windthread

browns

there are 3 seperate cloths.  pretty much all the browns that i have dyed.  the one on the far right is the one in the previous post.  it's early evening and hard to get any true color.  i had no idea i had these cloths...well, i knew that i had a basket referred to as Stuff i Dyed, but it was just a basket of cloth.  all is cotton,  silk noile, and linen.  all just plunked in either an aluminum or cast iron pot and left in the Sun.  Summer dyes.

and this.  this one strip with a notation.  Yerba Mansa.  8/10.  this would have been when the thought of moving to California first arose.  i think at that point, i detached from looking closely, here.  but isn't it interesting.  this is a color i have been wanting in the last months.    the Yerba Mansa this is from was in a pot by the front porch.  it died last summer, but i don't know, it also might be a biennial?  whichever, i have access to endless amounts of it.  it is common here.  today i see that it is a color similiar to the colors of the eucalyptus that i have longed for.

this has been Some Day.

 

rocks and stone

in Magic Diaries 2,  Jude talked about    Storing   cloth by stitching it together.   what is pictured here is nothing at all like the cloth she pictured,  but i was completely taken by the idea.   and then, i went back over to Southerly Post, Elizabeth's blog in Ballarat and for some reason an old post was there waiting for me.  a wooden clothes rack with fabrics drying......and those two ideas magnetized.  YES.

stitch the color houses together and just drape them on a wooden clothes rack.  easily accessable, easily alternated.  loose running stitch so that if a piece is needed, it can be easily taken out and the color house put back together without it.

so as an experiment, so i don't lose the thought, i found some browns (in all different places) that were the results of last summers dye pots.  i really had no idea that all this was there.  and there's probably even       more.  but, for now............

and in looking at this,  i realized that all this was connected to the realization yesterday,  that i will need some rocks and stones on the Diaries cloth.   Isn't It All just Somethin.

 

details

that odd phenomenon...that i can SEE things somehow more objectively when the pic is here,  more than when i'm standing face to face with cloth?????    but, wanting to see here,  how i did the integrated applique   (Jude, Magic Diaries)  to the top quarter of this Circle of How it Really Is.  i remain with the desire to just pin things together, leave them loose.  but having done this, i feel ok with it.   oh, and also, the bottom right, a little, but with the stitches running vertically  (top is horizontal).  will finish it this way,  using both directions i think.  Integrated Applique has become my second  (Invisible Baste) favorite stitch technique.

the room where things get born:  again, Integrated Applique of the eye (which will get more stitching of lines)  and some changes in the ghost butterfly....straightening, antennae and a thread bead head.   THEN,  a Wind came from the Raven's window yesterday and drifted over and across the Arlee moon.  i cut and wove it under the branch of the ghost tree.    this is now Invisible Basted.  not sure if it needs more.  will wait.   and it's only noon.

a Forever cloth

this is what can happen when i get to stay home three days in a row

SO.

will see how this feels as the day goes along.   it all began by really looking at that "room" where "things get born",  the one with the ghost/spirit butterfly from yesterday.  and began there by snipping away the crooked stitching.  which i will replace in a minute.  but then, still thinking about what that room IS,  there came an urge for another Eye.  ok. 

then quite suddenly, but maybe not really at all,  the urge to just see what things look like without those two vertical pieces, followed by the beautiful piece that i love but it all of a sudden just stood away from the rest.  gone. 

then...the beautiful lace piece, under the woman,  that connected so perfectly to the dark line in the Arlee cloth,  the magnificant square above it.   snip snip snip.

so, now i am staring at it thinking that it is becoming  a Forever Cloth.  that i will NEVER finish it even to some point where i will be able to let it rest for a long time.  i have referred to it as the Cloth of Next.   having meant that it is where i've gotten to, before continuing on to what's next in my life.    and maybe i just misunderstood.  maybe IT is what's next.  and next and next and next.

?

AND i wish i could learn how to put this in the side of this blog, that the lizard at the center top of this cloth is a Jude Hill, was gifted to me at a point when the encouragement was critical.  it is NOT my lizard.

 

 

minutia

i feel like driving into town and buying ingredients for White Russians:  vodka, cream, kahlua. instead, i'll post these pics.

this is the ghost, or spirit butterfly, after the design on my Tshirt.  which wasn't a butterfly but made me think of how it could be.  it doesn't look like much here and took me forever but i like the idea of it.  actually, i like It.  it depicts what i had in mind.

and here it is in this whole "room".....which remains a mystery to me.  i arranged and rearranged without any real changes.  i almost took off the moon.  it feels stark.  but then, stark feels right.  the two long strips at the bottom....WHY? i wonder.  but, they too remain.

and this.  Again, why?  no answer.

and here is the lightning and toad eggs for Marti to see.  has afternoon Sun on it.  i did a lot of really little stitching on the "circle", which in my mind, is "the way It really is". 

i don't know how Georgia and my Nepali friend got up at the top.  they were supposed to the the last pic.  but everytime i came over here to see what was going on at the MotherShip, there they were, watching me, having thoughts.

 

 

 

butterflies

so..this is where it all has gotten to so far.  i have spent a lot of time just looking yesterday and today.  what more needs to be here and why?  what would be "missing"?  not in terms of in a "decorative" way, but rather symbolically, to speak of this point in time.  where everything has "gotten to",  this far.  so, i know there will be the rest of the grasses.  3 kinds and i think i have decided the little lizards will be among those grasses, as they are in "real life" here.  and everywhere i have ever been.  

i think the only other "absolute" would be the butterflies.  there is the one that is on Her head:

but then, there would be the images that represent what butterflies symbolize for me.  i am working on how to put that into words.  not there yet.  working on it.  so today i stitched more butterflies

but then, by accident, noticed the BACK of the butterfly of the other day

and almost like that better........?  and then,  got a call from Alz B about a "situation" at her house, so went over there.  and during the exchange, she was interested in the design on my Tshirt, which i'd recently gotten from the Thrift Shop.  so when we were looking at it,  i SAW it.  a kind of Escher~esque thing....that made me think of.........butterflies.  so, now, i'm thinking, maybe for these "ghost" butterflies, "spirit" butterflies,  maybe i really might want to try something entirely different?

 

 

 

a little awkward, but.....

in the beginning i'd thought of putting many butterflies on the Diaries cloth.  but  as time has gone on, they feel like they would be too much.  but the symbolic meaning they hold for me remains.  this morning.....a thought:
the stitching is sloppy, but i just wanted to see if it could work...

here the wings are outlined with white colored pencil ...how it might look if i had been able to slow down and stitch more care~fully.  

this was just on a scrap.  i'll try one directly on the Diaries cloth...go slow, take care.  little butterfly spirits, energy imprints.  maybe using a different color thread, too.

 

color

these are what i have so far.  i added more water to the pot, it is weakening.  this is GOOD.

and here is that little ClothDreaming i was fooling with the other day...how perfect.  they have found this larger dream to go into

and...........well, wouldn't you just know it.  talk about right infront of your face.........

 

 

from NY times...on the wall

looking for a certain ....ivoryyellowglow

so...here is what came out of that first soak.  the strip on the right is a redye of something i can't remember what caused it.  i really, as in REALLY, need to take pics for better reference.

if my kids were to look here, they would get an Oh, no, feeling.  i spent years in Ann Arbor house painting and repainting the kitchen trying to find a color of the inside of a conch shell.  all i ever managed was variations of a kind of bubble gum.   and in noticing what i wrote in the Title box,

it's the glow

that i'm wanting i think, in both cases...and the glow occurs maybe only in the conversation between the Light, the color, and the eye that is staring????