Year of the Crone

It's transition time into next year and time to reflect. Tomorrow, I will already be looking back from a new perspective.

I saw these double rings double with their shadow into infinity and the vesica piscis and I really like how the two symbols connect and combine and what they might say about my path this year.

I have only done a very small bit of stitching as I've been focused on visiting family for the past week. I feel excited to return to setting up my new studio and getting back to work.

And my second son is moving out from home across country, so I expect even more space to fly. 2012 seems like it's going to be a year of big change and a new stage of life for me.

Before and After

There are moments in life when I have experienced sudden major change - markers on my timeline where I am conscious of the 'before' and the 'after' because my reality is so very different. I began this piece the day before Japan's earthquake and tsunami - and it unfolded like a dream with fabrics I'd recently dyed as part of a shibori class. I was drawn to include a piece of a Japanese napkin and to add a wave of silk gauze to complete a circle of life. Later that night as I drifted to sleep, I saw a wave of liquid advancing over cloth, dyeing it pink and the next morning when I turned on the radio, I heard the news of the natural disaster. As I went to take this photo, a wind came up and curled one corner of the cloth in an arc like a tsunami wave, flipping it right over - you can see it rising in the shadow, below. I am calling this 'Before the Wave' and it is a marker of personal 'befores and afters' I've lived through as well as of the enormity and impact of the Japanese tsunami . It is also a symbol of faith that even though many lives have changed forever, the circle of life will continue.

Coming Together

I have had a sense of things coming together as I have worked on this piece - two worlds, machine pieced/handstitched, darkness/light, inner/outer, right/left, back/forth - the meeting or merging point which shifts and remains somewhat fluid. Like the tides advance and recede, yet basically cover a certain span of sand. Or like the rocking motion of life offering some order and stability in the fluctuation of change. To ride the tides knowing change keeps happening.