a little more Florida

Nothing visual going on here in the studio. I wanted to get pictures of the new dirty threads up, but the weather went to grizzly shit before dawn this morning. First I had to turn the AC on just to get Saturday's heat and humidity out of the house. When the storm front came through, I had to turn on the heat.

When did I become such a hothouse flower?

This is the same sink that graces my banner up top. I didn't get any actual cloth dyed this time. The threads came out fine but these canvas grocery bags didn't hang on to this much dye once they came out of the washing machine. They have a Monet reject feel to them. All fails will get a second chance once it warms up around here.

I did get to the beach for a few hours, but the water was cold, the wind steady and a few people were hollering "shark! I got wet to the ankles, thanked Yemaya for the blessing, and spent the rest of the time on the sand reading and watching the surf.

I got a lot of writing done - my main reason for going.



"Baghdad Bazaar" has been pressed into service as a beach blanket. Art must serve. That is my concrete yoga bench. There should be a sign - "Lay down for ten minutes & need help getting up"

Baghdad Bazaar, 43x55, born here at ACA,  2007 

the compulsion

Also home with me from Florida, a butt load of cotton print scraps. Just what I need, right?! A full washing machine load of these little darlings. As you can see by the pink roses on the black background of my pjs, I have a tiny print fetish.

When I first saw them piled on the help-yourself table, I thought they were dismembered hospital gowns, but no, the hand is soft and the selvage reads "Made in France 100% cotton". Most of the pieces are less than a fat quarter and way wonkier.

If I sew them all together I might have enough to make myself a djellaba or a mumu or something soft and flowy and not for public display. More pajamas!

home

I left Florida at 8:15. We were supposed to meet at a local eatery at 10 for a farewell breakfast but I was anxious to get on the road.

With some lollygagging and disrespecting the navigator in my phone, I was fed, relaxed and the car was gassed up when I pulled in to my driveway about 5.  I just had to get off the freeway!

Before I did, I passed a huge tractor trailer all done up in a magnificent graphics wrap. I didn't have the wits to drive and snap a picture. It was the equipment transporter for the Stoneman Douglas Band - the Eagle Regiment.

As I passed it, I stuck my fist through the moonroof in solidarity and the driver acknowledged with a blast of the air horn. I was filled with an as-yet-unnamed feeling. I'm sure the French have one perfect word. It lifted me up, away from myself for a while, but then I couldn't help but think about the families, the loved ones left behind.

Then came the tristesse. I rolled with that one and let it take me to tears. Everytime I travel, I have the sudden realization that Jimmy will not be waiting for me when I get home. That's a facet of myself as real and permanent as a tattoo.

ACA days

The view from my desk in a cozy, private room.


Leaving for the beach shortly. Hope I can find my way out of the neighborhood. When I arrived, all the local streets were torn up by a massive, ongoing utility project. Bulldozer and diggers like angry dinosaurs on every lane.

I made a lot of Dirty Thread.  I wish I had prepped (measured and wound) more, cause this is the fun part.

With every dye session, comes a giant ground cloth. This one has some potential. I only had the wet studio to myself for one day so further development will have to wait until I get home. there will be soy resist, over-dyeing and be discharging for a map quilt.

Charlie Monday

I'm mostly packed. The idea was to leave Charlie's and come back here to finish. Silly me. You just don't park a three-year-olds energy and need for engagement because you have shit to do.  It was noon before we got this far. I'm still doing laundry. I'll head out when I get a good night's rest.

Then we had a picnic McD's lunch. The weather has turned perfect except for insane levels of pollen that had both of us coughing and rubbing our eyes. 

He was charmed that Colin got him this bit of weirdness which he recognized as a Poop Emoji. This one winds up and poops out candy as it goes. At one point he said, "It had no more poops to give."  I almost fell out of the chair.



Jake came to collect him and there was much goodbyeing as he knows all about my trip.

We will facetime or whatever I can get the web to do while I'm away.

Moon over Georgia

Colin just took this.





I took myself and my tarot cards out into the light for the blessing.

Play ball !

 As obsessions go, baseball is not terrible. I'd rather listen to the radio than watch it on TV but my fellow Braves fanatic scored tickets to the game this year and invited me along.

This was my very first opening day and the Braves & the weather made it special. The team waited until the very last inning to pull off a win and the skies didn't open up until we hit the sidewalk outside the stadium!

Auditions begin

I was packing up an order this morning and these two hot tickets jumped into the river basket.             A story quilt aborning.

FaceBook - meh

All this bullshit about how FB has been using harvested data and manipulating minds. How is that a shock? When was anything ever really free, even if you ignore the ads? 

I've known this since the early 90s the first time I logged into an AOL chatroom under the name DuchessaNY.  They sent a floppy disk in the mail addressed to "resident". I wondered what the catch was and figured it out right quick, child of Madison Avenue that I am.
 
The best thing about FB? Connecting with faraway family and friends, some never met in real life. And Throwback Thursdays which seems itself to be slipping into the past.

Here, I will continue to reach out, connect and, once in a while, look back.

at hand

My friend Grace is in a new, strange and limiting place. She's working with just whats at hand. The comments tell the tale as much as the picture.

It took me ten minutes to choose these. I took the picture and tossed them back into the sea of cloth.

My biggest art challenge has always been an almost compulsive need to use every crayon in the box. Limiting my pallet has always been painful.

The black & white series from '12-'13 was a sideways attempt to face that issue. Slick me, I found out just how many shades of gray there are between those two poles. Then my life kind of came unglued and I'm still finding my way.


We made it through the storm with no trauma or damage 

Storm watch

Heavy weather always reminds me of you watching me pretending to be scared.
Your sheltering love lingers.

A shift

Changed my mind

my cloth addiction is now yours!

You knew it was coming. Just like Spring, a sale! Between now and March 30 all Fat Baggies will be $23.50 including postage to the US. As (sadly) ever, if you are outside of the US, email me and I'll let you know what the $$postage would be.

(I'll be off to FOF2018 the first week in April, so 3/30 will be my last shipping day for a while.)

 Presently picking from this DEEP and WIDE collection.  Snips of silk, swaths of lawn, pinches of flannel. Damask, linen, broadcloth, sheeting,  dismembered shirts, dresses, slacks - Stuff from back in time! All graduates of the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Academy of Color Transformation.

There are so many different pieces in this batch there will be ZERO duplicates in each bundle. I'm stuffing 6x9 bulletproof plastic bags as full as I can and still seal them.

This way to the shop!

~O~

When words fail, stitch will hold it all together.

prep

For days I have been pulling tubs of cloth from the closet. 99% are going into the wider world. This is a BIG basket. A hamper. 18" across and 30" deep, heaped to the brim! After each shot, I dug deep and pulled a fresh batch of inmates to the surface. Zoom in!  All bound for Fat Baggies and someone else's' inspiration.

 There is every possible type of natural cloth going on here.

Cotton lawn, huck, broadcloth, flannel, sheeting, gauze, linen, silk. A few snips of some poly sparkle for fun.

Have I told you lately that I love you?

learning to pace

I was going to take advantage of the strong morning light and work on Wanderer for a while but after just a few minutes, it hurt too much to sit up. Coffee and drugs are necessary. Today will be a reading and writing day.

Sweetie and I wait for the Aleve to kick in.  Charlie and I had a great day yesterday, but I bit off more than I could choke down what with getting him in and out of a car seat in the back of a two-door eight times in two hours. Soon I'll be teaching him how to buckle himself in and my problem will be solved.

But - all scrap orders made it to the post office, and Charlie was properly entertained, napped, fed and exercised. Today I pay, but it was so worth it to be in his company doing fun stuff.

hard sun

I had a little time to kill this morning before Charlie arrived. The sun coming in over the birthday chair was fierce - the trees have barely budded so it will be like this for another ten days, give or take.

I'm appreciating how my hand-dyed threads have fast and furious color changes. It makes for interesting lines.

a Contest for the Whole Planet

(and nearby galaxies if you can send me a postage paid envelope!)

I was clipping and churning the Fat Baggy bucket this morning. I'm pulling cloth from the closet that dates back to when I first started experimenting with dyes.

Much of the really old stuff is good quality cotton - I used to buy cloth, can you imagine? There is a piece that's all swirls of red and yellow - it was crammed, dry, into a three-foot x 2-inch clear vinyl tubing and the dyes poured in the opposite ends while I watched the colors travel, meet and party!

Anyway, I dropped my big scissors into the tub and while rooting around for them, came up with the treasure below. No way to know how old or where it came from. The embroidery/embellishment is too perfect so it's probably manufactured. It's a hankie, a delicate cotton lawn, and it just went bananas for the color I was slinging this most recent dye season.

Send me an email with your mailing address from anywhere in the whole wide world and, at the end of the month, I'll have a drawing and will send this little treasure to the winner. I'll have the drawing on 3/31.

shreds!

Picking orders from this large tub of tasties today with my eyes closed so I won't be tempted to re-route any of this into the river basket.

Looks like an all-day rain today, dreary as hell, but I won't complain. Waiting on pictures of the spring snow headed for my friends in the northeast. Stay snug, y'all.