my intention for october: Balance

I intend to balance needs and wants this month.

My habits are changing.

As I head back to work and reconnect with the wider world, I notice that the things I value have silently undergone change.
Covid has had an impact on my dressing and shopping habits.

I still enjoy fashion and can't help but notice and assess new styles: elements of art recombined, repositioned.
Suddenly, however, I'm not being swept into the rushing stream.
​Suddenly, I'm holding on to something bigger, stronger. My coverings are more me.

I've put together a collage of pieces of my wardrobe worn this past month, Kate Fletcher's words milling around in my brain. Thinking that if I'm ever done with these clothes, I'll make a quilt out of them. Each square a life lived, and still covering.

In making this assemblage, I notice my preferences for covering: wool, linen, Tencel, leather, textured, plain, handworked, old. All part of my ecosystem, and the earth's.

Still playing: instead of taking a box to Salvation Army, I decide to cut and sew together the pieces of clothes that no longer serve me. A long vest, 2 lined jackets, jeans, 2 tops. Six garments. This quilt measures 8' x 8'. I've got an idea for this: I'm going to cover the ground with it. Polyester and rayon may serve me yet as weed eradicators.

The earth breathes too. 

We must not cover it so much that it can't. 
It too wants to wear its natural garments: flower, field, forest, sand and rock.

The many stages between fabric and garment of Sanctuary Innerwear involve me in nature. I'm at my best when I can reconnect, "get muddy", and "interlace" again. 

Today, the last of the woad leaves came in, and I will attempt to persuade it to wait for me until spring. I fill bottles with the emerald green water with turquoise foam. I will let it settle and dry the pigment.

Somehow, having this connection with the earth allows me to view the rest differently.
Notice, assess, but not get swept away.
​Grounding yet ascending, Balance's infusion is just that.