windthread

more of that invisible stitching on daughter cloth

outside to chunk up the potatoe patch some, beginning to work in the compost/manure

looking over my shoulder at the scraps of stuff that i pin to the wall and two wanted to be together.  then, they wanted a third.  ok.      the Moth is just a scrap corner of a blouse that has been floating from place to place for  about a year, got pinned to the wall maybe a  month ago.  but i've always seen it as a Moth.  soon as it's moon drys,  i'll stitch them together, see what that feels like

 

i want to make a        lot         of small   Butterfly and Moth pieces i'm thinking                  and then some variations of   First Bird   that black bird that shows up in my cloths.   not crow or raven, but the bird that signals the coming of the Sun in the morning…when all is dark still.  i don't know who this bird is.  speaks one single note  with long pauses inbetween

 

 

 

prepared the bed for the potatoes.  Ruby Crescent Fingerling.  they are more than ready.

i decided to just wait.  with words about that Tree Husband of mine.  for sure, the synchronicity is apparent, very,    but, maybe it's best to just move forward.   like to the potatoes.  

i dreamed about how i used to be.  and i am trying to understand what i have become and then, after that, why did i become this?  is it a good thing?  or just a way of being that kind of happened, without my really being aware of it.

jenny said the other day: "you didn't used to be like that" and in the context of the conversation, her statement indicated that how i WAS was a good thing in her thinking.  i never knew how she felt about things that i did. 

 

 

 

 

 
 

this was yesterday.  i had finally gone to visit P who i both used to work for and also became friends with.  she is a very committed gardner,  Grower, actually.  she sells at the Farmer's Market.  is organic and vegan.  is also 82 years.  a testament to her lifestyle.  and she is one of the few here who know i am thinking about leaving.  she didn't want to, but couldn't help, trying to make me feel a little bad about leaving.  What would my land do?, she asked.   as we were eating a very excellent lunch.  i'd forgotten how wonderful it is to eat with her.  everything is prepared with such care.  Slow.  slow food.  each ingredient selected and placed with the others with deliberation.  like it always was, i am the sous chef and i set the little outdoor table with the placemats and napkins that i select from her collection.  i get 4 dog busquits for the dogs so they feel a part of it all.  she eats SLOW, even slower than she prepares.  i am finished in half the time.  so, anyway, she gave me a truly glorious beet when i left.  greenhouse beet.  a work of art.  i wish i'd taken a picture of it.  late in the day i steamed the greens and ate them with butter and lemon juice while the beet itself cooked, root and leaf stump in place until done when there is the total pleasure of

slipping the beet from the skin……..like a baby getting born

and there was this great pot of juice and skins and stump                       sigh            so i dumped in some onion skins and then various little scraps of cloth, let them soak and since it was such a beautiful warm evening, the jar went out.   Yesterday.

 
 

today, it was a little quiet early, but then WIND came.  Crazy Wind.  HUGE GIANT WIND  not even taken a breath in between that intense Flow of Itself…just pushing, pushing, pushing  

no pause.  the walls of this little metal house all quaking, the windows, ify.  and SAND, a very very fine sand covering everything, coming through all the cracks.  like the Dust Bowl.  i have looked at photographs of the Dust Bowl over the years.  today, it was happening.  here.  really.  i couldn't see the horses in the pasture.  just dust.  the Daughter Cloth was covered in a distinct layer of this dust.

i stitched and stiched.  invisible, invisible, invisible  just kept on.  nothing else to do.  the far fence went down.  the gate between back and front broke loose.  two of the windows of the ROOM, where i stitched brok their little hook closures.  i screwed them tight.  with screws.    at one point, when talking to daughter on phone about having been called for a job transfer in California…eee…. i looked out                     and lo and behold, the skeletan of  "Tree Man" who i was really married to

had fallen.

so, this is enough for tonight.  in the morning i will tie it in.  but for now…i go to the window and look, to see if it is really true and yes.  it is really true.

 

 

 

 

 

no matter what, Beauty continues…keeps on keepin on. 

crab apple with praying mantis egg case

the most soft, sweet, beauty Full socks i have ever had in my entire life.   made by the hands of Deb Gorr.  i think they will be my california dreamin socks.  i gave the sciatic leg the special one.

and finally, this.

this is directly related with Whispering Hearts.  it is not a heart in itself, but is from the heart.  from somewhere of heart that i don't even really know.   part of a larger but small scrap that was just pinned on…then stitched on at the top, the rest flapping and then snipped to become a very small scrap.  all these incarnations on different days for no reason.  just from urges as i was invisible basting, invisible basting, invisible basting ~               then, watching and listening to Whispering Hearts this morning i have suddenly been completely taken with this scrap, loving this scrap, taking such care of this scrap by adding threads that will marry it into the cloth beneath, so it will be a forever there scrap.   i don't know why.

but it has something to do with the work of continuing.  with Japan.  with the japanese people who are beginning now to face the work of continuing. 

all that, has caused me to do some interesting work…mostly at night while i am dreaming.  and it's really too much to put here, but just to say, that it might have to do with being a soul that came into this plane with a "contract" of Continuing.  choosing birth to a mother who, i am thinking, on a constant basis, was afraid.   who taught me how to live with her fear and in being raised up inside that fear, developed a habit myself of "You Never Know".  but coming with a contract to learn and develop Continuing,  i have had to work at balancing those two dynamics.  it has given me an interesting life.    what does this have to do with cloth, we might be wondering?

Everything.

and it's the format of Jude's Whispering that i am loving as an incredible tool to hone and fine tune  everything so far and find ways to continue that are loving and energized and of good use to my beloved planet, even in the face of You Never Know.

 

 
 

late evening call from Red Bluff, California.  Julian in the background, calling room service in a motel that does not have cooties.  Everyone is HAPPY.

she says that even Red Bluff, that we imagined to be kind of uhhh….blah, is very beautiful.  she says that every where is more beautiful than we had seen on the real estate images.  it's

pretty

tomorrow they look in earnest.

 

this morning.  Alyssia is SURE that the motel had bedbugs.  Jenny sounded a little uhhhh, worn.  Julian was skipping about the motel room and yelling for Umma*, Jenny, who had handed the phone over and gone outside.  *gramma.

so…they called from Chico.

they left from where Alyssia is stationed in Lemoore, near Hanford.  North.  Fresno, Merced, Modesto,  Stockton, Sacramento to          Chico.               Chico is where jenny and i began spiraling out from.  Chico felt familiar.  and according to the phone call this morning, it is.  it is a college town with lots of farmer's markets.  lots of "stuff" going on.  so, similar in some ways to Ann Arbor Michigan where jenny grew up.  where Alyssia was born, where she returned to for high school and visits her grandpa.    So, Chico. 

tomorrow they will set out for the hinterlands.  the places where jenny actually might want to  anchor her life, her goats, her great magical dog Kadir.    Red Bluff is where she can transfer her present job.  so, Cottonwood.  even Redding.

the hope is for a minimum of 5-7 acres.  10, really.  More even better.

it's funny.  i have always had kind of a snotty opinion about california.  as in it is a place for fake people.  fake lives.  like a movie set kind of thing.  hmmmm…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

i got enough done.  each of these pots is filled half with manure/compost, hosed down.  i will  add soil that is dug from other places and mix it in.  in a week, will plant the indigo, madder, and  weld.   i have mixed feelings about this pot planting.  part of me is sad about it.  but it also seem in keeping with all the rest that has been rising up.    it looks so barren in this pic but that will change radically in just a week or so.  by june, it will look like a rain forest.  sort of.

i also trimmed off two branches of the Mexican Elderberry that almost put my eye out when i tried to pass through with the wheel barrow.  there were a few leaves on them and so…the first jar to ferment in the sun for cloth dyeing.  and  there…the outside kitchen, guess what?…hearts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it occured to me that i can do ANYTHING  at all ~  i can change Everything. 

this was where the frame of the 12 foot X 22 foot hoop house greenhouse was put up and then taken down.  these are the pallets that i dragged over to create an alternative small greenhouse that would be attached to the side of the Albatros (the shed/garage/giant building).

this is the "inside yard" that is actually like just another room to my home, but doesn't have walls and a roof.  it occured to me that i can bring some of those big landscape pots over here.  place them between the clusters of iris,  NOT plant herbs there this year (don't know where they will go instead yet)  and create my dye plant garden here.  close.  easily watered in the pots and where i sit in the evenings.  so we would be together.

a lot of this rearrangement in my mind and in my heart has to do with the fact that this is the first year in going on 16 that i will not Add More.   i am on Pause, in a certain way, with the possibility of leaving.  but also, Cloth is in my life.   there is always the pull now between the two…work outside or sew.  this may resolve that some.   may allow me to find some good rhythm back and forth.

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

i am leaving the screen door open now.  late, until i go to sleep.

praying mantis will come in.  some would say attracted to the light.  but i don't think so.  they want to look around.  see what's going on.  they always come in and stay on the curtain by the door awhile.  then, after checking things out, flutter to somewhere near where i am.  there they stay, walking around, just looking.