windthread

it was the WIND.  about 6 things appeared on the screen today asking me if i wanted to click something, try something out etc.  the last of which was Picasa.  wondering if i might want to update? and since i know they are going to make some changes in April anyway, i clicked OK and

now, i am mad.  maybe.  here is a test to see whether or not i should be mad or if i don't need to.

neither are right, the stitching.  one looks more like a horned toad.  the second was an improvement but it's butt is too big and there needs to be a much more subtle transition into the blueness of the tail.   AND again, it is evident that i need to really address my stitching skill;  come up with a plan and stick to it.  

the other thing here, i am in this moment realizing…..practicing on tea dye muslin isn't going to work.  the Diaries Cloth is dark.  the lizards will be a grey brown.  i need to practice on some of the same Diaries Cloth…or as close as i can find to really have any idea what it will look like.

ok.  am going to go see if i need to be mad at Picasa or not.

and here is an unusual view of the West rim.  if you look hard you can actually see the division of the layered mountain ranges.  ordinarily, it all looks like just one.  i think there are 6 visible here.

 

i like each stone a lot.  i like them within their company a lot.   BUT,  all of a sudden the Cloth felt Busy.

is it?,  i'm wondering?   or is it that it is just so long that i have seen the bottom….plain.  and,  if it IS Busy,  what will happen with the addition of the lizards that i had imagined to be among the stones. ?. ..

so…am just going to Look for tonight and tomorrow morning.  see how it all feels.  Today was not an easy day for quiet looking.   There were HUGE  Wind gusts, dust devils you could see coming at a distance.  the far fence that is most vulnerable,  once again, fell.  Twice.  Then, final time, i just left it.  the dogs know that i will ignore their escaping a couple times.   they speed about and make their grand tour through the horse pastures and i ignore this.  Then,  at some point, it's enough and i yell at them.  Enough!  they are not young.  by this point, they have each managed to hurt themselves a little,  are limping and usually that's that.  Today, maybe because it was such  Crazy Wind,  they kept it up.   So the last time they limped back through the hole in the fence,  they found that their dog beds had been thrown out on the porch and the dog door closed. 

Today it was 71 degrees.  Tomorrow there is supposed to be snow. 

 

 

 

 

 

a Stone Sew~er

i LOVE it.  i LOVE sewing stones.   i will become a professional stone and rock sew~er.  anyone, all over the world can email me.  i will gladly, joyously, spend the rest of my days sewing stones.

oh sigh.

the rocking chair has been wearing the blouse since i last posted pics.  i can see it every morning over the top of the wood stove.  just draped there.   and over and over i have thought how it's so beautiful but how i would never wear it because of the decorative stuff stitched to it in such beautiful pattern.  which IS beautiful, but also not me.  well….

and as i was doing that, parts of my dream floated through.  the first, that i had decided to "choose" Stevie Wonder.  in the dream, "choose" meant, marry.  like partner up with.  he and i were sitting somewhere creating a mutual creation.  it had two pieces that would automatically fit together once we had made them and would be come a third thing.  it was something like a pendant.  our pieces were about the size of a quarter, some kind of stiff material, but we were making them with our fingers and they had SCENT.  while we were busily making them, their fragrance floated up…his different than mine….  and as i thought about the dream, i thought, of course.  he's blind!

i never got to the end of that because it somehow changed into my son and i making the fountain outside.  when he was here about 3 years ago, my daughter was teaching herself how to make concrete counter tops.  so, he built a form and made me a large concrete triangle, with holes in it according to some envisioned design he had.  it has pieces of stone in it..kind of mosaic and somehow some rust.  but that's as far as he got before he moved back to Denver;  well, we did bring it out here to my house.  it's been out in the lizards island by the mirror chair all this time. 

so i went out there and looked a long time then dragged it from across out there to here, to the inside house garden area and into the diamond raised bed.  it must weigh over 100lbs.  probably right about how much i weigh.  it took a while.

this is from the front door.

and then,  considering all that,  out of the blue i tea dyed this little something that looks to me always like a fossil of SomeThing that had been very complex and very important in its life.

and as Sun drifted to the rim,  i cut some cloth into shapes and just randomly pinned them.  and what a difference just these amorphous rock shapes, just pinned, just a few,    Make.  there is weight now and almost a rocking motion  looking at it.  tomorrow i will cut more and begin sewing them down.

 

 

 

 

today i just wanted to see what those birds might look like, flying in an arc over Jude's lizard.  i snipped up the first black piece of cloth i saw…which won't be it, because it frays too much…but just to look.

and then, i thought to just try something butterfly ish.  it had come to me upon waking this morning that the butterflies would be rising , in like a cloud on the right,  up from that "room" with the lightning, the room of storms where the toads have put their eggs.   hanging over the back of the chair was the piece of cheesecloth that i'd used to make paneer the other day.  washed and then hung over the chair to dry.  ok.   and i should know better by now, but i still am always wanting to use guaze.  but…just to look at,   while the urge was strong.

and looking at these,  i found this drawing i'd come across some days ago, in the most recent purge of stuff.  i have very few left, but had kept this.  it's so typical of my "style".  i drew it in 1996.  if i were to try to draw something similar now, it would look much the same i think.   it, like everything i make has a "cartoonish" quality.   if i literally COPY someone elses drawings, i can render then correctly.  but when it just rises up out of my mind…it always looks like this.   i cannot make it different.  and  the addition of these black birds today kinds of emphasizes that quality in this cloth.  i am wondering if i made the birds smaller and made more birds…what would that do?

 

 

 

 

very close to finished.  a few more thread bead stars,   but the stitches through the weaving are complete.

this whole "room"….many stitches.  Many.

and all the while,  stopping to look, think.   How much do i want to make the buddha uhhh, clearer?  i can see her so easily,  through the Glennis window, out into the Pure Land.  but that story is in my head.  does it matter that no one else might see her?,   she might look like just a brownish mark?   Thinking.

and we might notice an addition to the picture.    yesterday, i finally remembered to take the cutters and brought home some really perfect and beautiful salt cedar sticks.  beautiful in that they are that perfect brownred color and perfect in that they are beautifully straight …… in case a cloth would ever need a hanging stick.  all sizes.  and there are more.  i have found the perfect clump.  between the ditch road, the road road and the railroad tracks.  who'dve guessed.

 

these are Desert Willow seeds.  each tree makes Many pods.  each pod contains Many of these seeds.  there are probably zillions out there.  a few will find the perfect condition to take root.

this morning,  Jude  placed things.  the cloths hold them.  i had been up during the night looking at this.  the stone is from Lake Superior in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, 1987.

[ the Spiral is Valerianna's work…Raven Wood Forest      the small woven piece is Jude's ]

i have reached a point on the Diaries Cloth where everything i "know" is in place.  for a couple days, there seemed to be a standstill of some kind.  this morning i knew that from this point on, there is no need to know anything.  just stitch.  however it goes. 

turns out to be ….  something different….and i don't know yet, but no longer feels like a mistake.

i did one more line of stitch through the thick stems in the center with that neutral silk weaving thread that i'd found in the waste basket at Martha the weavers house that i clean.  it's very very thin.  and then, those stems that seperate and lean to the right in a "clump" that i thought was wrong, is not.  this is the part i don't know yet.  they lean to the right of that awkward blue square.  i began stitching more stems over the blue square but, no.  will wait.  i don't know what it's for.  and i am being drawn to the eye a lot. 

it's late.  these two pics are with the flash so the color is distorted but i wanted to see what they looked like anyway: seeing

and it's funny,  it seems like a long time since i looked at the Cloth as a whole….have been intent on the grasses.  this feather grass, really.  it needs to be as right as i can get it.    and to that end, what i noticed tonight is that the stitching there is really really thick.  i look around the rest of the Cloth and don't see anywhere else that this might happen.   ?

 

i'd said to Cindy in the last post that i was going to try to keep going with this dilemma of mine and try to get someplace with it.        this morning, while twisting some pages of the New York Times that a friend in Albuquerque brings me to make winter fires,  i came across the Style Magazine, fall issue.  first impulse was to pitch it in the recycle…can't burn that because it's glossy color…..but then, thought i'd look at it for colors.  good thing, because it provided the perfect clue.

it made me remember where i was headed  some years ago, before i got waylayed.   

i can't undo the passing of that time, but maybe i can salvage the Intention in a different way?

a little later, ONE MORE CLUE

my kitchen counter

working to correct impatience.  i had wanted to use 3 strands of floss for this grass because there is a lot of it.  but, it's not right.  so today, tried to correct, with single strand.  ?maybe?,  maybe not.  but i DID see how to correct the pucker….it can be pulled to the kantha tree, held there.  did not try that yet.

Blue grama.   i have always called it eyelash grass in my mind.  above, you can see where i OH SO laboriously took out the stitches of that little lizard that i had thoughtlessly put there.  it took FOREVER.   i left its tail, and think i will leave the tail.  i'm not sure why.

so, now i am going to feed myself.  it's been a BIG DAY.

i remember posting a while ago about Meaning         and          Purpose.

           

sometimes i feel like i really am without either of these.  and i think about it.  sometimes i wonder about whether i have/had/ever will have    any Real meaning or purpose in this life.  i feel small and really, kinda "nothing".

it looked like this, this morning.  a frozen air.  a surprise, to both me and the world out there.

 Oddly, today i watched the entirity of Whitney Huston's funeral.  how strange.  i watched it here, on the computer screen, well, a few inches of the screen…maybe 3×5"?   i don't have a TV.

so.  i watched 4 hours worth of her funeral.  the funeral of a woman much younger than i.  a woman that though i never saw any of her movies, never watch any TV, never really ever listen to the radio even, ……….i knew.  i knew her because of the kind of world i live in.  stuff comes to you.  one way or another.  and i knew Whitney Huston to be a voice like no other in our time.  i knew her to be a gentle kind of beauty,  so beauty Full  and all so flawed and weak.   a woman.

BUT a woman who had an incredible gift.  a gift that allowed the possibility of Meaning and Purpose.  but here she was.  dead.  in a baptist church, in a casket, dead. 

many people said stuff.  her young daughter sat somewhere , out of the eye of the camera.  as, it seems she was all along.  this child of such a blinding light.  i wondered what she thinks about meaning and purpose

so

i stitched the SideOat Grama and listened and thought.

and i remembered the conversation i had with my son some days ago about the word …….mediocre……..that had come to me in my thought wandering.  that there was a certain kind of freedom coming with the thought that i am just a mediocre person. 

how interesting.

But…i am what i am, like Popeye says.  and being that, i must be what i am, what all or little i carry through the days.  so…i stitch sideoat grama on a Diaries cloth.  ok, then.