We did a little traveling for Spring Break:
Now I'm back and ready to share the next set of contributions to the Inheritance Project. There are a lot of items, from a lot of contributors, so the titles I've given help keep them all straight in my head. I'm incredibly grateful to the contributors all for their generous spirits and willingness to share their time, effort and most importantly, their stories.
Even the stories with holes.
Especially the stories with holes.
The Jaunty Cock.
Thank you Nikki Senecal for sending this handsome man my way. Here's his story:
"...I started stitching this Linda Gordanier Jary design that was published in the May/June 1995 Cross Stitch & Country Crafts magazine for my mother (it matched her dining room). I made a horrendous counting mistake and the project languished. In the meantime, my mother redecorated."
And I also say we should be willing to abandon a project that doesn't speak deeply to us any longer, for whatever reason. I've done it, you've done it, and we've all felt some level of lousy guilt. So, I suggest you call your unfinished work something other than "Unfinished." Instead, call it throat clearing.
Lodge this rooster in your mind when you put your own work down indefinitely and move on. Those A-hole Cocks clear their throat every guilt-free morning and sometimes all damned day. So, why shouldn't we?
Clear your throat. Move on. (Okay, first climb down off the barn).
And while we're talking about barns...
The Best Name for a Farm Ever.
Can I PLEASE live on a farm called Funkarella Farm? I'll only climb on the barn roof once in a while.
My new Dutch Friend.
Spending several hours with Lous and John that day reminded me of many childhood visits with a German couple named Carl and Sue. In their home in California, we were allowed to load and operate, and load and operate. and load and operate a rickety player piano, handle gently (but not play with) an enormous collection of Hummel figurines and trolls with shocks of orange hair, ask Carl to wind up the mechanical singing bird and wind it up again and then wind up the equally-exquisite-but-not-as-cool figure-8 spinning ballerina music box, or visit Carl's woodworking shop and choose special scraps off the floor. Sue always gave us Coke in small glasses and cookies from a box.
Similarly, through story and mysterious objects, the richness of Lous and John's lives together and the stories of places they'd lived were not lost on my children. They had many questions on the drive back to Anchorage. The most important question: Will we ever see them again?
Yes. Yes, we will. And we'll bring Papa next time to meet them, too. We've already promised.
Thank you Lous and John for the invitation to visit, for the homemade fish chowder and gorgeous bread, the hagelslag, the coffee and the lovely items I've inherited from you. I have been thinking deeply about how best to incorporate them into my work. They are so very special.
Rawness and Beauty.
She had a rough winter, and I knew this when these items arrived a month or so ago. I felt blessed that amid heartbreak and turmoil, she took the time to send something my way. Incredible.
"These came out of my mom's house...we buried my dad and put my mom in assisted living all in one week. So my feelings on these are this: dissolvent (of my childhood home), sadness, loss and grief. Had all the aging stuff gone down a different path i.e gracefulness, nostalgia, or whatever, I may have tender thoughts. Now I'm a raw bone."
I'm honored to have met and connected with Lorie in person. We'll do it again.
For more information on the Inheritance Project, please click here. It's a doily-centric crazy crowdsourcing effort that has turned into a web of connected relationships and curiosities and narratives about loss, friendships, history and valuing the valueless.
It's kind of awesome.
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But it might happen someday -- the newsletter. Not the bombardment. Or the lousiness.
A year ago, I posted about a Yellow Quilt that I'm almost ready to turn toward in reality. Really. Let me just climb down off this damned barn. No, really. Wait, I think my pants are hooked on the weather vane.