The marathon

My dear friend and foremost crit partner and I have been trading scenes and chapters for many years. 

There was some scratching, biting, hair-pulling...nah. None of that, maybe a few tears as we "killed our darlings" as writers must. 

No, it was straight-up, honest, sometimes difficult assessments of each other's words in the service of the stories in our hearts. A priceless exchange for which I will be forever grateful.

Now, Dee Mallon's debut novel, "The Weight of Cloth" will be available September 5, 2024. You can preorder it now.

I was on a plane with a sheaf of her printed pages, red pen in hand, intent on the work. As I turned the page over, the stranger sitting next to me said, "Wait. I didn't finish. It's really good." He was right.

Be proud and joyful, Dee!  I'll let you read more about it in her words.

 

Studio life

 

My staging space has been co-opted by the household security guard. I should have expected this because he's been camping out by my feet most mornings. 

Now I have a small stretched canvas balanced on my knees while I try to level the camera and work around the shadows flickering through the window screen. 

The hard light tells it true. 

Barriers

I believe he knows what's hidden under that piece of linen. 

I have been instructed to leave off with marketing for a bit. Attend to other matters. 

Who am I to argue with the 'Verse?

The players

 

A gray day today. The window to get these shots was very brief. Not a bad thing. I was sitting there waving hanks around trying to make them play nicely. Not so fast. This rainbow hit the blender. 

This is less than a third of the hatchlings. I don't know what else to call them.

There are at least two dozen that have three to four interacting colors. I promise to give everyone else first crack at these. My threadbox is overstuffed now. 

                                                          This is Opal

I will need to open some creative bandwidth to get all these sets gathered and named. I try for balance when I choose these groups. Should I include one of the stone ponies in some sets? Do people every want monochrome? This is going to take a while. 

The wait.. updated

 

This is the coolest thing. It collapses down to nothing and gets "misplaced" because I can put it away in too many snug places. 

I bought it a few years ago intending to dry my herb harvest, but luckily, I did a lot of research and this is not appropriate for the proper drying/curing of the Devil's Lettuce (or was that Jazz Lettuce?) Anyway, the flowers have a lot of sticky business, like sap. The more the merrier. It would have stuck all over the mesh ruining the crop and dryer. 

Turns out that High Hoops is the best way to dry hanks of thread and small pieces of cloth. Some of that will happen tomorrow. 

These have been hanging outside for most of the day. In about an hour, I'll bring the whole thing inside and get the new players into the lineup. 

There is a LOT of thread here. I'm going to sort these into color groups. 

Would Textilians trust me to put together sets of colors without committing them to groups just yet? So time-consuming!

If you trust me to dish up a rainbow of color plus one of the B&Ws, email me and we'll work something out. 

While we wait, some fun:

Hatched!

Stoned ponies

 It's been a while. This is my psychedelic, off-the-chain version of Jude's magic thread.  Black and white and barely in control.

When I was mixing up the colors I took a lot of time balancing the black for as neutral an outcome as possible. Not too blue, not too green, but a whole lot of pizzazz. There are a few little dirty glove fingerprints, but all in all, I'm happy with them. 

Just some of the Blues. Has a color ever been more joyous?

The back end

 

Today is the first day that I've felt good since last Friday. There's a lot of work ahead, but the big lesson of yesterday was Pace Yourself. 

Even two years after retiring, I sometimes still run my day as if I had to clock in around three.

Not today!

It's supposed to be hot and sunny with no sign of rain until next weekend. I'll be washing cloth and thread and watering the plants daily. In small chunks. 

Under the Big Top

 

That was a first. I shouldn't speak of it until everything proves out. It got completely out of hand, but there I was, eleven unique colors mixed and ready. An inky black standing by and a full cone of 

DMC hanked and holding. 

Nothing for it but to charge.

I was going to lean blue but the Curse of the Crayons got to breathing down my neck as the minutes in the heat mowed me down. I stopped the show and napped in the middle of the production.

Tomorrow, I'll be crouched at the riverside (figuratively) rinsing and washing everything. I am SO grateful I never put weed in that herb dryer. 

Today I read about a study finding that people who nap have a significant decrease in heart attacks and strokes. I have Colin to thank for forty-four years of diligent practice. When your firstborn only sleeps ten minutes every two hours for the first year of his life, you learn the art of napping in self-defense.

Dream Life

From some writing craft book: "No one wants to read your character's dreams." 

I wonder. 

I woke up this morning exhausted, not quite knowing where or when I was.

A horse is led into a strange, country-style living room. Big red fellow, sturdy and calm, but watchful. I can tell he will not suffer a fool. No saddle and only a rope halter. 

I am expected to ride this animal on some kind of journey and I look around the room for a chair to stand on. He's as still as a rock wall as I mount efficiently and seat myself forward over his front legs and not in the middle of his back because the thought of doing that makes my own back hurt. 

There is no saddle or blanket and I can feel his living heat right through my jeans. He is wide and my hips already hurt. 

Then the person who led the horse in handed a plate of hot food up to me. The horse shifts from foot to foot and he sways from side to side just enough to make my stomach turn over. 

On the plate, a small slab of meat and a pile of fettuccini all of it swimming in a sauce redolent of red wine. "Horsemeat," she said, cheerily. Big Red heaved a deep sigh and I pass the plate back down to her. 

This is what I get for following the Mongol Derby. 

                                                            ***

I'm hoping to have a dyefest in the next few days, but I really need the tent set back up. 

I wait patiently for that help. Cloth and thread are ready. 

I need to think about color for a bit.

This never gets old.

That's Rocky peeking out. Dennis taking his ease. 

A huge limb from the water oak on the island fell across the yard yesterday. You can see it's shadow in the foreground of this picture from a few days back.

I don't know whether it fell on its own or the cable guys knocked it down on purpose. It's clearly very dead and there are more up there like it.. It missed my car by a few feet. 

Debby didn't do Atlanta

 At all. 

Yesterday was sketchy with cloud patches wandering aimlessly. Every time I thought about suiting up the sky got punchy. Five minutes later, blaring sunshine. 

I gave up the notion of swimming and took care of some errands. Drove a wide loop that took me from the post office to the library along with a herd of the yellow peril. I'd forgotten about school buses oozing into regular traffic like so much molasses. Oh well. 

The Algo must have sensed my need for good music. I love it when a great segue makes me say, "damn smooth." Finished the circuit with some iced coffee and glazed chocolate donut hearts.

The cold dwindles finally after some experimentation with herbal and OTC meds. It probably would have resolved without them, but I slept good.

All that in preparation for some good reading followed by a whole morning of word whipping and finally, pool time. My gills were drying out.

Hot and sunny, Debby skipped us altogether. 

Low tide, but turning

 

Since Friday morning I have been entertaining a world-class head cold, no other symptoms, thank you. For me it's the kind of thing that requires stillness. I have been sitting in the stitching chair looking out at the Island Jungle or in the darkened bedroom watching the Olympic surfers in Tahiti with the sound off. 

I let the Island go totally wild this year. Just off camera to the right, there are 10-foot-high pokeberry trees and some other unknown shrubby stuff taking advantage of the runoff from the neighbor's slightly elevated yard. None of the flower seeds I scattered in the spring stood a chance.

Colin stepped outside for a smoke and our resident doe spooked away right in front of him but she stood snorting and pawing in the driveway because she had hidden her fawn(s?) out there. The cats don't even venture in there anymore. 

It teems with butterflies and birds and lots of things unseen. Snakes, of course. Cocoons and larval stages of everything. Come late Fall, I will make some hard decisions about paying for professional help before shrubs become trees. I imagine it drives my Mango maniac-supporting neighbor across the street crazy. Wait until she sees the HARRIS sign I'm going to put out there.

The waters off Tahiti sport my favorite range of cool blues. I understand the need for the safety of the surfers - the waters at the break are shallow and the coral reefs are punishingly sharp. And it is French Polynesia. But if you have ever felt the power of the ocean lift and carry you while you balance on a slab of wood and plastic, these waves look tame compared to the majesty of the surf around the Hawaiian Islands. 

To be clear, the only time I ever surfed was in the freezing waters off Race Point, Cape Cod MA on a rented long board and not enough sense to wear a wetsuit. I will always remember that lift and launch.

Last year, I was captivated by the Eddie Aikau Invitational and the fairytale story of the winner, Luke Sheperdson who took a lunch break from his life-saving job to nab the wave that made him the winner. And then, he went back to his day job. 

Today I'm going to try to get in the pool for a bit before the cloud cover from Debby takes hold. I had planned a dyefest for this week, but I don't have the energy. There's still plenty of August left. 

In all this quiet, there has been a running conversation between a precocious girl child and a spectral Barbary ape.