It was just on the other side of the fence in the pasture next to my studio.  A long thick owl pellet.  The stuff an owl regurgitates after eating.  Pieces of  broken bones and fur.

It was big, the size of a rat I thought as I poked though it looking at the tiny pieces of bone.

I found the pellet on Friday and on Saturday saw the owl.  It was in the morning and although I didn’t have my glasses on so couldn’t see clearly, I could see the large bird in maple next to my studio.

Could be a hawk I thought, but the chest was wide and the overall shape more compact.

Then it flew in that soundless gliding way an owl does.  It landed in the stand of trees across the road.  After that I lost sight of it.

I’m not sure what kind of owl it is, but it had a white belly and was white under its wings, so it could be a Barn Owl.  That would make sense with all the pigeons and the invasion of rats we’ve had at the farm.

It may be here to stay for a while, or perhaps it’s just here to hunt.  It seems to like the maple outside my studio though.  I’ll have to keep an eye out for it.

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Zip was curled up on the old Victorian chair in the barn when we got home today.

He was so still, at first I thought there was something wrong with him.  But it turned out he was just sleeping.  I know sleeps, I’ve just never seen him doing it before.

It would have been a good picture, but it was so unexpected I didn’t even think of it.  Anyway it didn’t last long.  All I had to do was get a little closer and Zip was off the chair and wrapping himself around Jon’s  legs.

Maybe it was the rain that made him fall asleep up on the chair in the barn.  I doubt he’d want to slog though the mud in the barnyard to get to the marsh and do some hunting today.

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I didn’t know much about Step Dance, except that it’s an African American Dance that is popular in schools.  But when I saw there was going to be a performance by Maxine Lyle called Step Show  at MASS MoCA, (in conjunction with Jacob’s Pillow) I got tickets.

Although we’ve been visiting the museum for years, Jon and I had never seen a performance there.  When we saw this one was at 8pm we only hesitated for a moment.   There isn’t a lot to do after 8pm where we live, even the restaurants close around or before then.  And this time of year, it’s hard to leave the cozy farmhouse in the cold and dark.

But we also needed something different.  A break in our routine.

The only professional dance I’ve ever seen has been ballet.  And until I started Bellydancing  myself, six and a half years ago, I never thought much about watching dance.

But now I’m hungry for it.

Instead of driving home over an hour on the dark back roads between North Adams MA and the farm, Jon and I decided to stay overnight.  Its off season so it wasn’t hard to get an inexpensive room.

I love a cheap motel room as long as it’s clean and the sheets and blankets are new.  I’d guess the  Motel we stayed at  dates back to the 1940s or 50s.  The room was freshly painted, and cozy with  a sparkling new shower and the perfect amount of space for an overnight stay.  Rocky, the owner, called to confirm when we’d be there so he could make sure the room was nice and warm for our arrival.  He also  recommended an excellent Korean restaurant right across the road.

Maxine Lyle has been working on Step Show for 20 years and it’s not finished yet.   It has changed over the years, and is still evolving.  What we saw was its progress up to this point.

In Step Dance the whole body is used as an instrument while dancing.  There’s slapping and stomping and voice both talking and singing. Lyle’s  Step Show tells the story of the African American dance that she traced back to the 1920s.  Her story takes place in 1946 when, she said, the road was being laid for the Civil Rights movement.

The dancing was non stop for two hours.

There was a drummer along with the music made by the dancers on their own bodies and in conjunction with the stage.  The energy was infectious and the dancing expressive and exhilarating.  The singing, which was mostly done while dancing, was beautiful and often powerful.

There were many positive message in the story, but what stood out to me most was the idea of endurance.   Which was not only a part of the narrative of legacy in the African American community, but also in the physicality of the dancers themselves.

Learning to dance has definitely made me appreciate watching dance more.

I get tired after a fifteen minute set where I’m not even exerting myself the whole time.  And before I took Bellydancing lessons, I just had this expectation that dancers would be good at what they did without an appreciation for what goes into making it look good.

Now that I understand even just some of the ways my body can move, and am aware of muscles in my body that I’d never felt before, I am more sensitive to how difficult it is to do what a good dancer can make look easy.

Seeing Step Show made me want to see more live dance.

I wish I could find a video from Step Show to share with you, so you could see even a bit of  what we did.  But I haven’t been able to find one.

However there are many videos of Elementary and High School students in Step completions.  Below is an example of one.

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I got a little behind in my Blue Bailing Twine.  It’s been cold the past few days and I didn’t have it in  me to knot the two pieces of bailing twine on the gate post.  But today I had two more for my piece and it was in the forties.

So I was back at it, tying all four stands together and even adding a “bead” of wool from either one of the twins to it.  I can see tying more pieces of the farm in the bailing twine.  Those things that pop up out of the ground, like rusty nails or bits of worn plastic or glass.

My Blue Bailing Twine is every evolving.

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I caught Zip going into the hen house this morning.  He disappeared inside quickly, but when I called to him, he slowly emerged, taking his time.

Then he hung out in the doorway, scratching his ears on the door…

…as if he belonged there as much as the hens.

I still have some “Zip In The Hen House” Magnets for sale in my Etsy Shop.  You can see them and buy them here. 

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“What is your name?” I asked as I tied the knots on the back of the quilt I made for Linda to give to her daughter.

But the silence was too much so I pulled up Selected Shorts on my iPhone and listened to two stories by Willa Cather.  The second story “A Wagner Matinee” was about a man whose Aunt comes to visit him after leaving Boston where she was a musician, to homestead with her husband in the midwest.

She is very old when she comes back to Boston to visit her nephew and he brings her to a Wagner concert, where she gets to hear music, other than a church chorus, for the first time since she was young.

“Soon after the tenor began the “Prize Song,” I heard a quick drawn breath and turned to my aunt. Her eyes were closed, but the tears were glistening on her cheeks, and I think, in a moment more, they were in my eyes as well. It never really died, then– the soul that can suffer so excruciatingly and so interminably; it withers to the outward eye only; like that strange moss which can lie on a dusty shelf half a century and yet, if placed in water, grows green again.”  From “A Wagner Matinee” by Willa Cather

I thought of my own life when I heard this passage about how the withering soul can be replenished by the nourishing  sustenance.  How my own soul hadn’t died, from neglect, it just became very small until I found Jon and he helped open me up to my creative self.

He was the water to my half century dusty moss.

The name for the quilt didn’t come till I hung it on the line to take a picture.  Outside in the back yard, I could get much more distance (literally) from the quilt than in my studio. And when I stood back and looked, really saw the quilt, the name popped into my head.

Secret Garden.

In the quilt I see a formal walled garden. A secret garden,like in the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett. But also the garden inside of ourselves that needs to be nourished.  The part that for some of us is so precious, we keep it hidden out of fear that if we let the world see it, it might be destroyed.

The garden in my quilt is formal and walled, but it also ripples out.  “A series of doors within doors hovering in an in-between space, beckoning to come and explore” as Lori wrote in a message to me.

It took me years to learn that my soul might survive if I kept it  hidden, but it couldn’t thrive.

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I love the expression on Kim’s face in this photo.  As if, while the rest of the sheep grovel in the hay,  she’s above it all.

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There is always time for a photo.  On the way home I pulled the car over so Jon could take a picture.  He and I have been doing this for years together.

Daylight was already fading by the time we got home.  Jon came with me to feed the animals.  It was cold with light snow, but it felt good to be outside.  So I looked for chores to do and found them.  I cleaned out the chicken coop, filled up the bird feeder and, with Jon’s help, brought two loads of wood into the farmhouse.

Zip hung around Jon and when he was done taking pictures, they sat on the chair under the apple tree for a while.

I went for a short walk on the road with Fate and Zinnia who seemed to need it as much as I did. Somehow the day was unusually draining.

No work in my studio today.  I will finish tacking Linda’s quilt tomorrow.

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Jon and I spent most of the day going from one appointment to another.  There was enough time in the waiting rooms for me to do a few drawings.  And enough time between appointments to get a yummy lunch.

Today I used up the small hand-made paper book that Jon got me years ago.  It always felt so precious to me, I didn’t want to use it.  So, a month or so ago, I asked Jon to draw a line though each page and that freed me up to make my own marks (he missed the last page, but I didn’t need it by then).

The pages are about 3″x4″ and there aren’t a lot of them.  When I use a pencil it smudges (ghost drawings) and when I use marker, the ink shows though on the other side of the paper.

Instead of skipping the page with the ink showing through, I decided to use it.  So it has a bit of  “ghost” to it too.

I think that long line of chairs speaks best to the idea of waiting than any of the “waiting” drawings I’ve done so far.

I might expand on that idea when I start my next “Waiting For Jon” sketch pad.

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Now that we’re feeding the animals hay, Fanny and Lulu have gone back to taking over one feeder while the sheep eat at another.

They don’t save the most tasty part of the hay for last. Lulu pushes the hay to one end of the feeder or out of it completely then the two eat up all the seeds that fall to the bottom.  When they are done they move on to the long stems.

And if one of the sheep try to eat from their feeder, Lulu’s head goes down with ears back and she pushes them away.

Sometimes they come back and eat at the opposite end from the donkeys.  Asher,  Issachar and Constance are most likely to try more than once.  And they often get some mouthfuls in before Lulu chases them away again.

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This weekend Jon and I went to see what my friend Emily Gold was selling at The Left Bank Gallery in North Bennington Vermont.

Emily texted me photos of the earring she was making a few weeks ago.   I couldn’t get the colors of the pair with pink, red and gold out of my mind.

Jon was good enough to buy me the earrings and I got him one of Emily’s paper mache birds to hang in his office.

Now Emily has her art for sale on her website, so you don’t have to go to Vermont to get it.

She has some collage kits, paper mache mushroom ornaments, ( I got one of those too) earring and… well… you can see it all and buy it on her website Paper, Cake, Scissors.   Just click here.

Now I’m off to Bellydancing class.  Emily will be there too, (we met in class over six years ago) and I’m going to wear my new earrings.

We also got a couple of Emily’s tea towels.  If the design on it looks familiar, it may be because I stole the idea from her when we made the potato print wool scarves at The Mansion.

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Merricat is well camouflaged between the winter grass and snow.  She blends right in.

There was little grazing for the animals this morning while the snow still lay on the ground.  But the sheep found something to nibble on.

I’ve closed off the north and south pastures for the winter.   If the sheep and donkeys  eat the grass down too low it won’t grow back as well in the spring.

But the back pasture is so big and filled with a wide variety of grasses and wildflowers, they don’t seem to ever make a dent in it.  The sheep and donkeys get little nutrition from grazing this time of year, but it is still how they prefer to spend much of their time.

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I don’t have a name for it yet, but it will come.  I got the backing for my quilt for Linda sewn together and started tacking it.  I used one piece of black fabric sewn together with red roses on it for the backing.  (I’ll take a picture of it tomorrow.)

I’m using Bedlam Farm wool to tack it.  It’s a skein that Fate got into a couple of years ago so I couldn’t sell.  She didn’t do much damage, only unraveled it a bit.   It’s a bluish gray and I’ve found the color works well for the past few quilts I’ve made.

Fate came in from outside and stood under the quilt, while I was working, trying to get my attention no doubt.

And she did.

She also got a treat for “staying” while I took her picture.  Looks like she’s winking at me as if she knew what she was doing all along.

I did add a thin brown border around the edges of the quilt.  Just the finishing touch it needed.

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Snowflakes were drifting around the farm long before I got up this morning.

While I fed the animals it seemed a snowfall, later, while I worked in my studio they were more like seeds on the wind. Spare and singular they floated on invisible air currants, shy compared to the downy woodpecker at the feeder.

All day it snowed in varying amounts,  yet there are only  odd speckled shapes on the ground, where the sun couldn’t reach, to show for it.  And, I suppose, the mud it left when it melted.

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First it was a half inch Poly Nose on the dining room table.  Then I found one of those seeds that grab on and don’t let go on my sewing machine.

I don’t know where all these small seeds came from.  But I felt like they were visiting me from the woods.

It’s what they made me think of, walking in the woods. I could have used a walk in the woods today.  I was struggling with the kind of self-doubt that I haven’t felt in a long time.  And walking in the woods is always grounding to me.

I though of walking on the road since it’s hunting season, but then I got caught up in finishing my quilt.  Anyway, it isn’t the same.

But in a way, the woods came to me.

In our dining room and then in my studio.  And when I went to put a log in the fire this evening, I saw the tiny squiggle of orange, like a flower,  growing on the branch that fell last year from our Paper Birch.

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I’ve never had this happen before.  I finished designing the second quilt for Linda today, but when I was done I saw that it went in a different direction than I had intended.

I had the colors in mind that I would be using, I had a photo of a needlepoint with those colors in it from Linda.  But in the end, the quilt became what it wanted to.

I see now that there was no way around it really.  The more I pushed it in on direction, the more it pushed back.

What a struggle this quilt has been. I woke up  at 5:30 this morning and couldn’t stop thinking about it.  So I got out of bed and went to my studio.   I think being there that early was helpful.  It allowed me to focus in a way I hadn’t been able to for some reason.

When I finished the quilt and hung it on my studio wall to get a good look, I felt good about it.   It’s a simple design that allows the inconsistencies to shine.

I wasn’t sure if it would would work for Linda’s purposes, but she let me know that she loves the quilt and it will be just right for her daughter who she is giving it to.

The only thing I may do is add a thin border around it.  I’m out of the brown calico, but I think a brown would be just right.

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I just didn’t work.  I stood in my studio, looking the quilt  I started last week for Linda, trying to see what came next.

But I couldn’t see anything.  And every thing I tried was wrong.

Sometimes when I’m writing and having a hard time putting into words what I’m trying to say, I’ll edit the piece often cutting out the first few paragraphs.  Or I’ll just delete the whole thing and start over.

It doesn’t mean I didn’t need to write what I did, just that it doesn’t need to be in the piece.  Jon calls it the wind-up before the pitch.

I feel like that’s what happened with this quilt.  So today, I removed the border I made last week and keeping just the center with the thin black line, started again.

The colors I’m working with come from a Needlepoint that Linda gave to her daughter.  Brown birds, light blue, soft reddish pink and yellow flowers in a sea of green.

It didn’t start to come easy till the end of the day.

This is where I left it tonight, but I think I know what comes next too.  Although I may feel different about it in the morning.  But that’s okay, I’m finally on my way.

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We’ve been walking on the road and not in the woods during Hunting Season.  But no matter where we walk, Zinnia finds water.

Today it was a puddle on the side of the road.

Zinnia is a joyful dog, but splashing though puddles makes her even happier.

If dogs smile, then I believe that is what Zinnia was doing as she left the puddle to join me and Fate for the rest of our walk.

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