Weaving update and personal tokens

I still work on this stuff once in a while. I saw this wonderful blog Backstrap Weaving by LaVerne Waddington the other day - and she inspired me to finish the piece that had been sitting on my loom (ie: picture frame) and start a new one. I think my weavings aren't terribly useful but they are pretty. I put this one under my pillow the other night. Maybe I could make a plainer one for something useful like under Esme's plate - but I tend to make them fancy anyway just to keep myself interested.



I haven't kept my woven dream bag under my pillow ever since Esme started pulling everything off the bed while she played. There are beads and a two special pottery tiles and shells in there that I don't want her to get her hands on. Now I carry it in the bottom of my purse. Even her handknit wool dream bag that was under the mattress of her crib is now in a high storage drawer with her Mousebear toy. It has a pottery tile that matches one of mine (the pair were made by a friend of mine on request for Esme's birth) and the small embroidery I made a few days before I went into labor (bridge symbol with quartz beads).

All of those are my own personal tokens with 'attachments' of thoughts in my life -- putting good thoughts and hopes and prayers into objects, almost like a letter, except instead of being written prayers they reside in visual/tactile objects. Those are ideas passed to me from my grandmother (Anishinabe and Blackfoot Sioux Indian heritage) and my mom when I was very young. We would go out in the woods and look at plants and herbs and dig in the rocks around the paths near the house and in the stream to find interesting and special things, shells, etc... In my art history and anthropology classes I read that it is a common type of activity in ancient cultures and is passed down between the generations. We went to a church as well - but this didn't have anything to do with religion, more with symbols in time and space, memories etc.... These small art tokens, put away in my keepsake boxes or carried around/worn etc, remind me of things that happened in my own life - important times and especially times of threshold like change and birth and love.