Thursday, March 29, 2018

found

i find things
some of them are totally unexpected.
papers-overlooked and left in the blotter sheets
money-dollars, but mostly change
jewelry-mostly my own, mostly earrings, mostly in weird places
like under the mailbox on the roadside
after the snow melted.
(see a pattern here?)
today i found both, an earring and a penny (tails)
i saw a glint of shiny in a dusty corner of my living room.
dusty.
and when i touched the shiny it was a gold earring, next to a penny.
it looked staged.
i know what this is
 ALICE 
found on a dried felt
i can't quite remember which alice, but alice
a little paper to identify alice's paper 
in a class.
flax kitchen papermaking continued this week.
my crazy drying set up on the counter
(which i was pleased to scrub off the indigo stain) 
and on top of the press?
the blotter sheets and a piece of flax i'd overlooked.
blotter sheets are old cotton letterhead 
letterhead: 
Newton Falls Paper Mill.
 isn't it nicely dimpled from such strange drying?
 i found alice the same day i found two seed pods
that the thaw revealed.
my yard and the back meadow are still snow covered, 
a few spots of earth emerging.
 out walking 
i'm keyed into milkweed
 the stem has split and you can see how strong the bast is
as it holds the stem together
 soft gold inside the pod,
looking a bit like an abandoned wild silk cocoon,
 the snow retreating from edges on my neighbor's little barn,
 it was a beautiful sunny day
 and as snow melts i find other signs,
 and i found this photo over on facebook.
this is theTAFA group I taught shifu to last March.
their funding source required them to teach shifu to their community
which they just completed.
my wonderful host Wendy Warren (top, left,1st)
 and 
Sue Ferarri (top, 3rd from right), 
their teacher,
 this group was an amazing class.
I loved teaching in a small public school on a hill near the ocean,
these folks deserve a special shout out for their dedication to fiber art.
and no, 
the edition is not complete.
yet.

19 comments:

  1. will you drill the whole and wear your penny earring?

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  2. mo, ha, i love your typo. and no, i like very very simple earrings, no more dangles for this crone. unless it’s a skull…

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  3. Found is always the most curious where the story will lead. Notice what you notice as Sandra said to us last summer. I try every day. We have less snow than you but still enough to put the early Spring garden on hold. Still trying to get some milkweed growing here. Maybe this year? xox

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  4. This morning I found a delightful blog.
    What else will the melting snow reveal?
    What will catch your eye?
    Thankyou Velma







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  5. corrine, have you tried digging up plants rather than growing from seed? that might work (i've got no experience, just wondering). i notice and notice it seems, but seldome what other people do!
    barb, well, thank you for these words. and who knows, but as it melts, stuff left by my roofers is appearing!
    ian, i can do that!

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  6. oh, you've still got snow! yikes, I'll stop whining about our weather. Fun to see your penny, Canada dropped pennies a few years ago, if you pay with plastic you still get charged odd numbers but with cash it gets rounded up or down.

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  7. My daughter, as a young girl was a 'finder' - head down, lots of loose change. I once saw a playing card face down and thought, Hey cool. Picked it up, as my daughter collected Jokers back then...turned it over and it WAS a Joker! As a kid myself, I once found the same lost teeny, tiny ID bracelet 3 times! I then stopped wearing it, for safe keeping...which worked as I still have it! I also once found the same rock, twice, almost two years apart while hiking in the local hills. Lost - Found + Fascinating! I love the dryness of growth against glistening snow and the beautiful old barn. Always had a thing for 'dimples' and groups of nice folk :)

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  8. Loved this post Velma ...... enjoyed reading about the glint of sunshine which led to the earring discovery and the tails up penny. As always, really enjoyed your photos especially the gold thing through the milkweed.

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  9. How you turn even a dusty corner (not to mention the rest of your day) into a poem is really something.
    (I'm a finder, too, especially like finding grocery lists at the store)

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  10. jean, even after a day or two of rain there's still al ot of snow at my place(es). it's fine, i love it and am sad to see it go. (really!). i don;t think i realized the penny thing in CA-i love pennies.
    nancy, great story. that group--what energy they all have. i'm the one who finds little things, mostly.
    susan, it is a reminder to myself to always follow the little things that get your attention, they may be the most fun and even wonderful things of all...or if not, there was at least a tiny adventure, which is always a good thing.
    oh, hazel. sweet. do you keep those lists?

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  11. Hazel~ I actually have a very cool book I'd given my mom, all about found grocery lists. She was a lister, not so much a finder :)

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  12. nancy, hazel, there was a book (maybe several) and a website called *found* and i once sent them a letter i'd found.

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  13. Yes, I keep them, and lose them in piles around my house... someday my children will be cursing me (for other reasons, too!). Nancy, I found the "found" book at the library.

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  14. hazel, now you can make your own found book. and think what a project on socio-economics your list collection could enable...find a grad student...
    ahem, anyway, that's cool.

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  15. Wonderful pix. The one of the roof with a patch of snow seems to be asking for some text to put in the frame.

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  16. Hi V - it has been a while since I have left a comment - had trouble a couple of times with blogger. Such a great blog on finding and discovery. Love the image of the gold inside the pod. And what a great stack of paper. Go well. B

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  17. barry, i'm glad blogger seems to have straightened up--i had troubles with it, too. i saw that gold, so like the gold of my newly found earring!

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