Soulemama: {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

After the new bandana fail I wrote about earlier this week my old one has been sitting near my desk, tickling the edge of my awareness. I needed to take care  of it, decide if it was going to become a rag or simply get thrown out.  I didn’t want either of those options for it, though.  I wanted to save it.  The obvious choice was a patch for it, but most of the woven fabric I have on hand is quilting weight cotton, much stiffer than my well-worn and loved bandana.  I did, however, have a bit of cotton voile leftover from a project.  (Aside: I ordered the fabric to make myself something for summer wear.  Instead it became the lining for these bags for my daughter and nieces.)

So I cut a square of it out, pinned it on without even bothering to iron it all out (*gasp!*), and used it a zig-zag stitch to attach the voile to the bandana.  Bam! I neatened the bandana’s hole, pinked the edges of the voile close to the line of zig-zag stitch and it was done.  My bandana lives again and I got to use in a smidgen of the voile in a project for me.  Win-win!

I have this bandana from my teenage years. It went camping and hiking with me, and I’ve worn it in and over my hair in many different situations over the years. I’ve worn it do death, you could say.

I’ve been wearing it with its ever increasing hole for several years now. When I washed it recently I had to admit to myself that just maybe it was time to retire it. The very large hole in the CENTER of it might not actually cover my hair anymore.

At the same time I’ve been purging the space in which I work and sew in our home and a fabric I bought for myself awhile ago surfaced. I had planned to make myself some sort of fabulous skirt or dress with the fabric, but it didn’t materialize for whatever reason. It was folded up and put away and mostly forgotten about. Seeing the fabric along with my shredded bandana made me think that it was about time to either use the fabric or lose it again to the darkness of the closet. I thought that having it in the form of a bandana where I could see it and use it was better than the mythical garment in my head that wasn’t likely to be made soon.

So I set to work cutting and ironing and stitching the mitered cornered creation, daydreaming about the great fabric I would soon be sporting on my head. And then, dear friends, I tried it on.

In reality, the fabric is probably just too heavy for using it in this way. I tried to reason that with a few washing it would calm down and I could use it.  But I’m thinking that won’t *really* be the case.  So now I have a very lovely napkin. Let’s hope I have enough fabric left to make a set! If not, well then, I’ll have a lovely solitary napkin to keep in my desk during the semester. It will be a little reminder to create even when grading and prep work pile high.

Soulemama: {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

It seems appropriate that this was the picture I picked for {this moment} this week after Amanda’s request for taking a moment and to share in something we love with those we love. That is exactly what we did this past weekend, our annual Beltane celebration with close friends from afar. Yearly rituals and celebrations can be so grounding when one’s thoughts are lost in sadness or chaos.

When the announcement was made this spring that Google Reader would be no more come July I was miffed and a little panicky all at once.  What would I do to find new posts on blogs now?  I surely did NOT want to return to the days when I would click on links to each of the blogs I followed to see if new posts were up and ready to read. Right after the announcement I did a little research but quickly stepped away from it and was drawn back to my ever-present grading during the semester.  I think a part of me hoped something would change about the Reader so I wouldn’t have to deal with its demise after all.

Fast forward to yesterday.  I had clicked on the stats page for my blog and saw an incoming link from “Bloglovin.” I hadn’t heard of it before and immediately clicked to check it out.  Low and behold, here was the answer to my Google Reader conundrum! I read about the service, then set up an account, imported my blogs from Google Reader, and “claimed” my blog through the service so that people could add my blog to their Bloglovin accounts. The whole thing only took a few minutes and was simple to complete.  If you’re looking for a Google Reader replacement, check out Bloglovin, and while you’re at it, feel free to follow me on there with the link below. And to the reader who came in via Bloglovin, whoever you are, thank you!

And because I can’t post without a picture, here were my onions and peppers late last week! Since the cold snap the peppers have been under a row cover, but are still thriving.

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Making space is something I work on a lot. You too? I work on making space in my physical world through decluttering, organizing, reorganizing, purging. I especially seem to engage in physical space making in the spring. It feels fitting with the season, a literal new beginning for the space around me, just like the blossoming of the natural world around me. I definitely partook in this manner of making space this past week as we had guests at several points during the week.

Beyond the physical act of making space, I practice having a more spacious mind set. This past week that practice involved finding a way to do all that needed to be done without talking myself out of it. Practice involved recognizing that I did have the space and time to do what needed doing, too. Actually accomplishing those tasks was all the reinforcement I needed to keep on finding and making space as the week progressed. Hurray for continuity, right?

In what ways do you make space in your life?

Soulemama: {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

I have one paper left to grade and then I’m done, Done, DONE for the semester! This afternoon I took a quilt, a dog, and a book outdoors for about half an hour to lay in the sun and get warm after grading all day.  It was so good to just lay there and soak it in and let go of guilt associated with all the things I *could* be doing but wasn’t.  After I hit submit on those final grades tomorrow, there will be time.  I’ll switch gears to post-semester tasks for the garden, for the shop, and for other pursuits like seeking out a regular yoga teaching gig.

I think Jasper enjoyed my practice today, too.

Soulemama: {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

That sounds nice, doesn’t it?  Balance, like I was finding peace and tranquility, right?

In actuality, my balance was one between little bouts of freak-out and finding my breath and being present.  There may have been more middle ground, but to be honest, the week is a bit of a blur.

Why, you ask?

It was the last week of classes.  All the end-of-semester questions and details and prep for getting student papers and final exams came into play.

That would certainly be enough, right?

But no, it was also the week leading up to this spring’s Mayday! Underground show.  So yes, end-of-semester and show prep all mixed up together.  The little bouts of freak-out were born of nerves related to both events.  Tomorrow I get final papers from my Psychology of Women and Gender students, final exams from my Intro Psych students on Thursday.  But this Saturday past?  It was Mayday time!

Sadly I was only able to get shots with my phone this time around.  L3 had a Fiddle Club event all day at which L1, with our big camera, were at.  And then the camera battery died there.  Oops.

As usual, the people, both vendors and customers, were great. Mayday is the only show I’ve done, so I don’t know what other shows are like, but it’s always been a comfortable environment and a true feast for the eyes at this show. And even if sales might not have been what I had hoped, I pushed myself to make new items and try new things for this show. One of my favorites was a display item, the top on the dress form below (mini-me, my duct-tape form. I discovered last week that she is inappropriately named because she is actually bigger than me!).

The fern is a from a stencil I cut last year. I stenciled the pattern on in fabric paint, then spent several hours hand-stitching all the glass beads onto the fern pattern. I enjoyed it thoroughly and am in love with how it turned out. The top itself is a new design and I have a couple already made without the stencil that need photographing.

This week is going to be a practice in a different kind of balance: grading and gardening! Broccoli, peas, potatoes, and more need to go in the ground this week. The weather report looks beautiful, so I’m hopeful that my digging in the dirt can happen. I’ll also be scheming how I’m going to get photographs of all the new items to put in my shop, like that yummy pink and grey bag you see in that last picture, as well as the one mini-me is sporting.

The burgeoning energy of spring is bubbling up inside of me.  I look forward to riding its wave throughout the week.

What kind of balance have you been striking lately?