Birth of a Poet

When I read poets and look forward to their next books, then that poet passes, it's like watching rope slip off a ledge, one I thought I'd tied firmly behind me, but suddenly--whoosh!--it's gone.  That sense of betrayal and disbelief at the empty air--it's like the moment you discover the person who you thought loved you, didn't really--a stripping-away moment.

I've been thinking of the opposite of that moment.  Wouldn't it be great to know the instant a new poet came into the world, to walk through a maternity ward and know that one of those callow faces was going to write the poem that someday, might save your sanity?  What a wonderful thing that would be.  It would be something like falling in love, but a little bit different, more like falling in awe, falling in limerence, being sublimely gobsmacked with gratitude.

Isn't that what happens when THAT book comes along?  I've had THAT book, the book that I can't bear to take out of my purse, the one I must have on me at all times, so I can read THAT poem, the one that looked right through me, the one that spoke my secret name.

I want more of those days.



In above photo: Nonna Luisa, Jordan

Farewell to Ai

There have been four poets whose recent passing has struck the dark hard place inside me, like a hammer hitting an anvil and chipping off white hot sparks from whatever was being shaped there:

Ai

Lucille Clifton

Deborah Diggs

Sarah Hannah

I first heard Ai read in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where she taught.  She was so gentle in her movements, in her deportment, and her words were so powerful.  The contrast, and the force of her meanings, made the evening memorable.  Rarely does one meet the quiet yet unrelenting force of nature, embodied.  That was Ai.

I can't adequately muster all the respect and longing in my heart to bid these poets farewell properly.

Easter Tableau

This is my Easter tableau for the grandkids.

(Even if they only get to see it on skype.)

I have had my grandmother's antique sideboard in storage for a good while.  Last year, things started coming out of storage, and they are still marching their way out of the dusty past and into the light of the present.

There was a fantastic Thanksgiving meal displayed on this sideboard last year, and a Christmas feast.  Now, it's time for Easter.

But, alas, I'm still looking for a permanent home, so there will be no grande feast this year.  There will  be a tableau however, one that expresses the abundance of gratitude in my heart, and one that will hopefully "wow" the little ones when we video chat.

The entire tableau consists of:

1. Mr. & Mrs. Easter Bunny:  I posted notes on how I put these two together. See "Easter."
2. Easter Egg Tree: I made this tree from scratch.  See my postings under the label "Easter."
3. Baby Bunnies in Carriage: Maker notes also under "Easter."
4. Crocheted hens:  This is an old crocheted pattern. I did these in 1978.  You can find this pattern through an internet search, or sometimes on ebay.  Sometimes, you can even find people selling the hens themselves.  The finished pieces fit over an egg.
5. White picket fence:  I got this at Big Lots.  It has garden stakes on the bottom, and those are planted in some fake plants to help the fence stand correctly.
6. Easter eggs on tree:  I've been collecting/making these since I was small.  Some are crocheted, and some are fabric over styrofoam.  My favorites are the crocheted ones.
7. Afghan/wall hanging:  This is a Thomas Kinkade print made into an afghan.  I hung it as a tapestry background.  I found it at a thrift store, and I picked it because of the white house in the middle of it, in the middle of a woods.  I was thinking about making a house facade for the bunnies, but I like that once Easter is over, I can take this off the wall and use it as a throw.  Seattle can be chilly!

Baby Bunnies in a Carriage

What bunny family would be complete without babies?

My inspiration for this project was actually a house plant container I saw at Tuesday Morning:

I was going to make a baby bunny pram by cutting the handle off of an easter basket, but when I saw this I immediately started thinking it was the right scale for the Mr. & Mrs. Bunny, and the wheels moved.  I took it home and started playing with it.  (It's a good thing I have these moments of inspiration in stores like Tuesday Morning, otherwise they could be costly.)

 I gathered a bunch of pastel ribbons from my stash, then started weaving them into the design of the basket:

Easter Basket from Recycled Container

Yes, that's right, it's a recycled oatmeal container from Starbuck's.

Mr. Bunny needed a basket, and it needed to bunny-sized, and this container fit the bill.  

To give it shape I wrapped it with quilting fleece and tied it with yarn:

Then pulled the bottom together and basted it:

then rolled the top of the fabric over the lip and sewed it right through the cardboard (it was pretty easy to pierce).

I wrapped a fabric around the bottom, tacked it in place, then lined the inside of it with the discarded silk purse from one of my Easter Bunny's outfits.  I also used the discarded trim from the waist of one of the bunny's skirts to wrap around it.

Florist wire and a ribbon sleeve to make a basket handle:

Here's what it looks like with the handle attached:

Instead of filling his basket with eggs, I decided it would be cute to fill it with peeps.  After all, he is a farmer bunny:

Easter Bunnies

When I first met Mr. & Mrs. Bunny, they were a bit sad:

Yes, this was them, in their pre-Mr. & Mrs. Bunny life, languishing on a shelf at Big Lots.  I try to get by on a budget, so I do go to Big Lots--not frequently, but often enough to know when the aisles change--and look for deals.  These two bunnies were a deal.  They weren't very complicated in construction: I could have gone to the fabric store and bought the materials to make them, but the sale price and my discount made buying them in this state and fixing them more feasible.

This is something I DO do frequently--buy things that are close to what I want and make them better.  I call it "editing."  After all, isn't that what a good editor does?  She takes a story that is a close, or maybe a diamond in the rough, and really makes it shine.

The first thing I had to do was pick one bunny to be the boy, and one to be the girl.  The one on the right had plainer clothing, so I picked him to be Mr. Bunny.  I removed the skirt from the outfit, which was sort of tricky, since these stuffed animals are finished with a combination of stitching and fabric glue.  Once I got it off, I could fully examine their construction:

I tied the collar together with a rubber band, and turned that into Mr. Bunny's kerchief.  I decided that covering the pink fringe on his hat with tan trim would also help:

I looked through my scrap chest to find some fabric to make pants from.  I didn't find any one fabric that would do the trick, but I had a bunch of upholstery sample blocks in hues of blue, and I thought they would make a nice patchwork trouser for Mr. Bunny:

It took me about an hour to piece together enough of these to wrap all the way around him.  When I pinned it on him to see how it would look, I also put a pair of doll glasses on him to see if he was a eye-glass wearing bunny.  I was looking for masculine details to add to his look.

Mrs. Bunny was easy.  I added a flower to her hat, made a balloon underskirt for her to fill out her outfit to the ground, and gave her a three-pearl brooch for her collar.  Not too tough.

Making Mr. Bunnies trousers though, especially since he had to have the illusion of legs, was tricky.  After I got enough fabric to loosely wrap around him, I sewed a permanent pleat in front and back where his trousers would have had pleats, added cuffs, and realized he needed feet/shoes to really look like he was wearing pants:

I sewed his "feet" to the bottom of his stand by hand.

I sewed a "dimple" all the way through the pants and the base to give the illusion of legs.

I came up short on fabric for his pants and had to make a waist band from a matching satin fabric, with a patch-pocket to put his pocket-watch in.  I added buttons to the front of his shirt.  I'm not fully satisfied with the result, but it will do for this year.  I already have notes in my craft journal for next year: "Make Mr. Bunny a vest."

Here they are, near completion.  At this point my friend Roxanna nicknamed them "Juan and Juanita J. Bunny."  I was going to call them Jean-Claude and Matilde, but we'll squabble over names later.

I noticed the effect of giving Mr. Bunny feet helped with his appearance, so I decided to make a pair of matching feet for Mrs. Bunny:

I drew the pattern for her feet on a piece of scrap cardboard.

I cut the bottom (with 1/2" seam allowance) from the same black felt as I used for Mr. Bunny's shoes/feet, then

cut the top of her shoe about 1.5 inches larger in a green satin.  (I got the fabric from the other bunny's skirt.)  I sewed a piece of the tan trim across this, then sewed the right sides together, turned them out, stuffed each one, and the ready to be attached "foot" looked like this:

Hand sewing it to her body:

Now she's ready to go dancing with her hubby.

I decided to make him a basket as part of his props, since she has her nice silk purse with her.  I was toying with different things to put in his hand, a rake, a pipe, but I figured out a way to use leftover fabric from the removed skirt and a recycled container to make a basket for Mr. Farmer Bunny, and that seemed apropos.  More on that later....

The TeePee Pattern Arrived!!!

Grandpa Tim is jealous.  He says when he was a little boy in Fort Wayne, he always wanted a teepee of his own.  He had a fort, but he thought a teepee would have been cooler!

I might have to make him one after I finish this one for the grandkids.

First stop on this project is finding the right fabric.  I'm thinking something soft, perhaps with a nap, in a nice tan or light brown, like a real teepee.  Some yarn to mimic whip-stitching and some animals sponge-painted on the sides, or painted on my the kids.  This will take me a few months to put together, but at least they're preschool age, so I don't have to worry about them outgrowing it too soon.

The Great Time of Saying Good-Bye

I am moving.

My inner dialogues have a flair for the dramatic.

Put these two things together and the result is what I have christened "The Great Time of Saying Good-Bye."

I get attached to places, to the confluence of time and space in my daily routines that produces a pattern.  As a writer I depend on these confluences to bring forth my writing self.  I have learned over many years that these confluences have to be actively created and nurtured by me in order for me to produce the work I want to produce.  If I leave things to chance, I won't get anything done.  Habit and environment are stronger than intention.

I get attached to places for this reason.  I spend a great deal of my imaginative life, or I spend a great deal of time in a place, imagining, and that repetition makes the place dear to me.  I get crushes on bushes, and benches, and fond wallpaper.

Catching Myself

Catching Myself in a Store Window

(Naturally, it's a bookstore.)

I once wrote a poem about things that hold our reflection without our consent, other people's sunglasses, water, television screens, etc.  A mirror, when you hold it in your purview, is like a conspirator.  You purposely use it to see yourself.  A store window though....

To see my own reflection juxtaposed in something else is sometimes jarring.  I was walking by a pawn shop in my poem, and seeing my reflection at the same time I was viewing worn objects made me aware of my own aging.  

It seems to me nature is one place I go to purposely not think about me.  Yet, on the entrance to the Wallis Falls trail:

...there I was.

I'm thinking about this more and more as I go down the path of being a blogger.  I've had people tell me blogging is about community, about connecting, but I wonder about the egocentric aspect of taking thoughts and making them public.  I don't have the same feel for these electronic words, nor quite the same tone, as my personal journal.  I'm aware of some aspect of performance here, or presentation, and of a need to be courteous, a need to self-censor.  Is that an accurate reflection of me?

Easter Egg Tree

The Easter Egg Ornament Tree

When I was small, the public library was the center of my life.  Every Easter, the librarians would take a small, dried tree branch, cement it in a pot, and hang these gorgeous hand-painted Easter eggs on it.  Later, I visited Ukraine (not "the" Ukraine), and I learned these eggs were called "pisanky."

I've always wanted to make a tree to display easter eggs, and I have quite the collection of hand made eggs to display: some styrofoam covered with fabric; some crocheted designs over your run-of-the-mill plastic, fillable Easter eggs; some from various projects I did when I was very young, like my interpretive sea shell egg.  The tree though, was a different matter.

The easiest way to make a display tree is still finding a viable dried branch and setting it with plaster of Paris in an empty flower pot.  If you put a piece of florist's foam at the bottom, it makes it easier for the branch to stay in place while the plaster dries.

But, once you do that, once you've got your eggs displayed and Easter comes and goes, then you've got this tree branch you need to either store, or do something with.  (I could already picture myself getting scratched when reaching to the back of the closet.)

I'm a fabric gal.  I like soft, bendable things.  I'm also the daughter of an inventor/engineer, and my brain won't let a construction project rest until I solve its puzzle.  So, down the road of making an Easter egg ornament tree I went.

Well, it needed a base.  I already knew the branches were going to be formed by a bailing wire skeleton wrapped in some sort of fabric, but those branches needed something to be anchored to.  My two choices were either a used paper towel stand rack, or making my own from a piece of wood.  I chose the latter:

For those of you inclined toward a coping saw, that's a 10 inch round with 6 stainless steel spikes imbedded in it.  If you have a thrift store nearby, or one of those discount stores that sells home goods, a paper towel rack with a nice weighted base will work just as well.  What you need is something to wrap the bailing wire around, like this:

I also padded the base and wrapped it with some tan fabric, then pulled it together like a little purse to cover the wood.

I built up the thickness of the branches and the trunk first with some black yarn, then with strips of polar fleece:

I used some floral wire to make roots for my tree because it was easier to bend:

And I cut the polar fleece strips to cover the roots a little bit narrower than the trunk strips, so the roots would look slightly different:

Close to completion, and here is how it looks:

Post completion note:  After I got the eggs hanging on it, I got to thinking about what I was going to do with the tree after Easter.  I could put it in the closet if I wanted to.  The branches were bendable, and it certainly would lay flat enough to fit in a suitcase.  I know this because I had to put it in one to take it with me to Seattle from Los Angeles (long story).


But, it seemed like such a waist, like another thing to keep track of in the back of a closet, so I started thinking about how to let the tree change as the seasons and my home did.  Then it hit me: velcro.


I took the fuzzy side (loop side) of some velcro tape, and I started wrapping the branches with it.  It blended pretty well with the color of the fleece.  I'm saving the hook side to make leaves, snow, autumn leaves, etc.  We'll see how it goes.