My gratitude
for this pile is deep.
Year after year it transforms
waste into nourishment for gardens
while at the same time inviting me to be
patient, get my hands dirty, and
remember that sometimes
life is really messy.

For me,
It's so much
more than textures
& subtle muted
tones.

It all
seemed 
so funny, how
I packaged them up,
but am waiting two weeks
to send them, for fear I might have
The Virus and might unknowingly mail it to
my sister whose husband has cancer and definitely
can't get this thing. So once again my compost
and all its associated projects invite
patience and humor. This
really is all quite
messy...

...and
beautiful,
because even
though we may be
thousands of miles apart,
we are together, exploring these
funny pieces of paper and
wondering what will
emerge from it
all.

...because 
it is March and
even though it seems dark
and gray and lonely to be stuck at
home, I know that the bulbs will emerge
from the frozen earth & spring will
come, because that's nature's
routine, and I'm good
with that.

PS
It is still
Women's History
Month...so let's support 
each other as much as we can
from afar. For inspiration of all kinds,
check out my friend Jennifer Jewell's Podcast
Cultivating Place - - The January episodes were all
about the therapeutic and spiritual capacities
of our gardens - in all their forms. We
need that now, more
​than ever. 

I love
working with
these strange pieces of
paper. When we have coffee at our
house, which is rare, we use a French Press. So
for me, these are an entirely new material which have, until
recently, just been part of my decomposing compost.
Now, though, with my sister's inspiration,
they have become yet another
invitation to explore
our material
world.

When I 
take them out
of the 5-gallon compost
collection bucket and move them
into the rinsing tub in our sink, these dirty
filters become precious materials
filled with creative
​potential.

All I
want to do
is move in closer to
explore these materials about
which I know so little. Once again, my
compost invites me to consider more than meets
the eye. While I have an idea of what my sister, Sarah C.
Swett, might create out of these filters, their
back story, like so many back
stories, remains a
​mystery.

Clearly,
this narrative
is unfolding as I write,
Sarah's imagination leading her
and my investigations taking me where
they go. But here we are, unfiltered, making it
up along the way. It does seem, however, that ours is
a circular narrative, filled with the ebbs
and flows of our lives and
curiosities.

Sarah
has instinctively
allowed her superpowers
to evolve over the past decades.
It's taken me a bit longer to discover mine,
and to let them flourish. I love that I embroidered my
first stitch at the same time she sent me that coffee filter bracelet.
It was like a subversive invitation to just go for it, whatever
'it' might be. And here we are, more than a year
later, and I've embroidered an entire dress
and she is working on her second
knitted coffee ​filter bag. 

I became 
entranced by the
colors, shapes and textures 
that emerged. I know. These joggers
are completely absent of
​color.

But the 
shapes and 
textures were so
cool and the feeling of the
wool fabric I used to repair the holes
so soft, I just had to share these 
​images  and this project
​with you.

And,
it turns out,
you can change the
structure of yourself as well.
Or at least, that's what happens to
me when I sit and sew. I hang out with my
dog, who hangs out with me. We ​both breath more
slowly. I have no idea what he thinks about,
but I stay focused on each stitch,
mindfully mending in
​that moment.

But even
as I sew on buttons
and patch holes in joggers,
I'm thinking, always thinking, about
all those big issues out there in the world
for which we want a quick a fix, but which, in my
heart, I know may not be able to be fixed with a single tool
box at a single moment. The problems we face are just too big. But
it helps me to address them when I adopt a mending state of mind. Knowing
we will be in this for a while, I focus on relationships of all kinds and not
worry about perfection by knowing what is good enough
and by making sure I am open to altering my
plans by adding color here
and curves
​there.

Please come
share the joy and
experience the wonder 
that is our waste at my artist's
talk next Friday, November 1. It will be
at AVA Gallery at 5pm. Oh, and it's also my
birthday and I was thinking how great
it would be to share it with others
who care about all this
stuff. See you then
and there!

And
​there is more.
Behind these photographs
there is me, a woman in mid life
choosing to share her work
and, by default, her
story - - 

Perhaps
that is why last year I had
so much fun dismantling and composting
my Harvard and UVA Degrees.
​Why not explore? 

Or, perhaps
that is why I am OK
sharing my first attempt at decorating
a silk dress with embroidered
imagery of my own
design.

Now
​that it is Show Time
the connections between these
experiments becomes
clearer. 

I was
in a great mood
because I had set the day aside
to work on a major embroidery project
I'm exploring this
summer. 

I think I was
able to finish about
half a leaf between each
interruption. By the time I went
out to hang the laundry, I was feeling 
really frustrated by how slow my progress was.
I'd been feeling bad about other things too. Like the fact
I hadn't written a blog post for more than a 
month and that I hadn't finished
the next playbook
in my series.  ​

But while standing
on the terrace and hearing the
baby birds and seeing a monarch butterfly
head toward the volunteer milkweed in the orchard
we planted, I remembered that not long ago,
none of this was here: no terrace, solar
panels, shrubs or perennials, and
no monarchs or baby birds
​learning to sing.

Sometimes I
​just have to consciously
remember how things really work,
which is why when I dumped the compost and
took yet another photograph, I remembered the power of
showing up and of big little things. 10 pounds of compost a week
adds up to 500 pounds a year -- a ton over four years. 
That's a lot of food diverted from the landfill.
It's also a lot of photographs
celebrating its
​beauty.

 I wore these
boots from November
to May this year. Finally, a few weeks
ago, they went into the storage box, from which my 
summer sandals and other cooler shoes emerged. Time for the
seasonal assessment. If I haven't worn something for 
a year or if it doesn't work anymore,
it goes in the spring give
away pile.

You might
think, with 26 pairs
of work boots, athletic shoes,
dress shoes and casual shoes, I'd have
enough. But I don't. My athletic shoes are worn out
and I've never really found the 'just right' pair
of casual sneakers...and with this
trip to London, it became 
clear that I needed
some upgrades.
But...

These days
I'm focused on shoes
and clothes with a story. If they
haven't been well worn by another before
me, I want to  know that the materials
used are ethically sourced, the
​stitches made with care,
and the resources
used, ​fair.

So yesterday,
there I was, in Kentish
Town, London, at The Third Estate,
on whose racks and shelves are clothes, shoes,
bags and socks made with love. Each
brand, it seems, has its own
​story to tell.

So I had some fun.

Light or dark Ethletic Fair Trade Vegan Sustainable Trainers?

Funky Kalakar 
Breathable and light
"BreLite Collection" shoes
whose soles come from recycled
tires and uppers are handspun cotton.
They truly are the lightest shoes
ever - - only 250 grams!
A perfect travel 
companion.

I ended
up with dark, cute,
comfy and filled with love.
They make me feel like I'm flying.
Maybe that's why The Third
Estate has a bird on
its window.

So I guess
shoes really are a
thing for me. Comfortable
feet matter but so does my actual
footprint. I think it's cool
when I can care
​for both.