memories wash up daily

2.15.21 

No writing, no stitching, but I was creeped by a handsome Creeper. We ate dreck (thanks, Uncle Josh), watched Pinky Malinky, and renamed the funny bone "The Brutal Bone".

I love how this Hail Mary selfie captured Charlie's attempt to appear menacing despite the giggling. 

Low rails of process

 

Of course, I had a list- never numbered.

First I had to improvise an ironing board. I can't remember ever owning one. Long ago I bought two yards of padded heat-resistant stuff and stapled it to the top of an old dresser. Long gone now. 

Then to select a supporting cloth for the dyed contemporary linen which is lightweight. I still have yards of that 1940's vintage mid-weight linen my brother rescued from a real estate clean out. Perfect support. Weighty, stable yet easy to needle through both. The last image is some test stitching I did right after typing that wishful thinking. Wishes came true. It's a pleasure to stitch.

I really dallied over the ironing. It was emotionally evocative. The same grandmother who gave me the maple embroidery hoops and taught me to cross stitch also taught me to iron. For her, it was a living and a task taken seriously. 

I polished both sides of each cloth, then married them together with steam and pressure. There was much (mostly unnecessary) pinning and basting before measuring and basting on guidelines.

 

All of this a commitment to an outcome. 

Spell casting takes work. 

Then came the fun part. I lost myself and my carers for hours sketching the letterforms. The ampersands will be the death of me, but not the project. 

When the words "and the" wouldn't fit, I couldn't remember what a proper ampersand looked like and had to google some examples. 

I'm still not sure I want to deviate from the original. That would mean starting over with an adjustment to scale and placement. 

Slow and thoughtful steps will keep me from abandoning the whole thing.

This sketch was done on a large drawing pad. What I really needed I knew to be buried deep in the bedroom closet. Tracing paper and the T-square I bought in art school tucked away in the dusty portfolio. 

Not in the same portfolio was an 18"x24" painting I was hoping to find. Nothing more than a large section of type (Times New Roman, if memory serves) meticulously reproduced in acrylics with what I remember as a watercolor brush with about ten hairs. Sable. Black letters on a dark teal background. THE lettering about two inches high. I'm sorry it's gone as it was strangely beautiful.

I also wonder why the actual text had zero significance.

Other things from a typical 60s art portfolio. Some hard-earned psychedelia, the drawing assignment "Don't lift your pen from the page" and a surprisingly effective dab at watercolor - something I love looking at but never studied. 

And yes, the two layers of linen needle very nicely, otherwise I might just take the cloth out in the yard and hang it in the crepe myrtle grove and watch it slip back into nature.

The circle IS cast. 

Solutions

Woke up from a false dawn dream. Usually, these are the best, but this one was complex, cinematic, and disorienting. A nightmare in disguise. 

I couldn't open my eyes. I stretched out my left hand and found Bailey's paw as an anchor. His solid, furred head then covered the back of my hand, and he heaved a sigh. 

A calm moved through me. Brought me back to the safety of the here and now. I don't wonder whether or not they know how their gestures affect us. I'm just glad of it.

I've struggled to find the right fabric to cobble into a few summer shifts. The last two were made from scraps of this cotton marked "Provence" on the selvage edges. 

Before the two long gowns, I made this 80x80 bedspread from the same cloth and backed it with one layer of muslin. Soft and warm enough for any AC-induced chill. 

When I moved back into the master suite, I went from a king-sized bed to a queen (a choice I still regret) and had to buy new bed linen. 

I was appalled at the cost of 100% cotton sheet sets so I bit the bullet and bought two sets advertised as "bamboo" for less than half the price of cotton. 

After a year, I've come around to preferring them to cotton. The fabric is soft, light, cool to the touch, and has held up to wear and laundering.  

The plan is to go back to the big box store, pick out a new set, and cut them up for making some skin flings. Knee length this time. 

 

Not spring

 

On second thought, I keep forgetting where I am and that the seasons aren't what I grew up with.

 The grove is filled with robins, bluejays, a flicker, a host of little brown I-don't-know-whats, and a couple of crows who look like battleships compared to the others. I don't bother with pictures because my phone/camera isn't up to the distance and, no giraffes in sight.

I'll put out the last bag of feed on my way to the country in a bit.

Dee called this Insta description a poem. I guess. For all I know about poetry.

We swell, break, and still.
Are cursed, given, or stolen.
Sworn on, pine, and leap.
Race and burn, full.
Holding you. Keeping time.

one more wandering heart

 

The last for a while.

My thread stash is uninspiring. I'll work this one in the stone colors that I have left.

The rest are here on sale for that heart holiday.

This is also the last bit of linen chopped from a favorite blouse that accidentally became part of a dyefest. 

Summer seems far away, but we have clear blue skies today so I'll get out as it warms up and gather some vitamin D and perhaps, some inspiration.

Arcs

 

Because I was actively watching a show while stitching, I can't tell you how many times I backed out a dozen or more stitches on this one because I didn't like the curve. Thank the goddess for the forgiving nature of linen.

I'm watching a British limited series called "The Stranger" on Netflix. It only has eight episodes, praise Jeebus. There are too many characters and storylines going on at odds but it's based on a book by Harlan Coben, who has 80 million books in print so I guess he knows what he's doing. I'll suffer through the end of it, but being dragged through a story just to find out who dunnit grinds my gears. I won't give a printed book this much grace.

And I am fed to the teeth with TV shows and movies that lean so heavily on technology--people staring dumbly at their cells for every significant revelation. 

The last time I remember the deus ex machina being used effectively was at the end of The Usual Suspects with the faxed image of Keyser Soze that crawled to life seconds too late. 

Watching people have their lives turned upside down by a text message has become a boring trope. Imagine being from a time when such problems didn't exist? Bless the aficionados of historical fiction.

Because of my hearing deficit and the piss-poor sound quality of many productions, I rely on closed captioning to follow a  TV story. When an actor stares dumbly at a cell phone you're lucky if they flash the message on the screen long enough to read it. And if they don't show the message, the actors seem hard-pressed to convey it to the audience, if their faces are shown at all. 

All my kvetching aside (that's for you, Dee), the book I'm writing (and the ones I've already written) tend to get spaghetti-ish, plot-wise, but I promise myself and my readers that resolutions don't wait for the last chapter.

I've had a plot problem recently and, as always, if I look at it properly and take it with me to sleep, the answers come by dream.

Of course, there will be different flavors of magic and I'll make you believe all of them.

Casting about

 I met a writer/editor friend for lunch at a new-to-me Mexican joint. Em was one of the first people to offer some tough constructive criticism of my writing. We could do that for each other when needed. So, we talked about her upcoming publications. I had long-hand notes scribbled on junk mail while I waited in the parking lot for her.

 Freshly cooked (by anyone but me) food is such a novelty, I'm ashamed to say. Lately making a few baked potatoes to decorate is a big kitchen adventure. I ruined a batch of brownies by not checking to see if the oil had expired until after I used it. Very.   

In the afternoon, I discovered a new and delightful way to fritter away time. Casting your novel. Never a good idea, but I'm in the mood for running bad ones.  

I put the rest of this post where it belongs. Here

Dirty thread in the sun

 Filling an order this morning required a hard inventory. Instead of coming up short, I found a set that had never been named or photographed. It happens.

Which will become its name, "It Happens" and if someone doesn't snap it up in the next few days, my stash is seriously low on greens and blues. And that mystery color on the right might have a future in a stitch spell sooner than later.

This is the glorious view from the Birthday Sewing chair. It's no wonder the cats gather here. I need plants to increase the oxygen for all of us. 

All that clutter on the table will be finding other places over the next few days. That dresser on the left is mostly empty, so sorting, trashing, and stowing.

The first project at the machine will be a couple of summer schmattas if I can find enough garment-appropriate cloth in the closet. I'm not building acres of cloth from scraps for dressmaking this time. 

I treated myself to a new bag. Been hauling the Black Hole of Calcutta around forever and was getting tired of the deflated motorcycle jacket look. It held up, so I'm retiring it to the closet for a well-earned vacation. I'm thinking the latest heart patch will go perfectly on the rather blank backside of this new one. Give it some pizzazz. 

A visitor

Change up! 

Jake had things to do down this way so he dropped Charlie off to spend the day with me and some old friends.

When my boys were in school, I think they were the only kids I knew who got sick on a Friday afternoon.

They would spend the weekend languishing under my care (non-stop cartoons, Tylenol, and chicken noodle soup) to perk up in time to get to school come Monday. Charlie came home from school on Friday with a mild fever and feeling punk. His father's son.

The plan was for a low-key day. Fine by me in this shitty weather. He helped me swing the work table up against the wall clearing space for floor play.  After an hour or so of conversation, we decided to watch a Studio Ghibli film together.  

He is the perfect age to get lost in these sweet, charming animated films, most from the early 2000s. So different from the frenetic games and cartoons he usually watches, he settles in and is spellbound, and with good reason. With themes of myth, magic, family, honor, and the need to respect nature, the artwork, tender-hearted stories, and glimpses of Japanese culture make for that "been to another world" feeling - thanks to the genius of director Hayao Miyazaki.

The first one we saw was "Spirited Away" which won the award for Best Animated Feature in 2001. Brand new to the family, Camilla was still not quite walking from whatever trauma she sustained when she was abandoned. She lay content in Charlie's arms for the whole two hours of the film. Her little nose was still bruised in this shot from Jan 2022.

After the movie was over today, Charlie declared he'd like to try having tea. Camilla assisted while we waited for the kettle to boil.

Intent

 

The lettering practice went badly last night. But I spent a lot of time just looking at letterforms. Drawing while reclining in bed is not going to give good results. 

I was tired from a late-in-the-day trip to the grocery store. The girl cats are in their beds by dark. Mr. B comes in and jumps on the bed at about 930-10. No sign of him before I fell asleep.

This morning, he didn't report for breakfast. The cat door was open but no one had seen him. This is a creature of dependable habits. He knows when and where breakfast comes from. 

The day devolved into calling for him, worrying, and looking out the streetside windows. My unspoken fear is that cats get taken by coyotes especially when there are pups to feed in the spring. Overnight our near-freezing temps jumped to sixty with overnight thunderstorms.

 I started this one for distraction, but I kept the curves and lines of the letterforms in mind. 

Just before dark, I went outside to drive around the neighborhood looking for corpses. Unlocked my car to have this devil pop up from behind the driver's seat where he spent the whole night.  He loves to hop into the car before I can get out. Last night I stopped at the top of the driveway to scatter birdseed and didn't see him sneak aboard. 

How these hairy people will run your life.

He's mad because I won't let him out now to be a cat.