Away

 

Moon's Grove Church rd.

lessons

The threads didn't dry completely overnight. No surprise when it's 100% humidity outside.

I was looking for something clean to lay them out on and pulled this piece of linen from the wicker tower of what-not. Another large piece of contemporary linen that I don't want to cut up and sell, bit by bit.

I may offer larger dyed pieces in the store. Let the dissection become another person's problem.

Somehow the need for overdyeing leaves me a little cold. As if they weren't good enough the first time. Like being made to repeat 4th grade even though you read years ahead of all your classmates. 

I need to adjust my judgements. Dump them in fact.

Perhaps think about how a second pass at color might be incorporated in the first dye session. Hold off on the hasty wrapup and cleanup that's usually a result of my human frailty. 

Note to Self..... Go get a cold drink, then lie down with a wet cloth over your eyes in the dark for an hour or so. Give the threads and your eyes a rest. 

Then later, come down and look again.  Setting up some small containers with magic sauce and a few prime colors to dip or paint on is no big deal. Preventive medicine. 

 

Hand in the fire

Colin's sunset tells the tale.

Bitch about the hot weather and what do you get? A dismal forecast for the next ten days that would make Noah nervous.

I still don't know the status of the tent frame and there is no point in putting it up in the face of wet weather since water accumulating in one pocket caused the damage in the first place. It will be a sunny day shade refuge. When the sun returns.

In the meantime, I banish thee, Ennui. Put my hands in the fire of the rainbow and pull back some born-again skeins of dirty threads. 

It's been a while since I've done any over-dyeing and don't remember there being any wild pitfalls to avoid, other than Fucking Fuschia (or any blend with a whiff of it).  

If you think of mx dyes as dogs, the primes are a lovely poodle, a noble German shepherd, and a golden retriever. The blends are the wonderful mutts. And Fuschia is a Belgian Malinois. Act accordingly

This lot, the tail end of the last dyefest, was just boring when I needed roaring.  

These are wet now. What will stay and what will go down the drain will unfold with the hours of the day. 

Right now, the challenge is to put the tray someplace where Bong won't mistake it all for bacon. He gets that wild look on his face when there's something new in his territory. 

 

I didn't watch the last Late Show live last night. I kicked Paramount to the curb a while ago, but Instgram and YouTube were putting the show up in segments almost as soon as they flitted through the airwaves. 

Through all of this I have enjoyed Stephen Colbert's sincerity regarding the past, his staff, the history of the show, but I have also enjoyed the quiet smugness of knowing that the network's pettiness is going to blow up in their faces when ALL of the late night talking heads stop pulling thier punches.  Have a quiet smile to think of someone like Colbert as president of the United States. A smart, decent human being.

I came to adult sensibilities early by watching late night talk shows starting with Jack Parr. Behind my parents twin recliners there was a large table covered by a lace tablecloth. I got to bed without argument at nine, would finish my homework and reading then creep down the long hallway and duck under the tablecloth to see what else was going on in the world. Something funny, please. I had already been through all the newspapers that day. I never asked either of them if they knew I was there. 

Ennui

 

This is the gardenia that was supposed to get pruned hard back in January. That's the way of it here. Priorities.

I went to the store late in the day yesterday. It was HOT out. Ninety and change and the AC was on the fritz or on the cheap in Publix. I have never broken a sweat in that place. The internal weather there usually makes me sleepy.  You check out, load up, start the car and slap yourself. "MILK!" I forgot the friggin'  (what have you).

When I got home it was all I could do to haul the goods inside and myself up to the bedroom. Not tired, just overheated.

I went up to Jake's to be on hand for Charlie's sixth grade graduation. With a Principals List award for four quarters of all A's. My mind boggles.

The whole time they were calling names (three or four hundred?) I kept remembering how school was mostly an annoyance in my life. As if they had anything interesting to teach me. The arrogance!

Charlie has a bit of it. "School is boring." 

I told him he needed to tell someone who could do something about that for him. Ask a teacher for some names. An option that wasn't there for me back in the day. 

We will be spending time together this summer. Milo is growing into a total charmer. Nibbler has forgiven his existence. 

I had everything ready for a dyefest today, but the malaise lingered on a day due to be hotter than yesterday. Having tools and materials prepped is nice. But one bucket of stamina is not enough. 

When the spirit moves me and the sun is up...

Weekends

It was a glorious weekend, Hallmark holiday aside. 

Once the sun is up over the big tree, the whole yard is in deep shade until a slice of sun blasts those chair for two hours as it sinks behind the house. Just enough time to soak up some vitamin D. 

So far, no mosquitios. One or two ant bites. I need some fresh insect repellent. They expire.

Jake and Charlie stopped by for a nice visit on Saturday. 

Something clicked because, afte they left, I opened the raw writing space* and finally banged out the scene that I have been avoiding for a couple of months. The penultimate action sequence - necessarily horrific. 

Convincing my ancient laserjet printer that it had better do its work (because boat anchors are in demand this time of year) went smoothly. Years ago, I was finished buying color printers that came with built-in crack habits. The color cartridges for the last one cost more than the little Canon I bought from somewhere off the internet. Are you kidding? $69.00 plus shipping? 

Of course it was cheap. It's been deliberately hamstrung with no software/firmware upgrades available. Wireless? It worked for the old Windows 7 laptop, but now I have to scoot the big Acer over there and cable up and it works like a charm. Bonus? I have never replaced the cartridge or whatever voodoo it is that makes little black marks on white paper. For all I know it's a tribe of tiny, naked scribes waiting to open their veins at my behest. Now I've probably jinxed the little bugger.  

Insert obeisance to the Inksters (tribe Canon)

A repeat, with a light breeze upgrade for Sunday. I set up my camp out there with my watchers. Made a handful of phone calls and took the printed pages out for a spin. Reading aloud to cats, editing on the fly. It was a good piece of work for an afternoon. 

I long for a little campfire after dark but the county has prohibited all outdoor burning for now.

fom an old post: 

I've been spending an hour or more each morning writing and it feels as if  I have been working my way down inside a nautilus shell, almost claustrophobic with the isolation of the activity. Writers  really can't just hang a work in progress on the design wall for all to have a look at; editing and rewriting are essential steps. It looks like you have to be a little bit crazy to be a writer and if you're not when you start, you probably will be once you get into it. Today I will get out of my own head for a while.

*https://internettypewriter.com/welcome   

Unresolved

 

This is a section of that linen sheet that I covered the table with for the first dyefest. The table mopper.

In the past, I used smaller, overlapping pieces balling them up with leftover dyes at the end of the days session. Leaving them to poach on the deck, days sometimes. After a thorough wash, they were chopped, cut and torn into scraps. Of course I saved juicy bits for myself. The River Basket overfloweth sometimes. 

Because the cloth is so Good & True, I'm going to use this one all summer, then make myself a coat. That gives me all summer to find a pattern that I can follow. 

Before the next dyefest (coming as soon as the sun comes back to town) I'm going to use soywax to protect interesting elements like this. It will be a work in progress. Just like the rest of us.

A work in progress myself, today recovering from the prescribed excess of 20mg of Valium dished out before the most recent lumbar nerve ablation. They are pleasant company if not very good nurses.

Remembering nurse kitty Karma who only got on any of us voluntarily if that person was sick. "Tut tut, my dear. All will be well." 

This bunch? "Turn around and get the cat cookies from the cubby. You can DO IT. REACH!"