The Pandemic Blanket Series

The Pandemic Blanket Series


After the nine eleven attacks that rocked and shocked the world, I did a series of blankets: security blankets, medicine blankets, and love blankets. It has been many years since I made a blanket, but during the Covid isolation period, I found myself once again, interested in blankets. As we all quarantined and cocooned, I begin to crave the soft enfolding comfort of the gentle and warm hand woven wool blanket.

This year I have been in love with the Shetland breed of sheep. If you have seen one Shetland sheep, one fleece, as they say, well, you have seen one Shetland! The Shetland is an primitive breed, small in size, and big in personality. They are very pet like. They apparently came in more colors and patterns than any other breed. 

As with many primitive breeds, they are not suited to factory use because of the lack of uniformity, and this is one of the reasons they are particularly endearing to me. Some have a double coat, with a soft downy undercoat, as well as the stronger guard hairs; others have a single coat. 


There is a wide variety of types of fur on the different parts of the fleece as well, with some soft or coarse, and some long or short, plus color variations. The color will even transform from one season to another. All, on a single sheep!


 I spin one amazing fleece in which you can clearly see the lamb was born dark blue gray, but then turned white: the first inch next to skin was dark, then changes abruptly to white! At shearing time, this one would have appeared dark on the outside, but was white under that! I learn that this is the trait from which the original tweeds were made.

Some roo: the coat comes off all by itself in the spring, either it falls off in pieces, or all at once with a little brushing or combing. This makes a very soft yarn, as there are no cut edges on the hairs. 




So, as the shows and fairs begin to be cancelled due to the pandemic, I begin to look to online sources for raw fleeces to spin. First I call a Shetland sheep farmer I know in my own neighborhood.  I visit her farm and buy five beautiful Shetland fleeces. Each one is so unique. I am intrigued. Most spin right off the locks, with no need to card it first. The fleeces of a Shetland tend to be small, often, only a pound or two. It is usually not very heavy with lanolin, though.




I also find some heritage Shetland fleeces in the land where my ancestry DNA test reveals some of my ancestors are from. Packages arrive by mail from Northern Europe. So exciting!


It turns out that due to importation restrictions, Shetland sheep can’t just trot onto a plane or boat and move into a farm in the US. Breeders must go to Europe get some semen from a Shetland, and then back breed, for several generations, to the Shetland, by successive mixing with some other breed off sheep that are already here. This fact has led to some interesting diversity that has been introduced to the Shetland name here in the States. It is no wonder they are considered pretty much a different breed from the European strains. 

So as I buy online, I find a very wide variety of traits in the fleeces. Some are curly, some are straight, some very soft, others not so much. My favorite ones lately have been ones that have little ringlets so tight you could curl one around a toothpick. I spin these in a way that keeps the ringlets and features them.


The yarn I spin is loose and fluffy; “woolen” style. I weave squares on a CinDWood potholder style loom; diagonal pattern, not square. The results are loose and fluffy. 

Soon I have piles and heaps of squares. The blankets require many, many squares, depending on the size of the squares. I join the larger squares together by pulling the side loops together into one another. This method requires no extra yarn, but does add a little bit of warping, as the squares tighten at the join. 
I join the smaller squares by actually sewing them together with external matching yarn, using a figure 8 shaped stitch.

I dye over both the dark and light fleece colors. The colors I dye over white are bright and pure. Some of these, I dye lightly, to produce pastel colors. With the naturally dark fleeces, of course, the colors come out in darker shades, and with less dye, the duller shades.

Next it is time for my color compositions. This is the really fun part. Every creative production is, as they say, ninetynine percent perspiration, and one percent inspiration. This would be the inspiration part. 

The first six blankets are monochromatic. Controlling the color is tough. I am so tempted to add more colors, to go full rainbow, even! But I hold my fire. Between the many shades and pure colors and pastels, plus the whites, grays and blacks, there is plenty enough diversity to work with.




But finally, on blanket seven, I can’t hold back any longer:







Phases of Covid Social Reorientation

Phases of Covid Social Reorientation

Covid has put us all, and the whole world’s social landscape through transformational change. 

In the beginning, it was a call to arms. All can help; in the effort to save us all. Stop everything, for a little while, so we can flatten the curve of exponential transmission, in that moment when we know very little about the virus, and have no known medicines, treatments, tests, or vaccinations for it. 

It is a phase of pulling inward, stopping our regular habits and patterns, even spending time alone. A moment of being alone. Together. 

Even the overworked medical heroes isolate behind their wall of protective gear.

Getting to know ourselves, going within, feeling who we really are. A real pattern-interrupt.

Many of us notice, during this phase, our possession of the shared wealth of abundant resources and systems that permit such a complete halt of business as usual. It is a teachable moment and an object lesson that, if we can change so suddenly, we can also change other things suddenly too, such a carbon pollution causing global climate catastrophe.

Next comes the phase in which people begin to form pods, little isolated groups of relative safety, from which members cannot venture out without involving the others in the pod in their business. It is, perhaps, a rudimentary recapitulation of the early stages of civilization, from the cave to the small tribal band.

We begin to discover new ways to work, new ways to get food and supplies. New ways to meet.

When supplies get ramped up and become available, the mask appears. 

All the while, social media is playing in the background, as we all think these things through together. 

The mask becomes an item of fashion, but also now, it is starting to be a sign of social separation and signaling. 

The mask is a new wall of separation, both physical and symbolic. Isolation compounded by viral, often untrue gossip, sometimes outright disinformation, enhanced by strengthened tribal impulses, gives rise to contentions, suspicions, even hostility. That feeling of we are all in this together dissolves. 

The next phase reaches a peak of this separation and social fragmentation as the vaccines roll out. So much fear and suspicion swirl around, especially in the amplified environment of the social media, that two distinct sides form.  

When a family member dies, people get emotional. Death stalks around, cultivating fear-obscured thinking.

The Rationals can see that if we all would just use the tools we have, those that are obviously scientifically sound, we can stop the pandemic and all will benefit. 

How can anyone endanger us all by going around unvaccinated? Put on a mask, or you are saying you don’t care about others. You could kill someone without even meaning to. How selfish!

But the Sovereigns are not on board. Trust is shaken. You wonder what is true. The Sovereigns suspect a plot to take away their freedom, their choice, their body autonomy.

Covid theater arises. The science is constantly changing. The Rationals wear their masks as a badge just to set an example for others, even at times and places when a mask is not really needed. The Sovereigns hold mask burnings; flouting the latest Covid transmission data by accusing the scientists of changing their story, thus proving that they can’t be trusted, even though it is the very nature of scientific information to shift as more is known and shared, and it is the nature of viruses to mutate.

But truly, both sides are actually pro social at heart. The Rationals simply know what is right for the best outcome for us all. The Sovereigns’ highest value is belonging to their tribe and adhering to its beliefs, even if it kills them. The Rationals are arrogant; the Sovereigns are paranoid. Both feel the pressure to conform to the position of their side. This phase can be likened to a Cold War, in which the sides retreat into their camps and armor up in defense of their respective positions. The tribes became nations, nations polarized into two opposing ends with irreconcilable differences .

The phase we are in now has all of these hardened positions beginning to soften and become fragmented. The Rationals know now that the vaccines have limitations. If they are paying attention, they will also know that big pharma has manipulated the pandemic for its own profit and in many cases at the expense of many people’s lives as they suppressed the efficacy of treatments and and safe medicines that were cheap and available “off label” in order to develop expensive alternatives that were patentable. They also realize, if they are being honest with themselves, that some people do just fine skipping vaccinations and treating or even preventing infection naturally and with wholistic methods. 

The Sovereigns have been outrun by the virus, and have, in many cases, suffered the personal consequences of mindless adherence to group beliefs. Even the young, healthy ones who have had a mild or even an aysymtomatic case of Covid know someone who was not so lucky.

Both sides have been traumatized by the fight. The Sovereigns have been hit with accusations of selfishness and uncaring, leading to the great humiliation of being shunned. The Rationals have been crushed to find out what these people in their lives on the other side really think; how they could behave so foolishly and disappointingly.

Now we do have many more tools with which to mend covid ravaged bodies. We have more knowledge, diagnostic tests, treatments, and better vaccination techniques than in the earlier phases. But we still do not have enough information and knowledge about which individuals may be personally vulnerable, and who is not really in danger. Nor do we know which direction the virus will mutate next. So it is not over. But it is slowly diminishing, like a season changing.

In the current phase, an uneasy truce is slowly giving way to reconciliation. The world is shaken. The civilization of the world is awakening into a new phase. People everywhere are craving so called normal. We will not go back to how we were before; for we are now, Experienced. Are we wiser?

Socially I have noticed one unifying and healing trend common to all: we now value the ability to be together in social community in our many favorite forms. Burned by the schism, we are also trying to reach out and mend the rift caused by the fight.

I had hoped in the beginning that the shared experience of the pandemic would open minds and increase cooperation and compassion. But fear has a way of contracting minds, and shrinking the capacity for care and rational thinking. Sadly, many are simply going back to the old ways of living, ignoring the innovations and realizations gifted to us by the crisis. Like pigging out on comfort food after a trauma, it is understandable, if not healthy. Some countries and tribes have gone right back to the old wars and rivalries, taking up right where they left off.

After living for so long down in the cellar of our fight or flight brain, higher thinking and reason have taken a hit and are in retreat. Confusion is thriving, exacerbated by deep fakes and other internet accelerants.

Fear is the opposite of love. The heart will need time to recover from this long phase of contraction. 

But I hope we stay awake and remember what we learned: we like playing with our friends, we are all in this together, everyone deserves compassion, and change, even dramatic overnight change, is possible. IF we want it.

Another Goodbye

Another Goodbye

Today I say goodbye to a large collection of my art. Again.

Ever since the great smoky weeks of 2020, I have worried about the large collection of my artwork that I keep at home. Here in the rainforest, it does not rain much anymore. The trees get thirsty and dry. Each year, the fire season lasts longer. I live in a fuel loaded forest that is no longer burned every other year to reduce the underbrush as was once the case, when the native people managed the land. Of course there were no houses then either. The people were nomadic and visited here on a rotation schedule.

These days the doom looms. No underbrush clearing, combines with global climate catastrophe, a so far twenty year long mega drought of the kind last seen a thousand years ago, and the tension is palpable here on windy hot days.

I think through the scenarios. I realize that I would be OK with losing a house, with all of its replaceable furnishings, but I would not want to lose the years and years of art.  

Hence, the yearly goodbyes. I pack it up in plastic and stash it at a storage rental place. But now it occurs to me, what if fire comes to the storage place?! There is only one storage rental in town that is not in the flood plane. There would be a flood, you see, if the BIG ONE happens. WHEN it happens. We could get a great quake here at any time, magnitude nine. There are eleven old dams, in need of repair, positioned above town, which is situated in the flood plane. So I have chosen a storage rental up in the forested, fuel loaded hills. Hmmm.

So today, I say another good bye to the art, the work of decades. This work into which I have poured energy, love, thought, care, time and money. It is a poignant, terrible feeling. 

I’m just practicing though. Why couldn’t I say goodbye to it before, by selling or giving it to the people who might love it too? Maybe because I love it more?

Do I love it too much? What kind of love is this anyway, to keep your beloved work wrapped up in the dark, in plastic bags, and shut up in a locked tin building?!

Someday too soon, the art will just be a pile of dust anyway, along with my body and those of everyone I have ever known. 

So each year, I practice this letting go, this saying goodbye. You never know when it is the last goodbye.

Who Owns This?

Who Owns This?

“Whoever thinks an idea can be copyrighted has already forgotten its source”

I mean, the founders of our country had a good intention when they established copyright laws and patents so creators could benefit from their work. But the legal thicket that has grown up around those concepts is now blocking and stifling creativity. And the protection goes on way too long in time. Also, the sense of ownership and entitlement of individual and corporate creators has grown totally out of proportion.

Culture is a group effort, not a business.

Let’s pare down the issue, for the sake of simplicity, and pretend for a moment, we are a culture with only an oral tradition. As soon as one teller speaks the story, it belongs to the whole tribe. The whole tribe then keeps the story alive. The story teller does not own the story. The hearers now own it.

All art, all music, all literature stands on the shoulders of the previous creator’s work. Without the progenitors, the later work has no context, so no meaning. It is a conversation in the medium of time. A conversation is worthless without a back and forth interaction. Otherwise you are just whistling into the wind, as we might say. Or the tree that falls in the forest that no one hears.

Speaking of these stories and aphorisms, indeed speaking of language, and of speaking, itself, this is, by definition, a shared creation. Ongoing. Where is the meaning or use of a language that is not shared with other speakers? Who first came up with this or that theme, this or that saying? After a while, it is simply a part of all of us. That is its power, and its value.

How about if I were to claim ownership of a letter in the alphabet? Every time you speak a word with my letter, or write it, you have to pay me royalties. Laughable? We can all buy letters, if we have enough money, lawyers, and power, I say. But soon, no one would allowed to write or talk! That is why I now own the whole alphabet. And every work of humans on Earth. And the sun. All of it is mine, but it is not all mine. It is yours too. Each cultural creation is a statement, nested in the context of all that has gone before it, back to the ancestors of the ancestors of the ancestors.

There is an awesome natural food store in Eugene named Sundance. Once upon a time, the legal team of the film festival that also goes by that name, approached the store demanding they drop the name Sundance because they claimed they “owned” it! As it happens, the store had been in business longer than the film festival had been in existence, so the greedy lawyers were thwarted. But the question remained, why did a group that takes its name from a sacred dance of Native Americans think they could buy such a so called property in the first place? The sun dance itself was created as a kind of painful magical self sacrifice ritual designed to make the invading Europeans go away, so, that’s rather ironic! But wait! We all live under the same sun. It is The Sun, the only daystar of the planet. Do not all of us descend from ancestors who danced under the same sun?!

Wait, but…who am I to think this? Best question yet! When inspiration and new ideas flow out of the heads and hands of us creatives, where does it come from? Is not the “original” idea, work of art, etc, what is sought and praised? Other work being dismissed as “derivative”? News flash: It is ALL derivative, folks! It is a natural unfolding and blooming created by the conditions and ripeness of the moment. It is true what they say: that there are no new ideas, just different ways to say them. You update them to the style of the times, to the changing language of the day.

There is also the well known phenomenon of several unacquainted scientists or artists coming up with the same inspiration at once. Why? Again, there is a ripening effect. A shared atmospheric meme space. These discoveries don’t just appear, they have context, and a long development stage preceding them.

It is only the egotism of immature individuals that wants to separate out the part from the whole. It is the child who picks off the flower head without even the stem to hold it up in a vase. The fruit that drops from the tree of culture or science into your hand is only the latest edition. It comes from the All. And the Forever.

You do not exclusively own the thing you made. And you surely did not make yourself. We are all connected, to a whole that goes back so far no one can remember, and is so big, no one can conceive of its enormity. So let’s loosen our boundaries, share, and build a cultural space for each other, with each other.

“Whoever thinks an idea can be copyrighted has already forgotten its source”- (doesn’t matter, right?)

A Colorist’s House

A Colorist’s House

Playing House with Colors

I love to play house. I just can’t believe it sometimes! I am all grown up and can set up a house the way I want to? 

It seems unreal somehow. And it is. In the sense of the Real things, the truly important things, it IS just play acting. For, by my definition, Real Things last forever. So these supposedly real, grown up things, are just toys and games to my artist brain, which is quite childlike. In a way, I am designing a kind of stage set for the theater of life.

So but here I am, fixing up an old house in just the way I would like! It is of course practical, but also, whimsical. It is aspirational, even symbolic, and with an activist dimension. It is the kind of thing you might expect when an artist plays house.

It is the colors you will notice first when you walk in. The stairs and hallway leading up to the second story dwelling, and the landing at the top, are white walled, with black trim. A neutral straight passage. But as soon as you get up there, wow, you see colors in the four directions. 

A bedroom on your left is glowing with a warm and inviting pink. I have dyed the curtains pink as well as painting the walls pink. When the outside light comes in, you are bathed in a wonderful pink glow as the light filters through the curtains. Though not a screaming pink, it is not bashful either. This makes me feel roses. And new beginnings. And love, security, coziness and comfort. So, I get some rose prints for the walls. 

The next room is as blue as the pink room is pink. The effect offers a blue light experience with the walls sky blue, illuminated by curtains I have dyed just the right amount of blue to bring in the light, but fill the space with blue sky peace. So I add cloud feature. (Maybe star stickers too, that glow in the dark?)

The bathroom is alive with butterflies. Monarch butterflies on the wall and shower curtains, and the space is trimmed in black and orange. The old, plastic, originally white, shower walls are hopelessly discolored with an orange tinge, so I just decide to go with it. We hang a nontoxic, neon orange shower curtain up, creating an amazing warm glow. Orange is always a friendly light to a naked body.

It turns out that the butterfly peel off sticker wall paper can be cut out to make individual butterflies. My four year old assistant and I watch as the butterflies get loose and  fly off. Soon they begin to appear on walls all around the house. On the tree. On the roses. Up in the sky of the blue room. Many land at four year old eye level.

This old house has some seventy year old sequoia trees nearby, smiling in through the windows, giving the impression, up here on the second floor, that one is in a tree house. So the kitchen is of course, green. Green walls, green curtains, infused with some sunny yellow. This is a veganish, green minded place of food. A kitchen for a plant based cuisine. I paint a tree mural on the wall, in the transition between living room and kitchen. I wonder if it should have fruit on it? Seems appropriate for a passage into the veganish kitchen.

The living room is a delicate lavender with green and white curtains covered with verdant vine patterns. A kind of spiritual neutral, open to the possibilities of the day; designed to contrast with the sequoias outside. There is green in curtains and couch, and this will also be a room where rainbows flourish. A living room is where you live, right? The full spectrum of possibilities.

The ceiling all throughout is newly refreshed, with a coat of white paint, that serves to convey the color and light in each room. It is a slightly warm white that nevertheless cools off in the light of the blue room. The door frames and window frames are also white: they carry the light energy and vibration of sky. 

But the electrical socket covers, and light switch covers, as well as the molding trim encircling all around the house along the wood floor, holds to the Earth, are painted in a warm brown. Grounding. Tree roots.

It is its own little world, this tree spirited house I am playing in.

“You must never stop being whimsical!” -Mary Oliver