Back at it...

 

Per that old sailor's adage, the following day was a delight. The day that I imagined would yield the last dyefest of the summer turned into something other, for the sun and warmth I busied myself with too many tasks. Still they were things that needed doing, like vehicle tag renewals and taking on both flu and covid shots. Ow! 

Working threads into different shapes kept fingers busy.

After some lengthy give and take with some IT people, I'm no longer concerned with who or what scrapes content from my blog. Fuck 'em. We have bigger fish to fry in Georgia. 

I'm sure somewhere on the web, you've read the post about how an untimely delay saved someone who was on a mission - keys misplaced, a long train at a crossing, a coffee shop opening late - all things conspiring to keep someone from disaster. Change to course of their lives. 

I'll never know what I missed by the fifteen minutes that Bailey refused to get off the roof of my car while I was heading out to meet a friend for lunch. He enjoys lounging on the car on a sunny day, but the clouds ahead of the hurricane hatching out of the gulf cover us thickly now and will for days. This was my view through the sunroof . Even as I started the car, he refused to budge.

I moved from one side of the car to the other, intending to lift him down and chase him into the wet grass. He wasn't having it. Mocked me through the glass and showed me his claws. 

It was a full fifteen minutes before he decided that his mission was accomplished. I will never know what fate had in store for me because Bailey was on the job. 

September's last

For a change, perfectly clear skies for the harvest moon, but not many options for meeting it at the horizon. The one place I'm sure of means parking on a bridge that passes over the interstate - these days an invitation to get arrested. 

Instead, I met some friends at the park. Actual socializing over a drink! We ran out of gas before  the moon made an appearance, but I stopped here and there on the way home, wishing I had at least cleaned my windshield.  

Under the influence of this moon, I was in a fit of making myself useful. 

I bought a pair of lovely lamps off FB Marketplace three years ago along with the kit to repair the electrical guts for one of them. The kit did not have any instructions, only parts. 

Even though fooling with electricity makes me nervouse,cut to the chase. I'm not fond of LED bulbs, but this was the only one in the house not doing something. 

Now to vacuum the lampshade back to white.

And the replacement agitator for the washing machine came. That was a little more challenging. But it's done and I'll be caught up on the wash in a week or so. 

No more washing blankets or comforters!

While New England suffered from that errant northeaster, Georgia has been lolling in the mid-70s with low humidity. Perfect for old ladies to soak up some vitamin D and stare off into the blue, read and stitch a little. 

Sublime.

 

Putting out poison hex nuts

 

That was a device in a science fiction story I read long ago. Robots had become a dangerous menace marauding far and wide for the parts they needed to maintain themselves. The hero figured out a way of making their most sought-after prize toxic to them. 

Yay for the humans. 

 I took a few days to let the cobwebs clear and remind myself that I can do many things that I had no formal instruction in. Taming data scrapers was the task.

Most often, it's a matter of knowing the right questions to ask and in the proper order. It's interesting that this time I enlisted the computer to the task of confounding itself.

Still, it remains to be seen if the fix worked. 

Other tasks lined up on my runway: replacing the agitator feed dogs in the washing machine. It's nice to know that I wasn't crazy imagining that the whites weren't coming out clean. 

Not so much fun will be spending hours (and a lot of steps this body is not used to taking) at the county offices changing the deed to my house. I have to file an affidavit saying that as my husband passed away thirteen years ago, I am the sole owner of the property. I haven't found the deed, but I had to spend long minutes at the glass partition with nothing to look at but his death certificate while the clerk rummaged up a dummy document for me to alter, then file. 

Until then, here's Sophie keeping my ass out of the stitching chair and Colin busy at the airport herding one of his metal sheep to safety. 

A weeks worth

I will never care enough to pay attention to how blogger decides to stack and apply images. It's practically organic in how it keeps changing.  I've always just worked around this capriciousness. Fitting in the words when I can find them.

And that is something that needs working on. 

I've read where some people do not visualize anything when they read or think about a word. What a strange void in those heads!

 For me, I usually get a full-color image, sometimes a movie with sound when I try to dredge up a person's name. That grubbing about, the searching has become an annoyance.

 I can run scenes from all the films he's been in, I just can't come up with the actor's name. This is not new. Still, the implications of long spaces between words as one ages gives one pause. 

The passing of Peter Max did not go unnoticed. He colored my life back when I thought that Art would be the easy way to go, educational and career-wise. All of his work looked delightfully lazy and carefree. Like me.

After a week of difficult and fruitless adulting, Colin brought a fine treat home. Especially noted because his week has been tough too. Double shifts and dental appointments. 

This morning I only want to report good things. The world will find its way into Hell's handbasket without my help for a day or two while I regroup. 

thanks, Nancy

My Waterman continues as champion. 

I should pick race horses as well. Do NOT give me hints or pointers towards Kalshi. I've only just now deleted the Georgia Lottery app from my phone.

I have been judged and found wanting.

That adulting thing had me combing through boxes labeled "IMPORTANT" for my house deed, only to find packets of photos from my mother's horde sent by my sisters. I don't know where this Polaroid came from, but they seem to hold up better than regular prints. 

A house party, 1965 or '66. I made the dress. A Simplicity pattern that was chimp simple once I figured out how to thread flat elastic through a channel using safety pin. 

Peau de soie silk was a thing back then. I lucked into about three yards of it at a yard sale, a dull, nubby gold, but the price was right. One dollar. My mother's necklace studded with big fake topaz. I clearly remember being disappointed with the tenth grade boys in attendance. 

The practice

From a playful sketch to a rainbow heart over a rainy weekend. Trimming, turning, and stitching are next. Another patch. 

Somehow, these have to be distributed. Maybe I'll have people meet me at the library with their denim and I'll stitch the hearts to them. Illicit a story or a promise. 

 The last of the Dirty Thread inventory has been posted.  

I'm hoping there will be enough warm weather left in September and October for one more dyefest this year. 

Into today, September 11

 I would have preferred to avoid the internet altogether today.  9/11 remembrances affect me more as the years wear on, and there are fewer people in my life who were actually alive and sentient twenty-five years ago. Many New Yorkers my age would either like to forget or sadly, they have. 

I also wanted to know as little as possible about the Shitweasel's swill fest in Dallas. He wasn't joking, and he is guilty of the crime of bribery. And somebody better tag and bag Mitch McConnell soon. There are enough zombies in Congress without the real deal on the payroll.

But there was business to attend to and more patient portals to navigate. I hate that shit. I can't imagine having no option but to deal with that crap while being sick with whatever. I have no patience for it. Fuck them. Hire a human. 

The weather took the promised turn - hotter and more humid than yesterday, but every ten minutes another burst of blazing sun alternated with oppressive cloud cover. The animals were acting out. Flipping me the bird.  

On my way to the doctor's office, I checked the mail and discovered the gardenia is coming into it's second bloom. With any luck or rain, I'll have Christmas gardenias again. Only one bloom, but lots of buds. The office visit just a formality so I can continue having some high-powered pain meds on hand should anyone need them. My back is as good as it's going to get with her care. The rest is up to me.

Everyone at the post office was in top form (your orders are rumored to be arriving on Monday). I actually followed through with the survey on the receipt!

Late in the afternoon the clouds lowered and thunder rolled, and we got a good long drenching. I tucked up with the threads and worked on those scribbled sketches from yesterday. 

Yesterday

Lately, I've been warned against making plans. The gods have been rolling in the aisles at my audacity.

My ten am appointment at the tire place - usually so punctual it doesn't pay to take any stitching along - dragged on until 12:30. 

I sat on the bench outside in dismay, watching fat, towering clouds bustle on through an incredibly cobalt sky. Still hot enough to sweat in the sun.

The "I'm starving to death" headache had made a nest in my left eye, so I succumbed to the BK right night door. Nothing they make actually smells like the air in the drive-thru line. It still surprises me that I can only eat half of whatever. The coke was tasteless enough to make me wonder if I had a case of the 'vid.

Feeding accomplished on the fly, I was still in a state of high dudgeon once I got home, wallet lighter from an alignment I hadn't anticipated and a serious case of the bloat setting in. As much as I hated the notion of wriggling into a damp bathing suit, I knew the cure was in the water.  

 

It was. Even though the sun was sharp, it was brittle and the water cooler by some degrees from the last swim. I deliberately left my phone upstairs, taking nothing but my hat. 

No music. No messages. No calls. No feverishly checking to see if he was dead yet...just giving my head a blank canvas to rest on and letting the buoyancy take the body.  

There was some "no-think" meditation, and if I had been in the floaty, I might have fallen asleep, the peace was so profound except...by the angle of the sun, the depth of the shadows and whisper of browning leaves, I knew it was the last swim of the year. Some years it's a guess. Not this time. 

Back upstairs, I slathered on aloe vera and settled into the stitching chair with Sophie. Her short, dense fur is like velvet. On the way in from the pool, I walked on some sprigs of thyme growing along the walkway, and Bong thought my feet were emissaries from heaven. Yes, this is an AI edit of the original photo because pictures of real feet, even my giant flippers, get unwanted attention from foot geeks. I still might put out a tip jar. 

Later, after coffee ice cream on ginger snaps, I sank into a few hours of some very quirky TV, mostly for the music (because I've watched the whole five seasons before) to backdrop some mindless doodling.

It's good to rest mind and body at the same time. 

I need to do it more often.

Heart on Fire

 

This heart is going to be stitched onto a denim vest I bought a while ago. Tart it up and sell it. 

I feel some beadwork coming on too. Fringes and frogs. 

He brings us the skies

 

To the Makers

 A toast!

If nothing else--thread or cloth--came from the most recent dyefest, this simple damask napkin would have been worth all the work.

"She rode a fierce black mule into the afterlife, a banner of wonder tied over the animal's eyes so he wouldn't be afraid."

~○~

Some of the newest cloth and thread demanded immediate action.

Working in the first strong morning light, provoked a return to the word train, too.

Think of it coming down the track at you, a measured, grinding pace. The rhythm of pen on paper, inviting you to take the leap, catch ahold up onto rough boards and unknown destinations. 

Wizards, we. 

Always drama

I'm parking this snitch of damask on this delicate linen table runner for now. It might come to something. Starts have been shakier. It has a lot of loud for something so small. I've been hand-washing the scraps from the dyefest and haven't had a chance to look for bright spots. The threads are bold as brass.

In time. 

                                                                                    ~🌔~

This piece came up in fb memories today. 2012 was a big year for big work. This one is going to get up on the wall. "Los Dados Encantada" is one of my favorites.