My husband's aunt and uncle have llamas out in Utah, as I've mentioned. They are fascinating, beautiful, funny creatures. Most of their llamas are excellent packers, and a real treat on hikes.
I think most folks could easily develop an obsession with scratching those long, elegant necks. Watching them gambol once they're released into the pasture on the other side of the creek is one of the sweetest things I've seen.
If I go out of my way to do anything, it's to travel with and to see friends, particularly if it means we'll be together away from television and computers and work and all of those things that get in the way of people really looking each other in the eye and hearing each other speak.
A few weeks ago I was at John the Farrier's with my tribe, celebrating Beltaine and welcoming home one of our members who had been far too far away in far too dangerous a place for a year.
Before that I was in Chicago, dancing and listening to tunes with friends who I can normally only reach over wires.
Last weekend, I was with some of my favorite women in the world on the Potomac Delta, watching Osprey hunt, and singing, and laughing hysterically for hours on end.
In a few days, Scott and I are flying to Utah to see his family, their dogs, and the llamas-in-law.
In all cases, I stay away from screens and electronics as much as I can. I always chastise myself for
forgetting to take pictures, or treating photography and journaling as homework or chores when I'm on these trips. But in the moment, a lens on a gadget, or a pen and a book just seem like they distance me from the people I'm trying to be with. So I could post a photo I don't think captures what I'm trying to say to you, but I won't. I'll try to remember to take just the right photo out west, and if I get close I'll paste it in later. If I don't, you'll have to settle for my words this time.
In the meantime, I'll be scrambling to set up a couple of gigs with Tethera and our annual group trip to Celtic summer camp, while simultaneously trying to dig out from the remodel and maybe paint a couple of walls in my sleep. The next time I complain about being too busy, please remind me that the busy spells precede and follow journeys, and that it's all for the best.
I've been studying Ireland in particular and the Celtic world in general--from Paleolithic to Present--for almost as long as I remember. I'm sure I've dedicated more hours to my subject than the average medical or law student has to theirs. And yet I can't really explain why. I'm often asked to. There aren't many people immersed in the sort of cultural studies I undertake, particularly when said studies pay less than a penny on the hour, all told, and when they've been misrepresented and cheated so often by American pop culture. To many people, Ireland is no more than green beer and fake accents in bad commercials. They put it on like a bad Halloween costume, and discard it again as carelessly.
There are the answers I give people at cocktail parties--I fell in love with the mythology, and then the music, and then the literature and language and history and archeology, and haven't looked back since. Which is all true, but far from the whole truth.
When I'm being honest--which I think most of us are trying to at least play at with our blogs--I say that studying Ireland, at least at first, felt like some sort of replacement for the side of the family that abandoned us. I can't have and really don't want a relationship with my actual father. But I want some connection to that missing half of my family, and I guess it feels safer to build a bridge to a long dead ancestor than to an aunt or uncle who just never bothered to try to hold on. Some strange sense of pride or betrayal made my paternal grandfather try to take our name from my brother and me when my Mom left my father, and I've clung tightly to that surname and some birthright I thought it entailed. Later, that grandfather tried to reconnect with us once he realized how destructive his eldest son was and how right my Mother was to leave him, for us. But theirs will never be my family reunions. I see my name attached to some genetic relative now and again--all of the people in the US with my name are direct relatives--and just once had the chance to talk to a distant cousin who had no knowledge of my personal family's sundering. It was strange and exciting, and it happened because my name was in a program at a Celtic Festival where I was performing.
And then, studying Celtic cultures is something I can share with my step-father, he who regularly insists that I picked the wrong country to focus on. He is the child of a Scottish immigrant, and he introduced us to the festival scene that ended up entangling me so fully. We picked different eras to study, and my obsession with music isn't something he can truly share, but bridies and bagpipes would be glue enough to connect us as friends even without our shared love for our family.
On some level, I've always felt like a traitor for focusing so much of my energy on the culture I wasn't exposed to by my Mother's family, whom I have always known and loved as my own and only. Why isn't "I" for Italy in my mind? Why didn't German culture appeal? It don't think the stain of WWII stopped me from focusing more on either, because my Mom's family was all here at the beginning of the 20th century and railed against the the modern countries that wrought that horrifying war. Maybe it's a Jungian response--a desperate grab at some collective unconscious I've been sequestered from. I do worry sometimes that I'll outgrow it, and then feel a fool when someone asks me what my MA is in . . . many many people already react to my resume as if it says "BA in artsy-fartsy with a side of teaching, MA in cliches and boredom." But no--my obsession carries on.
Because, whyever and however I fell for Eireann, I fell hard, and my love abides. The tunes and language and literature feel like home as they rattle around in my skull. The history--even after all these years of study--enthralls me, and appalls me, and sends me from worried insomnia to ecstatic reverie as I study it. I own it. I need it. I lived there, and swam in those waters, and ate food from Ireland's soil, and hope to do so again and again. I toy with the idea of seeking dual citizenship, despite the fact that doing so would bar me from a fairly large percentage of the jobs that are available to me here in my current home.
In short, Is leor don dreoilín a nead, agus Níl aon sceal eile orm.
I say house, because it doesn't ever really feel like home when you're in the midst of a remodel. We bought our house in 2000, not long after we got engaged and decided that buying a house was far more important than throwing a wedding right away. It's a 1,500 square foot Cape Cod-ish (no fireplace = not really a Cape Cod) house, built in 1970. The 1970 really showed, so we knew all along that this was a fixer upper. We started working on the kitchen a year or two after we bought the place, and it took forever because we did most of the work with the help of family and without much professional help. This time around, we decided to hire some good friends to replace most of the floors and give the downstairs bath a major face lift while Scott and I handle simple stuff like repainting most of the rooms and shuffling our stuff from room to room so the guys can work. Scheduling, of course, is tough.
I'll skip the before photos--the old carpets were beige and nasty. The old bathroom had an odd pink tub and 1"x1" pink and white glittery tiles, but the glitter had tarnished, and there were some obvious problems with the wall behind the shower tiles and tub. I had put a pretty cool mosaic on the old bathroom counter , but then the sink got a bad crack in it during a party, and there was no way to replace the sink without destroying the counter. That's when I started lobbying really loudly to gut the bathroom.
I came home from Chicago a couple of weeks ago to find that our friends and contractors Mike and Ben had started demo on the bath. Now, we're down to the finish work. That tile on the floor is fantastic. I love it like I love cake. The pictures do not do it justice. Scott and I still have some touch-up painting to do in there, and we need to add the blinds and towel bars and all those touches.
With the bathroom close to completion, the guys moved on to the rest of the floors. We're installing bamboo floors in all but the bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry. I am absolutely enamored of the bamboo.
And it looks great with our kitchen floor, even before the transition piece is in.
Now we have a lot of a paint colors to choose, and a lot of stuff to move from room to room to room as the work progresses. It's hard work, and I may have just broken a toe in a tragic run-in with a step stool. Kayo and the cats disapprove of all of the work, of course. Kayo expressed his disapproval on Thursday by running away, in fact, so we're making cookies for the charming woman who took care of him until she could get in touch with us.
So, back to working on our house.
G is for gardening.
I come from a long line of people who like to play in the dirt. I feel like I never get enough time in the garden, between my crazy commute and my copious hobbies. But when I do get down into the mud, I love it.
I love blooms, and berries, and herbs, and vegetables as much as any gardener does. But I plant and tend for the love the growth itself, and of transition. Watching a favorite perennial emerge from the soil is a gift every single time. Or finding a sport that traveled from a neighbor's garden or across the yard.
I love taking part in this annual bargain with my plants--I offer them shelter and care, and they return year in and year out, breaking through the soil to fill whatever niche in our landscape. I've had this Cranesbill since I was 18, and have moved transplant after transplant from one home to another since I first planted it.
I love the
decline and the deliquesce as well--gathering the fallen leaves and composting them, and harvesting compost wriggling with earthworms. I'm a dyed in the wool tree-hugging, dirt-worshiper.
F is for felt.
I've been making felt for several years now, using a couple of different methods. I was first attracted to it for historical reasons, of course--felt was probably the first fabric we humans made, and that warms my Luddite soul to the core. But as I've worked with it, I've fallen in love with the way felting affects the color of the wool, and with the strength and water-resistance of good felt. One of my favorite knitting bags is my Constant Companion, which is both pretty and bullet-proof--a rare combination.
Felting is also one of those forms of frugality that appeals to my recycling, reusing, and reducing heart. This bag I'm working on is made up of felted scraps from ruined sweaters. I chopped up a few cigarette-singed beauties I found in thrift stores, but the rest of the felt for this project came from some sweaters Scott and I loved a bit too much. I started collecting supplies for this a couple of years ago, felting commercial sweaters that wore through at the elbows. My stash of felt was too drab, so I just wasn't excited to start piecing. Then a couple of weeks ago I went through my mending basket and realized there was no good way to fix a few of my favorites, which are in colors I love of course. The purple one in the lower corner was theoretically superwash, so I put it in gentle cycle, and it came out unwearable. Sigh. The other three--including the spring green Cashmere at the top left--had irreparable holes. All four felted like mad once I tossed them in a hot wash--see the kitchen shears for a sense of scale.
I chopped the sweaters into 3" and 2"x3" blocks, and started piecing them to a thin twill foundation, also made up of scrap fabric. Each face of the bag has a green nine-patch in the center, and the sides and a bottom are more randomly pieced. 
More than half of the felt tiles are affixed. I'm trying to pick the right lining fabric and plot inside pockets and possible closures. The greens and blues are much brighter than they seem here, so there is some great contrast playing on the bag.
If that's a confusing image, from left to right, it's a side, front above the bottom, side, and then back you're seeing there, with a big seam allowance for the top hem.
I'll have plenty left to make at least one more bag this size once this is done. And then maybe crazy-patched felt when only the small scraps remain. Ahhh, felt.
Embroidery was my first craft, as I explained a few years ago in a book about fiber arts. I feel I give it short shrift these days, using it now and again to adorn something else I'm flirting with, but rarely working steadily on a project for more than a day or two, and even more rarely finishing anything other than a little flourish on another project.
My lack of drawing skills holds me back. Once I have a design, I can embroider it or carve it into leather. But I can't get what's in my head down on to paper--there's a gaping hole in my process, and I have to rely on friends to bridge that gap. I can't explain the disconnect, but it's there and it's one of the only things that I really regret about being who I am. If there were only a pill I could
take . . .
I also run into a stylistic problem with a lot of embroidery. Some of the stuff I'm best at stitching isn't actually to my taste. I own very little of my own work for that reason. The Jacobean crewel piece above is a prime example. For the first time ever, I bought a kit to see if I could still work my needles as I had as a kid. I can. And once I finish, what will I do with it? Like so much of what I make, I'll give it to someone and hope they appreciate the work that went into. And I'll worry that they don't.
Another stalled project? Perhaps one of the most ludicrous things I've started. I will finish it eventually, I guess, but it will take a long time. It's a crazy quilt with an entire queen sized flat sheet for the foundation. All of the fabrics are scraps left over from clothing I've made for friends. And the bigger designs were all drawn for me by friends. I've been working on it on and off for about 15 years. It's a riot of colors. It's too much. It's too big to work on comfortably. It forces me to abandon so many of my natural sensibilities about art and craft. 
A lot of the other embroidery I've done is utilitarian, in a sense. Pieces on garments, stitched heavily--lending an almost tapestry-like effect--so that they last through hard work and washing. This piece was on a dress for years. Eventually I'll attach it to something new. I've actually made it twice. The first time, I needed something to work on while I was studying in the UK one summer in college. I finished it on the flight back, and learned upon landing that a good friend of the family had given birth to twin girls--one a brunette and one a red head. I stitched that first version into a pillow and presented it off to their mother.
I've gone searching for more inspiration for embroidery recently, and I think I've found some good stuff. We'll see if my will can overcome my whims.
D is for daffodil
I'm cheating a bit--these photos are from last year's garden. I've been waiting for this year's to bloom, but they're just not going to be ready in time.
I love daffodils because I love Wales, and mythology, and spring. It is that simple.
These plain old big yellow daffodils are iconic, and lovely, and necessary. I've been naturalizing them for years, often in other people's land. Some people paint graffiti on things--I plant flowers and saplings about the neighborhood as a very Civil form of disobedience.
I've become increasingly enamored with cultivars like these over the last few years. It started as a need to just extend daffodil season a bit, and now I'm unabashedly flirting with accepting those pale petals for their own beauty.
C is for Contra dance, and Clogging--two long-standing passions of mine (and two things that are downright tough to photograph).
I haven't talked about either enough here on the blog, because I've been dealing with a few chronic injuries over the last several years, and it's been keeping me off the dance floor more than I would like. But I should talk about dance. When someone asks me about myself, "folk dancer" is one of the first descriptors I blurt out. I dance in my dreams. I was in a clogging troupe in college, and it changed so much about my life I barely have words to describe it. Teaching other people to dance is an avocation for me--so many of the dance forms I love can only be transmitted from dancer to dancer over years of interaction, and I hate to think any of the steps would fall out of the communal repertoire So when I got the go-ahead from my physical therapist, I checked out the Glen Echo dance schedule so I could start getting back on the floor and also take some photos for you crazy kids.
And that's when I saw that my friend Morna was in town from Montana to call the Friday night dance, with the open band as her musicians. Talk about serendipity.
The dance community at Glen Echo has been hoofing for decades, hosting two weekly contras and scads of other social dances year-round. I started dancing there when I was 16 or 17--I can't count the number of hours of fun I've had, or the steps and dances I've learned, or the fantastic bands and callers I've heard.
And as if getting to dance while one of my good friends is calling wasn't good enough, Brooke and the kids were there too, as were my friends Joni and Adrian, and several other dancers I haven't seen in far too long.
When I Contra dance, I clog. When I first started hitting percussive licks on the floor of the Spanish Ballroom, I can't say it was generally well-received. Back in the day, clogging was seen as anathema to the soft, whooshing sound of feet gliding over the dance floor during a contra. I was too loud for many of the dancers--my feet were loud, and my hair was unnaturally bright, and my clothes were just plain too strange. Times have changed. Lots of folks clog during the contras these days, and some guys wear skirts, and I no longer look like the punk rocker I still am at heart.
(Morna took pictures of my feet, and I took pictures of hers--it's like yarn-porn, but with worn old dancing shoes)
In the spirit of me dancing more, and teaching other folks to clog (while also reducing allergens and improving the resale value of our house) we're gearing up to remove all of the carpeting in our house and replace it with 1,400 square feet of bamboo. Hot dog, I can't wait. Come for lessons, friends. You just have to know how to walk and how to count to eight.
