repetition

I'm always getting ahead of myself: planning everything, needing it to happen now. Thinking about new hang tags to design and print, new labels. New drawings. Installations I want to make. Galleries to contact. Essays I have brewing (but never sit down to write). All the baby clothes floating around in my head, now that one of my best friends is pregnant, not to mention the maternity clothes and the normal-old-clothes always in there. Sometimes all the choices I give myself are overwhelming, and I find myself in stasis.

Printing was always a good thing for that, especially my dear lithography, because it demands precision, waiting periods, order. No skipping steps if you want the stone to etch.

I miss the smell of the printshop (lithotine, mineral spirits; the graining room's particular, gritty smell; liquid hard ground, hot ink, ferric chloride) and the textures of tarlatan, stone, copper. The certain calm of working. I'm glad to know that I'll be back in a shop one day. Maybe soon.

For now I'm happy to use his press to make some little cards for my mom. Pull the arm down (slow, for me, because I'm too short and light), pull out the card, replace the paper, ink the type; repeat.

Pattern and repetition: no better way to get out of the panicky feeling of too many things I should do, regret for things I can't do right now.

I continue to make drawings every day of my clothes and environment. I'm trying not to think about these being anything but what they are, which is a reminder of where I've been; what my clothes mean to me; how my outlook on color, pattern, and shape has changed; how my understanding of anatomy has improved. They're a great lesson in accumulation, the power of many small things together. Doing the action of drawing over and over is what makes the work.

Thanks again (!) for your words for my mom. And thanks for the jumper-buying. My mom just grinned a huge grin when I told her, then gave me the thumbs-up.

--

I've got some news I want to write about, but I'm exhausted and I want to give it its due, so I'll do it next time. Or the time after.

Hope you're well. Take care.

baby

My mom, who loves babies, taught me to sew before I even knew I was learning. She made us almost all of our clothes when we were growing up. She's part of a local sewing group that makes clothes for premature babies, and she sews mittens out of fulled wool for the homeless shelter in our parish. Sewing, for her, I think, is a tangible way to express care.

(1 :: 35.00 US :: includes shipping)

But she's never been driven to make things to sell. I pushed her, earlier this summer, to make twelve dresses to sell on my site--not only for the extra money, which is always nice, but for the challenge, and for the boost in self-confidence you feel when someone likes your things enough to pay for them.

(2 :: 35.00 US :: sold)

Before she could finish the dresses, she had an aneurysm in her cerebellum. Two friends helped me, and now I'm putting a few of them up for sale here, for 24 hours.

(3 :: 35.00 US :: sold)

You can see details by clicking on the photos. They are all sized for 1-year-olds, but will work as a shirt for a slightly larger child.

(4 :: 35.00 US :: includes shipping)

Shipping to the US is included. Elsewhere, please wait and let me invoice you.

(5 :: 35.00 US :: sold)

To purchase, leave your contact information in the comments.

(6 :: 35.00 US :: sold)

Thank you and thank you, from my mom (who was moved out of intensive care and into the normal hospital this afternoon!), and from me.

all new

My mom is still in intensive care and will be at least for another few days, after which she will be in the 'normal' hospital and then in outpatient rehabilitation. Today makes two weeks, two surgeries, hundreds of new vocabulary words for me to learn (stent, arteriovenous malformation), dozens of nurses, three surgeons. I've been learning a new kind of grown-up-ness these weeks: bills paid, hospital rooms attended, grief and healing observed. Your thoughts and words are a great support in a time that continues to be difficult.

There's been so much new happening concurrently: these baby clothes (which Martha and Barrett helped me finish); new drawings and silhouettes I've been working on at the hospital (lots of time to sit still with a pen and paper); plans for the next book for Milkweed, readings in New York and Chicago and maybe Portland; plans for the future. But it's hard to think about what's next, at the moment; I'm living in a world that's completely day-to-day, or hour-to-hour on the bad days, or ten-minute-block-to-ten-minute-block when it's particularly bad.

I won't write about this in flowery, interesting prose, but I wanted to let you know I'm still here, that your words are helping me through the hardest thing I've experienced, and that there'll be more here as the days go by.


My mom's baby clothes will be for sale here on Wednesday (20 June), just for the day.

*

Thanks for your well-wishes.

My mom is in the ICU and will be for at least two more weeks. Then there's normal hospital time and therapy. It turns out it is actually an aneurysm. More surgery this coming week. Spending most of my time at the hospital.

Please keep thinking those good thoughts. It's really good to know you're out there.

blink

My mom had a vein rupture in her head this afternoon. She was operated on and it seems, tentatively, that she may be okay. But it was the scariest experience of my life to see her in so much pain. More pain than I have EVER seen. And my mom doesn't show pain. So. Please, if you pray, pray for her, too. And if you don't, please send her good thoughts and love.

(These are baby clothes in progress--I cut them out, she puts the fabrics together and sews. She was going to put them online. I love them. Hopefully she will still be able to do this someday.)

Hug your loved ones tight. This was literally the blink of an eye.

and we're live!

{Note to self: always double the time you think anything on the internet will take.}

But it's done! The site's updated, (almost) everything is in the shop (I have some flea-market things from France that I haven't put up. May save them for later this summer), and it looks great, if I do say so myself.

I'm using Etsy this time, so if you got a coupon in the mailing list email and you want to buy something, the coupon won't work. Durr. Email me and I'll make sure to slip a few extra surprises in your package to make up for it.

Happy weekend! I'm off to the library to find books about silhouettes.