love, authentic, from a book

It may seem odd to spend weeks making a quilt for a stranger and yet that is exactly what I’ve been doing. “Respect” quilt no. 10 is now done! As I worked, I reread the book which inspired it and realized on p. 230, that the quilt manifests an insight within.

“For the first time in my life, I was dedicated to loving myself so fully that the natural response was also to love unconditionally any authenticity I found in others.”

–Michele Harper, M.D., The Beauty in Breaking, p. 230.

I so admire that line and the mindset it suggests; would that everyone felt equally strong and capable of loving, despite the hardships and pain it may bring. Harper’s candid and sometimes heart-breaking writing provides a beacon of hope, and a means of connection, for us readers.

I hope she’ll like the quilt.

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Respect Quilt no. 10, for Michele Harper, M.D.

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a sale, a pillow, an event! and a break

Even pacifists like success and today was a big first for me: I sold the first Original Honey Girl Pillow, in what I hope will be a long line of Honey Girl Pillows!  Each will have its own special vintage feel and Zen vibe. This one’s name is Blueberry. Just had to celebrate a little!

It is not coincidental that, just before remembering to celebrate with you, I was reading my students’ papers about money in French literature. (All my classes in this my final year of elite college teaching are about money. It’s my gift to the world.)

This blog, despite its ethereal air, is part of a larger project that will begin in just 220 days, when I emerge from the cocoon of college teaching and begin running a small business. Through the creation of Honey Girl Books and Gifts and the ongoing “Write YOUR Story” workshops I plan to teach for adults and kids, I hope to contribute to what sounds like an exciting–if widely scattered–alternative economy here in the USA.

It’s not so terribly “alternative” as that, maybe, although I do hope to pay the seamstresses well, and to hire young artists looking for a break. But by creating comforting narrative quilts for individual clients or families, fun Zen pillows for college kids, and the adorable Honey Girl for anyone, my secret hope is to lure people away from digitalia. The future book line will aim for that too. I hope to help people learn to appreciate old-fashioned ways of production, and time-honored means of communicating through cotton, paper, satin, and flannel.

Be real. Together. Be real together. Be real, together. Be, real together!

Happy Thanksgiving. I’m taking a few days off now.

 

 

windy windy windy skies

It is very windy tonight! The wind blew open my attic window and flooded the tiny room with good cool air smelling of the earth, of wet leaves, wood smoke, and change.

When the wind blows high like tonight, I think of the poem posted below. I was a little girl when I got it, on the back of a postcard from a counselor at Camp Robinswold. Robinswold is on Hood Canal, Washington, which if you don’t know it, is on the Olympic Peninsula. It is a place of huge ferns and shaggy fir trees dripping with moss, a real-live Rain Forest. So in my mind, French style and folklore, lush natural resources, and friendship go together.

This exuberant poem inspires with the colors of blue and white, the movement up into the air, and the soft touch. I don’t know who wrote it, but now it can be yours too.

Windy  windy windy skies

deep blue fallen over my eyes.

The clouds so white

as the sun is bright

The sea is so blue in place

as the wind blows in your face

The birds so loud & clear

as if you feel a soft

hand in the air.

Anon., ca. 1970, Robinswold, WA