Today I worked on wet-felting a dozen + a few (egg-tras in case of breakage) of my “shaker eggs”.  They are an item on my etsy.com shop (See them HERE) that a woman custom ordered this week for her daughter’s 1st birthday party to give as favors for the other children.  I filled plastic eggs with a variety of beads (so that each egg has a different sound), wrapped them in wool and then with a lot of wetting, soaping and rubbing I created these joyous sounding, rattles that I am thrilled will be adding to the fun of a child’s first party.  This was very therapeutic work today, as the last few days have been busy getting larger artwork finished for shows and deadlines.  This is a little more “mindless” and that can be good every once in a while.

As I rubbed and felted these eggs I stared out the window at Momma Robin sitting in the nest she and Daddy Robin made a little over a week ago.  Everyday I watch them come and go, following the calls of nature.  They picked a particularly interesting spot to set up “housekeeping”.  They chose to build their nest within a woven sculpture by artist Karen Gubitz.  She calls these works her “Basketrees”.  It is a perfect shelter for a bird’s nest.

I want to be like the birds. They trust in their shelter. They trust there will be an adequate food supply nearby for their offspring. They trust in each other, the daddy showing up when needed to give the female her breaks from nest sitting. They trust in their environment, in this world.

If humans are the higher intelligent life forms, why don’t they create an environment they can trust,  a world they can trust to provide safety, sustenance, blessings, peace, and joy for themselves and their future generations?  I bless the shaker eggs as I send them off to a group of one year old children somewhere in Kansas…Maybe these eggs can be a spark to create this future world we can TRUST.  At least they will spark a little JOY.  That is the basket I put my eggs into because I don’t think that kind of world is just for the birds.