Sight & Sound

Something very new from the other Creative under the roof, Colin Lacativa.

The music will be available at here at midnight tomorrow.

still seeking truth

I popped my head into the studio this morning just as the sun came over the ridge. So cold in there I could see my breath.

I may drag the heater in there and futz around later on. After cooking and cleaning and maybe a walk and most certainly, a nap.

Arlee Barr picked me to carry on this Art Chain thing on FB. I really can't imagine doing it for five days. I rummaged around in my image files and found some good images of somewhat recent work, if 2012 can be considered recent. Still, I needed to look at the real things I used to make.

While in here, I took a hard look at a piece that's been hanging on the small design wall since it was stuck to the canvas in 2010.

"Firefly Cotillion" even made it to the front of my business cards that year. A pretty good representation of what I was up to at the time.

I studied it for a while and started thinking about how all these little elements seemed to running around inside their life looking for something.

 Not lost or desperate, but purposeful, like they knew they'd find it eventually, if they just kept at it. Little seekers.

Without looking things over, I think it's a theme that runs through my work still.

 details from "Firefly Cotillion"

someday I'll finish this

I pulled "Firmament" from the chaos of the studio and added it back to the river basket. If I can do nothing else, I can make french knots with gold metallic thread.

For the first time this piece is putting me in mind of the ceiling at Grand Central Station in New York.

elsewhere

My brain was over in this neck of the woods this morning, Most mornings lately.

a sunday stitch

Some days nothing comes easy. There is no order or sense to events. This is what happens to me when I only have twentyfour hour span with no obligations or responsibilities.

 Here is something I know about. The river basket has be waiting patiently.

(Jake & Charlie stopped by and we went out for a slice. It's been a while)


5pm and the winter light fails for the day. My fingers are stiff and balky but can still feel the needle through the layers.

Lifted Up

What a treat. Got up early to catch up on some routine household stuff that had gotten away from me. Fed the cats and took my coffee back to bed and started in on my Christmas gifts.

I won't whine about not having enough time to read. Bye bye FB.

I made a run to B&N to cash in a gift card and got a copy of "the Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell. I normally don't buy hardcover but after spending an hour trying to find anything else I was happy to find at least one book that was on my to read list.

The contents of the shelves in the fiction aisle was mostly stomach turning tripe if the back covers were any indication of what was inside. Life is good.

a spin cycle in perdition

this is copied from a letter to a friend. If you are as tired of illness as I am, skip this one. Come back another day. I'll live.

"This is the first time I've been near the computer since Monday night. On the way home from Charlie's I stopped at Burger King and by midnight I was deathly ill. In all the years I have indulged at fast food joints, this is the first time I've had actual food poisoning. 

the funny part is that in my day job, one of the things I do is take reports of customer illnesses from restaurant managers. Sometimes we snicker amongst ourselves. No more. And I know why people don't bother going to the doctor. It comes on too fast and you'd die in the waiting room, if you could get seen at all. There is nothing to do but suffer.

I literally spent most of the night sitting on the john with a trash can between my knees. At one point all three of our cats were sitting there watching me. I think they had a pool going to see when I'd pitch forward to land face down in the litter box.

The next 24 hours I lay in the bed, staggering to from the bathroom. Ebola would have been nice. At least the CDC would have come taken me to a nice hospital bed. Colin delivered ginger ale and water at arms length because, at first, I thought I had finally gotten the stomach virus that Jake and Missy had but the speed at which this blew through my body pointed to a bad whipper. 

At some point Tuesday afternoon, my mother's ghost visited me. I wasn't even surprised. 

First she called on the phone and then we sat at her kitchen table. Drinking coffee, me waving off her cigarette smoke, the two of us eating half a Sara Lee pound cake. we argued, I appealed to logic. She gave me her wisdom of the ages routine . All the time she was making her Christmas list.

It was so real.

After a night of dreamless sleep I woke up feeling like I had been trampled like elephants. I am fairly sure I have a broken rib. I woke up in time to have my little buddy delivered to my doorstep since I was still breathing and able to be upright. His little face was good medicine.

At some point in my delirium, my friend, the artist Pat Chauncey, died after a long struggle with cancer.

We never met but over the course of the past two years she has been a source of strength and inspiration. She will be missed by a vast army of friends and family.

choice bits

I wasn't expecting to spend the day with Charlie today but, it was that or housework. Tough choice. He's teething and likes to chew on stuff like a puppy. And put his feet into his mouth.

It was a good writing day. I made myself laugh several times. I don't know if that's a good sign or not, but I'm happy with it. Sometimes you lose your way. Today was a wayfinding day.


Also gave over two plus precious hours to a movie late in the day. "Birdman" starring Michael Keaton, was remarkable. Just astonishing film adventuring, particularly if you are fond of the theater.

 I'm staying with my plan of NOT watching trailers - going into a film with no idea what I was getting into. I will not be shy about asking for a refund if a movie turns out to be really bad. So far, no losers.

trick or tool (from Feb 2012)

I have been idly dreaming about having a small, vintage manual typewriter, as if that would help. I don't even know if I can still type on a manual machine and if I started using one would it wind up crippling me and what about that day job? I still spend eight hours a day on the computer and get paid for it. No matter how I lust after the sleek, shiny black vintage machines for sale all over the web, I'm not going to get one until I actually put my fingers on the keyboard and whack away for awhile; see how it feels.

 Although I had an ancient manual typewriter as a kid, I never learned to touch type until the late eighties on a computer keyboard. The whole notion is probably a pipe dream fueled by watching a couple of episodes of Band of Brothers last weekend. There were several scenes of a soldier pecking away at portable typewriter, so incongruous yet so ubiquitous during World War II.

I spent a lot of time over the weekend looking for an archive of the music that used to be on my Ipod. Last week I accidentally gave the poor little thing a lobotomy and thought that restoring it would be a click or two away. Hah! That restoration took the better part of the weekend but mission accomplished. I'm finding that sleeping with earbuds in and the volume turned way, way down on the playlist sinisterly entitled “sleepingpod” is has a canceling effect on my increasingly aggravating tinnitus. Some interesting dream trains have left the station as well.

In the middle of that file search I came across a long lost short story that I started back in the early '90s. To my surprise it still had legs, crookedy and wobbling, but legs. What started out as a harmless and common fantasy tale rolled quickly into Twilight Zone/Stephen King territory, no surprise to anyone who knows me. This file was created and saved in an ancient program called Lotus Word Pro (I still have the floppy discs somewhere) and had been clumsily converted to a more universal file type. There were many errors in that conversion; formatting was lost and a myriad of crazed hieroglyphs were randomly inserted in the text. It was also obvious that there was no spell checker in the house and/or the writer was somehow impaired.

Dropping this file into OpenOffice and starting to edit it just for typos and formatting was good for most of yesterday morning. What with the side trips and diversions that are all too available when working on a laptop with a great internet connection, the morning evaporated with little to show for it and now, Tuesday morning is well on it's way to history too. All this brought me back to thinking about what it would be like to use an old typewriter with just enough interference between the brain and the paper to check my pace and keep my thoughts in order, without the distractions.

My first typewriter was a behemoth from the thirties or forties that my mother dragged home from a yard sale. I really can't recall the make, something common like Remington or Underwood, but due to it's advanced age, ribbons for it were impossible to find. I bought fresh, replacement ribbons for whatever brand I could get cheap and then wind them by hand onto the large metal spools of my machine – messy but effective. It had trapdoors on the side for access to the ribbons and at some point, I allowed my pet rat to hide out inside the machine. We won't talk about the day that I idly tapped a key and snipped off the tip of his tail.

I typed my homework for fun which probably bothered my teachers. I don't know what they were expecting when they came across my typed papers in a stack of hand scrawled assignments but I rarely delivered if my grades were any measure of success. When I figured out that a C or B would keep me out of jail or the doghouse with my parents, that was good enough for me. Grading should be kept secret from kids as long as possible.

I also wrote letters, specifically, begging letters to all the missions to the United Nations for every flyspeck country that belonged to the UN and a few that didn't. I'm sure my name got on some government lists when I was eight or nine. 

What I was begging for was canceled postage stamps from their home countries and, man, where they happy to oblige. I think I must have created at least a handful of jobs for people working at carefully tearing off the colorful, beautiful stamps from letters sent from all over the world. I didn't really even have a collection – I had a hoard! I started out with the best intentions, like all those skipping down the road to hell, but the response to my letters was so overwhelming that I quickly became blasé about the stack of fat, brown envelopes that would be waiting for me when I got home from school. After a quick perusal for anything new or different, everything got tossed in the desk drawer but I kept pounding out letters and spending my allowance on postage.

Once I got tired of getting duplicates of stamps that I already had too many of, I turned to typing papers for classmates who would dictate to me over the phone or give me chicken scratch notes on legal pads. Bigger brains than mine who didn't have access to a typewriter abounded. Then again there were the papers that I corrected and finally, rewrote,  until a couple of teachers twigged and recognized my style scattered throughout the three fifth grade history and English classes. My career as a copywriter/editor was squashed by a short meeting with the principal where I promised to stop giving it away and promised myself to charge more and work more carefully.

All these years later and I'm still giving it away and someplace in a second hand store or, more likely, a landfill, there is a hulking, golden typewriter with the mummified remains of a rat's tail tip deep in it's bowels.

thanks

Just a quick note of thanks to everyone who commented here and to those who reached out to me privately. 

To better days, lots of them.

not depression

I'm coming to terms with the fact that there will always be sets of cues or circumstances that will just plain rip my heart open. Yesterday was one of them. I was well enough to venture out for some provisions. Just before leaving, I missed a call on the cell. It was from someone who I haven't heard from in too long. Someone who never called me or acknowledged Jimmy's passing. It hurt then and I let it go. The missed call took me right back to square one.

After venting to my dear sister long distance, I decided that any further negativity would not serve anything. I couldn't be angry. I just didn't have the sap for it.

The outing wiped me out and I came home and crawled under the covers too sick and sad and sorry for myself to even cry. I missed Jimmy so much. His caring, his love, his concern for my well being. I have been out of reserves and running on empty. I was tired of being tough. It would be too much like work to lay down and die. The only thing that kept me going was that my grandson was coming to spend the day the next day. I was needed. And needed in shape to handle the day. So I washed my face and made a point of getting a good night's rest. Safe to say, this little scrap of life is saving mine.

Charlie was five months old on the first of the year and growing and changing while I watch. From the very first time I held him I felt my husband's love, down through our son, to this child and if no one is around, I have a little cry for myself. A joy cry.

Trouble is, I have to stop it somehow because today, Charlie caught me and I could see concern and confusion on his little face. It was quite remarkable. He almost always greets me with a smile. First comes the recognition and then, the emotion, he's happy to see me.

Now I watch him examining faces for cues before he reacts. Already he knows that it's not all about him. He's rolling over in all directions and will probably stand and walk before he's any good at crawling, just like his Daddy and his uncle. .

So after the lunch jug today, he fussed a little and I tucked him up under my chin. I can feel his whole body relax and give over to his need for rest. He heaved a sigh, patted me on the left shoulder three time, crammed his right hand into my cleavage and was asleep. I'll cry now kiddo. Quietly.

Lost Weekend Redux

Dispiriting is putting it mildly.

I don't even care enough to feel bad about it. Since midday Thursday I am simply taking up space and resources. It was only three weeks ago that I suffered a whole week of being sick. I can't tell cold from flu. It hardly matters once it's on you. If  boogers were gold I'd be rich, rich, rich.

Amazon Prime has disgorged a heap of new books that I can't open my eyes wide enough to read and this is as much as I can manage with my new wireless keyboard,  the old one dispatched by a strategically placed cat hurk.

When I finally figured out that  the new season of Downton Abby would not be airing last night (or did it?) I went back to the bed. 

I knew I couldn't read or type so the only thing I had with me was a yellow legal pad and a pencil. How much harm could I do? I wanted to think about my other novel, the one I started first. Think in organizational terms. It's no wonder the name on my Christmas stocking read “Fool”.

There was one line on the pad this morning – don't forget your purpose –   followed by a rather ominous void. I don't know if  I was writing about writing or life. I still don't and I still don't have any answers. 

But this morning I am able to take a whole breath, stand up long enough to put away some clean dishes and type this up. I'm alive and there's a mission out there somewhere. 

the sun beckoned me into the studio but the view was depressing.

studio in post holiday chaos

to the new year

"Live in the moment, remember the past, dream for the future"

2014 was a difficult year. Necessarily transformational. There were many lows, but the highs shine the brightest.  There will be many more radical changes going forward. I've come to recognize how spoiled I was by the stability of my old life. Now, being primary caretaker for this little guy trumps all other concerns.
I am so honored and blessed.

As to working with fiber, I still just don't know.

At the very least I will be taking advantage of a glut of raw materials and be dying vintage cloth and threads for other fiber artists. Gal's gotta make a living, still.

The writing goes forward. Talk about uncharted territory! All I keep seeing about writing and publishing is - there are no RULES! Baloney.

No matter what medium you are working in you have to know the rules before you can do a good job of breaking them.

Eye surgery success

Not me, the great spotted cat.

It's been requested that a change be made. Seems like he's a little too creepy . The red color and the wonky shapes were hasty choices anyway so, no worries....something in blue maybe. And some cat whiskers.





.....Meh...

12.26.14

We waited a day so we could gather without one of us having to rush off to work. It seems like my entire working life I've had the kind of job that runs 24/7,


It never failed that for one or more holidays each year I would have to excuse myself from family gatherings to go to work - ten years as a telephone operator and another ten as a network communications technician. As of next year I will be done with that. One way or another I am finished working for the man,


Here we are gathered round. There were prezzies and feasting. Merry Christmas from the Lacativas of Lawrenceville.

Tribe Lacativa. Christmas 2014

Christmas closing in

I know that this time last year we all pretty much put our heads in the sand and wished the holidays away.

There was no tree, no decorations and no gifts that I recall except for this special one.

Charlie's quilt is nearly done - I have a day of grace for a little more stitching in the ditch - they won't be here for dinner until Friday so I get an extra day to clean, shop and cook!

Colin sparked the spirit in the house with a perfect little tree - nothing to excite the cats but, I think the baby will be impressed.

wheels

Leave it to me to get emotional about the sound of an engine running.

Jake got Jim's truck going today. It's been sitting for over a year and we need it now. Jimmy was so adamant about not selling it once he was no longer able to drive. People were constantly asking if it was for sale. The answer was always, no.

Jim used be hard on vehicles. He was one of those folks who turned the radio up louder if there was a funny noise.  Things changed when he got this truck.

Jake was coming into his own as a mechanic and Jim would ask his opinion and take advice from him, probably the only mechanic he ever trusted. And so, the truck is in pretty good mechanical shape and should serve our family a few more years, with a little smart TLC. Thanks babe.

little quilts

I brought this top with me today to make sure it was the size that's needed...something to tuck up around him when he's in the baby bucket as the other ones I  made are much too large. I got carried away.

Missy proclaimed it perfect and Charlie couldn't wait to hurk on it and cuddle it. The boy has my appreciation for raucous colors. Now to get it away from him when I leave so I can finish it off.

~

Some days my heart just wants to fly away-

Vigil Cloth 2013

working with working cloth

Guess I better get on that present, eh?
These were all shot cotton shirts that I got from various second hand places. I over dyed all of them in one of the last dye days this past summer.

there are sixteen beefy blocks that will be sashed in with a cream colored solid and then backed with that black and white check. Pretty and practical.

I'm hoping to get all the piecing done tonight so I can do the hand quilting during the week. I know, wishful thinking.

every day is baby day

  You would think that an hour of so like this would free up the brain for things like reading or writing at the very least.  Not.

On the contrary, holding a sleeping baby in your lap is some kind of powerful sedative.  You can't fall asleep lest the little guy rolls away, but relaxation is total.

Charlie turned four months old on the first of the month and he has discovered the magic of vocal communication. He warbles, chuckles, chortles, laughs, and will scream himself purple for thirty seconds only to look into my face with wide eyes, grin like a fool as if to say "Psych Nana!" and then laugh himself to hiccups.

The cold that troubled him lightly for a day has kicked my ass for a full week.

Lost Weekend

I don't know how I though I'd duck the cold that Jake and Charlie had early last week, such hubris. It fell on me like a starving lion late friday night. I was fine when I went to bed, but Saturday was a total loss given over to drugs and alcohol, the medicinal kind. I give the cold 24 hours.

Things started looking up with the mail delivery late Saturday. I snapped this up on Ebay cheap because I think others bidders were scared off.  No religious significance for me, but a key item for one of the protagonists in my book in progress.

This morning started with a blessing and reminder - Find beauty and take care of myself.  The full moon was setting in the west and the reflection in the pool was overlain with the reflection of the colored christmas lights in my office across the hall. I'll take the camera to bed with me tonight. I even worked in a wobbly mile at the park this afternoon. Healed, I am.

Screw the Critics

I loved it.

(Thank you Brendan. If it hadn't been for your incessant chatter on Facebook I would have missed this live presentation.  Somehow my brain trapped Sunday as viewing night and I'm so glad I only missed a few minutes)

 I think you had to be there live in 1960 to really appreciate this latest production. Live TV is such a novelty! At first,  I found myself thinking, and without being derisive, "this is SO GAY", but a few minutes in, I found the place in my heart and memory before that kind of judgement was possible and just let the thing take me where I needed to go, back in time....(more)

Ongoing

The river basket is stuffed with WIPS these days - gifts, practical matters and a little piece of needle dreaming.

I've been spending a lot of time writing (,,,nothing to see here,,, move along) and thinking about how things are going to be different here at House of Lacativa in the coming year. Changes upon changes.

I have never shopped Black Friday, just refuse to take part in practice. If I've lived without something all year, and managed quite nicely without it, why would I rush out to some rude fest to spend money on the thing?

What  I do have are LOTS of fat baggies of  hand dyed, vintage cloth  if you are in the mood to treat yourself or someone else. I can ship on Tuesdays or Saturdays right up until Dec. 16th ...I'll go again on the 20th but no guarantees this will make it in time for Christmas.

Thanksgiving

We traveled again this year. Colin and I went with Jake, Missy & Charlie up to Abbeville, SC to spend the day with Missy's mother Cookie and her husband Bob on their farm.

It was nice to do something new and different for Thanksgiving. This year, though, I had a turkey and all the fixings ready to go into the oven at home on Black Friday so we'd have the beloved leftovers.  Nothing sadder than coming home from a family feast to cranky cats and baloney sandwiches.

The farmhouse itself was built in 1775 and is steeped in history. There will be a lot more about this place in the future.

I got to meet their horses and neither of them took exception to me as I made it clear to them both that I was not there to ride either of them.  Just a little meet and greet and a good scratch and I have two new friends. There's only this one picture of Charlie riding in the back seat with his Mom and Colin.. I left my phone in my car and all but forgot I had a camera with me. Just wanted to take it all in for a change.

revisitation

Since nothing much new has come out of the studio lately, I thought I'd scroll back some and look for some inspiration.


As soon as I paint my office,
I'm going to start hanging these older pieces, one by one.

Here's the original post.


It's for sale, of course. Email me if you are interested,







"Los Dados Encantada" 

2012

56x34

A days worth of doing before noon

One of those days where getting up early paid off nicely. Made  my lists, hit all the stops and  had all the "gottas" out of the way by noon.

All but one...get a replacement zipper for my fleece jacket. This meant a trip to Ho-Anns and me with no coupons. Oh well, it's only a zipper, right?

The crack was there ready and waiting.
Calicoes and batiks for a smaller quilt for Charlie, big fat cushy skeins of Lion Homespun and a J hook, just in case I couldn't find one of the five or six I have somewhere in the studio.

Not much later I had a visitor for a little while, but I don't think he'll remember.

Later, I put in eight hours in the whine mine  and still had energy to burn, in fact, I was up writing until nearly four. That was the real cherry on top of my day.

The cat crew insisted on breakfast at eight, so another early start only today dawned gray, raining and thunder rolled from time to time.

 A real good day to sit and stitch. The new quilt is well under way.

a day taken out of time

 Yesterday was a strange day. I never got dressed or left the house. I cleared off the stitching chair in the studio and sat with the cloth for  a while, but it was absent-headed fiddling with no intent and the results showed. An hour of stitching equalled another fifteen minutes of picking out. No surprise. The film "Giant" was a colossal bore and complete waste of James Dean.

Some stitching, some boring TV, some napping, and for me,  some dreaming.

A breaker failed last week and I have not been able to figure out which one. There was no power to the bathroom, closet or bedroom TV, so, no great loss at all.  Jake came by, fiddled with everything and still no power. I will call a pro eventually.

Last night when I was done with work,  I went into the bathroom and, out of habit,  flipped the switch and the light came on. It took me a minute to realize that somehow the electricity had righted itself, as if it was sulking and now happy I needed it again.

I turned on the TV on the same circuit just to check and it worked. "Gladiator" was on - gift from my Goodman on a day when I needed it. I left it on and we dreamed together.

A year gone by

"Hollow Places"



How little I knew back then. 

Winter sets in.

My house may be cold, but this room is warm and we are cozy. The only problem with this scene is that they object when I put the wireless keyboard on their heads.

Tough titty, kitties.  I had a major writing breakthrough this morning. Notes are now down, paths and further questions ironed out. It was a great day, even before the coffee was ready.

Time for Art to Work

I've decided to take this one and few others  out of the gallery and put them to use.


What better use that a playground or a cuddle for my grandson?



All of my art quilts were built with the same materials and techniques that I use for utility quilts and bedding. Except for the latter ones that used vintage damask, they can all stand up to machine wash and dry. All I have to do is remove the sleeve.





I'm thinking this one needs at least one backup.