( s e c r e t • l e n t i l )

Managing my brain’s energy is a full time job – but I do try to fit a bit of sewing into my days too – you know, so I can pay my bills. Every once in a while I pull these disparate goals together and do some work that keeps all neurons tidy and focused … at least for a time.

Such is the case, currently, with knee-length skirts. I’m in love with making them. Each one has its own rhythm and shape that wants to emerge – the design unfolds nicely before me as I cut – a problem emerges and I solve it, an idea wants to come through and I sew this way and that, stitching those panels back together and yes – there is the idea, expressed with economy, like a tidy E.B. White paragraph. I wish it was always this way, this murky art ~ craft ~ brain ~ life work that I do.

In honor of riding the current energy stream I’m doing some custom skirts for people. Well, they’re sort of custom-ish – here are the details. I get to pick the colors, so I don’t know who will be adventurous enough to let me play/work for them. My plan is to make these for a short time, until the curiosity is gone and the mojo fades and I feel like skirts are stupid and I should never make one again! Which could be any day now. So if you want one, take the leap.

Things I keep in case I need them some day: old heavy iron, styrofoam heads.

I’m not calling them resolutions, but I did tear a large unruly sheet of kraft paper off my roll and spread it out on the table to do some sprawling, rambling dreaming about the coming year.  Anything that physically resembles a kindergarten craft project is a great way to get my brain focused. I’m taping tabs of paper with subjects or thoughts written on them, then moving them around, unsticking and sticking them, and just trying to think through all the things I’m holding in my head about my frendly little Secret Lentil empire.

It’s an awesome thing to build something from nothing, but then even more of – well I guess – more of a responsibility to nourish and grow it.

Some of the ideas are banal, things that slip through the cracks because, well, because I’m sewing everything I sell by hand, one at a time, and I’m trying to stay alive!  Like gift certificates.  Hello Helen, why don’t you sell those online?

Others are more big and dreamy, like: I want to write a book. I have a folder on my computer that already has an outline and notes I’ve scrawled from time to time. Yes, I’d like to make that happen. I would publish it myself, heck I may even build each one out of kraft paper and packing tape.

But mostly I’m trying to figure out how to embrace every day, keep my work enjoyable, and stay on a path I respect. Go ahead and laugh, I’m laughing.  Oh! That’s it, I’ll just embrace every day! Like I’ve never tried that before.  But really, I think I’m getting there. The truth is that I’m getting used to worrying about starving, not paying my bills, never retiring, and the fear that suddenly, all on the same day of course, everyone on earth will decide they don’t like my work. Those fears get boring after a while. That’s right, I said it, they bore me.

I just watched a documentary about David Lynch and I’m smitten with the way he works – on movies but also on painting, on ceramics, on tinkering around with just about anything. He just states plainly that you really need to enjoy doing the work itself. And that if you don’t enjoy it “you should do something else.” Okay. That sounds good.

Also, I want to learn how to say “Hello” the same way he answers the phone. Hel-LO!

my hands, changing blades on the industrial serger

I’m used to chopping things up – it’s what I do for a living – but even for me it’s been a big weekend.

In real life I replaced the blades on my industrial serger for the first time. I had already sharpened the old ones (Was that breaking the rules? Well, it worked) so I sort of had an idea how to take things apart in there.

In the gelatinous semi-real world of the internet, ahhhh, that’s where things got messy. I transferred my website to a new host, pretty much deciphered how to update it, started a website overhaul, and almost have my bevy of email addresses sorted back out. Almost.

I also set up a Secret Lentil page on facebook, so if you’re already all facebooky you can become a fan. And, hint hint, you can suggest it to your friends.

Oh, and I set up the blog you are reading right now, which is now part of my website proper. I’m leaving the old blog out there like a carcass on the rocks – I hope that’s the compassionate thing to do.

Speaking of death – and oh yes, there’s a smooth transition – that’s really where all this change started, with a recent family death. After all the tumult and drama and big big sadness it was hard to just sit back down and sew. It made more sense to tear some things apart and build better things in their place, to poke death in the snoot one more time before getting back to normal, back to the calm churning rhythm of my sewing machine that connects everything to everything else:  fabric to fabric, death to life, and ultimately, me to you.