livin' la vida moka

Life has been taking the fast track lately & I feel like I've been holding onto the ragged edge by my fingertips! But, it has all been good, if a bit hectic...

Spring seems to have come & gone, since we've had temps in the mid-90s already! Fold up that fuzzy sweater & pop on that bikini, would ya? The change in season has brought a quick succession of flowers bursting forth as is wont in the desert-- the heady perfume of the waxy blooms of citrus trees; the dark, rich scent of jasmine; the bright scattered spots of color from desert marigolds, mallows, & lupines; and now the cactus & palo verdes are starting to join the floral chorus as mesquites & acacias don their millions of tiny green leaves. Dennis barely had time to get outside to attend to his "yard chores" before the high temps hit! We are hoping this is not the harbinger of a very dry & hot summer.

Spring also brought us... Moka! She is our newest dog, another rescue, born on & rescued from the reservation, adopted as a puppy & then returned to the rescue organization by her first owners. She is about a year old & was very shy & skittish when we first got her, owing to whatever kind of treatment her first owners did or didn't give her. She lived with foster owners Lisa & Kurt for three weeks before we got her & they did wonders to help her become adoptable. The name came with her, although it was originally "Moca" (which I didn't like because it is way too close to a Spanish word for a bodily fluid I am not fond of), then became "Mocha", which I decided to change to "Moka" because she is way too hip for such a common name & she isn't brown! Good thing dogs can't spell. She has now been with us for just over two weeks & has completely made herself at home. She still has some skittishness at times, but she is quickly learning she can trust us & she absolutely loves Roger, who is a bit of a stick in the mud about playing, but who allows her to steal the cushiest bed & fling toys around & on him without much grumbling. All of the old stuffed animal toys have all had very precise sqeakectomies performed on them, Moka is quite the little surgeon. Both dogs love the daily 3 mile walks, are getting in good shape, & have learned to drink from the water bottle when we are walking. Bunnies went out of fashion after Easter, now their latest obsessions are ground squirrel holes & lizards. Needless to say, one must have a tight hold on the leashes or find oneself going for an unplanned flight into the cactus!

I finished pinacate shuffle just in time to get the loom warped up & a header woven for the Hernmarck method workshop I took during Arizona Federation of Weavers & Spinners Fibers Through Time 2008 convention. Here it is while in progress & the cropped shot I took of it for the Tohono Chul exhibit it was woven & accepted for--

Burnham's Two Grey Hills & Native Brown were perfect for the sand!

Dennis also had one of his works accepted into Artful Insects, it will be his first exhibit! He works in watercolor pencil and pen & ink. Here is his Butterfly Magic before framing.

The Fibers Through Time convention was 3 1/2 days of fiber, fiber, fiber & it was held here in Tucson. The first day was registration & tours; I took the AZ Historical Society & Arizona State Museum tours which were fabulous since we were allowed to go "behind the scenes" to see textiles that were not currently on display. At the Historical Society we saw many items of hand stitched clothing from the early 1900s worn by people who were living here then, & at ASM, known for its textile collection, we saw breathtaking pre-Columbian textiles undergoing restoration & exquisitely old Navajo weavings. That evening instead of going to the wine & cheese event I decided to go home, partly because I was very tired & partly because I have learned to trust my premonitions & instincts when they come on strongly... something in Dennis' voice when I called to see how the dogs had done after being left alone during the afternoon was not reassuring when he told me that someone (Moka!) had gotten into my yarns & he wasn't sure what color they were. I arrived home to find that Moka must have had quite the soccer match with not just any yarn, but the special yarn I had just bought & carefully packed for the workshop. I was winding what I could out of the mess for 2 1/2 hours just to get enough to use! It is somewhat humorous now, but wasn't at the time! While I was winding & thinking bad thoughts, Roger made sure he came into the studio & told me he had absolutely nothing to do with it, honest!

The workshop was taught by Diane Wolf, who has studied with Helena Hernmarck, worked as her assistant during convergence, & was encouraged by Hernmarck to teach the class. Here is our workshop space, a shot of my loom with my piece in progress (it's a silver U.S. Navy pitcher, the photo was taken by Diane), & a detail of the weaving. It is a very intriguing & time consuming method, requiring much consideration... I still have most of it left to weave!

I entered 3 of my works into the exhibit that coincided with the convention... I was quite honored to have recuerdos de georgia selected to receive the Juror's Recognition Award For Tapestry.

My friend Janie Hoffman taught the natural dyeing workshop during the convention & after the convention's end, she came to stay for a couple days before heading back to Alpine. We had a field trip day, driving up into the Santa Rita Mountains on a very narrow single lane dirt road that switchbacked up close to the peak of Mt. Hopkins before we reached the security gate for the Whipple Observatory at around 8000' elevation. It was a slow going, sweaty palm drive up with very steep drop offs, most with no guardrails, & spectacular views-- thank goodness the road was very well maintained! The reason for our trek was for Janie to get some photos of the Tumacacori Mountains across the basin from the Santa Ritas for her Sky Islands tapestry that she is working on. She got some great shots & so did I, along with having most of the day to enjoy each other's company, the mountains, & the desert.

Now I am in the midst of preparing for a dye run that is overdue... I also want to get the dyeing done before it gets any hotter! I will be dyeing with 8 dyestuffs, most which I have not tried before & most from my own collecting efforts. The most unusual of them all will be the avocado peels & pits-- these photos were taken immediately after I covered them with boiling water to begin a week long soaking process, wow!

I hope to be able to post the results of the dyeing session before Dennis & I take a mini-trip to spend a couple days in Bisbee to celebrate our 15th anniversary. It will be the first time Roger & Moka will be left with our trusted pet sitters, so we are hoping all goes well so that we will be able to enjoy future trips together occasionally in non-dog venues!

february was a fiber filled frenzy!

I am not sure how the shortest month of the year could have held so much fiber related activity!!! I am still recovering from it all, but in a blissful, not devastated state. I am also very behind on reading my favorite blogs, so I hope to catch up soon on what everyone has been doing! This post will be loooong, so better get at it...

The month started off with the grand opening of the Land, Art, And The Sacred: Three Perspectives exhibit that I have been eagerly anticipating. I do not want to write much about it in my blog because I am working on an article about it for The American Tapestry Alliance's Tapestry Topics newsletter, but I will say it exceeded all of my expectations (which is why I feel driven to write an article about it!)... I was also able to spend time with DY & meet her dear friend Peg while they were in town for the reception, & I got to know Claire a little better, something I've been hoping would happen since meeting her briefly last year. I had the serendipitous pleasure of visiting the exhibit many times during the month, so I was able to really absorb & enjoy it.

In preparation for the beginning tapestry workshop I taught at the end of February, I drove the 2 hours to Bisbee one day to check out their frame looms that would be used in the class... I discovered it was a wise thing to do because they were a bit dusty & in need of a good tightening. I was also able to ferret around in their fiber room to see what was available to weave with. The next day my sister, Susie, arrived for a week long visit. We spent much of the time in the studio, where I put her to work weaving a sampler to improve & expand on the weaving techniques I had taught her last year.

While Susie was here, we, along with my friend Stacey, took an overnight road trip up to northern Arizona, traveling north through the Salt River Canyon route to visit Burnham's Trading Post, where, as the snow started to flurry outside, we indulged in a flurry of yarn buying & gaping at the beautiful Navajo weavings & turquoise jewelry for sale. I found the most beautiful turquoise bracelet I had ever seen & was able to buy it for myself because the price was right, along with purchasing yarns I needed for my next tapestry... my idea of heaven! Stacey & I have quite the love affair with Burnham's since we are devoted to using it in our tapestries & I use their natural white & grey exclusively for my natural dyeing... if we are ever in the neighborhood (oh, say within a 100 miles or so), we always go out of our way to swing by. We can mail order it, but it is just SO wonderful to buy it in person. The skeins that are vegetal dyed by Navajo women come in a rainbow of beautiful, earthy colors. The first time you walk into the yarn room, it widens your eyes & takes your breath away. Thanks, Janie, for turning me on to Burnham's, I am trying to return the favor by spreading the word! In fact, if anyone reading this has thought about trying Burnham's wools for weaving, but hasn't taken the leap yet, you should know that their yarn sample cards are free & also that during the entire month of April all of their wool yarns are on sale!

After Burnham's, we headed for Flagstaff to spend the night. By the time we got there, we were in a blizzard, but we braved the foot deep drifts to walk 5 or so blocks for dinner & afterwards to check out the few stores that were open. We awoke the next morning to a magnificent sight of snow covered San Francisco Peaks outside our historic bed & breakfast window & a scrumptious home cooked gourmet breakfast. Stacey made me laugh when I noticed that, a true desert dweller, she had rolled up her pant legs to keep them out of the snow. I even had to scrape quite bit of snow & ice off the Rover before we could leave to sled off back south, taking a convenient detour through Oak Creek Canyon, which was completely & breathtakingly covered in snow, & the red rock country of Sedona.

When we hit Phoenix, we made our way to the downtown Heard Museum to see a newly installed tile mosaic representation of one of DY Begay's weavings... it was stunning, DY! We also enjoyed a very delicious lunch at the museum's Arcadia Farms Café. By the time we got back home to Tucson, we were a very weary, but very content bunch of fiber addicts! A couple days later Susie left, with new yarn stuffing her suitcase & new tapestry techniques packed into her head.

The very next weekend, I was off to Bisbee to teach my very first tapestry weaving workshop & I kept a little journal on my mini computer...

thurs, 2-28-08
How odd that the first tapestry workshop I will be teaching should fall on a leap year... but this has been an odd week, precipitated by a phone call from a lawyers' office asking if someone at my residence was related to my ex-mother-in-law & could "handle her affairs". Quite a shock to receive that call, considering that my ex & I did not part on friendly terms & I haven't seen him or any of his family in over 15 years. Receiving that call & realizing that she was no longer alive prompted me to do a little online investigation & I discovered that my ex-father-in-law had also died, but 2 years previously. Learning all of this caused the resurfacing of many, many memories of people, times, & places that I have not thought about for 20 years or more, some good & some bad. Needless to say, these reminisces occupied my mind so much for the last couple of days while I made final preparations for the workshop that I had no time to think about being nervous. I loved teaching patients & their family members when I worked as a nurse & I had hoped that perhaps I could one day teach tapestry weaving, but I never thought the opportunity would come so quickly. I met the Bisbee guild's "education recruiter", Joan Ruane, when I was in Bisbee for their fiber festival last October; when she learned I was a tapestry weaver she asked if I would consider coming to teach a workshop for them.

So here I am in Bisbee, on the eve of my first beginning tapestry workshop. It will start tomorrow & run for 3 days. I came a day early to prepare the space & pull yarn out of the guild's fiber room. Bisbee is a tiny, quirky little historic mining town, converted in modern times to an art town/tourist destination perched on & in the nooks & crannies between the Mule Mountains & the Naco Hills at an elevation of nearly 6,000 feet. The Bisbee Fiber Guild is fortunate enough to have their own permanent studio space in the basement of the historic YWCA building where they have looms set up full time for members to weave on, a fiber room, a library, several storage rooms, & giant steel utility sinks for dyeing. It is a 2 hour drive from where I live in Tucson, through mountains & across high desert grasslands. It was an especially wonderful drive today-- the sunlight warm, clear & sharp; the sky very blue; the landscape a color study of duns, ochres, & greys... the high desert grasses gleaming wheaten gold & rusty red, the mountains looking dry & craggy with their canyons & drainages shadowed in sharp relief, and the creosote flats glowing with the chartreuse of tender new leaves. You can see across the basins for 50 or so miles & your eyes are constantly straying to take in the view, so much so that you have to remind yourself to be more careful to watch the road.


I have the pleasure of staying in a guild member's guest cottage while I am here, only a few miles from the guild's studio, but in the hills without a neighbor in sight. It is a spacious one room with a bathroom & "closet kitchen", surrounded by alligator junipers, Mexican oaks, manzanita, rolling hills, & bird song. This afternoon & evening I set up the student workspace in the guild's studio, set tapestry looms out, & selected yarns from the fiber room, arranging them by color family on a table. My efforts were awarded when a guild member who came in to do a little weaving on one of the floor looms was immediately drawn to my "yarn table" & began exclaiming over the display. Most of the guild's fiber has been received through donations & I was very happy to discover a nice selection of wools suitable for tapestry weaving. The frame looms the students will use also belong to the guild. They are simple frame looms made of hard wood with a nice tensioning beam on top & cylinders with grooves routed into them affixed to top & bottom beams for warping. The workshop begins tomorrow at 9 am, but I will arrive early to have a pot of coffee ready for those who need it & to put out class notes, spools of cotton seine, & bobbin kits. Let the weaving begin!

fri, 2-29-08
I arrived at the guild studio an hour before the start of class, set out all of the class materials, got my ipod set up with its portable speaker system, & started a pot of coffee for anyone who would be in need of caffeine when they arrived. One by one my 7 students trickled in, with the last two arriving just a little late. Today they were able to get warped, weave a header, & learn the first technique on the agenda, pick & pick. I feel very pleased that all of them are so very eager to learn & that my teaching seems so far to be effective. Everyone appeared to be intently enjoying the learning process & I felt I was able to give each person the attention they needed during the day. We worked from 9 to 4, taking frequent breaks & a lunch break. I cannot wait to see how it all goes tomorrow... with the difficult process of warping & getting the sampler started now accomplished, I hope to make good progress working through the other planned techniques so that they will be able to do a bit of weaving on their own, & cut off & finish their samplers on the last day of class.

sat, 3-1-08
This morning all of the students arrived with big smiles on their faces & eager to get back into the weaving so I must be doing something right! Good progress was made today & I noticed that everyone's dexterity handling warp & weft was improving as the day progressed. We managed to cover all of the techniques I had planned except for eccentric weft, so we will start with that in the morning. Then they will have the rest of the day to weave on their own & hopefully we will be able to cut off & finish the samplers as well.

After all of the students left at the end of class & I had packed things up, I headed out to walk around town & grab a bite to eat at a little café I had noticed driving back to the cottage yesterday. Across the street from the café I had also been noticing a building with a big hand painted sign advertising a musical comedy play, Annie Get Your Gun, being presented by the local actor’s troupe. I had been thinking it would be fun to go see it & in the café I saw a flyer that gave the time it would run. Dennis & I have driven up to a small town north of Tucson to see plays put on by the actor's troupe there, so I knew how good & fun a small town production could be. After finishing my meal at the café, I walked around, found a place to get a small espresso so I wouldn't be too tired, & headed back to get tickets & a good seat. The play was good & funny. It was so enjoyable to watch it on my own, just sitting quietly & absorbing it all without having to talk to anyone after having been talking all day during class!


I am looking forward to tomorrow... I can't wait to see what everyone chooses to weave when they are turned loose to weave on their own!

mon, 3-3-08
Too tired to write last night! Luckily I had already anticipated how I would feel & had planned to spend last night in Bisbee. Everyone arrived yesterday for the last day of class tired, but still smiling. We quickly covered the last technique, eccentric weft, & they all got down to the business of weaving. It was very apparent that everyone was intently enjoying finally being able to weave on their own & I was so very proud that they did so with minimal assistance from me. I walked around & observed, giving out reminders & prompts when necessary. Everyone also had a chance to at least quickly review the books I had brought so they could think about which one appealed to them most if they ended up acquiring one for themselves. Throughout the workshop they were also requesting that I come back soon & teach them more, expressing much interest in learning to design on their own, learning how to prepare a continuous warp, & learning to use a cartoon. I encouraged them to get together, decide what they would like in a next class as far as length & content, & to approach their education coordinator with a proposal. I would love to come back to teach them more!

As the day neared the end of the workshop time, several of the students decided for themselves they were ready to stop weaving & finish their samplers off so they could make the drive home to the nearby towns where they lived. Everyone was able to weave as much as they wanted & to cut off & finish their samplers which made me extremely happy. Several who actually live in Bisbee were already making plans to meet today at the guild's studio to help each other warp the looms for their next piece... wow! My encouragements to continue weaving & practice their newly learned techniques must have made quite an impression!

After all of the samplers were finished, the wool returned to its place in the fiber room, & the looms put away, 3 of the students & I went out for a drink & dinner. For most of the time we continued talking about tapestry, & I discovered they were quite passionate about soaking up more experiences... we ended the workshop & the evening as new cherished friends with a great idea to plan a trip to Alpine to have a "tapestry retreat" at Janie Hoffman's place on the Blue River.

Charla

Randy

Jan

Shirley, Lynn, Darquise, Joy

Since the workshop, two of the students, Shirley & Lynn, came over to Tucson to do a little shopping at the Desert Weaving Workshop; I met them there & we went for lunch together & then to the Land, Art, & Sacred exhibit. During that time, we decided we would definitely try to plan a tapestry retreat at Janie's... since they are both "snowbirds" who come to Bisbee for the winter months-- Shirley from Alaska & Lynn from Seattle, they both had to see about adjusting their travel schedules. Now the date is set for early May, and Darquise has also decided to come along. Janie & I had started contemplating the idea last year of having an informal retreat at her place but until now we hadn't found anyone who wanted to make concrete plans. I am so thrilled that it is finally going to happen!

The two exhibits I recently had work in at Tohono Chul have come down...my earth & sky tapestry was sold so it went home with someone else. I felt a startling bittersweet pang when I learned of the sale. I was surprised it had sold; I had begun to feel it was my favorite that I have woven so far, & in the original photo I had used, the image included Dennis & Roux because I took the photo when we were hiking, & it is one of the last tapestries I wove while Roux was still alive. But, the feeling has passed, mostly because I think the person who purchased it must have been very moved by it & will treasure having it in their home. I am beginning to learn just how closely a tapestry can be connected to the weaver's life, a wonderful, if a bit unsettling, discovery.

During all of this wonderful madness, our new dog Roger has settled in nicely, no longer has separation anxiety attacks when I leave, enjoys hanging out in the studio all day (with an occasional cookie to break the routine), & loves our daily 3 mile walks which have helped shrink both of our waistlines! Dennis & Roger walk on weekends when Dennis is home from work, those "guy walks" being a bit more hard core & good for them both!

Now I have my small Shannock loom warped up & a tapestry under way for another Tohono Chul exhibit, Artful Insects. It will depict a pinacate beetle crossing the sand, leaving a wake of footprints-- as soon as I chose the image I christened it pinacate shuffle. So far I've gotten the header woven & when I've completed more I'll post again with photos. The deadline is early April, but I have incentive to finish it much sooner because in early April is also the Arizona Federation of Weavers & Spinners biannual conference, Fibers Through Time. I will need the Shannock for a workshop I'm taking to learn the Helena Hernmarck technique of weaving being taught with her permission by Diane Wolf, a weaver who has studied extensively with Helena & has been her assistant during workshops at HGA's Convergence. After the workshop, the Shannock will be put to work again... I've been invited to create a piece for an upcoming Tohono Chul exhibit, Please Touch Again !, being held specifically for the visually impaired so that they may feel & touch the items on display.

March is well underway... fiddlenecks, mallows, & desert marigolds are beginning to bloom, our windows are thrown open to warming temps & birdsong, the light is taking on the rarefied & luminous quality inherent to desert spring & fall. I've been sharing my tapestry passion not only through my blog, but in real life. Life is feeling very good again.

goodbye & hello... good things come in large packages

Almost exactly 24 hours after we said goodbye to Roux, we had the most spectacular sunset we've had in quite some time... I like to think of it as Roux's sunset. Gentle rains followed for a couple days. I always look for signs from my environment during times of sadness or stress... a special bird, or animal, or sight... something to tell me things will be fine or right themselves soon. I take this as one of those.

Now, I have a new guy in my life... he's a good listener with soulful eyes, who kisses my tears away when I am sad for missing Roux, who lays his great, warm head in my arms, who looks at me & says, "I know how it feels to be sad, but I'll help you feel better & I'll love you with every fiber of my being all of my days on this earth because I am so happy to have found my forever home"...

meet Roger!

Roger was dropped off with 3 other dogs by the same person at the county animal shelter & then rescued by a local no-kill group. I found him by looking at Petfinder.com . I cannot go to shelters myself because it is so overwhelmingly sad for me, even on a good day, that I cry. Roger was advertised as a 1 year old mastiff-retreiver mix, but our vet is quite sure he is about 2 years old, mostly Rottweiler & with his black spotted tongue & soft coat, maybe retriever with chow or sharpei?

All I know is that he is a 90 pound love sponge, with pretty good house manners, a yarn fetish, a fascination with birds & bunnies, & a little bit of separation anxiety, which I am working on. He loves hanging out in the studio, although he does need to learn not to put his head into the working parts of looms.

I found out about the yarn fetish when DY Begay dropped by for a visit... she was in Tucson to bring her weavings that will be included in the 3 women artist collaboration exhibit, Land, Art, and the Sacred: Three Perspectives, being held here at Pima Community College. It will be quite a dazzling exhibit, already on display, but I am waiting for the gallery talk & artist reception so I can savor the anticipation of seeing it for the first time. DY came by to let me choose & purchase a saddle blanket woven by one of her relatives on the reservation. We presented it as a gift to our beloved vet, Dr. Nunn. We gave his partner, Dr. Koski, a small blanket I had woven from local Alpaca yarns, & the staff a couple pizza certificates to thank them for all of the care our pets have received from their clinic since we moved here.

So, about Roger's yarn fetish... as DY & I were looking at the blankets she had brought, I heard a noise that sounded like Roger was rolling on his studio bed & playing with a toy. Well, he was rolling on the bed, but he was rolling around with a ball of yarn in his mouth! When he ran through the studio with it wrapped around him, I figured it out pretty quickly, especially since that particular ball was attached to a poncho in progress on my triangle loom! I discovered that wrestling with a 90 pound dog that flops on the floor thinking it's part of the game to keep grabbing the yarn once I got it pried out of his mouth can be challenging, especially with a guest standing there watching the whole thing! Luckily, DY has a large Akita, so she understands & she even helped untangle Roger.

He has tried making off with other balls out of my yarn baskets, but I've caught him before it was too late. When I was putting away newly wound yarn I had just bought from Norsk Fjord Fiber, I had my yarn cabinets open & Roger sat gazing into them like he was looking at shelves full of chocolate. Wow, well I guess most of us feel like that about fiber, now that I think of it. When he went to the old dog toy basket & rummaged around, the toy he brought back to the studio was a sheep. Hmmmmm.......

Earth, Air, Fire, Water opened at Tohono Chul two weeks ago & the exhibit is ¡muy fabuloso! The reception was crammed with people. I immediately saw my earth & sky & Bengt Erikson's Rincons since they were displayed near one another, but then a friend mentioned there were two other tapestries in the exhibit... I turned around & gasped as I saw Michael Rohde's two magnificent tapestries, hung on either side of the exhibit hall's large picture window. They extended nearly floor to ceiling. How exciting to have other tapestries included in the same exhibit! I especially loved how my tapestry was displayed alongside some beautiful jewelry pieces, one with a large chunk of polished agate. All of the tapestries garnered much interest during the reception & I talked to many people who were quite intrigued with the process of tapestry design & weaving. Although earth & sky was quite small compared to most of the works in the exhibit, many people came up & told me they were drawn to it from across the room because of the colors & subject (The Vermilion Cliffs).

The other Tohono Chul exhibit, Turquoise, opened the following week without a reception in the smaller gallery. I have a tapestry in there as does Deborah Komisarek, a fellow Desert Tapestry Weavers member. Surprisingly, neither of us knew the other was submitting... we both designed geometric tapestries based on the concept of inlaid turquoise jewelry & even had very similar titles-- hers, Inlay 1, & mine, inlay 9. I have visited that exhibit & our tapestries complement each other very nicely. I hope to revisit the exhibit & get some photos to post of both our works on display.

And, speaking of Michael Rohde, he is in town teaching a rug weaving workshop at the Desert Weaving Workshop. I had the exciting pleasure of attending with my dear friend, Stacey, a slide & video lecture he gave last night on his trips to Tibet & Lithuania that explained the inspiration behind his body of work, Houses for Nomads, which was exhibited in a solo show in Lithuania last year. A wonderful lecture with fabulous photos & videos with audio that he took of the people & many festivals that were going on during his visit, along with photos of all of his tapestries. It was very inspirational to hear how he was inspired by the people, their lands, their culture. He brought a few of the tapestries with him, how very special to get to see them! I hope to make it into town tomorrow evening to the little gathering they will be having after the workshop is finished for the day.



















So, Roger & I are settling into a routine of morning walks, helping him learn to be comfortable & learn the rules in his new home, & working in the studio. Right now I am working on writing my class notes for my upcoming beginning tapestry workshop I will be teaching in the nearby town of Bisbee at the end of February. My weaving consists of weaving a sampler on one of the frame looms the guild is providing, one, so I will know how their looms work, and two, because it is helping me while I am writing. So, I weave a bit, jump up & go the computer, write a bit, & repeat, while Roger snoozes (& sometimes snores quite loudly) on his studio bed. My sister is coming for a visit in mid-February & as I have been helping her learn to weave, we'll be able to get some hands on time to help her advance her skills. I also hope to take us on an overnighter field trip while she is here up to Burnham's Trading Post so she can see some beautiful examples of Navajo weaving & we can buy MORE yarn!

You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog as large as myself that my father bought me. They are better than human beings, because they know but do not tell. ~Emily Dickinson

another road on life's journey

Life, for the last month of '07 & the first week of '08, decided to take a sudden turn down a bumpy road. Since this is supposed to be my journal, & a journal's purpose is to record events in one's life, I think it is important to also include sad times as well as happy, upbeat ones. It can't all be a reflection of the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind... these bumps in our lives are what make us grow, what help us learn about our own true natures & the nature of others in our lives.

The period of time after Thanksgiving & before New Year's Eve has never been my favorite. Not only do I miss the daylight hours that have been replaced by darkness, I also have come to dislike Christmas. Although I am spiritual, I am neither religious nor believe in any unseen deity, & I am saddened by the wasteful consumerism that has come to mark the season. What makes me happiest at this time is the passage of the solstice, marking the gradual lengthening of daylight hours. My feelings about this time of year are usually enough for me to deal with, but life decided to throw a few barbs in as well.

My father was hospitalized for almost 2 weeks in the beginning of Dec for pulmonary/cardiac edema & to try to save his leg from amputation. He had refused to go in for treatment for 5 weeks, so they had a mess to deal with when he finally went (because he couldn't breathe). Upon returning home, he resumed his smoking, drinking, & not elevating his legs as much as he should. On Christmas day, my mother had a minor stroke & was hospitalized for a couple days. Luckily there were no residual effects for her. Both of my parents are nurses & have knowledge of how they should care for themselves, but I have come to terms with recognizing that they are the only ones who can make choices about how they live their lives. I have siblings who live near my parents & they help out during these times. I am closer to my sister who lives there, so I stay in close contact with her, explaining the medical things & giving my "nurse perspective" on the situation. Needless to say, a very stressful few weeks.

Which brings me to the last little bit... we finally had to have our old Roux put to sleep on Friday, January 4th. Just before Thanksgiving, she had labs drawn that indicated she was headed into kidney failure. We declined taking her in for 3 days of IV therapy because we thought that being there away from home at her age (14) would kill her faster than staying at home where she wanted to be. So she did quite well until the last weeks of the year, when we started seeing a rapid decline. We finally knew it was time to make the decision we have been dreading since her cancer diagnosis a year & a half ago. What was great was that since Dennis was home so much (he always has lots of time off at the end of the year & had extra to burn), we got to spend lots of time being together here with her & taking her for walks around our property. She got to eat turkey at Thanksgiving one last time. She played with her toys & chased Dennis down the driveway. Her last day was perfect, so warm & sunny we could open the bedroom window, she could smell the light breeze & hear the birds singing. We took turns hanging out on the bed with her. She ate cookies in bed & played with her favorite toys a little. In the late afternoon, when we took her out to use the bathroom one last time, a pack rat jumped out in front of her from the bushes & she almost nailed it. It was just a little too quick for her, but she felt like a young dog again, if only for a few minutes. The last couple of hours before our wonderful vet came here to perform euthanasia at home, I laid with her & just kept petting her the whole time. My arm never got tired. The vet came & it all went smoothly... she went very quickly & peacefully. As her heart stopped beating, our vet said, "She's on her journey now" & he was crying as much as I. Poor Dennis couldn't bear to be in the room, so after he walked the vet out, he came in & had his moments with her. It was so hard to let her go, but we know it was the best for her... we didn't want her to get so bad that she was really suffering, so it was better to do it while she still had some of the "old" Roux spark. We buried her here on our desert property, in a very sunny spot with a good view in all directions.

We will miss her little paws, her pointed ears, the mischievous glow in her amber eyes, the swagger in her walk, the rocks she used to carry around & try to sneak in the house. But most of all we will miss her love. Roux's passing has also brought back many memories of our other dog, her buddy, Bear. He died almost 4 years ago very suddenly during our first trip to our New Mexico mountain property, and we still think of him very often. He is buried there, in a shady spot under the fir trees.

A dog era has come to a close. While our hearts mend with cherished memories, we are looking forward to the time when we will welcome other dogs in need into our hearts & home.

I have sometimes thought of the final cause of dogs having such short lives and I am quite satisfied it is in compassion to the human race; for if we suffer so much in losing a dog after an acquaintance of ten or twelve years, what would it be if they were to live double that time?
Sir Walter Scott

To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace. Milan Kundera