Ace of Wands day

 The back treatment (rfa ablation) went as expected with a lot of hurry up and wait. It was a good thing to relieve the monotony backstage. A little stand up routine for the staff. ONE 5mg Valium was plenty. 

Got home. Had some leftovers and crashed for a short while.  Then I got to work.

The base is one half of one of those cuddledown linen sheets that just did time as a table mopper.

The letters were the carrier scraps under the first batch of Dirty Threads. 

I should have remembered to check the calendar.

 

This next batch, including the blues I finished today, will be the Beltanes. 

(The lump is Camilla.)

Quick & Dirty gets the job done. 

One of the reasons I wanted to go to art school was I liked making posters. 

Milton Glaser's Dylan poster was everywhere in 1966 -- the year I had to make a half-assed stab at a life trajectory. 

For me, art felt like a lame fallback position.  I had no expectations of making a living from something I loved and was confident about doing. I was lazy. 

After the drugs wore off, I decided I needed another sign and went at it, hammer and tongs. 

Tomorrow is Mayday. Mayday. Mayday! We have to save ourselves. 

Just confirmed that Milton Glaser was a teacher at the School of Visual Arts during my time there. A class I should have taken no doubt. 

The 50501s teaser

The rain and clouds never lifted until a brief moment on Friday morning. This was the first time I had a good look at them, and I was pleasantly surprised. 

The extra steps I took in layering the colors paid off unexpectedly.

The entire range of blues turned out to be anemic at best and will be a focus for the next dyefest. There's a workaround that involves batching the blues under a black plastic bag out in the full sun. Poaching is more like it. 

I'll be making more of the B&W, too. 

It's going to be a very busy week for me, so I probably won't get around to posting these until the coming weekend. 

 

When was the last time...

 

...has anyone had the deep need to escape the moment? Apparently, a lot of people!

I'm running a sort of crack dealer sale on my three-book serial, "Prophets Tango". Book one, "Out of Step," is free to download from 'Zon until 4/29.

Over a thousand people have done just that! 

Of course, if they like it and want to find out where the story is headed, they'll just have to fork over a few bucks for "Dancing in the Dark" and "The Light Fantastic".

If you want to know more before you take a bite, here's a fat synopsis that Amazon wouldn't let me use. 

All of this is a great spur to get me back on the path of my favorite cheap thrill, writing. I have two books in the works, both of them far from FIN. 

How cloth feeds memory

 

Forgive the overload of images. It just pleases my eye like a flashy sunrise.

I dragged my heels finishing this bag. Finding just the right shade and texture of denim to make the strap, I cannibalized a never-worn denim jacket. The sleeves never fit me right, but now it's an amazing vest with great pockets outside and in. It will get some interesting embroidery in the future.

This is the right hip, including the front and back pockets - all that was left of Jimmy's jeans. Finishing had a sad finality, but I took my time and chose each element for its capacity to delight me. And I am delighted. 

It's just the right size to hold my Tarot, wallet, a small pad, and a pen. The pockets are deep for keys, change, and a cell. The back pocket will carry and receive messages.

I love that I can look at each scrap and know the provenance. That fish came from a dress that I wore (without a bra!) in the 70s. Those valiant fish.

The feathers were inspired by Jude's Magic Feather project on a piece from an Italian trousseau circa 1940s. I knew the owner of the tablecloth, Ginny A. These things came to me after she died, and her family left so many of her things to be trashed. Boxes of cloth and her memories.

We bought a terrific, gas-guzzling Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon off her. "Bluebird" was our tanklike kid-hauler for many years. We would be at the A&P at the same time, she driving her brand new wagon and hating it, and offering to swap to get the Olds back. 

Bluebird had the good grace to finally croak just about when gas prices had everyone scrambling for foreign cars with less greedy engines, which led me to my first Honda. No turning back. 

The gold critters on the teal background were saved from "Firmament," which I sometimes worked on during Jim's chemo.

The blue cloth came from a beach find on a long-ago OG family vacation near Newport.

It was so ugly when I found it. The babies mentioned in that post are almost 21. One of the twins is nearing the end of his struggle with brain cancer. The family turmoil up there continues.

Real tools hung from that loop sometimes.

I used to come up behind him when he was cooking and slip my hand into that front pocket, and he would say, "Is there something I can help you find, young lady?"

This embellishment came from a dress that I bought at GW back when anything white and tagged 100% cotton came home with me on senior discount day. Most of it went out in scrap bundles. Many of you may even have bits of it. Gauze is so nice to needle. You can push it around like clay. And those tassels!

This was one of the first wild hearts that I embroidered like potato chips in recent history. I still have a clutch of them. 

That glass cross? Acquired at a bead show attended with my friend Jan back when we were still making jewelry. I used to bring my purchases home and dump them into a tub. My bead soup drove some people crazy.

My intention is to load up the Tarot and give readings under my Mayday banners. Still researching for a suitable street corner.

 Tomorrow, I'm making a big banner:

                IMPEACH NOW!

And some day, this little bag will make a perfectly acceptable urn for our ashes to be buried somewhere under a sapling. 

Cast a dark eye

 Another of Colin's shots from the ramp at Briscoe Field. I thought to correct the color for a moment, but decided to leave it as he shot it. It perfectly captures my mood for the entire day. Flexing between fear, not for myself, but for others, and the rage of the impotence of age. 

When I read about the Worm's quest to establish a federal registry for autistic people I took up a search for "nazi doctor atrocities". Not a great thing to do before coffee.

In seconds, the most comprehensive result came from Wikipedia. Aktion T4 is what this entire administration, his entire cult, wants. If you are in any way not their ideal, you should be deleted. Please spread that link far and wide. I am nobody.

Autism is his smokescreen. Down syndrome, any mental illness, or any chronic illness. Let's not forget biological ancestry. He proposes accessing personal medical records for the betterment of the human race. Look up eugenics while you're at it. 

I'm going to be on a street somewhere on May 1.  And if you support the trump regime in any way, fuck off and die.

After the weather passed, the linen tablemoppers had a lot to say.

The threads are a mixed lot, as always. I was disappointed in the turquoise and will have to do some research as this has become a pattern. It's not the dye, I hope.

I think it's more about the ambient temperatures. 

It might have been hot out there for me, but not for the blues, so there will be some over dying before I let any of them go.

I love the unironed texture and drape of these linens. It might be that the model for the Statue of Liberty was wearing a linen gown. A cloth of substance.

The colors were as expected, a byproduct of the thread dyeing process. Haphazard and random, both pieces have lots of white space still. Room to glow.

 

I'm going to get Charlie from school tomorrow. First stop, La Michoacana for ice cream. I will try very hard to keep this ugliness away from both of us. I'm grateful to Jake and Missy for keeping the news out of their family life. For twenty-four hours, I will listen to music, check on the potato plants, and bird nests on the porch. I will also be filled in on the latest from Hogwarts.

naming a dyefest

 

I'm fresh out of clever.  The 50501 threads will do well enough. 

Today, I'm tired and a little sad about Pope Francis. There's a tough job nobody wants. I've watched the film "The Two Popes" several times, and more recently, "Conclave". Both fascinate me. The only Catholics I know are ex-Catholics, except for the lunatic trumper down the block. 

Jim saw the Church from the inside out and shed it like a badly fitting skin long before we met. Still, his dog tags read Catholic, and I made sure he had legit last rites. He lived a more righteous life than most. 

When I was young, I thought corrupting nice Catholic boys was a lark. Back then, I didn't know how corrupt they already were. 

 I'm convinced that, after meeting with Vance and knowing him for the hypocritical liar that he is, Francis may have decided that he could do more for humanity from the other side with a little judiciously applied Karma. India is rife with fanatics of every stripe. Go Kali!

It's turned gray and cold here. I keep thinking it's Sunday.

The threads are in. Hand washing, rinsing, and drying will take days. I'll update the store over the weekend. Maybe.

I'm leaving the table moppers and carrier cloths outside in the rain for a few days. Taking the cure, they will.

It's finally raining.

I brought these in last night. 

Washed and dried, they are beautiful with those tiny flashes of color here and there. 

There are only eight, but I think I'll make more with an eye toward a lighter touch.

Lift the baton

 Here it is. The whole enchilada, minus the outcomes, of course. I don't want to be found dead, face down, in a pile of salty threads. Even with the umbrella back up (thanks, Colin) it was mid-80s out there.

I started by pacing myself, slowing down, and considering each move. I was flagrant with the dye powder because bold was what I was after. And cleaning up as I went. This part happens at the kitchen table.


Outside, I committed one of the linen sheets to be the first table mopper of the season. I put the threads in the soda ash bath before I started mixing colors. Measured the soda ash. Don't know whose gospel, but I used a full cup to a gallon of water.

I really like the new China steel bowl for this purpose. 

The usual suspects were lined up and ready to go. If you zoom in, you can see I even labeled the containers with the colors. Not like I measured, but still...

This part of the table mopper would be the front bodice of the shift I'm planning to make. Halfway through the session, I rearranged it for more even coverage.

I'm really pleased with the new black from ProChem. It's very well balanced. If you zoom in you can see all the colors that make up black.

I'm not sure about these. I don't usually control the colors this tightly, but in keeping with slowing my charge to a stroll, I made quite a few skeins with three or more colors.

Early on, I got carried away with the hot colors. I always do. But this time, I think I struck a better balance. The range of blues is very pleasing.

These are some of the carrier cloths. I put them on the table mopper so it doesn't get too wet and overcooked with color in one spot. I work on eight or ten skeins at a time, then roll the scraps up to let them poach.

Everything is going to stay out there for the night. I'll take up the rinse and dry tomorrow. Right now, there's a 50% chance of rain. If the rain moves in tonight, that much less rinsing for me.

4/19

Dyefest has been postponed so I can be of wider use to bigger problems. I keep forgetting that I'm not locked into the weekends.

Friday morning, I woke up to this thrilling read from Heather Cox Richardson. 

Two people I invited to my front lawn "Hands Off" action requested the second banner. Both of them are big and easily read from passing cars. A good use of cloth that had been buried in a basket for sheer ugliness. 

This one is heavy linen, almost canvas. The acrylic paint is there to stay. I may do some stitching on this one. The other was gifted away.

I didn't take pictures from across the street because I didn't want to reveal anyone's identity. Real concerns these days.

We sat in the lawn chairs, had lunch, and waved to the occasional cars, getting mostly supportive responses. Nobody flipped us off or got out to counter these sentiments. 

For a beautiful day, there were fewer walkers than usual, but then it was hot out by one even though we were in the shade.

The cat crew supervised the setup until the guests arrived with a very well-behaved pup who enjoyed the bird bath and kept the cats glowering from beneath the parked cars for the duration.

With regards to HCR's telling of Paul Revere's ride, I had to mention this memorial to Sybil Luddington, who at sixteen is reported to have ridden through Putnam County NY, to raise the same warnings. This incredible statue is in the heart of our hometown in Carmel, NY.

Recently, I've started reading about some scholars throwing shade on this story due to "lack of evidence". 

It's no shock to me that the heroic efforts of a sixteen-year-old girl would be looked at askance in her time and presently. That she never talked it up herself would be a sign of her times as well.

Fuck the patriarchy, then and now.