In January, after considering every floor plan with every builder in southeast Aurora, we selected a builder, a model and a lot just two miles from our home.  The new house would be a ranch with a full basement - 2100SF on each floor for a total of 4,200SF compared to our previous 1,850SF.  In the new home, we’d live on the main floor and dj’s touch would consume the downstairs.  We spent February heads down in design.  We broke ground in March.

 

In April I contracted with a wonderful web developer/SQL database specialist named Jim Heath.  He would build the database I felt I needed to make the administrative side of the business bearable and he would expand the functionality of the website so that I could modify content and upload new creations myself on the fly.

 

And then life got hard.  In a five week period, we had three deaths.  Our 18 year old cat Desireé died after a wonderful life as a spoiled feline in the Wells/Abney household.  In April, we took our first vacation in two years (well, it was really an extended buying trip for dj’s touch) driving the New Mexico fiber trail for a week with stays in Santa Fe and Taos.  The last day of our trip, we received word that my father had died in Pennsylvania after eight years in and out of hospitals with heart troubles.  He too had a full and rich life with his wife of 63 years.  We were incredibly sad but relieved his suffering was over.  We flew to Pennsylvania and I delivered the eulogy at his funeral.

When we returned to Colorado, I returned to pottery, knitting and managing the home and studio boutique build.  My beloved pottery mentor and buddy, Barry, and I had identified yet another joint artistic venture – wire wrapped jewelry.  On Monday evening May 5^th, Barry called to tell me he had found a source for the jigs and tools we needed to produce the shawl pins we’d selected as our first offering.  He was happy and full of life scheming and planning our future together.  To the best of our knowledge, I was the last person to speak to him.  On Tuesday I received a call from the pottery studio informing me that Barry had passed away in his sleep.  My heart was broken.  I had only known him for 15 months but his impact on my life was profound.  He was 58 years young with so much more to do and offer, but life had a different plan.  So one week after I gave the eulogy at my father’s funeral, I was giving the eulogy at Barry’s.  For the next month, I focused on finishing the final pottery pieces that we had created jointly (he would throw, I would trim, I would throw, he would trim, but I always handled our glazing because he hated glazing).

 

I lost myself in managing the studio boutique build and producing knitted and pottery creations, but the grief I was burying inside began taking its toll.  It wasn’t until I began talking with others about the loved ones I’d lost that began to recover some of my former energy and joy.

Back to the home and studio boutique build.  We closed on the new space in early August.  By 8am the day after closing, we had eight contractors at the new house to finish building out the studio and boutique and do a little “tweaking” on the main floor (cutting into walls, building additional closets, curving straight arches).  Studio boutique construction was finished by the end of October.  The xeroscaping (environmentally PC landscaping with almost no sod and lots of boulders, rocks and wild grasses) began in September and was completed in November.  We put our old house on the market just before Labor Day.  It closed 2.5 months later in a cash deal with no contingencies in the worst real estate market of my lifetime (hallelujah).

 

In November I was invited to exhibit my first six embellished ceramic masks at the Namaste Art and Event Center - proceeds to support the Namaste Hospice Center.  I secured invitations for my fellow raku potters, Susan Chapman and Anthony Andersen, to exhibit some of their pottery and sculpture as well.

 
I spent the rest of November and December designing and outfitting the boutique, teaching and production spaces.  In the process I discovered that I had stockpiled more than 800 different types of yarn totaling more than 3000 skeins.  How did I do that in an 1850SF ranch with no basement?

I still had more to learn and life and death in 2008.  In early December, my beloved 16-year-old feline knitting companion Rem was released from his two-year battle with hemolytic anemia.  We had spent the last two and a half years helping our three elderly cats cross over.  We believed that when Rem’s time came, we would take a break from being owned by felines to let ourselves catch our breath.  We lasted one day without a cat.

And so Maggie, the adorable two-pound medium-hair calico came to rule our roost.  Rem taught me that knitting could be a meditative experience, as he lay quietly beside me for hours never fussing with my knitting.  After all the years of non-stop consulting and travel, I needed help learning to shift to a lower, more humane gear.  Maggie taught me that even knitting can be a competitive sport, as she lept through the loom, gnawing through my working yarn and diving into my knitting bag to attack the yarn at its source.  I'd never had a kitten – only adult cats.  Kittens are unbelievable.  Sweet and furry and loving one minute.  Possessed the next.  She tested the limits of my commitment to knitting and cats.  And we adored her and couldn't imagine life without her, of course.  With Maggie, I learned to establish healthy boundaries that facilitate balancing my artistic expression with spending time playing with those I love.