A Morning of Mornings

May 8, 2012 by

I bounced out of bed very early this morning, bundled myself up in layers of clothing and took to the mountain with Tater to watch the sunrise.  It didn’t disappoint.  All this thinking I’ve been doing lately about welcoming the day as a songbird does — with an optimistic heart and the fullness of joy — has me entirely enthralled with the birth of light and the breaking of day.  I’m gripped by the very truth of it.  Sunrise is such a bold thing.  For light to sneak up slowly on the riffled, murky edges of night and to usurp it, inch by inch, until the world knows day, is such tremendous boldness.

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold. [Herbert Spencer]

RW made me breakfast when I came home from my morning hike and we ate side by side in the sunny kitchen with the dogs and cat mewing and mooing at our feet.  I can feel the ricocheting wisps of hope, fruition and energy bouncing about my soulbeams.  My fingertips are live wires.  The studio is on and warming up!  I must delay computer work for the metal beckons!

Toodaloo!

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May 7, 2012 by

[sterling, copper, enamel, pearl, graphite, coral]
This little guy is so precious to me.  So precious.  It’s simultaneously zesty and tranquil.  The enamel colors in this shot are quite accurate and I’d describe this yellow as slightly melon with overfired undertones of periwinkle blue!  DELICIOUS.  I find myself feeling a little blissed out when I look at it…and then, despite the fact that the colors aren’t quite the same, I think of canola and flax fields blooming side by side on the great northern plains of Canada.  This piece takes my heart home.

Happy Monday to you, wherever you are.  Go forth and conquer the day!

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2012/05/07/4495/

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Chromazing

May 6, 2012 by



[sterling, copper, enamel, glass beads, graphite & sari silk]
Now that’s what I call color.
Have I mentioned lately how much I love enameling?  Well I do.  I love it very deeply.  Nothing else gives me color like I want color except for enameling.
I had an incredible writing morning here today, perched in a shaft of sunlight in the kitchen, sipping tea and mulling some things over.  While writing, I was also watercolor painting which is one of my favorite ways to work color ideas into being.  I was also texting a dearly beloved friend about her lost dog and all kinds of life details which prompted me to write about thresholds, the liminal, and moving out of the sphere of darkness and into the sphere of light (there’s a point that comes, in the transition between despair and joy, wherein you’re standing in overlapping spaces and I want to know what to call that space where the two sides meet, that threshold, or how to define it at least, and perhaps even understand what moves me into that space and beyond, and what drags me backwards, against my will, through it again…do you know what I mean?).  I’ve been talking about the liminal for eons, or so it seems.  I began to speak of it last summer.  I thought I was delving into it, but I haven’t really and truly delved until today.  Or perhaps my former delving was enormously shallow and today I had a taste of depth and some conceptual task grew itself a set of burly roots.  I don’t know.  This neck-piece looks like it put the *unk* in FUNK but there’s a serious side to it, one I am gladly and finally delving into.
Don’t you love the word delve?
I have used it excessively here.
I beg your pardon.
I also wanted to tell you that I was sick for a few days with a cold sore.  The fact that I consider a cold sore a sickness makes me sound like a fragile and pathetic princess but let me inform you of the tragic fact that I am a rare bird who suffers nasal cold sores and it’s one of the most painful and miserable things I have ever survived in my short lifetime.  Thank God I only ever seem to suffer one a year.  Anyway, I was knocked out for a few days and only left the house for a ride in our friend’s beautiful old Willys Jeep in the Idaho sunshine.  Have you ridden in a Willys Jeep?  It’s so wonderful.  Everyone you pass on the road stares at you and you can tell they all want to be riding in the Jeep you are riding in.  You have to press your elbows against the armrests or you’ll fall right out because Willys don’t have doors or a roof and sometimes no windshield either.  It’s a very fresh way to ride the roads.  But, what I was going to tell you is whilst sick, I began reading a Terry Tempest Williams book and now I have half the darn thing underlined with blue ink and about a thousand paragraphs quipped and quothed in my journal and I officially love gophers.
Gosh.  This post keeps getting weirder.
Also, whilst hiding my gigantically and terrifically sick nose from the inhabitants of the planet Earth I made a beautiful little buckskin purse with fringe.  It is so darling.  You’re going to perish when you see it.  I’m really into the cowboys and indians look right now and seem to be sleeping in my cowboy boots and doing a lot of squinting in the sunshine and spitting of chaw juices. Just kidding about that spitting part.  My sick nose doesn’t allow for spitting right now and my lady-ness doesn’t allow for it any other time unless I choke on a bug while running on the mountain.
Gosh.  I think I might be hyper.
The last thing I wanted to tell you is that our bundle of turquoise flooring arrived on Friday and it’s divine.  We made a good choice.  Rob cut and shaved over 2000 olympic rivets in the Airstream today and tomorrow he is going to lay floor.  Don’t that just put a whopper of a smile on your face?
Enjoy your Sunday night, my sweet doves.
I hold you in my heart.
xx
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Forest Walking & Stream Bending

May 4, 2012 by

Last night, Tater and I stole up the mountain for a couple of hours of forest walking and stream bending.  For the interior West, it’s tremendously lush and fresh feeling up on the mountain at the moment.  Every step deeper into the woods has a gal swimming in the clean and musky scents of a forest unfolding.  The creeks are running thick and crystal clear with the last of the snow melt.  As I walked past all the green unfurling, I think the fiddle head of my heart managed to fan out into a broad green, wind capturing face of delicacy and bright.

I love everything about my forests here.  I love the shushing of the tallest sentries, catching the breeze in fine fir needles and stomping their roots deeper into the earth.  I brought home some Douglas fir branches last night, they are settled in vases around the house, slowly releasing their fine spice into the tranquility of my home.  I love the easiness of the spreading wildflower patches, the promise of color and food for the bees.  Last night, I loved that funny little male mallard that came zooming out of the dusk, flying directly down valley with the creek flowing beneath his beak and his flight feathers squeaking in the wind.  I love being out there with a dog by my side, so I have someone very quiet with whom I can share a sense of exploration and wonder.  I like to sneak around, because everything in a forest is kind of sneaky.  Sneaky moose on stiletto legs.  Sneaky elk with bugle hearts.  Sneaky beavers chewing on their cottonwood tree trunks.  I get sneaky too and walk softly in my little cowboy boots.

Every time I go up the mountain, I see the same things, but I’m always amazed at the small changes, the growth, the flux in chroma, the deeper bends in the river curves.  I wonder, if all those trees look down at me and notice the small changes that take place in my heart and soul on a regular basis?

Night came on quick and the air became cold.  I found myself wishing I didn’t have to go home, that RW could come out to meet me and we could cook hot dogs over an open fire and drift to sleep under a blanket of starshine falling through ponderosa pine.  But last night, such a thing was not to be.  I hiked back out to the truck with Tater and we drove home to hot dinner and warm beds, but that expansive space inside my ribcage that I keep open for beautiful things that widen the soul felt illuminated and fresh.

Happy Friday to you merry little beauties.  Have a rich weekend.

xx

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May 2, 2012 by

[sterling silver & vintage Mary and Lourdes medals from France]

I should mention the realest reason I love to set these vintage Catholic medals in sterling silver — I think they’re full of truly beautiful energy.  Imagine how many finger tips and lips have brushed against these medals in times of devoted prayerfulness, fatigue, stress, fear and sadness — seeking comfort and answers or simply filled with easy joy.  They’re little metal objects, but I think they’ve been injected with hopes of all sorts and so changed into tiny, holy things, that testify to the ability of the human spirit to be buoyed up.  To rise and rise again.

There’s something so beautiful, ancient and peaceful about them.

They’ll be available in the shop tomorrow morning.

:::EDIT:::

Thank you to the wonderful women who claimed these rings.  xx

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2012/05/02/4440/

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