get your shop on

Thanks to everyone for the amazing response, I will be filling orders as they were received, first come, first served. There is MORE than enough cloth and thread to go around.

 It's not a living, but it helps.

From now, until they run out, I'll be including a random Dirty Thread in each Fat Baggie.

Giving away a skein of my hand dyed DMC embroidery floss is just like drug dealers giving away a "taste". We know you'll be back.

I found a new kind of shipping envelope. Not much more than a skin of very tough plastic with no lining, so it holds more cloth. I fill them until I can safely close them so, bonus to my customers!


Downside? More content equals more weight and postage. Add to that a recent rate hike and it comes out to a small bump in the cost. now 28$ includes first class shipping inside the US. Elsewhere? email me

I'm picking the baggies mostly from this past summer's dye sessions,  with choice gleanings from previous years added in. If you have questions, email me.  

If you are ready, there's this 

stilling

With the fall chill comes the need to fiddle string into something useful. I've thrown in the towel on that damn yarn. I can't count how many years I've started a project with those four skeins of blue, purple and brown Lion Homespun, then unraveled it all back into balls. I think I'll put them in a bag and leave them at the Little Library in the park.

I don't even know what these all are, the cones are unmarked. The ball is Perle cotton. One of them is bamboo. A rayon maybe? All five together make a satisfying, if a little pesky,  weight to work.

Nanowrimo starts next month. There is no way I have the time to commit to a new novel, not under the gun, so to speak. But I make take the time to frame up the next one to get out from under the bog of revising the current one for a while.

Fresh eyes. fresh perspective.

and the winner is

the contest is closed. I have twenty entries scribbled on the backside of some junk mail. All cuddled up here in my sari silk yarn skull cap.

Now to convince Sweetie to make a choice.

sightings

I took a day off from the grind and drove up to NC to visit a friend who is furnishing and decorating her home. I knew about the white couch and thought these just might work. Some of the "Alien Innards" go back to 2006. These are the ones that I couldn't bear to part with, one by one. I'm happy that they've been adopted en masse. They get along well with the other kids.

.

scraps surge

You should see the ones I put in the river basket. One might think I was thinking about stitching something.

(my glasses are for scale)

There are two more clutches just like this one and the fourth is winging it's way to Ukiah, CA at this moment.

I have a small problem. Although they are 6"x9", the new postal bags are unlined and hold more cloth! Yay for you, but the post office is hurting me.
Jumping the rate up to 27$ to cover the postage hike.

Cherry picking time

They say a Lady shouldn't go out without a hanky, or two.

in the days to come

The cloth and threads will take care of themselves for a while.

 I've come too far to let this spin away into vapors. So I will be in

revision

Is like shaving off prison tattoos a square inch at a time. 
The hardest damn work I've done since labor and death.

So far, it works like this. I'll read the last scene that WORKED and then the new victim,

 the next one, and the one that follows it. If the new one fails on enough fronts - and I've had more than

half do just that, I brood over the truth of it. The five 'whys'.

Then I start the autopsy.
Print, then redact - just like in the movies- with the broad, black marker, anything that's 

crap. Anything that's not a jewel.

Then I brood on it some more and find a different way to set some, not all, of those gems. 

A setting that not only makes the scene worthwhile but nods to the one before it and sets up

the next. 

Dominos dipped in nitro.


(don't forget to jump on this)

a contest, you say?

I'm waiting on a shipment of packing envelopes for
the Fat Baggies, but until they land, I thought I'd have a day late giveaway for my birthday. I'll be making up a bundle that includes scraps from the last dye fest and other treasures from my stash, plus a couple hanks of Dirty Threads thrown in for magic.

Open to anyone in this whole wide world. Just leave one comment here and Friday night I'll see if I can't get sweetie to help me pick a winner.

Took an opportunity for a little getaway...I'll make Sweetie do the thing on Sunday afternoon...there will be video.

historical

"Frontrunner"  2010 . The actual orientation is vertical, of course. It was conceived as a battle banner.  Now I see a flag under fire.


And this is sixty-eight, just a little high.
Happy birthday to me.

Last harvest 2017

strange doings

The (unseen) bloody of this picture had to be attended to first. While I picked glass slivers from my hand, this river of Turquoise dye, King of Stains, wandered across the table and cascaded to the floor. 

A mason jar that I was holding vibrated under my fingers and an eye-shaped shard sprang out. The vibration felt as if I had a big bumblebee inside the middle and ring fingers of the glove I was wearing. It was the strangest sensation.

I thought I was using a paint stick to stir the dye but while I was cleaning up, I found it still clean. Even if I had used a spoon, I would have been careful not to bang it around in the jar. 

The upshot was that I spent over an hour cleaning and by the time I was done, my back was saying "that's it for the dye day" but I staggered back outside onto the deck and got it done. I will be sorry tomorrow.

Climate change = an October dye day

I'll have to cheat a bit and stow everything in black plastic bags for extra heat.

It's day two of my stay-cation and I've decided that instead of bitching about what I haven't been able to do - travel, spend, socialize - I'll just try to do all of them on a reduced scale.

Today, though, I'm going to take another shot at dyeing the rest of the wonderful stash of linen garments that have been waiting in a pile in the corner of the studio.  Everything, including the Basis cloths (there are several), will be chopped up into usable sizes, 12x12 max, and included in a new round of          Fat Baggies. It's hard to imagine, but I am scraping the bottom of the tubs of my years-old stash. Time to replenish and renew.

lost weekend +2

After a rough week working through a cold/whatever with Charlie (he's fine) I succumbed.

At first, I thought it was the flu, but flu doesn't clear out after just a good night's (heavily medicated) rest and a bowl of soup and a grill cheese sandwich.

I am restored and will let tomorrow see about itself.

No one will be looking for me until Sunday night.

Right now I have the studio to keep me occupied. The place is a mess! What happened in here?

fiber fix

Dirty thread continues to be a learning thing.

Many of the most recent batch were just Meh, so I overdyed them. There's a project I don't want to mess with again.

Last night the simplicity of winding skeins while watching a movie was as much as my brain/body could tolerate. There are places on YouTube where people post videos of repetitive tasks like this. Doing them, I get. Watching them? Not for me, but Sweetie was fascinated and every now and then compelled to reach in and mess with the process.

Caesura

That Sunday shift turned into a three-day siege. We got some restorative fresh air and sunshine yesterday. Painting in the park with lemonade and sticks.

Shifted

Our Sunday breakfast didn't pan out. Nobody had an appetite.

We look a little shot. Me, hungover from not enough sleep. Charlie, not up to himself either. Once we got out from under the spell of a little Lego and "Stickman" on TV, it was warmer outside than inside, and we headed down the block for the tiny playground someone installed on a wedge of county property in the neighborhood.

We were about halfway there when he wrapped his arm around my leg and said, "There's something in my ear hurting me."
That and the boogers point to a low-key Charlie Monday tomorrow. We'll see what fun we can wring from the day.

away

...if only for a day. No stitching, no writing or editing. I did take a book, "Tell the Wolves I'm Home"
So far, so good.

Lake Lanier, only an hour away. It's not the ocean, but on a beautiful day like today, I'll take it.

A man-made reservoir, the rocks along the shore seem to come from another planet.
Today, I started a rock collection for Charlie. Rocks big enough that he cannot throw them.









I'm usually good with rocks. I have no idea what this beauty is, but I'm pretty sure the red spot is a garnet.  This is about the size of a brick.

Warmth

this next round of threads will include a warmer spectrum

a hot Charlie Monday

I accidentally left my cell phone at my son's house yesterday after spending a day with Charlie. It was a tough day for all parties.

We went to the park and had a good time, but when it was time to go, he gave me a dose of the Toddler From Hell. He didn't want to leave and was mad about not having a vote.

I did what I did when his father and uncle were that age- said, "See ya!" and walked away, heart lurching. It took him ten paces to stop asserting himself and call for me.
     "Nana! Don't leave me!"
I turned around and told him,
     "I'll never leave you, Charlie, you just have to catch up to me is all." And I put down my bag and waited for him.

He did, but he'd worked himself up into a fit of crying that persisted the blessedly short time it took to get back home. A quick wash and a snack with Curious George and he was fine. But we will talk about it next time I see him because I know he'll remember it. I just want to be sure he remembers the instruction and not the fear.

Vigil continues

The line at the post office was ridiculous today. I gave up and went to the park.

My timing for everything has been off lately. As in the "What's today?" kind of off.  Comes from working weekends and late nights at the change of seasons, I think.

Writing has come to a full stop. A necessary one, although stories still spin in my head. After a day with Charlie yesterday I needed A. a serious nap, ill-advised at 6pm, but it was that or just go to bed for the night, and B., to do something different that did not involve writing, editing, reading or second-guessing my existence.

I chose stitch, and this piece has been hanging on the design wall, dusty and bothering me in its unfinished state. It was started back when Jimmy was first diagnosed and I clung to it like a life raft some days. It was also connected with "Band of Brothers" on Netflix which we were watching together at the time so I put that on TV last night because I recalled that I liked the music.

The first episode was about soldiers training to become paratroopers and I remember Jim chuckling and saying how little had changed about that aspect of the service. When he was awarded his jump wings, they were pounded to his chest, the prongs deliberately drawing blood.

Jim was proud of his army service and I think he would be pretty pissed off over the state of our leadership. Like many, he would mist up at the national anthem, but I believe he would also be okay with taking a knee. That it's not about a damn song or a piece of cloth, but human decency. He was nobody's fool and would call bullshit out loud no matter who was leaking it. He was a good and decent person before all else. Shit, I miss him.