my crew

A while back someone remarked on the piece that could be seen hanging over my worktable. I couldn't find the image anywhere until this morning. For lack of anything new, here it is, something from my "gestures" series.

I have had another on my mind for while now but I have not even been able to draw it much less create it somehow with cloth. It's nothing like this one but still, a gesture. I'll keep trying.

the fun sort of work

We are snowed in today - a rare treat in Georgia. Now that the snow is tapering off we are in for 12 hours of freezing rain.  As long as the power doesn't go off we will be the snug rug bugs.

The boys are both in staying put mode at the respective GF's homes, and have made promises to drive nowhere.

All this gorgeous cloth? I have hand picked all of these for their "stitchability", that nice needle and thread, hand friendly feel that some cloth has.

These are all from my hand dyed, painted and/or discharged stash and include cotton - muslin, gauze, huck, flannel, lawn and damask. There is some silk, vintage sackcloth in several weights, a silk/rayon and all rayon scarf and a few hand picked commercial prints

I'm going to be cutting these up into fairly small pieces and grouping them into 3/4 hand bundles. You'll have to trust my (some have said) good colorsense - I won't have time to spread them out and photograph the individual pieces as I have in the past. Be assured each one will delight me before I name it and wrap it up.  I hope to have some up in the store by noon...and each bundle will include a treat until I run out of them.

winter storm

That's my dye studio out there! Even though we are out of practice for getting snowed in, we did a good job yesterday.

A big pot of beef stew got made, Jim went out and bought a couple of bags of sand to throw around on the walkways and I went out with my friend Janice to socialize, make plans, see a film and generally enjoy the day before the storm hit.

Now we'll spend the day looking out the window as all this gets worse. They are promising a day's worth of icy rain and freezing temperatures to continue - let's hope that the power doesn't go out as the trees start breaking down.

on the wall

I finally painted out that ghastly yellow I put around "Lavenderia" .Now I can come in here without getting aggravated.  It's been too cold to spend much time in the studio so I painted at the kitchen table this morning, toasty with stew cooking and the oven going.

Now I'm going to brave the cold outside and get out a bit before the snowstorm they are predicting for the area.

more studio archaelogy

More tiny treasures uncovered while I think about what and if, is next for me as far as the cloth goes. A little rummaging in the archives revealed that I have been making these little hand stitched pieces for a long time -  before anyone was taking any kind of notice or paying slow stitching any special attention. It was what you did when there was no sewing machine and had the time to do it.

I know I took up the practice because I was away from home for ten or more hours at a time, working at a job that was mostly "watch and wait" where nothing much ever happened.
 My grandma always said "Idle hands are the devil's playground". When I was little I always wondered where this damned playground was. On this job the saying was never more true -with a few bored keystrokes I could have disrupted telecommunications for everyone east of the Mississippi. Best I had something else to occupy me in the idle hours rather than any self-directed on the job training.


This is "Small Comfort" from early 2005. This was just one of a  whole long series of pieces I called "Rothko's Puppies"