Mothers Day morning

I sat with the morning light and tried for a little stitch but it didn't hold me for long - I had scenes to revise. And the studio is heaped with a lot of raw material right now, all of it nagging at me quietly. I'm thinking I'll shove it all into the closet and close the doors until the next rainy day.

Or have a big damn yard sale.

I've been working on the high gardens - redoing and replacing the dirt in the long boxes and clay pots.
This diffenbachia was a wedding gift from our friend Donald. We named it Louie years ago. With almost no care, Louie persists, but a repotting was long overdue.

Way down at the bottom was a thick old stem and a tangle of roots.

I've given it a fresh start. We'll see what comes of this.





The peonies continue their fabulous, stinking riot!!

milestones

The current run is sold out!
For everyone who placed an order as of yesterday, today is shipping day. International friends, I'm getting quotes from the Man Behind the Counter and will email you the bitter results.

It may be a couple of weeks before I can commit to another run, but it will come.  In the meantime, there are still plenty of hand-dyed scraps.

On a most personal note, those of you who see me on FB are probably familiar with Charlie Monday. Yesterday was the last official Charlie Monday. (yes, you heard a sob). Of course, I'll still have him for chunks of time on the weekends, and all the Mondays that schools are closed. Still...nothing stays the same, least of all puppies, kittens, and babies.

He's a little young for explanations, so it was business as usual for us. Not so much for me, but we cracked each other up so often that I didn't have time to get broody. At Publix, he asked the deli man if they sold Monkey Butt Hair Pancakes. The gentleman was sad to report that those were only available on Sunday.  Charlie's life is going to be filled with people that he has charmed just by smiling and saying hello.

I fully credit this little being (and the trust of his parents) for throwing me a lifeline after Jimmy left us. We will continue...

sweet saturday

 Jake and Charlie were here early. The pickup has been languishing for a couple of months. It's been needing a new fuel pump. Mission accomplished. Now, all I have to do is figure out why it doesn't have a current registration sticker!  I know we celebrated back in October when it passed the necessary emissions. Jake tells me that lowlifes will steal the stickers right off the plates! Let's hear it for the lowlifes and hope that's the case.

Meanwhile, I got to watch another artist's process. He's very interested in the names of things, like marigolds and bluebirds - the one who pooped on my car!

We had a fun few hours.

Later,  a friend with a chainsaw came by and those massive hedges in front of the house have been pared back drastically. Long overdue!

round 1 - the locals

I feel like an old spider, spinning. There's a whole new batch of Dirty Threads ready to ship. I'll hit the PO shortly and again come tuesday.

I'm experimenting with some 'close cousins' colors. Just the warms this time. Lots of blue or green based heathery ones. Mostly mid-tones.

The process is in place. Now I can focus on the color variables that I want to play with. As things are now, no two of these are alike enough if someone wanted to use them in a project that called for more than ten yards.

If you are interested in more, email me and we can discuss custom orders. It's an unpredictable process results-wise but that's not to say I can't make a whole set of the same results.


purchase info 

I've had to bump the price a tiny bit. Postage has just gotten ghastly!

first of the season

It was HOT today! The first time (that I've been home) that it was hot enough to break out the dyes. I had a lot of thread prepped and ready to go. 
There was every intention of some restraint, colorwise. Hah! I made the twin mistakes of taking down the umbrella and forgetting my hat. My brain fried and I went wild, color-wise.

After pictures tomorrow.

There was also a trio of vintage huck tea towels in the mix. Wonderful hand!

mending

I could have mended my Dixie Mink (a denim workshirt) in five or ten minutes on the machine.

This time spent was worth what I felt doing it more than the results, which are a ve'ey seedy boro indeed. I had no idea what I was doing.

And, the backside is in concert with the breast pocket. And a little help from friends.

cloth and touch

Seasons change

We had a Charlie Monday yesterday complete with the traditional, terrible lunch of fried chicken and red velvet cake. It was a crappy, rainy day so we stayed in, played music and made Duplo towers until Dad came home.

I'm counting the Mondays down now. Soon, he'll be in school five days a week. Oh, I'll still see him on the weekends, but it's the end of an era and, yes, I cried.

Hug your babies. They grow up so fast!

Spring cleaning continued

I was afraid this might happen. The cloths that gave up the ghost shouldn't have been in that mix.  The repair will be an interesting enterprise. I have no intention of trying to crochet a fix.

This rug usually resides in front of the kitchen sink, folded in half.

No one need ever see the scar. I may have to back the whole thing with something to stabilize it.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Spring

Even here in Georgia, the weather keeps bouncing back and forth between winter and spring. Monday was cold and blustery. When I got to Charlies in the pre-dawn, I thought it was snowing. I don't know what kind of trees they are but they lost all their flowers overnight.

I'm primed to make some more dirty threads, but I have to wait for some warmer weather. In the meantime, I'm going helter-skelter in the house trying to make it...nicer. That's code for 'cleaning'.

Dirty Threads

The Floridians are ready to leave the nest. 

more....

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.