Le mot juste

Yesterday was full of blessings.

A big item came off my "to do, or get done" checklist..you know the kind of checklist that rides around on your shoulder like a poorly trained monkey, picking at your hair and harassing strangers in public. Thanks to both my sons.

Then the mail brought reminders that, although I have cut myself off from the world at large for big chunks of the day, there are  people who think about me and the caring comes through.

I am deeply grateful for all of you.

The mail brought gifts! There was a box of very precious vintage linens and another with inspirational art and seeds to help my poor bedraggled garden.  Thank you N & D.

The translation of the title of this post is "the exact right word or phrasing". Of course, right is  always a matter of opinion, but the only one I'm counting now is my own.  I'm finding that, although there is nothing instinctual about writing fiction the way I used to work in cloth and thread, finding those right words is even more compelling.

My only complaint is, that like working on a piece for Quilt National,  not much can be revealed before the piece is not only finished but juried in.

The process of picking and choosing those right words reminds me of the many times I spent hours stitching away or embellishing something only to take a step back and a hard look and then pick it all out and start over.

You all know what that's like, but I get to do it now without pictures.

production

 I'm well pleased with the results. Now I have to sit with scissors and reduce all of these half shirts to small squares which I will machine sew together but hand quilt it overall.

This will have to be one of those projects that I do while something else is going on. Multitasking has been my middle name ever since I was indoctrinated into the cult by Ma Bell back when I first started working as an operator. Back then, if you weren't doing at least four things at once, they figured they weren't getting their money's worth out of you.

I've let go of that idea in recent months trying to cultivate focused concentration, but for the next couple of weeks I'm going to have to grow another set of arms for the project coming up next. Once these are cut up, I'll have to back burner them for a little while.

now for a beach

I reassembled most of that denim today...no backing this time and little or no overlap. I can lift it with one arm!

 If I can find something I like in the stash that's light enough and large enough I'll face it just for the sake of tidy.

up from the ashes

change, forced

I get pretty preoccupied with this tiny little garden in the spring. It's the only spot on our heavily shaded property that gets full sun all day.  Looking at this picture I'm wondering if I put on this show so folks won't look down the driveway at the mess I call Tobacco Road.  There's not a whole lot of gardening skill going on here. Over the years I've learned which plants flourish here with the least effort on my part, plus the contributions of the dogs in the neighborhood.

For any of you with even a nodding acquaintance with the Tarot will recognize the implied message of the Tower.

 I pulled this one in a one card draw, looked at it, shuddered and ducked the card. One more 'food for thought' that day and I might have choked and barfed. Not that anyone can avoid some situations, but taking the long look, the lessons in the moment are something to be considered.

I asked Colin to take the picture at the top of this post because the peonies were peaking..ready to explode, and a heavy thunderstorm was coming. Less than a half hour later, a small car beat the thunderstorm to the garden most thoroughly. I'm only glad that no one was hurt and a new garden (and perspective) is underway

Clutch your heart! a textile related post

 This morning Colin asked me "Where is the big staple gun?". In the studio, of course.

For once I knew just where to put my hands on a tool, but after hefting that bad boy and getting the evil eye from "Fierce" on the opposite wall, I reached down and pulled "Firmament" out of the "someday maybe" bin which is full to overflowing.

I thought about the stapler and the 36" square canvas that has been taking up space in my life for over ten years. Something will be happening.


Jack said "What are you trying to hide?"

Which is my slick way of introducing one of the main characters in the novel I am writing,  but also one of the questions I am not asking myself.

mother's day all year long

Jimmy and I were both blessed with strong, capable women for mothers. This made them the perfect mother-in-laws too.

Rosie and Eleanor just stood back and let us have at it. There was little to no advice from either of them; they let us think we invented married life and raising kids. I will be forever grateful to both of them. We had it our way and it was just grand.
Thanks, Ladies.

and of course, there's this

denim blues

Remember this?
Well, without my Goodman to rein in the insanity, I spent the rest of the afternoon, paving over an entire queen-size poly mattress protector with chunks of  his worn out blue jeans.

It always seemed like a sin to throw out good denim so I have stacks of them in the closet.

He would have stopped me and said "Doncha think this is gonna be a little bit heavy when you're done?"

I should have noticed that when I was horsing it around under the sewing machine needle.

I took it outside to hang over the deck railing for pictures and it nearly took me over with it. Ten, fifteen pounds? There are eight pairs of jeans here.

So, I just got finished with a quick and dirty dismemberment. Lament not! I'm just going to find a different way to make it happen with maybe a little planning and forethought instead of just plain passion.

Meanwhile, up at the mailbox garden, the peonies have finally started to pop. I hate that this is happening in the face of two thunderstormy days...the flowers will get beat down if the rain is heavy. I may wind up cutting a lot of them and bringing them inside if I can take the aroma. The two different colors have distinctly different fragrances, but both are heavy, spicy and sweet.

rêver

It's been some time since I've held a silent auction. It's time to sell some Art! 

This is one of the four "rêver" pieces from back in 

2011. 

It's 17.5 x17.5 x .25, ready to mount and frame as 

you like. I'll take bids by email 

(deborah@lacativa.com) through midnight on Mother's 

Day.  Let's start the bidding at a princely $83.22. 

Let me know if you want to be notified that you've 

been outbid. Sorry, this round is for US patrons only.

Here are some details:

cloth to the rescue.

I'm falling back in like with this one.

I picked up the needle and thread because I was down a blind alley with the writing and rather than punch my way through the wall, I just disengaged for a while.

Now I have to remember what the inscription was for this one.

peach days

First thing in the morning and just after two in the afternoon this is my reading/writing/stitching spot.. there's nothing like natural light.

Before too long,  it will be too hot for this. Spring does not linger here in Georgia.

The mailbox garden is thriving and I think the peonies will bloom tomorrow or the next day...stand by for a glut of flower shots.

boat rockers

Don't be shocked..stitching!

This is the first time I've used any of my own hand-dyed thread and I like it. Picking this piece up and working it was prompted by disturbances in the force.

The mailman brought a buttload of tax related grief from the state of GA that will have to be attended to by a professional and, this morning, I had to take Voodoo to the vet to have a swelling on his jaw looked at.

Although there was a shortage of evidence, we are treating it as an abscess. The other possibility is a tumor of some kind and I don't want to think along those lines. For now, we'll see what a fist full of shots and two bottles of pink medicine can do for him.

waiting for thomas

House Lacativa participated in a community wide tag sale yesterday. Most of the neighbors were offering the usual- clothing, toys, baby stuff and household goods. We had a lot of tools and construction stuff and the men practically ran down the driveway weeping. Most of them said "You can't have too many tools".  

It was a good day. Gorgeous weather, friends and neighbors stopping by.

I also listed this small stack of firewood on Craigslist,  free to the first taker and I got a text from "Thomas" who promised to come early this morning. Juicy and I were outside at eight. 

After sitting on one of the stumps for 20 minutes and having my ass turn to wood, I discovered that the rear deck of my Honda is the perfect height for writing so I stood there for another hour and made index cards from my flowchart.  I need a desk this high! My day job calls for me to be in a chair for eight hours at a clip so it's the last thing I need to do in my downtime. 

to plot or not

I wonder if other writers do this?

(It's word weaving)

community

I had forgotten how many feathers I made. Sometimes I get carried away.


 Read more about The Magic Feather Project 

as is

Take this as a warning

To stay away from me
Because the man that you used to know
Is not the man that you're going to see
Someday we may laugh at this
Someday we may be friends
But for now you can keep your distance
Stay away till the pieces mend


This sudden loneliness has made me dangerous
Please don't watch me while I fall apart
'Cause I'm sad and I'm angry
And armed with a broken heart


And what will get me through the night
Is what I'll use with all my might
And to some peace I have a right
But I pay so dearly

And at my age, I should be wise
Now I'm untying all those ties
The evidence is in the eyes
That should see so clearly
I once saw so clearly


You know I will say anything
If it will keep you away
But I don't know what I would do
If you said you were gonna stay
Don't do me any favors
Don't try to ease the pain
Won't you please let me hate you now
So I won't fall for you again

the task at hand

(detail from Jazz Takes Over 2012)

Lately, I am at a loss when I look back at the time and energy I used to devote to cloth and stitching.  Each of these things manifested at my will and by my hands, but there was never any deep intention associated with them.

They were and are beautiful to my eye. I know I took pleasure in the process of making them. The luxury of stolen time has lost its charm and glitter now that all the time I have is my own to direct.

I think I may have to start from scratch..making things from cloth that have a purpose and will last a good long time even with use. Like baby quilts. Back where it all began. Interesting.

slipped a cog

Lately, if I don't get out of the house and hit the walking trail I start to seize up like the Tin Man and get cranky.  Today was the second miserable, wet and cold day in a row.  I went anyway and was stepping along, minding my feet and business, thinking about something I needed to rewrite when this popped into the lizard brain:
 

I started laughing so hard I had to stand there with my legs crossed tight. Thank the weather goddess, I was alone.

Joe

Locked up by the rain, I have nothing to share today so  I'll let Joe do the talking.


Happy Friday!

potential prayer flags

There's a big brouhaha and ruckus going on over the QA list over whether it's appropriate for people who are not practicing Buddhists to make/use prayer flags. At least that's the drift I'm getting from the digests.



Really? Pieces of cloth with healing, hopeful words on them?  Do we have too much time on our hands?

I have no opinion, but some time ago I offered sets of rectangular pieces of hand dyed damask just for making them.  All ten of the sets were gone in three days and I'm willing to bet that not too many of my readers are practicing Buddhists.

 If I make up more sets, how big should the pieces be this time and how many pieces in a set?....all these things will determine the price, of course.
 All feedback welcome.

 

the walking cure

It was 35 degrees here this morning, but I'm not complaining. My sister sent pictures of snow. As pretty as this picture is, I was layered up, sweater, denim and hoody over all.

I had never followed this trail to the end before and was a little amazed when I passed the 1 mile marker, the end coming up maybe a quarter mile further.

Now I have to start timing the  round trip and but I doubt I'll pick up the pace much - I write while I'm walking, stopping along the way to either scribble notes or mutter into the record feature on the phone which makes me look just a little crazy because I make myself laugh. Then I come home and try to make sense of my own hen scratch.

Most of the seeds that sprouted over the weekend, lay dead in their pots this morning like so much green spaghetti. I guess I was being optimistic planting when I did. Even the grape tomatoes are nipped on the edges. All the baby plant sellers will be double dipping this season.

new heart

Treated myself to a little brain escape last night and watched the season opener of "Madmen". I suspect all hell will break loose soon.

More exciting were the ads for a new series coming on AMC - "Halt & Catch Fire". They could not have picked a more compelling hook than using the Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams (are made of this").

It's easy to imagine that this is where most of us fell in love with Annie Lennox . As for the show, let's just say for now that I have a vested interest in some of the crowd scenes.

Before I gave my undivided attention over to Don Draper, I spent a long time churning the scrap basket for the bits that suited my mood to begin "Heart With a Mind of It's Own"  inspired by the song by Jennifer Jackson.

 I have a tendency get overly sentimental (as in driving and crying) so I've always shied away from country music -  but Vin closed Idiot's Delight with this one a few weeks back and I actually went out on the web, tracked it down and bought it.

fierce fixed

I imagine that people are going to get pretty sick of looking at this as the months grind on, so I'm only going to update progress once in a while.
 During lunch with some fellow fiber artists and former cellmates,  I was reminded that I've promised a piece for a show in September. Ah, deadlines.

The original drawing was enough to take me this far with this piece (which is not usually the way I work) so I  decided I had better honor that impetus and orient and crop it accordingly. Now I need to find my black textile paint and do a discharge test on the foot & a half that got lopped off.

 I need to wear my cowboy boots when I'm messing with this one so I'm not tempted to stand on a stack of books.

fierce on the wall

Fierce

I'm going to have to move the furniture around in here just to work on this. There is another vertical foot that is folded over on the top, but it's just solid black. This is dry and I'm thinking I may want to use textile paint to make the black darker.

There could even be cutting some of it away. Right now it's just up for  consideration which means I won't be able to walk in there and do much else..the thing has presence.

follow through

Ok..it's bothering me enough now - all crumpled up in a heap on the floor of the studio like a Holstein cow that's been struck by lightning. I swear I heard moaning in there this morning.

We are off to the washateria with a book and a handful of pages to edit/rewrite.

more later..

Grrr..the water there was nowhere near hot enough BUT there was virtually no color drift. Home to try again here.


I hope everybody got their thread. I'm going to have to rethink this shipping included thing.

Heart Like a Wheel

Those promised rain days finally materialized and I spent a few hours with this piece and outside of my head with Mad Men, recapturing the mindset in preparation for the upcoming final season. Don't call me on Sunday evenings..I'll be busy. Jimmy used to say I had a date with Don.

This one is nearly finished..and yet, far from it. I think the lettering should have been in script, as if I had no other torments, like the tax deadline drawing near. I have other things on my mind.


"Why do we do what we do, we story tellers?

All I can come up with is that we want to be known, liked, loved even.

But most of all, we want to be remembered.

Our stories are our banners, our battle flags and emissaries.

They announce us before we come into a room and set the expectations of those who know us and those who think they do.

Our stories will stand in for us when we no longer can.

So, when a story is called for, as it always is in the company of people, 

a new teller will step up and, 

even though the flesh of a story may no longer be remembered, 

the people will remember it's bones, and the new teller might silently beg our pardon as they make our story their own 

and we will grant that pardon just to hear the story carry on, even without us."

dl

not AWOL

I can't remember the last time I sat with the river basket and picked up a needle..Heart Like a Wheel languishes, but we've been so busy around the House of Lacativa.  Tomorrow maybe, rain is promised.

Like much of the country Spring has fallen on us like a starving lion. After spending much of last year looking like a sheep meadow, we will finally get a jump on getting the lawn back from the nearly wild.

Really, if I had my way I'd plow the tired sod under and plant potatoes but that would mean serious labor. I don't cut the grass here anymore...the noise drives me crazy.

I have been taking every  opportunity to get out and walk in the local park.  The head space it gives me is wild open wonder.

Somewhere I have a T shirt that must be from the 80's.  It says
"If you are not sore and sweaty you are not doing it right"







                                     And... Baseball is back!!

tasties anyone?

It's a shopkeeping day and, as promised, here are the first batch of hand dyed threads that I did at FOF14.

There will be more as time goes on but, it's an incredibly tedious process. If  I wasn't taking first dibs on these for my own thread basket, I wouldn't do it all.

Details and close ups in the Shop

There is Braves game on TV today and I plan to spend nine innings making up some fat baggies from some of the cloth that I dyed in FL too.

PS - And while the boys were winning, I added fat baggies of FL cloth to the shop

more good reads

 I went to Goodwill today, once again on a quest for some examples of a current trend,  the Romance novel, but, you know, the kind with half nekkid centurions on the cover? I'm doing some research.  

My Amazon wish list will probably get me locked up and rather than spend big bucks I thought I'd find these books used.

Yeah, yeah, and your boyfriend/husband buys Playboy for the articles. heh heh heh.

Well, APPARENTLY, Goodwill, the Salvation Army and several other resellers pitch the bosom heavers right in the trash as they arrive OR the intake employees scarf them up and take them home. There were no sweaty six packs to be found  anywhere.

I brought these home instead, more to my taste and the Reliable Wife had me hooked deep in the first four pages.. Somewhere, someone (good I hope) is writing the screen play.

the high gardens

The gorgeous plant in the center is from cuttings taken  from my mother's "hohoya" plant in '93. That's what she called it anyway. Hers used to get little sprigs of pink flowers, but mine never has. 

Does anyone know it's real name? I'm fairly certain she grew this from cuttings she brought back from her trip to Hawaii. My mother, the eco-terrorist~!

It was barefoot warm today for the first time this year. I took most of the houseplants out onto the master deck and got the first seeds into the planters. There will be serious hanging gardens up here this year. First in, moonflowers and grape hyacinths. And that black swamp in the distance will be Caribbean blue in no time.

It looks like the gardenias and bougainvillea didn't make it through the harsh winter. ... I'm going to get some kind of chair and table out here so I can sit outside in the morning light.

hatching

Now this is the kind of thing that you would think you could do while watching TV but I have to tell you it's NOT.

You can get a closer look here.  There will be a lot more so I'm not going to list them in the store just yet. When I do, they will be posted in dated groups like this one.

I'll be watching all of the Braves home opener on Wednesday ..that may help me get the rest of them measured and carded.

Feels like progress.

sunday gold

We had a brief power failure last night while I was working so I went downstairs and cooked by candlelight - my version of red beans and rice; add sauteed chorizo and onions. I'll be eating out of that pot all week. While I was waiting for it to cook, I rewashed one of the FL hanks hand dyed six strand DMC. I can't wait to start working with it! The variations in this one are subtle..the others are more obvious. It'a beautiful, sunny day so I'll be able to set them all out in the sun to dry.

fruits of focus on fiber 14

I was going to be bold and stick the Beast in the washer, but I don't think our water temperature is high enough. The plan then was to take it to the lavanderia, but I ran out time.

Yesterday's gorgeous sunny day has been followed by a Green Goddess kind of day with a soft, all day rain so hanging stuff outside would be counterproductive.

Instead, I rounded up all the color pieces and gave them a final hard wash and rinse. These are nearly dry I didn't want them to get over baked in the dryer.

Everything I was looking for colorwise  is here and, as ever, there is more than I can ever use so  expect to be seeing some Florida bundles in the store soon.

I'm so pleased the black stayed neutral. The mix was totally winged - cooled, warmed and re-cooled on the fly using dyes so old I couldn't even read the label.

I had nearly a quart of what looked like squid ink by the time I was finished and used it all up .The Beast will be OK that way. Even the washer threads and color catchers are interesting...first one who wants them gets them.. just let me know in a comment.  

TAKEN!!