a gathering place

 

Some people journal. Looks like this is where I'm going to spend the early morning light. Gathering thoughts, ordering them, organizing the day. Priorities. 

Remember the Magic InvisibiIity Cloak? It's long past wearable, gathering dust on the back of my office chair. I remembered how I rushed it into existence. Paving it over with whatever shouted the loudest from the River Basket.  I'll be salvaging the tasty bits that stayed strong. 

I'm not going to rush this new one. A stitch here, a stitch there, as time allows. Images that resonate, colors that thrill me. And never shying away from picking out a bad or thoughtless passage of stitching. 

Nothing lasts forever. 

And that includes inventory. 

On the one hand, the next hot summer day feels a long time away. 

On the other, how the days fly by!

Home

 After taking time to straighten up the threadbox, I found just enough heat to start my engines. Didn't even draw the shape. Always mindful that I could remove it without harming the cloth. Also not referring to the original once I got started.  It's good.

On to the big news. Jake, Missy, and Charlie have found their home. The closing was yesterday and they plan on celebrating Christmas there.

Home will always be where the heart is.

Juiced

It's in here somewhere.

I have a new denim jacket - my Dixie Mink - and I want to either stitch this high on the sleeve or stitch another (as if) directly to the shirt. Problems abound.

A. I can't find this one.

B. I have NO red, even warmish, dirty thread in my stash. In fact, my stash is so vanilla these days, every time I open the box, I get sad and just shut it.

That sad thing. I'm at a place where I'm deciding if I want to eat a big hunk of the shitty, sad pie that I have been baking for myself daily. 

Or not. Decision made.

The remedies (and the results) are much tastier. 

I hate being web-coy, but it's not all about me, so, more facts in time. 

As I rummaged through my stash for the heart, I found snips of red-hot fun everywhere. For now, I'm resisting the urge to build a heart from these scraps because I won't be happy with the outcome. 

Doing for the sake of doing never does it for me. Ever. 

Patience.

 

All hands

So much inspiration everywhere. 

I cleaned out the River Basket and found a few UFOs that I barely recognized. A few that only need finishing touches.

The base is a piece of that modern, super-light linen. The pieces that fall into place as I cut and bend them to my will, damask. All of it dyed over this wonderful, one-of-a-kind summer.

The stitching is helping me find balance. A groove and an anchor in the face of changes. 

 

Carving out time

I knew it would happen. I fell victim to @brediculousyarns from Instagram. This is "Interstellar". Her colorways are a lot like mine.

"Fiber: 75% Superwash Merino / 25% Nylon
Knitting Gauge: 7-8 sts = 1" on #1-3 Knitting Needles
Hook Size: B1 - E4"

All of that is greek to me. I think a sheep was involved early on. Everyone knits fabulous socks and sweaters. I will settle for crocheting a pair of mittens but I have a sneaking suspicion this ball will only yield one.

It was warm and muggy so I took a book out on the deck. Instead of reading, I spent time weeding all the deck pots and hilling up some fresh dirt around the old Mother Thyme and Lavender.  Wrapped a few stems together for spellwork, maybe. Chasing mosquitos is more likely.

Little unknown seedlings have sprouted in all of the pots. No clue what they might be so I left them. If they make it through the winter, more power. If not, more compost. 

I ordered a bunch of perennial seeds from Baker Heirloom today. Now to find a half-ton of chicken shit and a few pounds of clover seeds. 

The book is very good, but it's making me nervous about the two trees that we left standing. 

I'm not even certain of their species and I'm doing weird shit to the soil over their roots, planting flowers where nothing grew but briars and ivy. 

The arrogance.

Threadbare

There are just ten Dirty Thread sets left in the shop. They are pretty green-heavy,  but I have other foursomes set aside to be included in cloth bundles in a wider range of colors that will be as random as I can make them. I have to keep from peeking in that basket because it gives me itchy fingers.

We are poised for change.

 

Halloween

First things first. In and out, my ballot was cast in under ten minutes.

Then on with the business of the day. 1. Find a pumpkin to carve and get some dry firewood for the firepit. Between Ace Hardware and Publix, mission accomplished.

 

We waited for Charlie to get home to carve the pumpkin. I wielded the blade, and he spooned out pumpkin guts.

We put all the guts and seeds up on the woodpile with the cosmos. Maybe a wicked pumpkin patch next year!

I have not lost my touch. Freehanded and no blood!

It was my job to sit by the campfire and hand out candy to those brave enough to cross the dark lawn and engage at a house with a ten-year reputation as a place to NOT stop on Halloween. 

While Jake, Missy and Charlie toured the neighborhood with another band of beggars, I saw fifty to sixty kids between sunset and nine.

As time passed, the tricksters got older. 

Jake doused the fire and we decamped. 

This was the first time since the boys stopped trick or treating that I participated and had a good time.

The cosmos

 

This is the view from my kitchen window. The woodchip pile never got completely spread. Back in the spring, I waited for a rainy day and broadcast a bag of sketchy wildflower seeds that I picked up at Home Depot.

I knew it was a crapshoot whether anything at all would grow - there was no soil, per se, just some slightly decomposed wood chips. 

Now, these flowers tower over my head and have been riot central for butterflies and bees all summer. Even now. The view from the street is ugly. My mission is to rid the area of stubborn shrubs and ivy (English and poison) and get a healthy variety of native wildflowers a better chance next year. These are Cosmos Sulphureus according to someone in a FB group I look in on. 

I asked this group for advice about flowers that reseed themselves and thrive on neglect. I got the most amazing help and information. (I had to look up "yeeted" and a lot of other stuff! This is from a Weed Wizard:

"What we have here is the cutting-edge in soil science: A well-aerated static compost pile made of high carbon materials where a diversity of seeds has been yeeted upon it such that it has become covered with a diversity of photosynthesizing plants

Could the diversity of the high-carbon materials have been increased dramatically? Yes. Could the moisture level have been maintained better than complete neglect? Yes. Could the plants have been specifically chosen for the functions they perform, Yes? But did the plants grow? They did. Are there places where moisture and oxygen remain consistent? There are. That is some primo biology right there. Are there places like that that also enjoyed the continuous living root of a photosynthesizing host plant and its root exudates? Yes, there most certainly are places like that. Are there places like that that enjoyed the continuous exudation of a diversity of roots from different plant families intermingling? Maybe even so. Will any evergreens or living winter cover provide exudates that keep communities of exudate-dependent microbes and their symbionts thriving in populations high enough to bounce back quickly and mightily in early spring? They will!   I second Donna's suggestion to introduce nitrogen to your compost pile with clover and its associated rhyzobia bacteria seed inoculant."

The whole group offered links to companies that sell native seeds just for zone 8B and other great resources.

I'm contemplating adding a little hidden pond in the middle.

This is Salem and Milly's favorite stalking ground. Play in the yard, kids.

Love

 

Putting special pieces of cloth to work this way is easy. Just tuck them in. I tried some random stitching on one and immediately picked it all out.  Anything beyond the color and the weave was just distraction.

Colin and Jake don't often work together. Just hearing them outside muttering and puttering warms my heart.

Even as I struggle to get the next book some legs, I have to do marketing stuff for the first three. In case you wondered what it was all about, the e-version of this one is free this week, just click on the link in the sidebar. Read the blurb, read the reviews and if it's your cup of tea, you're welcome, but be ready to shell out for two & three for the whole story as Prophets Tango is a serial.

Mending

 

Nothing to stitch on, but Bailey is recuperating from an infected bite wound to a toe. "Through and through," the vet said. Giving him 2ml of amoxicillin twice a day is exhausting and dangerous. 

Dangerous in that it all doesn't always get into his mouth and Jake is deathly allergic to any splashes or spills. I have to do this alone so it's easiest to hold Bailey down with a towel caped tight around him. He seemed calm and receptive this morning so I neglected that important step. Now I have to strip my bed and wash both quilts and the pillowcases. 

We've had two overnight near-freezes so I've brought all the tropicals inside. This Mandevilla flourished all summer in an outside planter with a geranium and a hollyhock that grew from a seed. All three of them are sharing a fiber planter in the living room. It would be nice to get them through the winter alive.

We continue to soak up warm afternoons outdoors despite both of us having lingering colds.  I feel like we got off cheap, two of my sibs in NY are struggling with covid. Virgins no more, one vaxed, one not, but both finding firsthand that it's no picnic. I hate being so far away at times like this. 

                            The changes in the air here are palpable. All good things.