what the root does...

As I sew tiny white beads to the crotches of cloth roots, I can't help but marvel at the miracle of the real thing.  Roots are the patient relentless hand of the plant, holding it securely to it's place in the soil.  They are the mouth, drinking in water, taking in minerals and nutrients.  They are a sort of reproductive system, sending out brave tendrils that urge new green shoots from the soil.  Roots are hidden treasure food for foragers willing to sniff them out and dig them up.  Roots hold the surface of our planet in place, keep it from washing into rivers and onto ocean floors.  Over time, roots break up thick pavement crusts and crumble massive buildings.  I am a great admirer, perhaps a worshiper of roots.

the sounds I make...

with the help of others.  Thank you Jonathan Bilenki and Dawn Cianculli.

The Heat is ON!

After many weeks of ordering parts, waiting for parts, watching utube stove install videos, sewing while wearing mittens and multiple layers, and watching more install videos, we got our stove in the yurt!! Hallelujah!  I can work much faster and for longer periods of time in a warm environment.  Josh gave me the stone owl for christmas and I hung some montana deer antlers on the wall behind the stove.  Everything is as it should be.  Thursday will be my first studio work day in my heated yurt.  I can't stop grinning with anticipation.

New Space

For the last several weeks all my spare time has gone to the big rearrange.  We recently put a yurt in our back yard that will serve as a studio space and guest room.  The round house construction is an amazing, flexible, intricate wonder.  We (7 of us, thank you, you know who you are) put the yurt up in several hours.  Its an adult lego set in wood and cloth!  Now we are outfitting the yurt, moving the girls into separate bedrooms (yes they are thrilled), moving ourselves into the old studio, moving our computer into a closet, generally dismantling every space in our house and moving it across the hall.  I am so grateful and excited to enter this new era of my art making life!! 

Nude-lings? Noodlings?

These are a few of the tiny watercolor nudes I've been making for this weekend's sale.  My brother-in-law coined them Nudelings.  I can't decide how to spell that word, but I love saying it!  Go ahead try it.

potted plant

When I was a child my mother kept an Aloe Vera plant on the table near the kitchen window.  Amazingly, that heat loving desert species thrived on the thin and infrequent sunlight of northern Alaska.  I would sit at the kitchen table staring out at snow drifts under street lights or finishing an after school snack and absently stroke the fleshy green spears with their thorn laced edges.  I'd marvel at the new red shoots emerging from the sandy soil.  A few leaves were always cut and puckered at their tips, where my mother would snip a bit of the plant to put on our cuts or burns, instant relief, a little green band-aide.  Maybe that plant survived in that improbable environment simply because it was needed, a tiny desert oasis in a frozen realm.