A few of my favourite things: late summer morning light on the roof top deck, hand stitch on a cloth painting, coffee in bone china, bee bath, pot of basil, ceramic birds (rosemary murray) on repurposed copper rain chain and a damaged but still functional vase (ruth porter)

Thank you for joining me here for this quiet little conversation, taking a moment to be with these thoughts, words and images.

I've been getting the message "allow yourself to receive" on repeat over the last month. It's something I've never been very good at. I don't receive compliments well. It's excruciating to ask for or accept offers of help. I don't like people choosing for me. It's as if I believe the only person I can truly trust to come through for me, is me. By not being open to receiving, I've been robbing others of the opportunity to feel generous and to nurture our connectedness.

The decision to listen to this message, and to make the conscious and purposeful choice to allow myself to receive has been a beautiful experience. I asked for and received help around the conditions of payment for a significant and unplanned expense I'm about to incur. There was a gift in the courage to make the ask and receiving a yes, a gift in the way it allows me some financial grace, and a gift in how my trust in receiving help is expanding. It's surprising to feel a degree of freedom and of relief that I don't have to figure out everything by myself.

In the spirit of allowing myself to receive, I have an ask from my tender heart to yours. I would really love for the gifts of my words and my art to reach more people. I would so appreciate if you would share my website www.mardellrampton.com with someone you know, or perhaps forward them your favourite journal post. Thank you for this, and I look forward to receiving new people into our circle.

An update on the cloth situation: a very generous artist shared a source for cloth products in the US and I've since arranged for them to send me some samples of possible cloth alternatives. As the days cool out of range for successful dye paint testing, at the very least I can assess some of the other aspects of these samples.

I made you a little video to show you why the cloth I've been using is so special. I talk about the features of this cloth and share some samples of past dye paint tests to give you a sense of what a difference the cloth makes to my particular process.

And as always, I want to express my gratitude to be living and working on the ancestral & unceded territories of the hən̓̓qəmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples.I honour the incredible depths of grace, courage and perseverance of Indigenous Peoples, and look to them as an example as they find their voices amidst the noise and obfuscation of colonization.

until next time,

Mardell

lessons in connection

shiny things and avoidance

Adaptability