to deconstruct a tree house

A person lived under a tree in a lot around the corner from my house.

It was a giant pine tree with bushy branches that stretched all the way down to the ground and formed thick walls around its base.

We only saw signs of someone living there because a shopping cart filled with odds and ends rested outside the enclosed area. There was something scandalous about it—a person using branches as a house right on the corner of a heavily trafficked street. Average people have houses built with so-altered nature that it’s no longer recognizable, but here a man had altered himself to coexist with a tree’s needs instead of the other way around. Then there was something majestic about it—breaking conventional boundaries blatantly and romantically before our eyes.

It didn’t last long. People talked. City organizations were contacted. People with power waltzed under the tree and took pictures which displayed makeshift walls and roof shielding the treed space from rain, clothes hanging neatly from branches, cushioned chairs seated gently inside, belongings arranged around the bark’s base.

Yesterday as I passed the tree, some people with power had trimmed the branches up to at least my height. All the contents of the occupant’s stay stood exposed. The temporary house was violated and cheapened into the neatly defined purpose that we make for trees in empty lots: decoration, perhaps. Oxygen only an excuse.

This deconstruction stated that we disproved of this person’s submitted housing purpose of an otherwise unused tree. Branches were judged insufficient at their attempted task of hiding the homeless from our sight as well as we’re accustomed. When we saw the cart parked outside the tree perimeters, it forced contemplation of the circumstances of someone who lives that way, and those seconds of thought intrude too greatly on some’s comfort.

Today all the belongings are gone. The evidence of human life is cleared away and the tree looks as though it stood in that lot by itself indefinately.

The only reminder of the person who lived there is an empty shopping cart resting near the curb.

a fleeting chance to see a trapeze swing as high as any savior

I’ve discovered that sewing together pieces of scrap paper has an unavoidable attraction. Here is the culmination of my evening spent therapeutically attempting to recreate my jumbled life of paper clippings by sewing it into a somewhat cohesive refurbished whole:

I made it with the intention of writing a letter on it. But I’m still trying to figure out how to place the words.

nothing so small

I’ve fallen in love with scraps.

I recently decided to make a quilt, and the hefty task has left me scouring the earth to compile the scraps of other people’s lifestyles. With my recently acquired best friend freecycle, I’ve found myself traveling to various porches and doors of strangers where fabricked surprises like portions of a grandma’s old clothes and patterned remnants of childhood fetishes have been bagged and discarded into my hands.

I must admit that I acquired a lot of junk in my fabric scrap collection endeavors. It’s inevitable to encounter actual garbage inside of piles that other people consider garbage enough to get rid of. But I’ve also collected millions of mismatched pieces that I suspect, if combined in exactly the right way, might actually create something almost good.

I recently accompanied a friend on a trip to the fabric store to acquire large sheets of fabric for the quilt she’s planning. It was great to have endless options before our eyes, but it was also terrifying. New things generally make me a little nervous. Those dumb dollar signs have a way of amplifying mistakes. And there’s such great potential for mistakes in quilting and in life.

I’ll stick with scraps.

So now I have piles of various shapes and styles of fabric scattered about my floor waiting to be endlessly ironed, monotonously sorted, tediously combined, and slowly transformed into something beautiful with endless histories residing inside.

have less, live more

Last year I got really interested in the idea of a buy nothing Christmas, so this past Christmas I found myself scrambling for thrify and creative ideas that would result in me having nice and at least somewhat desirable gifts to give to each of my family members.

This is what my efforts led me to discover:

I rediscovered that the idea of gift-giving is quite a beautiful thing. When making all of my gifts, I found myself still dwelling in the stress of time limitation. But it seemed like the hours I spent working on someone’s gifts sort of forced me to keep that person in my mind: what they like, what they need, how they’re doing, etc. These things became more important than how much money I had left in my Christmas budget.

So now that Christmas is over, I thought I’d post some of the creations I gave as gifts that took a good amount of thought and time and improved my whole Christmas experience (and hopefully that of those who received them).

I did a screenprinted-like shirt for my brother-in-law:

It just takes making a stencil with freezer paper, ironing it to a plain shirt, and then painting over it with acrylic paint and a sponge paintbrush. It makes for a nice screenprint look minus the costly materials and the ability to make multiple copies of it without making the stencil all over again.

For my sister I made a sketchbook out of recycled paper and fabric:

I pieced together fabric scraps to make the design on the cover then I collected lots of nicely-colored used paper and sewed designs on the pages and bound them with a sweet criss-cross binding design.

I also knitted her some glittens or mloves or whatever you call the combination fingerless gloves with mitten cap things:

For these I used the fluffiest and warmest yarn I could find and combined a couple patterns and made some of it up. Here’s a good pattern for some similar gloves.

I also quilted some pot holders for my mom. And for my dad I made handmade paper by creating pulp from old paper scraps. Then I used my ancient typewriter to fill the pages with my poetry.

I can’t remember the last time before this past Christmas that I was more excited to give gifts than get them.