unpacked a lot of boxes today, but none containing cloth and thread. daughter, moxie, got a canary yesterday (a late holiday gift to herself), and pavarotti (we call him ‘rotti for short) immediately captured the attention of housemates . . .

at first they froze – didn’t blink for 2.5 hours. then they decided to take a closer look.

and all the while, ‘rotti sang the most beautiful songs . . .

these hands of mine haven’t touched fabric – except to don the same sweatsuit (the only one i have here) the past several days. it’s interesting living in limbo. though almost everything except hubbie’s tools and a few clothes are there, at the new (or “to” as i call it) house, the heater decided to die, so it’s too cold to stay there overnight. then hubbie and i got sick this week, probably our bodies taking charge and forcing us to slow down a bit.

am feeling downright cratchity having not held cloth and thread or strung words together in so long. am itching to pick up needle and thread – to do what, i don’t know. i just need to get some cloth in my hands. but who knows where it is or when i’ll unpack it?

i do, however, think that with views like these (snapped from the deck on the back of our “to” house), i’ll be inspired to create something . . .

melioration has begun – finally. not much to show, though, because, well, we’re moving, you see.

that is, we might be moving – it all depends on when we will have our fill with the . . . well, never mind.

we thought we were moving before christmas, so all the fabric, floss, needles, fabric scissors, irons are now residing in one of the gagillion boxes somewhere in the overstuffed garage. i found a snippet of cream-colored fabric with white hearts that’s not too chirpy, and cut (more like hacked, really, given that those scissors have cut everything except fabric), and using ye-olde-fingerpressing technique, tucked under the edges. then, after much fussing and grumbling about how uncomfortable it is for me working with big pieces like a completed-if-tattered quilt, that one rectangle of not-too-chirpy fabric is in place, covering one of the bald spots and extending this quilt’s life well into future generations of little jeannes.

my plan (if you can call it that – it just occurred to me as i cut hacked the snippet of not-too-chirpy fabric) is to patch/cover/conceal/mend with various whiteish fabrics. 88 pieces, to be exact. same number of keys on a piano.

thursday found us scooting up the road to n.c., and though i have thread, floss, needles, snippets of non-chirpy fabric – even ideas – i forgot THE QUILT.

so i spent yesterday doing maintenance on my blogs, upgrading to the latest version of wordpress software, a tedious, time-consuming task that i’m glad is done. (though i haven’t checked. twould be just my luck to find that the newest version came out last night.) spent some time uploading pictures to my flickr account that i set up ages ago, then abandoned.

there’s this internal brewing, you see: i am on facebook and i twitter and i have 2 blogs (4 really, but on one i’m a occasional guest blogger and the other i write under a pseudonym). i find blogging so much more enjoyable, so much more satisfying than facebook and twitter because blogs feel less surfacey. spending more than 160 characters promotes some depth and breadth, and through blogging i’ve made some friends, built some relationships.

now i harbor no illusions that anybody (other than possibly my mother and husband) gives a rat’s ass about where i am and what i’m doing, and i admit to feeling rather like an exhibitionist every time i update. facebook flat-out overwhelms me for reasons i plan to explore on my other blog. all that said, i have decided (at least for now) to continue with facebook and twitter because they are my check-in buddies. just as some folks get a friend to provide the accountability factor for exercise by agreeing to go to the gym together on a regular basis, updating on facebook/twitter reminds me to be more present, more grounded, more engaged with my life.

we head home tomorrow, and i’ll be able to get my hands in motion on that quilt, thereby giving my brain a (much-needed) rest because somehow i think better when my hands are in motion.

time out for another adventure. back 1/5/09ish.

fingers haven’t been idle of late – not by any stretch – just not dancing with needle and thread. last night’s eventual quiet was punctuated with familiar strains of adult children quabbling over who sleeps under my grandmother’s quilt. the quilt made especially for me is quite tattered now, and we all (finally) agree that it’s time for me to start mending so this worn cloth can hold space for sweet dreams far, far into future generations.

happy, happy. . .

not much stitching going on around here the past few weeks. no time and no inspiration – though i do know from a vague memory or two that inspiration finds me and i find her once i dedicate the time (even the smallest snippet of clock) and move. stitch. start. go.

much, much life going on here – all good (except for the no time to stitch part). just full. really, really, really full.

will be working from colorado over the next 2 weeks, and while i don’t have the first piece of clothing packed (or even planned, for that matter), i already have a bag full of various and assorted cloths and threads (in case there’s no thrift shop within driving distance). i’ll be at my son’s home, and he usually frowns on my going through his closet and cutting up his clothes. (he used to, anyway.)

it’s funny (well, not really, but you know what i mean) how there’s so much more time when i’m away from home – even if i’m working. something’s wrong with that picture. very wrong. must find balance. i know it’s around here some place . . .

am here. came to spend a week in nc decompressing then managed to (a) forget the piece that was just beginning to make sense and (b) get sick. so i just lay around with a compress to my cellulitis-infested ear, watching the clock for time to down my next antibiotic, and wonder why life is so much busier now than when i had 2 wee ones born within 14 months of each other.

how does that happen?

i mean, really. there should be so much room in my life now – room to do yoga, walk, write, stitch, and still tend to family matters. instead it often feels like i’m clawing the clock, trying to slow the hands down enough to give me even 30 minutes to stitch. now that i’m sick, i have the time, but no energy or desire.

maybe, hopefully tomorrow.

no time to work on it today – at least not with needle and thread. but i did wake up thinking about this piece and puzzled about it most of the day. am now thinking i’ll flip it over and make the back the front. like karin, i usually like the back of pieces better anyway. (in houses, too.) there’s just something more approachable, more comfortable, easier about backs or wrong sides. i like the way the various fabrics play peek-a-boo when this piece is flipped. only thing i don’t like is the lace. blechkdt. i really do not like lace – at all – so i’ll find something to put over the lace. a patch. like mending.

could work. . .

a(nother) week without internet access finds me catching up (again) after enjoying an all-too-short week-long mother/daughter trip to the beaches of hilton head island in south carolina. one of our most favorite spots on earth.

while there, we enjoyed a sunset supper and the full moon from the beach on nearby sea pines:

another night we took a sunset walk on the beach. okay, folks, i admit it: though i love being AT the beach, i do not like being ON the beach. don’t like it AT ALL. i just can’t STAND the feel of salt and sand. (imagine a long involuntary shudder here brought on just by writing about it.) looking at the beach, listening to beach sounds = beyond fabulous. feeling it on my person = not the teensiest bit of fun. if i did every negatively-inclined word in this paragraph in all caps, it wouldn’t be enough to convey just how much i DO NOT LIKE being ON the beach. that’s why this picture of my size 5.5’s ON THE BEACH will undoubtedly prove how much i love my daughter and doing things mother/daughter style. i mean, really.

sometimes it was hard to tell algae from sea critters, and thus we have another reason i do not like being ON the beach (did i mention that before?). though fun to look at something i just don’t see every day, i figure that’s what the zoom lens on the camera is for.

another day we boarded a boat and cruised to nearby savannah. don’t these grasses just BEG to be stitched?

at night we’d sit and stitch: alison knitting a purse to hold her money and key at the upcoming civil war reenactment she will attend, while i worked on alison’s deep dish, a piece that took a decided turn (partly of necessity = scarcity of resources/materials), detouring from the image that appeared to me several months ago into something related-but-different. sitting there stitching with alison those nights in hilton head, i felt compelled to stitch the names of our matriarchial lineage:

(since my freestyle stitched handwriting is barely readable, i opted to do a stitch-over. the marker i used is a fabric marker but not of the erasable variety, so those occasional pen marks that peep out from under the thread? we’ll just consider them “shadows”.)

all too soon, our mother/daughter week at the beach was over, and it was time to head home, a trip that took a mere 14 hours because my car threw a hissy fit on I-95 which meant waiting in front of the convenience-and-liquor store for 2 hours and 17 minutes on a tow truck. temperature in the mid 90s, lovebugs swarmed and proved (once again) their preference for silver cars and our hot, sweaty skin. (can anybody tell me exactly how those disgusting gelanous bugs benefit the big world of nature? i mean, really: what is their role?)

the tow truck driver got there (finally) and despite having been told twice that there would be 2 passengers accompanying the car, still seemed (unpleasantly) surprised to hear that we would be riding with him. he loaded miss T2 (my car) (stands for Miss T’EyeWanda, the word uttered by kathy bates’ character in the movie fried green tomatoes as she repeatedly rams the car belonging to the 2 rude, self-obsessed girls in the walmart packing lot), we hoisted ourselves up the two stories to the cab of his truck, and off we went. we’d scarcely left the parking lot when he announced that he had to go pick up another car. it was near the hospice, he said, but he had no idea where the hospice was. didn’t even know there was one.

because it was now 4:28 and knowing that the dealership and car rental place closed at 6 pm, i took charge: got him to get the address from his dispatcher, googled it on my phone, retrieved the phone number, and called for directions. because the driver seemed decidedly uninterested in the impending possibility that we would be stranded in the parking lot outside a locked car dealership for the next 18 or so hours, i became chatty cathy, encouraging him to talk about his (apparent) favorite topic: his 7 drag racing cars. chevrolets all, one has a $60,000.00 engine and 3 parachutes. all have 1-3 guns (best i can tell, each gun makes the car go faster), and, except for the block, which he subs-out, mike builds the cars all by himself.

he shows more than a bit of his propensity for speed on the ride to first the mechanic’s shop where he delivered the other vehicle then onto the dealership, where we squeaked in with about 27 minutes to spare.

which would have been enough if the young woman – the very one i’d talked to on the phone 4 times that very afternoon – hadn’t been on her way out for a smoking break as we entered. now i don’t know if (a) there was some memory-sucking agent in her cigarette, (b) it was almost quitting time on friday, (c) the end of a long, hard week or (d) all of the above, but in the 12 minutes that expired between her pointing to a table and assuring us that she’d be with us in just a few minutes and her coming back in (looking at us like she’d never seen us before in her life) to inquire if we’d been helped, she had obviously totally forgotten us. and the 9 other people who were clothes in dealership insignia are either blind or big on ignoring customers, because not a single one said so much as “howdoyoudo” as they swarmed around us, filling the “hospitality center” refrigerator (no, he didn’t offer us anything as he good-naturedly endured the ribbing of his coworkers who apparently have had to fill the fridge before); answering the phone: chatting about weekend plans; and (my personal favorite): watching the golf tournament on the big screen tv in the customer hospitality center.

breathe.

the main thing is: we are safe. no small thing given what ailed miss t2. another adventure fetching miss t2: we got home around 12:30 a.m. (after seeing Les Miserables), napped till 2 a.m, then up and on the road for the 6 hour drive to get my 4-wheeled girl. turned in the rental car, picked up miss t2, and were home by 3 p.m. in time for alison’s voice students.

so that’s enough catching up for now. not much stitching going on this week or in the foreseeable future, really, given that daughter and i are renovating a house, but am hoping to stitch my way through this evening. or maybe i’ll spend my sitting time traipsing through my favorite stitching blogs, reconnecting with e-friends i’ve missed so much. if no stitching to share over the next few weeks, perhaps i’ll post snaps of freshly painted walls or newly-installed light fixtures . . .

glad to be back, i am. so very glad to be back.