They fly away

.

Yesterday was his big day. An outing with his Mom and Dad and best friends to Legoland. They had a grand time.


Kindergarten starts on Monday. I'll be there in a ceremonial fashion, his Mom will be getting him ready and putting him on the bus. I'll take some pictures, grin and make light. Then I'll sit in my car and cry ugly for a while.

Today we proceeded like it was any other Friday. I got up before dawn, drove to their house to hang with him a while. Dress, have breakfast, watch a little Spongebob and then on to the wonderful sitter who watches him when I can't.

What shirt to wear? What toy to take? What music to listen to while we roll, tell stories and jokes? All the while I'm struggling to not cry because summer is over. I did not burden him with my cares. That would have been cruel.

My watch is over

He's five

People say, "When did that happen? How did that happen?"

Day by day, sometimes minute by minute. They aren't all sweet and holy, but if you pay close attention, and try hard to not let it be about you, you get see them discovering themselves, digging through the layers and finding their way out of the chrysalis of babyhood.

It's so different than it was with my own boys.  A completely different kind of adventure and I am so privileged and grateful to have been a part of his life, to be Nana.

color of line

I doubt the monitors can bring the truth of these colors to your eyes, the way mine see them, here, live.

I still need a few greens, but these are the players for Night Gardener, among others.

My personal stash of dirty thread is getting out of hand.

lines and traces

I need to put this out of sight for a while before I do it an injury. The bits of cloth closest to the surface (in some places, five layers) are fragile and won't stand up to a lot of picking out of errant stitching.

Also, these colors are anything but true.
Something else to futz with another time.


I'm going to take some time and study marks from past pieces. See if they speak to my intentions at the time, or were they scribbled in haste.

messages

double-six, some hefty lines

thoughts and conditions for the moon (which needs help)

A reminder that every edge does not need nailing.

Night Gardener

the beds are planted.

the printed vegetables and the fish removed for some other iteration.

Anything else will be embroidered including the moths and fireflies and maybe a comet.

An eternity of stitching ahead. 36"x 24", this should hold me through winter.

Delightful exhaustion

I really wanted, intended to stitch

last night, but by the time we fell into bed, all I could do was pick up the cloth and look.

Having a child in my care requires every speck of my attention and energy.

raised beds

many things to think through.
to reconsider.
none of this is carved in stone.
cloth is never stone.

that fish is out of water.
so too, that patch of green that I've loved for so long.

tomorrow was planned for a sun and water day but looks like the weather wants a stitch and words day instead.
time will tell.

obsession

Without a map or destination, I'm becoming obsessed with this one.

The story it belongs with is still largely untold.

What I was hearing as I stitched were totally unrelated conversations between the main characters of the book that I have already finished, the one that's being edited. What more do they need to say? Why?

Meanwhile, I'm kerning* thread. Crazy.

*kerning - the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. 

textures

The newest batch of cloth from the dye deck
are a riot of textures.

Pieces of linen so strong and thick that I hurt m'self trying to rip a big one in half. A tiny, delicate blouse..dismembered.

That cotton, embroidered window panel so rich with blue it's going back into service. I guess even second-story bathrooms should have curtains.

There will be further transformations for some of these. Discharging and overdyeing.

groping

Whew - thanks for the run on Dirty Threads. I've packed up the orders and will get them to the post office in a while.


This lot here is fresh. I'm struggling to get the range of greens I want for Night Gardener. Working outside in full sun and high humidity has a way of stupefying me. If I put up the umbrella (now dead) or pitch a new tent, I can't get the truth of the colors to my brain, so there's a lot more serendipity than color science. Still not happy, although some interesting things have hatched. These will go into inventory soon.

Time out of time

Wednesday mornings time stops the moment he pats my arm always awakening from the kind of dreams I have when I can go back to sleep after getting up too early.

He has a lot on his mind. A worrier. I hurt my back and alarmed him with some pain noise. He asks if I'm going to die. I really hate burdening him with 'someday'. Small friends distract and soothe.