Today, I've been using a lot of thread. I'm not kidding - real sewing thread! Three of my favorite girls (Stillwater Ponies Golf Team) and I have spent 4 weekend days since the beginning of January making t-shirt blankets. Yes, I am over 8 months pregnant and just today *almost* finished my latest hobby, a 30 square t-shirt blanket.
If you know me, you know I love memories and get nostalgic about remnants that keep things alive in my mind. So in early January, when I casually mentioned that I have a dresser full of old t-shirts in my laundry room, just waiting to make a t-shirt blanket, I was happy to hear that Libby, Whitney and Emily ALL had the same sort of collection. (Of course up until that day, only Emily had ever made one of these!) So as we tend to do, we said, "Why not? Let's do it!" (We had the same response to our idea to drive overnight to Penn State to surprise our fifth, which turned out to be one of the best Memorial Day weekends of my life.
Anyways, more on the t-shirt blanket in a future blog post. For now, I just find it ironic that I've been playing with thread and thinking a lot about the thread I follow.
My last post included a poem about the notion of thread, how we each follow a thread, and as long as we hold onto it, we can never get lost. It talked about the transitions in life, and how things change and move around us, but we never let go of our thread. At last fall's GAC Retreat, we read the poem together and were tasked with depicting our thread visually. This was the image I created with oil pastels and watercolor paint.
For me, it's extremely timely to remember the thread I follow and what it looks like. The warm colors indicate the passion and fire in which I live my life, and the blues and greens that surround it are the calm support I receive from others (first and foremost, from my amazing husband).
Cool surrounding warm. Calm surrounding intensity. Some gray and black along the edges, but only in spurts, and for the most part, kept at bay. A bright, winding, twisting and turning thread, continually climbing and leaving the frame higher than where it started.
It goes on forever like this! I'm so excited to meet this baby, but I've also been feeling like the transition from married couple to parents, independent woman to baby mama, ME to WE is a bit intimidating and scary. It's going to be so great, but I can't help but wonder when I'll feel lost, and how I'll find my way back.
I've just got to remember the thread.
