cliodhna’s wave

the house from the beach

So, by hook or by crook, I am not sure which, I have found myself living in north-west Ireland for the next three months. A stormy, rocky, wave beaten, wind scoured, almost desolate, treeless, sideways landscape it is too. Yesterday, were it not for the rain battering against the french doors into the back garden I could have imagined that the ocean and land had traded places and and the squalls of rain were sea currents and the birds being tossed here and there were fish. the view from my back window the beach down from my house The birds fly backwards, its easier and doesn’t get their feathers ruffled so are we going or what? the beach at the end of the road I went down to look at the waves and crossed the rocks to get nearer. The ocean is a scary heaving beast with a life of its own and a casual disregard for all things small. I would be a pebble, an annoyance, a fly, a speck of dust to it. The waves got closer and sprayed me with sea foam.. I got scared and backed off… a lot… to the safety of the grass. The waves are huge here closer and closer

The rock here has fossils in them. Apparently they are famous for it.

Louis the dog

I have a dog and a cat into the bargain, which stops me missing my own dogs and cat too much (though I still look forward to getting them here) and there is a stove to warm the house. Perfect to make art and relearn my songs on the guitar and dream away the nights as the wind howls outside. There is silence now, but I can hear the waves thundering onto the rocks in the distance and a clock ticking somewhere in the house and the dog sighs as he sleeps. And to top it all of two fields away (to quote Margo) is Ellen’s Pub which has a session every Friday night I will go when I have a few songs mastered and when Paul brings my fiddle to me from the states.

Good Night!

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I have been here for three weeks now, i think, living in a hotel while we look for a house and eating in restaurants and getting the office organized and generally looking and learning.

Some first impressions

There seem to be either rich people or poor people here with not much of a middle class. I had a thought yesterday that its like looking at first world people living in a third world country. When Paul first tried to drive to the mine the army had blocked the road and he had to turn back. We thought, ‘great, we move from chihuahua and the out of control army to guatemala and its worse’ but then we discovered that the government doesn’t pay them very often and when they get tired of waiting they block the roads and wait to get their money. Police do this also and even other groups like teachers, construction workers.

The textiles are wonderful! I love them and the colours and the embroidery. I have already got a few things and now just need a house to put them in.

To cross the road in guatemala is to take your life in your hands. there are white painted lines on the cross streets but nobody stops, you wait for a break in traffic and run for it. traffic is horrible in the city buses pull out where ever they want, it is up to the car to get out of the way.

there is even more paperwork than mexico (if thats possible). Everything has to go through a lawyer. We rented two apartments for the company… it took two weeks for everything to go through… two weeks!

there seems to be an amazing amount of lakes and rivers and jungles and beaches and I can’t wait to start exploring!

I am in food heaven! every single restaurant here has been delicious. Food from italy, peru, mayan, sandwich shops, sushi.. After two and a half years in Chihuahua and its steak based cusine this is wonderful!

… i was thinking about music and about the fact that there is not really that much music that i really really like to listen to. Oh sure, i got tons of albums (and anyone looking for a great music website check out emusic.com, you pay but they have everything) but left to myself and given a choice I always pick a certain style and ignore the rest. Spacey, meditation music, trance to work to and slightly more upbeat version of the same with swedish and irish folk thrown in for driving. There are exceptions of course, there are always exceptions.

Anyway I started wondering where did I ‘think’ I liked the other musics come from? Why did I buy them? In fact where did I ‘think’ I liked anything come from? clothes, style, food, lifestyle choices. I did some recapitulation on it and came up with the startling revelation that most of my life, if not all was made up of choices made because other people thought they were cool, because I wanted to be cool and fit in, because I wanted to be accepted and if I had a definite game plan of ‘who I was’ then there was something to be liked/loved/accepted.

So begins the clearing, what do i want to ditch and what do i want to keep? what attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, are really mine and what have I garnered from outside myself since I was born seeking approval. I guess I have to find out who I actually am first and then the rest will fall away naturally.

I have noticed this with politicians. Politicians are not allowed to be grey, they are not allowed to be not sure how they think or feel about something. they have to be black or white. I think thats why Hillary Clinton got ditched the last election, she is smart, intelligent, savvy and sometimes stands in a grey area. I am glad Obama got in but I definitly would have voted for Hillary.

Ok, just back from Sturges Bike Rally for the second time, this time on my own bike! Bike riding is fun! I am slowly learning my bike, corners, stopping, speed, freeway (still scary). Its amazing, 60 miles per hour on a bike is much faster than in a car.

Anyway, some photos of some amazing bikes we saw there . The bikes are a mix of ones on the street and ones from a competition for custom bikes.

paul in his bike.

a custom chopper from the competition tent, called Pink Lady.

a dragon bike! so cool….

a futuristic machine.. some of them I wasn’t sure how they would actually work on the road

one from the street

main street in sturges

a chopper

Sitting in friends house in Carrick on Shannon we were messing with my camera. Taking pictures of the fire and then seeing what shapes were in it. Try it sometime, very entertaining. The one above is an angel or a phoneix and the one below is a dragon.

fire is amazing, i remember doing a fire dance many years ago on a shamanic course and we danced and twirled the fire and it went into tall thin circles like tornado circles. The tall thin ones were male and short fat ones were female.

Hi! to enter the giveaway please comment on either this post or my facebook page GreenBirdDreaming…

I have decided its time for another giveaway.

Now to the theme of the giveaway. The Small Achievement Award.

I was thinking the other day about how I run myself down and always try to work harder and push myself further and think ‘oh, i am not working fast enough’ or ‘I am not being good enough’. I work with a Toltec teacher and part of this work is seeing myself and finding out who I really am, finding where I stop myself from shining but also just be happy where I am right now and accept myself. I, as explained above, push myself in this also and he tells me ‘but Cliodhna, you are great! you are an artist living in Chihuahua and you travel here and travel there and you paint beautiful things’ and I think, ‘you know he’s right, I have done a lot and i don’t give myself credit for what I have done, I just run myself aground on my thoughts of what I didn’t do or how I did it wrong’.

Thats where this post comes from, not the big achievements that are in papers or make news on the television but the little achievements we don’t give ourselves credit for, being a mother raising wonderful children, painting, making a cake, being nice to the neighbour, listening to someone, learning to drive, traveling, just being me, whatever you have done or do that you don’t recognise as an achievement.

I am going to officialy give myself a pat on the back for living in another country, learning another language, and on an even smaller level changing a lock in a door which took me a while to figure out but all finished and I had a perfectly working chub lock without calling a locksmith to do it! I was quite proud of that

Comment below to enter the giveaway and if you like, share something small you have achieved you would like to congratulate yourself for. Can be anything!

x cliodhna

I have just spent the last hour wandering through Kathy Yorks Art Quilts and being inspired and wowed. Her quilts are beautiful!

This one is incredible, the buildings are all 3d blocks. She describes how she makes them and how she puts lollipop sticks in them to reinforce them structurally.

I adore this one. Called ‘Falling through the cracks’. The bird fishing for the falling beads and the textures of the different colour buttons in the squares up on top. I love the subtlety of the colours.

This one is from Kaizer Krafts blog. I found it when I did a search for ‘goldfish quilts’ before I started my own one. ‘Wow’ is all I can say. She has other pics from the Tokyo International Quilt festival.

This is beautiful.. It is from the National Quilt Museum. The link is to their facebook page.

It makes me wonder when I see art that truly drops my jaw open. A part of me wants to compare and think ‘I could NEVER do that!’ but of course I could, it would just be differant thats all. I am inspired about the whole quilt thing. That is what good art does, it inspires you to create. Dream beyond your old borders.

I am slowly defining myself as a textile artist. Before I did textiles but I wanted to paint and when I went into galleries with my embroideries they would generally shake their heads and say ‘no crafts’. Now, I am starting to find all these quilt shows, textile fairs, arts and crafts festivals and other opportunities that I would love to do. I think getting into an international quilt festival would be a good goal to have!

x clio

ok, for starters this is the first tutorial I have posted on this wee blog of mine so any suggestions as to improve the following are welcomed with open arms

I make greeting cards and I decided for my first tutorial to post about them. They are simple and easy to make and the finished product is wonderful. I have received warm reports from these. I think its the hearts that do it but i do fishes also and angels for christmas and trees.. your imagination is the limit!

You will need

a sewing machine that has a drop feed dog function, sometimes its called the darning function, you have to drop the teeth under the needle so they are no longer pushing the fabric forward. Go check, see if your machine can do this, you will be surprised at how many of even the cheaper machines can do it. I worked on a 100 dollar brother for two years before it died, now I have a super cadillac smooth pfaff and I love it. You might also need a darning foot or a free motion machine embroidery foot, each machine is different.

Scissors, fabric for the hearts, fabric for under the hearts on the paper, threads, beads (optional), hand sewing needle and card paper. The card paper I order online with the crease down the middle already from Joes Supplies but if you live beside a paper shop like Daintree in Dublin see what they have. Deckled edges make for an extra nice card. Embroidery Hoop.

The fabric for the hearts (I am using orange felt here in the photo) you stretch on the hoop and make sure its taught. The trick with machine embroidery free style is practise. Move the needle fast and the fabric slowly and draw with the thread. Practise circles and spirals and writing your name and you will soon see how simple it is. I draw hearts on the fabric following a cardboard template I drew and cut out before, this just makes sure all the hearts are the same size, draw them freehand if you wish. I use fabric chalk to draw the outline and then I sew round the outline twice and then fill with spirals and patterns. I usually go over the lines I make twice, it gives a stronger line. The patterns are up to you, invent, be free and your patterns that you do naturally will emerge. Also I do six hearts at a time so as not to waste the fabric.

Cut the hearts out when you are finished. Cut a square of your other fabric just a little bigger than the heart. Place the heart on top of this fabric on the left side of the card (so its in the right place when you fold the card, make sure its upright!)

and then with more spiral patterns sew the heart directly onto the card through the underneath bit of fabric. You can make it as simple as you like, just make sure you sew the edges of the heart down. If its a fraying fabric I use lots of long stitches back and forth to catch the edge.

The heart finished sewing. I still have to tie off the threads at the back, pulling the front one through and tying it with the back one. Prevents it unraveling.

The inside of the card so far.

Now for the beads, these are optional but they add a sparkle that I love. Pick a colour that stands out a little from the backround colour, silver or gold beads are always beautiful. I have used a pinkish bead here that sets off the green gauze I have used and still looks good on the red heart. Sew these on by hand where ever you like, i generally put one over a spiral end and then tie off at the back.

The inside of the card at the end

The finished card, ready for its envelobe and, if I am selling it, its sticker saying my name and plastic protective sleeve.

I have these and other embroideries for sale at my etsy store ‘GreenBirdDreaming’ if you would like to visit!

There was a cat in my swimming pool a while ago, trapped for the night until the next morning when I went to investigate the mewling. It was only a kitten but when I tried to catch it it was fierce and hissed and spat at me and its fur was on end. I was impressed by it, it was so small yet willing to defend itself to the death. When I did catch it with my cardigan over it it got loose and bit me hard on the thumb, teeth going through nail and all, a mighty crunch from a small fierce thing.

I remember ages ago a dream I had when I had to choose between two kittens and one was soft a cuddly and domesticated and the other was smoke grey and spitting at me furiously. I knew I should probably pick the nice kitten so i would have a cat I could have sitting on my lap but a part of me really wanted the other one, the wild untamed one, the one who would walk by its lonesome like in the Rudyard Kipling story. (maybe I will post it).

So when this cat bit me I have blood trapped under my finger nail and it is growing out slowly. I thought that maybe its a sign that I have until the blood grows out to learn the lesson of the fierce kitten in the swimming pool. Where did my fierce independance go? my willingness to fight off intruders from my space? to stand up for myself even though the other might be a lot bigger than I was? I must remember it. A courage to be different, to stand alone and be myself.

I have had discussions with the boyfriend about it too over the last while. I stop being the little girl and start getting my own life together and this threatens him and he figures I am leaving. Of course there is a fear in me that he will leave, to go and find some more obedient girlfriend who will do what he tells her and doesn’t do pesky things like soul searching and strange workshops. But you know what, the happier I am with myself the happier I am in my relationship. We are getting married next christmas so I have this feeling like if I am marrying him then I had better show him who I really am so he knows what he’s doing (hi Paul! x)

I am off to Galway today to put posters and leave fliers for the workshops I am organizing. It’s funny doing this, It is reminding me of all the times I would have done it for gigs we were doing. Book the venue, do the radio interview, put up the posters, tell everyone we knew and then when the night of the gig arrived we would do the sound check, and then sit back and wait for people to arrive. Sometimes they would arrive early and we would relax and enjoy and sometimes nobody would come for ages and we would have visions of playing to three people, but eventually they would trickle in little by little and we would always have a full house to play to.

Same feeling here, putting the fliers out and spreading the word and waiting for the response. I am feeling responsible for getting people and a part of me wants to push and control it and thinks that if I don’t do it right nobody will come and I will be to blame. This is where, I think, doing your best comes into play, that if I do my best and give it the energy it needs and deserves then no matter the outcome I will know I did what was to be done and I couldn’t have done it any differently, where-as if I had skimped on time and attention I will always wonder what if?

Of course the other side of that is my wonderful judge who will try to make me feel bad no matter what I did but I try not to listen to him.

I remember putting up a poster for Reiki in Guanajuato and having this wonderful realization afterwards that I didn’t need to worry about it or try to control it, if there was someone who needed my energy they would find me so I could relax and let the universe do its stuff. Nobody did arrive but I figured I had put up the poster for me to have that revelation, to not be attached to outcome and then I can take the risk of doing something new.