Dearest Friends,

Finally accepting that I will not have my full needlework studio set up and running any time soon – nor the dream home that I had hoped would manifest if I put my Arthouse up for sale and then bought a new one in Portugal… Waiting patiently as our small investments become big ones... Plus a magnificently-upheavel-ing spontaneous minibreak this week, which we got back from at nightfall yesterday… It has been a week with little mental space to work on big projects, and so I have come back to the very simple work of – between driving and playing, resting and eating – repairing my favourite yellow leather handbag.

The handbag belonged to a very good friend of mine, Michael angel, a New York based theatre and screen writer, who moved to Guardia Sanframondi after our famous house-hunting TV show. She had this beautiful bag for many years, travelling across Manhattan to her her professor's job at the university: on the subway, writing and teaching, coffee-ing and returning home to her apartment; it has a lovely patina of the history of its lifetime in The Big Apple.

There are several ink marks, which are such a great illustration of where it has been and who it has been with. And the visible threads which are part of the design, were greyed from their original brightness (after many many many sessions of small stitching sections, I have almost finished this covering up of the old threads!) The inside lining is torn, plus I removed a stretch of the lining seam, so I could unscrew the metal plates which had branding on them. These are all aspects which I’ve been working on for a while, and which I still have to finish.

So I carry this bag around with me, containing always the threads, scraps and scissors that I need to repair it: sometimes I get only a couple of stitches covered with new thread, but it gives me a sense of the long-term completion which I would love to manifest.

This reminds me of how important small steps are in our life, which lead to a fine piece of work being made best. It leads me to believe that ONLY the very-long-term, and ONLY the small steps are the really vital ones. We get lulled into thinking that only the big steps and dramatic events are important, and we neglect tiny wee accumulations, but they are the stuff of life: the threads that hold our magical universe together.

• A long career planting seeds in students’ minds and hearts, and writing without mainstream success – each harvesting the treasure at a following season, like my truly-marvellous friend Michael angel.

• Long years waiting for partnership, doing the work and suffering for not finding him yet – never compromising and yet feeling like the less I compromise the harsher the reaction from the men-who-were-not-right-for-me – until the moment when we embraced for the first time in Napoli train station, and our worlds crashed perfectly into place inside each other!

• Striving for sustenance and survival all the decades, in stupid jobs and half-successful vocations, until I accepted that Living In Gift was the only way that would work for me: unworking. My sovereign path being quite clunky at first, but, strength in numbers, melding paths with @vincentnijman we have exponential riches – especially right now as Bitcoin bursts through multiple ceilings and doesn’t seem to be slowing…

The very-long-term has always been a theme – in my own life and in the world around me – that has been most interesting to me; nature works with a very long vision in mind, and when I look at the lifetime rather than the daily/ weekly/ next-deadline goals, it is much much easier to both exist and to enjoy life.

Which is why, when folks ask me “Is that not really annoying?” or say “Euch, I could never spend so long sewing like that!”, I smile, and carry on sewing. Sometimes I’ll suggest to them that they take up a needle – I describe the feeling of slowing down, and of that deepest of satisfactions when a project is hot off the sewing machine… But mostly they don’t want to know this.

Folks love to complain about not having the time to slow down – when slowing down is what gives us time. They love to boast about how they suffer in working hard without proper reward: it gives them a sense of identity and connectedness with all the millions of others who are doing the same. It takes a lot of courage to not join in with the familiar discomfort – and instead to take a different kind of path of unfamiliar discomfort, which actually rewards us rightly.

Even a small job like this has an immense return: e.g. it has brought myriad conversations into my life, which were stimulated by folks asking what I am doing – connections in the living moment, and vivid discourse around the meaning of life. I often have to remind older women – who say ‘Ahh, no-one is handsewing any more!!’ - that I am doing it, and many, many women like me. This leads me to discuss the Needlework Monday community, Hive, and crypto – which in turns gives me a sense of purpose and direction (which my earlier art career, for all my ‘success’ never gave).

Sewing one stitch at a time, even when interrupted, is a living metaphor for our lifework. One step at a time, one breath at a time. One stretching out of bed in the morning and laying down cosy under the covers at a time. One bleeding cycle and moon rise and sun set at a time. One season, one rotation around the sun, one generation: every step is significant, when it is seen as a jigsaw piece in a much larger picture. Every thread is meaningful when it is seen as part of a great thick rope of all of our contributions together, leading us to a better world...

What are you stitching today?? Here, we’re about to put a morning fire on, and to unpack/ tidy up from our few days away. I will sit by the stove and sew some more on this gorgeous handbag which I am making new – and will write to my friend Michael angel, to let her know I am still working on it, hehe! Eventually it will be more brand-new-looking: not today, but some day, when it finally accumulates all the stitches and patches that will make it anew… Until then, a few more stitches today will suffice.

With Love!

www.claregaiasophia.com