Hopeful Homemaker

20 in 20: May-July Report

August 4, 2020 jennifer Quilting and Sewing

Well, the world has sure changed in the past several months, and my 20 in 20 project has evolved along with it. When I posted my last report in April , finding time to sew was a struggle. Who could have predicted all this? With so much social unrest in the US at the end of May, I decided not to post my monthly report. (And then I may have accidentally abandoned posting at all for a while!) Gratefully, however, I’ve kept with my resolution to sew for at least 20 minutes every day in 2020 .

My 20 in 20 quilt is now more than half sewn, with rows for almost seven full months attached. It’s colorful and happy and I’m SO GLAD I decided to make a quilt to track progress.

Sewing has continued to be a wrestle for me; either I can’t settle on what to sew when I have time, or inspiration strikes and I can’t get to my machine. Family demands have shifted and I’m still adjusting. Gratefully I can usually do some hand sewing, and frequently it’s an applique project that allows me to get 20 minutes in.

I settled on a solution for marking days. Writing the event/memory in pencil, then stitching over it with two strands of black embroidery floss is working well. The highs and lows are now marked for me to remember. It’s becoming more of a journal, but it feels appropriate.

It’s been months since we’ve had a reliable schedule at our house. So many things changing all the time leaves me with little time for sewing. But as I suspected, 20 minutes does add up. It also seems to be enough to keep me from dropping the habit entirely. I’m excited to see how August goes, and what sort of schedule we come up with as school starts again. It should be interesting!

Keep sewing!

Jennifer

Hello Again

August 3, 2020 jennifer Musings on Life and Beauty

Hi there. It’s been a while. 2020 has turned out to be quite the year, and from all appearances at this point it’s going to stay strange. I didn’t mean to take such a long break from blogging; one minute I was taking photos of my newest quilt top in April, and the next I was turning the calendar to August. But here I am, and hopefully you will stop by at some point. So, hello again! How are you?

I feel different. And the different has changed forms several times over the past 5 months. Our family has experienced our own, individualized, version of the pandemic along with everyone else. It’s been stressful, heartbreaking, freeing, beautiful, and ugly all at once. Sometimes I feel lost; other times I feel found. I have loved extra time with my family and grieved for things we’ve lost.

Sometime in late March I was working in the yard when I spied this daffodil laying face down in the flowerbed. I straightened its bent stem to look at the flower. And it took my breath away! Its slightly wilted, yet still exquisite beauty was both a gift and a mirror: a gift of hope and a mirror of the resilience we’re all working to maintain. We may be wilted, and we may be rising up from having our faces down in the dirt, but we are beautiful. Beautiful, valuable faces we can still turn to the sun.

However the year ends, I hope I’m coming out of it more gentle, more compassionate, a better listener. I want to see people for who they really are, hear their stories, spread kindness. I want to be part of the solution – on an individual level.

So… wherever you are in your journey, face up or face down, thriving or struggling or anything in between, know that you matter. You are beautiful, talented, valuable and creative. I end today with wise words I’ve shared before:

“Being creative will help you enjoy life. It engenders a spirit of gratitude. It develops latent talent, sharpens your capacity to reason, to act, and to find purpose in life. It dispels loneliness and heartache. It gives a renewal, a spark of enthusiasm, and zest for life.” – Richard G. Scott

Here’s to gratitude, to renewal, to enthusiasm and zest for life! Hello again!

It’s good to be back.
-Jennifer

My Cherry Tree

April 28, 2020 jennifer Musings on Life and Beauty

My cherry tree should be covered in white blossoms right now. It tried. But when the first blossoms were on the cusp of opening, they all froze overnight. So now my tree looks more brown than white.

I have a stack of finished quilts I was saving to photograph in front of my favorite tree. Today the light was right for just a minute so I went out to do my best. And naturally, in the ten minutes I was out there, it was cloudy, windy, rainy, sunny, rain through sunshine, and about ten seconds of just right.

I took a walk around my tree, noticing all the details. As I did, I thought, “This tree looks like life in 2020”. Beautiful blossoms destroyed overnight, like all our plans were cancelled in a couple of announcements. Where there should be white and beauty and thriving, so much is brown. Usually my tree is literally humming with bees – but today there were none. Like my hopes and dreams for the next few months. Others sleeping, hopefully to wake again.

Here’s what I noticed, though. I didn’t see or hear the bees, but as I walked in circles around the tree I heard birds singing. And as inspected the faded brown blossoms, I also saw a few fresh white ones peeking out in spite of everything. I saw new growth, leaves beginning to form. And way up high there was a branch or two that is mostly white, and as I admired them I also noticed blue sky above them. In spite of clouds, rain, wind, we still had blue sky up above.

At some point, and hopefully soon, we will emerge from this crisis. When we do, I hope we will all be tenderly cradling a new dream or two in spite of everything that dried up. When we do, I hope we will be able to notice the blue sky above and the birds singing in the distance. Even if we miss the industrious buzzing of hundreds of bees, and the glorious show of everything blooming at once as we’d planned, I hope we will have eyes to see the opportunity before us. And the courage to engage and try again no matter what we lost. Just like my cherry tree.