juggling

I was relieved to find this one still hanging up at the office where I left it.

A notice was recently sent out instructing people about NOT  klepping  lunches from our shared refrigerators in the break room. Imagine having to write a politically correct interoffice memo about the moral issues surrounding BEING A THIEF! (read the bold letters in Sam Kinison's voice). There are no fast food joints within a reasonable distance from the office so if you don't bring something to eat, you go hungry, unless you eat something from the overpriced and under-serviced vending machines. Enough on that.

A few days away from it and now I'm pingponging back and forth between the two of them. Cousins, no doubt. Winter and Spring.  Do not wish for that which you can conjure for yourself through either hard work or deep imagination.

sweater weather

I'll even get to wear it today - it was snowing sporadically this morning! This is Georgia - and not the mountains - the weather has lost it's tiny mind.  I bought three of these cotton sweaters at Kohls years ago and wore two of them to death.

This one was originally cream colored and has been through several color changes - this being the only successful one.  it was really, really bad before.
That scrap of folded cloth is a half yard of muslin that was blue with soy resisted white spots, now burgundy and purple and wildly interesting.

rainy Sunday

In addition to leaving the current WIP at the office Friday night, when I tossed my stuff in the car I tore my right thumbnail to the quick and all day Saturday I kept banging it into things making it worse.

Last night it was all I could do to manager seven feet of a simple running stitch joining these two rayons scarves lengthwise. Why didn't I run it up on the machine in 15 seconds instead of taking most of "Lawrence of Arabia" to get this much done? It will be finished when I can cross each of those blue stitches in orange. Maybe later  this evening.

(Something new too)

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      It was so beautiful out yesterday I brewed a new tub of soda ash and submerged a large batch of cloths that I've been collecting all winter in anticipation of the first dye fest of the season. Did I check the weather report? Not.

There were a handful of bottles of dye stock that have been out on the deck since the fall, mostly blues, so I overdyed a cotton sweater that's been too horrible to wear in public (a combination of reds, browns and greens resembling road kill)      to see if the dyes still had some kick. Poor sweater spent today hanging over the deck rail getting rinsed in the rain all day long.

Baseball!

Sixteen days until Opening Day! I've don't bother watching the few spring training games that are broadcast on TV - the commentators seem to be so bored that they will yatter on about anything but what's happening on the field.

I dashed out of the office last night and forgot to take the current WIP off my cube wall. Unless I decide to start something new, there won't be any stitching at all this weekend which might not be a bad idea.
It's 'sposed to be sunny and 70 outside today. Sweetie took her first foray out of the house yesterday while Colin and I watched over her....just a few minutes around the front steps. While I was at work, she helped herself out the cat door and was staring in at Jim from the back deck demanding to be let in!

art rug

Like many people during these economic tough times, our family is "forting up".

The lease on Jake's apartment is up and instead of re-signing it, he's going to be moving home for a while. We have the room and it will be nice to have my favorite mechanic back in residence.

The trick was cramming this 8x11 (well, 7 something by 10 something) rug in a Honda Civic. I love a rug that is the same color as dirt - so sensible, so real. It remains to be seen what Voodoo, Karma and Sweetie will think of Juicy, who is a Maine Coon cat. He (?) looks like a beagle disguised as a black sheep.
Pictures to follow.

WIP languishing

Sometimes things just stall.

I found a little scrap of fire in the bottom of the sewing bag while I was looking aimlessly for something else - anything else, to move this piece along. I'm still shuffling things around.

The triangle is real and the smaller bits are digital. I realize that I could move these pieces around forever. Too many possibilities will keep me from making progress every time. I'm seeing the circle of things shaping up again and it pleases me.

Making way for the new

 I got the new Dharma Trading catalog in the mail the other day. Although the ink is smelly I can't help looking through it and making marks here and there knowing full well I'll be placing the order online and not on paper.

In anticipation of the new dye season, I've slashed all the prices for Raw Materials at Random Acts of Dyeness

lost 24hrs

I've finally taken the step of working beyond the mounted fabric. All that white space around the piece just won't do sometimes - especially when the standard sized canvas is not really right for the piece.  OMG, it's almost a painting.

Doing this made me very anxious - that old "artist faces blank canvas fever" came back like malaria. Then I reminded myself of the gallon of gesso I have languishing under the work table. There are do-overs aplenty in that can.


I did a little stitching on the current WIP last night but I was afraid to go too much further as I was still feeling pretty pointy headed and didn't want any blood on the design.

Yesterday (my day off) was lost to me. Tuesday night around midnight I took a new pill that's supposed to help my back pain and NOT render me deaf. Instead, I was a drooling idiot for most of my waking hours yesterday.

Jim and Colin had great fun mocking my stoned self and I will have have to revisit that tutorial, written heavily under the influence as it was. I know spell checker had a merry time of it. Wordy as hell for  a tutorial. Still, I had been thinking about what I wanted to say for some time so the thoughts were there just needing to be rounded up like so many rabid rabbits by the rancher with cotton candy for brains.

mummy making

As promised, here's my tutorial on making fiber mummies or fiber fossils.
I can't decide which name I like better.

Please read the whole thing through before you dive in and email me if you have any questions.

finishing

"Old Comfort" is mounted and I'm pleased that  none of the bright whites lost their pop.

I took a whole series of photos around this one and the process and will get them published with commentary when I get an hour or so. (click for closeup)








                                            

                                                       I've started work on mounting "Candyland"

which will really benefit from the darkening that comes with this process. It was a pastel disappointment but you can see by the red that it's going to be a color riot. Now if I can just work up the courage to paint in the margins - extend the design beyond the fiber.

Hare & Tortoise

Jude described me in her sidebar as "fast but slow.." Flattered to be mentioned at all,  I wasn't sure I understood it until I spent the entire evening stitching a two square inch area on this only to pick it all out.

I trample all over myself to lay the groundwork, the broad strokes and then revel in the long, drawn out process of modifying that groundwork with the stitch. There's my Slow Cloth philosophy.

If I were in prison I would have no trouble tunneling out with a teaspoon. I have told clients, when they inquire how long it will take to make a report over the phone, "Together, we will be moving a mountain with a teaspoon. One teaspoon at a time and suddenly, the mountain is gone."




Kate of the brilliant Needled is chronicling her way back from a stroke and gave me another shift of vision on fast & slow. Isn't her Hare magnificent?

revision

When I unfurled yesterdays start today I wondered who put acid in the yogurt so I dismembered and cannibalized it right down to the dirt.

One false start after another finally got me to this place by about 10pm.  Now it's working for me and basting is under way.

I really loved that "storm cloud" commercial batik that I wrapped around it yesterday but it was just too busy  and had to go back in the stash for another day.

Ask & ye shall receive..

No kidding. And don't forget to be careful about what you ask for. I wasted an hour this morning cruising the web looking for fresh ideas for my own home made website which is not reflecting my current work or direction . Bored and aggravated by coming up empty, I did a quick run though of the blogs I check in on and lo&behold-  Tracy Helgeson held up the torch and pointed the way.

I'm cross eyed and crazy right now but it looks like OPP has what I'm looking for by way of change. I ain't thrilled with the notion of paying for something I've always had for free but I'm doing that now at the store anyway so I'll have to study the particulars, do the math and maybe split the difference.

"In the dream I woke with a start and rushed outside into the yard. The sky was impossibly huge and black and the porch light was defeated to old butter on the ground  by it's density. The stars were all wrong in the sky for any  time of the year and the air was so cold and bitter that one could not suck any life out of it."






It was a good night at the Whine Mine last night. The Folks must have been exhausted from three straight days of complaining and picked last night to lay low and leave the phone alone. Maybe they were watching American Idol and fell asleep before it was over. TGIF even though I am working this week end.

Robert Genn's twice-weekly newsletter was about the creative flow that can come from the bored place in the brain, "Accessing the default mode network". That was timely for me too.