From my indigo dyeing experiment earlier this month, I've had some big bundles of perfectly blue clothesline rope staring at me each and every time I walked into my studio. Tempting, they've been! This weekend, I couldn't resist them any longer, after a quick trip to the craft store for a whole lot of blue thread (have I mentioned how much they suck up the thread, these baskets? And did I tell you that the latest issue of Taproot has some lovely clothesline basket-making instructions in it from Maya? It's true).
This simple and seemingly 'frivolous" stitching was just the very thing I needed to be doing with my hands this weekend, as I wound down from such a busy week, as I finished up my latest audio book (A Fall of Marigolds, which I recommend), and as I found my footing at home, and in my studio. The youngest kids, meanwhile, where at my feet and in the library just across the hall, deep in the work of filling no less than fifteen sheets of shrinky dink paper! Honestly, I thought I was buying a season's supply of the stuff, but I was quite mistaken. Hours went by just like that - me stitching, and them drawing and baking, and it seems as though it was just the very thing we all needed. Parallel creative play, I guess you could say. Together, but in our own zones. You know, all these years into this parenting gig as I am, and having written a book on the very subject, I still find myself amazed and surprised sometimes at the way in which creativity connects us a family. The way it feeds us, and restores our sense of home and rhythm. Oh, I'm forever grateful for that. And baskets made out of indigo-dyed clothesline. There's always more room to be made for those.
