Raven and Sparrow

Tiny dishes

The first gift I remember receiving was a toy tea set. I was about three years old, sitting on the floor of my grandmother's house in the remote desert town where I was born. In the cool dimness of her living room I unwrapped my present and fell in love. The shapes of the things linger more clearly in my memory than the colors; the empty spaces encircled by handles and the curves and roundnesses of the vessels. The plump yet graceful teapot, the companionable cream and sugar set, and diminutive cups and saucers were enchanting. What is it about miniatures? Why does shrinking something concentrate its essence so poignantly? My little dishes reached out to me. I can still feel the hollow place they made inside.

Those tea things are long gone, of course. I played with them and they were lost. The Peter Rabbit pieces belonged to Mike's sister Barbara. They came to me when she died.

Blue leaves

I've been slowly painting the leaves on the sheer square....grayish blue to go with the decoration on Lynne's plate. When it gets layered over green it will have a more springy look. Painting is ticklish work. I don't remember my hands shaking so much. I have to keep the paint away from the white stitching or it stains it darkly. I've hit it a couple of times, but so far itsn't too messy. The cloth has to be suspended in the air to keep the watery paint from spreading or marking the open spaces. I don't have any Japanese shinshi to keep the cloth off the table, so I make do with a Rubbermaid tub and masking tape. It is surprisingly slow work.

Now that the course of this cloth has been decided upon, my thoughts are turning to the next design. I still have to come up with a summer and an autumn cloth for Lynne. I'm having a little trouble because my techniques usually produce a decidedly rough look and Lynne's dishes are finely finished and formal. Lynne herself is traditional in her tastes. Sometimes juxtaposing different levels of formality on a table freshens its look, but it can be hard to pull off. Various possibilities wander through my mind, but so far, I'm not sure where to go from here. 

An angry day...inside and outside

Some days just go bad. This morning Mike and I got off to an irritable start and spent the morning alternately sparring and avoiding each other. In an attempt to escape the tension, I undertook a number of errands, including a twenty-five mile drive to the county seat to file some plans for a permit. When I finally got there at 3:15, I was told that permit interviews ended at 3:00 and I must come back again. Furthermore, I was told in a condescending tone that this had been the policy for over two years and I should have known about it. Furious at the inflexibility of county rules and the unfairness of life in general I came home and expressed my outrage to Mike. He said he had been told about the three o'clock deadline earlier in the week, but had forgotten to mention it to me, even though I had explained my plan of action to him as I left. At this point I had to get out. I took the camera and walked down to the rocks. The wind had been rising since my return and now it was truly wild. I grew up here in Puget Sound and when I was young I thought it was a dull backwater where nothing ever happened. Even the waves were small and tame in comparison with the ocean, which in fact I had never seen. Now I have seen the ocean and know what a rare treasure this benign, protected inland sea is, viewed from a larger perspective of the world. This afternoon though it was anything but calm. As I tried to capture pictures of the waves as they struck, I could hardly stand up against the increasing anger of the wind. It was a perfect mirror of my inner turmoil. Feeling the power of the waves and the force of the air pushing against me helped to blow some of my distress away. When I finally turned my back to the sea and climbed the hill to the house, I was ready to talk to Mike about what was going on between us and pour some calming oil on our troubled waters.

Primrose path

We had overnight company this weekend....old friends with whom we have shared many happy hours over the years. This was another good time, and of course it included dinner. When I began to think of the table a couple of weeks ago, my eye was caught by the primroses for sale outside the grocery store. I thought their strong colors would be a welcome note of cheer in these almost spring days of changeble weather. When I actually went to acquire some primroses this week, I found that their merchandising moment had passed. The scroungy remaining primroses were now on sale and the new, hot, yet-to-be-neglected flowers were things like geraniums and gerbera daisies. Those are lovely, but I wanted something that suggested spring just springing, not imminent summer, so I went back to the primroses and examined them carefully. I found these three orangey-red ones that seemed healthy, and then realized that my favorite packets of nastertium seeds had similar colors. Tucking the seed packets into the napkins and tying them with garden twine made the time-to-plant theme more obvious and provided my friends with little gifts that they, gardeners all, seemed to appreciate.

This is the season for looking forward. We must have our anticipation of spring in common with every other human who has ever experienced winter. The return of the sun, the power of the sprout...our celebration comes from deep inside.

Sewing ovals

I've been making what I think of as the infrastructure for Lynne's table... the undercloths. I'm planning two: a navy blue one for fall and winter, and a green one for spring and summer. Her table is small but oval and it turns out that ovals are hard. There is no standard curve for oval tables, so the tablecloths have to be fit to the table they are covering. I made a pattern of the table to start with, and when I got the cloth cut out ( I had to add panels of fabric to both sides to make the cloth wide enough) I took it back to Lynne's and marked the hem in place. It reminded me of my mother doing the finishing touches on the little cotton dresses she made for me when I was in grade school...gathered skirts, puffed sleeves and sashes. She knelt with straight pins in her mouth, making me twirl slowly while she painstakingly folded and fiddled with the length of my skirt, trying to admonish me to stand straight without spitting out the pins. Lynne's table was less fidgety than I was, but the process was the same. Now the blue cloth is ready for hemming, and the green one is close. I'm not used to wrassling such large lengths of fabric and I find it tiring. My big worktable isn't big enough, so I am constantly pulling and smoothing to keep the edge I'm working on flat. I'm looking forward to the return to squares and runners, which are more manageable.