just finished going around all of it, snipping off loosened threads.
NOTHING came loose. nothing frayed into oblivion. just as Jude said somewhere, long ago, the threads loosen to a point and then if anything, merge even more into the single Cloth. it is strong.
i am taking pics of Arlee's Leaf Moon and the tulips before they go into the machine at the laundromat. they are just barely stitched down and i want to find out how their edges fray.
had to bring inside this morning….Crazy Wind is back. so, back to where it all began, on the ceiling beam. and it goes from elation of yesterday to uh, well…… kind of Hmmmm.
will work on the little goat…. tomorrow will take to laundromat and wash. 3 long months of blown in sand and 3 long months of cat . then, just looking for as long as it takes. for sure, the tulips and Arlee's Leaf Moon will remain. otherwise, i just don't know. i realized as i was stitching down that central big piece, that a lot depends on what it wants to "say". and what i want jenny to hear when she looks at it….over time. and right now, i don't know. there is a sense tho that she might be setting out soon. once it's washed and the little goat in place tho, she can take it. to use Jude's criteria, it does hold together as cloth. and i can work on it more when i finally get there???
i think she needs to be moved a little to the left edge and am thinking about a wandering road to the sunrise.
look what has finally, f i n a l l y, happened!!!!!!!!!!!
all the stitching , the basic invisible baste, is now complete!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it is ONE CLOTH. just want to put it here to convince myself it is really true. i will come back later and write more. this is just such a glorious moment.
sometimes, actually, a LOT of TIMES, when for whatever reason, i cannot fully go in to the sewing, it helps me to just look at these things on the wall. sometimes when i am doing other "activities of daily living", ADLs, i come across a ripped out pic from a magazine; now this is mostly national geographics and sometimes pics from the Gallery publication that they have at the airport here………….and i just pin them on the wall. this particular one was there alone for a long time. months. then, i was looking for a scrap and came across this very small little thing that came in a packet from Jude. so that went on top of the ripped out paper pic. then just a couple weeks ago, this fragment from a piece of Deb Lacativa's cloth was lying on the table and i took it over to become the arch.
it's beautiful, isn't it. i won't ever use that fragment from Jude in a cloth…it's hers. but what it will cause for me is that sometime, i will stitch some form onto a very small piece of something and it might have similar energetic spirit????? maybe.
the faces at the top are a cloth i lucked out in getting from Jude's shop. i had watched it in it's evolving forms for a while and was totally surprised when it appeared in the shop. it is an extraordinary piece of her Art and also had a lot of personal meaning to me… it is called : The Spirit of Self Deception "a reminder that everything is not always pretty. a playing card sort of thing, maybe a hand you dealt yourself"
been wondering about that. what exactly WAS/is it.
and i think i understand some. Deb G on her blog Bee Creative had posted a link to an excellent documentary on Permaculture. April 24th post. and part of it is what it is as a documentary, but also, like everything it seems lately, part of it was totally incidental to what it was and that was the young woman farmer who created it. i was very taken by her, her profile, the lines of her face. her hair. how she is just quiet when other people are speaking. i think my daughter is her age, give or take. and then
how it often goes, out of the blue i become aware of the book The Resilient Gardner Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times by Carol Deppe.
here you see it. propped on the cucumber trellise. the clothespin holding the cover down because of Wind. in ordinary times the cucumbers would already be up and leafing, sometimes almost ready to send the tendrils. today, the seeds are still in their packet. the ground, the trellis, just waiting. i brought wood in tonight. covered the indigo and weld. will have faith that the young potatoe plants will be ok. too windy for a ground cover. fate.
then, almost simultaneously with receiving the book from the UPS guy this photograph just simply appears.
where was it. i haven't seen it in years. i don't remember the last time i saw it. there are photograph albums that the kids always get out and go through when they are here, but that's not it. i have a habit of sticking things in books and being happily surprised by them when i take a book off the shelf . but not this one. i honestly don't know. it just appeared. and in this moment, i don't even know where it was when it appeared, as in…on the end table?, the book shelf?
and then, again, on Deb G's blog in her side bar is the quote of Terry Tempest Williams that i had read many times before. but it was here again…like in italic neon:
"Our survival, the vitality of the planet depends on mental flexibility and emotional acuity. Hands raised. Hands put to work. We can improvise. We can create without a map. And we don't have to live in isolation. The gift of an attentive life is the ability to recognize patterns and find our way toward a unity built on empathy. Empathy becomes the path that leads us from the margins to the center of concern." ……..Finding Beauty in a Broken World
and i look at this one single daughter of mine and think how so proud i am of her, her huge effort to improvise, create without a map. and i look at her eyes in this photograph as she looks into the camera that i am holding…i guess at her mother, taking her picture. that would be me.
and something in me shifted. i am ready. when it can happen, to move into that "center of concern". these are Uncertain Times.
it came. the eco dye pieces i ordered from Arlee
and further, two other surprises…a gift of a leaf moon enclosed AND look! at the beautiful stamps on her envelope. this moon is just magical…a perfect moon for my need . leaf moon. the 3 fabric pieces are just as i'd hoped…just so so great. THANKS!!!!!!!!!!! Arlee for performing this gift of dyeing…you have the gift and i am so happy to have this cloth to work with. 
and then Alzheimer's B and i finished cleaning out her closets of almost all her clothing that no longer fits, which i took to the Thrift Shop except for this
and when i got it home i thought Oh jeez, grace. this is a HUGE skirt with yards and yards of fabric. why!!!!!! but then, this morning i cut off a strip…very thin…maybe a half inch? and then ripped that in two and as i was sitting in my "morning chair", noticed a threaded needle nearby
there was the collar of the linen shirt lying there too and i thought, why not. first a strip of the right side and then turned on the wrong…..and as Jude's post was titled, A Little Romance on Friday….well, this was for sure a little romance on saturday….i am completely in love.
i couldn't find the piece i was looking for but did find this and yes.
in Jude's Whispering Hearts, she posted about composition, about relaxing into it. Talking about "working from the chaos of the thing ~ the basket of Randomness ~ the capacity to create maybe from noticing things about yourself, relating them to things around you ~
the sense of freedom of doing that"
so i worked with those thoughts and became lost in the process of it. it doesn't matter whether this composition is good or not. or if i will change it or not. none of that mattered. what DID matter was the deep pleasure of being totally absorbed in the placing of so many small bits of cloth, watching how each changed everything, feeling how i responded to those changes.
