterday in the late afternoon light against the window. My testing raises some concerns. Still, despite the obvious flaws in the photo, this shot captures changes I’ve been noticing in him, visible signs that he is growing up.

I posted to Facebook the other day after seeing a video assemblage of clips of a daughter between birth and age 12. Part of my Facebook note echoes the post I later made here (today) on the blog about our afternoons on the hillside. But I thought I’d share the note here.

“In the afternoons, while the kids fight with sticks on the hillside, I have been on and off again sitting in the car and skimming a giant book on Alfred Stieglitz (photographer), mostly because of his relationship with (and portraits of) O’Keeffe. I saw this quote the other day (O’Keeffe describing Stieglitz’s vision), and it came to mind today when I watched this video (which I saw on The Pioneer Woman’s feed). “His idea of a portrait was not just one picture. His dream was to start with a child at birth and photograph that child in all of its activities as it grew to be a person and on throughout its adult life. As a portrait it would be a photographic diary.” What strikes me watching this… more even than the images… is the realization that for those twelve years, she’s been talking to him.”

If you haven’t watched the video, it’s interesting to see, interesting to think about the difference between video and photography, and interesting to think about other ways in which we create such “portraits” of people or kids or favorite themes, places, or spaces over time.

I also watched this video recently, and I would encourage you to do so as well.

Friday. A break for tea and a check-in.

Most days after school, my kids play on the hillside just outside of the school gates, a scraggly stretch of trees, grass, and dirt that has, for years, carried with it the name of Terabithia, after the book. The “inhabitants” of Terabithia change, I believe, year to year. This is the first year that Terabithia has garnered more than a now-and-then glimmer of attention from my boys, but suddenly, as this year winds down, the quasi-wild space between the school and the street has become their afternoon stomping ground.

In our six years at this school, there have been many phases of after-school focus and obsession. Once there was kickball. Then there was dodgeball. Then there was tetherball. Then there were Beyblades. During all of those phases, I sat and waited on the peeling green benches on the school yard. It is with some relief that they’ve moved their play outside the gates — and that they are big enough to not need the same kind of supervision. I sit at the bottom of the hill in my car, out of the sun, out of the wind, out of the way of small talk. I can still see them as they play with sticks or hear them as they run along the upper hillside in a game of Capture the Flag. I know the time they spend in this freeform activity is good for them, that these minutes help them transition from school to home and the rest of the day.

These minutes are my transition as well, from a busy morning at work and into an afternoon of homework, of refereeing sibling battles, of food preparation, of shared stories, and of more work, when I can fit it in. So I don’t ask much of myself during this waiting time. I sit with the door open, half in and half out of the car. Some days I sew on an applique project. (Knowing this bit of time is built into many of my days has a lot to do with why I have chosen applique projects for my last two “year” quilts.) Some days I read or look at a magazine. Some days I make a short list. Some days I flip through something from the library and take notes to mention this book or that one in a podcast.

It struck me one day this week that I’ve stopped trying to process everything that’s going on. Trust me, I know that’s not a good thing. I know I’ve lost, for right now, the conduits I had to my creative self. All the notes I have started here and there for the podcast that feels a bit ghostly these days seem to indicate this. This doesn’t mean I’m “doing” nothing creative, not exactly. But, I’m not tracking, I’m not sorting, I’m not capturing the overflow, and, maybe most important to me, I’m not writing.

Still, occasionally, maybe only for a few minutes on a Saturday, I stop and look up and see this cabinet door. The folded design wall draped over the edge is covered in an assortment of pieces for different projects. I can wish I was managing to do all the things I long to do, managing to still have the energy at the end of the day to do the things I once did, but right now, I’ve shut some mental door. And yet the words are running through my head at all times. I’m just not always stopping to let them materialize, to give them breath and air and concrete form.

And yet these blocks, unstructured, unscripted, unbound by rules or expectations, may, in fact, be the slip of thread by which I’m keeping in touch with myself. In the few minutes I find when I actually turn to the pile of fabric for these, I know that they are symbolic.

And as I contemplate that, I’m doing other things that seem odd, or unexpected, or out of character. For example: figuring out a skateboard to order, buying alligator clips and a luxmeter, and trying to determine whether a pocket knife or a straight knife makes more sense for learning to whittle.

Saturday.

A somewhat better look at their Hunger Games T’s, (a la Rachel @avgjanecrafter). This was our first time trying a bleach stencil of any form… and we weren’t able to find black shirts when we decided to make these a few weeks ago. We didn’t go store to store looking. We just compromised on a different color. Luckily, it worked out, and they’re happy with the approximation of a rustic gold that the green bleached out to be. It’s probably more a tinged chartreuse, but really… it’s about the symbol, folks.

We stopped to take these photos after we parked on the afternoon we headed to the movie. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time to deal with dirty glasses, or with rumpled postures, or even with my more-and-more uncooperative camera. Even so, the few minutes we spent snapping photos gave the field trip we’d seen as we drove around the corner looking for a parking spot the chance to beat us to the theater. When we passed the large group, I’d said, wryly, “I hope that group isn’t going to see the movie!”

I was totally joking. It never crossed my mind that they really were going to see the movie… until we rounded the corner and all all couple hundred of them standing out front!

Wednesday.

This is not a quilt I made. But isn’t it beautiful? This quilt was a gift in 2012, one of a special collection I am lucky to have.  Some days I am not sure where to put all the quilts I am accumulating at a rapid rate. But I love them all, and each is unique. Each tells a story. Each captures something about a certain year.

This quilt contains a traditional Churn Dash as the unifying element, there are many other bits and pieces worked in, including remnants from other projects (some collaborative) from the last few years, fabric collage from my kids a few years ago, and more.

I took it along recently when the boys and I went away for a few days. I took it, hoping that there might be outdoor chairs that would be perfect for photos. Unfortunately, there were no truly inspiring chairs that seemed right for the series of drawings I’ve been doing, and the murky weather didn’t lend itself to a lot of outdoor photo exploration. The weather didn’t keep the kids out of the pool, however, and so I draped the quilt over the gate and snapped a few photos on the final afternoon while they played in the water.

I love the bold contrast of the quilt against the green of the outdoors.