Between studio and summer

This morning I woke with that delicious disorientation – what day is it? Saturday? Monday? Wednesday? For a few moments, time felt porous, unanchored. I love that liminal pause, before the pull between the part of me that longs to be untethered and the practical workings of my prefrontal cortex, which inevitably wins as the calendar snaps back into place.

I am sitting at our worn wooden kitchen table after a full and shifting week. It’s week four – or maybe five – of term one. The school rhythm had begun to settle and I was finding steady studio time again. Cutting, sewing, writing, admin. The work moving forward in small, pleasing increments. Then on Tuesday, a bull ant bite just before drop-off, and a planned home day I couldn’t slide out of on Wednesday. Two back-to-back days at home*. The studio rhythm shifted. The to-do lists re-evaluated. Appointments rescheduled.

Now we are nearing the end of the week, and here I am. The morning’s household jobs finished. A blank page. A cup of tea. A stretch of quiet time in front of me. I’ve noticed how quickly irritation creeps in when I’m not “being productive,” not “getting through the list” – that ever-growing, shape-shifting list. But really, what is more important? Being available for my babies, who will be children for such a brief and ever-shortening window of time? Or ticking off tasks?

And yet, alongside that, my need to make remains constant. So much of homemaking is invisible and impermanent. Laundry cycles back into the wash. Meals are prepared, then disappear into bellies. Stories drift softly into memory. There is something steadying about dedicating time to work that endures. Cloth that carries weight. Seams that create form. Pieces that move from the cutting table into lived life. Something tangible that says: this is how I spent my time.

This week I finished an actually wearable Arthur pants toile. The proportions finally feel resolved – 3.5 inches removed from the rise, another inch from the length, even after sizing down two sizes. I opted for French seams, knowing the busy ikat fabric would swallow the effort of flat-felling. The fabric sits exactly as I’d hoped and the shape feels balanced. A terracotta linen pair is already cut and waiting. I’m curious to explore the zipper-fly variation and I am dreaming about a colour-blocked iteration.

Uma and I knitted a small kitten for a sweet friend who just turned two. I love how each of these soft animals develops its own quirks and character, even when following the same pattern. My dyer’s chamomile has come out of the dehydrator and into a jar. I feel the pull to return to the dye pot before summer closes – to spend time getting witchy with colour again. It has been too long since I’ve let cloth steep and shift in a vat.

We had a wild storm earlier this week. Sideways rain, booming thunder, power out, school families running between deluges to their cars. The garden responded almost immediately. Cooler nights. Restful sleep. I’ve been harvesting herbs just before they pass their peak – oregano, sage, thyme, lemon balm – and planning another batch of seedy sprinkle. This time I will write the recipe down properly.

I finally strained the St John’s Wort oil I began infusing in late December. If I had to choose a single favourite scent, it might be this deep red oil – spicy, almost incense-like, with a warmth that edges toward apple skin and late summer sun.

Yesterday we wandered through Blue Lotus – acres of tropical gardens oddly set within Victorian bush. We were told it was the end of the season and the lotuses were fading, but from where we stood the lakes seemed crowded with them. Giant leaves layered upon more giant leaves, blooms rising above the water in pinks and whites, but also oranges, yellows and blues. The children ran ahead in exuberant loops, as though we had stepped through some invisible threshold into another geography.

And so the days continue in this rhythm – some given to children, some to cloth, some to admin, some to storms and herbs and laundry. The studio door remains open. The amorphous list expanding and contracting. The practice quietly deepening in its own time.

*After writing all this on Thursday, Uma had an unexpected home day on Friday. Three of five studio days turned into days with my babes.