soy wax frenzy

You know how it is when inspiration strikes. Common sense, experience, and even safety get left in the dust.

Well, I didn't damage myself or anything else so far today. Give me a minute, it's only 1:19.  Checking fingernails...no glove failure even!

This scrap has been floating around the studio and this morning it got to me. I've been a two-week long total immersion getting ready for a competition - a writing thing, but you textilians all know about getting a last-minute, down-to-the-wire entry finished, shot and shipped.

This was pretty much the same thing. That last minute heart-lurch before you hit the send key, wondering if there was something you forgot or screwed up and so kiss your entry fee goodbye.      

So, by way of recovery, I dipped into the stash of white goods that has been hanging around so patiently and set up shop in the kitchen. It's muggy and overcast out and didn't want to waste any personal energy on fighting the elements. (AC has ruined me.)

I layered the cloth right on my kitchen table, trusting there were enough layers to catch the soywax as it steamed it's way on down to the wood.  Anyway, a light skin of soywax on pine feels a lot like bacon grease. It'll work it's way out over time.

I started with the Raven, but it had a bluish cast under my white light and I over-warmed it, I think. Won't know til everything has been washed and dried. I forgot what a monumental pain in the ass soywax work was.

My hot water is blistering, but it still takes three or four washes on the more dense cloth. I won't trust the machine with this, it all has to be done by hand.  My mind keeps coming back to my biggest fail, especially since the author of the drawing tool took down his website. So far, I can't find Scribbler anywhere else. I sincerely hope he got a really good price for it.

 I'm out of personal gas now and I have to nap before the day job so the rest of the baker's dozen piece down in the sink are going to get a good long steep in the color. I just had to see how the black turned out. greedy I am.

fat baggies

Picking from these tubs all week. If you ordered since Sunday, your order will ship tomorrow.

Some great stuff, I might add!

breathing color

You would think the dyefest would be underway by now. It just hasn't been hot enough. All revved up and nowhere to go....

rescues

These were from the marked down cart at the grocery store. touched with today's sunrise. They may only have a few days of glory left, but I will appreciate each minute.

Same day I rescued a half dozen snapdragons and a gorgeous Boston fern from the "less than perfect, less than half price" aisle at the big box store. I'm really glad that people are stupid this way.

toast

Several times I've picked this piece up and couldn't find what I wanted to do next. Generally, that means, done. finished. I need to back it, square it up and set it free.

testing

mostly because I had housework to NOT do.

This is post wash, rinse and dried in the sun. Gives me a good idea of what it in the jar, no matter how it thinks it looks. Some need doctoring but I rarely use them straight anyway. The black, Raven, by Dharma, is rich and promising.

a new stitcher

Spent the day with Charlie again. As ever, he was intrigued with whatever I was putting my hand to. After we got back from our maiden voyage to the park, he gobbled his lunch and napped.

I was working on this when he got up and he was full of questions and anxious to get "hands on". First, I showed him that needles were sharp. With some healthy respect for the tool, I let him pull the needle and thread, setting the stitch. He understands 'slow and gentle' and the thread behaved. After a few stitches, he was content with playing with the spools of thread. I just remembered that these are the same hoops that my grandma Nell put in my hands when I was four or five.


I need to find out about making sage smudges before this plant takes over the pot

some Sunday stitch

Once the trees in the front yard leaf out, I won't have this morning light from the east. For now, there's an hour, give or take. I take it when I can.

Until we give it thought, heart and soul, it's just so much cloth and thread.








Time passes, the cloth speaks and stories take shape.

Cusspots explained

 The name "cusspot" came to me out of the blue (like all my titles do) when I was thinking about how to name these little containers that I started crocheting at work rather compulsively. When I made the first one, I put it on my desk and put a few coins inside with the notion that the nickel and three pennies might breed like hangars in the closet tend to. Didn't happen.

Then I remembered how some offices and families have a Swear Jar that you have to put money into if you swear out loud, as a kind of punishment or deterrent to bad language. Where I grew up you got five upside the eyes for anything past "Hell" or "Damn" (and those got you the very evil eye). Of course, we swore like sailors when the parents were not within earshot.

I swear a LOT on my job, violently and elaborately, but inside my head, at my customers. I curse them all, need it or not. It keeps me from burnout. My little crocheted container would never hold a day's worth of swearing fines, they were not big enough to be real Swear Jars, they were merely CUSSPOTS.

I started poking thread ends into it instead of letting the bits fall where ever and getting more evil eyes from the vacuum cleaner guy late in the evening. The threads stuck to the office carpet like crazy and he had to spend extra NOISY ANGRY minutes around my desk once a week. In the spring, I pulled all the thread bits out and left them in the shrubs around the office for birds to make nests with.

the waitlings

That snowdrift is just part of the cloth that I will be dying this season.

The package from Dharma arrived today with the rest of the colors. I forgot to buy urea, but in all honestly, I never use it anyway.

The deck itself is awash in storm trash from yesterday and winter long neglect. The lunatics at the weather bureau indicate that the temps will be in the 80s all next week. It could happen.

Holding space and time

Sat and watched two seeds break soil. Cried. Stitched.

"Southern Blood" by Greg Allman and others will be released in the fall. Gregg’s longtime friend Jackson Browne duets with him on “Song for Adam,” which was one of Jimmy's favorites. Song and singer.

for immediate rehoming

"Firefly Cotillion"  2010

That "immediate rehoming" is an amusing euphemism for "Buy Me Now". Until I can come up with something better, it will do.

This piece is hand dyed vintage cottons, damasks, some commercial prints, the base a Japanese import - all gifts or magical finds. It's hand stitched and embroidered and permanently mounted to a 16x20 canvas, ready to be framed or hung as is. You can click through for a larger image.

  $150.00 includes flat UPS shipping to anyone in the US. International customers, I'll have to get you a price. Please email me  if you are interested. 

I'm in the serious process of clearing out the studio. After a week here, I'll be moving posts like this to the Buy Art! It's Good For You page.

time tripping

A new reader to my blog is working her way through the years and the statcounter notifies me.



This germ of an idea from November, 2010 eventually became the launching pad for this late in 2012/

angels watch

We had a powerful storm the night before last. I was working (the day job) in the studio at and called my supervisor to tell her that I was going offline until the storm passed.

The lightning, wind and thunder seemed to be right on top of us. I could barely hear the callers and was pretty uncomfortable being tethered to something with power running through it. I never heard this happening behind the house.

So, the tree guy was here yesterday and we both stood a long time being amazed at how very lucky the House of Lacativa was.  He calculated that, yes if that tree (those two trunks come from one huge base) had fallen toward the house it would have taken the pool, the deck and, depending on the angle, me in my bed.

As things lean now, they pose no hazard and would cost thousands to be removed. There are two remaining that have to be taken down as soon as $800 materializes from thin air. Deep and profound gratitude keeps me going.