A bag for Gaia

This, too, was meant to be a Yuletide gift. Boy, was I late.

My friend was pregnant at the time - she's since given birth to her son, and fortunately I did manage to get this to her a week or two before the birth, which was my aim (the "hard deadline").

When I started in November; she was quite pregnant already (big baby this time around!), and I was thinking how wonderfully suited my friend is to pregnancy. I think of her as a water spirit, but she was so perfectly at home as this grounded mother, growing heavy with child. So I began to bead a sort of mandala pattern for her, all in blues and greens, studded with lapis and jade.

I stitched together a kind of medicine bag from softest back suede; the bag is maybe ...5 or 6 inches wide by about 8 inches long, I think? I don't quite remember. The entire bag is edged in tiny seed beads of palest lavender. One on every stitch.

I made a very long, 4-strand braided strap from leather, so the bag could easily be slung, messenger-style, diagonally across the body and hang at the hip. I left long fringes hanging and weighted them with silver beads to help them swing just right. My fingers turned black from working all those dyed skins.

I wanted it to be a gift to bring sweetness and light, so I stuffed it with a sage smudge, palo santo sticks, lavender balm and special soap, tea for breastfeeding mothers, etc. And off it goes. Not much to say about this; it's just a pretty thing I made for a friend whom I love and it turned out quite perfect!

Another architecture tee

2015 is my year of the WIP (Works-in-Progress), by which I mean, working on finishing up old WIPs (and jettisoning those projects that I'm never going to finish). And there are PLENTY of these thing banging around the house. SO MANY IDEAS, never enough time for them all. But as Cass and I finally make progress toward entering the housing market (as first time buyers), I'm trying to adopt an attitude of "we're moving" and use that to motivate some streamlining in all aspects of our lives: cleaning out the fridge and freezer of old unused food, cleaning out our closets, and yes, even cleaning out baskets of projects.

In the interest of finishing up old works-in-progress, I printed this shirt for Cass some time ago; it was meant to be a yuletide gift, but ... I don't know what happened, exactly. I made this screen years ago, and printed him a blue-and-black Aalto tee then. He'd worn that shirt out, so it was time for a new one. Simple as that, really. He's happy as a clam to have an Aalto shirt again. This print is one of his favorites.

I also finished another originally-intended-as-a-yuletide gift in mid-June. I'll try and get it up on the blog this week; I would've posted sooner, but a business trip to Cleveland, followed by Midsommar, followed by a rush proofreading job and the 4th of July have absorbed my last three weeks in a constant state of busy-rush-rush.

I think I've earned a bit of a summer break: time for less rush-rush and a bit more summer reading and beading in my near future, I hope! Oh, and quilting, too - I want to finish the Rabbit in the Moon quilt this summer and give it away. With full time work and part time freelancing, I think I can safely say that Months and Years is officially going back on the shelf of Dreams for When I Have Time. Oh, I'll keep making beautiful small things for little people, but I think I'll just go back to giving them away instead of trying to build a collection of them to sell together.