Our Tiny House

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Jen

Greetings from our Tiny House in the Charcoal Forest!

Our Tiny House arrived here at the beginning of May, and now we have fully nested back in our charcoal forest. It was a major ordeal hauling it up the mountain with low branches over the roads, and a colossal stress, but things have calmed down now and we are getting use to two people and one large dog in a place that is very small. Our tiny house has frightfully few drawers, or closets, but very nice walls, surfaces, fixtures, and huge windows. It is tidy, efficient, artful, and crazy cozy! I even have plenty of blithe sunny angles to contemplate …

We’ve managed to get the bare essentials in as best as we could. Jeff made a counter extension into the stair landing so that there is a tiny bit more kitchen counter and a couple shelves for necessaries (ahem, those “drawers” in front of the sink, they’re fake, a tease, just for looks, but no complaints about the deep sink!) , and we still need to put up some shelves and cup hooks and such. There are two lofts, one with stairs going up to a platform with 5 foot overhead, it is our bedroom & has room enough only for our mattress ( restorative naps like from a nest in the trees !) and the other loft has a steep ladder going up, over the bathroom, with about 4 feet overhead and which serves as an attic. The saving grace is that Jeff built a shed, which is about 25 feet from the Tiny House, and where we have the luxury of temporary storage, all of our clothes, chairs & dressers I collected in last 6 months, and boxes etc… and… a washer & dryer which will be moved to the house when it is built one day. So that’s me trotting back and forth countless times a day, and with my knitting trail right at the doorstep, and all the wildness I am in need of ~~ ho hum, I tell you, this is “glamping” !

The outside paneling is torched & sealed wood , a method called shou sugi ban , which apparently has excellent preserving qualities, as well as fits right in with the charcoal forest ! Hunkering down for the long haul now, until our former house is rebuilt.

Knitting as usual…

And napping…

I’m so grateful that our Tiny House has super efficient heating & cooling, so I can close all the windows up and it becomes nearly sound proof, which is helping me cope with the loud noise of chain saws and bulldozers of the loggers at work nearby, and eventually the construction of the house. Eventually. Once in a while a huge tree lands with a thud and shakes the Tiny House, but here inside we are safe and far enough away not to be bothered too awfully much. Still trying to find my former manic wave, while adapting to the big changes going on, but I wanted to post this for our friends and family who have been wondering how our new living situation is. That’s us. Here. Now.

Everything in its place, and life is good.

♣ ♣ ♣

In closing, I just wanted to say that I’d love to hear more from you. I want to encourage some chattiness (plenty of space in the WordPress comments)…so please don’t be shy, and tell me about you!

blue things

Posted on March 14, 2018 by Jen

jenjoycedesign© cappuccino and knitting
In the last weeks I’ve been frequently knitting at the Oakville Grocery cafe to quell life’s blues. Just a quiet little deli & espresso place on the highway with vineyard views in all directions, and with picnic benches in the back where I can bathe in the morning winter sun while making progress toward the finish of a new pattern. And Emma and I are getting out a little bit for (mostly short) walks on the ridge.

Although it appears the walk up the ridge has lost it’s charm completely, I am trying to embrace it, hoping for better days ahead and the mysterious healing power of Spring. Other blues: An intensely blue sky over Oakville on Sunday. A blue balloon descended from the sky, tangled in the woods, omen-like. My blue knitting bag hung on a burned branch while walking up the ridge. Need I mention the blue knitting with cappuccino? I would like to see some blue wildflowers soon. Oh but hey, the vernal equinox is only a week away!

Finding

Posted on February 17, 2018 by Jen

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After losing most of my things in the wildfire, I am scouting again.

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Earlier this week I found this retro beauty in a local consignment shop of antique & vintage objects, and we picked it up this morning.

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A bathtub is not a delicate or graceful object, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to find one while out scouting in the thrift & antique shops, but the utmost in useful things in my opinion, something of daily life, and lifestyle. I can’t express just how gratified it makes me feel to begin to find pieces of a home again, which is in so many ways my identity.

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This goes especially for used things, sturdy and elegant old-fashioned things that have already endured decades of use. I love, love, love old things, and am ready and eager to bring them into our new house, which likely won’t be any sooner than a year, but I can begin finding now. We will have at least saved a fortune snatching up this one, and not waiting until later to buy new.

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I suppose I am like so many other Nesters, completely taken in by the beauty of a utilitarian thing like an old bath tub.

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My new finding does have me feeling pleased with myself, even though for now it will have to stand patiently next to a big window in our holding place, and I think it will come in handy as a giant yarn bowl, or laundry basket, until eventually the new house is built.

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Frustrations over painfully slow rebuilding aside, and nature’s cruel black hand is far from getting use to, but admittedly life is seeming to feel good again as this particular finding brings my focus forward to what might be.

Intuitive

Posted on November 16, 2017 by Jen

Moon phase is Waning Crescent, and at 3.5 percent this very hour. The Old Moon quickly moves into the New Moon in less than twenty hours. Symbolism attributed to this moon phase is a time of subconscious enlightenment giving way to conscious awakening of values. Indeed, an event for me this morning, so ripe with meaning. The waning crescent moon is about to seemingly disappear, when it is directly between the Earth and the Sun, hidden and obscured.

And I have felt obscuring in my life, without routine and wandering without confidence. Where is my mothers skirt to cling to as I did when a child of the world? We are all thrown out into the water at least once in life to test our instincts, and to strengthen that innate mechanism of survival. I’ve been thrown into the water, and I have been lashing about for weeks and weeks, lacking trust of my buoyant inner self.

I crave to feel the presence of my strong intuition, and let my life develop here forward in a more fluid state, stroking instead of splashing, trusting instead of panicking over what is perpetually lost.

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From here I stride away from the recent difficult experience …

and (hopefully) toward positiveness & creativity.

Fresh

Posted on November 13, 2017 by Jen

jenjoycedesign© new space

Fresh. Clean. Beginnings.

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In a new place, a space to explore, and lay-about.

jenjoycedesign© new lay-abouts

Emma and I are sleuthing out comfort in this transition, doing alright but not brilliantly, as can be expected. I have not knit, nor have I walked very much to speak of. Life upside-down brings different perspectives for certain, and as I find myself upside-down, well then I am resolved to learning new angles on form and experience. Its okay, I have no complaints …. except that I miss my home terribly and to have to wait for it to be rebuilt is something I can not embrace just yet.

We’re fine otherwise, and are contemplating a far more minimalist life-style.

I am so grateful for the flurry of pattern sales from you supporters out there (the post Recovering) and those of you who gave to me loving good thoughts & prayers. A few things which managed to come to us by gift from friends have been shaping this holding place, and it feels just a teensy bit homier now ~~ thank you!

Abelene Two just just arrived at the door … just in time to inspire me to knit something to drape on her lovely form. And I still am grateful for cups of truly delicious fresh coffee.

Thank you to all of you who have left heart-full notes during & in the wake of the wildfire. Please forgive my silence, and please know that I am so very much appreciating your words, in a wordless time. Thank you.

A temporary place.

Posted on October 27, 2017 by Jen

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We have found a place to rent and moved in our few things we took with us. Life has a new routine now in a place that is merely transitory. This is something I have to find the courage to live inside of ~~ a temporary place.

Rafter beam with nails Jeff and I hammered in 2001

I long to be in our house. I break down frequently, and become hopelessly frustrated in doing the basic things, feeling like I am groping in the dark to find my way around, having to relearn every small movement through the disorder and difference. But each day I am becoming a little more resigned to it.

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Dying fir needles from the unburned tree crowns fall like snow everywhere, an eerie beautiful gold in the woods

There are brief moments when I feel that metaphorical sun streaming through a window of my creativity, and I contemplate how I might continue to be artful in this transition. That itself is the key ~~ being creative without roots in a place.

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trail working tool remains

My trail-walking, even knitting, has been put away for a time. One of the things I took in my escape, was a tote full of yarn & mostly all my needles, knowing I might be displaced for a few weeks, and I could cheerfully keep on designing.

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trail work as last left on my Knitting Trail, and Autumn leaves keep falling over the blackened earth

But the heaviness took hold and the cheerfulness did not last. It was perhaps still numbness that day I cast on for something that is forthcoming, but only about half the stitches before putting it down, and soon after I learned our house burned to ashes.

what is left of a carbon fiber and aluminum mountain bike

So I will not knit for a while. But I crave to blend fibers and spin, and there are a couple of very generous women locally who are setting me up with both a wheel and fiber ~~ bless them ~~ I should be spinning by this weekend.

wiped away charcoal sill plate where doorway was, to see Jeff’s & my initials written in the concrete, from when we finished foundation in the year 2000.

And thank you so very much dear friends on my knitting forum who have offered their time and welcoming warmth helping knitters with their questions.

burned outline of a bench on my knitting trail.

Deep gratitude to All of You who have bought my patterns, it was quite an overwhelming response to my previous post , and I can not thank you enough. The selling of my patterns to knitters of the world is enabling me make a priority to swiftly ‘set up shop’ , and in gratitude I am doing so, longing to refine & post in Tweed Chronicles again, as well as All Things Forthcoming with designing.

I will be back soon, hopefully with something creative and artful of my temporary place, and find resilience through the kindness of my lovely friends local & global, and of beautiful generous strangers. Thank you again & again, xxJen

Recovering

Posted on October 21, 2017 by Jen

photo from A Temporary Place

Facing the long process of recovering a life even remotely similar to what was ‘before the fire’ could easily drive one to depression in merely a thought, a blink of an eye. I have discovered that I am very much a person influenced by Things. Sentimental things are good, craved, needed, and unsentimental things (as furnished rentals) could very much send me over the edge. Jeff and I are apparently for various reasons not able to just go up and live on our fire-ravaged land in a trailer any time soon, as was the thought I held on to through the first week of being displaced. We will have no choice but to weather over this storm of drastic life-upheaval, in another place, and I am going to focus a few months to recover only the very basics of what I had and used every day.

I really very much appreciate the resonating requests from all of you, in the comments over the last two posts Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and Ten acres and a trailer, so many people offering to send things to help. I have thought and thought about how to go about asking for it, so I have a favor to ask of anybody who would like to help me recover the basics for my knitting, spinning, sewing studio which I took so much pleasure in posting about on Yarnings over the years. Something like this is easy, digital, no postage necessary, because right now I don’t have an address– and I would get your support.

If you would like to help, please buy a pattern, or two, or more,

from my pattern page on Ravelry.

Be sure to scroll down and see them all, they range from $3.40 – $6, and I am sure you could find something that you would enjoy knitting, even to learn on, or to have a knitter make for you, for many of my patterns are beginner friendly, or if you have no desire for having it knitted, just enjoy having the patterns as a token of your support. The money from this burst of sales could allow me to get specifically what I need , and can form personal sentimental attachment to, which is ever so important. And soon I will get my most recent pattern up and running, and soon I will be in a temporary space, but with my own tools of the trade, and while we rebuild the hermitage on the mountain, at least I could keep working.

I never would ordinarily ask for this pattern-selling promotion, but it is the best way I think, a way that is mutually benefiting. So please buy my patterns, I’d be so grateful, and please spread the word to every knitter you know. I will be coming up with the latest one probably some time mid or late Autumn.

Thank you everybody, for being such an important pillar for me during this time, xxJen

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Posted on October 19, 2017 by Jen

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My heart goes out with loving empathy to my neighbors & friends who lost their homes, and others who like me, have had to endure these tortuously bleak and dark smoke-filled days, and still displaced from the wildfire evacuation. I just found out that our house has burned down. There is nothing left. The landscape took a lashing, as did my sanity and sense of confidence in the world.

Thank you again all of you who had left a note on the Ten Acres & A Trailer, for those notes were a reminder that life was still happening during the numbest time of my whole life. In closing, I never really talked much here about the house, but it is so very special because Jeff and I built it ourselves, and it took us nearly six years to do it, working every weekend, every holiday & summer vacation.

2001: Thirty-five feet in the air.

But I am healthy, and so am facing forward with gratitude the size of Mt Veeder itself that I still have the ones I love near me, friends who have not lost their home, and a future, even if unknown.

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ps. I will look forward to answering all of your comments soon, thank you so much for them, they are giving me a lot of strength ~~ xx Jen

Ten acres and a trailer.

Posted on October 12, 2017 by Jen

I am soon to land feet down in ash and soot, after floating and free-falling for what seems a lost number of days. Not much needs to be said as the media has been pelting the airspace relentlessly since it all begun, and my perspective on the wildfire situation here in the blazing counties is only another shadowy narration of it. It is immense and I am going to ignore it for now, and try my hardest to not look backwards.

Jeff, Emma and I are in a calm and safe place, and unharmed. The future is all I can bear to ponder right now, perhaps a new routine living in a trailer as we clean up the black coat which will be sticky and heart-wrenching, or simply sweeping up ashes… I do not yet know. I dream now of freshness, of sun streaming in through windows on the mountain’s rugged landscape, and I am willing to accept whatever it looks like, as a loved one who has been injured, I will care for it tenderly, when the time comes soon that we will be allowed to revisit our property and see the aftermath. I crave to thrive, and create, to tap into that effervescent well spring within myself. I want to be there now, I am ready, but I am having to be patient for the scale of the situation involves many thousands of folk just as I am, reluctantly separated and in limbo hoping for anything better than the worst.

For me that would be living in a trailer if I must, and once again walking in the wild places, along those trails that I share with the wildlife, and to scribble the day’s chores on my chalkboard and pace myself through them, never again begrudgingly! ((Oh, and a belated happy birthday Michele, sending you a card was the one important thing I had written on my chalkboard as I left the house, and never got to it!))

Edit in: Friends , I am posting progress of the situation in comments below, where you can be informed of my personal fire news, until I post again. xxJen

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Category Archives: wildfire