Wish Me Luck

I have an appointment tomorrow with the owner of a local store about selling my crafts. I'm so excited!

Culture Cloth

I am really fascinated by textiles. I am amazed by the way people use them and I am astounded by the fact that most people take no notice of something that is a vital part of civilization.
The culture I find most intriguing in regard to cloth is the Middle East. Here are people living in a desert, a barren, dull colored place and they produce the most detailed, most beautiful textiles in the world. And there is a lack of sources for making textiles. In the West are surrounded by plant and animal fibers which can easily be turned into cloth, yet our textiles are primarily functional. But in the hot sand of the Middle East they have rugs, robes, and tents. Some how they make more than enough textiles for shelter. And beauty. If I could do anything I wanted I'd go to the desert and study. I'd photograph the rugs, learn to dye and weave. I'd live in a spacious tent. I'd wear their robes and I'd fill my notebooks with a thousand tiny details. In place where there is nothing everything becomes magnified to great importance.
I think about my jeans and how they fit. I think about my white fluffy towels. I love my sheets that have worn down to perfect soft comfort but don't match anything in my bedroom. I love my purple sheets that do match because I like the way Kevin looks while he's sleeping. He looks stunning on my purple sheets.
I keep journals with magazine pictures taped to so many pages that the book just shut anymore. I cut out clothes I want but are impractical to wear- silk dresses with full skirts and puffy sleeves. I have National Geographic pages of gypsy wagons (another stunning textile culture) and art that I think would make good fabric designs. I have page after page of Celtic knots. I write down my thoughts. I have a graph paper pad of quilt blocks. I draw blocks over and over looking for the best way to put them together. I think about not only efficiency of sewing but also numerology. 12 is a great number for quilting. 12 is 3 and 4, luck and balance. 12 is also 6 and 2- goddess numbers, creation numbers. 3 blocks in 4 rows looks great. 24, twelve twice, is another great number. Not only does it lay out well, but it's a number of abundance.
I think about color. I like to put opposite colors together, red and green, purple and yellow, black and white. Placing a color next to its opposite make it brighter. Sometimes to tone down a quilt I place a color next to a shade or different 'family' member of its opposite- a bright blue and a pink instead of orange. I think about red for health, yellow for happiness, black for protection, purple for magick. I want to shape people's dreams.
I think about the meaning of the quilt blocks themselves. Log cabin is my favorite. A red square at the center symbolizes the hearth fire. A yellow square is the lantern in the window that will lead you back home. I have a red and blue log cabin quilt hanging on my bedroom wall. It's one of the first quilts I ever made. I stitched all the things I want in my home in the blocks. I stitched my dog, hearts for love, a moon for magick, roses for romance. I stitched circles, squares, and spider webs. I traced around my left hand and stitched myself into my work. I sewed on buttons. I pinned Mardi Gras beads to the corner. There's the whole story of me on the wall and I'm the only one who knows what it says.
Go look at your house carefully. Look at the curtains, the sheets, the towels, the table cloths. Open look closet and see what your clothes say about you. You spend your entire life surrounded by fabric. Better make sure you like it.

Aaaarrrggghhhh

Okay, I'm sick of talking about diabetes. And after I finished my last post 5 minutes ago I realized that's about all I talk about now. So I'm going to tell you about sewing.

I've been dying fabric. When I get a nice little stash made I'm going to sell it on esty. I thought about doing the flea market thing again but well, flea markets are nasty. And open air markets, craft fairs, and town sponsored events are about like flea markets. Maybe a little less junky, but not always cleaner.

I've been doing needlepoint. I'm making stars. Beautiful 8 point stars. Currently I'm making one for my friend's birthday. I don't know if my stars would sell or not. When I had an indoor flea market booth I learned that art quilts rarely sold. People are unlikely to buy something that just hangs on the wall. I'm framing my stars, but I wondering if they would better as book covers or the like. Should they have a function or is beauty alone enough? When I finish this star I'll post a picture and then I want people to tell honestly if they'd buy a star.

Whether it sells or not, they are fun to make. I feel like I'm casting spells- I carefully consider what the colors mean. I think about the number of points, the number of stitches in each point, the number of colors. I feel like I'm on the verge of something very important.

Some things I have learned about diabetes

1. Balance is key. I must have exactly the right amount of insulin, carbs, and exercise. Too much/little of any of them and my sugar is out of whack.

2. I cannot afford to be lazy. Diabetes is a 24/7 job that I didn't ask for, don't want, and can't possibly quit.

3. The only one who can manage my condition is me. Doctors and nurses can help, but they tend to treat everyone the same and I am a unique person. I have learned to take their advice with a grain of salt.

4. I can't take more than 6 units of insulin or my sugar drops dramatically. The nurses had me taking too much insulin which resulted in low sugars where I felt like crap on toast. See #3.

5. Constant abnormal blood sugar levels can be damaging to internal organs. This is not something the docs tell you. See number #3.

6. I am a person first and a diabetic second. While my condition has permanently altered my life, I refuse to let it be the sole thing which defines me.

7. While there have been great advances in treatment during the last 20 years, the cause of diabetes is still unknown.

I have to stop right here and tell you a story that illustrates point #7. Brad came up to me at work and said he had to tell me something. His dog is diabetic. THE DOG! I would have thought he was fucking with my head, but Brad doesn't joke and play. He took the dog to the vet b/c she was drinking a lot of water and peeing all the time. Now he has to give her insulin shots twice a day. He's been asking me a lot of questions and apparently diabetes in animals is not all that different from diabetes in humans. The fact that a dog developed the disease makes me think that diabetes is caused by something in the environment. A lot of people think it's hereditary but I don't think it is b/c neither of my parents are diabetics. My grandmother was, but she type 2 and I am type 1 so it seems that we would be the same if it was genetic. Other people think diabetes is more cultural, meaning you cook and live like your family. But I grew up not knowing my family so that doesn't exactly make sense. And I doubt I got the disease from anything I did- prior to the coma I was trying to loose weight. I was eating healthy and exercising. Pretty much the same thing I am doing now, only now my diet is more strict and my workouts are harder. Before it was a 'be nice to loose 10 pounds' type of thing and now it's a 'do or die' thing.

I'd like to end this post on a positive note- to tell you that I have a grand plan for beating diabetes. But I don't. There is currently no cure. Research indicates there could be a cure in as little as 15 years. But unless they find the cause I don't see how the disease could be PREVENTED. So theoretically you could be cured and then be diabetic again in less than a year. All I can do is keep learning.