when i got home from the bookstore tonight, ezra and i walked to the park and through the neighborhood streets.  it was just settling into darkness.  there were cats skulking through the long grass.  and there were tvs making the windows glow in almost every house.  it's hockey playoffs and tonight is a big game.  i think even people who don't love the leafs are watching.  tom is a life long leafs fan, and it goes generations deep.  there has been some cursing at the tv, and now that it's overtime, i think he has to watch something else completely....the tension is too high.  
i spent last week making baby quilts.  the nursery rhyme quilts are adorable.  they are much like the poetry quilts only with nursery rhymes and soft pretty baby fabric.  twinkle twinkle little star.  baa baa black sheep.  itsy bitsy spider.  i have to get them photographed and listed on etsy.  
i found poems tonight at the bookstore for my next batch of poetry quilts.  neruda and keats.  i love combing through the words.  i write a poem a few times to feel it's essence and let it's fullness sink into my consciousness before i start quilting it.   it's a nice process. 
   

industrial paned windows, steel holding the glass in place.  looking into stone concrete brick.  housing fascinating but inexplicable machinery, boilers, dials, iron wheels.  or the rusty remnants of the machinery that has been removed.  these buildings are most lovely to me.  i'm drawn to these industrial spaces of rust and grit and glass more naturally than to all the swoony pinterest rooms.  we walk past a block of these buildings every day, ezra and i, and i always stare in the windows, wishing i could walk in and absorb it all. with my little watercolor box and a camera.
i have a little place i go in my mind....a studio i had in college.  i have spent my life collecting spaces.  spaces i've loved.  and this is one of my jewels.  a low brick building.  a bit like a concrete barn.  but with a wall of steel paned windows.  facing a patch of grass and another identical twin of a building.  inside there was a wall of glass block separating the main room from a smaller one.  the floor was gritty.  and the light was everywhere.  gorgeous cascading light.  it was isolated, on the very edge of campus, and i could be there for hours and hours without being found.  music would pulse against the walls.  dora maar (my first great dane) would be there with me.  and i would work with no concept of time.  just a girl in an empty boiler room with her dog, david bowie and paintings.
so these buildings i walk past every day feel a little like if i walked in i could lose myself to that youthful girl, like the wheels and dials and rusty pipes may be my own personal back to the future.  

we can enjoy being outside again.  the weather is drawing us into the yard, along the lake, out to the farm.  ezra is learning about all our spots.  he loves the yard and quickly learned how fabulous the porch swing is.  although he's not a big fan of the swinging part.  and the lakeside path is becoming his territory.  he's been meeting new dogs all the time, and being mostly polite.  

the farm makes him a little crazy.  100 acres of grass and trees and deer and wildlife galore takes his curiosity to a place a bit beyond what he can control.  he doesn't listen very well, so his off-leash time is usually pretty short.  
this week of sunshine and balmy air has been a gift. it seems to make everything function better.  the studio flows fresh and steady.  the house feels a little easier to keep clean.  even figuring out meals is easier.  the barbecue is gassed up and tom has been grilling almost every meal. 
the gentle air is welcome.  i've never appreciated spring to this extent before.    

this is my view.  my vantage point on the couch.  in the gloaming of morning.  i think gloaming is meant to be evening.  but i like it for the dawning of the day too.  i haven't tidied or made the room camera ready, but that's ok.  this is a very alive room.  and there is no hiding it.  now i have stella tucked against my hip under the quilt with me. i love catching these moments.  it's one of my favorite things about my phone....there is rarely a moment i can't attempt to turn into a photo.    

i just stepped out onto the porch to bring ellsworth in from his night wanderings.  and although i'm barefoot and barearmed in a light little white nightie, there was only pleasantness outdoors.  the light was thin and gray and i had braced myself to get hit with a slap of cold.  but the air had no chill. even the floorboards of the porch on my barefeet were comfortable.  i think the winter is behind us and may is bringing the scent of green and the sounds of life.  

the windows are filling with light now.  i love this hour as the day starts, the stillness and the quiet of night turning to day.  oh, it reminds me of my favorite movie in the 80s.  i can't help that i still love it.  'ladyhawke'.  the medieval tale of a lover's curse, each of them human half the time and animal the other half, never meeting as humans, but living with their counterpart, a hawk and a wolf.  and almost touching as humans in the seconds between night and day. 
my day has arrived, and i think i'll head directly to the studio.  and work in this fresh energy for an hour or so.  before i dress and make breakfast and have a bath.....the routine can be such an interruption sometimes.  

there are little shifts that shape a life.  and in my life, it's the quilt thing that always surprises me.  for most of my life, i didn't notice quilts.  they held no appeal to me.  i didn't seek the story or notice the artfulness in a quilt.  there may have even been a bit of contempt in my youthful artist's sensibilities, considering them folksy and simple, those being characteristics i hadn't yet learned to admire.  yet many of my memories from childhood are anchored with a quilt, or the making of quilts.  and i remember wandering through an exhibition at the u of michigan art museum in my ann arbor days.  it was an exhibition of quilts that i expected to dismiss, but found myself enjoying. the idea, the import, the interest, must have spent years fermenting and settling deep in.  so when i was cuddled on the couch with tom, watching a movie (the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind), almost 9 years ago, and my eye was drawn inexplicably to a relatively small detail, a quilt of large colorful squares of vintage fabric, my life took one of those dramatic turns.  but i suppose i wouldn't have noticed the quilt and been so pulled into it's design, if i didn't have an internal tug in that direction to begin with.  and finally, at 38 years old, i was allowing it to surface.  (i searched for an image from the movie.  and this is the only one i could find..... i feel like i'm looking at an old friend, a part of my family.  although it's been years and years since i've seen the movie or this pivotal quilt.) 

if you watch the movie, you'll see it here and there.  but to me, it was all i noticed.  like a main character.  but why?  i fancied myself a painter then.  i noticed line and juxtaposition and composition.  i didn't know i noticed fabric.  sure i bought fabric that i would stretch and paint on.  and it turned out i had quite a bit, because the morning after the movie, i had enough fabric to cut and sew and fashion a quilt of sorts.  it evolved, this first quilt.  all my quilts really.  they sprout from my head and my hand.  and from that moment, a day doesn't pass that my thoughts aren't full of the chaos of pattern and color and managing it all into something a little wild and yet cohesive. 

     

have you noticed, i like to write in the morning.  early when the house is quiet.  or as quiet as it can be.  when the sun is thin and the covers are rumpled.  the house will be tidy later.  and it will smell better too.  after i change the litter and wash the floors.  but right now i want to hear the tap of computer keys as i make words.  it's how i like to start my day.  
in the studio, i'm into the meaty part of the quilt i'm making.  past the stage that feels like prep and not yet to the part that feels like it's done already.  but in the phase that excites me as it begins to breathe and mingle and have a personality. 
upstairs, i just heard tom get into the shower.  and ezra stumbled down the stairs to see what i was doing.  sleepy and warm and smelling of clean sheets, with his eyes squinty and dreamy.  but without tom in bed, it wasn't quite so cozy for him.  i know how he feels.  
so the day has burst upon us.  i'll make eggs and see if ezra will sniff around the yard for a few minutes to properly wake up. and get a second pot of coffee on the go!
  

the lake is my retreat.  and we are coming into the season that our friendship is the most active.  i can sit in the little lipping waves for hours, sifting through rocks looking for the gleam of pebble-softened glass.  a therapeutic hunt. but there is a magnetic draw even without the heat of summer.  she is our walking partner.  she calms me and and makes me happy.  ezra is just learning about her magical ways.  he's a little uncertain, not too sure about getting close.  but we walk along beside her every day and soon i hope he'll let her cool his feet. there is always a little thrill when the ice begins the crack and shift and open to the waves beneath.  for although there is power in her iciness, the stillness is disconcerting after a while.  i'm glad she's open and teeming, filling our little village in the city with her rhythm and energy.