The Social Porcupine

I took on a couple seamstress positions last year. Which means I hardly clean anymore, and I've discovered I actually like sewing a lot. It's rather amazing how a change of work has impacted me. I love life just that much more. I love people better, and feel better, and do more things outside of work.  And I sew more.  Here are most of the things I've made outside of work.  1.  I did a bit of sewing for Revivall last spring, and she gave me a black trash bag full of wool scraps. Originally, I was wanting to make a sweater dress. But the wool was too heavy for the sweater top. It was meant to be a simple wool skirt with a diamond cashmere top. This dress is one of my first truly creative pieces. I had no pattern and no idea of what I was making. It changed with every added piece. At the end I even added a ton of embroidery to the hem and bodice. Only thing new: buttons bought in Germany.  2. February I went to a we...

I found this linen apron on Revivall's fb resale page last year, 2021. I began the embroidery sitting in court for the sentencing of a young woman who'd killed her husband. I continued working on the apron visiting other churches, and it came with me on all of my last road trips. I learned a new stitch, the little yellow roses, from an Instagram video. Children and other women interested in learning to embroider added a few practice lines to my wildflower scheme. Nearly a year later, end of April 2022, I went shopping with friends... feeling grumpy and antsy, I brought this apron and put all my frustration into the final few stitches. This apron saw a lot of hard times. All hand projects, but embroider especially, help me to hold onto patience and remember forbearance. You sow what you reap. You love what you touch. You wait and work for all good things in faith and good will.

I've experienced responsibility much as Jonathan Button experienced age: rather opposite of most people, with an awfully lot at a young age and quite a bit less of it the older I've gotten. I'm turning into quite the gypsy, keeping my conservative appearances mostly because I like it. Some, mostly staunch conservative Christians have an issue with this. Why, I wonder, when it is they who sing old hymns such as  Wayfaring Stranger  and keep a copy of The Pilgrim's Progress next to their Bible.  They chide me on my wild ways, "You must have a home church. "  But this world is not my home. I am not meant to sit still, or to wait at home for the coming of some man or of the Messiah. We are all meant to be as children: wild and loud and happy. I should be able to pick my own flowers, thank you very much, without being accused of feminism.  I sometimes find churches to attend while traveling. Looking back on them I feel as if I experienced the same so...

  I knitted my first sweater. A client told me it smelled of nautical colors. I did much reading while knitting. Also watched many films with friends. Sometimes I took it to the top of a mountain. Or I'd just sit on my couch after work.  I found a pile of thick shell buttons in an old sewing machine drawer. There were just enough.  I spent a lot of time reading Anna Karenina while knitting. A large knitting project and an epic classic really do belong together.  One of my most relaxing projects. I gave myself a hard deadline, with nearly plenty of time to finish it. Had to take out several days of work once because it came out too large. So goes knitting.  Blocking it was the hardest: The merino wool is stretchy and wanted to come out much larger than I'd knitted it. Because of that I sized the pattern down four sizes, then sewed in some hidden darts.  I inspired my coworker to knit a sw...

I'm not adventurous. And I've never desired to be interesting nor mysterious.  As a young girl I dreamt of living in a cottage near a gentle stream. I'd write stories and teach my sixteen children how to play baseball. I'd knit their stocking and sew their dresses and trousers. We'd wear embroidered linen aprons to butcher chickens and can okra pickles. The idea of adventure would bore us.  "Out of all my siblings," I complained to my friend. "How am the one considered to be adventurous?"  Naturally she laughed at me. "Because you are..."  "Not by choice. Don't you remember how all of my siblings, but I loved moving from house to house? Yet they are the ones who are most at home now."  Back then I feared change and hated stepping outside whatever front door we happened to live behind. I spent most of my childhood years praying we wouldn't make the worst move of all... to Montana or Alaska.  One could say that perhaps t...

I don't feel boredom. I'm recovering from an addiction to anxiety (so I've been drawing faces onto my toes) After a steady workaholic season I decided it was time to get on the road again. This time indefinitely and with less structure than before. I basically won't come home until I've danced in Tennessee, and hopefully l'll return with twenty-five feet of tatted lace.  I will most likely stay on the road longer than that. I need to learn to hold onto something (faith). And I need to prepare myself for some big changes.  My first destination was a family reunion in Oklahoma. But first I organized a hike with a random assortment of Colorado friends (they did not know each other).  We did a lot of car camping and caravanning for the weekend there. We tried to visit a small cult I love, but that didn't work out. I found a beautiful café and saw googly eyes on construction cones. But this lower picture is from some bathroom in Co...