Doe in Snow Neck Piece ::: The Quiet Ones Series
[sterling, copper, silk & enamel]

I’ve been terribly excited about returning to this series with the onset of cooler weather.  Actually, I’ve been thrilled about being able to enamel again, in general.  I missed it very much during the summer months when my un-air-conditioned workspace is simply unbearable with the added heat of a kiln.  The studio, when I’ve had moments to work these past couple of weeks, is thrumming with energy, light and that steadiness that comes with hard work.

:::ALSO:::
There’s been the adventure of embarking upon a photo project with one of my best friends.
My involvement with the creative team for this incredible e-course [I promise Maddie!  I’ll have my thoughts and images to you tonight.  TONIGHT!].
There is something small and wild taking up a lot of my time…I don’t feel ready to share it with you quite yet.  But it makes me so happy.
There’s a poem I want to write about the wasps that live in my attic — the words string themselves out in my mind when I’m falling asleep at night.
There’s a cup of hot tea nearly every hour, on the hour, to warm my autumn bones.
There’s a bit of soul fire to match the red of the scrub maples as they turn.
There are twenty thousand emails for me to answer but I can’t sit still long enough to get the work finished.
All of our firefighter friends are done their work for the year and are back in town so there has been the beauteous behooving of scintillating sociality many nights of the week followed by the sudden quiet of all the boys 
leaving for their antelope hunt in Wyoming.
I can’t stop listening to this.
Very shortly, there will be some girls and I in a forest service cabin just outside of West Yellowstone for a couple of days.  
There have also been image submissions at the request of Getty Images (such a wonderful experience).  Perhaps, sometime, you might see Plum smiling on a bag of dog food at the grocery store (rest her crazy little darling soul)!
There is a stack of letters from friends that need responses, an extra quilt on the bed and plum jam on toast in the mornings.
Oh!  And this book just handed to me by the mailman — which is so beautiful and haunting!

I have a couple of details to wrap up out in the studio before I make myself lunch.  Can you believe I’m still eating from my garden every single day?
Shortly, I’ll have: roasted beets with a side of baby carrots, kale, patty pan squash, zucchini and garlic lightly sauteed in butter.

Tra la la!


https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2011/10/13/1114/

Today.
Today I feel:

-thin, but pretty
-loved and cherished
-elegant and long of limb
-intelligent
-ebullient, but soft
-soulful
-thoughtful
-wound loosely around the soft white bark of turning aspens
-like a chorus of cat call, wolf howl and chickadee song
-here but there, there but not
-forgiving and forgiven
-replete with potential but hinging on promises, promises that will be kept, steady with trust
-so sure of the good work that is being done in me
-positively rich, glad despite my poorness, made merrily thankful by my steady income
-one day older than I was yesterday
-bone young, soul ancient
-strong of spirit and shining smile
-that nothing can ever truly be lost


How about you?

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2011/09/29/1105/

"éléphanteau avec moutarde"

 Bah oui!!!
C’est vrai!
 Built of sterling, fine silver, 22 karat gold, copper and enamel!
And now, I have put on my polka dot dress and will go spin myself around in the springtime sunshine on my bicycle.  Plumbelina will be mad that I’m taking Penelope instead of her into the great big world, but Plumbelina does not yet know how to run with a bicycle and Penelope will fit so long and narrowly in my bike basket…additionally, we go faster when she flaps her ears. 

Today was:
-bippity boppity boo
-languished about in bed this morning, longer than I should have, but it felt nice and the birds were singing Handel’s Messiah…or something…when the nature music is that rapturous you just have to sit still and let it penetrate into your bone marrow or your soul will flop over and you’ll burn the toast when you set about to making breakfast
-black bean salad for lunch
-hair is feeling long
-didn’t get to write my morning pages
-wrote a letter instead
-the loveliest mail arrived, I was caught by surprise
-going to have a glass of something young, chilly, fizzy and white later tonight
-the anemones I planted 5 months too late are beginning to sprout anyway because sometimes ascorbic acid is stronger than the calendar date
-I love Robertimus Maximus so much that I sometimes cannot control myself and I latch onto him with a fierce hug that makes me feel like a sweet little puckering barnacle on an ocean stone

 Toodaloo!
xx

At random:

Life flows at four speeds, four gaits.
I walk, I trot, I lope, I gallop.
I gallop now, sucking wind, not slowing even when the earth pitches itself into a hill beneath my feet.
Soon, I’ll slow down to a walk, breathe deeply,
there will be stillness even when I find myself moving.

Even now, despite the speed, there are sunsets,
full moons to set me glowing, 
a fine, pale, dust shimmering there on my fingertips,
a distant howl,
the new lengths of the days,
the steady creep of water under ice.
There are these things.
 Life has been a tornado of fantastically solid phantasm these past two weeks!
We’ve been spinning madly and happily in the good hands of family and friends,
criss-crossing the countryside, holding ruddy cheeked nephews, embracing new friends
from afar, celebrating, feasting, drinking, laughing and living!  There’s been so much living in these past two weeks, so much living that I’ve felt guilty at times, until I’m reminded that the time spent out of my studio and away from my computer is time that fills my creative wells, pushes fat breezes into my wind greedy sails and pulls me into new nations of inspiration and innovation.  This is to say, I’m allowed to have a life, 
a friend reminded me of this:

I make jewelry.
But jewelry isn’t who I am.
I am many things and the work of my hands
does not singularly define me.
There are objects I build, but what of the living behind those pieces?
What of the heart here beneath the carefully arranged slats of my
ribcage?  What of the light in my eyes?  What of the good laws I hold myself to, the white lands of my bones stretching in all directions, the Nameable thing that begs me to be better in all ways?

My studio has been cold for days, no, for the better part of a pair of weeks.  
But there’s still construction in full swing here.  
It’s called living.
Someday soon, I’ll pour these emotions, these thoughts, these moments lived 
into something tangible and carefully fabricated.

Until then:
I am the slender, white twig leaning over the water
and ice, trembling in the down valley drafts, believing in spring
with all my heart.
Sleepy cork cambium.
I’m reflected in the deeper pools 
where the sky rests
and sweeps tattered leaves beneath the fray of raw silk 
rugs.  There’s something decadent, simple and hidden here between my hands, tightly clasped.
Something wound into a tiny bud.
Something worth unfurling…
 That Nameable thing has been playing a soaring prelude on my heartstrings.
(The music falls so gently on my deaf ears.)
There’s no space.  (Who needs space?)
There’s no horizon!  (The distance is so very grand.)
How I love to run.  (To breathe!  To wade into stillness!)
I wear a sigh of contentment on the rush of my lips.  (These paces, these gaits, these four hooves
bruising the grass, chasing the tail of day, cresting, the crescendo of a shared life, of shared lives, before running into the arms of diminuendo.)
[I stole a moment.  I took a walk.]
We are expecting another four, fairly continuous, weeks of varied forms of company, here at The Gables.
I’m delighted, though tired.
People rarely come to Idaho.
Now they’re coming all at once!
I’m going to host them all.
One by one.
I’m going to draw them hot baths, thick with Epsom salts and lavender.
Build stalwart soups in deep pots atop my kitchen stove.
Bake them loaves of bread spiked with rosemary and almond fragments.
And I’ll continue to receive the daffodils they hold so kindly in their hands
when they step up onto my front steps and carefully ring my door chime, only to set 
the dog pack howling and barking, time and time again.

I hope you’re all well.
Good gracious, I sure am!
There’s too much love, softly flinging itself at me from all directions, for me to be found unwell.
A new week begins here.
Hold on tight!
We’re galloping now!
xx
Plume