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!!

Heart Like a Wheel

The NO TV lifestyle continues with impressive results.  I got up this morning early and wrote for two hours, working on some character notes that I had been avoiding - there are just some people that you would rather NOT wake up to, believe me.

Housework, admin crap, chores and then off to my new favorite public space, the park in Lilburn. After a very short walk I sat in the car and stitched while listening to the last Braves spring training game on the radio.

I think we've had our last freeze so I tempted fate and set out the plants in the big pot out front. Maters & Marigolds this year, so far.

Just because

not grind

Let's not call it a grind. Shall we say "the necessaries"?  All of the bright colors face a real machine wash and dry,  and the threads will all have to be hand washed and rinsed.  The beast will go into the big chili pot as soon as I buy some color catchers. A lot of color catchers I fear. Once I get all the wax out of it there is going to be a lot of correction on both ends of the spectrum. Nobody said art would be easy.

I'm still in a Florida state of mind, that is, expecting sunshine and warm temperatures every day. Silly woman. This morning  I kept hearing the newsheads saying something about "colder"





And that's another thing. TV as company in the house has GOT to go. You can't call it company when it sucks out your brains like a Zombie.

I was up writing last night until two-ish and woke up with a half dozen additional scenarios and ways for things to go in my head and by the time I was settled in the poang   with my coffee all those tasty ideas had run out of my ear like so much sand.

It was the damn TV yammering away like a rabid turkey. I missed it a little bit in the evenings while I was away, but got over it quickly and I don't want to restart the bad habit.

There's nothing wrong with choosing a show and giving yourself over to it for a specified time (I started watching Dexter yesterday) but just for background,  I've cut over to the music channel and hope to suck some of that sand back where it belongs before I have to get back to work this afternoon.

Yeah, there's that too. The ole' ball and chain day job. Got to do something about that situation. 

getaway day

Home.

My missions accomplished. Saw some old friends, made some new ones, and took the time to just ...reset.
It was all very good.

Deepest thanks to all who made it possible.

Susan Lenz did a remarkable job reporting and documenting the whole week here and here..