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Cozy and Comfy

| Betsy

bobbinneedlepoint

I took this photo of Bobbin the other week and to me it pretty much embodies what, to me, is essential for “home,” a furry one and some handmade items. Every time I see her curled up with this pillow it reminds me how much I love my grandmother, who made it. As she gets older she likes to give away her things, and once when I was visiting her at her retirement home, she tucked this under my arm without warning and said, “I want you to have this.”

Store-bought pillows just don’t hold the same resonance, depth, and warmth. As lovers of things handmade, I think we are lucky to appreciate the work that goes into them, as they hold traces not just of the hands that made them, but of the people themselves.

Constructive Constructs.

| Betsy

It’s strange how certain images (and not others) imprint themselves on your brain. Lately, two images have been on my mind, two images that I discovered during a postmodern art course in either 1997 or 1998.

I guess you could say that without realizing it, these two images encapsulate two of the most important constructs to me: home and identity. Is home a person, a place, a feeling? Is there an X that marks the spot or does it move throughout time with you? Is identity fluid or static?

I’m not sure I really know the answer, except that I think both of them are real, and examples of the ways we try to reconcile the external with the internal.

Rachel Whiteread’s “House” and Ana Mendieta’s Silueta series are both creative works that exist for a moment, for a few photographs, but ultimately and in time (and respectively) are destroyed or returned to the earth.

I think the reason I’ve been conjuring them lately has as much to do with “home” and “identity,” as it has to do with our definition of “life” itself. Like the works above, we’re not here forever. Our lives are spent trying to create “home” and “identity” only to have them ultimately vanish. And it’s this delicacy and intricacy of trying to glean and grow and learn as much as we can from both of them, like life, that leaves them fragile and fresh and poignant.

It’s funny how images you read about in class over a decade ago still manage to pop up without warning. And it’s amazing how our denotations remain the same, and our connotations evolve, shift and expand over time. One forever staying constant and the other staying true, but in permanent evolution.

leaves, knitting awesomeness and the marshall tucker band.

| Betsy

Above you will see a photo from the November issue of Ode magazine, which I took in the bookstore, while it was on the shelf with people looking at me weird. You can read the review online right here. Thank you Ode! Thanks also to my friend Jeff for taking this photo of me on his front porch one afternoon in Durham!


Today is one of those days when it’s lovely and perfect to sit outside drinking tea with your feet up and no shoes on, even if your neighbor insists on listening to The Marshall Tucker Band* really loud and leaves keep falling on your keyboard and in your tea. I secretly wish it was like this outside everyday.

In knitting news, I found the most amazing article about how knitting can change lives today! It’s the story of my new favorite knitter, Tonks (aka Jessi Rose), and how knitting both saved and changed her life.

After battling mental health issues for years, Tonks saw a way out as she planned to commit suicide one night after the mandatory group therapy class at the halfway house where she was living. What she didn’t plan, however, was to learn how to knit during the class. As she watched the slow and steady progress of the instructor’s work and picked up the needles herself, she began to see how she could slowly rebuild her life bit by bit, just as the scarf progressed row by row. That was 7 years ago.

She is now preparing for her full knitted wedding vow renewal ceremony in 2010. You can follow her progress on this project on her blog! Go Tonks! Her story is one of hope and persistence and love and creativity that makes my heart smile.


*“In My Own Way” seems to his favorite, generally closely followed by his second favorite, Can’t You See.