Glad Tidings!!

Big Best News - GRACE FOREST arrived safely with Tazmena, Tay and goats intact at Oroville California (letter dated 12.16) and she'd been there a week. She won't be on the web for a while and the phone is iffy, but she's happy and it's beautiful!!!....thanks, Michelle!

the wormhole

I can't even claim to have fallen into the wormhole of holiday preparations. We have a tree, but it's still leaning up against the wall in a corning of the living room. No lights, no wreath, no cards in the mail. There have been some self-congratulations on finding something that will delight Charlie for a long time to come. A few culinary plans for Christmas day. But beyond that, my mood has not been quite "bah humbug". More like "meh".

Like many of you, I've been pouncing on my mailman anxiously awaiting news of Grace from California. Going through the mechanics of tracking someone down with not a lot of information. 

I just finished making up nine Fat Baggies of scraps dug deep from ancient tubs on high shelves. Old cloth, pure colors, many textures. Now that you've taken care of everyone else, they won't get there for Christmas, but what's a bad day when cloth arrives in the mail?

Father & Son

I think if it wasn't for Charlie, we might not have done this.

Jimmy would approve.

The story behind this picture.

~

marking time.

seasonal shenanigans

this was the strange light that greeted me this morning. wonderland.


Not your everyday thing in Georgia!

Surprise guests arrived.   Charlie's first real snow experience.

This way to the

Gone

Just  Going!

Goddess Speed, Grace! 

Don't think. Jump.

There he is, making me crazy. When I first went out, the clouds were ranging all over. I took the cards out with me. As I fanned the deck out of the box, a big round gap opened up and the clouds froze as if the moon didn't want to be interfered with while it was smiling at me.

After each card was exposed to its light, I turned the deck over and touched them blindly, trying to find the one that mattered in this moment. Once, twice, five times, I chose a card, but let it one slip back into the deck. Finally, I took courage, pulled one, and held it up for the moon to see first. All my questions were answered. It was the beloved Fool.

"The Fool almost always stands for new beginnings, new experiences and new choices; the first steps along a new path and the first words written onto a blank page. Like the Aces of the Minor Arcana, such beginnings are like the Fool himself - neither positive nor negative, but with the potential to turn into either, depending on the choices you make and the path you follow. But this must not be your concern, because when a journey begins no one can know (or should know) what will happen on the way to the destination. Never let another person control your life. Live in the present and trust in your own abilities - this is the way of the Fool.
Such journeys always imply a degree of risk, and hence the Fool is pictured walking toward the edge of a high cliff. With any new experience, there is always the risk of failure and the certainty of change; it is the degree of change, and how that change will appear, that is undeterminable. But the Fool has no qualms about taking chances, so why should you? It is through the first steps that we learn how to walk, and it is through changes that we learn how to live our lives in harmony and peace. So jump head first into the abyss of the unknown, and know that even if you eventually fall to the ground, for a while you will soar. -James Rioux

the work

Perfect weather/light for shooting textiles outdoors yesterday. I've always preferred natural light, but overcast is better than strong sunlight, which causes hard shadows.

I took the batch that came home from the Fierce Fibers show to the park with the intention of laying them on the sloping concrete features of the new skate park. Silly me. It was swarming with skateboarders, so I just flung the pieces between my feet and fired away.

Later tonight, I'll do the drudgery of finding links to the provenance of each piece and posting dimensions and prices. They are all available.

to the Work

sea changes

Before I turn into Jabba the Hutt, I've put my feet back on the turtle trail at the park. No turtles to read to these days, they've all gone into the mud for the winter, but I did pull up at this sunny station and get a bunch of handwritten pages done on a problem that I've been avoiding.



Now to boil down mad ravings into something useful. And lookee here, a whole 1188 steps yesterday, if the gadget on the phone is to be believed. By (typical) comparison today, it said 181 steps, but I don't carry the bloody thing around with me while I'm in the house so who knows.

 there was a little retail therapy that included replacement reading glasses and tired eyes eyedrops and, counterintuitively...the makings of homemade socks because I can't find any that I like.


Now I have to learn a new trick.

On the home front, a year ago I wrote that dialogue with Charlie was 95% geeba-geeba and 5% perfectly enunciated words including four-letter epithets. A year later and he asked me for a stand-up routine of jokes to consider whilst seated on his little plastic throne. He wanted to tell me a joke, but he couldn't quite pull the trigger. He will, and soon.  Then we had a lively game of I Spy and after a few rounds, he understood that the object was to not change his pick to suit my guess. Fun begins....

personal archaeology

Included with some things my sibs held aside for me when Mom passed. From back when making and sending fiber postcards was a thing. Feels near victorian.