Leaning into the Leather

It’s a leather day here at The Gables.
Well, other things are also happening, like:
1.  The quinoa cooking on the stove top.
2.  I’m irrigating with my creek.  I pulled the gate earlier this morning.  
The grape vines looked thirsty.
3.  Loretta Lynn is singing to me over the stereo in this little room:
“Have mercy on me baby….you’re tearing me apart…the way that you do me you know you done got to me…have mercy on me baby…

4.  My cabana boy has come and gone and the lawns are looking lush and cleanly trimmed.  Thank you Brother Bradley — Brad is one of RW’s best friends, a firefighter, and he mows my lawns on Fridays.  How awesome is that?  I love fire community more than most other communities I’ve been part of, which is kind of shocking.  But I love that these men and women view me as family, as well as RW, and they help to take care of me while he’s away.  I know there’s always someone I can call if I need help with heavy lifting or some other task that I’m too little for — there seem to be a lot of those sorts of tasks.  I am small, after all.
_________________________________________________

It’s a beautiful day here today.  Slightly overcast with the wailing promise of thunderstorms on all of the horizons I can see from my workbench.  I hope to feel the cackle of lightning and a sudden rush as those rogue plough winds rear up and sweep down off the West bench.

I feel so content today.
I’ve talked to RW three nights in a row.
I feel loved.
I feel precious.
I feel appreciated.
I am missed.
I feel the fullness of the good, strong and healthy love I have with that smokejumper of mine.  It’s been so fun to listen to him talk about his work.  Every time I talk to him, my heart, the very roots and timbers and branches of my heart shake with the joy that’s found in the fact that my man is living one of his dreams. I’m so glad I am able to give him the freedom to chase his dreams.


I have lovely weekend plans in place and I feel I’ve earned them. That’s right.  I plan to pull down.

I’ve walked the line this week.
I’m ready for a Sabbath.
My gardens are responding to my touch.
My dogs can’t stop smiling.
My legs long to run and I want the sunshine in my hair.

Happy Friday to you all and thank you so much for your incredible support this week.  You’re amazing. Life is amazing.  The bliss is raining down.

xx
PLUME

PS  Today someone claimed my Bliss Ring for herself.  She plans to wear it at her wedding later this summer.  She said that she has “been with me since 2007” and that this is her first and long overdue ring.  Amazing.  Amazing that I can have a history with a person I’ve never met.  I couldn’t help but cry at the beauty of that realization.  

Yesterday, a woman fired me a note about how she had just lost her cat to a tragic accident.  She said she didn’t know why she wanted to tell me but she did and I was so glad to connect with her, even in the event of her grief.

You are all
so
incredible.
You’re all so real to me!
Thanks for letting me into your lives.
Thanks for being part of my world.

The Love is in the Leather…

…and swirling all around.
I made these for you.
I’ll make them available when I return home from the jaunt I’m taking this evening
They are built of sterling, dendritic opal, amethyst sage agate and leather in beautiful, shady resisted and antiqued hues!!!
Scrumptious, supple and sweet.
Made for a woman who has admirable heart and biceps!

A dear dear friend told me this last night:

 “you’re cracking your heart open like a nut, harvesting its marrow. there has to be recovery from that, or you’ll die.”
[KJK]


So I’m going to the city tonight for a pinch of respite.

And when I go to the city, I’m going to be wearing this:

Hopefully the urbanites don’t freak out when they see a bit of country 
living walking down the streets!

xx
PLUME

The First Fruits

The Love Cuff.
Featuring a slice of green chrysoprase set in rusticated sterling silver and sealed with my maker’s mark.  It slides freely along a handcrafted leather cuff that has been antiqued a fair weather blue and embossed with the word LOVE.
Built for a 6 inch wrist.
The Hope Cuff.
This leather cuff bears the word HOPE and hosts another slice of chrysoprase set in rusticated sterling silver.  My maker’s mark is tethered to it.  It’s meant for a six inch wrist.

Both pieces are one of a kind and manage to represent, 
so well,
this moment in my life.
May they go to the ladies who need them most!
xx

:::EDIT:::
Wowwee.
Thanks so much for your support today,
wonderful women of the world.
You maybe know how this feels, but whenever I take a holiday and disappear for nearly an entire month, there’s always this little unfounded fear that you’ll have disappeared from my life and my world by the time I get back.  It’s always so good to see your bright and shining faces again.  Thanks for loving the leather.  It loves you back.
xx

Leather Part Deux


Not only does leather come to me on the cusp of a change of season, but it comes to me in a time when I’ve been in dire need of a fresh horizon view. I’ve been leaning into the hides as one would a fence post or the shoulder of another. I’ve found myself surprised by the supple quality of the material and by the way it falls away beneath my tools as though it’s time or an object under the spell of gravity. It comes easy. It comes quick. I wrestle with the shears. My hands and back know a new and foreign fatigue.
The heights and depths of tooling come lightly beneath my hands; the beastie scent of hides and the two-faced texture between my fingertips draws new ideas and possibility in the realm of relief — forms clearly visible, highly accentuated, brought into existence blow by blow. Already, I’m crossing back over into metal and applying new ideas to my sketchbook in layers of black ink: scribbled and faded lines that tip off the edges of pages, shrinking as they creep in minuscule loops towards a table top or fall into the pit of my sketchbook spine. There’s never enough space when my pen grows greedy in the domain of record making.
As I type,
Farley barks in his sleep.
All four paws twitch and his body shudders
as he prowls the wheat fields of his dream scape
in pursuit of the winged things.
The window is open.
To let the cold in.
I hear the city and the push of wind in the redwood outside.
The Bay is glittering below us
in the distance
under night
and the constant clatter of streetlights
between here
and there.
The world hasn’t ever seemed so big.
My heart holds the memory of sagebrush.
It fans the scent in the face of my soul,
recalls the space of Idaho and
the reckoning and beckoning of that big sky.
Something has started calling me North once more.
I’m losing track of everything I had to say.
There are crescendos, here and there,
but the details I needed to tell you have been cut adrift.
I speak out loud, type with my tongue,
roll my eyes to the ceiling and then shut them light tight.
I lay on my back with the warmth of interwebular connectivity across my stomach; a sure glow beaming out in pixelated uniformity in the eveningsilence
of this room.
And still, those roaming thoughts I have been meaning to share about taking friendships to the next level, trusting others implicitly, admitting insecurities and watching things that are meant to take flight rise up on wings in the moment of their first flight.
First flight.
First flight.
Those roaming thoughts: thick as bison, pesky and fleeting,
gorgeous and new.
Roses in the cheeks of children.
Fiddleheads.
It’s late here, again.
Something scampered by, a brief moment ago, and tossed a handful of
sand in my eyes.
The grit of weariness is hard to see through and I give in.
I
tuck my head
under
my wing
and all the rest,
the good and the wonderful,
fall away.

Sometimes, while on holiday,
I find myself doing a little bit of work.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2010/05/22/686/