VERY LATE UPDATE!

Hi friends. It’s been a long time. I’ve missed this space. I’ve been working very hard in a lot of places that aren’t here. I’ve been writing every monday on Synchronized Swim, a project that my friend Jessie and I have become very fond of and proud of. I’ve been quilting quilts and smaller quilted objects and also sewing signal flags with which I’ve launched an Etsy shop that you can find here. I’ve been working full time in the kitchen at HoneyRock trying to cook food for friends and strangers with mixed feelings. I’ve been traveling within myself, stretching out, opening up, widening in big ways and small. I’ve been cold in feet of snow, free in mossy forest, warm by fires. I’ve been all over the place and now I’m here again.

I’m writing from Chicago where I’m visiting and staying with my friend Margaret. Isaiah is in Rwanda for a week (long story), and I’m resting and thinking and feeling and enjoying returning to my old city, which doesn’t quite feel like home anymore. It feels a little like I don’t have any home, which isn’t true but also is a little bit. Isaiah and I have plans and hopes. We are moving to Pittsburgh, my hometown, in May. I want to keep building my precarious fledgling creative small business. We want to have babies someday, not like right now but soon-ish. We have so much we want and so many hopes and goals.

In the meantime, though, between all the thinking, planning, moving forward, we’ve also been staying put. Sometimes stuck, other times just sitting. Maybe it’s a winter thing, but for all I’ve done in these past few months, it doesn’t quite feel like very much. I’ve been doing all I can do and I still don’t have as much to show for it as I wish I could. And now I’m back in Chicago for a moment looking back at it all and feeling underwhelmed but thankful. No way to change anything, no different version of what has come to pass. Just ways to move forward. Ways to stop waiting and keep working. Ways to do one thing at a time, the thing that makes sense to do. Going by guessing. Learning by going where I have to go.

A quick recap in words and pictures (in no particular order):

I knit my second ever pair of socks, the Pixel Stitch socks by Purl Soho. I set them down for a long time and picked them up again at the end of the year. I’ve never owned a more special pair of socks.

Quilted Christmas stockings, made in January because Isaiah and I have never bought any for ourselves and it was time. This will surely be an ongoing experiment with more versions rolling out by next November-ish.

Thankful for our tiny treehouse home.

Been working on a new applique project which I’ve been calling “Incarnation Quilt”. Each block is a hand-applique image from the Bible and Christian history. I’ve chosen images that have become meaningful to me in the past months and years, things that remind me of what is true, what has been written, what will be. This project will take a long time, and that’s exactly how I like it.

I’m knitting a new sweater! Cline by Julie Hoover. Part of my handmade wardrobe plan for 2018.

Made myself a project bag to hold my knitting because I can’t afford the ones I love from Fringe Supply Co. A few kinks to work out of the self-drafted pattern, but I really love having one that is handmade! If I can get the pattern just right, these may end up in my etsy shop, so keep eyes open if you’re into this sort of thing!

I’ve been making flags. A great many of them. The flags when hung together make secret poems which you can read about more here. If you would like to learn more or buy some or just see what I’ve been working really hard on the most since December, hop over to my Etsy shop here. A big exercise in “go before you’re ready.” A big exercise in faith.

Currently trying to find somewhere sort of like this to live in Pittsburgh in May, so if you know of any leads let me know THANKS! Want big bright beautiful studio space, more than one bedroom, nice-ish kitchen, and a washer/dryer right in the apartment because A GAL CAN DREAM.