My new column for Spaces Kansas City is about living with pets.  You can find it here.

This is a throw back Thursday picture of Dexter as a puppy, with a much younger and more tolerant Rosie.

This last week was something of a blur. I was in New York for a couple of days seeing friends and art and product. I had not been to the gift show for a few years and it was good to run into colleagues and to see what will be filling shop shelves soon. The friend part is always tricky. I could spend whole days with the friends I was able to see and it would still not feel like enough. Even so, there were people I wanted to see and couldn’t. It’s a matter of too much goodness and not enough time. “Stay longer,” my at home friends advise, but it would take weeks, I fear, and not just another couple of days.

With only a few hours to dedicate to exhibits, I settled on Picasso and Pollock at MoMA. The Picasso show was packed and there was the most delightful group of school girls there with their teacher. I eavesdropped on her comments until I felt conspicuous, then I went on alone.

The first room is Picasso’s later works in metal; the next contains early pieces primarily in wood. They are smaller, mostly on pedestals and hung on the wall. This is good, because I could be close. I don’t know much about art. I know how it makes me feel. The energy comes to me in waves. I like to get as close as I can, to see the brush strokes or the texture of the canvas where there is none. I like to see the push of the clay or where the hammer met the metal.

In these early sculptures, I recognized Picasso. The work was consistent with what I knew. But what I loved seeing, was not the final form, but the random drive of the nails that held the rough pieces of wood together. I don’t know if the artist considered their placement; perhaps their seeming randomness was calculated. But it looked to me that the important thing was to make the pieces stick, just as my boys would have done building something in the garage. The focus was vision to reality; nailing was the rush to get it together.

I realized something as I studied those pieces. My writing has been stuck. For a long time it came out in a rush, a willy-nilly tumble of words that I could not get onto the page fast enough. I wasn’t as worried about the line of the nails. I just wanted to get the damn thing together. I am missing that juice.

Image, top, swiped with great appreciation from the MoMA site here. Photography Pablo Enriquez.

I promise this won’t turn into all stitching, all the time, but there was an interesting piece in The New York Times about needlework on Tuesday. The article reinforced all that I knew to be true (even though its focus was knitting.) “The repetitive action of needlework can induce a relaxed state like that associated with mediation and yoga.” “When my hands are busy, my mind stays focused on the here and now.”

Many of my canvases are large. People sometimes look at the 18 x 18 square and say, “That would take me forever. Could you make them smaller?” For some of the designs, smaller does not make sense. And, truth be told, other than those that are novelty, I don’t think pillows should ever be smaller than 18″ square.

But beyond that, I think the time put in should be viewed in a different way. “How long will that take you?” people ask me as they watch the movement of the needle, the canvas draped across my lap.  I could calculate it, though I never have.  What difference does it make how long it takes me to create? When I’m finished I will have something that I love for my home, or for a friend, that could last for generations.  I’ve made something.  I’ve put my heart and my time into it.  There is nothing you can do on your phone that will deliver that kind of satisfaction.

You can find the piece in the Times here.

I take ridiculously long, hot showers as it is.  Heaven knows how much longer I’d lather if my walls were chinoiserie tile.  For the love of Pete, my fingers may never unprune.

Better, perhaps to consider a kitchen backsplash as the kitchen is someplace I really never want to be.  Birds and blooms may lure me in.

Cle Tiles is offering bespoke chinoiserie tiles as large as 3′ x 6.5′.  The idea is to bring the beauty of hand-painted tile to spaces that may be challenging for paper or silk.  Click on over to see the designs here.

Oh! The mud room.  The butler’s pantry.  The dog shower.  Every day – every mundane task –  would be a treat.