More curveballs and detours

Late last year, I had decided I needed to stop teaching for while so I could focus on writing two books I’ve been working on for several years. I was going to continue working on my newsletter and had added a donation button here to supplement my income until I was ready to start teaching again. But, as has happened several times in the past decade, life threw me a curveball. In March of this year, my husband had a major heart attack. He’s had health issues for several years and we’ve made adjustments, but this was a different order of magnitude. I am happy to say that four stents, a pacemaker and 7 months later, he’s doing better.  

My studio practice, any writing, and pretty much anything creative went out the window for a while. I am back in the studio now. A few hours each day. And I wanted to share a little of what I’ve been doing. With the daily challenges of the past few years and my focus on teaching as well as writing, I haven’t done much work on major pieces. Instead I’ve been doing smaller, meditative pieces and last year I decided to try a daily coiling chronicle inspired by the tapestry diaries of Tommye McClure Scanlin and the stitch journals of K J Turner.

I started my first coiling chronicle last year on the 5th of January 2023 and finished it 25 January 2024. Each day, I stitched a short segment using a unique blend of 3 colors. I missed a number of days, marked by small white bands and used black bands to mark the boundary between the months.  There are 277 segments in the 2023 chronicle marking a year filled with challenges. But more importantly, I persevered and was able to create even if only a small bit each day.

I spent some time during late 2023 thinking about what changes I wanted to make for my 2024 chronicle. I decided I wanted the new chronicle to be a more focused study of color using the color wheel, which conveniently has 12 colors. I planned to use one color from the wheel as the first strand of the 3-color blend each day along with two additional color strands from the same color family.  I had hoped this would link the days/months together and give the chronicle a sense of flow. 

I liked the results for January and February, but I found when I transitioned to March that the shift from yellow-green to yellow was more abrupt than I had envisioned.  I was puzzling over what to do about this when my husband had his heart attack.

I didn’t do any work on the chronicle, or anything else, during those months and since so much had time passed—I didn’t take up the idea again until September—I decided to start a new chronicle. I often feel like fall is the beginning of the year and September is as good a time as any other to start, or renew, a practice, so starting again felt natural to me. 

With the new 2024 chronicle, I am again using one color from the wheel through each month, this time starting with yellow-orange in September transitioning to orange in October.  Each day, I choose 2 colors to blend with the wheel color, but I am not limiting myself to the base color family this time and I am much happier with the result. 

Another change is the marker between months.  Instead of black, I am using the two colors next to each other for the month just finished and the month to come. (The contrast between the yellow-orange and orange in this image are a bit hard to see.)

Life is always throwing us curve balls. With my coiling chronicles, I try to remind myself that the passage of time is constant.  We don’t get the days back, so it’s important to do something, no matter how small, to mark and appreciate each day. To stop a moment to appreciate what we have and what we can do.  Even if I have to leave a white mark for a day… or two or three…I am acknowledging that I lived those days.  The 6 months between the first and second chronicles for this year are a blur of fear and pain, but I came out the other side and so did my husband.  For that I am grateful. 

I am back to writing and have a new major piece I’m working on. I’ll share more about these projects another time. I hope you are finding time each day to work on something creative.