Closing of the Year

I have been using a butterfly as a personal motif for a long time - since my first (and last) solo art gallery exhibit in oh, 1983? 

The butterfly is a powerful symbol of change, metamorphosis, growth. 

2019 has been a very powerful year of...change, metamorphosis and growth for me.  Between closing the business of selling hand woven textiles, 'retiring' so to speak, and the changes that has meant to my studio and life?  It has been unsettling, stressful, and uncertain as to what the coming year will hold.

On the other hand, the changes were needed and the time had arrived to make them.

Talking to some people the other day, one of them again expressed surprise at my age.  I like being the age that I am.  I like the fact that I am still alive, able to change, metamorphose and grow.  It is an opportunity my brother had cut short at a much younger age.  I still miss him and regret the chance to grow old alongside him to see how he would have grown as he moved through life. 

He had plans.  He had dreams.  He accomplished a lot in his life and people in this town took him as a good role model.

Tomorrow it will be four years since mom died.  I have been thinking about dad, mom and Don a lot this week. 

Maybe because I am feeling 'better', not so crushed by the low grade pain I had been having, my mind is thinking more clearly.  I am starting to have ideas for textiles I want to weave, using - as much as possible - yarns from my stash.

Yesterday Doug and I took a good look at the annex (he was pressing the latest cloth from both looms - I now have a heap of hemming to do), then we took a good look at the studio and we discussed how the arrangement was shaping up.  He made a suggestion I hadn't considered but realized would actually be more useful than what we had.  Another tweak, another change.  Hopefully for the better.

His helper will come today and they will work on getting the table for the laptop that runs the Megado tweaked with castors and a larger table top, then if there is time, they will move things around - a small snow globe shake, but one I think will actually make things work better in terms of space.

Today the rent cheque for the annex will be delivered to the landlord along with the notice of our move out at the end of January.

That really is a light I see.  I hope.