spring cleaning

In the shuffling of stuff, my thread box got dumped. It was overstuffed so it was more like a spew.

Sorting the colors threatened to give me a headache. The colors I gravitate to rarely fix in once camp or another. What I know to be true - how they look on the skein is far from how they look in a stitch. The variables are too many to count.

This tray got more consideration, beautiful blank slate that it is. Got a thorough cleaning for the first time in memory. Jude, you may have had one like it. At SVA, a painting teacher encouraged us to get this large enamel tray and give up the romantic notion of the quaint wooden pallette with a hole in it for your thumb. He was right. 

This tool has Served valiantly. Beyond art, it has brought meals to bedsides and even did a short stint as a sled. Now I think of it as the Make Tray. Yesterday it staged a Lego project.

Nothing moves me.      Yet.

Roomies

 

They make sure I get my rest and keep me company.

Early rolling

 

    

Getting past a 6:15 alarm and the hustle of coordinating Charlie and his gear for a ride to school, I'd forgotten how much I like driving into the sunrise. We chit-chatted in anticipation of my first ever Car Rider drop-off, but the timing was perfect and it went off without a flaw. 

On the drive back I fell into the years-old routine of asking myself a question about a scene then letting answers come with the miles.  It never fails to produce results that just don't seem to come when my butt is in the chair in front of a computer. Stop-light notes scribbled on junk mail and receipts get it done.

change for the good

In 1979 we invested in half a house full of This End Up furniture. It has proven to be enduringly practical and ugly. This little footstool has been a plant stand for years. With nowhere to go, I brought it into the studio gave it sliding feet and a new cushion covered with a hand-dyed, mid-thirties Italian linen towel. Cloth, get to work!

The blending of the two southern branches of the Lacativa tribe is underway.  Going forward, our schedules - work and school - will make us mostly ships passing in the night. The rearrangement of things has been revelatory. The expression "death cleaning" is apt. Death of Sloth in my case. 

I threw away 4/5ths of my so-called wardrobe. Those who know me also know that I wear clothes until they are dead. Very little of what I gave up was fit for Goodwill where much of it came from in the first place.  It's time for some new duds come summer.

 

And Summer was delivered, as promised. All the colors of the sun plus a wisp of dusk.

 

This demon found refuge in my personal stash of cloth, He's annoyed because today I removed all the good stuff from the tub and replaced it with a worn old blanket. He knows.

It's nine days since I tested positive. The lingering cough I put down to moving years worth of dust and cobwebs from every possible surface. I really should have worn a mask Taste and scent still elude me. Sleep is spotty and dreams are wonderfully cinematic.  Not working until the wee hours every night may have everything to do with that. 

Rock and roll never forgets.

 

Well, well. And I didn't have to google any directions. Just convincing a king flat sheet that it's a perfect pillow case for a twin mattress. 

inventory

 

While I was gathering and relocating my dyeing supplies I took a minute and did an inventory.

Guess which color I'm missing most?

Summer.

I'll be paying Prochem and Dharma visits in the near future.

There WILL be miles of thread and an acre or two of cloth. 

Give me Strength...updated

 My Mom used to growl that at us and we knew that she was asking God to give her the strength to not bash our collective heads together and whatever fuckery we had been up to had better cease forthwith.

My mission to bring House Lacativa up to welcoming guest mode has been slightly derailed by testing positive for covid.

Midday Tuesday I was minding my business catching a breather in the stitching chair when my face started to warm as if I'd been out basking in the sun. It was pleasant and I just sat and felt it for a while.

By evening, the inevitable was obvious. 

more tomorrow as I am fresh out.

My new living/working space. The light is everything!

Pardon the ongoing clutter. Marie Kondo would be proud. We hired a 15-yard dumpster and really should have gotten a 30. 

I've found it strange to have the east sun coming over my left shoulder so this is not the last arrangement thanks to those little furniture sliders.

I may just turn the chair to face the window for my old friend Sweetie. She's getting on in years and needs help getting up and down the stairs. 

We finally undecorated the very crispy Christmas tree and she found a kittenish exuberance for this ornament I made years ago.

the never blank slate

I took a break from the domestic push the other night. On Dee's recommendation, I watched "Being the Ricardos" on Netflix. Originally, I was dread-set against watching it. 

"I Love Lucy" was on the air from the time I was two until I was in third grade and I hated it. The smarmy fakery and the evil snarkery of all parties. Always trying to one-up one another in the meanest pettiest ways. My parents, at least my mother, loved it.

I gave in grudgingly when Dee reminded me it was written by Aaron Sorkin, king of dialogue. When I found out Javier Bardem was playing Ricky I prepared myself for a glorious train wreck. Turned out to be pretty compelling although it could have used a deep trim.  Who knew what went on behind those scenes?  Kidman and Bardem were masterful, but Bardem was too old, and Kidman was weirdly ghost-like under strange makeup effects so I listened while I composed with cloth. 

No pins, straight to basting even though my hands hurt from all the cleaning clutching I've been doing. Nothing else may come of this at all, but it unwound me through the evening. A comfort.

In all the years I've been reporting from this space, have you ever seen it so sterile? My rug arrives tonight and tomorrow I will attempt to unroll it and levitate the furniture into position very incrementally and if I can't, I wait for help. Those sliding feet things are pretty cool. Those wire racks are going. I still don't know what will go where. 

 

Love

                        Words fail.

missing hands on

 

 Imiss making. Everything is packed away, boxed, and closeted. Mostly I miss it because the immediate task at hand is unmaking. Taking apart my life and Frankensteining into an as-yet unimagined new design, like one of those little plastic number puzzles where you slide the numbers around to make order.

Going through piles of stuff and not being moved to save it from the trash bag is giving me soul callouses.

I hate interior decorating. For the first time in memory, I have to decide what goes where and I'm spending way too much time staring inwardly at a blank canvas. There is no spatial imagination.

 It's going to be a long winter.

Addendum!   Page of Pentacles. It's time to hit the KDP books. 

Nuts & bolts time. Feng Shui, anyone?