Travels with Shelley and Muzzy: Travels at Home

Muz 'n' Shell

Muzzy and I started traveling in 1990. Our first trip was to Thailand. Muzzy was in the Merchant Marines in another incarnation and had traveled all over the world. I had done a lot of internal traveling, but waited a lifetime to be able to really travel. After that first trip I was definitely hooked. We went to Bali in '93 with our daughter Sarah and her partner Don. In '96 we returned to Thailand to visit Sarah at her Peace Corps site in Petchabun province and to celebrate her marriage to Don on the island of Koh Phangan in the Gulf of Thailand. In '99 we went to Nepal and Thailand, in '03 to Laos and Thailand, and in '05/'06 back to Thailand, Laos and Burma. It was a trip the whole family took after the death of our eldest daughter Lise from breast cancer in February of '05. In '07 we returned to Nepal, Laos and Thailand with our dear traveling companion Kyp. Ever since that first trip to Laos, we have been in love with the country. There is something timeless and magical there and if there is any balm for my soul, it is in the warm breezes that blow across the peninsula in Luang Prabang. Muzzy and I have been incredibly fortunate in making the trip up the Nam Tha river twice to Luang Namtha. Laos is so special to us that I hesitate to tell anyone about it, but life does go on and no place is immune anymore from tourism. I just hope we get to keep traveling. The photos posted on this site are all by Mr. Muz unless otherwise stated, and he is a grand and wonderful photographer! I could go on forever (we both could and often do!) but really, thats why we started the blog!

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Travels at Home

As I have discovered since returning from SE Asia, travels can take many forms. I am traveling through all sorts of new arenas...retirement, although I don't think I am really retired or ever will be since I didn't really have a job career...aging, my own and most pertinently, my mother's...creativity, and that is a huge journey that keeps unfolding in great massive swathes of cloth and wire. I now have two nice cigar boxes with glass lids that I had made up almost a year ago. I love their shapes and the fact that the glass slides so tidily on and off. I also found some wonderful "hopsack" linen/rayon that makes my heart beat fast, especially when I think of cutting it from the new pattern I made of the Khamu jacket from Laos. I also found lovely cotton sateen at a local quilt store. The colors fill my head with rainbows of linings...the linings are the best part of a subtle ethnic jacket since we in the northwest like to hide our sunshine. And I have discovered a whole new dimension in wire wrapping that has driven me to rip apart old earrings and whip up new ones, lighter, better, more outrageous...and I don't even care if anybody sees them! Hurrah for time on my hands!