To My Tribe-THANK YOU!

Sitting here drinking a cup of coffee.  The house is quite.  My teenager is still asleep and my youngest is enjoying a surprise visit from her dad.

T-shirt yarn at the ready, with table to be refinished beneath.  Projects just keep coming! :)

I'm getting ready to weave a bit more on my rug but I took a moment to check yesterday's blog for comments and respond if necessary.  While at my blog, I glanced over at the links for all my past blogs, and I clicked through a couple of them.

I've made progress in someways and in others I'm still working through the same old shit.  I guess it's really just life I'm working through, and the sunshine and the shit are just regular participants in my journey.

What I wanted to say today, before I get up off my duff and do some actual work, is THANK YOU! Thank you to each of you who read my blog and walk with me. Life is messy and beautiful and difficult and amazing and exhilarating and exhausting and wonderful and trying and so much more. Some days I'm on top of the world and others I'm looking up from the bottom.  But regardless of where I may be, I know that I am not alone.

I have an amazing tribe of people who love me, support me, encourage me, inspire me, and walk beside me.  Some of you are right around the corner. Others are on the other side of the planet.  Many are somewhere in between.  The distance between us means nothing.  I can feel your love every day in my life, and I am eternally grateful.

So I lift my coffee cup to each and everyone of you today. I hope and pray you feel my love and eternal gratitude for your presence in my life.

Looming and Learning and Life: Creativity Cures!

The loom creation project was wonderfully enjoyable!  I spent a few minutes rummaging around inside and outside of my dad's shop and luckily I was able to gather all of the necessary supplies:  wood (from the frame around PCV pipe delivered for water wells), metal poles (cut from the flower display stands from my Grandpa's funeral in '09), nails (probably left over from when my dad was building their house in the late '80's), and wood screws (my dad had these on his service truck).

With the supplies ready to go, my dad helped me get the project started.  The first thing he did was show me all of the splendiferous power tools he had to help make this process easy and FUN! And, since he's a rather decent collector of tools, he had everything I needed and more!

Frame and poles laid out during frame design brainstorming.

Then we took a few minutes and laid out our design.  I was using pictures I had found on the interwebs and ballparked our measurements since this isn't an exact science.  The size of the loom can vary depending on how large a rug you want to produce.  We decided to go with a three ft horizontal piece and a four ft-ish vertical piece (just used the boards the length they were, cause I liked the length).

My newest love, the power miter saw!

Next we cut the horizontal pieces down to three ft using this lovely little tool. It's a power miter saw, and I'm in love.

Then we began the process of actually putting the frame together.  We pre-drilled holes for the wood screws to prevent the boards from splitting (they weren't the newest boards).

Pre-drilling for wood screws.

Makita makes my heart melt!

After drilling, we put the frame together with the wood screws.  Dad headed off to check his deer feeder and left me to work out the rest.

I cut the metal rods down to the right size, using my dad's Makita metal cutting saw, and my heart fluttered once again!  After cutting the rods, I polished the sharp edges with my dad's buffer/grinder, and sparks flew (literally and figuratively)!  ;)  Have I mentioned I my affinity for power tools?

With the frame together and the rods cut and polished, I moved on to hammering in the nails for the warp of the rug.  I placed the nails one inch apart and hammered them in across the top and bottom of the frame.

Nails one inch apart

The only thing I did not find in my dad's shop was eye bolts.  I needed them to hold the rods in place along the sides of the frame (to keep the tension, when weaving, from accidentally causing the to rug hour-glass in).  I was able to purchase a set of eye bolts for the whopping price of $1.00 at Fred's in town.  Once I added the eye bolts, the loom was done!

Pre-eye bolts,  the rods are just hanging on one of the nails.

Warping the loom.

T-shirt yarn!

I used some yarn my friend Amy gave me for the warp (the material wrapped vertically from nail to nail).  After I put the warp on the loom, I began weaving with the t-shirt yarn I had made (I'll post about this process soon).  I'm not sure how many shirts I'll need or what color combination I'll use, but I am thoroughly enjoying the process.  It's definitely a learning process.  I'll blog about the finished product once it's complete.

But, what I have learned so far in this process is that creativity keeps my soul alive.  Life is shit sometimes, and there are days when all you can do is breathe and endure.  It's in the midst of these moments that a project like this helps keep me going.  At times, life can feel utterly exhausting and almost pointless.  When the dark cloud settles in, I need something that's gonna bring a ray of sunshine into my soul.

That's when this loom helps me the most.  I look forward to seeing how the rug will turn out.  I enjoy the process of repurposing old t-shirts into something that puts a smile on my face. I love learning how to do something new and envisioning ways to make the next rug.  My mind and my soul are creatively engaged, the dark cloud begins to life, and the world looks a little brighter.

Come walk with me (on my new rug, soon) and we'll see what excitement the next project holds!

My daddy and I in his shop,
 working on this project.

Green, light gray, blue-gray, orange, navy blue . . .

Raw

Yesterday I killed it and made my rug loom.  I'll put some pictures up soon.  I felt like a rock star.

Today I'm not feeling it at all.  There's a bad tape playing in my head and I can't seem to find the pause button.  I get irritated that my headspace can spin so quickly.  I breathe.  I pause.  I try not to get irritated. I feel irritated.  I attempt to sit with the irritation and all the other shitty feelings.  I try not to run from them.  I try not to judge them as shitty.  I sit and work with what comes up.  I try not to judge how well I'm sitting.

This is me. You're welcome.

I just decided to sit and type exactly how I was feeling.  It's kind of scary knowing that if I actually share this post then y'all will see me.  Like really see me.  I don't particularly try to hide.  Honestly I feel like I'm a pretty open gal.  But there are times when I don't write something or share exactly how raw I feel because I don't know that everyone should see me as clearly as they could.  Or better yet, I'm not sure anyone wants to see me that clearly.

I don't want to be rescued.  I don't need to be rescued.  I just feel like being real is worth something in the world today.

So yesterday rocked.  Today I'm dragging and picking myself up very slowly.  Not sure how to explain the change.  Every now and then I still feel like I'm back on that roller coaster, in the dark, that never repeats.  Suddenly there was a drop I wasn't expecting or a turn that jerked me in a direction I wasn't ready for, and I'm off balance and trying to recover.

Today I can't say that there was a sudden drop or unexpected turn.  And I can't even blame it on being a Monday.  Today I feel shitty, and raw, and kind of worthless, and a bit lost, and very tired of all these stupid feelings.  But today is today, and I'll keep breathing through it.

And I'm going to go to a thrift store and look for old t-shirts to turn into t-shirt yarn so I can start working on my rug loom. 

The Future Looms 😉

Good morning.  I'm sitting here waiting on the coffee to finish brewing and listening to my youngest play Toy Story 3 on the wii in the next room.  I have been researching rug looms and trying to get myself motivated enough to actually get up and find the necessary materials to build one rather than just keep looking at all the ones on Pinterest or the interwebs.

We've started a new school year here with my oldest in college in Philly, my middle in the 10th grade and my youngest in 2nd grade.  This is the first year my youngest has gone to public school, and the first year I have not had a child with me 24/7 in 18 years!  It's a bit surreal.

I am working on getting to know myself again as a person rather than just "mom," and honestly, I'm a bit confused and at times mildly terrified, but in an exciting way. I had been a wife for 21+ years at the time of my divorce a couple years ago and a full time at-home mom for 18 years. Now I'm embarking on a strange little journey at mid-life trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

My girls live with me (their dad is off to England shortly for a job thing), so I'm still a full time single mom, but now I have 8 hours each weekday that I need to fill. And what I'd like to do with those hours is, hands down, the biggest question looming in the back of my mind.

Currently I'm working from home for my dad's water well business, and that keeps me busy.  However, my dad turned 70 yesterday and I know he won't be drilling wells forever.  So the question becomes, what will I do next?  I am a certified teacher so I could go back into the classroom.  That is a very real possibility.  I'm going to be subbing in local schools this year so that will give me a good idea of what being back in the classroom would feel like.

But there are other possibilities.

When I think about what I enjoy doing (that whole finding your passion thing you hear about) I come up with a few things:

• being with people-extrovert here
• helping people complete a task or project-great worker bee/encourager
• organizing and de-cluttering, and helping people do the same-again great worker bee
• crochet and crafty/creative things-creativity makes my soul smile
• making/building stuff-I love power tools!
• yoga and mindfulness-cause I gotta stay sane
• maybe more, but I've drawn a blank and want more coffee!

So my journey continues.  I'm learning to listen, search, trust, breathe, be . . . I love having my tribe walking with me.  For me, life together is the only way this world makes sense.   So feel free to pop in occasionally and catch up.

And when I actually get a loom done, there will be pictures!



(The title is corny, I know. 😉  But I'm a goober, so I thought it was funny!)