the dogless days

I have taken up this sampler again. I love the words and the making of it, tinkering with the letterforms as spacing and mood allows. 

If I can score a market umbrella, there will be another dye day or two this season. Fred did take out the tent. Permanently this time. 

Hurricane Fred mostly gave us a pass but for one rainy day which was overdue. And trashed my deck tent.

Summer slithers, but the shift is on. Charlie was here on Sunday. We were thrashing about in the pool when he stopped, looked around and said, "Something is burning."

Yes. I had tried to ignore it, but someone was burning leaves nearby. Fall. 

"I like it, " he said. He grows wiser. I grow older.

 

Disconnect

 

If you've ordered anything in the past week, it's on the way. 

I'm going to do my best to disengage electronically this weekend. Put other things in my line of sight. Slip into other flows.

rest

 

The Churn

 

I love this basket. It's big. 18" high and wide. Heavy even when it's empty. 

A gift from a neighbor years ago when she grew tired of supervising her moving sale. I need to get some wheels for it. Right now it's chock full of fabulous. Below, four shots. I dig down to the bottom, grab a handful and slowly bring it to the surface, then stir.  I got mine, of course. The rest is up for grabs, one fat baggy at a time. There's lots of damask in there now.

glory squared

 

There are thirty-something of these vintage damask napkins waiting for me to sort and iron. Eventually, I'll be cutting most of them into ninths or more, mixing the pieces into the big basket that I pick Fat Baggies from. 

It's been a long time since I've had any damask to share. The Skin of the Gods!

I'll be keeping a handful of the biggest ones for my ongoing text project.  The blue background on the last one was too busy. Made it hard to read the letters. My bad. Lesson learned.

The rhythm of August

 

Work until midnight. Sleep until the cats say they'll eat my eyes if I don't get up and feed them. Sevenish.

Then a few hours of quiet stuff. Stitch, read, web.

It was sunny and hot today. Rather than let the dyes got to waste, I cut that tablecloth into nines. Rounded up some other colorless pilgrims in the studio and threw them down to the dye deck. 

Sweat and thunder rolled. No matter. I was still in my bathing suit.

This is a king-sized flat sheet. Loomed in Italy. Not too old. It may not be able to hang on to the colors. It happens.

We have a little algae.