Working updated

 

Labor Day. What else would I be doing? Most of my working life, I've worked for companies that offered their customers 24/7 service. 

Ma Bell, AT&T, and the whine mine I quit two years ago all paid double time for anyone stuck with or willing to work on major federal holidays. I thanked the union for that and jumped at the chance to make extra money. Did they think I was working for the fun of it?

This morning I worked in my own shop, posting all the rest of the Dirty Threads from the last big dyefest. All the cloth is in the scrap bin and a SALE is underway.

If you order by this Thursday, I will make the post office my last stop before I head to the beach for a week. 

These two cussposts--now stuffed fat with hand-dyed scraps-- are also on the block. I hope they don't start crying when I separate them. $30 each includes postage inside the US.

Ragweed pollen was wishful thinking. I have a first class head cold. 

Maggie May

Reluctance to commit to an orientation is a good sign. 

And these wrinkles! The silk has shed little shadow ghosts of dye in places. I'm thinking about amplifying them in some way other than stitch. 

I actually have to go buy some black embroidery thread. 

The morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age. 

A pop song from ages past (1971!) that still gets too much play. I never understood the connection (there is none) between the intro and the song itself.

Rod's singing about the problems of being with an older woman. 

 I was with a guy who would have been a whole two years behind me in high school if he had graduated. He seemed to think that skipping that part gave him some kind of special status. Whenever this song came on the car radio, he took perverse delight in turning it up and making something of our age difference. I used to look out the car window and think, What an asshole. But then, he was the asshole who told Jimmy he could come sleep on my couch...

There is SO much cloth in the scrap bin I'm having a sale.

Reaction

 

Silk shreds dating back to 2010 experiments with ColorHue dyes. I don't recall the source of the silk. I can't imagine what cloth like this would be used for other than the kind of negligee that was made to be torn off. There are tiny scraps of it wandering all through my private stash.

The base is the trimmings of that handkerchief linen shift that I hand stitched together, again, because I have no white thread for the sewing machine. I sat with the shapes as they came from the bag, with no cutting or tearing. I prodded, pinned, and unpinned through a couple episodes of "Homicide: Life in the Streets".

The show was recently released on Peacock TV.  I didn't get to watch it much when it was first aired. I was still a nightbird for AT&T and was never one for slavishly needing to have a show taped for viewing at my leisure. I had kids. It won awards and a cult following for good reason. 

Balance. Up, down, crime, justice, left, right, life and death. 

The cloth is wet because I didn't want to iron away all the nooks and crannies to blend away the holes from a false stitching start. 

I'm not even sure there's going to be any visible stitching. Tomorrow may tell.

Addendum 

Around sunset a storm flickered by.

The end of the line

 

For this one, it was sudden. I found it on the lawn. Out in the middle of the yard, unprotected. No damage that I could see. No cats or other predators in sight. I put my finger under it and thought I felt a grip, or those legs just have little grippy hairs. No flutter, response. I put it in one of the potted Swedish ivy, thinking, "Rest a bit, then move on." Hours later, unchanged. Gone like a summer day.

Last pool day, maybe.

Someone in the neighborhood felt the need for a fire. 

It's been in the sixties overnight and the water temperature in the pool is approaching "no can do". I've recognized it's what I say aloud on that hot, sunny day late in summer when I go down the later, and by mid-calf, I can't go any further.

 

Today, I pushed it and by the time I was standing on the bottom, I was largely numb. Not good, so I skipped the cleaning routine and climbed aboard the floatie. Skimming the surface was do-able. Weatherwise, I might have a few more days like today. It's a strange flavor of sad.
 

I may do more of these. Make them a page.  Reading the cards gives me a fine kind of buzz. Like there's more oxygen than I'm used to. Feels a lot like writing.