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 . . .

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quick check-in

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.

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update

sigh.

let’s review:
day 1: enjoyed collection of and introduction to materials.

day 2: discontent set in. liked the backside better, so back is now the front.

day 3: hate the lace, but like the way layers peek out from under the pink satin camisole as if they’d been sat upon, squished by the pink. when i started the piece, i fancied the fabrics as representative of various layers of my life. the pink satin = the pretty, fresh, little girl layer where i was absolutely adorable to look at and be around. now here’s little pink layer sitting on the other determined layers. i tend to personify and anthropomorphize, it’s true. (which makes me think of judith’s pathways, actually. and here i’ve been too embarrassed to admit publicly that i make up stories like this with my pieces.)

which brings us to day 4/today: i know i ought to take the advice of my stitching sages and put this piece up, tuck it in a drawer, set it aside for a while, but honestly, there are so many unfinished things, so many loose ends in my life right now that i just can’t do it. i can’t. i want to finish something, dammit. and, bless its heart, this project is what’s going to satisfy that desire. i know i run the risk of hating the piece forever and ever, but (for now anyway), the quest continues.

i tinkered around with it this morning, deciding to pull up the ends of the thread. i mean, they were just hanging there anyway (i didn’t bother with knots or embedding them or anything.) as i “worked”, i listened to susan susanka’s book, the not so big life. i have a strong affinity for place, and one of my favorite thinking candies is how our physical spaces support us. as i pulled those threads,

i got sculpture.

i got cubbies.

i got whatzits.

but i got no ah-ha. no magic. no eureka.

and that damned lace has to go.

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maybe it’s a goblin?

could work. . .

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still not yet

sigh.

i don’t like it any more than my camera likes focusing on the grid of that delicates bag.

the layers are kinda’ cool, but it’s definitely sorely lacking in other ways. ways i hope will soon make themselves known because right now, the back is the best.

and that’s not saying much. not saying much at all.

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not yet

so i have a dryer sheet:

a bit of pink satin from a camisole i once wore:

a bit from one of those laundry bags used to wash delicates in the washing machine, a bit of pink lace, and some delicious fabric from a pair of pants that i’ve not gotten around to mending:

cut up a jacket to capture a bit of dragon, something else i’ve been thinking about lately:

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breaking ground

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.

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the women we are

i want to do more of this.

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clay day

maybe most of you have completed and moved on (?) while my cqr project continues. i think a story is forming . . .

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since last we met . . .

it didn’t work.

i missed you.

in cleaning out during my forced electronic exile, i found my old smocking machine, gave her a dab of wd-40, and rolled a piece of batiste through (breaking only 42 needles in the process and inventing more than a few new cuss words). a former jeanne taught smocking and enjoyed smocking clothes for the chiclets.

being a bag lady then and now, i pieced the salvageable ticking fabric from grandmother’s clothespin bag around the smocked panel and created a little tote.

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roots reunited