A stitching day?

After what feels like weeks of blessedly perfect weather the sky has clouded over and two days of on/off rain has been predicted for the area. Sorry for the folks going to Music Midtown  but the plants and animals seem to be holding their collective breath in anticipation of a good bath and a deep, clean drink.

The river basket is calling me and there will be some time for stitching I hope.

I have been putting off cleaning up the dye deck but I may do what I can with it between the showers.

My tradition of visiting Elizabeth Bartons studio so we can use up each others spent dyestock may have to be put on hold until next fall so I may dig some un-dyed cloth and put it into my tired colors knowing that the results are going to be sighs,  whispers and echoes.  But that's ok, they will all be beautiful.

 I need to do some shop keeping - the cupboards are bare - so whatever comes from the dyedeck this weekend will be available soon over at Random Acts of Dyeness.




All this activity is predicated on what I'm finding is a post chemo pattern in Jim's treatment. This weekend he will be in a resting phase which somehow translates into less anxiety for me even if there's a little more steppin' and fetchin'. 

I think I've recognized that I was born into service in many past lives. This would account for my affinity for the staff of Downton Abbey as opposed to the upstairs folk who seem to spend all their time fretting about how things appear to others. The staff knows in their hearts that the work of their hands matter, to whom or why is not something they dwell on. It's the doing of the thing with pride that gives them a deep sense of purpose. 

more cloak

Thanks for all the kind remarks about my shirt.

I've reconsidered the violent approach of scalping it for the best parts. Instead, I'm going to tailor it a bit, shortening the sleeve, and changing out the over-sized snaps.

Then I'll tackle reworking the parts that need maintenance and replacing the ones that just aren't working.  Just one thought if you are thinking of a project like this...make sure the garment fits and is functional before you begin applying the Art. If you love it before you begin, you'll love it even more later on in the project.

Grace, remember these cocktail napkins?

As the weather cools...

...it's time to break out the magic invisibility cloak 


It needs a lot of TLC. I may even excise the most interesting elements and relocate them onto a newer, more substantial garment.

Starting out with a very worn chambray shirt was a romantic notion that has proven to be the proverbial garden path...

I'll look it over in the morning light before I do anything crazy.

The perfect bliss....

....of being easily delighted is my core treasure. Marigolds, sugar, cats purring, my Goodmans hearty laugh. I am rich.

This came in the mail yesterday. Thanks Judy.    If you have not been following this miracle of creation, the Manitoulin Circle Project ,  you can catch up here

Summer slips gently into fall with cooler nights and low humidity making good sleeping weather. After a long week of anxiety, Jim's blood work was good enough today for his second round of chemo to be a Go this morning. I told the doctor "Light him up!"

back stories

"The Stars out of Place" was finished in the spring of 2010.  It was inspired by a nightmare, the kind that is so real that you wake up in a cold sweat gasping for air.

I was almost nine when Sputnik was launched and we had a neighbor who let us lie on the roof of their screen porch at night and watch that tin star crawl across the night sky while we bounced back and forth between AM radio bands listening to Murry the K or Scott Muni.

It all seemed pretty benign to me and I didn't understand how some adults perceived this to be some kind of threat from the Russians. That all became clear to me after I read "Hiroshima" later that year. That damn book sure took all the fun out of Godzilla.

Still I became a night sky watcher for the beauty of it and became intimately familiar with the locations of the heavenly bodies and the names of all the constellations. Total immersion in the Zodiac soon followed.

In my nightmare, I went outside on a crisp winter evening and looked up to find the stars all jumbled and the moon full and leering, too close, in the wrong quarter of the sky  and shedding wisps of pink poisonous looking gases.  The air was too thin and tasted metallic. I closed my eyes so hard they hurt, woke up in sudden disorientation and willed myself awake for the rest of a long night. Despite my best efforts to forget, it was a keeper.