The Year of Living Differently

One of my tribies ( definition - a person belong to and of the tribe that gets you through the joys and learnings of life ), Jen, made a complex quilt pattern designed for scraps and using remnant fabrics. I have some commercial fabrics stuffed into a dark recess of a linen cupboard, and after giving my stash of commercial fabrics away twice in 40 years, the few I've inherited or kept might work well in this context. First, buy the pattern. I don't do commercial patterns. I feel my textile work becomes processy, not artsy, and certainly unoriginal using someone else's pattern. Jen had fussy cut every single piece for every single block - perhaps1500 individual pieces - to make her version from 1950's era fabrics.  It looks beyond fabulous. On the other hand, I had a small container of commercials connected only through being in the same container.  I committed to only using those fabrics. Instead of mindless piecing, I found the evenings spent putting this puzzle togeth...

After Chris died, the hound was quietly consumed by grief. Lying in the hallway, waiting for the door to open and the beloved master and playmate to walk back into our lives. After the first month the pressure to be a playmate and take Chris' place achieved pest status. The universe delivered a reel, offering a rescue greyhound. I ignored it. A week later the reel re-appeared and I sent a tentative email. He was located nearby, a re-home from a vaccine producing entity, a year older than the brown hound - what could possibly go wrong?  I now love that on leaving a strict biosecurity protected area, it was a one way trip.  Our little prince (not so little really) had no concept of 'inside', the feel of grass, play or understand all dogs are not greyhounds. I love that I don't think things through. I love that the hound and I took a chance on our prince who spent the first 10 days enclosed on the back patio, too frightened for anything else. The hound and the prince met t...

Acknowledging the turbulence of loss and the promise to find joy, however small or elusive, in something. Every. Single. Day.  I think we both saw the reel by Richard E Grant sharing his late wife's wisdom, the joy-finding legacy. It has taken a few months to find my footing in the new 'normal' life, for however long that lasts and until the next iteration emerges or is imposed. I decided to experience a year of living differently, being open and self-caring, of being the best and best-worst version of me. Going with the flow and unapologetically using 'no' as a complete sentence. Trying the uncertain, embracing the 'no excuses now' approach to living. Truly living. At the end of the YOLD, I'll be heading to Caverswall, England and taking his ashes home. It is my dream to then train across Europe and join my tribe in Aarhus, Denmark for a few weeks of art, quite reflection the way the Danes don't need to make a fuss, and revisiting the city that make...