windthread

 

 
 

the lizard cloth, bottom center is Jude's work.  a gift during Patwork Beats.

first to say that nothing i write at this time might be true.  it might change by this afternoon, or even, in the next second, before i get through touching the keys to create the words.   BUT.  i think something is straightening itself out in my mind.  and it might have to do with this:

 
or not, i don't really know, but i think so. 

for Sure, it DOES have to do with this:

i have been having

feelings

that i don't know what to do with.  that are not convenient.  and i think that it has been my propensity in all of what i could call my           past        to         uhhhh, just change things around so that what i am faced with can be somehow accomodated by Change.   but

recently,  a woman who is a noted astrologer was brought to my attention by a friend who had a reading done because she is very ill.  she is on the literal edge of life and death and she, it seems, has some        choice.   the astrologer is Marguerite Manning, the book that i got to educate myself a little with our conversations is:  Cosmic Karma    understanding your contract with the universe.   all this might seem a little glib, for a case of life and death, but really, it is not.  although i  have never chosen astrology as a place of intense focus,  it is really just another Point of View of the same Truth as the buddhism that i do choose as my spiritual home.  anyway          upon getting the book, i of course, looked myself up.  Sun in Sagittarius.   and something has been floating in my mind for a few days now and this morning,  a crack in my thinking appeared.  i realize that i have been trying to circumvent the reality of what is happening with this moving thing by creating a story for it that just somehow makes it          beautiful.  instead of Hard.   it's Hard.  it might also turn out to be very beautiful, but to jump over what is happening now, to not understand that it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to LEARN  would be, well, a really BIG MISTAKE.  those words, Once in a Lifetime echo.  so…here we go.

 

 

 
 

 

yesterday, i read the maybe second to last post in Sun Moon and Stars.  i clicked the video…watched the little feather float…watched Jude touch her cloths…listened.  i read the words and then clicked the two audios

and as sometimes happens, there was this                   pure rush                  of images        visual and sensual, i saw so much, so many things                  and i walked away from the screen, just totally filled to overflowing with things

then glanced at the clock.  what could i do with this before i had to leave for Alz. B's???   and it all almost immediately began to dissolve.  by the time i got home, it was gone.  this morning it was gone.   i cleaned house.  put up some summer window hangers in the ROOM, two skirts, cut and stretched across the long windows.  the Raven back on the door window.  i was so much wanting all those images to return.  no.  so i cleared a basket, sloshed the cast iron pot, and sat with the cloth that i'd dyed.  going to various baskets and cigar boxes, i gathered fragments that i love…layed them with the dyed cloths and just looked.  i will begin putting pieces in that basket when they rise to the surface as the days go on.  by the time July arrives and the Magic Diaries, the basket might be full of pieces that feel right.  i go often to Jude's Flickr slideshow of Coma, let it talk to me in its language of image.  this language i would like to learn for the Diaries. 

i stitched the feelers of the Moon Moth…not much to show for a day…but what it was.  this piece will go on the big cloth of my own…the Diaries cloth.  i think it is some kind of cape.

and Empathy.  empathy comes in for those who are still going off daily or almost, to make a living.  being responsible for children of their own in addition to that.   it is very hard.  and i Honor you all.

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

these are the ones on the table…can see them more clearly here.  they are my favorites and really only two are finished.  and mostly from Spirit Cloth work…the first workshop.

to clarify…these won't go on this big cloth.  i just wanted to look at what i'd done…look for continuity in Theme?   my guess is that the big cloth will have some similarities but be more complex.  it also won't be woven.  or, maybe parts might be, but not woven like jenny's Daughter cloth.    and back to nance's thought about a center…i think the center might move as it goes??? that it might be just many moments in time?  i really love thinking about it.

here are the pots:

the cast iron…rusty…is where it began….just water and onion skins.  uncovered, it  evaporates pretty quickly.  once, last summer, i let it completely dry out and got some beautiful forms that actually were black, come to think about it.  Helen, you have a little piece of that.  it's also the largest piece on the "Clothesline" cloth above.  i hadn't thought about that until i am typing this in this moment.  funny how it goes.

anyway…in the cast iron pot for a couple days till a good "green" is achieved, then all goes into the copper pot.  water added if necessary.  then i hung them to dry in Sun.  last step was to swish in the Colorhue black.  today is day 2 in the cast iron….drama.  the jar has geranium dead heads from  Alz.B's front walkway yesterday.   i'll stick some cloth in there today and see what happens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hot has arrived.  and the swamp cooler isn't wanting to work so the computer which is i guess a cousin of the swamp cooler is making that odd buzzing sound it does just before it just goes blank and shuts down.  this limits my time here to early hours.

i am still very much content withing the Sun Moon and Stars Whispering.  i have not had enough yet of watching and listening, thinking, imagining.  so still being so much there, i wander in to the possibilities of Whispering Magic.   A Large Cloth.  one that might take forever.  i like the image of that…me, sitting different places, different times,  … adding something,  mending something else.

one of the thoughts that has come is that there is a consistency of a ground color of Jude's Magic.  Indigo.             

beautiful and magnificant Indigo.   

but i don't have so much Indigo…only small pieces.  so what will i use as the consistent cloth that lies itself down to receive all that will come?   what i DO have is a LOT of muslin, all kinds and so while i am thinking about all this, i began stitching together some 9 patches of tea dyed.  the intense sensual pleasure for me of stitching muslin is a good sign.  and then,  on a whim, i took one out and put it in the cast iron pot with onion skins.  after a day/night/day, it was a deep and interesting greenish color.  into the copper pot…all of it; cloth, sludge.  another day night a different shade.  but i'm thinking, black.  how can i make black.   the little bottle of  ColorHue from Glennis' class so long ago.  float the greenish 9 patch, swish, float and here we have it

 

the dark one.  the color isn't quite true.  but i like it.  a lot.  the piece to the right is a tea dye that i just floated in the left over ColorHue water.  a lighter variation and i like that a lot too.  the one at the bottom is a piece of linen/cotton that took the very last of the dye and is beautiful sky cloth with clouds.  i think i can repeat this dye process enough to create a good amount of muslin to begin this Large Cloth.  and then, i found all the most loved pieces that i have learned with since the beginning of It All….put them together with this dyed muslin and yes. 

it feels good.

In Sun Moon and Stars, Jude's latest post is about Theme.  how will i think about this???  especially in terms of the beginning of this cloth?  but then, in general too.   and i realize that it's already there, has always been, really.  when i was i think 4 years old, my mother took me to the Museum of Natural History in Detroit.  i would have to be 4 because we moved from Detroit when i was 5.  i saw something there that became the leit motif of Me and how i see myself in this life.  over time i have tried to replicate what i saw in different ways, but there is a consistent bottom line, a Humm that has remained the same.  it's the image of Diorama, the small illuminated still moment of something happening.  small doings in the lives of human beings within the larger context of humanity as a whole.  within the larger context of their Place on the planet. within the larger context of Sun Moon and Stars.  within the larger still context of the Universe.  and too, within the small personal context of self.  in this case, one woman's life. 

so…i have gotten to some place with the cloth making.  i feel a shift.  i learned things i don't know really from making the Daughter Cloth.  and as i continue now, with small cloths and with the beginning of Whispering Magic                                                                                                                                           it's the image of the Diorama that i think of as Theme.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

this is a very good day.   Enough has been done.

the top edge has been stitched under.  the other three edges are ok as is for the time being.  the skipping goat is all secured.    nothing will come loose.

so it began with Spirit Cloth,  with the burning desire to understand the meaning in my own life of those two words ~ went on into Patchwork Beasts with the appearance of the little goat ~ then  into Cloth to Cloth  where the Daughter Cloth came into being as the holder of dreams. 

and i want to say here again, that the large cloth is from strips and strips and strips torn from unwanted scraps of "good household cloth" as Jude called it, from our local thrift shop in combination with the central motif that my daughter lingered over at the big thrift shop in Albuquerque.  the back, which will be may be the middle some time is a very used but strong flannel blanket.  all tea dyed  and what is the very very greatest thing to me,   sewn by hand.                    cloth unto cloth unto cloth.      one of these days when i am in the same place as she is again,  i will take it on in to Contemporary Woven Boro.  mosaic weaving,  stitching.  i look forward to that day.   for now, i learn in Sun Moon and Stars Whispering and will practice these things, both to finish off the edges of the SUN's rays and also for those stars,  those  beautiful little boro stars……..

so, here we have it.   the little scrap of onionskin dye near the sun rays, i almost forgot.  will be stitched in to a ray.  she will recognize it as frog eggs where we are going and Spadefoot Toad eggs from where we've been.  needs to be there.

thanks for everyone's endurance with this    xoxoxo 

 

so…a decision.   in a gesture toward luck and whimsy, i made a rainbow path.  am totally ambivalent about it….         i like that it indicates a wish for luck,  a  journey to somewhere over the rainbow.    so i like the thoughts,  but i am not at all sure about the reality of it on the cloth.

i remember some point in the Beasts Workshop when the word whimsical came up.    i love very much whimsical elements in other people's work, but remember saying that i am not much for whimsy in my own.   so i think about this.   Why not?, i am wondering.  what's my deal about whimsy?   and since this is such a personally referenced cloth (that i probably should say is the center of the Daughter Cloth)   is this the place to deal with Whimsy?    maybe it is………

so the little goat needs a tail and then there are some more stitches for the sewing down of the right and left brown mountains in the top part.  a few more stems of grass. 

there was a temptation to refine the goat some, but i ended up liking her so much as is…just the most basic shapes to indicate goatness and the funny little legs that were just selvage scraps that were sitting on the table…somehow i really like that a lot at the time and like it still, months later.

so…need to make this decision sometime today.  this cloth needs to be stitched on to the Large cloth this weekend. 

 

 

 

 

i surprised self today by feeling             moody.  i don't often have             moods         much anymore.  i hadn't really realized that.     

but, from this, came this:

and because of the moodiness,  i am going to tell myself a kind of story……that maybe fragments of old rainbows get caught in fragments of old stars.  or vice versa.  or maybe they are just fragments that have yet to determine their purpose.  or maybe just pieces of fragments that will at some point gather to become a new star or a new rainbow?  or, maybe just a way for me to comfort myself from being surprised by     a mood.

at any rate,  today's post in Jude's  Sun Moon and Stars