2007

Well, hooray!…in a vague-sort-of-way….because I just “changed my nameservers” from the old website to the new, and now it is just a matter of waiting for everything to fall into place and I shall have a new home on the Web. I am told this process can take from 24-72 hours.

I wanted to post a little something here, so that everyone knows what is happening and has a place to communicate with me, should there be any problems along the way. I wanted to find a lovely, curtainy image to adorn this post-but I don’t have one at the tips of my fingers, and my fingers are currently very busy with the making of many things for my first Holiday Show in a few days. So I chose, instead, a photo I took for the new website. It is photo for my gift tags, which is what I am surrounded by at the moment, in various stages of completion. I have wisps of vintage seam binding that I am stringing some with, little rectangular stacks to be tied with raffia in my studio and a whole tabletop in the living room strewn with hand-stamped tags and matching little envelopes. I had the nicest time with my hand-carved stamps and pads of ink and diminutive envelopes last night, as I smiled and laughed at a PBS show about Carol Burnett.

And now I must get along with all the preparations! Just comment or send me an email if you encounter any problems with my website in the next several days….or want to send me some happy messages. It has been such a huge job to create the new smallmeadowpress.com, but I am so pleased about how fresh and pretty it all is….you are all very, very welcome there.

I was pulled away from my website design and the news of the California wildfires, to take our dogs out to the fields before bedtime. Usually it is my husband’s task, but as he was working late, it was me who went to the droughty, dusty field and the large, starry sky. I was feeling a bit grumpy at first, to have to leave my work, put my boots on….but was soon just overwhelmed with thankfulness to be out in the dry, yes, but not-on-fire fields….looking back at the lights of home. And everything fell into place, as sometimes happily happens.

Difficulties forgotten, with the moon and the sweet night air for company, I had the answer to the question I had been pondering of what the central idea of my 2008 calendar should be. The calendar I make is one of my favorite creations, and I always want the words and images to be especially satisfying….as I and all the other women who buy one will be seeing and using it every day. I hadn’t been able to decide if the theme should be nature or the work of women or books or….what? But under the stars, I knew it should be about Home….in a domestic sense, as the vessel for many of our dreams, our creativity, our comforts….and in the larger sense of the Earth as our abode-with all its beauties and gifts.

And now the rain we have been waiting for months to arrive has come, as I hope relief will come to those who need it in California. And I am inspired to get back to making my new website lovely and begin gathering illustrations for A Calendar of Ones Own…and even cheerfully (don’t laugh-beloved man-when you read this…I am trying!) taking the dogs out yet again.

*the leaf photograph was taken last Autumn, when the fields were green*