Monday, October 19, 2015

overnight changes

It got cold overnight and I brought Mr. Wilson inside. The rest will get their frog/lizard check tomorrow and join him.

It was so nice out over the weekend that on Sunday I took the overflowing river basket to the park and staked out one of the new picnic tables with the intention of working on this piece.

As I started looking for a certain color thread, I pulled more and more tools, UFOs, bags of thread and miscellaneous crap from the basket and found a trio of stinkbugs lurking. One by one they were evicted and I spent an hour sorting and reorganizing. It needs a serious offload.

The stitching didn't happen until much later during a short Downton Abbey orgy. I find I can't just stitch. There has to be something else going on. A ballgame, a movie, an audiobook. I have to disconnect the brain from the hands otherwise I get bored and quit or bad stitching things happen from overthinking.


Thursday, October 15, 2015

yakkety yak


Charlie and I hike up to the tennis courts they have where he lives. I've never seen anyone playing tennis so I'm sure they won't mind us taking advantage of clean surface and sturdy fences.

He's got language by the tail with a non-stop patois of gibberish that leaves this mere mortal clueless. He gestures, uses inflection and clearly wants to have a say.  There's also a strong note of pity for his witless audience especially if I try to imitate him. The arched eyebrow glare is priceless.


Monday, October 12, 2015

stitching on the clock

While I was composing this last night, I was trying to recognize how the activity related to writing. It doesn't.
It's much more gut reaction to the materials.

Every move I make with cloth is a yes/no proposition - unless I get carried away and stitch a bunch of crap that gets ripped out when the smoke clears - it happens.


 I'm not in any kind of rush here so each yes/no is going to be considered and seconded. I've set everything here in the studio/office so I can stitch between the Tales of Woe that I listen to every night. There's a story in that crap, lemme tell you, but you'd die of boredom before midnight.



Sunday, October 11, 2015

Studio update


The rain and then the chill and I realize I'm weeks behind getting the studio ready for winter. Now that I've moved the day job computer back in here, it won't be long before I trundle the little heater out of the closet. The studio will be cozy and it looks like there will be stitching.


I pulled the birthday chair out into the room and gave it a thorough going over with the vacuum and reinstalled the sliders under its feet. Sucked up every speck of spider crap and web in that corner of the room and put up new Festivus lights.  That's two corners of the room deep cleaned and re-ordered.

To crown the process, I dug into the river basket, weeded out a lot excess and dug up a handful of UFOs that aren't beyond hope or help. I have discovered that 1.75 cheaters are not going to be sufficient. Time to bump up to 2s and shorting stitching time accordingly.

I have to go to the DMV to take an eye exam on Tuesday. I may lay off any further eye torture until then.

Friday, October 09, 2015

-




"Your eyes will lie to you first, but you can trust your other senses," he said. "Close 'em. Go on." He waited.

"Now hold this. Bring it up to your face. Breathe it in. You can feel the truth of it. Be still and find it in memory; what it's here for. Touch finds the truth every time."