Well, hello there! Fancy you dropping by after so long!

This has been one hell of a year and 5 months and i am so bloody exhausted by being exhausted and not appreciating what i have and what has been given me. In the grand scheme of things, i will always miss my Beloved, but it is time to move on, and he would certainly want that. Grey Man treated me like a Princess, and it’s time to start acting like a Princess, the kind that is happy, balanced, creative, engaged productively with the world and ready to charge into the future with her eyes open, aware of the gifts of love and hard work that have brought her to this place, from her own hands and heart to those who have lent their caring hands and helping hearts, from Memory to Etherwaves to Real World.

My son has come back to me and i am thrilled to re-connect with him. He has helped, is helping me in enormous ways, physically, emotionally and spiritually. We have covered a lot of ground in talking and will keep on talking. I NEED him in my life. We are not going to dwell on the past because all we have is the now, though we have spoken of old days and n0w are past that point, because the future will take care of itself if we take care of the now, no WooWoo intended or expected.

Keep on keeping on, keep on trucking, as they used to say in the “olden days”!

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I have gone back to the REAL basics, ones i never learned in all my garment making years. Since i decided to re brand as a wearable art business: learning to draft my own patterns or adapt others and how to make slopers has been one hell of a curve. (Especially when some of the teaching aids haven’t been translated into English…) One really important thing i have learned from it is that there is no point in me jumping into the “sell a PDF pattern” as an adjunct biz. As much as i’d like to, A. i haven’t the patience to learn how to use Adobe that extensively (too freekin much math and i prefer the hand drawn aspect anyways of drafting) and B. i haven’t the patience to chart EVERY step, no matter how small, to write as instructions, and C (the most important) there is nothing new under the sun.

From studying the flats online of new pants patterns for example, they are all pretty much the SAME. Seriously same. Of course they are! I mean come on, we’ve got 2 legs, an ass, a crotch and a waist fitting in there, torso sticking out one end, feets out the others. That’s all that pants are. The world does not need another pants pattern from me. Kudos to the pattern makers out there already, but i’m not going to be one of the Club.

In a sense too, i didn’t HAVE to do all this new brain stretching work BUT my focus this time too is for curvier women than i clothed before (most were probably in the size 14-20 size range), and you can’t just add more seam line to a pattern to change a size 18 to a size 34. (I’ll be talking about that peeve/bugaboo/insult called “sizing” in a future post.)

Even if people never notice this, or don’t care, or i never get it perfectly, it’s wonderful to be making the brain work. My body is shit right now ( brace, knee operation or new knee in the not too distant future?), but the old vasty skull still has a sharp tenant keeping the lights on and the stair rails firmly attached.

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I have also discovered that the “style” i am doing/using/re-inventing/making with  in *my* way, is known as “dopamine dressing”.  I LIKE that. Big loud colours, huge scale florals, stripes, polka dots, bold graphics, simple shapes re-interpreted, nifty details (dare i say “nifty” without sounding bumpkin or disingenuous?), peculiar and idiosyncratic mixes of motif, colour and texture. OH YEAH BABY.

So, over the next few days, 2 weeks at most, i will be blasting photos of colour, pattern, mixes there-of and shapes, hopefully intriguing you to shop when i make my first “Drop”. (SHUDDER. I do not like that term: i am not dumping food, water, blankets or medical supplies from a “Helo”. I will be, as usual, posting listings.)

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Now, i will go dance, my new relaxation and stress release!

There are definitely two of me right now. One is exhausted, can’t remember to wash her hair (did you know your hair can start to dreadlock in a week and a half?) or do laundry (because how do you wash what you have been wearing for two weeks if you are still wearing it?) I’ve been eating, yes, but rarely enjoying (does feed the cat though), haven’t stepped out of the house since the 27th of April when i sent a dear friend off to the airport to go home (i actually made it to the parking lot to do that) after she came out for 10 days to straighten me out, and the other is exhausted of being exhausted, of messes not cleaned up, of boxes and bags of fabric and dyes ordered but not touched, of fresh air not breathed in, back garden not tidied for a new season. Then i repeated all that but did  go out 2 days in a row when my son came out for a whirlwind weekend visit the 21st of June in which he did pretty  much what my friend had done and that i had let go of again…..

Did all of that make sense?

In January, we lost old Sally, the cat we inherited from MIL. In February, i lost my Beloved. In March, i lost my Mother. In April, Nessie the DogFaced Girl passed on.

The weekend that J was here (my darling son) we took the ashes of Sally, Nessie and Vic out to the mountains, and they were scatter-buried in the family plot, final rest spot: the Barr/McGuigan Mountain Heart Cemetery. Some of Vic went to the Ocean too where my boy lives.

Selena (Momma Cat) 2009, Miss Piggy (Minoux Cat) 2015, Moe (Big Boy Cat) 2017, Cosmo (Big Boy Cat #2) 2017, Sally (Duchess of Canterbury) 2024, Vic (My Beloved Beloved) 2024, Nessie (DogFaced Girl) 2024

Slapshot and i will join you when our time comes.

But, it IS a new season. A season of being alone, except in my memories. A season of resettling our home (which weirdly is now “my” home—at least i THINK it is, having still not heard back from the GD mortgage people….), of deciding that some of the studio can now move upstairs to a sunny bright big room. A season of adjusting to ONE person (me) and ONE animal (the cat) (Slapshot), rattling around in a 3 floor townhouse.

“Therese Bugnet” was developed in the 40s for our growing zone (Oft Cruel 3) by an Alberta man who named them after his daughters. (There’s “Marie Bugnet” as well, a snowy white i’d like to find as well.) When i bought Therese, she was a barely there stick with 2 leaves in 2017. She suffered badly at the old house, never getting bigger than 1 and a half feet. No blooms. In this back yard since, every year she got braver. Maybe next year her size will be the 5wide by 7high and COVERED in blooms. She’s tough too–never had bugs, viruses, mold, nada. I kind of ignore her until she’s in bloom, minimal water and poking and fertilizer.

I sat out here yesterday for an hour in the gloom of a lousy summer. I was/am sad, but i felt my Beloved doing his awkward pat on the back. “Things will get better, Hon. They always do.”

And it IS also time to get off my Sorrowing Bazotski and be me again. I have over 100 yards of various fibre fabrics and many many bags and packages of magical plant potions to dye with, a billion ideas and 11tybajillion sketches to work from. It’s time to launch the wearable art business again. I will still be offering packets of mixed fibres and colours and threads and bits of trim for artist work by you, and you and you, but i’m going back to my main love and that was very limited edition wearable art for real bodies.

But after almost 2 years of not posting, i want to make sure everyone knows i’m still here, and still “doing things”. Sort of. No pics though.

It hasn’t been great. My mother has broken both hips in the last year, so with also a knee replacement, she is now the Bionic Woman, from the waist down at least. Currently, she is in hospital for the second hip replacement (tripped over the dog’s work, a chewed up rug…) but does not sound like herself and is “trapped” there until the 1st of February at least. First hip operation a year ago she was home the next day and moving around, this time i think she’s going to give up……

Greyman and i have spent the last year trying to figure out why we both feel like utter shit after quitting smoking. Aren’t we supposed to feel better??????? It’s been 15 months, neither of us cheated, but guess what? We have pneumonia, mine barely negligible, his enough to put him in the hospital at the moment, short of breath, also as they have discovered, severely anemic and with an ulcer or two. He’s been there 3 days and will be for at least another 2 weeks, and i miss him and i’m scared for him. He has a breath exerciser and a liquid diet, which means when he gets to come home, he’ll probably weigh as much as a stick. But he will be a breathing stick at least.

Oh yeah, and through my own self neglect, i am pre-diabetic. I love food so this sucks. I’m still learning what the fuck the difference is between healthy food and not healthy because i thought i WAS eating healthy……………..

We do wonder though why for the duration so far of our no-more-smoking lifestyle, both of us have been EXHAUSTED. We’ve had weekends for months when we would get up at 9, go back to bed at 11, get up at 3, back to bed at 5, up at 8 and then back in bed by 10, both of us sleeping like the proverbial log. We tried “happy pills”, but anti depressants made it worse, so stopped those. Still a fricking mystery. The Lizard Brain (the one/part responsible for addiction, pleasure and stubborn-ness) is NOT pleased at all. Asshole.

The cat we “inherited” (from his late Mom) died a month ago in the closet, all curled up and passed away in her sleep. Sally was my Duchess of Canterbury, the sweetest, gentlest, quietest kitty i’ve ever had. I miss her sleeping on me, and i mean ON me–i was a hammock for her, always with the little cold piddies and tummy on me.

Haven’t gardened for 2 years.

We did drive back to Ontario (almost 7000K round trip) the summer of 21 to see what’s left of my family, 2 brothers and my Mom. First time they had met Greyman, and we all got along wonderfully.

I’d had great plans for the Christmases of 21/22/23 (Holy shit, thought it was 2 of them, not 3…), dyed and collected all the stuff together with my sketches and patterns and trims and beads—–and did NOTHING.

Took a print dye class online in 21, did nothing with it. GOOD class though regardless of my non results.

I’ve been planning on creating a wearable art line again, have accumulated the necessary fabrics, drawn up the patterns and collected the raw materials for dyeing—-lots of ideas and sketches, not even any prep on fibres done yet. MUST GET OFF ASS AND GET AT IT. I DO want to do this, seriously. Really. Really i DO. I loved it when i had my wearable art business in the 90’s.

Taking another print and dye class currently, more comprehensive and “glamorous” (YES i WANT “Glamorous” results and will have them.)

FB and Instagram are my main entertainments these days, though i do keep up on the ocassional blog, so i know what most of you are doing. Waving madly at you, hi, hi, hi.

So, bets on when i post again?

Soon!