I am thankful....

Carmen, Clemencia, Cristina, Mom, Alvaro Abuelito, Abuelita

As the snow falls outside my windows I meditate on all that I am thankful for. I return to my favorite place, my memories, and smile, cry, and laugh at each and everyone. I am thankful to have such a wonderful family that loves me and held me and raised me. So many amazing women that each made me who I am today. My mom, who taught me to be strong, persistant, artistic, and caring. My Tia Clemencia gave me discipline, faith, an examplary mother and wife. My tia Cristina taught me to be forgiving, carefree, happy, joyful. My tia Carmen taught me to be myself, straight forward, bold, energetic, pensive. My tia Ma. Claudia, who gave me comfort when I really needed it. My Abuelita, who continues to be the majestic matron of the family, taught me patience, the magical quality of soft spoken words, music, liveliness.

The men in the family are all too important to not thank.

My tio Alvaro, my Abuelito, my tio Gabriel, my tio Juancho have all been my father, my friend. They have given me strength, compassion, and thousands of lessons f life, and how can I forget the uncontrolable laughter that they have all given me. Like when my Tio Gabriel got lost in the Disney parking lot. Or My tio Alvaro's famous "Yes or no Yes." Or Tio Juancho's new variation of the letter "if".

I have no way of thanking them all, except living my life they way they taught me. They are all the reason I smile.
Gracias a todos.

The Sun is gone

The view this morning at 10 am.....

I have not seen the sun in several days. Maybe I would go as far to say over a week. I was afraid of this happening. Since I have lived in Germany, the winter season has always been a difficult season for me. The only two highlights are Christmas, which in this house is a whole month long, And the mister and son's birthday in February. However, the winter does not end nor begin there. So in order to compensate for the lack of color and light, I have been working on the Advent Calender and my son's Christmas stocking, which is almost done, both of them.

 My Son decided it would be fun to see if he could mix the colors together by twirling the advent calender.

And if that weren't enough, I am not forced to finally finish the baby quit I had started over a year ago. It is not an easy task, because I seem to undo and redo and add and it seems to be a never ending process... How I am going to be able to finish it all in a month baffles me.

Tis the season to be busy.

High in the sky, as free as a bird

With the clouds hovering, 

and rain drops falling

I found a man dangling in the sky.

 And as usual I became bored and uneasy. I needed to do something that would bring in the color, and lighten up such a dull day. So we looked around and found by surprise a nice little gift from Oma and Opa. 

There were two big planes, a firetruck, a train, and a colorful cement truck too.

 And as we glued them on his bare closet doors his Christmas stocking stood still. It is almsot done, but still lacking a lot of little half cross stitches in blue.

 Basti gazed up at his new collection of automobiles, and sang them all a little tune. 

This is what happens on a grey dull day, while a man dangles in the sky in the afternoon.

playing around

I have encountered Tumblr and am still not sure what I think of it. I don't know I seem to have entered the winter apathy.....I see things as being all the same just painted in a different light. Hopefully this funk will leave me soon.
How is your day today?

I believe we shall venture outside. There are blue skies today and a high of 46 degrees. I enjoy the cool wind for a while. So maybe a nice walk is in order.

Grey skies, uneasy hands.

As my breath freezes in mid air, my desire for Christmas begins to grow. The smell of pine, the warmth of a fire, hot chocolate steam tickling my nose, and the smiling familiar faces are just a few things that come to mind. With all these delicious thoughts swirling and bubbling I begin to materialize my Advent calender. Two frosty but welcoming eyes gaze back at me as I color in the wrinkles of joy and wisdom.


I remember one Christmas, the same Christmas I play over and over again in my head, when I was about 6 years old. It was the year we all spent Christmas at the Cabin, my grandpa and ma, dad, aunt and uncle, and my three cousins and I. There was laughter, fights, tears, and unity. And my imagination grew when my grandpa played the role of Old St. Nick. He ate the cookies and left a few crumbs. He took my note and left footprints in the snow. He was a good man. A man that I barely knew, but left such a mark. A World War two veteran, a hard working mechanic that loved old cars. My memories of him are his dirty fingernails after working on cars all day, his strong arms, his playful spirit, his cheese eggs, and his love and admiration for my grandma.

How wonderful memories are.

the images of a dream

To dream a dream of paper and pen
a dream with smudges and lines
is a sweet dream for me.

 and at morning break
when my eyes are pierced by the sun rays
the pages remain stacked behind my eyelids
the charcoal remains untouched
and the lines kept straight

 but once the night comes again the artist returns to her stool
she lets the lines dance once again
leaving their mark in this world of hers

creating stillness with movement
creating life without breath
with smudges on her hands
 and with ease of mind.

To dream a dream of paper and pen
a dream with smudges and lines
is a sweet dream for me.

breathe in, breathe out, and release

I feel blocked. I have in a while. Every time I have the urge to create something I sit down, prepare my self, loosen my hands, and then something inside me stops me. I can feel the thought, urge,idea, craving fighting back, pushing it´s self against the wall, but it remains trapped. So I ask why do I block myself from being myself? How can I unblock it? Release it? I used to be a dreamer, running around a vast city imagening games, stories. I wanted to cover the streets with art and magic. I would create without a care. Speak without fear, and now I have lost that part of me. The part of me that promised her 5th grade teacher she would never grow up.

However, I feel it inside, floating around the dull me screaming, begging to be free. I feel troubled, so troubled that I cannot seem to feel comfortable with being my own me and stop being this socially accepted me. This Christine is polite, quiet, friendly, reserved, introvertive, a wall flower. But the real me, the me that comes out when no one is looking,  is one that talks to herself, dances as if she were on a stage, believes in more than 4 dimesions, questions reality, and always wants to retreat to her imaginary world of color, rhythm, and beauty.

As my son drew with passion I wondered how to retrieve my own. It is a long jurney...I only hope that this luster that is burried deep within the dried soil that is my being can still be found.

I begin to dig, and with each mouthful of dirt sorrows and pains and forgotten dreads are unearthed. Is it a journey to self destruction or a voyage to my own Beatrice, the Wooni that has a faint pulse...
With the beasts guiding me we shall see whatelse the earth fosters...

Preparing for winter

Lately I have had the urge to take pencil to paper and prepare for the upcoming winter. I have always loved the frosty season, and have plans to create an advent calender. This the Wooni-ish St. Nicholas. He has a woody feel. I wanted his beard and forehead to appear like wood, a suggestion of age and wisdom.On top I believe there will be a banner saying "Merry Christmas".  But before any of this can start to happen I have to finish Basti's Christmas stocking....which I started while I was pregnant... This year it has to be done.

This little elf, known as Ben is another winter inspiration. I am not sure what I will do with him, but he seems to beg to become softer to the touch.

Even though I have a wonderful little bamboo so that I can draw on the computer, I have a certain aversion to it. There is just something magical about paper, the texture of it underneath my palm, the smudges, the effect of the eraser, and so on.  I have always had an obsessions with textures, like Amelie, I love sinking my hand into barrels or bags of beans, legumes, sand, flour. I could caress stitches for hours, and I always catch myself stroking the cloth whenever it lays before me. I even have dreams of textures. First they start out as rough static textures that make me feel uneasy and slowly they turn into smooth surfaces that sooth me and make me feel that everything is alright.

I wonder what they mean...

History that binds us

 Unaware of my history, I was amazed by what lay hidden within the boxes of my past. Laying in a flattened box was the image of my great grandmother Carmelita. A strong woman who was afraid to suffer the same despair as her mother, who was left penniless with a your Carmelita. Mygreat great grandmother lived with relatives while she sold embroidered tablecloths, nakins, and other fiber goods. Carmelita was taught to never depend on a man to provider her with a life, and even though she married a very well to do Fulgencio Roa, she created her own milk and butter delivery business that gave her financial peace of mind.

I was unaware that such strength was part of me.

So, as my son sat studying his alphabet I wondered, am I as strong as them? I do not feel such strength. I weaken at the sight of doubt, mine pulls on me while other´s pushes me down. I limit myself out of fear that I will be seen as too odd, or even worse a failure. But now with the knowledge of these women, their stories, my persistence to create and release it has grown. I can feel their blood pulsating through my veins. They whisper "sigue, no te dejes" (continue, do not let them bother you).

As my son recalls his infancy with a forgotten pacifier, I revive that driving force within me, that nagging tap on my shoulder to go into the studio and create.

Our wedding gift to our guest. A small painting on glass of Usaquen, done by a very talented Colombian artist.

Who looks behind the mask?

Some doodles, maybe a potential theme or story. The human condition, and the materialization of a thought. What if it became a being? What if it were lonely a looked for a friend? How would it find?

Musical concoction

A heart beats to a rhythm of 2.

My telltale heart

 I have had love on my mind as I was trying to finally learn how to sew a curved seam. It took me forever. But I finally managed.

This colorful heart sang to me a little song on why it shined so brightly.

A heart in love shines a million colors.

Beating to a rythm of its own.

 Without love the heart looses its luster.

Remaining silent and lost in darkness

 It only needs a whisper of love to shine again.

So whisper sweelty

whisper till times end....

One little square. A single sunflower of the many in a field of gold.

a last farewell

a sorrow so deep
a sorrow so wide
I had never meant,
nor intended
for you to feel
oh how I wish I could have just stopped
put a holder on time
turned the switch off
but the flow has reached the broken damn
and my wishes have been swept away
for another more fortunate
a young one with dreaming eyes
and a heart that floats with wings
oh how I wished hard and long
I only wanted for you to live a long and happy life
to watch your hair turn grey
but now my beloved tocaya here you are
inside that box that encases your everything
your breath
your sighs
your laughter
your cries
your thoughts
your dreams
I know you are let down
I know you want to scream and be heard
but all that is left now is silence
all I can hear is your silence that deafens me.
And all I can say is forgive me
forgive me for my absense
forgive me so that I may stop crying
forgive me so that I can release your ghost
forgive me so that all that happiness that I had wished for you
may fall upon me
one day
oh just one day of happiness
for you and me
maybe that day we shall meet
in my dreams
once again
and look through the kitchen window...

a last farewell to my beloved aunt.

In the spirit of spookiness

One of my favorite artist couple The Cart Before the Horse is having a giveaway.So pop on over to see if you can win a wonderful Skeleton of your own.

The truth about the pumpkins.

Completed. Words are not flowing today.

Many thoughts

This clear blue Wednesday I sit down at my displaced kitchen table (now in the living room because of one wall cabinet decided to fall down and shatter all mycrystal into thousands of small slivers. May it was a collective decision. maybe they decided to revolt since they were never in use.) and enjoy a cup of hot coffee as I read through Jude Hill´s blog. For me it has turned into more that just a blog. It is a school, where I am taught to see the world differently, where I am taught how to see clearly, and yesterdays lesson was a beautiful one. It was about shot cotton, but it is so much more than just about cloth. I was about my past and my present and of course my future. It made me think about the little girl that I used to be. How I would play in the little garden that met the woods in Concordville, Pennsylvania. How  would wear shot cotton dresses with a crumpled waist and walk up and down a fallen old tree. How I would wait anxiously every weekend to spend time with my father and how most of those weekends were just a mere extension of his work week.

There were a few weekends that we were a little family, sitting on the big bolder that stood stubbornly in the middle of the creek and ate sandwiches, or watched for deers in the winter. Those warm cozy memories of unity and feeling complete and in the right place are all woven tightly in the shot cotton. But just was the shot cotton, once you ct it you see how easily the different threads start to unwind and unravel.

Now in the present I am once again closely staring atshot cotton and other fabrics as I used to as a child and once again I have a sense of unity, I feel complete and in the right place. However, I am afraid that one tug all could fall apart. It is just paranoia. I am an expert at it. I do have a bit of OCD. Itread softly when things seem to be going right. I try not to get my hopes up fearing that they will just get squished.

So as I put my fears and thoughts aside I continue with my little halloween cloth.

Costume rehersal

The curtains open, 

the wind takes center stage

dancing with the thousand colored leaves

the moon slowly appears 

As the moon floats higher in the night sky
we are greeted by the other characters

a cat with a golden streak, and a pumpkin with reminiscent eyes.
and just like that they leave us, and the curtains close once again.

strange how one can adapt

 

it is strange how i have gotten used to not having a space of my own. I lived for so long in another person's space I got used to collecting my things every day and storing them in bags. It is quite an emotional venture to actually hang things on walls, organize things how you want them and trying to not think about how that will not be the permanent spot. I have to keep on telling myself, " Its ok, these are your walls. you are staying here until You want to leave." It actually feels surreal to have furniture again, and unearth forgotten pictures. 

Those masks on the wall are from our wedding, back in 2007. 

once upon a night so dreary

when fog and mist came up, not mearly

to scare the mighty and take flight

from such a  horrible, monstrous sight

He prayed for his sake to leave such a place

but the image remained like a grooling embrace

what had led him to wandering and snoop around?

especially in such a frightening town

If only he had listened to what the peopled warned

since then all the inhabitants mourned

that dreary night

the end of Mr. Bartholomew White.

The hatching

An old moon, rectangularized by conformity. A cat petrified by time, and a pare of pumpkins waiting to hatch.

Pumpkins

With the changing season I am beginning to get into the holiday season mood. I love it when the weather cools, because of the celebrations Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and ending with Easter.
Therefore I have been trying to create a halloween inspired cloth, however, the pieces do not seem to fit. I cannot find the right way to put them on the cloth. It either seems to empty too crowded or not right....
Thus I go to where I always like to go, back in time for inspiration.
Here are some wonderful examples of vintage halloween postcars, greeting cards, and such.