I haven't started anything. THREE projects on the table, TWO more ufo's hanging on the line! And yet another idea springing to mind as I was putting my kid to bed...I'm all talk, no action these days.

more gift-giving

I ran to JoAnne with the guys this afternoon to find two more large-print motifs with broad repeats and a dark-brown background. I'm working on a baby quilt for new father Jonathan and his wife Emily, parents of baby Beck, whose nursery was featured recently on the parental blog. Once I had the color scheme, there was no turning back, and anyway baby quilts for someone you know are a piece of cake. I will try, try not to be too experimental with this one (unlike the last one, a few years ago, which just had too many competing fabrics included.)

The moon is still round and clean tonight, and the colors concealed or revealed by moonlight make an unpredictable landscape of shadows and strange flares -- the bright pink of the geraniums is still as plain as if seen by daylight, but the faded red of the patio brick is now a mute gray. The air is cold -- September again, the smell of wood fires somewhere up the hill reminding me of late-summer camping trips. I feel the urge to change this blog's background to black, a reflection of me in the dark sewing room, typing by the full-moon light of the laptop screen. My late-night internet companion has retired early for the evening, so I'm left to my own devices here. Today was the first day of kindergarten. I feel I've crossed that line beside my child, and we stand together now on the hastening treadmill of all that comes with growing up, growing older. He's not a baby anymore. There's nothing I can create in the studio that matches the unfolding grace of my child as he changes.

full moon tonight...

I'm on PAUSE. In the last weeks of summer, the first week of Kindergarten, the waiting and the simultaneous transitioning around big changes at work...I'm out of the groove.

But I have been sewing. Made a 24-hour marathon tote bag for the exiting pastor at church, a lovely item if I do say so (and no I didn't make time to shoot a photo). Designed it myself, no pattern, just a sense of what I wanted to accomplish. I used some lovely home dec and printed panel fabrics -- birds and flowers, and a quiet little spider on the back. A perfect tote for knitting and other light weight projects. She seems to like it, has already put it to use she says, though her note of thanks seemed mostly concerned with the pain of parting. Glass half-empty, I guess. But hopefully she will see only brightness and her own potential creativity when she's using the bag.

The other project, in the past two weeks, was to finish a scrappy pillow that my son and I started together last year. He grew tired of the project before it could become a blanket, this string-pieced cloth of greens and reds (again, no time for a photo) -- but it was the perfect size for a pillow for Auntie Dede, a gift of appreciation for her years of loving daycare. I printed a cute photo of H on cotton, and mounted it on matching fabric, embellishing with buttons and beads and yarn -- the photo is safety pinned to the center of the pillow cover, and can be removed should she wish to rest her head on the pillow itself (the pins are little colorful ones that blend nicely.)

So these transitions have been marked by some artistic action, a slightly more domesticated kind. This will have to do, until I can bring my heart around to the moon and the birds again.