Ever since I got the sewing bug while I was pregnant with Brenna and in my last days of art school I’ve thought it would be fun to design fabric.  Then I became a quilter, discovered designers like Amy Butler and Anna Maria Horner (who also has 6 kids) and have thought over and over, “I could do that….. if I could just figure out how to do that.”

Well, I decided this is the year that I will learn to be a fabric designer.  I got myself some books

which have helped me immensely.  I learn by reading.  If I can read about how to do something in a book, then I can do it, but reading directions on the computer, experimenting by trial and error– they just don’t do it for me.  Kim Kight’s Field Guide to Fabric Design is fantastic.  All the tutorials for digital design are for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, but since those aren’t quite in the budget I’m having to translate things into GIMP and Inkscape, which are free.  I also got a vector drawing app for my iPad call iDraw and a stylus so I can draw right on my iPad.  It’s like a glorified sketchbook, though I have been using my real sketchbook a lot too.

And then there’s Spoonflower.  I’ve known about it since it first started in 2008 or 2009 and signed up as soon as it wasn’t just by invitation only, but have never figured out how to make designs until now.  And look!

My first test swatches came in the mail!!!  My designs are printed on real fabric!!!

Anyone remember the story I told about Ian coming downstairs one morning and telling me, “Mom, we’re going to get a girl baby and her name is going to be Eva and she is going to be zero and she will have a pink shirt that is a dress”?  Well, he further described that pink shirt that is a dress as having blue butterflies on it and a skirt that is blue with pink butterflies.  I’ve been on the look out for pink shirts with blue butterflies, pink fabric with blue butterflies, blue fabric with pink butterflies.  None.  I guess I’ll have to make some.

And I can!!  How fun is that?

It makes me smile to walk down to the back of my yard in the evenings and hear my cat bird friend sing his heart out. One day he even sat on the fence, looked me in the eye, and told me everything he knew. I could hardly bring myself to breathe.

It has been beautiful beyond description outside. It has been dry by Ohio standards, but the lack of humidity makes the air so fresh I just want to lie in the grass and breathe it in through every pore. My kids are dirty from head to toe. My trees are well climbed, the sandbox well dug.

Thank you summer.

(I am having frustrations with our new scanner. With our ancient one, my drawings scanned in exactly as they were. This new one is fuzzy, the color’s off… Oh well.)

I caught Logan playing Leap-Pad, so he held still enough for me to draw his head. I need to keep practicing so that I can capture the posture of their little bodies as they play…

I’m totally loving Amanda’s sketchbook drawings of the little girl growing in her tummy, and as I sit here typing with the laptop in my lap it is jumping all over the place because of the little legs and arms in mine.

I am officially huge now. I got a babysitter for the afternoon so that I could run errands unhindered by out-of-the-womb children. I went three places. At each of them someone asked me when I’m due, accompanied with something like “It looks like it could be any minute!” I do make a very conscious effort not to waddle. Brenna even knows about it and when she is with me out in public will drop back behind me every so often to analyze my walk. She usually has very encouraging things to say–that I’m walking perfectly normal. I wonder if her coaching would have helped thwart comments today?

Probably not.

Oh, and for the record, I’m not due ’til March.

And the only way I can draw my kids is if they’re watching TV.

I’m very out of practice with figure drawing, but I decided I needed to branch out a little and try. This small scale works pretty well for me. I need a lot more practice though.

Thinking is hard work-in fact the very hardest that human beings are ever called upon to do. It is fatiguing, not refreshing. If allowed to follow the path of least resistance, no one would ever think.
Mortimer Adler

But, it is in thinking that we find meaning in the mundane repetitive tasks of life. I’ve been volunteering at an 1880s living history farm. It’s quiet and peaceful–and it’s hard work. You have to keep the fire going if you want to cook something. You have to go get eggs from the chickens or analyze the pantry contents before making a meal. You treadle the sewing machine pedal up and down over and over and over to piece a quilt or mend a shirt. And you have to think about what you’re doing while you’re doing it. The slowing down is time consuming, but for me it seems to create such a connection to the act of living.

There are so many things that we simply take for granted. We live in such ease that we can go without thinking. A lot of the time our lives are governed by expediency and just going through the motions.

But, by thinking about the what and why of even the smallest things, we can create so much more meaning in our lives. We can conciously choose and create our circumstances if we stop to think and ponder and meditate…

My discussion group was wonderful and empowering and inspirational. I am so excited to be embarking on this adventure and building real friendships and to be spending time with women talking about positive things. And thinking together.

That’s pretty cool.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

I really firmly believe that every single person ever born has a mission, a purpose for which they were created, something they alone can do.

And I think God gives us hints and glimpses of our unique and individual missions through our passions, dreams, and abilities. We have to listen for them. We have to be looking. We have to find our center and quiet place…

It is often hurdling the distractions that is hardest. There is so much that is blaring loudly telling you what to think, how to look, what to eat, how to be, what to watch…

I’m preparing for the first meeting of a book group I’m starting with a purpose of helping us each create a meaningful family culture that lays a solid foundation of truth, fosters a love of learning, and gives us tools we need to fulfill our own unique missions in life and help our children find and fulfill theirs.

I just gave a few articles out with the invitation for this first discussion. Want to join in? Here’s the first one. The second is here, but I don’t know if just anyone can get to it because it is in the member section of the Art of Womanhood site. (You can register free of charge and have access to the article if you really want.)

I’ve felt like I needed to start this group for a while, but the time just wasn’t ever right. I was released from my big church responsibilities, so that frees up a lot of time (Now I get to play the piano for the choir!). All that was left was overcoming my self conciousness that everyone would just think I’m wierd, and working up the courage to just do it. “If you build it, they will come.” People have been coming out of the wood work asking to be a part.

I know teaching and discussing my thoughts with women is part of my mission. I’m passionate about that. I’ve jumped one hurdle.

How about you?

Over the next few days I’ll post the little drawings that I’ve neglected to post for soooo long. I’m no where near the three per week that I was shooting for, but I do have some.

And now I’m at a loss for words.

Well, I’m getting excited for our baby to come. I always wonder how people have lots of kids. I think I’d like 6 or 8, but being pregnant that many times? YIKES! I certainly don’t feel like this is the last little person that needs to come to our family, but my hips and sciatic nerve sure would like to be done with all these streching, shifting invasions of alien beings. And my ankles would like to come back home too.

Oh, and it’s going to be a boy. I don’t think I’ve said that here yet. Brenna is destined to be just like me. I am the oldest of 5 with 4 younger brothers. In a lot of ways relating to women still feels like speaking a foreign language. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a sister? Oh I want Brenna to have one someday…

Just three this week.

But, that was my goal. Two weeks down, 50 more to go.

I’ve spent the past 2 weeks preparing of a funeral for a woman at church. Echo Pryor Arnesen left behind a husband, 6 children, and 19 grandchildren. She was one of those people you just can’t forget once you meet her. She was exhuberant and always had something to say. It was actually pretty hard to keep her from saying anything There were a few times during Sunday meetings that I would cringe as she recounted stories of dreams she had and how the Lord directed her to get a child out of bed because its head was wrapped in covers…I can’t think of any more right off the top of my head, but most Sundays there was something. The stories were true though. She had a simple faith and not only believed in miracles, but expected them.

In the room where the family set up the viewing were tables of pictures and scrap books. She was a wonderful record keeper. She kept a journal for each of her 6 children from the time they were born and continued to add to them after they left home. What a treasure. She was unforgettable by virture of her personality, but her love and commitment to her family ensures that she will never be forgotten.

I don’t love my children any less than Echo loved hers, but will they remember that when I’m gone? I’m just so deeply impressed by her committment and dilligence to write so personally for each of them.

Maybe I should take a page from her book…

I’ve been inspired by Lisa’s posts of her daily drawings, and so I thought I’d take a stab at it this school year. I adhere to the educational philosophy of “it’s you, not them.” My real responsibility is for my own education–and in order to teach my kids that they, in turn, bear the responsibility for their own educations I need to be learning and making during school time. So, here’s week one of drawings. Here in writing I’m only requiring myself to do 3 a week, but this week I have 5. You know, it’s new and the motivation is high

They’re all small, about 6″x6″ give or take, on scraps of printmaking paper using watercolors and a regular old #2 pencil.

My other mom school work is working on the Womanhood Course in a new organization called The Art of Womanhood.

My friend April is updating her little bunny knitting pattern book and I just got done with a few illustrations for it.

Fun, huh? I love April’s knit bunnies. And, I miss April. She moved far, far away…