boat rockers

Don't be shocked..stitching!

This is the first time I've used any of my own hand-dyed thread and I like it. Picking this piece up and working it was prompted by disturbances in the force.

The mailman brought a buttload of tax related grief from the state of GA that will have to be attended to by a professional and, this morning, I had to take Voodoo to the vet to have a swelling on his jaw looked at.

Although there was a shortage of evidence, we are treating it as an abscess. The other possibility is a tumor of some kind and I don't want to think along those lines. For now, we'll see what a fist full of shots and two bottles of pink medicine can do for him.

waiting for thomas

House Lacativa participated in a community wide tag sale yesterday. Most of the neighbors were offering the usual- clothing, toys, baby stuff and household goods. We had a lot of tools and construction stuff and the men practically ran down the driveway weeping. Most of them said "You can't have too many tools".  

It was a good day. Gorgeous weather, friends and neighbors stopping by.

I also listed this small stack of firewood on Craigslist,  free to the first taker and I got a text from "Thomas" who promised to come early this morning. Juicy and I were outside at eight. 

After sitting on one of the stumps for 20 minutes and having my ass turn to wood, I discovered that the rear deck of my Honda is the perfect height for writing so I stood there for another hour and made index cards from my flowchart.  I need a desk this high! My day job calls for me to be in a chair for eight hours at a clip so it's the last thing I need to do in my downtime. 

to plot or not

I wonder if other writers do this?

(It's word weaving)

community

I had forgotten how many feathers I made. Sometimes I get carried away.


 Read more about The Magic Feather Project 

as is

Take this as a warning

To stay away from me
Because the man that you used to know
Is not the man that you're going to see
Someday we may laugh at this
Someday we may be friends
But for now you can keep your distance
Stay away till the pieces mend


This sudden loneliness has made me dangerous
Please don't watch me while I fall apart
'Cause I'm sad and I'm angry
And armed with a broken heart


And what will get me through the night
Is what I'll use with all my might
And to some peace I have a right
But I pay so dearly

And at my age, I should be wise
Now I'm untying all those ties
The evidence is in the eyes
That should see so clearly
I once saw so clearly


You know I will say anything
If it will keep you away
But I don't know what I would do
If you said you were gonna stay
Don't do me any favors
Don't try to ease the pain
Won't you please let me hate you now
So I won't fall for you again

the task at hand

(detail from Jazz Takes Over 2012)

Lately, I am at a loss when I look back at the time and energy I used to devote to cloth and stitching.  Each of these things manifested at my will and by my hands, but there was never any deep intention associated with them.

They were and are beautiful to my eye. I know I took pleasure in the process of making them. The luxury of stolen time has lost its charm and glitter now that all the time I have is my own to direct.

I think I may have to start from scratch..making things from cloth that have a purpose and will last a good long time even with use. Like baby quilts. Back where it all began. Interesting.

slipped a cog

Lately, if I don't get out of the house and hit the walking trail I start to seize up like the Tin Man and get cranky.  Today was the second miserable, wet and cold day in a row.  I went anyway and was stepping along, minding my feet and business, thinking about something I needed to rewrite when this popped into the lizard brain:
 

I started laughing so hard I had to stand there with my legs crossed tight. Thank the weather goddess, I was alone.

Joe

Locked up by the rain, I have nothing to share today so  I'll let Joe do the talking.


Happy Friday!

potential prayer flags

There's a big brouhaha and ruckus going on over the QA list over whether it's appropriate for people who are not practicing Buddhists to make/use prayer flags. At least that's the drift I'm getting from the digests.



Really? Pieces of cloth with healing, hopeful words on them?  Do we have too much time on our hands?

I have no opinion, but some time ago I offered sets of rectangular pieces of hand dyed damask just for making them.  All ten of the sets were gone in three days and I'm willing to bet that not too many of my readers are practicing Buddhists.

 If I make up more sets, how big should the pieces be this time and how many pieces in a set?....all these things will determine the price, of course.
 All feedback welcome.

 

the walking cure

It was 35 degrees here this morning, but I'm not complaining. My sister sent pictures of snow. As pretty as this picture is, I was layered up, sweater, denim and hoody over all.

I had never followed this trail to the end before and was a little amazed when I passed the 1 mile marker, the end coming up maybe a quarter mile further.

Now I have to start timing the  round trip and but I doubt I'll pick up the pace much - I write while I'm walking, stopping along the way to either scribble notes or mutter into the record feature on the phone which makes me look just a little crazy because I make myself laugh. Then I come home and try to make sense of my own hen scratch.

Most of the seeds that sprouted over the weekend, lay dead in their pots this morning like so much green spaghetti. I guess I was being optimistic planting when I did. Even the grape tomatoes are nipped on the edges. All the baby plant sellers will be double dipping this season.

new heart

Treated myself to a little brain escape last night and watched the season opener of "Madmen". I suspect all hell will break loose soon.

More exciting were the ads for a new series coming on AMC - "Halt & Catch Fire". They could not have picked a more compelling hook than using the Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams (are made of this").

It's easy to imagine that this is where most of us fell in love with Annie Lennox . As for the show, let's just say for now that I have a vested interest in some of the crowd scenes.

Before I gave my undivided attention over to Don Draper, I spent a long time churning the scrap basket for the bits that suited my mood to begin "Heart With a Mind of It's Own"  inspired by the song by Jennifer Jackson.

 I have a tendency get overly sentimental (as in driving and crying) so I've always shied away from country music -  but Vin closed Idiot's Delight with this one a few weeks back and I actually went out on the web, tracked it down and bought it.

fierce fixed

I imagine that people are going to get pretty sick of looking at this as the months grind on, so I'm only going to update progress once in a while.
 During lunch with some fellow fiber artists and former cellmates,  I was reminded that I've promised a piece for a show in September. Ah, deadlines.

The original drawing was enough to take me this far with this piece (which is not usually the way I work) so I  decided I had better honor that impetus and orient and crop it accordingly. Now I need to find my black textile paint and do a discharge test on the foot & a half that got lopped off.

 I need to wear my cowboy boots when I'm messing with this one so I'm not tempted to stand on a stack of books.

fierce on the wall

Fierce

I'm going to have to move the furniture around in here just to work on this. There is another vertical foot that is folded over on the top, but it's just solid black. This is dry and I'm thinking I may want to use textile paint to make the black darker.

There could even be cutting some of it away. Right now it's just up for  consideration which means I won't be able to walk in there and do much else..the thing has presence.

follow through

Ok..it's bothering me enough now - all crumpled up in a heap on the floor of the studio like a Holstein cow that's been struck by lightning. I swear I heard moaning in there this morning.

We are off to the washateria with a book and a handful of pages to edit/rewrite.

more later..

Grrr..the water there was nowhere near hot enough BUT there was virtually no color drift. Home to try again here.


I hope everybody got their thread. I'm going to have to rethink this shipping included thing.

Heart Like a Wheel

Those promised rain days finally materialized and I spent a few hours with this piece and outside of my head with Mad Men, recapturing the mindset in preparation for the upcoming final season. Don't call me on Sunday evenings..I'll be busy. Jimmy used to say I had a date with Don.

This one is nearly finished..and yet, far from it. I think the lettering should have been in script, as if I had no other torments, like the tax deadline drawing near. I have other things on my mind.


"Why do we do what we do, we story tellers?

All I can come up with is that we want to be known, liked, loved even.

But most of all, we want to be remembered.

Our stories are our banners, our battle flags and emissaries.

They announce us before we come into a room and set the expectations of those who know us and those who think they do.

Our stories will stand in for us when we no longer can.

So, when a story is called for, as it always is in the company of people, 

a new teller will step up and, 

even though the flesh of a story may no longer be remembered, 

the people will remember it's bones, and the new teller might silently beg our pardon as they make our story their own 

and we will grant that pardon just to hear the story carry on, even without us."

dl

not AWOL

I can't remember the last time I sat with the river basket and picked up a needle..Heart Like a Wheel languishes, but we've been so busy around the House of Lacativa.  Tomorrow maybe, rain is promised.

Like much of the country Spring has fallen on us like a starving lion. After spending much of last year looking like a sheep meadow, we will finally get a jump on getting the lawn back from the nearly wild.

Really, if I had my way I'd plow the tired sod under and plant potatoes but that would mean serious labor. I don't cut the grass here anymore...the noise drives me crazy.

I have been taking every  opportunity to get out and walk in the local park.  The head space it gives me is wild open wonder.

Somewhere I have a T shirt that must be from the 80's.  It says
"If you are not sore and sweaty you are not doing it right"







                                     And... Baseball is back!!

tasties anyone?

It's a shopkeeping day and, as promised, here are the first batch of hand dyed threads that I did at FOF14.

There will be more as time goes on but, it's an incredibly tedious process. If  I wasn't taking first dibs on these for my own thread basket, I wouldn't do it all.

Details and close ups in the Shop

There is Braves game on TV today and I plan to spend nine innings making up some fat baggies from some of the cloth that I dyed in FL too.

PS - And while the boys were winning, I added fat baggies of FL cloth to the shop

more good reads

 I went to Goodwill today, once again on a quest for some examples of a current trend,  the Romance novel, but, you know, the kind with half nekkid centurions on the cover? I'm doing some research.  

My Amazon wish list will probably get me locked up and rather than spend big bucks I thought I'd find these books used.

Yeah, yeah, and your boyfriend/husband buys Playboy for the articles. heh heh heh.

Well, APPARENTLY, Goodwill, the Salvation Army and several other resellers pitch the bosom heavers right in the trash as they arrive OR the intake employees scarf them up and take them home. There were no sweaty six packs to be found  anywhere.

I brought these home instead, more to my taste and the Reliable Wife had me hooked deep in the first four pages.. Somewhere, someone (good I hope) is writing the screen play.