Fall comes

Yesterday I knew summer was over. I put on warm socks and long pants, leaving shorts and sandals behind, probably for this year. Sigh. The rain has started. Right now the sun is shining and there is blue sky, but there are clouds around the edges. Yesterday the rain came down in torrents and washed summer away. The garden is still wet and drippy from yesterday. The bathroom door is sticking because of the additional moisture in the air. The creek is high. Summer is over.

There's a little frog in there—can you see him?

I went to the studio yesterday, with an umbrella, and turned on the heat to help dispel the damp and turned on the lights to dispel the gray and I puttered the afternoon away with some non-art sewing.

I bought a length of hand-woven fabric, years ago, at the market in Otavalo, in Ecuador. "Es algodon??" I asked, in my terrible Spanish. "Is it cotton?"  "Si, algodon" was the answer. But it isn't. I don't know what kind of fabric it is. Maybe some cotton and something else. I washed it when I got home and it crinkled up strangely and raveled like mad, producing huge wads of colored thread in the dryer. I burned one of those thread wads and it produced black, hard balls of melted something. I folded it and put it away where it has remained for probably 8 years. Yesterday I made myself a long shirt from the fabric.

Then I made two soft flannel reversible caps for my sister, who is undergoing chemotherapy and will lose her beautiful hair. We—she and I—have always been a bit vain about our hair. It is thick and coarse and began to turn white so many years ago we can't remember. It attracts attention. It is our family crest, inherited from our father and grandfather and shared by our brother, and cousins and children and oddly, it feels extremely representative of who we are and where we come from. Hair. Silly, isn't it? She will lose her hair—temporarily. These caps will keep her head warm in the coming rainy, damp months until the hair comes back. They are very soft and remind me of baby caps, except I made them extra large because, along with the "Howard hair," we all have big heads.

Rainy days are good days for hunkering down and getting things done. And getting things done feels better than worrying about things I can't control. Like hair.