Grief comes in waves. People say that, and I know what they mean. The other day I was happily working away on a new piece, trying to get the elements to behave themselves and talk to each other nicely, when suddenly I thought of my mom. It was a tsunami of emotions. I had to sit down and just be still while the feelings crashed over me. And here’s the thing… this blog? It reminds me of my mom, because when I first began blogging more than a decade ago, my mother was its biggest supporter and commenter. I think she commented on every single post or nearly every one of them. That blog was called Emma’s Hope Book. It eventually reached a massive audience with thousands of views per post. And then it was time for me to move on.
I started this blog: Where Art & Life Meet. I wanted a place where I could write about my work and art and life and everything in between. And so my mother began commenting here too. I miss her so.
During the last few years of her life she began sending videos and funny quotes to a few lucky recipients, of whom I was one. I loved receiving them, especially because it was right when COVID hit New York City and all of us were reeling. The city was in lockdown, I’d just started my YouTube Channel and often Mom’s videos and messages were the one thing I could count on to make me laugh, so I’d post them here for all of you to enjoy too. I miss her so.
Whenever I see a funny video on Youtube I think of her. Sometimes if I’m doing a couple of things at once, I’ll catch myself thinking – Oh! I have to send this to mom!! She’d love it. And then I remember that I can’t.
Her favorite video of mine was this one that I’ve added below. One of her caregivers told me she watched it multiple times.
So when I saw the video I’m posting below, I thought, Mom would have loved this. This one’s for you, Mom. It won’t let me share via this blog, so you have to click on the highlighted text instead.
I’m seizing this moment to explain the website and it’s checkout process since a few people have had trouble. I’ve broken this down into steps and highlighted things that need to be paid attention to.
So let’s go over to the website, shall we?!
First when you arrive you will be greeted by me! There I am, cheerfully welcoming you into my world of design, art, and hand stitching.
Do you see those two big red arrows? That’s showing you the navigation bar because I’m going to go over all of the items listed, but first let’s just look for a second at the bottom of this landing page, the page with me smiling at you. If you scroll down you’ll see a whole bunch of images and text about my past design work and then at the very bottom you’ll see this:
This is how you can get in touch with me.
Now you can also use the “contact” at the top in the navigation bar.
Either one will work. So if you get into trouble, just know we’re here to help answer any and all questions you may have. And most of you, who follow me elsewhere, know I’m pretty good about responding to you in a timely manner.
Okay. Now, let’s move on to “Workshops”.
Yay, workshops!! So much fun. This is what you’ll see. At some point I’ll change the large header image with my most recent piece, but until then this is exactly what you should see. Scroll down and you’ll see the calendar break down of all my workshops as of today. I’ll be adding a few more in the coming weeks, but for now, this is it.
Click on the blue link from the photo above (I’ve circled it in red). All those blue titles are hotlinks and when clicked on, they will open that workshop!
Here we are in the Stitch Along Dorset Button Glasses Case Workshop.
Look at the drop down menu! How cool is that?! That’s what you’ll see if you click on the button to the right of “Customize your experience”. This is where you can add stuff. Fun stuff like fabric kits and thread kits. If you don’t see a drop down menu it’s because no kits are available for that workshop. But for both my Stitch Along workshops you get to add kits!! One more thing about the drop down menu… when you choose one of the options, you’ll see that the price changes.
See how the price changed when you added the Fabric Kit? And can we just admire for a moment those fabulous linens? These include enough linen and lining for TWO cases – Pat Pauly’s hand dyed linens, my own ice dyed linen, a cotton lining AND a micro fiber lining, (you’ll get both) which is perfect for glasses lens, fusible fleece interfacing, again enough for two cases and enough wool for one. Same with the Stitch Along Scissor Case, but I’m getting side tracked…
So the price includes the workshop, plus the Fabric Kit, which also includes shipping and the design and the detailed instruction booklet. “What!” you’re saying to yourself, “that must be a typo!” but no, it’s just one of the perks you get for signing up for this Stitch Along. “But what about the thread kit?” you might ask.
Here you go!
This is the workshop and the thread kit. Please note that if you live outside the US you MUST order at least 4 weeks before the beginning of the workshop. Even so it’s dicey with customs and covid causing delays. Bottom line – if you don’t live in the US, hurry and enroll now!
Here we are with the Workshop, the fabric kit AND the thread kit. See all those beautiful threads above? Oh! And look! See that gorgeous hand dyed linen underneath? Yup that’s the whole package. One last thing – this workshop features Dorset Buttons. Not just your traditional Dorset Button, but really, really wild dorset buttons. Dorset Buttons like you’ve not seen before. Last year I gave a couple workshops called Dorset Buttons Gone Wild. It was a huge hit. This workshop and the other Stitch Along I’m doing in July will teach you how to create dorset buttons that are little pieces of art unto themselves. So even if you don’t want to make a glasses case or scissor case, you can still take this workshop and create dorset buttons for something else you’re working on. It’s all about thinking outside the box, using the dorset button as a jumping off point, but doing things you’ve never thought of doing. That’s what we’ll be doing in both of these Stitch Alongs.
Okay, let’s keep going with the website. So now you’re convinced this is just the coolest Stitch Along/Workshop that you’ve ever seen and you can hardly wait to sign up. So what do you do now?
Click on the “Add to cart” button and you’ll see the little, light blue, transparent box at the top that I’ve helpfully circled in red! And if you look at the navigation bar you’ll see the number 1 in your “cart”, showing you that you’ve added one thing to your shopping cart. And now you can do a couple of things: You can keep shopping and sign up for more workshops and/or designs or you can check out.
There are two ways to check out. The first is to click on the button that I’ve circled in red in the image above.
Or you can click on the the “Go to cart once all items are added?” button, which is right below the “Add to cart” button. Do you see it? ⬆️
Once you click on “view cart” or “Go to cart once all items are added?” you’ll be asked to login, if you haven’t already done so. This is for your security and this is what you’ll see
If you remember your user name and password you’re good to go. If you’ve forgotten your password, like everyone else in the world, you’ll need to click on “login” and you’ll see this image above. Do you see the dreaded “Lost your password?” No problem, we can help you with that. I can’t remember my middle name, much less every password I’ve created for different websites, oh wait, I don’t have a middle name, but you get the point… Click on “Lost your password” and you’ll get an email to reset your password. This is so that no one pretending to be you can get in here and make mischief.
Once you’ve created a new password and logged in, you’ll see this page above… wait, what? Coupon???? I want a coupon! I can help you with that too. If you signed up for my newsletter you will have seen that I give one to everyone who signed up. If you missed that, you can join Patreon where I also gave a different coupon just a few weeks ago! Lots of coupons, lots of different ways to get one.
Once you’ve entered your coupon code or decided you just want to get enrolled because the workshops are filling up fast, you’ll click on “Proceed to checkout” and voila, you’ll be taken to this page.
A couple things here – there’s yet another reminder to use a coupon, if you have one (upper left corner circled in red) and don’t forget to un-click “Ship to a different address?” unless your credit card info is different than your shipping address. For the kits, the shipping address is really important because this is what will be given to me to ship all that beautiful fabric and threads to, so make sure it’s correct. I cannot tell you how many times I go to the post office only to be told “that address doesn’t exist”. So please, please, please, double check and make sure it’s correct. And include you’re phone number so that we can call you to verify, if we run into problems.
Once you’ve filled out all the credit card info, you’ll get an email welcoming you to the workshop and then you’ll get another email from me asking you to choose which kit you’d like. Make sure you have my email address in your contacts so that your email security doesn’t block me, thinking I’m spamming you. I promise, I would never do that. ❤️
Congratulations you are now successfully enrolled in my workshop and the fun has just begun!
But wait! What about the rest of the website?
Okay, okay, here’s the Stitching Shop:
After that is the blog, which is where you’re reading all of this. But have you looked at the right hand side bar? You haven’t!? Well let me show you around because there’s some cool stuff.
So above the red circle there are all the social media icons which you can click on and follow me in various places. And then there’s the Subscribe to this blog! That’s where you enter your email address so that you never miss one of my blog posts.
But there’s more!
When you sign up for my newsletter you’ll get lots of other things stitching related. I wrote my first ever newsletter just a few weeks ago! And I’ll be writing another every month or so. I’m not really sure how often I’ll be writing one, but it won’t be daily or even several times a week, because I don’t have the time, but it will certainly be once a month.
So now that you’ve subscribed to this blog AND you’ve signed up for my newsletter, I want to point out something else: the Translate button.
If English isn’t your first language or second or third, you can have this blog translated to the language you’re most comfortable with. How great is that!
Okay, we’re in the home stretch… Along that top navigation bar after “Blog” and “Contact” (remember I told you about the Contact tab earlier?) then there’s “Account”. And if you hover your mouse over it, another drop down menu like this one will magically appear.
Click on “Account Details” and the image above will appear.
Lost Your Password is the next item on that drop down menu and where you can make a new password.
“Orders” is where you can see all the things you’ve signed up for and purchased and the next item “Downloads” is where you’ll find any and all downloads that came with anything you’ve purchased and finally there’s the “Logout” button.
So that’s it! You are now a pro at finding, ordering and navigating all the different things on my website!
Oh!! and I added another The Basics Workshop in July, since the one coming up, sold out quickly, so don’t wait and grab your spot now!
There are diversions and then there are DIVERSIONS! Organizing can be one of those. I finished the BIG piece I’ve been working on and instead of leaping into something new, I got sidetracked with organizing. Organizing my work space, it’s pretty small so it takes some doing to spend more than a few hours on this one, organizing my threads, I’ve got a LOT of thread, so this one is easy to lose oneself for a day or two or week or month, and organizing my materials, again there’s a lot of stuff, some of which I use often, others not so much, still it’s a sink hole.
It all began with a YouTube video, doesn’t it always, though?
See that huge bag filled with thread winders? That’s only some of them. I did another video for my Patrons over on Patreon and had a little give-away. Five lucky patrons are receiving a nice package of those thread winders from me. I haven’t sent them yet, because I keep finding cleverly hidden stashes of OH, so that’s where those were! threads that I then rewind onto those large cardboard bobbins and put in those 16″ long plastic refrigerator shelves. It makes my life so much easier when I can see everything easily and quickly.
But now I’m nearing the end of my reorganization efforts, not that one is ever really done organizing, it’s like laundry, AND I have a lengthy to-do list that is calling to me as well, but the nagging thought that I need to start a new piece has been buzzing around making life feel a bit more fraught than usual. A friend of mine used to say that she was both the team of horses pulling the carriage AND was also the driver with the whip beating those horses on. It’s all a bit like that. Still there’s good that comes from it. Organizing makes me breathe easier, having a to-do list calms that voice that screams at me, and knowing I will not feel calmer until I begin a new project, propels me on.
It’s all good, as they say.
The stoics suggest that each day is best lived as though it were your last. But if I did that, I wouldn’t get all that much done, because I’d just spend every moment that they’d allow with my children and husband and cat. So yeah, there’s that.
Now I have some fabric kits for one of my upcoming workshops to pull together… did I mention those?
No?
Oh well…
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I’m not feeling great. I should probably just end this post right here. But, no, I’ll soldier on. Not because this post is important, it’s not, but because it represents all the things on my to do list and so much that is just life. No one needs to hear my laundry list of “woes”, we’ve all got them. More to the point is that I’m struggling. My mom’s death feels like an endless, bottomless pit of emotions. I know I’ll get through it. I know work-arounds that help me get through those days when things are really bad and “getting through the day” feels impossible. That’s when the put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other method of coping gets enacted.
Grieving is a luxury. Some days require putting all of that to the side so that other things can be dealt with in a timely fashion and because life moves along, it doesn’t wait for those of us who are grieving. And I also know I can’t leap frog my way beyond the grief. It will be there waiting for me on the other side. It’s always there. Some days I’m luckier than others, the grief stays on the edge, other days it moves front and center. Those are the days when every step feels like I’m dragging a fifty pound weight. Those are the days when showing up feels like a monumental task. But I know from designing, from creating, from every day that I work on a piece, that even when I don’t “feel like it” showing up for the work is one of the most important things I can do. And, counter-intuitively, it is what ends up making me feel better in the long run.
All of this reminds me of something Michael Crichton once said. It was decades ago when I was the Director of the Aspen Writer’s Conference and had reached out to him to kick off the conference. He was game and gave an amazing talk in the Paepcke Auditorium at the Aspen Institute. I will have to paraphrase as there is no transcript of his presentation. He was talking about writing. Imagine, he said, if you were a commercial airline pilot with a full schedule of flights and woke up one morning and said, You know, I don’t really feel like flying today. I think I’ll go back to sleep for a few hours. Writing (any of the arts) is the only “profession” where people talk themselves out of getting up and putting in the hours. Everyone in the audience was quiet. But it doesn’t work that way, he continued. If you’re a writer/artist then you get up and you put in your hours, whether it’s flying a commercial airline or writing a book, or in my case, working on a new piece, writing up a new workshop, filming a new Youtube video or any of the other things I’ve got on my list of things that I need to do because this is the life and profession I’ve chosen for myself.
How does grief fit into all of this? It doesn’t. It’s just there. All the time. And as a result, it is I that must make the necessary adjustments in my life to accommodate these new feelings and emotions, while continuing to show up for the work.
I’m just about finished with my big improvisational stitching piece that I’ve been working on for the last 7 months or so, and it’s bittersweet. It always feels like a tiny death. There’s sadness and a kind of grieving that happens. Sometimes I just leave it up on my design wall and look at it from time to time, knowing that eventually it will need to be stretched and framed or mounted, floated or somehow “finished” as in ready to be hung on the wall or made into a pillow or whatever I’ve decided I’m going to do with it. But often I just can’t and so on the design wall it stays until something else is begun and necessitates that I take it down to give room for the new piece.
Also there’s the feeling that I’ve done my best and maybe this will be the pinnacle of my creativity. Maybe everything from now on will just be a rehashing or versions of the same thing; I won’t progress as an artist beyond this, is the thinking. But I don’t know that to be true. It hasn’t been so far, so why assume it will be now? I keep growing, exploring, investigating, learning, trying new things, new ideas, why invite trouble? as a friend of mine used to say.
The stoics are big on living today as though it were your last, being kind and recognizing that every action we take is a choice. So today I’m choosing to just keep going. I know I’m nearing the end, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less joyful working on it. In fact, savoring each stitch, knowing that I’m almost finished makes it all the more wonderful and magical. Taking joy in the process is always the answer and boy, have I loved working on this piece!
Yesterday I had my monthly, scheduled livestream for my Patrons. We had such fun! I was talking to them about some ideas I had for this piece and everyone was chatting and I had a moment when I just stopped and savored the joy of stitching, of this piece, of all that’s happened since I began it. And that’s the thing, each piece carries with it so many memories as life continues going along. This piece came with me to Africa. It was with me when I learned of my mother’s death. I took it to Egypt and Jordan. I carried it in my backpack through countless airports and airport security. It’s been put up on my design wall hundreds of times, only to be taken down again to be stitched, added, stretched, pulled, manipulated, torn, cut into, bound, sewn and even stuffed. It has my tears soaked into its very fibers, I’ve painted, stenciled, appliquéd and stitched and stitched and stitched, culminating in this piece.
Now it’s almost done.
A tiny death. What’s that cliche about one door closing and another opens? This piece will give way to the next one and the fun and joy and magic will begin all over again.
There’s something about traveling that’s like falling in love. Everything is new and exciting, the people, the smells, the food, the architecture, the monuments, art, culture; immersing yourself in something so completely different from what you’re used to, from what you know, is akin to falling in love. It’s exhilarating and defies description. When I’m traveling I want to know the language, see how the people live, understand the customs, go to their markets, eat their food, see the artisans at work, lose myself in this foreign place. It’s a high like nothing I’ve ever experienced. That I can share that excitement with my husband makes it all the more magical.
With my Husband in Wahtye’s Tomb
That he shares my love for travel, makes it all the more amazing. Together, we fall in love over and over again with the country we are visiting. This trip to Egypt has been no exception. In the above photograph we are standing in front of Wahtye and his wife in the recently discovered Wahtye’s Tomb, which is also the subject of the National Geographic Documentary of the same name.
The young man on the left is who guided us just this morning into the tomb. It was such a treat to meet him and talk to him about how it felt to discover such a treasure! After the tour he and his director decided to show us something they had just uncovered an hour or two before we got there.
The top shape is a mummified lion cub discovered this morning by the same archeologists who discovered Wahtye’s Tomb! I could barely contain my excitement.
The joy and sheer exuberance of being able to see things that I’ve only read about and seen pictures of is beyond anything else I know of. It is to be transported to another time.
“Bent Pyramid” the 2nd attempt by Sneferu to build a pyramid with the calculations off and requiring a slight adjustment, hence the “bent” sides. 4th Dynasty, 2600 BC. His 3rd attempt was successful and became the template by which others were then built.
Along the way we passed this handsome fellow.
Look at his eyelashes!! Isn’t he beautiful?
Tomorrow we leave for Jordan, yet another opportunity to fall completely in love all over again, awaits us!
Special thanks to Nabil Ashour, Medhat Hafez and Abercrombie & Kent.
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