Back to the Night Gardener

 This has been on the design wall watching me work on other things.
 It holds no overt judgment, but smug up there in its dark patience, knowing I'll be back. That I'm already in thrall to it.

In some places, it's four layers thick including the fleece base. I won't stress my grandma's small embroidery hoops that way. The big, FA Edmunds holds it snug.
Some test stitching went through it all like a hot knife through butter. Or, I'm just a brute.

Harvest

All I need now is a good, firm pillow. I got a beaut from IKEA a while back. Feathers. That's what this one needs. Something with some weight.







Less than an hour ago I was drifting in the pool under a blue sky, editing a scene, listening to music. Summer noticed.

and here are the missed moments from earlier in the week. We were kinda busy. I was a bad nana and allowed Charlie to get a bit poached while we were at a friend's pool. He was so entirely freaked out when I split open an aloe leaf and slimed him. I don't know that this will become tan. His skin is like his mother's fair on fair, the whitest little white boy. My bad for his night of mild discomfort.

Thursday night I ventured across town to a bookstore where Chuck Wendig, (a pen monkey, I think he calls himself), was giving a yak about his latest book, "The Wanderers". Aside from the gorgeous cover, I was quietly excited to see a publisher take a chance on a big one, 800+ pages. In time, you'll understand.

I got there a few minutes late to find the place was packed with fans, CW just stepping up to the podium. I couldn't hear him so rather than stand there like a dummy for however long, I bought a copy and scuttled off. Now to soak it up and hope it's a good one.

That's the library's copy of "Where the Crawdads Sing" under it. I found a typo - a wrong word actually - in the first thirty pages. Reading as a writer can be a pain in the ass.

In the greenworld

My sprawling suburb calls itself  "the Crepe Myrtle City".  They are everywhere.
 I am going to have to go back  and get a better picture  this red one .  You don't see too many  of this color- astonishingly  rich  and bloody .  White,  lavender, and the ubiquitous  fuchsia are common and sums up  the struggling gang of four in my front yard. Struggling because we pruned them late and badly.


The sampler is almost finished and I'm still thinking about how stitched secret messages will figure in to the next book.

tasties

The survivors of the do-over have been renamed The Golden Delicious.

Do overs

 While I wait for the sun to come to the stitching chair, a few volunteers take a dip for stronger, overall color.

No clue if this will work.

.

business as usual

A large bag of scraps from the studio. I sat in the car and made up fat baggies to ship before noon so I could get in the pool with a good conscience. 

I need to find some old damasks. The pickings are getting slim.

Swimmer

I spent the afternoon observing the pure joy of a child soaking up the pleasure of being 'of' the water. His phrase.

He willingly shed the floats for a while. No fear in finding his own buoyancy, the power in his arms and legs. True child of my clan.

Another roadside rescue

He won't need much...

Found on the side of Buford Highway at the entrance of the Car Wash From Hell. (It's a fun place but post-wash, the exterior of my car smells distinctly like dogshit soup, per my co-pirate, but I agree with him.)

Anyway, this guy has not seen any real weather, but he's been rolled around on the highway a mile or two. Dingy as if he's lived with smokers, but not smelly.

I'm going to open a few seams, take out those frigging plastic pellets and hope it's not a package of crack. Take out his old fluff and give him a good soak.

shortages

It's a good thing I'm not a purist. I don't have enough of any one color for this project, so I'll be sneaking back into the inventory.


When I take my first dibs from a dye fest, I only take one of a particular colorway. Next time around, I'm going to be a little more greedy.

Planning on some purple-gold-brown, gray-gold-blue and other threeway sets soon.

Anyone have any suggestions or requests?

ps..I named this image for the cursing I was doing as I came to the end of a thread and had one more letter to do with that color. 

...my field of fvcks

Just what I need. A little diversion.

I love the imprecision of the original lettering. You can bet I'm going to do my best to duplicate it.

Dirty thread is perfect for the job even though I'll have to improvise, colorwise.

Revisions flies

This is the orientation the new owner decided on. I like leaving that choice up to the buyer.

And so, I created and affixed my maker's mark, something that I haven't bothered with since the second baby quilt. Somehow, this one called for it.

Right up until this second, I had the horrors that I'd spelled something wrong. Leaving off the date was deliberate.

A little note about the backing cloth.

'99? At the OHCO fabric warehouse, a man driving a bobcat with a snowplow attached was pushing piles of fabric around on the concrete floor. A length of this was trailing from under the pile. I grabbed it up before the tracks could damage it. Five or six yards of sixty-inch jacquard weave of unknown content or provenance. It's grand stuff.

Here I am all patting myself on the back for finishing, but I forgot to find out whether or not she wants a sleeve for hanging. Doh!