dye days continued

I started a new piece on the design wall this morning and found myself actually rooting through my stash for a specific color....and not finding it! (If you could imagine)

The weather is spectacular and the dye deck was waiting so I put up about 20 pieces but plan to let them brew overnight. I'm really hopeful that the tasty looking chocolate in the bottom right corner holds true!

storm stitching

After we got home from a trivia victory at Italian Pie, I stayed up to catch the season finale of Chicago Fire. Earlier, the weather dude and the online map promised that the swarm of thunderstorms sweeping across the state would miss us.
They goofed - a boom of distant thunder got me up out of the stitching chair to check windows.

I went down to the dyedeck to check on what might need to be brought inside and wondered if they were wrong...the almost full moon was brilliant and the sky clear.

 There was another distant boom of thunder and, while I watched,  the moon was obscured by a lace curtain of clouds and an opening volley of heavy drops spattered across the tent top. I quickly turned out all the containers onto the deck boards and let everything take the blessing..big laundry session coming up.

a day away from the chair

The mailbox garden is at its peak.
The peonies burst open and disintegrate within days in the Georgia heat. This year I'll be digging cuttings and sharing them around. The fringy paler mutant below will be cut to come inside..the rains made them top heavy.

Meanwhile, out on the burning dyedeck, many cloths came under the spell while I listened to a day game on the radio and gave m'self some minor heat stroke. The pool is still too cold to be a remedy or relief.

Some errands, a nap and then out for dinner at the trivia joint which has become a regular, fun thing.

a rondo of consequences

....and an overflowing cast of characters.

This story is unfolding but the other one is broken, boxed in, and has no anchor. I'll have to dwell on that from a cave I think.

While I was out on the deck trying to read a lady cardinal flew down and tried to pull a shiny one off my ankle beads  and the blue tailed lizards were looking at me making those naughty moves with their heads. Lizard lust.

new work space

The top six inches of the water is entirely hospitable...dip any deeper and numbness overtakes you. Still the plan is to get in on Wednesday, do the annual perimeter scrub and then enjoy the ballgame on the radio.

I'm not one for basking but I hauled this family heirloom down onto the deck with the intention of making it my outdoor office. It needs some patching and the binding replaces..not high on my list of gottas. The embroidery you can see used to be along the bottom of a pair of bell bottoms. This is vintage denim sewn over a heavy king sized blanket and backed with a tacky printed sheet. It's seen many a picnic and party.

I got some reading done out there today and put pen to paper for the first time in months and fell into the reverie almost immediately. Better than drugs.

Speaking of drugs..how did you like Madmen last night? I always knew that was how it got done.

further good intentions

I had to grow the base of this piece since the story seems to have legs. No planning here, just plucking bits from the scrap basket and working them into the parade. It's Back in the Saddle Monday. Time for some reading and maybe some writing. At least we won't be cooking anything today...too many tasty leftovers.

storm driven

"Good Intentions will bite you on the butt if you don't keep moving"

Saturday night the thunder and lightning were so fierce I was finally impressed. 

The house thrummed with sub aural vibrations and the room strobed with blue light like all of five-O was parked in the driveway. My phone kept shrieking some kind of weather alert. NO SHIT!  We did not get a lick of sleep until dawn but got up and forged ahead with a grossly complicated recipe for chicken/eggplant Parmesan. It turned out delicious and I am bone bone weary.

they come creepin'

I've been getting little mental sticky notes and postcards from the Ether about the unfinished writing. Why these come in the form of needlework is beyond me because I can't be in that very walled off place of writing while I am pulling and snipping thread in the studio. I'm not making the connection.

Writing is an all or nothing proposition for me so what is all this stuff? Have all my hands-on work been an effort to keep me out of my own head?

 I went to the library for the first time in months today and took away a stack of fiction - "The Cat's Table" by Michael Ondaatje,  "At the Mouth of the River of Bees" Kij Johnson, "Rasputin's Bastards" by David Nickle and another batch that got left in the back seat of the car because, after reading the first chapters, I know I won't finish them. I'll give any book at least that.

While I was sitting out there reading it dawned on me that my Verifiers, my Fact Checkers have checked out and  I am free to run amok.

a gift from the slideshow

My laptop is set to display a slideshow of images from the hard drive when it's left alone for a few minutes. I'm often taken by surprise by some of the images.

This piece "Shell Vapors" is the only piece of my work we have hanging in the whole house and it's not a quilt. It is stitched fiber but the cloth has been permanently mounted to a canvas with acrylic medium and glue.

The dark gray area had a thin layer of batting and no backing at all. I just stopped without getting carried away for once. I was experimenting with a mounting technique I called mummy making and this one was at hand and waiting and fit the 36 inch canvas that had been hanging around for years.

oddities abound

I somehow found my way to Don Kenn's work this morning and feel compelled to make something...odd.
So what else is new?

Behance

I just finished setting up a page for the Karma series on Behance.net



Does anyone have any experience there?
What are your impressions. All comments welcome...