The snow

(I hate that S isn't in any of these snow pictures! She refused to come out and have fun with us- staying inside, cat like, with her Daddy)

We are the world

The first few snow days, H and I made this people world. H, J , S and I had been designing people- (and animals, I can't help it). My plan was to make a bunch of characters and do a puppet show, and expand my video capabilities- but H had a different plan and wanted to tape them all together. We decided it needed something to mask (ha ha) the giant masking tape center-

"A flower!" H said, then "NO!! The EARTH!!!" And so it was.

A week of snow days

The begining of the rainbow snow mural

Artistic pride

pom pom snow

We've crafted. We've baked. We've had a lot of wine. Well, some of us. H has had one day of school this week- Tuesday. She is off next Monday and Tuesday- so here we have an improptu vacation. I was not ready for this, and we've been snowed in for most of it. I may attempt to venture out today. I may need to, for all of our sanity. Yesterday J and I were out shoveling snow (for 3 hours) our neighbors were laughing, what did you do tie up the kids? No- we left them inside with a pitcher of milk, a box of cereal and Sesame Street. They were outside with us for about 20 minutes, which is S's limit for cold tolerance. Even H was a little over the snow.

Doing

An accomplishment! These gloves sans fingers, fingerless gloves, god forbid gauntlets, whatever you want to call them, took me less that half an hour start to finish (not including felting the sweater, which was done years ago) and they kind of look it- but a finished product! In the land of a thousand started things!

I have been knitting and un-knitting for many evenings in a row now- I thought I'd make something "easy" to limber up my creating muscle- but its been night after night of frustration. The knitting is relaxing for me, ordinarily, but indecision has crept into that as well, and I can't decide what to knit with what yarn and keep starting and stopping. Unraveling. I've been knitting to feel like I'm "doing" since I can't decide what it is I'm "doing" in the studio these days. But my doing isn't working and its making me crazy!

I will still knit a version of these non digit gloves (damn it) but today S napped briefly, and I ran up to the studio, cut haphazardly, stitched haphazardly, and now my hands are warm. Cashmere warm, too. I am hoping this finished product will help with the doing and non-doing.

I am in major...transition.. we'll call it. I am blocked creatively, and am getting too frustrated too quickly. I need some easy inspiration, but my usual sources of inspiration are frustrating me too. I am trying to remind myself that I often feel this way before an artistic breakthrough, but there's that other voice that lives in my head mocking me.

So break through already.

Hummingbird

A portrait of my grandmother- with a hummingbird and a fox.

For whatever reason, I tend to assign animals to my family. Maybe they assign them to themselves, I don't know- my father's nickname growing up was rabbit. (I swear this has nothing to do with my previous rabbit post) His sister always called him that, into adulthood- and he holds on to that nickname to remember her, I believe. The nickname was because he raised rabbits- not because he has big ears or teeth. He doesn't hop.

My aunt, my fathers sister, had a lot of favorite animals, she had dogs, horses, she briefly loved rhinos- but the one that lingered, her animal, was a fox. When she died, the morning of her funeral, I remember looking out the kitchen window at my grandparents house, and seeing a little grey fox just sitting there, for the longest time. My grandmother told me later she saw that fox every day since my aunt died, and she always thought it was her.

My grandmother loved hummingbirds. She would to paint them in water color- and would often call me with questions- the kind of questions you can't answer about someone else's painting but I'd try. She gave me some of her paintings the last time I saw her, including her painting of a hummingbird. After she died, I saw hummingbirds everywhere. There is a hummingbird, or a few, who visit my garden every year- they hover and look me in the eye until it makes me a little uncomfortable- but I always think of my grandmother and wonder.

For the last few weeks at bath time, S has been splashing around in the water saying "I'm a hummingbird!"
The first time she said it I was shocked. "You're a what?"
" A hummingbird.", she said. Miffed that I interrupted her hummingbird splashing.
"A hummingbird."
"Yes."
I have been wracking my brain trying to think of hummingbird books, or a hummingbird that was on a show. Trying to figure out where she's learned about hummingbirds. I asked her teachers if they had mentioned a hummingbird in class. No. I have no idea where this hummingbird thing came from. I'm sure there is a logical explanation- but it does make me smile and tear up a little. My grandmother never met the girls, and I do like the idea of her watching them splash around at bath time like hummingbirds.

Lifted

I had big plans for some studio work this morning- Both H and S in school for a few hours, I was going to do nothing but immerse myself. Except we were out of food, again, so maybe I'd do a quick jaunt to the grocery store. Even though I know there is no such thing. I was almost done with the groceries and my phone rang. It was J with a message from S's school- they called to say "come get your child now because the amount of diarrhea she has been having since the second you dropped her off is spectacular." Last week at school she emptied the contents of her stomach all over the lunch table. I'm sure they're loving her- and me- at the school these days.

All these bodily fluids are putting a cramp in my creativity. So I decided to bake bread. What I really wanted to do which is dye yarn, but I am not allowing myself to pursue that at the moment. I need a new craft like a hole in the head, I haven't begun to knit through the surface of my yarn hoard. Bread I can allow myself.

While the bread was rising, I suggested to S that we go up to my studio and paint. She was game, as always when it comes to painting. We went up, I got her set up- assured her five times that it wasn't really that the white wasn't working, just that its hard to see on white paper. Maybe she should use orange. It worked, today, there have been many flip outs as a result of the white not showing up. Yes, I've used multiple colored paper- she wants to see the white on the white.

I sat down with a scrap piece of rives BFK and some black ink- the closest things at hand. I brushed a line on the paper- and it lifted something in me. I have had this revelation so many times in my life- how I can possibly forget it as often as I do astounds me. This is the pull to the studio- I need to do work so I can live with myself. I am guilty of repeatedly trying to understand the why of it, and telling myself I don't really need it.

S and I were only in the studio for about 15 minutes. She needed scissors, which were downstairs. She paints and then cuts her painting apart into tiny pieces then tapes them all to the wall. I'm working on getting her to collage her pieces, mainly to contain the scraps of paper. Its a colorful hamster cage around here. It was a great 15 minutes. Tomorrow we'll try again, with scissors.

Stuck

Its raining. There are things I want to print. There are things I want to knit.

I am instead being whipped in the face by a monkey blanket and peed all over by S who is trying to remember to use the potty but too busy elbowing me in the ribs to remember. She rolls on me, causing typos, knocking everything over. Demanding a band aid every time she bumps herself. There aren't enough bandaids in the world for this.

There are meatballs are in the oven for lunch- S's idea-" I want a meatball in my HAND", she said. They're taking some time to cook- she asked indignantly "What those meatballs DOIN in there?"

I sit- frustrated, hating myself for complaining, but wanting a studio day.

S pulls her chair up to a giant water bottle- her car. Tells me "goodbye, I'm going to my tude-tude" (studio)

good luck with that, I say. Lets go have some meatballs.

Maybe we'll go up to my tude tude after lunch.