owls around

 
 This scrap has been following me around for some time. I found it tucked into a summer shirt pocket from the back of the closet. 

I've been contemplating killing off one of the characters in my story by having him blunder into a live wire. 

We saw this happen once.  A great blue heron crossed the road up ahead, high enough and far enough away for my son and I to track its majestic progress and be awed.

That awe turned to staggering horror as it came into contact with a power line. That grandeur became a lifeless bundle of bones and feathers that dropped from the sky into a deep ravine on the far side of the road. I have trouble revisiting the memory.

This shape, this iteration of spirit, came about very spontaneously. 

Message received.

From a fixed position

A bedside enchanted forest. All the houseplants want to be outside. 

Cheapo solar lights delight me. I stuck all twelve in a big pot full of some cute weed. I should look it up. On a few hours of charge, they blazed all night on the deck. I felt like I was sleeping beside a campfire...which may account for waking up feeling like I slept on a beach after an all night brawl. 

Here's the extent of my efforts today. More easy amusement - a set of arteza woodless watercolor pencils and a water brush pen. 

Something here might fall under the needle. 
 

a chill day

 After the valium wore off, I spent some time soaking up a fine day under the watchful eyes of the posse. I hesitate to speak it aloud, but ever since my neighbor across the street died, they don't cross the road and saunter up her driveway to disappear behind her house. She knew Bailey on sight and called Camilla "the chubby one". Can't prove it, but there may have been treats involved.

The procedure was routine and familiar. This time I paid more attention to the doctor's detailed explanation about what she would be doing and why. I've also been keeping careful notes on the pain diary I was given. Every fifteen minutes for the first six hours, then hourly and daily. Happy to say I woke up a 2 this morning, but I'm going to tread lightly. Not rock the back boat.

I'm so tickled with this quick and dirty logo that I whipped up yesterday from a sketch. I didn't even transfer the drawing to the cloth that way I was mindful of the placement of every single stitch. No wandering to the left or right of a line. 

Names for the show, (which is not until January '26 - an eternity) were being tossed out and I came up with 

"Warp, Weft & Wonder"...

three textile perspectives. Subtitles are always optional.

I will continue the delicious escape into writing. Spinning worlds.

Monsters mild

 

Pain is so distracting. 

As of 9 this morning, the pain in my lower back has been switched off. Of course, all those muscles have given up doing anything beyond guarding against movement (any) that might cause pain. They will have to be retrained and I fucking HATE physical therapy.  But I'll do what I have to regain some mobility. I'd very much like to walk more than 50 feet without collapsing.

I hate that this much relief is only temporary. The first two rounds of marcaine injections are to pinpoint and define the nerve branches that will be targeted for radiofrequency ablation. Second marcaine in two weeks. Ablation within a month of that. Soon. 

Going forward, anything that keeps my butt in the chair will have to be balanced with an equal amount of active time. Not an unfair tradeoff. 

I can listen to books while I walk. 

Walking leads to all kinds of things.

 

No hubris here, just gratitude

 

This morning dawned glorious. No damage here.

The local weather forecasters whipped themselves in a frenzy of Cover My Ass with a chorus of We Warned You since the middle of the week predicting weather Armageddon for Saturday night.

It was tediously ominous for a full twenty-four hours. I even decided to wrap my car against reports of quarter-sized hail two states away. I still carry full coverage on a car that's fifteen years old, but I'll bet they would find a way to screw me out of glass coverage. 

I moved my big wind chimes from the dye deck to right outside the slider to my bedroom. Big winds would wake me.

As if I ever got more than an hour's sleep. The very high thunder and lightning were incessant from midnight to dawn, but the wind and rain were run of the mill for a spring thunderstorm.

(That bright thing is Bhagdad Bazaar from 2011. It's been in the trunk of my car, a trusty beach and picnic blanket doing something useful.) 

Later I'll drape them over the law chairs to  dry out. The brown quilt needs a wash before storage and the artquilt will go back in the trunk, always ready.

This morning, I'm just having a little fun with some of Charlie's monster drawings getting goofy on a lovely commercial placemat I was gifted, along with a raft of beautiful linen clothing, table and bed linen. Gorgeous stuff full of potential.

There will be a nap in the sun later.

unsettled

Weather warnings have taken on a new slant now that NOAA

is facing random job cuts.

Local forecasters are scrambling to be seen.

Dire shit is predicted for this weekend which seem so far off. 

It's been still and dank all day with heavy cloud cover. I doubt we'll see anything of the lunar eclipse tonight.

It's been a good day for writing. Well, rabbit herding, anyway. Rounding up scraps and bits of paper and getting the words into the machine. 

I've been spending the early morning hours at this. No music, no background news on TV, as little peeking at the web as I can manage. I have 60K words and the story is only half told. Dee warned me about overwriting. Seems to be the way I do.

Here's how Colin do. 

On his day off from the airfield, he cooks! This is air-fried chicken and Belgian waffles. What a treat.

The fur posse are all giving off restless vibes.

Bailey just being his normal, pervy self. He steals dirty clothes from my closet basket, drags them either up onto my bed or down the stairs to the living room. He does a little ritual dance, then goes about his business.

I know the drug-addled assholes have been up to something in the computers.

Has anyone ever received a tax refund from twenty years ago? A treasury check came, followed a week later by an "oops" letter.

The letter confirmed that this was yet another gift from my Goodman. Even eleven years gone, he's got my back.

The SS# on the letter was his. We've always filed jointly so, the grift leaned my way this time. 

I worry for everyone who gets social security.

Who would have guessed she'd grow up to be Aunty-fa?

~O~

The joy of my Waterman on his triumphant return to the Moomba Masters in Australia is just contagious.

                                            Sundown at Brisco Field

Spring up country

 

The doctor is setting me up for another round of sacral nerve ablation. It's been more than two years since the last time, so the nerve regrowth was slow. 

I elected this instead of cortisone cocktail injections, which only have a 50/50 chance of working beyond the first few weeks.

There will be a few rounds of instructional PT and she recommended continuing weight loss. 

I hope to do as well as Dee. 

Without knowing it, she put my feet back on the ground with a few messages regarding writer's tools. Clarifying my own process for myself was a revelation that I needed badly.

The littles remain little. 

For all the cats in my life, I don't remember one being a teenager. All the cats seem to be having Spring zoomies, this one springing around with her tail all puffed up chasing the reflections from my phone screen. Some time in the night, she nested up on the pillow in my hair, running her little engine. That's a drug you could bottle and sell. Kitten Sleep Magic.

I wonder if this little one gets treated differently. Singled out. There are a few browns and reds, but mostly black. He/she? stands out. Next week I'll give them a name. Observe a while. 

This not-so-little one had me clutching at my heart regularly. The hand-held game and the mindless electronic nonsense are gathering dust. The wider world beckons as he gains confidence in his physical abilities. The videos Jake sends me from the skateboarding lessons are amazing.

There will be 4H camp this summer!

Right after this, we hastily planted some potato sets that had sprouted in the trunk of my car. He expects to make potato chips in the Fall.

The Camillia is just coming into bloom.

All this a sorely needed reminder that the world keeps turning no matter what worries or fantasies we cultivate for ourselves.

urgent self care - part 1

 

Some fundamental stuff starting with a doctor's appointment in an hour. In the meantime...

These two cusspots have become so full they were no longer functional. It's been more than a year because I started the peachy one when the OG cusspot was annoyingly full. 

Now they are both empty and I'll take the contents up to the grove and spread wisps along the branches I can reach but mostly on the ground.

99% of this is DMC cotton thread. Nothing over two or three inches long. 

By the end of March it will all be gone. 

The cream colored one is the very first cusspot I ever made. Once I had settled into the job at the whine mine and started working nights, the first things I brought to entertain myself between calls were a ball of cotton thread and a small crochet hook. Size G, I think. 

I made an eight by eight stitch square and started working around the edges to learn how to increase and decrease to form curved shapes. It's about the size of a lime and the peachy one, an expensive, oversized lemon that's probably mostly skin. They serve me well. 

focus and consideration

 

First, thank you so much for sending it home, Liz. 

I want to study it to recapture the feeling. Being the god of a small universe. Giving it meaning and life. I have plans for some much larger pieces but I have to keep in mind how important scale is with textile work. It's such a tricky balance. 

No matter how one may pave a piece with stitches, to the human eye, all that effort still evaporates from a few feet away. You can only go just so large before the nuance of stitch, warp, and weft is lost. The trick lies in the larger gestures of color and shape to draw the viewer close where the story is written in stitch. 

I need to keep all these factors in mind and not succumb to the self-indulgence of getting lost in luscious colors, textures, and mind-numbing stitches. The temptation is real. 

And all this time I'm tipping my head to the left to see this as a tower and reminding myself out loud that the success of a piece is first in the eye of the maker.

                                                

battle flags

 Before anything, call your Senators or Congresspeople and urge them to walk out on his speech tomorrow night. Let them pray their jokey prayers to a god who should strike them all dead if he was real. Let that sack of shit in a blue suit introduce his special guests. Let him warm up his imaginary accordion to accompany his lies. 

Then, as a body, decent Americans should stand up and walk out. Don't speak. Don't look back. Meet the media in the street if you want. I am hoping he has a live, on-the-air stroke, shitting himself and swallowing his tongue. 
                                                                ~O~

What a bad picture. 

But the help was in a surly mood and I didn't ask for a second shot. 

A piece of light, contemporary linen, 42x60 inches, give or take. I want to do something to bump up the blue without interfering with the gold. 

Some cautiously applied soy resist is in order. And some turquoise dye. I'm out. And it's cold again. Time and patience. Very precious commodities.

And if I were bringing text to this what would I say? 

Sometimes words won't work. Or there are none for the moment. 

I have been uttering curses-- not swearing. Swearing is fun and easy--curses so dark and profound that I stop and take notes. 

Hate is an expensive emotion (Thanks, Johnny Depp) and yeah, what the Buddha said. Creative cursing is active. Satisfying.

                                                        Communication. 

Thank you for the kind words about my nephew. My family, the praying ones, are praying for him to slide into kind oblivion. There is no way to know what he is experiencing because he has been semi-comatose, nearly agonal, for weeks, being bounced between a nursing home and hospital ERs.

Despite the expert medical professionals who have had a hand in his care, his mother won't acknowledge what is happening and refuses hospice intervention.

I can't think of anything more selfish and cruel. 

For the spite of a two-decades-old war with my brother, she has refused to let my side of the family be a part of her boys' lives and now, it's too late. She will be making loud and public demands for money for an elaborate funeral. 

I will send her a book of matches from the Fuck You Cafe.

Slava Ukraini

 That sounds so much better than "I am mortified to be an American." 

    Have you ever felt true cringe from another person's behavior? That Offal Office ambush made me feel like I needed a shower. And even though the well being of my countrymen might hang in the balance, I could not have resisted backhanding the douche beside me and kicking that suit of shit hillbilly in the nuts.

Everyone saw it for what it was, and those trying to deny that Trump is not a Russian asset are fools. He should be arrested for treason, impeached and imprisoned. 

That's Venus staring me down. 

Down in that tree line Mercury glimmered through the dense horizon atmosphere like a star. 

My heart is with distant family. Distance is hardest when there just are no more words. Pictures a poor substitute for hugs or a cup of coffee. 

Finishing

 There's nothing like a distant deadline to get me to shake off the cobwebs and realize I have a trove of nearly complete work. I can't decide if I want these to be pillows or hangings. I'm also reminded that those finishing stitches, like a quilt binding, are so satisfying. Like finally getting to lick the butter cream icing off a knife after you frost a cake.  You know you do it.

I'm also reminded how much I enjoy stitching text. I won't waste my time with things like FUCK TRUMP or ELON SUCKS. It will have to matter more than shouting into the void. Any suggestions?

"Cooze is cooze, but it's the heart that makes the heat."  From "Prophets Tango".

"Don't be afraid. Love's plans are made." Straight up stolen from "I Dreamed Last Night" by Justin Hayward. I did pay for the record many years ago. Fair use? Somehow I don't think he'd mind a pillow or two.

and ever repeating beginnings that lift the heart and give hope.

This is the patch of garden that I can tend. Wild now, I'm still deciding what will thrive the way these have. A few years back, Jake and I liberated a few clumps of monkey grass from the curbside gardens of a beautiful brick home being demolished to build condos. These were mixed into the clumps. In the fall, I'll divide these and take some to his place.

Perennials would be nice, but I know marigolds like the front row. 

Eyegasm

 It's warmed up here. Dare I say it out loud? Winter is over. 

I ventured out onto the dye deck to survey the mess. At least this year I made sure to up-end the mason jars so they wouldn't break if rainwater froze. 

This was balled up in a clot under the table looking nasty. I was reluctant to pick it up with my bare hands, but I shook it out glad to find it an almost intact vintage damask napkin, not just a shred.

 This is why I call them Dirty Threads. All my dye work happens outside on an uncovered deck. Trees everywhere shedding their skins. Bugs, lizards, frogs, moss, cat hair--if it wasn't for the boards under my feet, I might well be out in the woods. 

A thorough hand wash in the kitchen sink and random, nearly discarded beauty came through.

For now, I'm going to tuck it away because there are many other things on the flightline needing my attention.

There's been quite enough dicking around with test stars on this linen scarf. I have to start thinking about how they'll look on that bloody field. 

My posse

 Some time in the middle of the night, one or two of these invaded my bed with anxious zoomies waking Salem and I from a dead sleep. I got up and looked down the stairs in time to see a foot-long raccoon tail going out the cat door.  

They crowded me the rest of the night. All disapproving as I saddled up to go buy more grub for them.

to extremes

 

The light is cloudy, winter afternoon, so, not optimal but I didn't want to dick around with filters. 

This red feels like a living thing, shifting from warm to cool enough to keep me from turning away. It's not my favorite place on the light spectrum. Is "Easily Incited to Violence"  a color? 

Yes, I believe it's here.

I'm thinking about how to convey and refine the message.

Blue/white stars wandering, lost.

Some stars colored by a prism. 

I'm going to do some sampling before I commit to the linen.

I had a bit of a meltdown yesterday morning. A blend of domestic and external stressors combined to rock me. I let it happen, and turned to the kindest shoulder {Pokemon indeed!}. 

Took a minute, got my shit together and lit out for the country. If it were closer, the magic might wear thin.

We doodled. Listen to records. Played with Nibbler. Played poker. He's better at poker than Scrabble since I don't show him mercy anymore. 

Once the whole family was home, we watched the film "Flow". 

Beautiful, deep, moving. You'll thank me.