Lighting a Candle of Remembrance

Today, I light a candle of remembrance. A candle for those who have passed, are trying to pass, or will pass in the days and the years ahead. A dear friend lost someone she loved. Her loss, then becomes my loss--and so I grieve for her pain.

I know that the day will come when it will be my own turn to grieve again, for the cycle of life is like the cycle of the day, when darkness turns to the light. It is like the cycle of the seasons, when the dark days of winter slowly lighten into the earliest days of spring. And it is like all things that come and go into their next cycle.

So, it seems most fitting, that tonight, this New Year's Eve, I honor the passing of one year into another and one life into another. I light a candle and I hold the light for her, as well~~~

Gifts Come in Many Forms

I feel blessed and grateful for the many gifts of the heart that I received during this holiday season. I found that it is the child that you think that will not be able to come home for Christmas, but then does, or the gifts of food that show up at your doorstep when you were too busy to do much baking, or the little ways a gift is all wrapped up in love, that mean far more than any item on any shelf in any store. Having said that....I am delighted with all of the material gifts that I did receive, as well as with the givers, the receivers and Christmas, in general.

What this gift tag from my son really says is "MOM"...but Mom is simply Wow, upside down. And I must say, after the holidays that is exactly how I feel...upside down and wowed.

And...once,again...I must add, after 4 days of trying to get blogger to upload a photo, any photo, in any blog, on any form, in any format, in any location, I am totally wowed..that I finally, finally did it!

Now, while my good fortune holds...do I upload every single photo that I might ever want to post? on any blog? on any occasion? for any reason????

Coming Home for the Holidays

The true meaning of Christmas is the story of a journey, and of a search. It is the story for the search for the true meaning of the home that we seek within and the journey to find that home. When Joseph and his wife Mary, traveled across many lands to seek refuge in his birthplace of Bethlehem, this symbolized the search that we all go on during the holy or healing days for the heart. The days, and night, when we seek a refuge of acceptance and caring and nurturing and love in that place that we call 'home.' We seek to find a place where our weary hearts can seek solace, our tired bodies can finally rest, and the inner child within, can finally find expression by being given freedom to express joy, surrounded by acceptance and by love.

Each of us in our own ways, searching within our own hearts, seeks and needs this special place within. It may be with family, it may be in an inner journey for self acceptance, but it is a journey across the barren wasteland of all of the inner pieces of the different puzzles of our lives, across the pains of rejection, past all of the doors being slammed shut in our faces, to a place where finally...finally we can lay our weary and worn hearts down to rest and feel the joy of acceptance, hear the celestial music of the spheres of the heart's song and know that at last, we are finally and true home for the holidays.

I wish to each and everyone of you, happy or hurt, alone, or with family, the true magic of this holy season. May you find that which you are looking forward within and feel comforted and warm and secure. And if you do not have in this dimension, in this lifetime, then may the blessings of this holy season reach out across these miles and know that someone here cares, and cares deeply for you and wishes you peace and the true happyness that can only come from peace and acceptance within. Happy Christmas from my heart and my home, to all of yours.

Winter:In All of Her Twisting and Turning Variations

Winter storms are hitting Oregon now, continually endangering attempts to find the three missing climbers on Mt. Hood and forcing the rest of us to cozy down in our homes to keep warm and wait it all out. Our thoughts and our hearts go out to the families of the missing men. Our minds and our hands need to keep busy. No Christmas shopping, no traveling to lighted house displays in surrounding areas, my blogger has refused to upload photos all week...it was just plain time to quilt.

So, one of my quilts in progress is now finished. The fabric from the 'father basket'-cut out, pieced, backed, pinned and re-pinned three times, then quilted, frog quilted, re-quilted. I figure if it's worth doing once, why not try again...and again...and again. My father will be celebrating his 90th birthday in mid-January. So,I am making him a 'Turning 90' quilt in a WW 2 theme.

My Alaskan grandparents were a 'five star star' family. That meant that they 'gave' five sons to the war effort. Five sons in different branches, all sent out to defend American honor,integrity and territory. One son, my dad's brother, was shot down in his airplane in the Pacific Ocean, near Japan..never to return home. Four others, including my father, served in various capacities and did return safely home. The loss of one,rededicated the intent of the giving of the others. So, take that patriotism, that pride and then see it as a much greater gift with deepened significance.

My dad was a Warrant Officer on a ship in the Aleutian Islands. He never saw combat but still he and his fellow officers patrolled the frozen waters off Alaska and transported goods to different bases. He served with great pride and sees it as an important chapter in his life. He met and married his Louisianan pen pal, my Cajun French mother near the end of the war, by traveling the more than five thousand miles, by car, to meet her, fall in love, and marry her. The whole decade of the 1940's changed his life in many ways, forever. It set a course in destiny for him and for our family, than cannot be over emphasized.

So, his quilt is a WW 2 patriotic one, very simply designed, bold but with softened colors and with large photo transfers of himself, his family and my mother. The photos are super sized because my mother is legally blind and can only see things when they are enlarged with high contrast, and then with a magnifying glass for the details. Several of the photos are of her,which I know they both will love.

I used a variation I worked out from the idea of a 'Turning Twenty' pattern. Instead of 20 blocks, I used nine (wasn't up to piecing 90!) But they are turned and twisted to be an original version. The turning and the twisting is symbolic, I think, of conflict of any kind, but especially conflict that leads to change. Life and death are major aspects of such change, but in a way birthdays are as well.

Each birthday marks a mile point and acts as a catalyst, but ones which come on the cusp of a decade, are somehow even more notable. We mark and honor the milestones in our lives, there is history and meaning and even a search for reason in the meaning of all them. So, as my dad is 'Turning 90', so this quilt will commemorate a major time of change in his own life. I honor those memories and the strong, determined and steadfast man he was then and remains yet, today.

The Magic of Christmas in all of its Shapes and Forms

I am a basket case. My house is filled with baskets of all kinds. For some reason, I have always loved them and collected them. In order to justify my obsession, I try to use as many as I can in all of the ways that I can think of! This one comes out during the holidays and sits upon my old treadle sewing machine. The machine went through our house fire in Alaska in the '70's and has never been refinished. Somehow its scars and it survival from those wounds (when so few of our possessions did survive) is a reminder to me of just what it takes to make it through hard times...even through a catalyst like fire. And sometimes, it is only after hard times, and after great loss, that what we do have is truly appreciated and valued.

This treadle belonged to my Finnish grandmother. She immigrated to Alaska in 1901, as did my grandfather. Each came separately, not yet having met, on ships to Ellis Island, then trains across the U.S. and then on a barges up to Juneau. They each settled on Douglas Island, where I grew up. My grandfather was a gold miner in the Treadwell Mine...at one time the richest site of gold ore in Alaska. I was born in Louisiana to a Cajun French mother who married her Alaskan penpal during World War2. We then moved to Alaska which was my father's home and it was there that our family lived and I grew up. We were a pioneer family in all meanings of the word. Every thing we ordered and bought, had to come up on barges and that took several months. We ordered from Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Wards or we learned to make do or to create from what we did have. My family were fishermen, hunters, and carpenters. But they were also artists and photographers and dreamers. We learned to appreciate natural beauty as well as all that we could create by hand.

This machine belonged to my grandmother and when I was a young girl and decided to teach myself to sew, I started first with this machine. I was fascinated by its magic and wanted some of that magic for myself. I started teaching myself, first how to make it 'go' and then figuring out how the magic worked to create seams. I never dreamed that someday the magic machine would follow me to Oregon on another barge and be such a treasure to me! My little snowman reminds me of 'home' and creates memories for me of all of my white Christmas's...with or without real snow.

The true magic of Christmas is one of belief. Magic, belief and memories...we imagine what we will and we create it from our hearts.

Tracking the Days: Advent Calendars

This is our well loved advent calendar. I made it sometime in the late 70's. Although, I have sewn extensively since I was 12, this is one of the few, if not only, Vogue patterns I may have ever used. It is machine appliqued. felt on felt and the little ornaments attach with velcro.

Over the years, it has become fingered and worn. Its little pocket is stretched our from some many hands reaching into it to claim an ornament to place upon the tree. We added items day by day, instead of taking them off or opening them as some advents go. My children would do a round robin of one for me, one for you..selecting their ornaments ahead of time. Many years there were tears as the elf went first or the little snowman or whatever the favorite for that year might have been. Next year,you can choose first would always be the promise!

I look at its age spots now, and they are like my own...battle scars and memories of years and the tracking of the days and all of the remembrances of a life well and lovingly lived but still not without its wounds and challenges. We live our days the best we can, we dream large and we try our best. But sometimes, like this calendar, we live only day by day and sometimes the special time or the special season must come to an end. Then, we begin again. We have to find new reasons to share or to celebrate or just to find joy in each and every new day. If each of us can find something to look forward, something special to achieve and feel good about, and maybe someway to share than joy with another...then that day was not lived in vain.

Winter: Between the Darkness and the Light

From ancient times, the winter season has been seen as part of balance of nature...a time where the balance point changes between the darkness and the light. With the shortening of the day and daylight, comes an increase in the lengthening of the night and darkness. It is a natural time for letting go of all that which seems dark within one's life, and a time for making choices to bring in the light. Throughout history, in all of the world's cultures, through belief systems, festivals, traditions and practices, the changes in the cycles of birth, death and rebirth have been intrinsically and symbolically honored. From this honoring comes our holidays...our 'holy days.'

When we walk between the veils of one season and the next or one change or one emotion and the next, or even one 'holy day' and the next, we find ourselves always balancing our emotions...balancing the dark emotions, the very ones which create power and change, or the light emotions, the ones which bring in joy and abundance. One of hardest of the darker emotions is that of sorrow, grief and loss. Today, I am recognizing and honoring the gift that the darkness brings in as I honor the sadness of many as they face or as they remember loss.

I live in Oregon and today all Oregonians feel a huge and strangely personal, loss at the sad outcome for the search for James Kim. After the incredible survival of his wife and two young daughters, we were all praying for a continuation of that Christmas miracle. For all of who followed the Kim family's story, it became more than just one family's loss..it became the symbol for all of us about being lost, facing those emotions and feeling the sadness, the yearning, and the grief that such loss brings into our lives. Such is the sadness, the loss and the acceptance of the dark into our lives that each of us is asked to face at different times. Knowing that the dark will eventually find its way back into the light again is also know

Winter Projects: Running Out of Procrastination Time

Now that our little community quilting group has taken its winter break, I told myself that I would work on the last of the Christmas decorations, finish up my own immediate projects and really focus on what needs to be done first.

I looked around my little sewing room...I am one of those people who spends as much time trying to be organized as I do actually sewing and there were all my bins and baskets of projects all lined up. They are like family, really. I lovingly care for each and every project as if it were a little spirit with a soul:)

There is my mother basket in rosy pinks. My mother will reach her five years cancer free milestone in January. She came and lived with us for nine months in 2002 as she had almost no chance of surviving stage 3B of inflammatory breast cancer. She went through all three processes...chemo, surgery and radiation and she did survive! I am planning a quilt to honor that five year survival mark. So, her basket is filled with the fabrics I am collecting for a small lap quilt to honor that milestone.

Then, there is my father basket. My dad turns 90 one week before my mother's milestone. So, he gets a patriotic memories quilt from his service in WW2. His little basket of proud patriotic vintage fabrics stands by her side. Both of them, there, waiting patiently for my attention. Then, there is my UFO basket. A project I need to frog quilt apart and redo with the sashings it should have had inserted in the first place! Another one, a top, knowing that someday maybe it will finally be it's turn.

Little baskets, lined up and waiting patiently. My winter projects that should have been started yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that. Like all of our yesterdays, waiting patiently to be remembered.

Angels Watching Over Me

This is a shelf in my sewing room. I have several little shelves devoted to things I care about, that are gifts to me, or represent people who have been gifts in my life. When I am busy sewing, I look at these gifts and feel a deep inner gratitude for all that I have, for all that I have experienced, and for all those who have been part of my heart's journey. Some of that journey has been challenging beyond belief. I have learned from experiences with chronic pain as well as from amazing healing journeys. I have learned from lovings and from losings, and from having been given gifts as well as obstacles to further my growth along the way. All of these experiences make up the percieved reality of what I know as my life. Along the way, I have learned a multitude of new lessons or the re-learning or re-experiencing of old ones. I am humbled by the depths of these challenges and even more by the depths of the human spirit to overcome them.

However, all that having been said...today I am simply and irrevocably grateful to have my blogger capabilities back again...after days with no editing or publishing buttons! I have learned just how obsessive compulsive I can be when trying to 'fix' things, that are certainly 'unfixable' by 'me' in the first place. In this case, a computer blogger program battling my server properties, and/or that blogger program having some inherent flaws it needed someone to practicing getting better on!

In any case, I would like to personally thank all of the blogger angels who watched over me as I was enslaved by a hot key pad, and an exhausted mouse. I am grateful to still be relatively sane as opposed to the decided lack of that capability that I might more likely be deserving of at this point. My thanks to the Blogger Buzzers who, I am sure, have worked day and night to help those of us cranky bloggers who blasted them with emails and pleas for help! My name is Heart's Journey and I am an obsessive compulsive blogger.