handstories

cloudy

     I'm participating in "Tour de Fleece" over on Ravelry (spinning on our spinning wheels every day the bicylce wheels of the Tour de France are spinning).  Laigrai's team is "cirque du fleece", there's an old fashioned circus theme going on (I'm Lydia the Tatooed Lady").  I think the circus spirit has found its way into this piece, which I had thought would end up all white or off white.  

    Was happily surprised to see this sun in the fabric.

    There will be more rays, probably, and many more stitches, and who knows what else.  No plans, just stitching & adding as I go.  Lots to go.  

 

beastish

    One of the pieces from Jude's "patchwork beasts" workshop.  Realized that I hadn't finished any of them, due to avoiding the making of faces.  Fear of who I'll meet?  Or fear that I won't find who I'm looking for?  Anyway, this little cloud creature got a face, a simple one, but it does the job...

...and she seems friendly...so far.

(off to Oregon for a bunch of days, visiting the moms/grandmas).

 

you can't make this stuff up

    While taking the photo of the snood on the koala, there was a loud crack, turned around, and watched a tree fall across the street, missing both cars, but not the wire.  

 

Trying saying that sentence to someone with a straight face.

snood, snooding, snooded

and without my lovely model...

    Here's my first snood (still loving the word).  A mobiusish strip knit from these yarns.  This was the third try (a charm?), to get it the right size.  It will be fun to wear next winter, or with the way the northwest summer is going, tomorrow.  Funny, I'd ordered the batts around the same time, both had antique-ish names ("vintage" & "old lace"), so in my head I planned to use them together somehow.  Once spun up, I thought they should have nothing to do with each other, the colors seemed wrong.  Unable to let go of my original plan, decided to give it a whirl.  Turns out they were old friends who just needed to be reacquainted.  Being knit up and ripped out together three times did the job.  

snood, snood, snood.

guilting & quilting

Getting into bed, "Didn't we have two blankets on our bed?".     "Yep, where's the blue one?"

Search ensues.  The blue one was on top of sound asleep Mr. Blue.

In the morning, Blue asks, "Why did someone take my blanket off me in the middle of the night?"

"Why did you take OUR blanket off our bed?"

"Because I'm cold.  None of my blankets are big enough for me anymore."

oh.  

How, in a house full of piles of cloth and yarn, and a mama who loves to stitch, did a growing thirteen year old boy end up with cold feet sticking out of the end of his bed?!?  

Isn't there an old quote about how it's always the shoemaker's children who are shoeless?

Blue started this green patchwork two summers ago & lost interest.  I've got the machine out & am aiming to warm up his toes as quick as I can.  

bobbin of baubles

Here's the "vintage" with all of doodads added in.  This was challenging, but fun.  Finagling tied on dangling strings back through the orifice when buttons or baubles were too large to go through, drilling holes in wooden milk disks to add the thread to attach it with, treadeling  s-l-o-w-l-y so as to maneuver all these and the other treasures through my fingers and onto the bobbin.  Whew!

I'm thinking of combining it with this spin from hobbledehoy's "old lace" batt.  

Maybe a snood?  Just for the fun of saying "snood" over and over.

moon & me

    Today Mr. Moon and I went to the Frye Art Museum.  I wanted to see the "Degenerate Art Ensemble" exhibit, especially a piece by Mandy Greer (I went on about her here).  The almost nine-year-old review, "it was kinda creepy at parts".  Yes, it was, but worth the trip to see some Mandy.

                                   (dim lights = blurry)

We came home for some making of our own.

What's better than looking at your baseball card collection?                                              Drawing your own versions of them.

As for me, I spun up the "vintage" batt, my first attempt at add-ins.

    And tonight we put on the tie-dye and sing songs from the 70's & 80's for our family choir concert.  Another good day.

just making

    Well, school's been out for a week.  

    Accomplishments:

        Some spinning, one beautiful batt of blues & greens,that I started to ply with a dark brown.  Sounds good, doesn't it, well it wasn't- ugly, broken off & abandoned.

        Some more rainbow stitching on that first moon/sun piece, even though I couldn't  find my reading glasses and had consumed a glass (or two) of wine.  Not a good idea.  Abandoned.

        Some staring at the star/sun piece with all of it's added rays and no new ideas for it.  Next.

        Some cleaning (if you know me, you know this is huge), going through piles of paper, recycling, filing.  That felt good, but there was so much more.  Daunted.

    During that cleaning, found the above sewing.  It's a quilt I started more than a year ago.  A pattern designed by someone else.  My sister didn't understand, "you have your own ideas, why are you using someone else's?"  Because I liked it.  It was clean and simple and brought happy stories to mind.  

    Then I started reading Jude's blog, and taking her classes, and new things started happening, the quilt was abandoned.  

    Yesterday I started working on it again.  All the while, weird conversations were going on in my head...."Is this how you should be spending your time?  Shouldn't you be creating something of your own?  What would the group think?  What's the value in this?"  When I got tired of listening to myself analyze whether or not I should be doing this, I realized how much I was enjoying the process- pinning, mindless stitching, pretty fabrics...the original happy stories were back in my mind, and I was happy with just the making.

    This is just what I need to be doing.  After an unexpectedly busy spring, full of creating, thinking, learning, hard emotional work with, for and because of others- I just needed to stop, to be mindless, to not think, not plan, just be.  

    Jude's upcoming whispering is in my mind, not ideas or plans, just feelings and hopes and visions of layers of intertwining cloth.  

    But, for now, just stitching, happily, (and this is new for me) just being, and being ok with that. 

    Thirty-one hills to go.

tah-dah!

Thinking about the word "open"-

opening

opened

being open

without worry of what may come in, 

or whether anything will,

just being....

ohhhhhpen.

 

india's influence

pansies...

frozen... 

in a jar with fabric...

This was not something I expected to get into.  Was just going to check it out of the library.  To see what everyone was talking about.  The photos...they are stunning, rich, inspiring.  I renewed it.  And again.  Had to return it.  Bought it.

India Flint's book, Eco Colour.

Don't know if I can wait 24 hours...