Lemon Pot tea towels

These tea towels began as a custom wedding gift order for a bride who dreams of a kitchen with a lemon tree growing in a blue ceramic pot.  They are woven in a variety of advancing twill variations that are intended to evoke the various glaze finishes or fine china patterns found on household ceramics.

I truly adore handwoven towels in the kitchen.  They are long lasting, hard wearing, super absorbent, and bring a spark of beauty and joy to my day every time I see or touch one.  I weave these with 100% unmercerized cotton for maximum absorbency and fluffy softness.  This has the added benefit that you can toss them in with a regular load of laundry, set the water to hot, and then toss them in the dryer when they're clean!

I warped enough on this project for a few towels for the shop as well as the wedding collection.  They absolutely flew out the door as fast as I could list them!  I'm going to have to do a longer warp the next time!  Tea towels are really fun and satisfying to weave.  The rhythm is a welcome change from baby wraps: with a weft change after one yard instead of 5, they're quick and fun.  I'd like to get a batch up in the shop in time for holiday shopping, tea towels are always a great gift!  

What colors or inspirations would you most like to see hanging on the bar of your oven door or use to wipe up spills in your kitchen?  Does your kitchen have a consistent color theme?  Tell me all about it! 

It starts with a sponge

Lately I’ve been needing to be reminded of my own teachings.  Needing someone to tell me the things I tell my students.  Someone to make me hear the truth of my own words.

 I preach self care. I deeply believe in the power, the necessity, the beauty of giving from a full well.  And I do try to practice what I preach.  Yoga, meditation, regular chiropractic care and massage.  My current non-negotiable (next to coffee) is a daily shower.  I arrange my day in such a way to make this happen.  I can generally ensure my daughter’s contentment along with safety while I am in the shower, but occasionally she squalls.  And that is the price of a sane and human-feeling mama. 

I understand how to find small moments of restoration though breath.  Through meditation.  But I’ve realized that I’m not attending to the foundation of wellness.  The Upanishads say “From food are produced all creatures which dwell on earth.  Then they live by food, and in the end they return to food.  For food is the oldest of all beings, and therefore called panacea.”  We are what we eat.  Food is medicine.  My daughter’s source of food – the breast – is also her place of deepest comfort and contentment.

I don’t think I’m eating enough.  I’m not one to count calories, but I’m noticing myself constantly hungry.  A low level low-bloodsugar crankiness pervades too much of my day.  I crash emotionally in what I recognize as a low bloodsugar crisis entirely too frequently.  It is not that I’m not eating.  But I’m eating the way I ate before I got pregnant.  And as an exclusively breastfeeding mom, that is just not cutting it. 

For health reasons, ethical reasons, financial reasons and pure preference my kitchen is one that is full of whole foods: garden veggies in the freezer, fresh veggies from the grocery, bulk grains and legumes, blocks of cheese, canned tomatoes, and so much frozen salmon.  (There’s also a basket of chocolate and I go through ketchup like nobody’s business, I’m not stepping up onto a high horse here!) And frankly?  It is more appealing to retreat to my studio to play with yarn and eat a few almonds, or curl up on the couch with a baby and a quart of water than it is to make the meal I know I need to eat.  It is a weird place for me to be in.  I have taken so much joy in cooking for so many years, and I don’t right now.  It is not that I dislike it.  I’m just not inspired. 

It simply means I need to become intentional about it.  I need to make it easy for me to eat.  Dedicated deliberate work can sometimes get you farther than inspiration ever will.  Inspiration cannot be forced.  But it can be courted, enticed, invited.  You do the work, the craft … and silently, suddenly inspiration may slip in.

And so it is 2 am, I am awake with a fussy baby wrapped on my chest and I am stirring flour into yeast and oats and water.  100 strokes.  A wooden spoon in a bowl of goodness.  Bread starts with a sponge.  An inviting habitat for yeast to flourish before the heavy lifting of leavening whole wheat flour begins.  I am making oat bread, a staple of childhood memories of deep comfort. Oats also happen to be good for milk production.  It’s a hearty, healthy, delightful bread that is best hot with butter. 

I am also taking this as license for daily hot cocoa with whole milk, and plenty of cream in my coffee!

Tangled up in Love

The women in my family love to cook.  We adore spending hours and hours, days even, in the kitchen. Chopping, dicing, kneading, rolling, sautéing, baking, simmering.  Combining flavors into food.  There’s something sacred about it, it seems to me.  Thanksgiving is a time when we have been known to pull out all the stops.  Menu planning has been known to begin in October.  Feasts have been laid that are the result of three talented cooks, at least one day of prep,  and a day-long marathon of juggling dishes into and out of a single oven and four stove-top burners.  This year Thanksgiving was a little different.  The menu was pared down to the basics.  The day held only the essentials.  It was quieter.  It was simpler.  It was punctuated by cuddles and hours of nursing on the couch, in the rocker, and at the dinner table.  

A newborn changes the rhythm of life. 

Thanksgiving as a holiday, despite its problematic history of intolerance and genocide, is for me primarily a time for drawing close with loved ones, celebrating the inherent abundance of the universe, and for gratitude.  This year was FULL UP of those.  So much love of ones so close, so much gratitude.   

One month ago, I welcomed my daughter into the world.  Avery Iona was born gently, into water, just as the sun was rising behind the snow-clad birches. 

My gratitude list this year is simply a litany of her name.  Over and over.  Gratitude and love.  It gives life a whole new sense of meaning, wrapping intention and purpose around this brilliant spark of light and love in a tiny human body.  

This year, for her first-ever Thanksgiving, she joined us in the kitchen.  Wrapped in a sling, sleeping and awake on her mama’s chest, she helped prep the turkey and get it in the oven.  Granted: we spent plenty of time nursing on the couch while Grandma kept the kitchen company; and she spent time cuddling with Grandma and with her dad while I chopped and mixed… But for a bit she joined in the grand kitchen dance, learning the rhythms of the cook.  And that is as it should be.  That is my thanksgiving.  

Today, she is one month old.  One month since my world changed forever. Babies are magic, it seems to me.  They indelibly change the world as they enter it, shifting the fabric of the universe with their very presence.  As they birth themselves, they birth parents, sometimes siblings.  They birth a whole new family.  They tangle everyone up in love. 

And for that, dear existence, I thank you.