Spring up country

 

The doctor is setting me up for another round of sacral nerve ablation. It's been more than two years since the last time, so the nerve regrowth was slow. 

I elected this instead of cortisone cocktail injections, which only have a 50/50 chance of working beyond the first few weeks.

There will be a few rounds of instructional PT and she recommended continuing weight loss. 

I hope to do as well as Dee. 

Without knowing it, she put my feet back on the ground with a few messages regarding writer's tools. Clarifying my own process for myself was a revelation that I needed badly.

The littles remain little. 

For all the cats in my life, I don't remember one being a teenager. All the cats seem to be having Spring zoomies, this one springing around with her tail all puffed up chasing the reflections from my phone screen. Some time in the night, she nested up on the pillow in my hair, running her little engine. That's a drug you could bottle and sell. Kitten Sleep Magic.

I wonder if this little one gets treated differently. Singled out. There are a few browns and reds, but mostly black. He/she? stands out. Next week I'll give them a name. Observe a while. 

This not-so-little one had me clutching at my heart regularly. The hand-held game and the mindless electronic nonsense are gathering dust. The wider world beckons as he gains confidence in his physical abilities. The videos Jake sends me from the skateboarding lessons are amazing.

There will be 4H camp this summer!

Right after this, we hastily planted some potato sets that had sprouted in the trunk of my car. He expects to make potato chips in the Fall.

The Camillia is just coming into bloom.

All this a sorely needed reminder that the world keeps turning no matter what worries or fantasies we cultivate for ourselves.

urgent self care - part 1

 

Some fundamental stuff starting with a doctor's appointment in an hour. In the meantime...

These two cusspots have become so full they were no longer functional. It's been more than a year because I started the peachy one when the OG cusspot was annoyingly full. 

Now they are both empty and I'll take the contents up to the grove and spread wisps along the branches I can reach but mostly on the ground.

99% of this is DMC cotton thread. Nothing over two or three inches long. 

By the end of March it will all be gone. 

The cream colored one is the very first cusspot I ever made. Once I had settled into the job at the whine mine and started working nights, the first things I brought to entertain myself between calls were a ball of cotton thread and a small crochet hook. Size G, I think. 

I made an eight by eight stitch square and started working around the edges to learn how to increase and decrease to form curved shapes. It's about the size of a lime and the peachy one, an expensive, oversized lemon that's probably mostly skin. They serve me well. 

focus and consideration

 

First, thank you so much for sending it home, Liz. 

I want to study it to recapture the feeling. Being the god of a small universe. Giving it meaning and life. I have plans for some much larger pieces but I have to keep in mind how important scale is with textile work. It's such a tricky balance. 

No matter how one may pave a piece with stitches, to the human eye, all that effort still evaporates from a few feet away. You can only go just so large before the nuance of stitch, warp, and weft is lost. The trick lies in the larger gestures of color and shape to draw the viewer close where the story is written in stitch. 

I need to keep all these factors in mind and not succumb to the self-indulgence of getting lost in luscious colors, textures, and mind-numbing stitches. The temptation is real. 

And all this time I'm tipping my head to the left to see this as a tower and reminding myself out loud that the success of a piece is first in the eye of the maker.

                                                

battle flags

 Before anything, call your Senators or Congresspeople and urge them to walk out on his speech tomorrow night. Let them pray their jokey prayers to a god who should strike them all dead if he was real. Let that sack of shit in a blue suit introduce his special guests. Let him warm up his imaginary accordion to accompany his lies. 

Then, as a body, decent Americans should stand up and walk out. Don't speak. Don't look back. Meet the media in the street if you want. I am hoping he has a live, on-the-air stroke, shitting himself and swallowing his tongue. 
                                                                ~O~

What a bad picture. 

But the help was in a surly mood and I didn't ask for a second shot. 

A piece of light, contemporary linen, 42x60 inches, give or take. I want to do something to bump up the blue without interfering with the gold. 

Some cautiously applied soy resist is in order. And some turquoise dye. I'm out. And it's cold again. Time and patience. Very precious commodities.

And if I were bringing text to this what would I say? 

Sometimes words won't work. Or there are none for the moment. 

I have been uttering curses-- not swearing. Swearing is fun and easy--curses so dark and profound that I stop and take notes. 

Hate is an expensive emotion (Thanks, Johnny Depp) and yeah, what the Buddha said. Creative cursing is active. Satisfying.

                                                        Communication. 

Thank you for the kind words about my nephew. My family, the praying ones, are praying for him to slide into kind oblivion. There is no way to know what he is experiencing because he has been semi-comatose, nearly agonal, for weeks, being bounced between a nursing home and hospital ERs.

Despite the expert medical professionals who have had a hand in his care, his mother won't acknowledge what is happening and refuses hospice intervention.

I can't think of anything more selfish and cruel. 

For the spite of a two-decades-old war with my brother, she has refused to let my side of the family be a part of her boys' lives and now, it's too late. She will be making loud and public demands for money for an elaborate funeral. 

I will send her a book of matches from the Fuck You Cafe.

Slava Ukraini

 That sounds so much better than "I am mortified to be an American." 

    Have you ever felt true cringe from another person's behavior? That Offal Office ambush made me feel like I needed a shower. And even though the well being of my countrymen might hang in the balance, I could not have resisted backhanding the douche beside me and kicking that suit of shit hillbilly in the nuts.

Everyone saw it for what it was, and those trying to deny that Trump is not a Russian asset are fools. He should be arrested for treason, impeached and imprisoned. 

That's Venus staring me down. 

Down in that tree line Mercury glimmered through the dense horizon atmosphere like a star. 

My heart is with distant family. Distance is hardest when there just are no more words. Pictures a poor substitute for hugs or a cup of coffee. 

Finishing

 There's nothing like a distant deadline to get me to shake off the cobwebs and realize I have a trove of nearly complete work. I can't decide if I want these to be pillows or hangings. I'm also reminded that those finishing stitches, like a quilt binding, are so satisfying. Like finally getting to lick the butter cream icing off a knife after you frost a cake.  You know you do it.

I'm also reminded how much I enjoy stitching text. I won't waste my time with things like FUCK TRUMP or ELON SUCKS. It will have to matter more than shouting into the void. Any suggestions?

"Cooze is cooze, but it's the heart that makes the heat."  From "Prophets Tango".

"Don't be afraid. Love's plans are made." Straight up stolen from "I Dreamed Last Night" by Justin Hayward. I did pay for the record many years ago. Fair use? Somehow I don't think he'd mind a pillow or two.

and ever repeating beginnings that lift the heart and give hope.

This is the patch of garden that I can tend. Wild now, I'm still deciding what will thrive the way these have. A few years back, Jake and I liberated a few clumps of monkey grass from the curbside gardens of a beautiful brick home being demolished to build condos. These were mixed into the clumps. In the fall, I'll divide these and take some to his place.

Perennials would be nice, but I know marigolds like the front row. 

Eyegasm

 It's warmed up here. Dare I say it out loud? Winter is over. 

I ventured out onto the dye deck to survey the mess. At least this year I made sure to up-end the mason jars so they wouldn't break if rainwater froze. 

This was balled up in a clot under the table looking nasty. I was reluctant to pick it up with my bare hands, but I shook it out glad to find it an almost intact vintage damask napkin, not just a shred.

 This is why I call them Dirty Threads. All my dye work happens outside on an uncovered deck. Trees everywhere shedding their skins. Bugs, lizards, frogs, moss, cat hair--if it wasn't for the boards under my feet, I might well be out in the woods. 

A thorough hand wash in the kitchen sink and random, nearly discarded beauty came through.

For now, I'm going to tuck it away because there are many other things on the flightline needing my attention.

There's been quite enough dicking around with test stars on this linen scarf. I have to start thinking about how they'll look on that bloody field. 

My posse

 Some time in the middle of the night, one or two of these invaded my bed with anxious zoomies waking Salem and I from a dead sleep. I got up and looked down the stairs in time to see a foot-long raccoon tail going out the cat door.  

They crowded me the rest of the night. All disapproving as I saddled up to go buy more grub for them.

to extremes

 

The light is cloudy, winter afternoon, so, not optimal but I didn't want to dick around with filters. 

This red feels like a living thing, shifting from warm to cool enough to keep me from turning away. It's not my favorite place on the light spectrum. Is "Easily Incited to Violence"  a color? 

Yes, I believe it's here.

I'm thinking about how to convey and refine the message.

Blue/white stars wandering, lost.

Some stars colored by a prism. 

I'm going to do some sampling before I commit to the linen.

I had a bit of a meltdown yesterday morning. A blend of domestic and external stressors combined to rock me. I let it happen, and turned to the kindest shoulder {Pokemon indeed!}. 

Took a minute, got my shit together and lit out for the country. If it were closer, the magic might wear thin.

We doodled. Listen to records. Played with Nibbler. Played poker. He's better at poker than Scrabble since I don't show him mercy anymore. 

Once the whole family was home, we watched the film "Flow". 

Beautiful, deep, moving. You'll thank me.

my mark

 

Small to great, the work of my hands,

...and the work of my heart. They are all there is to know about me.