windthread

more fooling around.  can't stop.

over in Magic Diaries,  Jude said this morning: 

"let it transform.  slowly over time.  until it becomes          yours."

well,  i think that i have a deep love of  Space Inbetween.   i think i might want to find a way to honor that love and at the same time figure out a way to create a cohesive cloth.

 i also reminded self that with this cloth, i began by  wanting to put many things i love that may be incongruent with one another,  as  "design elements",   but not as things i love.   things i want to be able to see all in one place.  and that is the strongest  "element" of this cloth.

 

 

here's where it is now.   i made a decision, changed my mind and then changed my mind again.   this is the far end of the living room….a wall window.   we need a break from each other.  we need just some not constant looking.  (as i look out of the corner of my eye)  (this window is about a yard from my right shoulder as i sit here at the computer)   this might last an hour or a day or a while.  we'll see.

here is the wall.  you can see how inclined i am to finish home improvement projects.  the naked drywall panels have been this way for…uh…4 years?  but, that's not the point here.  what will happen next ….. is.

 
 

 

 

maybe i am just still too  "new" to the cloth thing.    ?

i thought i was ready to work on a large cohesive cloth.  i        want     to,   but  where i still am is just a complete fascination with the combinations of things, how the     cloth     itself,  themselves, "go" with  one another…….and in this moment, how so many individual pieces go  ON  the base cloth that i LOVE…that was a miracle of accidental dyeing luck.  

so as i look and play with small pieces of cloth this morning,  then stand back, sit, look,  i realize i am  all the while  entertaining this undercurrent of thought about      how am i going to tie this all in to a solid quilt like cloth????    in the moment, i don't think i can yet.   that might be yet to come, someday but for now, i might  just have to keep doing it this way????????

 

 

moving things around ~ putting things ~ taking them away ~ putting them back ~ wondering why ~ just so i remember, in case.

 
 
 
 

yesterday some family was here.  i had taken down things hanging from the ceiling,  cross beam to the Room so their heads wouldn't be bumping into them.    i cleared some surfaces.  vacuumed.    moved piles of fabric onto my bed to clear chairs for human sitting          and this morning, it all looks so spacious.    and looking at the Magic Diaries cloth,  i suddenly see the Grass Person  who is always on that wall to the far left.    but i    SEE   her.   she has been hanging in this house for as long as i have lived here.   the Grass People are the only of the fiber figures that were repeated.  their bodies relatively the same shapes, always one hand holding something, one hand receiving.  they are also the only of the figures that had no human facial features, but rather faces like grass seed.   and i thought how in so many of the cloths i've made there has been strands of grass.   and realized that one of the strongest personal symbols i have is Grass.  and here, i am speaking of wild grasses,  prairie grass,  desert clump grasses.  native grasses.   in other places it might be those fierce tough beach grasses that hold shoreline. 

anyway….actually SEEing her this morning i thought how grasses can maybe tie together these seperate images on this cloth?

am going to do as Jude reminded today…print out some pics and draw on them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

what do these images have in common.  what is it that threads them together in my mind, in my life? 

another rhetorical question.

yesterday,  daughter Jenny and i drove the many miles to East Mountains in th gigunda 4 wheel drive Silverado borrowed from the Old Cowboy.   we took 5 goats to the goat show.  above, is Amelia who won reserve grand champion for junior does.    i wish i would have been able to focus differently and tell you numbers, but i didn't so just can say that there were MANY people and MANY MORE goats than people and a goat show is an  I N T E N S E  event.  it has to "move along" at an orderly clip and if there is anything goats are Not interested in     it's moving along at an orderly clip.  my job was to keep track of 3 or so goats at a time while one was being judged.   so i sat on the ground with a long lead that had several collar clips which made it difficult to photograph everything.  actually, these were the only 2 photos i took.    after all was said and done, there was an enormous potluck barbque and after that,  we hooked up a 2 horse trailer that Jenny bought and

set out for home

here is where the above images begin to relate and i am still watching.   it has to do with life Occuring, with how we all choose from the Myriad Possibilities and  CHOOSE  which will Hold our meaning,   our purpose for particular segments of our life's journey.    i will say here that i was      Afraid  about hooking up that horse trailer, about driving those many miles in a relatively unfamiliar huge truck on this new mexico freeway that is similar to a vehicular rodeo.   before i left home at 5am i had put 2 drops of the Joyous Warrior under my tongue and as i pulled out from the ranch where the show was,  i thought about Cindy's ..Handstories… aunt who was a cowgirl.   and when i got  home, finally, early evening, all of us safe and sound,  Jenny, the goats, the trailer at her house, and me finally here,  i looked long at this large cloth on the wall,  this cape of What's Next and        oddly enough,   saw it all as part of some one very very large Thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 

to weave….inspired by everyones work.  it started as a thought for the bottom of the lightning cloth,  the space of the nine patch  above the toad eggs.    kept trying to find how it might work there, but it just didn't want to.  too much comotion.  so i just took it completely away,  and looked at it as a cloth of its own but then kept looking at those orbs of Deb Lacativa's………set the woven under it and

ahhhhhh

yes.

 

 

i just said that yesterday.   and a few days ago,  i said:

i can     create    context        or   i can     wait    and let context    make itself known.

so…here we have it.        Lightning.   the eggs of the foolish or desperately courageous.     two  cloths joined to receive that exquisite moment that i need to never forget.  not for a second.  ok. 

 

IT RAINED LAST NIGHT

this morning the dragonflies were here already;  where one Was as i clicked the shutter

the mutant bean plant blossomed in the dark it seems

 they saw the Lightning

 

things had to be redone this morning

 New Mexico.  the most benevolent place on the planet in its way.  harsh, hard,  but it won't let things die.   tonight, sheets of Rain,  a wall of Rain.    the first since over a year.   there is some fear.  you know you could die but you just listen,  ears pricked, you feel it in your footpalms, like everyone Out There;  toads, coyotes, scorpions, birds, snakes, plants.  who i think have no fear, just shelter how they can and listen.  i shelter here.   earlier, before it came, Wind came in the house and knocked a heavy picture frame off the wall.    i knew then that it was coming.  Monsoon Rain.   ran out to bring in the clothes off the line  just as that first strike hit.  that Lightning that splits your brain in two,  splits your heart in two. 

this is what i will miss most.

as the Rain flows down, sky river,  the Lightning is overhead.  direct vertical hits one upon the other. 

it seemed to be quiet so i went to bed…to those wind blown Tide sheets.  fell asleep.  but then maybe,  well, i don't know how long,  but it began again and i drifted in and out of sleep finally getting up to write this down because i knew by morning,  the acute sharp sense of it would be gone.   i want to remember this moment,  the feeling of it all,  the smell of those wind/sunset/tide sheets,  the lying there upon them in the flashing lights,  the pungent fragrance rising up from the earth to meet the rain,  the beginning of the driven bleating of some Spade Foot toads who were either fatally foolish or desperately courageous.

i need to hold so close the understanding  that this scene gave me.  about living each single moment fully,  as is.  this is how i want to go forward.

rain 
 

 
 
 

 

so,  Acey's cloth went winging it's way today.  and i was feeling a little adrift myself when i got home.  so i just sat a few minutes and watched the wall.  and remembered what i'd been thinking the other day.   was wondering about Why those particular cloths were up there on the cape cloth.   a few i know for sure,  are easy, like Jude's lizard,  the moth moon,  and most recently the Raven cloth.  but  some of the others…????????
this one, most of all.  very much a mystery.

 

and then 

this one is interesting.  the print fabric strip is from a piece of        new        cotton that i found at, of all places,   Walmart.   i go to Walmart  to buy  the Old Cowboy's Cinnamon Swirl Bread.  to him, the staff of life.  he could not live without his Cinnamon Swirl.  so…sometimes i cruise through the craft section on my way to check out.  on this particular day i saw this.  for whatever reason, i was/am very attracted to it.  i studied the info on the bolt cardboard thingy….made in China.  i thought about how i felt about that, about textile factories pumping ot reams of stuff for us here, about the women who might be working there  ……..  all that,    but it appealed to me anyway.   this particular strip includes the selvage at the top.  i like it a lot.   why?

so…in looking at these,  i first of all see the small pieces of cloth themselves.  for whatever reason each appeals to me a lot.   and that is an important thing about this large cloth.  only what i love here.   but too,  i realize that all of these pieces were just kind of daydream stitching.   there was no plan…just putting two or a few scraps, fragments together.  for no reason. 

thinking a lot about this.