stitching here and thinking elsewhere

 This piece is evolving around the theme of secret messages. Evolving because I am winging every bit of it. Even the basted substrate cloth has been cut away and shifted as I stitch.
 
To let you in on those secret messages, all of this stitch activity is, for me, a very useful misdirection of brain activity. Others may meditate while stitching, but while my hands and eyes are busy making second by second choices at the warp and weft level, my mind is gathering up the threads of a book I'm working on.
 
One of the devices in the story is a young child who has been taught embroidery to keep her busy and out of the adult's hair. There are strong paranormal and magical elements in the story; irascible ghosts, talking animals, demons walking around in everyday bodies, people possessed by evil. Evil itself writ large and loud, a pillar of his community.
   
The child takes it upon herself to help the afflicted by stitching hidden messages in clothing stolen from clotheslines by her familiar, a cigar-smoking Barbary Ape named Ace.
 
The messages? Simple, childish directives like "sleep good" or "be nicer" go unnoticed until she steps up her game to stronger messages and bigger magic comes into play.  The working title is "The Monkeytown Murders".

It's tough switching between editing one book and writing the next one. Needle and thread are helping me find the way.

Monday derailed

There was no school for MLK day, so Charlie and I made plans.

Plans that were quickly derailed when I heard a funny noise as we pulled away from McD's with breakfast. Fortunately, the flat tire found us in the parking lot and not whizzing down the highway.

Clear and cold outside, I felt full of myself and decided I could still change a tire. What did I tell you, Grace? Get them to manually tighten the lug nuts? Did I follow my own advice? NOT. 
With all of my might, I could not crack any of them. We called Jake, he came and rescued us, and Charlie got a lesson from the guy who matters most.

While we waited for his dad to arrive, Charlie worked on his backseat journal, asking me how to spell this and that. FACTORY.  He printed the letters, frowned, and said, "That can't be right. Are you sure?"

wheels work

And so today, I presented Jumping Jack Flash at Discount tire. Made myself comfy in their immaculate waiting area. Sunlight streaming in. I was ready for a long wait. Blessed silence! For once a public waiting area with no TV.

Several men wandering around, too engrossed in their phones to sit. They looked at what I was doing like it was somehow suspect, not approaching, but obliquely curious. Time flew and the work was done.  I was off to an oil change, then shopping. By the time I got home, all I wanted was a solid nap.

Someone else decided that twenty minutes was plenty.

I love Fridays

It's been a day of lessons and indulgence.

I don't have to work tonight. After a busy morning and a solid nap, I came back to the sewing seat in the studio, turned on the task lamp and the music and stitched until full dark. It was a really nice piece of time.

In case you wonder about the mismatched socks, my feet are blind. It's a small part of my lifelong quest to Not Give a Flying Fuck about a lot of things that other people seem to go nuts over. Matching socks.


After weeks of freakish warmth, it's going to get cold again. I don't know how these will fare. This display strikes me as desperate with no pollinators around. I have to assume plants know what they are doing so I'm not going to cut them and bring them just in because they please my eyes.

Once the blooms die back and it warms up, I'm going to be thinning this bed. If anyone in the US wants some iris tubers, that originally came to me from NM, let me know.

These will serve that purpose. Someone else disconnected them from the earth. I'll pay for the privilege of just looking on their dying days.

Stitching stories

One book written, but a long way from done.

The second book in bits and pieces, scraps and dreams, but the seeds are planted.

Magic and miracles in the highest branches. Down in the grass, it's cloth, stitch, mayhem, and justice.