windthread

SUN drifts toward the western rim of the earth

it's not Eve yet, but close.  these last moments of the day go fast.  there is light and then, seemingly suddenly, there is not. 

New Year's Eve,  December 31, 2011.  and from the week's thinking,  yes.  keeping the book of small things.  finding and dyeing string.  and, beside continuing with the Diaries cloth....my Noragi.

Work Jacket.  my beloved Hoodie.  i have had half the zipper removed for a year (according to my calendar)  i had ordered and received a new metal heavy duty zipper.  sat there.  while i kept  wearing the hoodie with a saftey pin to keep closed.  i should have had that in the pic.  ah well...  so this morning i removed the other half of the broken zipper and

STITCHED IN THE NEW ZIPPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  oh, ta DA!  the sound it makes is just Great!

and i will Begin.  this will become THE morning ritual.  boro~ing my noragi.  that's all i know so far.

and still tonight is the thing i have done for many years.  the transfer of the calendars.

i'd been hoping for another Butterfly one, but not.  Flowers instead.  Dollar Store.  you take what they have.  and i love them for their oddness.  made in China calendars, so we have pansies in January.  well, so do all of you in Australia, so i will think of it that way.

after i eat whatever amazing thing i have cooked myself i sit.  and go through each month.  reading what i had  written in the last year, transferring to the new calendar things that might have "significance" to the future.  and also, on the top, in the space around the Month, there are things from years before that for whatever reason, i feel like i need to keep in mind.  Birth Days are outlined in Blue Hilighter.  and then, it's done.  New Year's Eve.  if there's time left, i just sit there and think about it all.  if not, i go to bed.   This is my very most totally FAVORITE day.

more thoughts for a new year

i think i would like to dye    String.  any kind.

and keep better record of the experience of this Cloth Community,  it's doings, including my own.

phone calls, the day after christmas

ring ring

people say:  HELLO!!!!!  and what did you DO today?

me:  sewed grass

people:  oh

me:  it's really beautiful

people:  well, what did you do yesterday? (christmas)

me:  sewed grass

people:  are you ok?

and if they were to ask what i hope to do today, which they don't, i would have to say in all honesty:

sew more grass

i love the grass.  maybe today i can finish that inner left stems worth.  and then, finish stitching the small black and white forms that i don't know what they are yet.

 

a week before New Year's eve

so, i like tonight because it's usually when i begin thinking about New Year's eve.  which is my really only favorite holiday anymore.   and i enjoy very much the week coming of reviewing the last year.  looking back, thinking.  it's a very quiet, but intense activity for me.  what did i do?  and why?  do i want to do more of it?  do i want to change things?  and sometimes i come up with things to do before that Eve night arrives.  this, for one:
Snow.  Again.  about a foot of it.   SO.  accept that this is maybe going to be the way it is.  OK.  be ready.

and here.  this is an awning over the livingroom window.  the window to the West that receives the afternoon and into the evening SUN most of the year round.  it is very ugly.  a friend of the Maniac husband had a fondness for bringing me things he thought i would like.  many i did.  like the cobalt glass doorknob with art deco brass.  a set of metal butterflies, rusted.  a horse figure made out of some kind of metal like iron.  the big post out this window that has all the secret language engraved on it by insects because he had heard the story of how as a child, i'd thought that was the way that my "real" family left messages for me down by the creek, the Indian family.  his name was Louie.  so he brought this awning one day and afixed it outside that window "for me".  and although it is totally ugly, it DOES work to ease the heat.   i've often thought of taking it off but then remember that it DOES work, and also remembering how happy he was to gift it.
and see the right hand corner?  that little meeting of aluminum metal there is maybe only an inch wide at best.  i was sitting, stitching on the grasses and saw a flutter movement...?????  it was as the storm was gaining momentum, just at dusk.  looking carefully,  i saw a little form there and moved the curtain just a little and it rushed off.  a little bird.  sitting and waiting, a few minutes later, it returned.  i watched as a sparrow positioned itself exactly in the corner, pressing itself against the cold aluminum, beak up,  feet tucked, and wing extended.  i didn't want to disturb him/her again so couldn't take a picture.  instead, i've drawn it.
this is not quite right.  it was more    pressed,  like wedged.  tight up against the metal.  tonight is it's third night there.

so, this week i'm going to think.  i'd like to put a maybe 2" wide strip of wood along the length of that awning.  imagining that it might be more comfortable than than narrow metal corner rim?  but also, it would be a NEW thing and birds don't always feel comfortable with new things for a long time.  maybe i should wait till after the winter.  put it up in the spring, giving a lot of time before next December for it to become "just the way it is" ? 

so, this is the first thing i am considering tonight.  i like doing this a lot.  and have 6 more days.

HERE is the Other Corner...Which would You Choose???????

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solstice

these surprises.  there are 8 of them.  began with a shred on the floor, near the chair leg.   and as soon as it was placed,  the vision of more, circling

maybe hard to see, but that's how things of Their Kind are....

building the cloth

i think it's going to be ok and even good.   when seen this way,  it works to , uhhhh,  begin saying something.

and look out the livingroom window

these are the Giant Sacaton grasses that are on the cloth, so i decided today was the day to begin working on them.

the light today is odd and it's very difficult to get a true pic, but here, a little of how they look.  and in stitching them i realized even more fully that grasses will play an even larger part.  there still is the Mexican Feather Grass, the Blue Grama and the Side Oat Grama.  so, thinking.

i am so EXCITED

Before:

the beginning of Forever After:

and again, the Lizard cloth at the top of my Diaries Cloth is a Jude Hill.  a teaching cloth from the Beasts workshop.    but look, oh, oh, look, grace...look at what you have understood.  oh Ecstasy

a wet desert day, not great for a lizard person

what's left of the wood that isn't wet....under the tarp.  behind, the compost, where a couple days ago were many footprints, including the skunk.

both this and the pic above taken from inside the house...the living room window.  it's raining.

much of the day was absorbed by this very very small bird.  could you have known it was a bird if i hadn't told you???  i learned a lot.  the original  that is seen in previous posts was just 3 scraps of some of Deb Lacativa's damask.  i just loved it in that form.  but, as i stitched it down, it became threads, seperating threads.  so i kept at it and here we have the result.  not at all what i had envisioned in the beginning, but i will let it remain, to remind me in the future. 

 

 

progress report

right panel and 90% of middle (2 petals of the sunflower to do and a little on mothMoon)  is firmly stitched.  then, left panel: glennis' Moon window and the buddha illusion.  so...i am nearing the moment when i will be able to

take the cloth on my LAP, hold as i sew.  EEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee!!!!!

 

AND,  finally, i did do it.  the lizard was too long.  this proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that stitches are forever if left on their own.  it was HARD, like really HARD to remove just these small stitches.  but...done.   and i found the old drawing from a while ago about how they need to go East and West at least, maybe North and South

they were drawn on a paper i drew my Beasts Workshop lizard as Jude taught me....  and it's interesting that i noticed for the first time that i had given the little ones   Necks?...???

 

developmental stages, expected and desired. conversation with michelle

ok.  it took me forever to find where the computer keeps this pic hidden.  but here we are.  i had posted this when i had the old Blogger blog.  am always tempted to blur out the cigarette, but  that would not be full disclosure.  yes.  and i roll my own.  only Manya appreciates  this.

this is 4 years ago now.  and yes, that is me in the middle.  daughter Jenny on the right and her daughter, my granddaughter Alyssia on the left.   it's the best and really, the only pic of the three of us or i would use another.  in this pic i remind self of two things:  first, i think i look like George Burns, and second, looking at this me, i remember a hermit crab my daughter had as a little girl.  now and then it would give up its shell and for days wander shelless and so vulnerable and just so thinskinned looking ...it scared us in its exposed state.  anyway...i don't really look like this.  it was a day that for the first time  all my kids were together here.  these two and my son and his woman and my grandson.  it was a little startling, all these large people, all milling about.  and we were doing some intense remodeling thing of the kitchen/ROOM.  and i'd put on my ONLY dress, because it was a special day. 

anyway. 

they have dibs on me.  their other parent/grandparent was given to my son.  he "gets" his dad.

so, Michelle, as you can imagine,  i sometimes think it might be easier to be singular.  they are magnificant, but they are also two Women.  we will learn to compromise some things i think over the years.  and when i realized i was facing a choice of remaining here or putting in with my daughter's north california goat dream,  i thought a lot about the concept of deferring to the Next.  and it was the advent of some very good thinking that i feel is just a normal developmental stage in the life of an adult female (or male, i guess).   there isn't just this long expanse of "adulthood", where we just stay the same,  we continue changing, growing, evolving.  if we choose to.   and to me, the active participation in moving toward a "state of being irrelevant" is just Real and pragmatic.

i think i feel differently about looking at things than a lot of people.  i don't see thinking about my old age as dark or sad.  and i think it's a lot because of buddhist study which simply sees this as a given and part of the beauty of the "work" of being human.  "Every thing [is] a promise of some future something",  until that future undeniably becomes a limited present.  and to me, this is not in the slightest sad.  i think about it a lot.  my daughter and i talk about it a lot.  and i watch people i know, my own age (just entering Old) and people who are in their 80s and 90s that choose different forms of denial which end up being very hard on them and those who love them.  we last a long time nowdays  and very likely we won't be "beamed up", but will become    irrelevant, actually, as far as being able to maintain our  role as the heroine of the play.  we will need to defer.  so to think about it is a really good thing and i think the Best thing along with actually living each day with great purpose and intention NOW.  no regrets down the line. 

and Michelle, i know you know all this.  so these words are just so you know where i stand with it all and that i am open and oh so willing to explore the thinking.  the thing that bothers me most is when all this is treated like some forbidden pessimistic train of thought that descends if we let it.  but should be kept at bay forever.  

anyway....this isn't at all what i'd hoped i'd write but it's what came out and i will add more as the days go along as comments to mySelf.   and THANK YOU for being who you are and your oh so glowing relevance to my world in this present.