"The Universe is a Continuous Web. Touch it at any Point and the Whole Web Quivers." - Stanley Kunitz

The upcoming Autumn Equinox can be a time of reflection upon the year’s successes and failure and a moment of celebration of the harvest cycle.  This time of year reminds me to pause and look at the bigger picture of my life.  I feel this due to the changes I am making in my garden and how the changes seem to suggest a time of reflection.  I have been planting the winter garden, composting spent plants and planting cover crops.

 

I am also making this quilt from old clothes and material scraps.  All of them would have most likely gone into a land fill because they were so ripped up and old.  It is fun putting the different pieces together and composing a design.
Here are a couple close ups of different places on the quilt:

 

Some snow peas ready to be put in the garden:

 

my garden changing into winter mode:

 

"The garden is, in a sense, the cosmos in miniature, a condensation of the world that is open to your senses.  It doesn't end at the limits of your own parcel of land, or your own state, or your own nation."

- Stanley Kunitz

"....Because He Loved the Sky...." - Brenda Ueland

A book I go back to over and over again for support and inspiration is called, "If You Want to Write" by Brenda Ueland.  I think the title could be, "If You Want to Create Art of any kind."  I just substitute the word 'write' for 'art' when I read this book.  Here is a passage from this book:
The author writes......
".......the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it. And Van Gogh's little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care. ”
- Brenda Ueland (from If Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit)

Perhaps anytime we do something from a place of love we are contributing 'art' to this fragile home we call earth.

Deciphering work composed in yarn and thread

I have been altering T-shirts recently, something I really enjoy doing.

I enjoy sitting outside and sewing by hand.  I have learned a lot from other artists' blogs.  One in particular comes to mind called: Electic-Meanderings  created by Deanna 7Trees.  Deanna's blog is filled with inspiration, how tos', and Deanna herself is one of the most encouraging people I have met in a long time.  I encourage you to visit her blog and become a 'follower' .

Shirts on my favorite rocking chair!

Much of the social history of early America has been lost to us precisely because women were expected to use needles rather than pens. Yet if textiles are in one sense an emblem of women’s oppression, they have also been an almost universal medium of female expression. If historians are to understand the lives of women in times past, they must not only cherish the Anne Bradstreets and Martha Ballards who mastered the mysterious ways of quill pens, they must also decipher work composed in yarn and thread.”

–Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

“We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.” E.B White

These are some small mixed media paintings I am selling at "Dino's" in Loch Lomond, CA.  Dino's is a wonderful Deli and market where you can get freshly made sandwiches, salads, drinks and much more.  Loch Lomond is in Northern California a beautiful pine tree filled rural area.