Someone else deserves her love now

{PS She found a new home}

I made this doll in honor of our beautiful old Matilda, who died this past month. It was a hard goodbye and making the doll was a way to grieve–and I got to hold her as I sewed her dress and stitched her polk-a-dots.

Matilda came to us a young elder and for over 10 years we cared for her after she had been taken out of a neglect situation. She was in rough shape after being used as a brood jenny for years but without proper care or feed. Her feet were horrible and her back swayed, and she was weak and worn out. In time, we put weight on and helped her. She died at 30. That is a good long life for a donkey and especially after her start.

But I miss her.

Dolls and art are a wonderful way to grieve and say good bye, again. People wonder why I don't keep a grief doll, and there are some I keep. But it is the process that is important to me.

I had over ten years with the real Matilda, so I want someone else to enjoy her as a doll. I made a linen dress for her with polk-a-dots of silk and wool. The dress linen is from my family collection of old Swedish linen napkins. Her face includes natural mohair and hand stitching [raggedy style]. On Matilda's last day I spent a lot of time brushing her, and found her hair in the brush-I'd forgotten about it-but it was bittersweet to find it. So I put it in on the doll's head.

I will also enclose a copy of 'Misfits of Love" because there is a dialogue and story of Matilda in it. 

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There's a reason they call it slow stitching

Been working all last week on this 20" piece, which I am really enjoying. Sometimes I stitch in silence, sometimes to music, but I do find it is good for me to slow stich, as it makes me be less patient with outcome. One of the reasons I like acrylic over oil is I can cover up images over and over and don't have to wait. Stitching is not fast, everything about it is slow–threading the needle, stitching, reworking edges.

I am a novice stitcher, and sew raggedy just like I paint and make dolls, but I hope do be doing more. I might work on some 8-10" pieces next. It was rather adventurous to start a 20" piece but I had bought these flour sack cotton towels and they are great to stitch on too. It isn't done yet and I'm learning a lot.

I have not had that much to say here on the blog lately. My daily life with the animals and elders is so on display on IG and FB. I don't want to let the blog go though, it is a piece of history for me, I can look back and see the history of our farms and animals.

I guess I just feel that I have more interest in writing shorter things but when I do have something longer to write I will still come here to do it.

I feel that I am entering this new stage of my life. I guess turning 64 got me to seeing the future more as a chunk of time. When I was 30 or 40 or 50 it didn't feel like that. But I've always thought that living to around 78+ seems about right. I have no desire to live into my 80's or 90's if I'm unable to be outside, with animals or creating. Maybe it feels different when you get there. But my point is that I realized if I did live to 78, that's only14 years away, that is the same amount of time I lived in Yamhill. It is so odd to see it that way but it is a fact.

So I started seeing the next 15 year chunk more like a living creative project. What will I do with it?

I will keep doing my work here. I will keep writing and creating. But what else, what might I want to try or expand, or quit?

I do know I'm quitting certain people. I'm quiting 'yes' to many things and instead am saying, "No, I don't feel comfortable doing that for you anymore." As a pleaser, sometimes I say 'yes' before I think it through, or ask myself, "Do I want this, or is it this other person that wants this and I am capable of giving it to them and that is why they are here, but do I want to engage my energy in this?".

 

Slow stitching with the elder cats & Walter and I are in the in-between time

This week I took my threads out to the cat room and began taking a couple hours a day to slow stitch amongst the old cats. This is a very special time for me and Walter. 

Walter and I [and the other three remaining elders, all are 18-20] are in the in-between. He seems to be losing strength in his hind, which is very common when they get this old. I've seen it a million times. I've noticed that his bone structure in his face is shifting, more sunken as muscle is lost. It's been a few weeks since Lemon passed. While Walter had surely lost weight over the year like Lemon, Lemon was much thinner and clearly on his way in due time. In the past couple days I've seen something shift in Walter. He is not depressed or anxious or sad or ill. He simply seems the most content I've ever seen him, and the most bonded to me he has ever been. Our journey together has been so rewarding and we took our time to get here. 

Today he wanted to be with me, sitting on my stitching, then my lap. He got up a few times but always came back. If you had told me this would be our final part of the journey when he first arrived, feral and scared, I might not have gone along with it.

I think these moments we are having our the most beautiful and profound moments I've encountered for awhile. I had been feeling the muse provoke me over and over to take my stitching out to the cat room and kept forgetting or got busy with something else. But in the last few months there has been a shift in me too. I simply want to do the work I feel like at the moment and not feel any push to do something speciific for the shop. I still make my living this way, but these past months have felt more liberating. I don't know why.

Anyway, today I was thinking -did my muse urge me on to work in the cat room, or did Walter also urge me on, so we could be together even more in these final weeks or months that he has? Yume too is clearly transitioning and she too came and sat in my lap yesterday as I sewed-this is unheard of. She is tiny but now is very, very tiny, and pretty blind too. One can't predict the muse, but when it speaks, an artist learns to listen. If they can't follow the muse, they get all messed up and confused. And if you can't follow the muse you are probably in a part of your art career that is taking you on a certain path that you feel is necessary to make a living or grow a clientele. I'm glad I'm passed that part. I always played with the muse but it is really since I started my own shop and quit reps and galleries and focused on my writing too that things settled into what I have now. It wasn't luck. And it was a winding path. And I made some wrong turns.

I've decided that I like working out there, and I also like having fewer cats in the elder suite [we had 12 at one time and usually had around 8-10, but we are down to four, and they are all very old]. I think I will make it my slow stitch and sewing area. They get my time, I get their time. I think I'll take my sewing machine out there too.

{I post my art and stitching and creative work regularly on Instagram}