TAKE40

good morning.

it was foggy here when i woke up but it's all burned off now and out my window it's bright blue and bright green and sun.  i was reminded of these pictures i took a few years ago one foggy walk.  

shop-wise, everything available now is 40% off for the next few days.  and then i plan to take a week away and return after my birthday- june 7.  the coupon code to use when you check out is TAKE40.

as always, thanks so so much for supporting me and enhabiten.  

love,

liane 

3 new hand-dyed upcycled tops in the shop for all y'all.

find them HERE

i may soon annoy and bore (i mean enthrall and excite) you with a 2014 hopes and goals list.

and here's a polaroid from new year's day.  today, school's cancelled, it's snowing a big ole day long storm, i'm going for a walk shortly with my daughter.  then she's gonna clean her squalid room.  it's condemnable and smells bad.  don't tell her i told you.

xx

stars and dark rollers

my current therapies of choice: walking a few miles a day (yesterday a fox ran silently right across my path), listening to the open yale course "the early middle ages" while i stitch  (i'm thinking about plato and the allegory of the cave today) and reading a few pages a night of the orphan master's son by adam johnson.  i've been interested in north korea since watching any documentary i could find about the country and reading nothing to envy a couple years ago.   

my daughter olivia (michael was her boyfriend) and i were in a bookstore recently.  she wanted to find a book to occupy her mind.  after a 45 minute search she came back with "the orphan master's son" under her arm, having no idea it was the book i was reading as well.   

i am searching for answers and for truth.  my attention is making what was previously invisible, visible.  in the beginning of "the orphan master's son" the main character, jun do, is working in underground tunnels.  the north korean soldiers are expert at navigating in the dark without modern technology, even without light.  i'm about 150 pages into the book and there is so much that is beautifully written about light and dark.    

here's a small excerpt from the book in a time period when jun do is working on a fishing boat:

Not that he envied those who rowed in the daylight.  The light, the sky, the water, they were all things you looked through during the day.  At night, they were things you looked into.  You looked into the stars, you looked into dark rollers and the surprising platinum flash of their caps.  No one ever stared at the tip of a cigarette in the daylight hours, and with the sun in the sky, who would ever post a "watch"? At night on the Junma, there was acuity, quietude, pause.  There was a look in the crew members' eyes that was both faraway and inward.

another walk

woods in april, empty old house.

magical and mythical

couple things

(or more than)

feeling the urge to chat.  

i have been struggling with what i think is tendonitis in my left elbow and finding it painful to do simple things like use scissors and pick up my coffee cup.  lugging firewood around is not helping.  i struggle to put my seatbelt on in the car.  this is making me feel frustrated but also defeated and old.  i know anyone can have this problem but i tend to chock a lot up to age since, oh, i turned 40.  i alternate between whining and doing my best to be a big girl.  i mean woman.

i just ate half a box of jelly beans.  i focused in on the mixed drink inspired flavors for a bit and decided yes on the pina colada, nay to the margarita.  

if you've been following this blog for awhile (too long...i didn't say that) you'll remember i used to go for a lot of walks.  they weren't exercise walks.  they were therapy walks.  and i don't mean the kind of pleasant pondering stroll you might be imagining, i'm talking something akin to pacing but in one direction where my face is all screwed up tight in an ugly pretzel shape and it looks like my head might pop off.

thank god for those walks.  they pretty much saved my ass.  but anyway.

i stopped taking them maybe 2 years ago.  and ever since i've missed not the reason for taking them but the activity of them.  it was my kind of meditation.  i don't want to jinx myself but this year i really want to get back to it.  

2013 is supposed to be a real good year for geminis.  like, pinnacle.  

the rob brezny gemini horoscope this week says:

I do think there's a decent chance that sometime in the next seven months, many of you Geminis will discover places, situations, and circumstances that will be, for all intents and purposes, magical and mythical.

Do you understand just how much power you have to create the life you want to live in 2013? Are you fully aware of just how much access you have to new resources?

i really honestly think this may be true!   

i'm gonna ponder that as i get back into long walking this year.

a different gentler kind of walking with intention and optimism.

xx

in the stilled place

 

lola and i went for a walk today in the woods down by the river.  we walked a path which once was the main road to the next town over.  you can still find the remains of cellar holes, flower beds, day lilies.  while we walked it rained and then it rained harder.  it's been raining here for days and won't let up till friday.  but the wet forest and the path were beautiful.

..

i am reading poems by wendell berry right now.

SOWING

                             In the stilled place that once was a road going down

                             from the town to the river, and where the lives of marriages grew

                             a house, a cistern and barn, flowers, the tilted stone of borders,

                             and the deeds of their lives ran to neglect, and honeysuckle

                             and then the fire overgrew it all.  I walk heavy

                             with seed, spreading on the cleared hill the beginnings

                             of green, clover and grass to be pasture.  Between

                             history's death upon the place and the trees that would have come

                             I claim, and act, and am mingled in the fate of the world.

foggy weather

eli found a large paper wasp's nest yesterday.  most of it was still high up in a tree but the bottom had fallen to the ground.  i found some pussy willow on a walk.  

i've been doing a little bartering for things i need.  i sent some pillows to katie at pine and main and received a set of vintage mugs.  locally, i made some arm warmers for a yoga teacher in exchange for a few classes.

there's a new fisherman pillow in the shop this morning and i plan to put some heavy naturally dyed black hemp canvas pillow covers i'm calling "galaxy" in the shop this afternoon.  they'll have a vintage black glass button closure with hand-stitched button holes.  this black fabric is my favorite hand-dye.

when i go for walks i most love the smell of wild concord grapes soft and browning and falling from the vine at the end of the season.  out walking, i also gathered some oak galls and acorns and sumac.  did you know you can dye with all those things?

i made some things with fall colored boiled wools and dyed hemp and tossed them right into the shop.

ps- i loved LOVED all your responses to my bad dream post.  let us hope we all have sweet dreams tonite.

xo

via blacklung

there is snow on the ground again here.  but the sun wants to shine.  i'm heading out on foot shortly to go get my hairdo refreshed.  meaning more black dye.  my friend dienya does my hair and she works at a shop out on a back road in my town.  so walking there involves a few miles of up and down hills surrounded by woods.  are you tired of hearing me wax on about walking?  but it's just one of my favorite things.  walking and taking long baths which i do amost daily (gasp!) so indulgent.  both do this thing to my sometimes tired brain...clear it out and calm it down.  especially for a creative person it helps locate the ideas which turn into the projects.  so anyway, i think you should all take a walk and a long bath today.  then report back.

xx

pure pleasures

cashmere

such a good idea!

via sartoria

...

and don't forget about the HAPPYNEWYEAR coupon code in my shop for 25% off everything including already discounted goods.

...

and here are the promises i'm making to myself for this wonderful fresh start we are given in a 2011 new year:

-i used to walk 3-5 miles almost everyday and i'm promising myself to ease back into that.

-i promise to continue educating myself about what's going on in the world beyond my house, town, country both past and present with books like this and this.

-i just ordered seed catalogs and i'm making a promise to  make my vegetable garden a priority this spring and summer because i believe growing my own food and feeding my family and friends with it are profound acts of political and social importance (how's that for grandiose?) and also that digging in the earth is one of the purest pleasures in life.

with love,

liane



november