honey & ollie

Another holiday shot from yesterday’s photo jaunt around Old Town Pasadena. I loved this for the lettering and the contrast of the green trim and leaves against the black window and white wall. What I did not notice when taking the picture was the sparkly holiday lights inside mingling with the sunlight reflected on the glass outside.

I have not been doing much with fiber in the last week or so. After the frenzy of spinning and holiday knitting, I really just needed to take a break from it. I’ve been feeling a little bit ADHD, bouncing off the walls I am so filled with ideas for other projects and other crafts. I will probably knit tonight, I need some soothing and therapeutic yarn time.

I have a little bit of a conflict going on in my brain right now. I’ve been wanting to set up a dedicated studio space in my house for making art, jewelery and other stuff. The area I am the most drawn to doing this in has been my dining room. It makes sense to do this, it has proximity to snacks and other stuff that is needful, like tea. But for some reason, I have found it difficult to let go of the rigid idea that the dining room should be just that. A dining room.

here’s the thing.

we don’t dine.

Like seriously we never sit at the table and eat dinner anymore. Maybe twice, three times a month, if the Captain and Pantalones Jr. are having dinner with us. And I would kind of like to not waste that space, or that lovely scarred pine tabletop that is so perfect for craftiness but which sits empty or full of clutter, most of the time now… I’ve wanted to push it against the window, hang twinkle lights around and use it for something that brings me joy.

I am not sure why this has been so hard to accomplish.

Perhaps it is part of letting go of the idea that this house is a “family” space. It really isn’t, or rather it is but it’s a very different looking family than the one that moved in two years ago. Our #1 is gone and our #2 will fly the coop in another two years or so. Jeff and I have not resided together for almost 4 years now. Now it is two women and a lot of cats. We will always be a family, but we are no longer a family with a mom, a dad, two kids, all living together in a big chaotic house where we eat dinner together every night. We don’t have pancakes on Saturdays anymore. We don’t need a “dining room” anymore. It is sad, liberating, and weird. These are changes that are good, but sometimes hard to process.

I’ve made a bit of a start on it:

The shelves used to hold cookbooks and china. Now they hold art supplies, paper media, ephemera, little bits of whimsy that delight me – some from their old lives, some new. They are cheery little shelves – I had fun repurposing them and painting them for the dining room when we moved in here. Now seeing them filled with paint and paper and tools makes me feel happy all over again. My folk art from Mexico hangs around, muertos, milagros, tin art, paintings from friends. I am charmed by this space. I need to set up another stack of storage for my jewelry making supplies. Maybe haul the sewing machine out from the back where it’s been languishing as my bedside table… it is a work in progress.

Life changes require change. And this is a huge, ginormous, big life change. Back to myself. Y’all, it is pretty terrifying.

And for my 11th Day of Gratitude?
I have not forgotten gratitude. I am grateful to have the physical, mental and emotional space available to me for this to be a problem.

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