LunaSea and the costs thereof...

December, January and February are the best working and dreaming months for LunaSea. Why, you ask? There are significantly more opportunities to be snug, near the wood stove and indulge in all manner of activities with fibre on dull winter days or during snow storms. Oh, and of course daily amounts of scribbling. I love it. I do of course prefer to be storm-stayed at home where all my toys are, but that's a given.

LunaSea is having a few concerns today about affording her preferred life path over the coming winter months. It's all well and good to have a life philosophy such as LunaSea espouses, but the problem always arises over cash to support the damn thing. LunaSea has stuffed the pantry with as much as she could to keep interesting options for meals available for the duration. There's not enough booze of course; then again, how could there be? 

Anarchy reigns in the pantry (it is no more organized than the rest of LunaSea's world) and of course the compost freezer. Let me explain that last term. Everything below the top layer in the freezer is compost, the further down we venture in our archaeological digs, the older the strata. It may be the only known historical kitchen midden separated by plastic freezer bags into discreet, albeit still gross, lumps. The unmarked packages being of course the most interesting for research purposes. And no, I will not thaw them to identify the contents (however much this may be in the interests of science and my reader), if something gets excavated at all, it gets tossed out, quick.

LunaSea is somewhat attached to the midden in her freezer and considers it an insurance policy of sorts. Everything in LunaSea's world can go to hell but we still have midden surprise from 2005 (or earlier) to heat and serve, if not exactly eat. It is after all three full years until the state pension kicks in, so we may need to indulge yet. That is unless LunaSea somehow manages to qualify for the mad old woman designation and other funding before that. What, in this case, is the difference between prudent and mad?

LunaSea and then some....

I have long loved this name and the concept I ascribe to it. The moon in all her wonder has been a treasured companion since childhood. If there is anything I miss about my past life on the prairies it is the near nightly view of the moon in cloudless clear skies.

Last night I saw the full moon through the trees, and also, as I was driving home, rising above the river. She was a beauty, as always, though sometimes her drama is more in my face, such as the rising moon over the sea in Cape Breton two years ago. I don't know exactly where we were but we were completely captivated by the power, majesty and blessing of that rising full moon. 

In recent years I have painted many, many watercolours of the moon's rise over water on paper. While in my prairie phase I did a spectacular painting show called Luna and the Land. For that show I painted on my hand woven silk yardage (for the weaving geeks--I'm one--90 epi warp and approx 60 epi weft, 8 harness satin). It was very like bringing the moon down from the sky and capturing it on the silk, as the glow of these images was breath-taking. I am still in awe of what I was able to create and how beautiful it was. I wish I'd kept one of the pieces for myself.  I also most heartily wish I could find the silk Japanese jacket I painted for my mother but it seems there is no recovering it from wherever it may have gone. I have a couple of slides of it from textile show I did a few years before the painting show. I'll add those images to this post when I get them converted to digital one of these days.

Okay, the concept.  So much of what I do is (in the view of the so-called 'real world') lunacy. But I live in Nova Scotia now and the term seems more appropriate and nuanced as LunaSea. My business name is LunaSea Studio & Gallery, and my actual business seems to be lunacy of a benign fibre, paint, beads and words sort. For why would anyone do these things when they don't make money, don't save time, don't compete by any of what are currently considered 'real' values?

Enjoyment of one's life apparently counts for very little. It's a sidebar to reality and you are lucky to have a little in the way of pleasure from your days. It is however 'LunaSea' to expect your life to unfold with joy and pleasure in whatever you choose to do each day. That's not being productive, realistic, sucking it up, getting on with it, being adult, or being a good little worker drone. In my LunaSea world view, all of the above is significantly over rated if we're talking about joy in life.

A case in point (there will be many in this blog, I promise). I'm currently seriously enamoured of colourful wool blends, particularly a merino/cashmere blend. So every available moment, when I'm not noodling away on one of my other passions I'm knitting a very smooshy (technical term!) little scarf as a gift. It is so yummy I could just about eat it: the colours include glowing pumpkin, rich gold, and greens, the colours of October in Cape Breton.  And for myself I'm knitting the same pattern in an alpaca/merino blend in blues and lavenders. I can't get enough of this and how lovely it is.

One could say that I live on a merry-go-round of obsessions. If you are saying that as you read this, you'd be right, and I hope not worried about me. These are not noxious as obsessions go and then again is it an obsession when there's so much pleasure involved? Or when the results are so damn pretty?