unplanned excavations

 It started off with Salem trying to jump up onto my desk in search of cat cookies and bonking her head on the pull-out armrest. She allowed me to pick her up and accepted a soothing cuddle complete with jet engine purring. She is not generally demonstrative.

After a minute, she decamped to the chair at the back of this picture. It has been piled high with large, rolled up art quilts for a while now and covered with a terry robe and cat hair. After a minute of circling, she barfed right where she usually nests. Hasty cleanup ensued and all the quilts were moved to the bed.


Very fittingly, this one was at the top of the pile. "Big Bad Voodoo Daddy" was an homage to the dear departed Voodoo.  Been some time since I got carried away like this.

 After all the quilts were moved, this small throw remained. It's in pretty sad shape.

I started experimenting with repairs some time ago, but, as it turns out the repairs have not much to hold on to. It's as if the original piece is evaporating.

5x5 feet give or take, I crocheted this some time in the early 70's. I remember where I worked on it because it was not very portable.
The 12 ply cotton string was rescued from the post office where my mother worked. When the old post office moved to the new building, several giant cones of packing string were headed for the trash. Not on my watch!

It was Macrame time, but I never learned any of those trendy moves and tucked it away until cold weather brought out my crochet craving.

 You can try, but sometimes, there's just not enough to hold on to.

the finds

Shockingly, that Romeo Y Julieta cigar box turned out to be empty. I've always loved cigar boxes to the extent that I never took them for granted, especially wooden ones. The cheap, cardboard sort were not to be trusted with treasures.

The wooden one, icons unto themselves. This one has already had a repair. I glued a strip of cloth over the paper hinge that must have been torn or disturbed. I love that soft, satisfying "thunk" sound when you let the lid drop. This being 420 day, I know exactly what I'm going to be using this one for. The other is home to a set of Berol colored pencils. I haven't used colored pencils for anything since I was in grade school, so I have no clue or memory of the source for these. People send me stuff. I send thanks and stuff gets filed. Sort of.




I rummaged in the fiber closet a while to see what I may have to use for my own Wind Robe project. It's a beauty, but at 72" square, it may require more cutting and fitting than a bigger cloth would. I want this robe to hit mid-calf and have plenty of space inside it around me. There's one on eBay that I have my eye/bid on. We'll see what happens there.


This will probably get incorporated into that robe. That and lots of other smartass remarks. Planning ahead for a muslin lining.

In other strange and wonderful finds. I so loved Firefly that I have never seen the last disc in this set. I was hoarding it! The time has come.



Addendum. I went to the post office today to ship Dirty Threads. You would think, by the number of cars in the parking lot, that they were giving away cases of toilet paper. I took a hard pass. I'll try again tomorrow.

the long weekend

Too long. I've been letting the days get away from me in unproductive ways. Making things is not always a good thing. But, I'm out of string. I made all the masks I can stand for a while.

I was sitting at the machine, debating whether to get up and wander in circles when my eyes fell on that little double stack of IKEA drawers. What was in all those drawers?

Surprise, surprise. I did NOT get rid of all my machine thread. Big and little spools and cones of King Tut cotton quilting thread. Bottom line bobbin thread, actual bobbins - the finicky special ones just for my Janome. I remember buying three packages of them from a little quilt shop that been closed and gone a long time.

While looking in the closet for the good quality quilting fabric, I found a crazy log cabin waiting to be finished. Loud, fun.

I did what I could with Baily judging me from the ironing spot. Will you look at the chaos?




He just gave me a good laugh. He stands on the vanity, drinks from the leaky tap then looks longingly at the bathroom window and then at me.

I'm trained, so I know he wants to sit in the open window so I open it. It's two stories up, but the screen is tight.  He made the bold leap, settled on the ledge and the sky split open with lightning and thunder. He fell back into the trash.

someday, shopping

FaceBook kept putting ads for French Market bags on my feed. Some nice to look at, but who knows made of what. A few touted they were made of recycled fishing nets. And the prices!

Anyway, things have been slow at the night job. The flow of calls had all but dried up. Idle hands and all that. So I looked closely at the pictures. I found a basket with cones of cotton string and a rayon/bamboo blend, my J hook and I got busy making it up as I went. Did I mention that I don't really know how to crochet? That is, I don't know what these stitches are called and have no idea how to follow a pattern. Taking something as one dimensional as a piece of string and building something useful with it has always intrigued me.

There was a little trial and error. Some ripping out and starting over ,and unexpected assistance from three cats who I thought were well past the kitten-with-string stage of life. Silly me.

So this came to be during a George Clooney kick. Over two nights, "Descendents" and "Michael Clayton". George demands perfection although I may go back in and do some strategic reinforcement at what might be stress points.

There's string enough for just one more. I think.

Someday, some shopping.

after the storm

Which didn't really even affect us...much. People lost their homes, lives even, in other parts of the state. I heard a crack, thud and splash around 9. It happens in heavy weather, the trees have grown close, crowding in.

Around midnight there was a roll of thunder so deep and wide, so long the house was vibrating. I started wondering about other possibilities. A train was derailing nearby, a jet was coming in for a crash landing on the roof. Fun stuff. Nearing midnight, my phone kept waking me with tornado warnings, but when I looked at the radar map, we were on the edge of impending doom and only getting licks of mayhem. I fell asleep and slept soundly through whatever happened between midnight and 6:30. Then I got up to make coffee, never really thinking I needed to do a damage assessment.

I've been writing here since 2005 so I'm pretty sure most readers are sick to death or at least overly familiar with pictures of my swimming pool. My blue heaven.

Jim came into a small insurance settlement the year after we moved into this house. He was injured on the job and as a result, had to make a big change in how he made a living. I know a lot of men would have made self-pity purchases with that kind of money, trucks motorcycles and the like. Jim bought me, us, the family this pool.

He built all the decking around it that makes it look in-ground.  It has had the same liner since the day it was set up in 1999.  All props to a company that probably struggles because their product is so awesome. Thanks for all the years, Splash.

It's too soon to tell, but we've patched a few small cuts in the liner in the past. Tomorrow, the pool guy, Colin, will get in, clear away the debris and we'll make an assessment. We just joked, at least we got ahead of the fornicating tree frogs this year.