I'm stitching old remnants of bias tapes onto a linen runner. ^
It's thick work, and I'm grateful for Sarah's recent gift of finger protection.
I don't have any plans for the piece––it's just more shades of white on white––but it looks like it might be another piece of cloth armor. (I'd ended up not liking the metal lath armor I'd started---it was too hard and sharp.)
This afternoon bink, Maura, and Laura are coming over to watch soccer, but this morning I am sewing alone at the coffee shop near where I'm house sitting.
I'm adapting, consciously, to being on my own again lately.
It may be a healthy independence on her part, but I miss her.
A lot of things have ended lately––work, friendship––and my heart is a little sore, and I feel a little lost. Researching garbage is not helping, it's so awful, and I keep wondering if I should keep going. (I haven't signed a contract yet, so I could drop it...)
The other week I came across this line a blogger wrote after a friend and mentor died:
"I will shift this sadness into my courage."
I like that a lot.
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Tales from the Thrift
Anyway, amid the sads, good things have been evolving too. Happy things keep happening at the Thrift Store, for instance.
The other day, a wife and husband came into the store, looking like Patti Smith + Wally Shawn (crane + bunny), asking if we had a rubber rug.
We didn't, but thrift customers are like library patrons:
sometimes you need to decipher what they really need, so I asked them what they wanted it for.
To line their rats' run, the wife told me.
"If they run on wire," she said, "it hurts their feet, and they develop something called bumblefoot."
"Can you wait a minute?" I said, "I'll go check the donations downstairs."
I came back with a yoga mat. "Will this work?"
It would! They were so happy, and so was I:
it was a small but noble deed, saving little animals from sore feet.
