It could all have been so beautiful

Let's start with a recap of where things currently stand. I’m still in San Francisco. Pooch and I are no longer together as of April, although at this moment we are still living together. I have an awesome one eyed cat called Charlotte.

I work for Shopify. I’m still quilting, sewing, knitting, creating and generally making things that look different to how they did before I got involved with the base materials.

After a period of having completely lost my mojo creatively, I’m generally expressing myself artistically in whatever way I feel like in the moment. I suspect it is displacement activity since one thing that hasn't improved since I started this blog is my ability to express and feel my feels. In fact I'd say that it's got a lot worse. The six years I've spent here living with Pooch have not been easy, and the last year in particular had been especially hard. I'm no angel, but when I let my eye drift back over the vista of those years I can see that I've been manipulated and used. Of course, I brought some of it on myself by marrying him again after the first divorce. The fact that I don't feel particularly angry or upset about this split is what I'm currently working on with my therapist, and what I'm trying to express creatively. I was thinking about this earlier and the phrase I've used as the title of this entry is what kept going around in my head.

I signed up for Joe Cunningham's quilt classes when he moved online, and one thing he said in the first class has really stuck with me.

"If I want to communicate with you I'll give you a call. My Art is what I want to express."

So not only am I trying to express myself by feeling my own emotions, but also by expressing myself in a more abstract form.

The class was about interpreting a classic block (in this case an unnamed one of HST flowers in a vase) using Joe's techniques. This is what I ended up with.

I quilted it as if the "vase" had been shot and was in the act of shattering into shards. I don't like it but I am really pleased with it and have had it hanging up in the bedroom ever since. I finished, quilted, faced and labelled it all in one weekend which was extremely satisfying. His next class is in a few weeks and is about his use of bias tape which promises to be intriguing.

I've been knitting scrappy socks as a mindless exercise to keep my hands occupied. I'm onto my fourth pair, having not knitted any for a few years, and they are starting to pall. I did break out and make this yesterday, using two pieces of english paper piecing I'd had in a drawer for years. 

1" and 1/3" hexagons. I inset the smaller ones using the 6 minute circle method which is amazingly effective, although definitely not 6 minutes for me. This is the May block for the SF Quilters Guild "lone robin" since with Covid we're not able to meet and exchange blocks. The prompt was to use a circle. The June prompt is to add flying geese although my first attempt was aborted this morning. I have a back up plan but the first looked too crazy even for me. I do like this start, using up orphan blocks and elements left over from old experiments or projects. The Guild's online meetings are currently free and July will be a trunk show of rare and historic quilts on July 21st. More details are online.

The next step in the dissolution of my marriage is to find a new place to live. I have one option with an awesome friend but there would be a clash of cats. I'd love to find a 1 bedroom apartment of my own and am open to anywhere in the SF/Oakland/Berkeley area as long as it's got some sort of public transport. My dream, and what could have been so beautiful, was to have a little house with a garden. I thought we were there last Autumn until I got played on that too. That was really the end of the beginning of the end and made it a definite thing. So for now I'd settle for a tree just outside so Charlotte can watch the birds from the windowsill.